572 – Assassination of Alboin, King of the Lombards
Alboin (530s – June 28, 572) was king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572. He had a lasting effect on Italy and the Pannonian Basin; in the former his invasion marked the beginning of centuries of Lombard rule, and in the latter his defeat of the Gepids and his departure from Pannonia ended the dominance there of the Germanic peoples.

The period of Alboin’s reign as king in Pannonia following the death of his father, Audoin, was one of confrontation and conflict between the Lombards and their main neighbors, the Gepids. The Gepids initially gained the upper hand, but in 567, thanks to his alliance with the Avars, Alboin inflicted a decisive defeat on his enemies, whose lands the Avars subsequently occupied. The increasing power of his new neighbours caused Alboin some unease however, and he therefore decided to leave Pannonia for Italy, hoping to take advantage of the Byzantine Empire’s reduced ability to defend its territory in the wake of the Gothic War.

After gathering a large coalition of peoples, Alboin crossed the Julian Alps in 568, entering an almost undefended Italy. He rapidly took control of most of Venetia and Liguria. In 569, unopposed, he took northern Italy’s main city, Milan. Pavia offered stiff resistance however, and was taken only after a siege lasting three years. During that time Alboin turned his attention to Tuscany, but signs of factionalism among his supporters and Alboin’s diminishing control over his army increasingly began to manifest themselves.

Alboin was assassinated on June 28, 572, in a coup d’état instigated by the Byzantines. It was organized by the king’s foster brother, Helmichis, with the support of Alboin’s wife, Rosamund, daughter of the Gepid king whom Alboin had killed some years earlier. The coup failed in the face of opposition from a majority of the Lombards, who elected Cleph as Alboin’s successor, forcing Helmichis and Rosamund to flee to Ravenna under imperial protection. Alboin’s death deprived the Lombards of the only leader who could have kept the newborn Germanic entity together, the last in the line of hero-kings who had led the Lombards through their migrations from the vale of the Elbe to Italy. For many centuries following his death Alboin’s heroism and his success in battle were celebrated in Saxon and Bavarian epic poetry.

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1873 – Alexis Carrel, French surgeon and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1944)
Alexis Carrel (French: [alɛksi kaʁɛl]; 28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. Like many intellectuals of his time, he promoted eugenics. He was a regent for the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during Vichy France which implemented the eugenics policies there; his association with the Foundation and with Jacques Doriot’s ultra-nationalist Parti Populaire Français led to investigations of collaborating with the Nazis, but he died before any trial could be held.[1][2][3][4] He faced media attacks towards the end of his life over his alleged involvement with the Nazis.[1]

A Nobel Prize laureate in 1912, Alexis Carrel was also elected twice, in 1924 and 1927, as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.[5][6]

Biography
Born in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, Rhône, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family and was educated by Jesuits, though he had become an agnostic by the time he became a university student.[citation needed] He was a pioneer in transplantology and thoracic surgery. Alexis Carrel was also a member of learned societies in the U.S., Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy and Greece and received honorary doctorates from Queen’s University of Belfast, Princeton University, California, New York, Brown University and Columbia University.

In 1902, he was claimed to have witnessed the miraculous cure of Marie Bailly at Lourdes, made famous in part because she named Carrel as a witness of her cure.[citation needed] After the notoriety surrounding the event, Carrel could not obtain a hospital appointment because of the pervasive anticlericalism in the French university system at the time. In 1903 he emigrated to Montreal, Canada, but soon relocated to Chicago, Illinois to work for Hull Laboratory. While there he collaborated with American physician Charles Claude Guthrie in work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs as well as the head, and Carrel was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for these efforts.[7]

In 1906 he joined the newly formed Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York where he spent the rest of his career.[8] There he did significant work on tissue cultures with pathologist Montrose Thomas Burrows. In the 1930s, Carrel and Charles Lindbergh became close friends not only because of the years they worked together but also because they shared personal, political, and social views. Lindbergh initially sought out Carrel to see if his sister-in-law’s heart, damaged by rheumatic fever, could be repaired. When Lindbergh saw the crudeness of Carrel’s machinery, he offered to build new equipment for the scientist. Eventually they built the first perfusion pump, an invention instrumental to the development of organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Lindbergh considered Carrel his closest friend, and said he would preserve and promote Carrel’s ideals after his death.[8]

Due to his close proximity with Jacques Doriot’s fascist Parti Populaire Français (PPF) during the 1930s and his role in implementing eugenics policies during Vichy France, he was accused after the Liberation of collaboration, but died before the trial.

In his later life he returned to his Catholic roots. In 1939 he met with Trappist monk Alexis Presse on a recommendation. Although Carrel was skeptical about meeting with a priest,[9] Presse ended up having a profound influence on the rest of Carrel’s life.[8] In 1942, he said “I believe in the existence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in Revelation and in all the Catholic Church teaches.” He summoned Presse to administer the Catholic Sacraments on his death bed in November 1944.[9]

For much of his life, Carrel and his wife spent their summers on the Ile Saint-Gildas, which they owned. After he and Lindbergh became close friends, Carrel persuaded him to also buy a neighboring island, the Ile Illiec, where the Lindberghs often resided in the late 1930s.[10]

Contributions to science
Vascular suture
Carrel was a young surgeon in 1894 when the French president Sadi Carnot was assassinated with a knife. His large abdominal veins had been severed, and surgeons who treated the president felt that such veins were too large to be successfully reconnected. This left a deep impression on Carrel, and he set about developing new techniques for suturing blood vessels. The technique of “triangulation”, which was inspired by sewing lessons he took from an embroideress, is still used today. Julius Comroe wrote: “Between 1901 and 1910, Alexis Carrel, using experimental animals, performed every feat and developed every technique known to vascular surgery today.” He had great success in reconnecting arteries and veins, and performing surgical grafts, and this led to his Nobel Prize in 1912.[11]

Wound antisepsis
During World War I (1914–1918), Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin developed the Carrel–Dakin method of treating wounds based on chlorine (Dakin’s solution) which, preceding the development of antibiotics, was a major medical advance in the care of traumatic wounds. For this, Carrel was awarded the Légion d’honneur.

Organ transplants
Carrel co-authored a book with famed pilot Charles A. Lindbergh, The Culture of Organs, and worked with Lindbergh in the mid-1930s to create the “perfusion pump,” which allowed living organs to exist outside the body during surgery. The advance is said to have been a crucial step in the development of open-heart surgery and organ transplants, and to have laid the groundwork for the artificial heart, which became a reality decades later.[12] Some critics of Lindbergh claimed that Carrel overstated Lindbergh’s role to gain media attention,[13] but other sources say Lindbergh played an important role in developing the device.[14][15] Both Lindbergh and Carrel appeared on the cover of Time magazine on June 13, 1938.

Cellular senescence
Carrel was also interested in the phenomenon of senescence, or aging. He claimed that all cells continued to grow indefinitely, and this became a dominant view in the early 20th century.[16] Carrel started an experiment on January 17, 1912, where he placed tissue cultured from an embryonic chicken heart in a stoppered Pyrex flask of his own design.[17] He maintained the living culture for over 20 years with regular supplies of nutrient. This was longer than a chicken’s normal lifespan. The experiment, which was conducted at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, attracted considerable popular and scientific attention.[18]

Carrel’s experiment by some was never successfully replicated, and in the 1960s Leonard Hayflick and Paul Moorhead proposed that differentiated cells can undergo only a limited number of divisions before dying. This is known as the Hayflick limit, and is now a pillar of biology.[16]

L. Hayflick has shown that a cell has a limited number of divisions, equal to the so called “Hayflick’s Limit.” However, L. Franks and others (Loo et al. 1987; Nooden and Tompson 1995; Frolkis 1988a), have shown that the number of cell divisions can be considerably greater than that stipulated by the “Hayflick Limit”, having practically no limit at all.

It is not certain how Carrel obtained his anomalous results. Leonard Hayflick suggests that the daily feeding of nutrient was continually introducing new living cells to the alleged immortal culture.[19] J. A. Witkowski has argued that,[20] while “immortal” strains of visibly mutated cells have been obtained by other experimenters, a more likely explanation is deliberate introduction of new cells into the culture, possibly without Carrel’s knowledge.[21]

Honors
In 1972, the Swedish Post Office honored Carrel with a stamp that was part of its Nobel stamp series.[22] In 1979, the lunar crater Carrel was named after him as a tribute to his scientific breakthroughs.

In February 2002, as part of celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s birth, the Medical University of South Carolina at Charleston established the Lindbergh-Carrel Prize,[23] given to major contributors to “development of perfusion and bioreactor technologies for organ preservation and growth”. Michael DeBakey and nine other scientists[24] received the prize, a bronze statuette [2] created for the event by the Italian artist C. Zoli and named “Elisabeth”[25] after Elisabeth Morrow, sister of Lindbergh’s wife Anne Morrow, who died from heart disease. It was in fact Lindbergh’s disappointment that contemporary medical technology could not provide an artificial heart pump which would allow for heart surgery on her that led to Lindbergh’s first contact with Carrel.

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1895 – The inaugural run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.
The Royal Blue was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O)’s flagship passenger train between New York City and Washington, D.C., in the United States, beginning in 1890. The Baltimore-based B&O also used the name between 1890 and 1917 for its improved passenger service between New York and Washington launched in the 1890s, collectively dubbed the Royal Blue Line. Using variants such as the Royal Limited and Royal Special for individual Royal Blue trains, the B&O operated the service in partnership with the Reading Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Principal intermediate cities served were Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore. Later, as Europe reeled from the carnage of World War I and connotations of European royalty fell into disfavor, the B&O discreetly omitted the sobriquet Royal Blue Line from its New York passenger service and the Royal Blue disappeared from B&O timetables. Beginning in 1917, former Royal Blue Line trains were renamed: the Royal Limited (inaugurated on May 15, 1898), for example, became the National Limited, continuing west from Washington to St. Louis via Cincinnati. During the Depression, the B&O hearkened back to the halcyon pre-World War I era when it launched a re-christened Royal Blue train between New York and Washington in 1935. The B&O finally discontinued passenger service north of Baltimore on April 26, 1958, and the Royal Blue faded into history.

Railroad historian Herbert Harwood said, in his seminal history of the service, “First conceived in late Victorian times to promote a new railroad line … it was indeed one of the most memorable images in the transportation business, an inspired blend of majesty and mystique … Royal Blue Line … Royal Blue Trains … the Royal Blue all meant different things at different times. But essentially they all symbolized one thing: the B&O’s regal route.”[1][2] Between the 1890s and World War I, the B&O’s six daily Royal Blue trains providing service between New York and Washington were noted for their luxury, elegant appearance, and speed. The car interiors were paneled in mahogany, had fully enclosed vestibules (instead of open platforms, still widely in use at the time on U.S. railroads), then-modern heating and lighting, and leaded glass windows. The car exteriors were painted a deep “Royal Saxony blue” color with gold leaf trim.[3]

The B&O’s use of electrification instead of steam power in a Baltimore tunnel on the Royal Blue Line, beginning in 1895, marked the first use of electric locomotives by an American railroad and presaged the dawn of practical alternatives to steam power in the 20th century.[4] Spurred by intense competition from the formidable Pennsylvania Railroad, the dominant railroad in the lucrative New York–Washington market since the 1880s, the Royal Blue in its mid-1930s reincarnation was noted for a number of technological innovations, including streamlining and the first non-articulated diesel locomotive on a passenger train in the U.S., a harbinger of the steam locomotive’s eventual demise.[5]

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1869 – Kate Carew, American illustrator and journalist (d. 1961)
Mary Williams (June 27, 1869 – February 11, 1961), who wrote pseudonymously as Kate Carew, was a caricaturist self-styled as “The Only Woman Caricaturist”. She worked at the New York World , providing illustrated celebrity interviews.

Biography
Mary Williams was born in Oakland, California, and began her art training at San Francisco’s School of Design under the esteemed Arthur Mathews and received the school’s “Special Medal for Excellence in Painting” at the local Art Association’s 1891 Winter Annual.[1] From 1891 to 1895 her art received awards at the California State Fair. She exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. After the premature death of her first husband, Seymour Chapin Davison, in 1897 she became, under the sponsorship of Ambrose Bierce, a staff illustrator of portrait sketches at the San Francisco Examiner.[2]

In 1899 Mary Williams Davison moved to New York City and established a studio-residence on West Twenty-Fourth Street. She was hired by Joseph Pulitzer to publish her caricature drawings and interviews of celebrities under the pseudonym “Kate Carew” for his Sunday World and Evening World, divisions of the New York World. In 1901 she married the Australian journalist and playwright Henry Kellett Chambers. In September 1910 she gave birth to a son, Colin Chambers, and the following year divorced her husband for his infidelities with the Mexican writer, Maria Cristina Mena.[2]

In 1911 she was sent to Europe by the Sunday World to publish the series “Kate Carew Abroad.” She traveled to London and Paris, where she interviewed Pablo Picasso and Rostand, John Galsworthy, George Moore, Émile Zola, Bret Hart (who happened to be in England), Lady Sackville-West, and many others. She wrote about 500 pieces for New York City newspapers and later for the Tatler (London), The Patrician, and Eve.[2]

She was among those who visited `Abdu’l-Bahá, then head of the Bahá’í Faith, during his visit to the States and travelled with him for a number of days. On April 16, 1912 with Mary Williams still travelling with him, `Abdu’l-Bahá visited the Bowery.[3] Mary Williams noted that she was impressed with `Abdu’l-Bahá’s generosity of spirit in bringing people of social standing to the Bowery as well as that he then gave money to the poor rather than accepting it.[3][4][5]

She became severely ill in December 1913 and returned to the States after surgery. While conducting interviews in Hollywood for the London Strand she met and married the British-born John A. Reed in November 1916.[6] The following spring they moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. She became an exhibiting member of the Carmel Arts & Crafts Club and staged a solo exhibit at Monterey’s Hotel Del Monte with over two dozen caricatures, including Woodrow Wilson, Mark Twain, and Ethel Barrymore, to rave reviews.[7] [8] Beginning in the early 1920s, when a severe wrist injury temporarily limited her career, the Reeds resided primarily at Guernsey in the Channel Islands or in France. She exhibited at the Salon des Artistes of Paris in 1924 and 1928; on the latter date she displayed Farm at Hyeres.[9] In June 1938 they returned to the Monterey Peninsula. John Reed died in June 1941 at a sanatorium in St. Helena. Mary Williams returned to Monterey in the spring of 1943, purchased the former home of the painter Lucy Valentine Pierce, and devoted herself to seascapes and landscapes.[10] She died at the age of 91 in a Pacific Grove rest home and is buried in Oakland.[2]

 
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James Maitland “Jimmy” Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American actor and military officer who is among the most honored and popular stars in film history.
He also had a noted military career and was a World War II and Vietnam War veteran and pilot, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve, becoming the highest-ranking actor in military history.[5]
 
 
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1579 – Livonian campaign of Stephen Báthory begins.
The Livonian campaign of Stephen Báthory (referred to as the Russo-Polish War among Polish historians[1]) took place in the final stage of the Livonian War, between 1577 and 1582. Polish-Lithuanian forces led by Stephen Báthory (Batory), king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, successfully fought against the army of Ivan IV “the Terrible”, tsar of Russia, over the Duchy of Livonia and Polotsk. Russian forces were expelled from Livonia before the campaign was concluded by the Truce of Jam Zapolski.

Background
Main article: Livonian War
In the second half of the 16th century several powers, including Poland, Lithuania and Russia were engaged in the struggle over the control of the ports in the southern Baltic Sea (Dominium Maris Baltici). The Russo-Lithuanian War of 1558–1570, in which Poland aided Lithuania (and in 1568 united with it forming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), ended inconclusively with a three-year-long truce. The death of Polish king Sigismund II Augustus created a brief period in which tsar Ivan IV of Russia contemplated taking part in the Polish royal election (see Polish-Lithuanian-Muscovite Commonwealth), but eventually the Commonwealth elected Stephen Báthory of Poland to its throne, and the hostilities between Russia and the Commonwealth resumed.[2]

1575–1577
In 1575 Ivan ordered another attack on Poland, and succeeded in taking parts of Livonia (notably, Salacgrīva and Pärnu). In 1577 Russian forces besieged Reval (Revel, Tallinn) and a strong army was concentrating near Pskov. At the same time Polish forces were tied on the western side of the Baltic Sea, dealing with the Danzig rebellion. In July the main Muscovite army of about 30,000 advanced from Pskov, taking Viļaka, Rēzekne, Daugavpils, Koknese, Gulbene and surrounding areas.[3] A Polish counter-offensive—known as the First Campaign of Bathory—begun in the fall, and succeeded in taking back some of the territories.[3]

1578
Negotiations took part in that year, and a three-year truce was signed, although it was rejected by king Bathory who was preparing for a larger counteroffensive. At the same time, Polish and Swedish forces managed to stop further progress of the Muscovite forces in the Battles of Wenden (1577–1578).[3]

1579–1580
Bathory gathered a large army of over 55,000 (Polish, Hungarian, Wallachian, Bohemian and German soldiers, and the Szekler brigade under Mózes Székely.[4] His main army (over 40,000 strong) in what is known as the Second Campaign of Bathory advanced on Polotsk. The siege began 11 August, and the city surrendered on the 29th of that month.[5] The Polish army also captured all 8 Russian castles in Polotsk – Rossony region (Sokol, Nescherda, Susha, Krasnae, Turovlia, Sitna, Kaz’jany, Usviaty) . Lithuanian-Polish forces resumed their offensive the following year with the Third Campaign of Bathory, besieging Velikiye Luki on 29 August and taking it on 5 September. A cavalry battle took place on 20 September near Toropets (battle of Toropets) and ended in another Polish victory. Polish forces also captured Velizh and Nevel.[3]

1581–1582
The last phase of the war centered around the siege of Pskov by the Polish forces. The Poles did not succeed in taking the town, but the Russians facing growing threat from Sweden (who took Narva in 1581 – see battle of Narva (1581)) decided to sign a truce treaty favorable to Poland.[3][6]

Truce of Jam Zapolski
Main article: Truce of Jam Zapolski
The truce, signed in 1582 for 10 years, was favorable to Poland, which regained Duchy of Livonia, kept Velizh and Polotsk. Russia regained Velikiye Luki.[3][7] Notably, Russia failed in her bid to regain access to the Baltic Sea.[6]

The next stage of the Polish-Russian wars begun in the early 1600s, when the Poles invaded Russia in 1605.

1699 – Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin, French businesswoman (d. 1777)
Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (26 June 1699 – 6 October 1777) was a French salon holder who has been referred to as one of the leading female figures in the French Enlightenment. From 1750–1777, Madame Geoffrin played host to many of the most influential Philosophes and Encyclopédistes of her time. Her association with several prominent dignitaries and public figures from across Europe has earned Madame Geoffrin international recognition. Her patronage and dedication to both the philosophical Men of Letters and talented artists that frequented her house is emblematic of her role as guide and protector. In her salon on the rue Saint-Honoré, Madame Geoffrin demonstrated qualities of politeness and civility that helped stimulate and regulate intellectual discussion. Her actions as a Parisian salonnière exemplify many of the most important characteristics of Enlightenment sociability.

Early life
Born in 1699 , Madame Geoffrin was the first child of a bourgeois named Pierre Rodet, a valet de chambre for the Duchess of Burgundy, and Angelique Thérèse Chemineau, the daughter of a Parisian Banker.[1] Marie Thérèse’s mother died a year later in giving birth to her son Louis. At age seven, Marie Thérèse and her brother were taken to live with their grandmother Madame Chemineau on the rue Saint-Honoré. At thirteen, she was engaged to be married to the widower Francois Geoffrin, a lieutenant-colonel of the National Guard and a prosperous general cashier of the Saint-Gobain Venetian mirror manufactory. Despite the fact that he was in his fortcy-ninth year, and Marie Thérèse had barely passed her fourteenth birthday, Monsieur Geoffrin had inherited a substantial fortune from his first wife, and the chance for “an excellent settlement” was thought to be quite suitable by Madame Chemineau.[2] The marriage took place on 19 July 1713. Nearly two years after the wedding, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter, and the future Marquise de la Ferté Imbault. Her second child, a son, (who was to die later in childhood) was born two years later.[3] It was not until Madame Geoffrin was over her thirtieth year that her connection to the salons would become established. Her husband, Pierre François Geofrin died December 20, 1749, a fact that was hardly noticed by Mme Geoffrin’s visitors–indeed, Mme Geoffrey hardly seemed to notice herself.[4]

Education
As the notion of female education was quite contentious in eighteenth century France, Geoffrin was unable to receive a formalized education. It has been suggested, most notably by Dena Goodman, that the salon itself acted as a schoolhouse, where Geoffrin and other salonnières could train. Goodman writes, “For Madame Geoffrin, the salon was a socially acceptable substitute for a formal education denied her not just by her grandmother, but more generally by a society that agreed with Madame Chemineau’s (her grandmother’s) position.”[5] She also states, “Her earliest schoolmasters were Fontenelle, the abbe de Saint-Pierre, and Montesquieu. Madame de Tencin played a large role in Madame Geoffrin’s rise in society. Goodman states, “Madame Geoffrin made a daring step for a devout girl when, at the age of eighteen, but already a wife and mother, she began to frequent the afternoon gatherings at the home of Madame de Tencin.” After Madame de Tencin’s death in December 1749, Madame Geoffrin figuratively inherited many of de Tencin’s former guests, thereby solidifying her own salon.[6]
Madame Geoffrin and the salons

Madame Geoffrin’s popularity in the mid-eighteenth century came during a time where the center of social life was beginning to move away from the French court and toward the salons of Paris. Instead of the earlier, seventeenth-century salons of the high nobility, Madame Geoffrin’s salon catered generally to a more philosophical crowd of the Enlightenment period. Goodman, in “Enlightenment Salons,” writes, “In the eighteenth century, under the guidance of Madame Geoffrin, Julie de Lespinasse, and Suzanne Necker, the salon was transformed from a noble, leisure institution into an institution of the Enlightenment.”[7] Goodman writes:

“Geoffrin, who acted as a mentor and model for other salonnières, was responsible for two innovations that set Enlightenment salons apart from their predecessors and from other social and literacy gatherings of the day. She invented the Enlightenment salon. First, she made the one-o’clock dinner rather than the traditional late-night supper the sociable meal of the day, and thus she opened up the whole afternoon for talk. Second, she regulated these dinners, fixing a specific day of the week for them. After Geoffrin launched her weekly dinners, the Parisian salon took on the form that made it the social base of the Enlightenment Republic of Letters: a regular and regulated formal gathering hosted by a woman in her own home which served as a forum and locus of intellectual activity.”[8]

Her dinners were held twice weekly. Mondays were specifically for artists. Wednesdays were generally reserved for Men of Letters.[9]

Goodman writes, “Enlightenment salons were working spaces, unlike other Eighteenth-century social gatherings, which took place as their model.” She continues, “The Enlightenment was not a game, and the salonnières were not simply ladies of leisure killing time. On the contrary, Enlightenment salonnières were precisely those women who fought the general malaise of the period by taking up their métier.”[10]

Salons, French society, and the international community
Madame Geoffrin’s role was central to her identity as a French hostess. The historian, Denise Yim writes, “The most distinguished salonniéres were discerning women who selected their company with care, set the tone, guided the conversation, and could influence the fortunes of those appearing there.”[11] She continues, “The most influential salonnière was perhaps Madame Geoffrin of the rue Saint-Honoré, who managed to attract the largest number of distinguished foreigners to her home.”[12] A lady of great renown, Geoffrin’s salon catered to a wide range of foreign dignitaries and distinguished guests. “An invitation to the Monday and Wednesday dinners of Madame Geoffrin was an honor greatly coveted by foreigners passing through Paris. The hostess herself had gained a European reputation even before her journey to Poland, and to dine with Madame Geoffrin was by some people considered almost as great an honor as being presented at Versailles.”[13]” Yim continues, “Whether it was Madame Geoffrin’s design to attract all the most eminent foreigners to her salon, thereby spreading the reputation of her home throughout Europe, as Marmontel wrote, or whether this was the natural consequence of the presence of so many philosophes and Encyclopédistes, it was a fact that no foreign minister, no man or woman of note who arrived in Paris failed to call on Madame Geoffrin in the hope of being invited to one of her select dinners.”[14]

Salon politeness and gift giving
Madame Geoffrin exemplified the qualities of politeness that were required for the participation in French high society.[15] She was completely devoted to the management and organization of her salon, and of the patrons that frequented it. Madame Geoffrin could be defined in the ordered consistency of all her actions. “Regularity was part of a greater sense of organization that defined all aspects of Madame Geoffrin’s life and every hour of her day, from a 5 a.m. rising, through a morning of domestic duties, letter writing, and errands, to the afternoons she devoted twice a week to her salon.”[16]

Although some historians, such as Dena Goodman, associate Geoffrin and other salonnières with intellectual life, other researchers depict the salons as the realm of anti-intellectual socialites. For example, Amwqth, education, or remarkable mental gifts of a sort that leave permanent traces, she was the best representative of the women of her time who held their place in the world solely through their skill in organizing and conducting a salon. She was in no sense a luminary; and conscious that she could not shine by her own light, she was bent upon shining by that of others.”[17] Denise Yim adds that “these women considered themselves the purveyors, the disseminators, the nurturers, the very guardians of taste in the belles lettres, in the fine arts, and in the music. Their own peculiar art consisted of pleasing.”[18] “Maintaining the tensions between inner satisfaction and outer negation which made Geoffrin the model salonnière was not easy.”[19]

Antoine Lilti also rejects the notion that Geoffrin and other salonnières ‘governed’ an intellectual arena. Lilti focuses, rather, on the salonnières’ practice of politeness and gift giving. In relation to Madame Geoffrin, Lilti writes, “there exists numerous testimonials about the gifts that Madame Geoffrin bestowed upon the writers who regularly attend her salon, from the pieces of the silverware offered to the Suards, the silver pans and 2,000 gold écus presented to Thomas.[20] He continues, “writers were not the only ones to benefit from this generosity. Madame Geoffrin received artists every Monday, securing contracts for them among high society collectors and even commissioned artwork for herself. Madame Geoffrin’s notebooks mention that these artists also received regular gifts.”[21] For Lilti, Geoffrin’s gift giving was nothing more than a reaffirmation of social inequities. He states, “the exchange of gifts, of course, was a common practice in all areas of high society, but it took on a particular social signification in the case of gifts given to men of letters, since the absence of reciprocity rendered the relationship asymmetrical. It was more about simply reinforcing a social bond through gift-giving, as it was for the socialites who exchanged little gifts with each other, but instead made a financial relationship part of urbane sociability––especially when the rapport became more or less permanent in the form of allowances, such as the ones that Madame Geoffrin bestowed upon d’Alembert, Thomas, and the abbé Morellet.”[22]

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1900 – The Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu discovers the Dunhuang manuscripts, a cache of ancient texts that are of great historical and religious significance, in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China.
The Dunhuang manuscripts are a cache of important religious and secular documents discovered in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China, in the early 20th century. Dating from the 5th to early 11th centuries, the manuscripts include works ranging from history and mathematics to folk songs and dance. There are also a large number of religious documents, most of which are Buddhist, but other religions including Daoism, Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism are also represented. The majority of the manuscripts are in Chinese. Other languages represented are Khotanese, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Tangut, Tibetan, Old Uyghur language, Hebrew and Old Turkic.[1] The manuscripts are a major resource for academic studies in a wide variety of fields including history, religious studies, linguistics, and manuscript studies.

History
The documents were discovered in a sealed cave by the Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu on June 25, 1900.[2] From 1907 onwards he began to sell them to Western explorers, notably Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot. Japanese, Russian and Danish explorers also acquired collections of manuscripts.[3] But largely due to the efforts of the scholar and antiquarian Luo Zhenyu, most of the remaining Chinese manuscripts, perhaps a fifth of the total, were taken to Beijing in 1910 and are now in the National Library of China. Several thousands of folios of Tibetan manuscripts were left in Dunhuang and are now located in several museums and libraries in the region.[4] Those purchased by Western scholars are now kept in institutions all over the world, such as the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. All of the manuscript collections are being digitized by the International Dunhuang Project, and can be freely accessed online.
Studies of the Dunhuang manuscripts

While most studies use Dunhuang manuscripts to address issues in areas such as history and religious studies, some have addressed questions about the provenance and materiality of the manuscripts themselves. Various reasons have been suggested for the placing of the manuscripts in the library cave and its sealing. Aurel Stein suggested that the manuscripts were “sacred waste”, an explanation that found favour with later scholars including Fujieda Akira.[5] More recently, it has been suggested that the cave functioned as a storeroom for a Buddhist monastic library,[6] though this has been disputed.[7] The reason for the cave’s sealing has also been the subject of speculation. A popular hypothesis, first suggest by Paul Pelliot, is that the cave was sealed to protect the manuscripts at the advent of an invasion by the Xixia army, and later scholars followed with the alternative suggestion that it was sealed in fear of an invasion by Islamic Kharkhanids that never occurred.[6] Even though cave 16 could easily have been enlarged or extended to cave 17, Yoshiro Imaeda has suggested cave 16 was sealed because it ran out of room.[8]

Languages and scripts
The variety of languages and scripts found among the Dunhuang manuscripts is a result of the multicultural nature of the region in the first millennium AD.[9] The largest proportion of the manuscripts are written in Chinese, both Classical and, to a lesser extent, vernacular Chinese. Most manuscripts, including Buddhist texts, are written in Kaishu or ‘regular script’, while others are written in the cursive Xingshu or ‘running script’. An unusual feature of the Dunhuang manuscripts dating from the 9th and 10th centuries is that some appear to have been written with a hard stylus rather than with a brush. According to Akira Fujieda this was due to the lack of materials for constructing brushes in Dunhuang after the Tibetan occupation in the late 8th century.[10]

The Dunhuang manuscripts represent some of the earliest examples of Tibetan writing. Several styles are represented among the manuscripts, forebears of the later Uchen (dbu can) and Ume (dbu med) styles.[11] Both Old Tibetan and Classical Tibetan are represented in the manuscripts, as well as the undeciphered Nam language and a language that some have identified as the Zhang-zhung language.

Other languages represented are Khotanese, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Tangut, Tibetan, Old Uyghur language, and Hebrew,[12] as well as Old Turkic.[citation needed]

Buddhist texts
By far the largest proportion of manuscripts from the Dunhuang cave contain Buddhist texts. These include Buddhist sutras, commentaries and treatises, often copied for the purpose of generating religious merit.[13] Several hundred manuscripts have been identified as notes taken by students,[14] including the popular Buddhist narratives known as bian wen (變文).[15] Much of the scholarship on the Chinese Buddhist manuscripts has been on the Chan (or Zen) texts, which have revolutionized the history of Chan Buddhism.[16] Among the Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts, the texts of early Tibetan tantric Buddhism, including Mahayoga and Atiyoga or Dzogchen have been the subject of many studies.[17]

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1484 – Bartholomeus V. Welser, German banker (d. 1561)
Prince Bartholomeus Welser (25 June 1484 in Memmingen – 28 March 1561 in “Amberg im Unterallgäu”) was a German banker. In 1528 he signed an agreement with Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, granting a concession in Venezuela Province, which became Klein-Venedig until the concession was revoked in 1546.

Biography
Welser was head of the German banking firm, Welser Brothers, and with his brother claimed descent from the Byzantine general Belisarius. They were very rich, and lent large sums to Charles V, for which Bartholomeus was created a prince of the empire and made privy councillor to the emperor. In 1527, he was granted the newly discovered Province of Venezuela, with the proviso that he conquer the country at his own expense, enlist only Spanish and Flemish troops, fit out two expeditions of four vessels, and build two cities and three forts within two years after taking possession. As Venezuela was reputed to contain gold mines, he later obtained permission to send out 150 German miners.

In virtue of his contract, Welser armed a fleet, which sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda early in 1528, under the command of Ambrosius Ehinger, whom he appointed captain general. After Ehinger’s death in 1531, Georg von Speyer became captain general, and fitted out a new expedition, which sailed in 1534. In 1540 his son, Bartholomeus VI. Welser journeyed to Venezuela. Finding Speyer dead on his arrival he joined the expedition of Philipp von Hutten. After his return to El Tocuyo in April 1546 he and von Hutten were taken captive by the Spanish conquistador Juan de Carvajal, and later executed. After that the crown of Spain claimed the right to appoint the governor, and finally, in 1546, Charles V revoked Welser’s charter.

Welser did much to establish trade between the Netherlands, Germany, and South America. His enterprise has been commended by many writers, and is eulogized by Henri Ternaux-Compans in his collection, but it was detrimental to the interests of the banker, whose losses in his colonization schemes were estimated to reach the sum of 3,000,000 florins.

In 1889, Welser’s banking house still existed, as did the old family mansion, which is one of the curiosities of the city of Augsburg.

 
 
 
 

 
 
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On this day:

229 – Sun Quan proclaims himself emperor of Eastern Wu.
Sun Quan (182–252),[1] courtesy name Zhongmou, formally known as Emperor Da of Wu (literally “Great Emperor of Wu”), was the founder of the state of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period. He inherited control of the warlord regime established by his elder brother, Sun Ce, in 200. He declared formal independence and ruled from 222 to 229 as the King of Wu and from 229 to 252 as the Emperor of Wu. Unlike his rivals Cao Cao and Liu Bei, Sun Quan governed his state mostly separate of politics and ideology, he is sometimes portrayed as neutral considering he accommodated the wills of both his rivals but only when it benefited Eastern Wu and never fully attempted to conquer his rivals, although most of historians would cite his lack of logistical resources to do so.

Sun Quan was born in Xiapi while his father Sun Jian served there. After Sun Jian’s death in the early 190s, he and his family lived at various cities on the lower Yangtze River, until Sun Ce carved out a warlord regime in the Jiangdong region, based on his own followers and a number of local clan allegiances. When Sun Ce was assassinated by the retainers of Xu Gong in 200, the 18-year-old Sun Quan inherited the lands southeast of the Yangtze River from his brother. His administration proved to be relatively stable in those early years as Sun Jian and Sun Ce’s most senior officers, such as Zhou Yu, Zhang Zhao, Zhang Hong, and Cheng Pu supported the succession. Thus throughout the 200s, Sun Quan, under the tutelage of his able advisers, continued to build up his strength along the Yangtze River. In early 207, his forces finally won complete victory over Huang Zu, a military leader under Liu Biao, who dominated the middle Yangtze.

In winter of that year, the northern warlord Cao Cao led an army of some 830,000 to conquer the south to complete the reunification of China. Two distinct factions emerged at his court on how to handle the situation. One, led by Zhang Zhao, urged surrender whilst the other, led by Zhou Yu and Lu Su, opposed capitulation. Eventually, Sun Quan decided to oppose Cao Cao in the middle Yangtze with his superior riverine forces. Allied with Liu Bei and employing the combined strategies of Zhou Yu and Huang Gai, they defeated Cao Cao decisively at the Battle of Red Cliffs.

In 220, Cao Pi, Cao Cao’s son and successor, seized the throne and proclaimed himself to be the Emperor of China, ending and succeeding the nominal rule of the Han dynasty. At first Sun Quan nominally served as a Wei vassal with the Wei-created title of King of Wu, but after Cao Pi demanded that he send his son Sun Deng as a hostage to the Wei capital Luoyang and he refused, in 222, he declared himself independent by changing his era name. It was not until the year 229 that he formally declared himself emperor.

Because of his skill in gathering important, honourable men to his cause, Sun Quan was able to delegate authority to capable figures. This primary strength served him well in gaining the support of the common people and surrounding himself with capable generals.

After the death of his original crown prince, Sun Deng, two opposing factions supporting different potential successors slowly emerged. When Sun He succeeded Sun Deng as the new crown prince, he was supported by Lu Xun and Zhuge Ke, while his rival Sun Ba was supported by Quan Cong and Bu Zhi and their clans. Over a prolonged internal power struggle, numerous officials were executed, and Sun Quan harshly settled the conflict between the two factions by exiling Sun He and forcing Sun Ba to commit suicide. Sun Quan died in 252 at the age of 70. He enjoyed the longest reign among all the founders of the Three Kingdoms and was succeeded by his son, Sun Liang.

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Born on this day:

1625 – John Fell, English churchman and influential academic (d. 1686)
John Fell (23 June 1625 – 10 July 1686) was an English churchman and influential academic. He served as Dean of Christ Church, Oxford,[1][2] and later concomitantly as Bishop of Oxford.

Education
Born at Longworth, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), the eldest son of Samuel Fell, who would himself be installed as Dean of Christ Church in 1638, and his wife Margaret née Wylde, he received his early education at Lord Williams’s School at Thame in Oxfordshire. In 1637 aged only 11 he became a student at Christ Church, and in 1640 because of his “known desert”, he was specially allowed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, to proceed to his degree of B.A. when wanting one term’s residence. He obtained his M.A. in 1643 and took Holy Orders (deacon 1647, priest 1649).

English Civil War
During the Civil War he bore arms for King Charles I of England and held a commission as ensign. In 1648 he was deprived of his studentship by the parliamentary visitors, and during the next few years he resided chiefly at Oxford with his brother-in-law, Thomas Willis, at whose house opposite Merton College he and his friends Richard Allestree and John Dolben kept up the service of the Church of England throughout the Commonwealth.

Career
After the Restoration, Fell was made prebendary of Chichester, canon of Christ Church (27 July 1660), dean (30 November), master of St Oswald’s hospital, Worcester, chaplain to the king, and D.D. (see Doctor of Divinity). He filled the office of Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1666 to 1669,[3] and was consecrated bishop of Oxford, in 1676, retaining his deanery in commendam. Some years later, he declined the primacy of Ireland.

Fell showed himself a capable administrator. He restored good order in the university by the archbishop, which during the Commonwealth had given place to a general disregard of authority. He ejected the intruders from his college or else “fixed them in loyal principles.” “He was the most zealous man of his time for the Church of England,” says Anthony Wood, “and none that I yet know of did go beyond him in the performance of the rules belonging thereunto.” He attended chapel four times a day, restored to the services, not without some opposition, the organ and surplice, and insisted on the proper academic dress which had fallen into disuse. He was active in recovering church property, and by his directions a children’s catechism was drawn up by Thomas Marshall for use in his diocese. “As he was among the first of our clergy,” says Thomas Burnet, “that apprehended the design of bringing in popery, so he was one of the most zealous against it.”

He made many converts from the Roman Catholics and Nonconformists. On the other hand, he successfully opposed the incorporation of Titus Oates as D.D. in the university in October 1679; and according to the testimony of William Nichols, his secretary, he disapproved of the Exclusion Bill. He excluded the undergraduates, whose presence had been irregularly permitted, from convocation. He obliged students to attend lectures, instituted reforms in the performances of the public exercises in the schools, kept the examiners up to their duties, was present in person at examinations. He encouraged the students to act plays. He entirely suppressed “coursing,” i.e. disputations in which the rival parties “ran down opponents in arguments,” and which commonly ended in blows and disturbances.

Discipline
He was a disciplinarian, and possessed a talent for the education of young men, many of whom he received into his own family. Tom Brown, author of The Dialogues of the Dead, about to be expelled from Oxford for some offence, was pardoned by Fell on the condition of his translating ex tempore the 32nd epigram of Martial:

“Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere – quare; Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te.”

To which he immediately replied with the well-known lines:

I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Dr Fell.

Delinquents were not always treated thus mildly by Fell, and Acton Cremer, for the crime of courting a wife while only a bachelor of arts, was punished by having to translate into English the whole of Scheffer’s history of Lapland. As Vice-Chancellor, Fell personally visited the drinking taverns and ordered out the students. In the university elections he showed great energy in suppressing corruption.

Building operations
Fell’s building operations were ambitious. In his own college he completed in 1665 the north side of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s great quadrangle, already begun by his father but abandoned during the Commonwealth; in 1672, he rebuilt the east side of the Chaplain’s quadrangle “with a straight passage under it leading from the cloister into the field,” occupied now by the new Meadow Buildings; the lodgings of the canon of the third stall in the passage uniting the Tom Quad and Peckwater Quadrangle (c.1674); a long building joining the Chaplain’s quadrangle on the east side in 1677–1678; and lastly the great Tom Tower gate, begun in June 1681 on the foundation laid by Wolsey and finished in November 1682, to which the bell “great Tom,” after being recast, was transferred from the cathedral in 1683. In 1670 he planted and laid out the Broad Walk.

He spent large sums of his own on these works, gave £500 for the restoration of Banbury church, erected a church at St Oswald’s, Worcester, and the parsonage house at Woodstock at his own expense, and rebuilt Cuddesdon Palace. Fell disapproved of the use of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin for secular purposes, and promoted the building of the Sheldonian Theatre by Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon. He was treasurer during its construction, presided at the formal opening on 9 July 1669, and was nominated curator, along with Christopher Wren, in July 1670.

Oxford University Press
In the theatre was placed the Oxford University Press, the establishment of which had been a favourite project of Laud and now engaged a large share of Fell’s energy and attention, and which as curator he practically controlled. “Were it not you ken Mr Dean extraordinarily well,” wrote Sir Leoline Jenkins to John Williamson in 1672, “it were impossible to imagine how assiduous and drudging he is about his press.” He sent for type and printers from Holland, declaring that “the foundation of all success must be laid in doing things well, which l am sure will not be done with English letters.”

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