Sunday
Jun. 25, 2000
Adelstrop
Poem: "Adelstrop," by Edward Thomas, from Collected Poems (W.W. Norton & Company).
The Korean War began on this day in 1950. North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and launched a full-scale invasion of the South. Two days later, President Truman took America into the conflict without asking Congress for a declaration of war the first time this happened in our history. Using the U.N. security Council as his authority, Truman said the Korean crisis was not a war but a "police action." It lasted until July 27, 1953, when an armistice was signed formally dividing the country. 23,300 Americans were killed in the war. Estimates of total losses come to almost two million military fatalities, plus a million civilian deaths.
It's the birthday of suspense writer Dorothy Gilman, born in New Brunswick, New Jersey (1924). She created a series of spy books featuring Mrs. Emily Pollifaxa bored, lonely New Jersey widow in her sixtieswho applies for a job with the CIA, is chosen for special assignments, and is sent to exotic locales where she looked more like a kindly tourist than a spy. The first one was The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (1966).
It's the birthday of novelist and biographer Nicholas Mosley, born in London (1923). He's the author of a 3 volume biography of his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, the British Fascist.
It's the birthday of novelist George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), born in Motihari, India (1903), author of Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), Burmese Days (1934), and Homage to Catalonia (1938). But he's best known for his satires Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), published just before he died (1950).
In 1903 on this day, scientist Marie Curie announced the discovery of radium, a radioactive metallic element remarkable for its spontaneous disintegration. She, her husband Pierre, and Antoine Becquerel would share the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics.
It's the birthday of George Abbott, born in Forestville, New York (1887) who lived to be 107 years old, and was involved, one way or another, with more than 120 productions on and off Broadway and on the road. He wrote The Pajama Game (1955) Damn Yankees (1956), Fiorello (1959) and others.
On this day in 1876, the Dakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull wiped out the forces of General George Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana. Custer, commanding 264 soldiers of the 7th Cavalry, was too impatient to wait for the reinforcements who were about to arrive. He died along with all his men in the battle.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®