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“Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third. And to this end the actor must forget his personality and throw aside his joys and sorrows. He must present the public with the reality of a being who for him is only a fiction. With his own eyes, he must shed the tears of the other. With his own voice, he must groan the anguish of the other. His own heart beats as if it would burst, for it is the other's heart that beats in his heart. And when he retires from a tragic or dramatic scene, if he has properly rendered his character, he must be panting and exhausted.”
~ Sarah Bernhardt
Wikiquote (Sarah Bernhardt (October 22 / 23, 1844 – March 26, 1923) was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas. She developed a reputation as a serious dramatic actress, earning the nickname "The Divine Sarah".)
October 23rd, 4004 BC
Young Earth creationism claims the Universe was created, according to the Ussher chronology.
Wikipedia.org Image: Michelangelo Buonarroti's The Creation of Adam.
October 23rd, 42 BC
Roman Empire:
42 BC - Roman Republican civil wars; Second Battle of Philippi, take Mark Antony and Octavian (Augustus) decisively defeat Brutus's army. Brutus commits suicide.
425 - Valentinian III is elevated as Roman Emperor, at the age of 6.
Wikipedia Image: Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
October 23rd, 502
The Synodus Palmaris, called by Gothic king Theodoric the Great, discharges Pope Symmachus of all charges, thus ending the schism of Antipope Laurentius.
Wikipedia.org Image: Fresco painting of the Resurrection Chora Church, Istanbul, Turkey.
October 23rd, 1086
Battle of az-Zallaqah the army of Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats the forces of Castilian King Alfonso VI.
Wikipedia Image: Western Europe Satellite, credit NASA.
October 23rd, 1642
English Civil War:
1642 - First English Civil War; Battle of Edgehill - first major battle.
Wikipedia Painting: English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers);
John Milton publishes Areopagitica;
Battle of Naseby, victory of the Parliamentarian New Model Army;
Battle of Marston Moor, 1644;
"Cromwell at Dunbar", by Andrew Carrick Gow; Oliver Cromwell; King Charles I, painted by Van Dyck;
"And when did you last see your father?" by William Frederick Yeames.
October 23rd, 1707
The first Parliament of Great Britain meets.
Wikipedia Photo: The Houses of Parliament seen from across the River Thames; House of Commons; The Houses of Parliament seen from across the River Thames at night.
October 23rd, 1812
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1812 - Malet coup of 1812; Claude François de Malet, a French general, begins a conspiracy to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte, claiming that the Emperor died in Russia and that he is now the commandant of Paris.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay).
October 23rd, 1850
Woman's suffrage:
1850 - National Women's Rights Convention; The first National Women's Rights Convention begins in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States.
1915 - In New York City 25,000 - 33,000 women march on Fifth Avenue to advocate their right to vote.
Wikipedia Photo: Woman's suffrage: in the United Kingdom and United States, credit Library of Congress ● Emmeline Pankhurst (100 Most Important People of the 20th Century) ● Christabel Pankhurst ● Women suffragists demonstrating for the right to vote, February 1913 ● Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution became law on August 26, 1920, and women could vote in the Presidential election.
October 23rd, 1861
American Civil War:
1861 - United States President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
1864 - Battle of Westport; Union forces under General Samuel R. Curtis defeat Confederate troops led by General Sterling Price at Westport near Kansas City, Missouri.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
October 23rd, 1870
Franco-Prussian War:
1870 - Siege of Metz; concludes with a decisive Prussian victory.
Wikipedia Painting: Aimé Morot's La bataille de Reichshoffen, 1887 ● Battle of Spicheren (August 5th, 1870) ● Battle of Wörth (August 6th, 1870) ● The Siege of Paris, by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier.
October 23rd, 1917
Russian Revolution:
Lenin calls for the October Revolution.
Wikipedia Image: The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union
October 23rd, 1929
Great Depression:
1929 - After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange begins to show signs of panic.
1932 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level closing at 41.22.
Wikipedia Photo: Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California, centering on Florence Owens Thompson, age 32, a mother of seven children, in Nipomo, California, March 1936; Bud Fields and his family. Alabama. 1935 or 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans; Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.
Margaret Bourke-White World’s Highest Standard of Living, 1937 (colorized; April 17th, 2012 by © Pleasurephoto).
October 23rd, 1941
World War II:
1941 - Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov takes command of Red Army operations to prevent the further advance into Russia of German forces and to prevent the Wehrmacht from capturing Moscow.
1942 - Second Battle of El Alamein; at El Alamein in northern Egypt, the British Eighth Army under Field Marshal Montgomery begins a critical offensive to expel the Axis armies from Egypt.
1942 - The Battle for Henderson Field; begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends on October 26.
1944 - Battle of Leyte Gulf; the largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines.
1944 - The Soviet Red Army enters Hungary.
Post World War II:
1946 - United Nations General Assembly convenes for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, New York City.
1956 - Hungarian Revolution; thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation is crushed on November 4.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
October 23rd, 1965
Vietnam War:
1965 - 1st Cavalry Division (United States) (Airmobile), in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, launches a new operation seeking to destroy North Vietnamese forces in Pleiku in the II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands).
1972 - Operation Linebacker; a US bombing campaign against North Vietnamese in response to its Easter Offensive, ends after five months
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam War: Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam on March 1965. (AP Photo / Horst Faas) / Boston Globe
October 23rd, 1973
Watergate Scandal: United States President Richard Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations.
Wikipedia Photo: Watergate Scandal: was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement.
Watergate Complex Washington, DC, credit Watergate Notes; President Richard M. Nixon defended himself against many allegations, National Archives; Oliver F. Atkins' photo of Nixon leaving the White House shortly before his resignation became effective, August 9, 1974.
October 23rd, 1973
Suez Crisis:
1973 - Yom Kippur War; United Nations sanctioned cease-fire officially ends the war between Israel and Syria.
Wikipedia Photo: Yom Kippur War: credit Phobos.ramapo.edu.
October 23rd, 1983
Lebanon Civil War: Beirut barracks bombing; the United States Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.
Wikipedia Photo: Beirut barracks bombing; Beirut Lebanon Marine Barracks Bombing.
October 23rd, 2001
Apple announces the iPod.
Wikipedia Photo: iPod, credit Apple.
October 23rd, 2011
Earthquake
2011 - A powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake strikes Van Province, Turkey, killing 582 people and injuring thousands.
2004 - A powerful earthquake and its aftershocks hit Niigata prefecture, northern Japan, killing 35 people, injuring 2,200, and leaving 85,000 homeless or evacuated.
1958 - Springhill mining disaster; an underground earthquake traps 174 miners at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time. By November 1, rescuers from around the world had dug out 100 of the victims, marking the death toll at 74.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
October 23rd, 2015
Hurricane Patricia: The lowest sea-level pressure in the Western Hemisphere, and the highest reliably-measured non-tornadic sustained winds, are recorded in Hurricane Patricia, which strikes Mexico hours later, killing at least 13 and causing over $280 million in damages.
Wikipedia Image: Hurricane Patricia: The lowest sea-level pressure in the Western Hemisphere, and the highest reliably-measured non-tornadic sustained winds, are recorded in Hurricane Patricia, which strikes Mexico hours later, killing at least 13 and causing over $280 million in damages.