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Today is Saturday, August 31, the 244th day of 2024. There are 122 days left until the end of the year.
12 – Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus Caligula is born. During his reign from 37 to 41 AD, he displayed extreme cruelty, recklessness, arbitrariness, and outrageous extravagance. As he imposed unbearably high taxes and other levies, he turned the Senate and the army, even his own commander of the Praetorian Guard, against him, and was assassinated in 41 AD. The Senate then declared his uncle, Claudius I Tiberius Drusus, emperor.
1290 – King Edward I expelled the Jews from England.
1354 – The Serbian State Council in Serez promulgated the complete Code of Dušan, the first part of which was adopted in 1349 in the Serbian capital of Skopje. The most important legal document of feudal Serbia – the Code of Emperor Stefan the Pious, as it is officially called – established the general principles of state organization of the southeastern European country in the strongest possible way. In addition to constitutional provisions, it contained provisions on criminal and procedural law, as well as provisions on family law and inheritance law. Created on the basis of custom, church and Roman/Byzantine/legal, it had a humanistic character, as it protected the rights of even the lowest classes. He preached the principle of legality: the law is stronger than the contrary will of the ruler.
1422 – Death of King Henry V of England, who had been fighting the Hundred Years’ War with France from 1413 until his death. He defeated the French at Agincourt in 1415 and conquered Paris. He died of dysentery in France and was succeeded by his nine-month-old son, Henry VI.
1688 – English writer and Baptist preacher John Bunyan dies after serving 12 years in prison for preaching without permission from religious authorities. While in prison, he wrote a spiritual autobiography and began A Pilgrimage, which was at one time the most read book in Britain.
1808 – The first Serbian higher education institution, Velika škola, was founded in Belgrade. Among the twenty students were Alexa, son of Djordje Petrović Karajorda and Vuk Stefanovic Karadžić, leaders of the First Serbian Uprising. After the failure of the uprising in 1813, the school ceased to function.
1811 – French writer Theophile Gautier was born. He was a master of words and form, a pioneer of the Parnassian school, and cultivated “art for art’s sake”. Works: Poetry – “Enamel and Relief”, Prose – “Mademoiselle Maupin”, “The Romance of the Mummy”, “Captain Flacas”, Criticism – “History of the Dramatic Art in the Last 25 Years”, “History of Romanticism”.
1867 – French writer Charles Baudelaire, one of the greatest poets of the 19th century, dies. His poetry, full of subtle sensitivity, opens up new avenues of lyricism, expressing the pain, despair and corruption of civilization, telling the story of a man who is constantly struggling between good and evil. With a rebellious spirit, he overcame the aesthetic norms of the time, introduced oriental colors and exoticism into his poetry, retaining elements of romanticism, classical paganism, and hints of symbolism. In addition to the collection of poems “Flowers of Evil”, which is considered by many to be the greatest lyrical event of the 19th century, he also published the prose work “Artificial Paradise”.
1876 - Sultan Murat V of Turkey is deposed and succeeded by his brother Abdul Hamid II.
1887 – 36 years after the first shooting group was founded, the Serbian Shooting Association was founded. In 1909, when there were already 843 active groups, the Association became a member of the International Shooting Union and Serbian shooters took part in international competitions in London and Hamburg for the first time.
1898 – Serbian writer Dusan Matić was born, a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a member of the Belgrade Surrealist Circle. Works: poetry collections “The Awakening of Matter”, “Lies and the Paralysis of the Night”, “The Book of Rituals”, “Letters – But They Arrive”, “So, When I’m Alone”, essays “The Place of Surrealism in the Social Process”, “A Vision of French Literature”, “Anna’s Ball Dress”, “Empty Space and Heart”, “On Today’s Carpet”, “Brittany Scosa”, novels “The Age of the Deaf” and “The Dead End”.
1908 – William Saroyan, an Armenian-American writer, was born. He emphasized original storytelling techniques and mainly described the lives of “little people” in the United States, who were usually Armenians and other immigrants. He believed that courage and humor were the most effective means to overcome adversity in life. He spent his childhood in an orphanage and then moved to the United States, where he gained a reputation as the greatest humanist in contemporary American literature. Works: story collections “My Name is Aram”, “Five Ripe Pears”, “The Daring Young Man on the Trapeze”, “Mom, I Love You”, “Dad, You’re Crazy”, “One Day in the World Afternoon”, novels “The Human Comedy”, “The Experience of Wesley Jackson”, “Laughing Objects”, TV series “The Time of Your Life”, “My Heart is in the Mountains”.
1939 – French and British Prime Ministers Edward Draghi and Arthur Neville Chamberlain attempt to negotiate with German leader Adolf Hitler, but fail. A day later, Nazi troops invade Poland, and World War II begins.
1942 – During World War II, German General Erwin Rommel resumes his offensive against the British at Alam Halfa, Egypt, with the intention of breaking through the Suez Canal, but the attempt fails.
1944 – Soviet troops drove German troops out of Bucharest, the capital of Romania, during World War II.
1957 – Malaya gained independence.
1962 – French painter Georges Braque, who co-founded the Cubist movement with Pablo Picasso in 1905, died. After World War I, he went through several phases and painted with amazing originality. He sought solutions between objectivity and non-objectivity, painting nature, nudes and still life.
1962 – Trinidad and Tobago becomes an independent nation.
1973 – John Ford, the Irish-American film director who created more than 200 films, including westerns full of lyricism, nostalgia and humor, dies. Films: The Teller, Stagecoach, Young Lincoln, Fruit of Wrath, The Long Ride, How Green Was My Valley, My Darling Clementine, The Fugitive, The Price of Fame, The Quiet Man, Killing Freedom Valance, The Black Sheriff, Cheyenne Autumn.
1983 – More than a million people attend the funeral in Manila of Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, who was assassinated at Manila airport ten days earlier after returning from three years in exile in the United States, eliminating the most potent challenger to Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the 1984 election.
1986 – Henry Moore, a British sculptor and one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century and a foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, died. He was inspired by ancient and primitive art and believed that a work of art should have its own life, no matter what it represented. He worked on the synthesis of abstract forms and surrealist psychological research.
1986 – Urho Kekonen, the most prominent post-World War II Finnish politician and President of Finland from 1956 to 1982, dies. As head of state and prime minister (1950-1953 and 1954-1956), he supported cooperation between the center party government and workers’ parties, including the Communist Party of Finland. He made a great contribution to the process of peaceful cooperation between countries, which culminated in the successful 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki, the capital of Finland.
1994 – Soviet troops formally end a half-century military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltic region in a ceremony attended by Russian President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
1996 – In the largest military operation by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces since the end of the Gulf War /1991/, Iraqi troops help Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party capture the strategically important northern Iraqi city of Erbil from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
1997 – Princess Diana Spencer, ex-wife of Prince Charles, dies. Her lover, Dodi el Fayed, dies with her in a car accident in Paris.
2001 – An explosion at a four-story building in central Tokyo injures at least 26 people, 23 of them seriously.
2003 – On the Greek island of Corfu, commemorations were held in memory of Serbian soldiers of the First World War, first in Gouvia (where the Drina Division landed in 1916), and then in the village of Agios Mateos. A monument was built to the fallen soldiers and the elders of the famous division.
2005 – 1,199 Iraqis killed and more than 460 injured when a million Shiites march on a bridge over the Tigris River in Baghdad, panicked by rumors that a suicide bomber was about to detonate explosives.
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