13, 1964. Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức sent
dissident units into the capital Saigon to overthrow the ruling military
junta led by General Nguyễn Khánh. They captured key points and
announced the overthrow of the regime on national radio. In the previous
month, Khánh's leadership had became increasingly troubled. He had
tried to augment his powers by declaring a state of emergency; this
provoked large-scale protests calling for an end to military rule.
Fearful of losing power, Khánh began making concessions and promised
democracy in the near future. He also removed military officials linked
to the discriminatory Catholic rule of the former President Ngô Đình
Diệm, including Phát (Interior Minister) and Đức (IV Corps
commander), who responded with a coup. With American help, Khánh
rallied support and the coup collapsed the next morning without
casualties. Despite Khánh's survival, the historian George McTurnan
Kahin has described the coup as the start of Khánh's ultimate political
decline. His relations with America became increasingly strained and he
was deposed in February 1965 with US connivance.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_1964_South_Vietnamese_coup_attempt>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
509 BC:
The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Capitoline Hill, the
most important temple in Ancient Rome, was dedicated.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Jupiter_Optimus_Maximus>
1541:
After three years of exile, John Calvin returned to Geneva to
reform the church under a body of doctrine that came to be known as
Calvinism.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism>
1848:
An explosion drove an iron rod through the head of railroad
foreman Phineas Gage (pictured), making him an important early case of
personality change after brain injury.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage>
1971:
Following a failed coup attempt, Mao Zedong's second-in-command
Lin Biao died in a plane crash while attempting to flee the People's
Republic of China.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Biao>
2006:
Kimveer Gill shot 19 people for unknown reasons, killing one,
at Dawson College in Montreal.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_College_shooting>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
gooseberry:
1. A fruit closely related to the currant.
2. Any of several other unrelated fruits, such as the Chinese gooseberry
(kiwifruit) or the Indian gooseberry (amla).
3. (British, informal) An unwanted additional person: Robert and Susan were
so in love that nobody could go near them without feeling like a
gooseberry.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gooseberry>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars —
mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a
desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of
the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my
little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of
which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It
does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far
more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.
Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who
can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning
sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
--Richard Feynman
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman>
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