Aug 15

Tivoli Gardens is a famous amusement park and pleasure garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. It opened on August 15, 1843 and is one of the oldest amusement parks that has survived intact to the present day. The amusement park was first called “Tivoli and Vauxhall” alluding to the Jardin de Tivoli in Paris and to the Vauxhall Gardens in London, England.

Tivoli’s founder was Georg Carstensen who obtained a five-year charter to create the park with the use of roughly 15 acres of the fortified glacis outside Vesterport. From the beginning, Tivoli included a variety of attractions: buildings in the exotic style of an imaginary Orient: a theater, band stands, restaurants and cafes, flower gardens, and mechanical amusement rides like a merry-go-round and a primitive scenic railway. After dark, colored lamps illuminated the gardens.

In 1943, Nazi sympathizers attempted to break the Danish people’s spirit by burning many of Tivoli’s buildings, including the concert hall, to the ground. Undaunted, the Danes built temporary buildings and the park was back in operation after a few weeks. Tivoli is always evolving without abandoning its original charm or traditions. Walt Disney, during a trip overseas with his wife Lily, visited Tivoli Gardens. Disney was so impressed with the Danish amusement park that he immediately decided that Disneyland should try to emulate its happy atmosphere.

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Aug 14

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez is a Venezuelan-born leftist revolutionary and terrorist. After several bungled bombings, Ramirez Sanchez achieved notoriety for a 1975 raid on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna, resulting in the deaths of three people. For many years, he was among the most wanted international fugitives. He is now serving a life sentence in Clairvaux Prison in northeast France.

Ramirez Sanchez was the given the nom de guerre Carlo when he became a member of the leftist Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Carlos was given the “Jackal” moniker by the press when the Frederick Forsyth novel The Day of the Jackal was reportedly found among his belongings. In 1973, Carlos was associated with the PFLP and he tried and failed to assassinate Jewish businessman and vice-president of the British Zionist Federation, Joseph Sieff. Carlos also admitted responsibility for a failed bomb attack on the Bank Hapoalim in London and car bomb attacks on three French newspapers accused of pro-Israeli leanings.

Carlos participated in the planning for the attack on the headquarters of OPEC in Vienna. In December 1975, he led the six-person team that assaulted the meeting of the OPEC leaders and took over 60 hostages. He was subsequently expelled from the PFLP and formed his own group. Three days after minor surgery in the Sudan, his own bodyguards tranquilized and tied him up, and then handed him over to French agents on August 14, 1994.

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Jul 20

Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a German army officer and Catholic aristocrat who reached the rank of colonel and was one of the leading officers of the failed July 20 plot of 1944 to kill German dictator Adolf Hitler and seize power in Germany. Stauffenberg found some aspects of the Nazi Party’s ideology repugnant; although he agreed with its nationalistic aspects, he never became a member of the party.

Stauffenberg’s part in the original plan required him to stay at the offices in Berlin from where he would phone regular army units all over Europe and the Reich in an attempt to convince them to arrest leaders of Nazi political organizations. However, he was forced to kill Hitler far away from Berlin and to trigger the military machine in Berlin during the office hours of the very same day.

He was the only conspirator who had regular access to Hitler by mid-1944 and the only officer to have the resolve and persuasive power to convince German military leaders to throw in the with the coup once Hitler was dead. On July 20, armed with two small bombs contained in a briefcase, Stauffenberg nearly succeeded in blowing up Hitler at a meeting but the dictator escaped with only slight injuries as he was shielded by the blast by a heavy, solid oak conference table.

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Jul 17

The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict in Spain that started after an attempted coup d’état committed by parts of the army against the government of the Second Spanish Republic. The Civil War devastated Spain from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, ending with victory of the rebels and the founding of a dictatorship led by the Nationalist General Francisco Franco.

The supporters of the Republic gained the support of the Soviet Union and Mexico, while the followers of the First Rebellion, nacionales, received the support of the major European Axis powers – Italy, Germany, and Portugal. The war increased tensions in the lead-up to the Second World War. The advent of mass media allowed an unprecedented level of attention and so the war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired, and for atrocities committed on both sides of the conflict.

On July 17, 1936, the nationalist-traditionalist rebellion, long feared by some in the popular front government, began. Exiled military officers suspected of conspiracy against the Republic took control of the Balearic and Canary Islands. Franco was flown to Spanish Morocco where the Spanish Army of Africa, led by Nationalist ranks, was almost unopposed in assuming control. The rising was intended to be a swift coup d’état, but was botched and the government was able to retain control of only part of the country.