BORN TODAY, in Seyðisfjörður in Iceland (Still in Iceland – a town of 668 inhabitants in 2011) – Nína Tryggvadóttir “one of Iceland’s most important abstract expressionist artists”. After living in Copenhagen, Paris and New York she was banned from the US in 1949 after a short trip to Iceland, suspected of being a communist, but managed to return to New York ten years later.
Also born today: One of the “Capuchin Martyrs of Valencia” (catholic priests executed during the Spanish civil war) – Enrique Garcia Beltran. Imprisoned on 4th August 1936, and killed in a stone quarry near Castellon on 16th August 1936, aged 23.
Society and culture: In Paris, a crowd of 120,000 demonstrators protest at the decision of the French Army to introduce three years of mandatory military service.
Law and Order: In Illinois, USA, the Chicago Tribune headlines with “Morals Court to Open War on Vice”. Chief Justice Harry Olsen warns that the city cannot “permit such important laws regarding public health and sanitation to lie dormant merely because the exploitation of vice has been commercialized and its financial magnates infest and seek to dominate the politics of the city”. Henceforth, citizens of Chicago should remember that “A card index will be kept of all persons arrested, not only inmates frequenters and lessees of property used for improper persons but also the owners”.
onehundredyearsagotoday 