Today in History: June 26

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Journalist Veronica Guerin was shot and killed 20 years ago today by a drug gang in Dublin, Ireland.

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” … [T]o save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind; to regain faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small; to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained; to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom …”—The Charter of the United Nations

Fifty of the first 51 member-states of the United Nations signed the United Nations Charter on this date in 1945. A typo that states “June 27” is scratched out of the official document with June 26 handwritten over. It is a treaty and all members are bound by all of its articles.

A recording of Sir Laurence Olivier reading the Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations, with music by Aaron Copland (after the jump):
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Auden’s ‘The Way’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

At one point in “The Quest,” his modernist version of a quest romance told in 20 sonnets, the poet W.H. Auden derides occult fascinations as “an architecture for the odd.”

The particular sonnet, which in some editions is titled “The Tower,” but in Auden’s official Collected Poems is simply called number “IX,” concludes with a warning from magicians caught in their own tower:

Yet many come to wish their tower a well;
For those who dread to drown, of thirst may die,
Those who see all become invisible:
 
Here great magicians, caught in their own spell,
Long for a natural climate as they sigh
“Beware of Magic” to the passer-by.

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Today in History: June 25

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A war with many names started on this date in 1950. Most know it as the Korean War; in South Korea it is called the “6-2-5 Upheaval,” in North Korea it is called the “Fatherland Liberation War,” and in China it is called the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.”

On June 25, 1950, forces in North Korea invaded South Korea; the North was aided by the USSR and China, and the South was defended by the United Nations, with most forces supplied by the United States. Three years and one month later, an armistice was declared that kept the border between the two countries in place and tensions high to this day. A combined two and a half million civilians on both sides of the border were killed or wounded in the conflict.
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