Latest news with #LibraryofCongress
UPI
3 days ago
- Politics
- UPI
On This Day, June 18: Saudi prince executed for assassination of King Faisal
1 of 5 | On June 18, 1975, Saudi Arabian Prince Museid was publicly beheaded in Riyadh for the assassination of King Faisal, pictured. File Photo by Marion S. Trikosko/Library of Congress On this date in history: In 1812, the United States declared war on Britain, beginning the War of 1812. In 1815, England's Duke of Wellington and Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard von Blucher defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in Belgium. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI In 1975, Saudi Arabian Prince Museid was publicly beheaded in Riyadh for the assassination of his uncle, King Faisal. In 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a strategic arms control treaty (SALT II) in Vienna. In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space after the shuttle Challenger was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. In 1990, gunman James Edward Pough, 42, whose car had been repossessed, killed nine people and wounded four before killing himself at a General Motors Acceptance Corp. loan office in Jacksonville, Fla. Investigators said he had killed two people and injured two others a day earlier. In 1997, Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan resigned under pressure after his governing coalition lost its majority in Parliament. File Photo by Tarik Tinazay/EPA In 2004, U.S. hostage Paul Johnson Jr., 49, was killed by his Saudi captors despite pleas from senior Muslim clerics. In 2014, Spanish King Juan Carlos abdicated the throne amid scandal, massive unemployment and regional separatism. His son was crowned King Felipe VI one day later. In 2018, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Defense to create a sixth branch of the military -- a Space Force. In 2023, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that the Titan, a small submersible with five people on board, went missing off the coast of Newfoundland during an expedition to visit the site of the sunken Titanic. After days of searching, it was determined the submersible imploded, killing pilot and OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, crew member Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and tourists Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and Suleman Dawood. In 2024, AI-related earnings enabled chipmaker Nvidia to surpass Microsoft as the world's most valuable publicly traded company. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
What is Flag Day and why do we celebrate it? What to know about the June holiday's history
While June brings several holidays, like Juneteenth and Father's Day, there's a more obscure holiday this Father's Day weekend. Flag Day lands on the Saturday before Father's Day this year, which is always the third Sunday in June. It isn't a federal holiday and most people in the U.S. don't get the day off of work, but most will this year, since it lands on a weekend day. Here's when Flag Day 2025 is, what it is, why it's observed and how it started. Flag Day, which is observed on the same day in June every year, falls on the day before Father's Day this year. Flag Day 2025 will fall this Saturday, June 14, and Father's Day is the next day, on Sunday, June 15. When is Father's Day 2025? Here's the date and origin story for the June holiday for dads Flag Day commemorates the day that the Continental Congress decided what the official American flag would look like: June 14, 1777. 'According to legend, in 1776, George Washington commissioned Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross to create a flag for the new nation,' The Library of Congress says. 'Scholars, however, credit the flag's design to Francis Hopkinson, who also designed the Great Seal and first coin of the United States. Even so, Ross most likely met Washington and certainly sewed early American flags in her family's Philadelphia upholstery shop.' According to the Library of Congress, there have been 27 different official versions of the American flag, with the arrangement of stars varying until President Taft standardized the flag to 48 stars in six rows of eight. The current version of the flag with all 50 stars was standardized on July 4, 1960, after Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21, 1959. Yes. Flag Day is not a federal holiday and doesn't mean a break from work or normal government-funded operations like mail service when it falls on a weekday. But this year, those who don't work weekends will have the day off because it falls on a Saturday in 2025. Flag Day commemorates June 14, 1776, which is the day the Continental Congress agreed on what the nation's flag would look like. In 1916, President Wilson issued a proclamation of June 14 as Flag Day. And more than 30 years later, in 1949, President Truman signed a formal observance of the holiday into law. But the creation of Flag Day pre-dates Wilson's proclamation and started in the 1880s, with a school teacher in Waubeka, Wisconsin, a small town about 35 miles outside of Milwaukee. 'On June 14, 1885, Bernard J. Cigrand, an 18-year-old Waubeka native teaching at Stony Hill School, put a flag in his inkwell and assigned his students an essay about what the flag means to them,' PBS says. 'Cigrand left the next year for dental school in Chicago, but he never gave up his advocacy for a national day dedicated to the flag. Cigrand realized his dream in 1916 when Wilson issued his proclamation.' Yes! Flag Day shares a date with the birth of the U.S. Army, which pre-dates the decision of what the American flag would look like by two years. "According to U.S. Army history reports, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress authorized the formation of 10 companies from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia to march to Boston to support the war against England for independence and put it under the command of General George Washington a few days later on June 19, 1775," according to Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA), the Department of Defense's largest military installation. "This army was known as the Army of the United Colonies until its name was changed to the Army of the United States after the Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776." This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Flag Day this Father's Day weekend: What to know about the obscure holiday
Mint
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Fired US Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden speaks out, details abrupt dismissal
Carla Hayden, the first woman and African American to serve as the US Librarian of Congress, revealed she has had no direct contact with the Trump administration over her sudden dismissal in May. 'No one has talked to me directly at all from the White House,' Hayden told correspondent Robert Costa. 'I've received no communication directly, except for that one email. That's the only communication,' Hayden said in an exclusive interview with CBS News. Hayden described the abrupt manner in which she was removed from her post, which she held since 2016 after being appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate. On May 8, she received a brief email stating: 'Carla, on behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.' Asked if her tenure truly ended with 'one missive that's electronic,' she confirmed, 'That was it.' Hayden added, 'I was never notified beforehand and after.' The Trump administration justified the dismissal partly over Hayden's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts at the Library of Congress. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on May 10: 'There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.' Leavitt added, 'She has been removed from her position, and the president is well within his rights to do that.' Hayden faced political pressure from the conservative advocacy group American Accountability Foundation (AAF), which accused her and other library leaders of promoting children's books with 'radical content' and literature opposing President Trump. Hours before the firing announcement, the AAF called Hayden 'woke' and 'anti-Trump' on its X account, demanding, 'It's time to get her OUT.' As Librarian of Congress, Hayden oversaw management and policy for the nation's largest library, which serves Congress and the public with vast collections of books, historical papers, rare artifacts, and archives of presidential and Supreme Court documents. Her removal marks one of several dismissals of federal officials perceived as misaligned with Trump's agenda during his second term.
Gulf Today
06-06-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Something fishy
It looks like Donald Trump is after the Library of Congress but why? He doesn't seem to like reading as it appears he hasn't read the Constitution. He might be one of those people who 'writes' more books than he reads. Dennis Fitzgerald Melbourne, Australia
Scroll.in
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Poet Walt Whitman used photography to curate his image – but ended up more lost than found
When I read and study Walt Whitman's poetry, I often imagine what he would've done if he had a smartphone and an Instagram account. Unlike many of his contemporaries, the poet collected an ' abundance of photographs ' of himself, as Whitman scholar Ed Folsom points out. And like many people today who snap and post thousands of selfies, Whitman, who lived during the birth of commercial photography, used portraits to craft a version of the self that wasn't necessarily grounded in reality. One of those portraits, taken by photographer Curtis Taylor, was commissioned by Whitman in the 1870s. In it, the poet is seated nonchalantly, with a moth or butterfly appearing to have landed on his outstretched finger. According to at least two of his friends, Philadelphia attorney Thomas Donaldson and nurse Elizabeth Keller, this was Whitman's favorite photograph. Though he told his friends that the winged insect happened to land on his finger during the shoot, it turned out to be a cardboard prop. Feigned spontaneity The scene with the butterfly reflects one of the main themes of Whitman's Leaves of Grass his best-known collection of poems: The universe is naturally drawn to the poet. 'To me the converging objects of the world perpetually flow,' he insists in ' Song of Myself.' 'I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,' Whitman adds. 'They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.' Whitman told Horace Traubel, the poet's close friend and earliest biographer, that '[y]es – that was an actual moth, the picture is substantially literal.' Likewise, he told historian William Roscoe Thayer: 'I've always had the knack of attracting birds and butterflies and other wild critters.' Of course, historians now know that the butterfly was, in fact, a cutout, which currently resides at the Library of Congress. So what was Whitman doing? Why would he lie? I can't get inside his head, but I suspect he wanted to impress his audience, to verify that the protagonist of Leaves of Grass, the one with 'instant conductors,' was not a fictional creation. Today's selfies often give the impression of having been taken on the spot. In reality, many of them are a carefully calculated creative act. Media scholars James E Katz and Elizabeth Thomas Crocker have argued that most selfie-takers strive for informality even as they carefully stage the images. In other words, the selfie weds the spontaneous to the intentional. Whitman does exactly this, presenting a designed photo as if it were a happy accident. Too much me As Whitman biographer Justin Kaplan notes, no other writer at the time 'was so systematically recorded or so concerned with the strategic uses of his pictures and their projective meanings for himself and the public.' The poet jumped at the opportunity to have his photo taken. There is, for instance, the famous portrait of the young, carefree poet that was used as the frontispiece for the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Or the 1854 photograph of a bearded and unkempt Whitman, likely captured by Gabriel Harrison. Or the 1869 image of Whitman smiling lovingly at Peter Doyle, the poet's intimate friend and probable lover. Some social scientists have argued that today's selfies can aid in the search for one's ' authentic self ' – figuring out who you are and understanding what makes you tick. Other researchers have taken a less rosy view of the selfie, warning that snapping too many can be a sign of low self-esteem and can, paradoxically, lead to identity confusion, particularly if they're taken to seek external validation. Whitman spent his life searching for what he termed the 'Me myself' or the 'real Me.' Photography provided him another medium, besides poetry, to carry on this search. But it seems to have ultimately failed him. Having collected these images, he would then obsessively chew over what they all added up to, ultimately finding that he was far more lost than found in this sea of portraits. I wonder if – to use today's parlance – Whitman 'scrolled' his way into a crisis of self-identity, overwhelmed by the sheer number of photos he possessed and the various, contradictory selves they represented. 'I meet new Walt Whitmans every day,' he once said. 'There are a dozen of me afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.'
