This day in history: June 19

Jun 19, 2022 News

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Kaieteur News – The world’s most powerful drug lord, Pablo Escobar surrenders to Colombian police
Some have described him as the most powerful drug lord in history. At the height of his power in the 1980s, Pablo Escobar was one of the wealthiest men alive, and his Medellin Cartel at one point controlled the importation of 80 percent of all cocaine to the United States. This made Escobar extraordinarily rich.

Business Insider said that the “King of Cocaine” was the son of a poor Colombian farmer, but by the time he was 35, he was one of the world’s wealthiest men. He was worth around $30 billion by the early 1990s (around $58 billion in 2018) and earned around $70 million a day.
Such absurd wealth made the kingpin extraordinarily dangerous. Escobar was responsible for an enormous number of deaths, massacres and narco-terrorist attacks as he maintained his grip on the cartel. In one instance, it was stated, Escobar ordered the bombing of an aircraft which was supposed to be carrying César Gaviria, a presidential candidate opposed to the cartels. The plane was not carrying Gaviria and all 107 aboard died.
Escobar eventually surrendered to the Colombian authorities on June 19, 1991. But he did so on his own terms as he was allowed to design and build his own prison, La Catedral, which included a football pitch, a giant dollhouse, bar, jacuzzi and waterfall. Escobar lived unrestricted in the luxurious mansion, and when reports emerged that he was still running the cartel business, including having people murdered on the grounds of the jail, the Colombian government attempted to move him to a normal prison facility. He however discovered the plan in advance and escaped. Escobar spent the rest of his life on the run until he was shot and killed by police on December 2, 1993, in his hometown.

US state, Texas, was forced to free its slaves; Juneteenth is now a federal holiday
Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and Cel-Liberation Day, is an American holiday celebrated on June 19 and is slowly making its way into Caribbean culture as another acknowledgment of the liberation of Africans from physical bondage in the Western Hemisphere. On this day in 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was read to enslaved African Americans in Texas by Major General Gordon Granger informing them that they had been freed.

United States President Abraham Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, but in Civil War-era America, enforcement of this declaration was painfully slow. Since the declaration had been made in the middle of the war, it was not until the final victory of the Union (the North) government in mid-1865 that many slaves in former Confederate (the South) states were granted their final freedom.One of the remotest slave states was Texas. Very few battles of the war took place there. After the end of the war, federal troops did not arrive in Texas until June 19, 1865, which has become known as Juneteenth. Major General Granger arrived on Galveston Island and issued his General Order, which stated in part: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, becomes that between employer and hired labour. The Freed men are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”
Today Juneteenth is celebrated in 47 of 50 US states. Many campaigned for it to become a national holiday with federal recognition. And while the event has been celebrated since 1866, a year after the declaration, it was finally made a federal holiday June 19, last year when current US President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law.
In 2020, the Caribbean Community’s Reparations Commission Chairman, Hilary Beckles opened his solidarity message saying, “As you, our African American compatriots, rise to recognise and celebrate the legal ending of the chattel bondage of our ancestors, we, your brothers and sisters from ‘your islands’ downstream Mississippi are standing with you in joyous remembrance of the journey.”

Merga Bien was arrested for being a witch, burnt at the stake for being impregnated by the Devil

Did you know that witchcraft was a thing in medieval Europe, so much so that it was outlawed? Evidence of European witchcraft can be found as early as the Bronze Age. In early modern European tradition, most witches were stereotypically but not exclusively women. Witchcraft was practiced in a variety of countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Russia.

Belief in witchcraft in Europe can be traced to classical antiquity and has continuous history during the Middle Ages, culminating in the Early Modern witch trials and giving rise to the fairy tale and popular culture “witch” stock character of modern times, as well as to the concept of the “modern witch” in Wicca and related movements of contemporary witchcraft.
Merga Bien, born in the 1560s and died in 1603, was a German woman convicted of witchcraft and perhaps the most famous of the victims in the Fulda witch trials in 1603–05. The Witch trials of Fulda in Germany, 1603 to 1606 resulted in the death of about 250 people and belonged to the four largest witch trials in Germany alongside the Trier, the Würzburg and the Bamberg witch trials which were ordered by the Catholic Prince Bishop, a follower of the Counter-Reformation, and crypto-protestants.Bien was born in the city of Fulda and was married three times. She became the heiress of her first two husbands, and this later played an important part in accusations against her. In 1588, she married Blasius Bien and moved from the city, but returned after a conflict with her husband’s employers.
Prince abbot Balthasar von Dernbach, who had returned to power in 1602 after a long exile, ordered an investigation of witchcraft in the city with more than 200 people being executed for witchcraft. In March 1603, the investigations resulted in the first wave of arrests in the city and on June 19, Bien was arrested and put in jail. Her husband protested, pointing out that she was pregnant. In jail, Bien was forced to confess to the murder of her second husband and her children with him and one member of the family of her husband’s employers, and that she had taken part in a sabbath of Satan. Her pregnancy was considered an aggravating circumstance; she and her husband had no children although they had been married for fourteen years. She was thus forced to confess that her current pregnancy was the result of intercourse with the Devil. Bien was convicted of witchcraft and burnt alive at the stake in late 1603.

The Garfield Show was born
If you grew up on cartoons of the 90s, then there is hardly any doubt that you watched the famous fictional feline on his Garfield show.

It was one of the most entertaining cartoon series on television and captured the attention of viewers of all ages. But before his television debut, Garfield first appeared in newspapers.The American comic strip created by Jim Davis, was originally published as Jon in 1976, then in nationwide syndication from June 19, 1978, as Garfield. It chronicles the life of the title character, Garfield the cat; Jon Arbuckle, his human owner; and Odie, the dog. As of 2013, it was syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers and journals, and held the Guinness World Record for being the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip. Garfield has gone on to premier in many countries with remakes, replays of older versions and today, Garfield even has his own show on Netflix. Garfield lives on his own terms. He gets great pleasure teasing his geeky owner Jon, while tormenting dimwitted Odie, the dog.
Davis, the cartoonist, said Garfield was named after his grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, who was named after James Abram Garfield, the 20th President of the United States. According to Davis, his grandfather was “a large, cantankerous man,” which very much describes the fat, lasagna loving, orange tabby cat.
June 19 is National Garfield the Cat Day, declared by lovers of the fictional feline. Having entertained audiences for more than 40 years, it’s only right that this smug and sarcastic feline gets his own holiday, they said.

 

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