By Michelle Dumas
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Francis Lieber (18 March 1798 – 2 October 1872) was a Prussian-American jurist and political philosopher. He is most well known for the Lieber Code, the first codification of the customary law and the laws of war for battlefield conduct, which served a later basis for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and for the Geneva Conventions. He was also a pioneer in the fields of law, political science, and sociology in the United States.
Born in Berlin, Prussia, to a Jewish merchant family, Lieber served in the Prussian Army during the Napoleonic Wars. He obtained a doctorate from the University of Jena in 1820. A republican, he volunteered to fight on the Greek side in the Greek War of Independence in 1821. After experiencing repression in Prussia for his political views, he migrated to the United States in 1827. During his early years in America, he worked a number of jobs, including swimming and gymnastics instructor, editor of the first editions of the Encyclopaedia Americana, journalist, and translator.
Lieber wrote a plan of education for the newly founded Girard College and lectured at New York University before becoming a tenured professor of history and political economy at the University of South Carolina in 1835. In 1857, he joined the faculty at Columbia University where he assumed the chair of history and political science in 1858. He transferred to Columbia Law School in 1865 where he taught until his death in 1872.
Lieber was commissioned by the U.S. Army to write the Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field (General Orders No. 100, 24 April 1863), the Lieber Code of military law that governed the battlefield conduct of the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The Lieber Code was the first codification of the customary law and the laws of war governing the battlefield conduct of an army in the field, and later was a basis for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and for the Geneva Conventions.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Question of the Day
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Puzzle of the Day
Died
- Ulysses S. Grant (18th U.S. president) –
- Sir William Ramsay (chemist & Nobel prize winner) –
- D. W. Griffith (film director) –
- Montgomery Clift (actor) –
- Edward V. Rickenbacker (WWI flying ace) –
- William Pierce (white supremacist whose book, The Turner Diaries, is believed to have inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh) –
- Chaim Potok (author) –
- Ron Miller (songwriter; hits include Touch Me in the Morning and For Once in My Life) –
- Amy Winehouse (singer) –
- Sally Ride (astronaut; first American woman in space) –
Born
- Raymond Thornton Chandler (author) –
- Don Drysdale (baseball player) –
- Philip Seymour Hoffman (actor) –
- Nomar Garciaparra (baseball player) –
- Daniel Radcliffe (actor) –
Events
- America’s first swimming school opened by Francis Lieber in Boston, MA–
- The first practical typographer (typewriter) was patented by William Burt–
- Union Act passed by British Parliament, uniting Upper and Lower Canada into one government–
- Copyright for “America the Beautiful” by Katharine Lee Bates registered–
- Boeing 767 turned into glider after fuel ran out due to metric conversion error, Gimli, Manitoba–
- Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign when she relinquished her crown–
- Disney’s Tarzan became the first all-digital film–
- George Lee “Sparky” Anderson inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame–
Weather
- In his weather diary, George Washington described a big storm that passed over his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Historians often refer to this storm as George Washington’s Hurricane.–
- Sheridan, Wyoming, got drenched by 4.41 inches of rain, which washed away some railroad tracks–
- Rain delayed Giants/Mets baseball game 3 hours 39 minutes–
- A hailstone broke through a deck in Vivian, South Dakota, during a severe thunderstorm. The hailstone weighed 1 pound 15 ounces and measured 8 inches in diameter, 18.6 inches in circumference. It was the heaviest and largest hailstone in diameter ever recovered in the U.S.–
- Several counties in Kansas reported baseball size hail–
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