1883: Gibran Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese/Syrian poet and author of The Prophet (1923), is born in the northern-Lebanon mountain village of Bcharre. Gibran emigrated to Boston in 1895. The Prophet would become one of the biggest-selling works of poetry of all time.
- Profile: Gibran Khalil Gibran
- Excerpts from Gibran’s Various Works
- Khalil Gibran Bibliography
- Khalil Gibran Commemorative Site
- Khalil Gibran Works
1986: Israel says immigration to Israel fell in 1985 to its lowest point since Israel’s creation in 1948, with just 11,298 immigrants arriving in Israel, a 41 percent drop from 1984. The 1985 figure includes 2,035 Ethiopian Jews. The numbers are worrisome to Israel officials, who fear that Arab populations in Israel’s control would eventually exceed that of Jews.
2004: Bechtel, the engineering and construction firm with close ties to the Bush administration, wins a $1.82 billion contract to restore water, electricity and other services in Iraq. Bechtel bid against two other, unidentified companies for the U.S. government contract. In Deccmber 2008, The New York Times published a secret, 513-page federal history of rebuilding in Iraq that the paper summarizes as “a $100 billion failure.”
2005: Nominated by President Bush to be U.S. Attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, author of a 2002 memo that claimed the Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives did not fall under Geneva Convention protections—protections Gonzales termed “quaint” and “obsolete”—says in his confirmation hearing that “this administration does not engage in torture and will not condone torture.” Gonzales is lying: By then the Bush administration had endorsed waterboarding as a method of interrogation.
