1845 to 1914
1845
March
3 Georg Cantor is born in St. Petersburg, Russia.
1853
Itsko Girsha Marshak, Head of Household, died in Volozhin at age 37.
Spring
The Russian government opened in Bobruisk, as in the other larger cities of the Minsk Gubernia, a Jewish "government school" with a Russian inspector and one or two teachers, who graduated from the Vilna Teacher Seminary.
1854
George Boole published An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on Which Are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities, which he regarded as a mature statement of his ideas.
1855
January
Jacob Mistowsky is born in Russia.
1856
Jacob L. Marshak’s future wife Minnie is born in Russia.
1858
Lena Mistowsky is born in Russia.
1863
A group of wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg and Odessa created the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia for the purpose of educating Jewry into “readiness for citizenship.” The goal of all segments of the Russian Haskala in the 1860s and 1870s was to turn Jews into good Russians and to make their Jewishness a matter of personal idiosyncrasy alone.
1865
Claude Bernard publishes Introduction à la médecine expérimentale (1865; An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine).
In essence, he argued that progress in medicine was only possible by the application of experimental physiology. His own work on vasoconstriction is a good example of his ideas. Without an hypothesis to be tested, and proper controls for the carrying out of experiments, investigators would only be groping in disorganized toil and the liklihood of clear and solid knowledge emerging from the effort was small. He wrote:
...we must of necessity go down to objective reality..... In the search for truth by the experimental method, feeling always takes the lead: it begets the a priori idea or intuition: reasoning develops the idea and deduces its logical consequences. But if feeling must be clarified by reason, reason must in turn be guided by experiment.
Bernard also maintained that the foundations of physiology were the chemical and physical sciences and that a vital force was not necessary to explain life because biology follows the principle of scientific determinism, i.e. under identical conditions phenomena will be identical. Perhaps because of his enthusiasm for this principle he disliked statistics (at that time an imperfect art), and this is his only important argument that is out of step with modern ideas.
1868
February
23 W.E.B. DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. "I was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, which began the freeing of American Negro slaves. The valley was wreathed in grass and trees and crowned to the eastward by the huge bulk of East Mountain, with crag and cave and dark forests. Westward the hill was gentler, rolling up to gorgeous sunsets and cloud-swept storms. The town of Great Barrington, which lay between these mountains in Berkshire County, Western Massachusetts, had a broad Main Street, lined with maples and elms, with white picket fences before the homes. The climate was to our thought quite perfect."
March
1869
October
2 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Porbandar, India.
1870
In the 1870s, Samuel Mohilever was one of the rabbis who met with leaders of the Haskalah in order to try to bring the two sides together. He was attracted to the concept and possibilities of settling mass numbers of Jews in the Land of Israel. As pogroms swept through eastern Europe and Russia, he approached both those who were fleeing Russia as well as the philanthropists to try to convince them to encourage Jews to go to Palestine. When other religious leaders withdrew their support of the movements encouraging Aliyah of their contact with members of the Enlightenment movement, Mohilever did not join them. He encouraged Pinsker and Lilienblum who wanted to organize the various local Hovevei Zion groups into one organization to create the Hibbat Zion.
He was one of the leaders who influenced Edmond de Rothschild to help establish early settlements in Palestine, particularly Ekron, which was intended for Jewish farmers from Russia. He also helped persuade Jews in Bialystok to settle Petach Tikva.
1871
Jacob L. Marshak comes to America.
January
18 Bismarck completes efforts to unify Prussia and the German kingdoms into a single nation and has King Wilhelm I proclaimed Kaiser.
1872
Richard Dedekind developed his arithmetical rendering of irrational numbers in his Stetigkeit und Irrationale Zahlen (Eng. trans., “Continuity and Irrational Numbers,” published in Essays on the Theory of Numbers). He also proposed, as did the German mathematician Georg Cantor (q.v.), two years later, that a set—a collection of objects or components—is infinite if its components may be arranged in a one-to-one relationship with the components of one of its subsets. By supplementing the geometric method in analysis, Dedekind contributed substantially to the modern treatment of the infinitely large and the infinitely small.
Jacob Mistowsky comes to America. Lena Mistowsky comes to America.
August
4 Dovid Marshak son of Zalman Khaimov and Elka Lejzerovna born in Minsk.
1873
Georg Cantor demonstrated that the rational numbers, though infinite, are countable (or denumerable) because they may be placed in a one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers (i.e., the integers, as 1, 2, 3, . . .). He showed that the set (or aggregate) of real numbers (composed of irrational and rational numbers) was infinite and uncountable. Even more paradoxically, he proved that the set of all algebraic numbers contains as many components as the set of all integers and that transcendental numbers (those that are not algebraic, as p), which are a subset of the irrationals, are uncountable and are therefore more numerous than integers, which must be conceived as infinite.
Enoch Sontonga, from the Mpinga clan, of the Xhosa nation, was born in the Eastern Cape of Africa in about 1873.
1874
While vacationing in Interlaken, Switz., Dedekind met Georg Cantor. Dedekind gave a sympathetic hearing to an exposition of the revolutionary idea of sets that Cantor had just published, which later became prominent in the teaching of modern mathematics. Because both mathematicians were developing highly original concepts, such as in number theory and analysis, which were not readily accepted by their contemporaries, and because both lacked adequate professional recognition, a lasting friendship developed.
Borisov Revision List: Berko Marshak; Srol son of Berko; Raytsa Marshak; Abram Itsko, son of Berko; Hevel Marshak; Leyba, son of Hevel; all in Dokshitsy Town, District of Borisov, in Minsk Province. Zinaida Marshak died in Borisov Ghetto. Harry Marshak in Igumen District, Minsk Province; Samuil Marshak, son of Yudelev in school in Town of Slutsk, MInsk Province;
The British, long present in the region with trading forts, in 1874 defeated the ASHANTI, sacked their capital KUMASI and declared the entire GOLD COAST a PROTECTORATE (at that time stretching over the coastal area and the Ashanti Kingdom). The capital was ACCRA. Lagos (Nigeria) was subordinate to the governor at Accra until 1886.
1878
Minnie Marshak comes to America.
January
Brynie Mistowski born to Jacob and Lena in Providence, Rhode Island
October
29 Brynie Mistowski dies.
1879
Continuing his investigations into the properties and relationships of integers—that is, the idea of number—Dedekind published Über die Theorie der ganzen algebraischen Zahlen (1879; “On the Theory of Algebraic Whole Numbers”). There he proposed the “ideal” as a collection of numbers that may be separated out of a larger collection, composed of algebraic integers that satisfy polynomial equations with ordinary integers as coefficients. The ideal is a collection of all algebraic integer multiples of a given algebraic integer. For example, the notation (2) represents such a particular collection, as . . . -8, -6, -4, -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 . . . . The sum of two ideals is an ideal that is composed of all the sums of all their individual members. The product of two ideals is similarly defined. Ideals, considered as integers, can then be added, multiplied, and hence factored. By means of this theory of ideals, he allowed the process of unique factorization—that is, expressing a number as the product of only one set of primes, or 1 and itself—to be applied to many algebraic structures that hitherto had eluded analysis.
28 July 2004 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=30202>.
1880
Issledovaniye dogmaticheskogo bogosloviya by Leo Tolstoy; An Examination of Dogmatic Theology
June
28 Minsk list of draft evaders shows Abram Marshak, son of Shlemov, not born in Minsk, and Zel'man Marshak son of Movshev from Minsk.
October
1881
Soyedineniye i perevod chetyrokh yevangeliy by Leo Tolstoy; Union and Translation of the Four Gospels
The first extensive pogroms followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Although the assassin was not a Jew, and only one Jew was associated with him, false rumours aroused Russian mobs in more than 200 cities and towns to attack Jews and destroy their property.
1882
January
31 Shmerka Marshak is born in Town of Minsk. Father is from Dokshitsy.
April
7 El'ia-Nokhum Marshak is born in Town of Minsk. Father is Itska Marshak from Koidanov. Grandfather is Kalman Marshak.
13 Lessor Mistowsky is born in Providence, Rhode Island to Jacob and Lena.
June
26 Mendel Marshak is born in Town of Minsk. Father is Girsh. Grandfather is Srol'.
November
16 Grshon Marshak is born in Town of Minsk. Father is Girsh.
1883
Samuel Mohilever became rabbi of Bialystok, where his members granted him time to continue his public works. He was honorary president of the 1884 Hovevei Zion conference, as well as chairman of their conferences in 1887 and 1889. Under his influence, a board of rabbis was chosen to insure that settlement work in the Land of Israel would be carried out in accordance with Jewish tradition as much as possible.
One of the initial speakers of the founding conference of the Hovevei Zion in Odessa in 1890, he then led a group tour of Eretz Yisrael. Upon his return, he encouraged financial and physical support for settlement in the Land of Israel. He believed deeply that it was possible to create an active religious Zionist movement that could work with the secular Zionist groups in Europe. He initiated the concept of a "merkaz ruchani," a spiritual center. This effort became Mizrachi, the religious Zionist organization.
Mohilever and his colleagues continued their work, especially among Orthodox Jews, and as a result, Mizrachi became the foundation of the religious Zionist movement.
February
9 Henry I. Vorobitcik marries Rachel Mistowsky in Providence, Rhode Island.
1884
Marshak in Kaidanov and Kaunas (was Kovno), Lithuania.
1885
August
November
27 Moses Mistowsky is born in Providence, Rhode Island to Jacob and Lena.
1887
September
October
1888
August
4 Mary Mistowsky is born in Providence, Rhode Island to Barnard and Rachel.
1889
At the age of 21, Maxim Gorky attempted suicide, shooting a bullet through his lung. Although he survived, his lungs were permanently damaged and caused him to suffer frequent bouts of tuberculosis.
April
November
30 Thomas Mistowsky is born in Providence, Rhode Island to Jacob and Lena.
1890
Samuel Mohilever was of the initial speakers at the founding conference of the Hovevei Zion in Odessa, he then led a group tour of Eretz Yisrael. Upon his return, he encouraged financial and physical support for settlement in the Land of Israel. He believed deeply that it was possible to create an active religious Zionist movement that could work with the secular Zionist groups in Europe. He initiated the concept of a "merkaz ruchani," a spiritual center. This effort became Mizrachi, the religious Zionist organization.
Mohilever and his colleagues continued their work, especially among Orthodox Jews, and as a result, Mizrachi became the foundation of the religious Zionist movement.
Jacob and Minnie Marshak become U.S. citizens.
Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin is born in Kazimirov, Belorussia, where his father was rabbi.
June
W. E.B. DuBois graduates from Harvard University and speaks about Jefferson Davis at the Commencement Ceremony.
1891
January
22 Aron-Leiba Marshak born in Kamen, Minsk. Father Girsh Marshak. Grandfather Shmuilo Marshak.
September
12 Max Mistowsky is born in Providence, Rhode Island to Jacob and Lena.
1892
November
9 Samuel Mistowsky is born in Providence, Rhode Island to Jacob and Lena.
1893
Dovid Marshak called up for draft in Minsk.
Tsarstvo bozhiye vnutri vas by Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You
In brief, Tolstoy rejected all the sacraments, all miracles, the Holy Trinity, the immortality of the soul, and many other tenets of traditional religion, all of which he regarded as obfuscations of the true Christian message contained, especially, in the Sermon on the Mount. He rejected the Old Testament and much of the New, which is why, having studied Greek, he composed his own “corrected” version of the Gospels. For Tolstoy, “the man Jesus,” as he called him, was not the son of God but only a wise man who had arrived at a true account of life.
Stated positively, the Christianity of Tolstoy's last decades stressed five tenets: be not angry, do not lust, do not take oaths, do not resist evil, and love your enemies. Nonresistance to evil, the doctrine that inspired Gandhi, meant not that evil must be accepted but only that it cannot be fought with evil means, especially violence. Thus Tolstoy became a pacifist. Because governments rely on the threat of violence to enforce their laws, Tolstoy also became a kind of anarchist. He enjoined his followers not only to refuse military service but also to abstain from voting or from having recourse to the courts. He therefore had to go through considerable inner conflict when it came time to make his will or to use royalties secured by copyright even for good works. In general, it may be said that Tolstoy was well aware that he did not succeed in living according to his teachings.
"Leo Tolstoy" Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
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1894
January
August
22 Gandhi founded the Natal Indian Congress of which he himself became the indefatigable secretary. Through this common political organization, he infused a spirit of solidarity in the heterogeneous Indian community. He flooded the government, the legislature, and the press with closely reasoned statements of Indian grievances. Finally, he exposed to the view of the outside world the skeleton in the imperial cupboard, the discrimination practiced against the Indian subjects of Queen Victoria in one of her own colonies in Africa. It was a measure of his success as a publicist that such important newspapers as The Times of London and the Statesman and Englishman of Calcutta editorially commented on the Natal Indians' grievances.
"Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
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1895
In 1895–97 Cantor fully propounded his view of continuity and the infinite, including infinite ordinals and cardinals, in his best known work, Beiträge zur Begründung der transfiniten Mengelehre (published in English under the title Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, 1915). This work contains his conception of transfinite numbers, to which he was led by his demonstration that an infinite set may be placed in a one-to-one correspondence with one of its subsets. By the smallest transfinite cardinal number he meant the cardinal number of any set that can be placed in one-to-one correspondence with the positive integers. This transfinite number he referred to as aleph-null. Larger transfinite cardinal numbers were denoted by aleph-one, aleph-two, . . . . He then developed an arithmetic of transfinite numbers that was analogous to finite arithmetic. Thus, he further enriched the concept of infinity. The opposition he faced and the length of time before his ideas were fully assimilated represented in part the difficulties of mathematicians in reassessing the ancient question: “What is a number?” Cantor demonstrated that the set of points on a line possessed a higher cardinal number than aleph-null. This led to the famous problem of the continuum hypothesis, namely, that there are no cardinal numbers between aleph-null and the cardinal number of the points on a line. This problem has, in the first and second halves of the 20th century, been of great interest to the mathematical world and was studied by many mathematicians, including the Czech-Austrian-American Kurt Gödel and the American Paul J. Cohen.
28 July 2004 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=20387>.
1897
January
On landing at Durban Gandhi was assaulted and nearly lynched by a white mob. Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary in the British Cabinet, cabled the government of Natal to bring the guilty men to book, but Gandhi refused to prosecute his assailants. It was, he said, a principle with him not to seek redress of a personal wrong in a court of law.
1899
Basha Marshak in Alytus, Lithuania. Abram-Aron, Osher, and Sheina-Frida Marshak in Lunki.
Nikosi Sikelel' Afrika was first sung in public at the ordination of Rev Boweni, a Shangaan Methodist Minister.
October
11 Boer War , or Anglo-Boer War (Oct. 11, 1899–May 31, 1902), war fought between Great Britain and the two Boer (Afrikaner) republics—the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. Although it was the largest and most costly war in which the British engaged between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, it was fought between wholly unequal protagonists. The total British military strength in South Africa reached nearly 500,000 men, whereas the Boers could muster no more than about 88,000. But the British were fighting in a hostile country over difficult terrain, with long lines of communications, while the Boers, mainly on the defensive, were able to use modern rifle fire to good effect, at a time when attacking forces had no means of overcoming it.
"South African War" Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
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1901
R. Shemerihu Nokh Shniuerson opened in his royal court a yeshiva Khab"ad, young boys studied there under the supervision of a special supervisior of dietary law, and students which the Rebbe alone burdened himself with. Besides Gemora, which they studied, they absorbed themselves in the words of the sages, and not evasive of the pilpul, the students every day studied a chapter in the "Tane" [early Mishna rabbis] or in other Khsidic texts.
1902
April
18 Menachem Mendel Schneerson was born in Nikolayev, a town in the southern Ukraine. His father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchock Schneerson, was a renowned scholar, his mother, Rebbitzen Chana Schneerson, was an aristocratic women from a prestigious rabbinic family.
1903
DuBois published The Souls of Black Folks.
Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.
The pogrom against the Jews of Kishinev spurred Jabotinsky to undertake Zionist activity. He organized self-defense units and fought for Jewish minority rights in Russia. Jabotinsky was elected as a delegate to the 6th Zionist Congress, the last in which Theodor Herzl participated. During this period, Jabotinsky was active in spreading the Hebrew language and culture throughout Russia, and the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
June
26 Jennie Mistowsky graduates from Grammar Grades in Providence, Rhode Island.
September
5 Jennie Mistowsky's 16th birthday.
1904
In Stasov, Samuel Marshak got acquainted with Maxim Gorky and was invited to Gorky's summer residence on the Black sea where Marshak read much and met different people.
June
6 Iossel Marshak is born in Town of Rubezhevichi, Minsk. Father is Girsh from Koidanov.
1905
Reb Mordkhay Tsvi Manbi dies. For nearly fifty years he sat in his secluded room, which the wealthy of the Rabinovitch family had built near their synagogue, absorbed in Torah and prayer, speaking only Scripture and in the Holy Tongue, and nourished himself--on the days when he was not fasting--on some potatoes. From time to time he used to interrupt his study, in order to go into town to gather alms for its poor, mostly impoverished and fallen business owners who used to benefit from his anonymous charity. Over the streets he went blindfolded, in order not to glance at a female stranger--and therefore in the city they used to call him the "blind preacher." He had a great spiritual influence, even greater than the rabbis, who also payed homage to the "blind preacher" and used to come to him "to enjoy being in the tsadik's radiant presence and be blessed by him." His death in the Revolution year 1905 was a sort of sign, an indication of an era which was gone, an era in which the Torah way of "....[Scriptural reference].." was a dream and desire of quite many and the best."
October
Revolution in Russia. Samuel Marshak's family was forced to return to St. Petersburg.
1906
The Transvaal government published a particularly humiliating ordinance for the registration of its Indian population.
January
The "Niagara Movement" was formed. So called after the site of the meeting place–the Canadian side of Niagara falls. (They were prevented from meeting on the U.S. side.) Its objectives were to advocate civil justice and abolish caste discrimination.
September
The Indians held a mass protest meeting at Johannesburg and, under Gandhi's leadership, took a pledge to defy the ordinance if it became law in the teeth of their opposition, and to suffer all the penalties resulting from their defiance. Thus was born satyagraha (“devotion to truth”), a new technique for redressing wrongs through inviting, rather than inflicting, suffering, for resisting the adversary without rancour and fighting him without violence.
1907
Samuel Marshak first appeared in print, with lyrics of his own and translations of foreign poets. His start in literary life he owed largely to Maxim Gorky, in the circle of whose family he spent part of his youth.
1908
September
5 Jennie Mistowsky's 21st birthday.
November
1 Joseph Marshak marries Jennie Mistowsky in Providence, Rhode Island.
1909
All members of the Niagara Movement save one (Trotter, who despised and distrusted whites and their objectives) merged with some white liberals and thus the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was born. DuBois was not altogether pleased with the group but agreed to stay on as Director of Publications and Research.
July
26 Marcella Marshak is born to Joseph and Jennie in Providence.
1910
There came among the pious circles in Bobruisk a movement to "renew the crown of the Torah" and they began a broad agitation to study Torah. According to the initiative of HaRov Khayim Gorodenski of the "Minsk Plan" and the admo'r's son Menakhem Mendl Shnieurson, they opened a school, "Sfart Bokherim," where hundreds of children studied until the revolution.
1911
March
26 Louis Rains marries Annie Mistowsky in Providence, Rhode Island.
1912
Grodno Gubernia Voters List: Shlioma Marshak, son of Itsko, in Bialystock. Shevel Marshak, son of Osher; Itsko, son of Mordkhel; and Isaak, son of Khaim, in Grodno.
January
8 At the first meeting of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), the forerunner of the African National Congress, Nikosi Sikelel' Afrika was immediately sung after the closing prayer.
June
11 2d Lt. Leighton W. Hazelhurst, Jr., 17th Inf. was killed in an aviation accident. Hazelhurst Field, N. Y. was a temporary flying field under lease, located on the Hempstead Plains at Mineola, Long Island.The field was also known as aviation Field No. 1 and included included Field No. 2, later known as Mitchel Field. The field was named in honor of 2d Lt. Leighton W. Hazelhurst, Jr.
1913
Hundreds of Indians, including women, went to jail, and thousands of Indian workers who had struck work in the mines bravely faced imprisonment, flogging, and even shooting. It was a terrible ordeal for the Indians, but it was also the worst possible advertisement for the South African government, which, under pressure from the governments of Britain and India, accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi on the one hand and the South African statesman General Jan Christian Smuts on the other.
August
31 Louis Feinman marries Sara Mistowsky in Providence, Rhode Island.
1914
February
6 Miriam Britain Richards is born to William and Dora (nee Oshman) in Freeland, PA.
June
28 Archduke Franz Ferdinand heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife are assassinated in Sarajevo.
July
“The saint has left our shores,” Smuts wrote to a friend on Gandhi's departure from South Africa for India, “I hope for ever.”
28 Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.
August
1 Germany mobilizes her armed forces and declares war on Russia.
3 Germany declares war on France.
4 Germany declares war on neutral Belgium and invades in a right flanking move designed to defeat France quickly. As a result of this invasion, Britain declares war on Germany.
6 Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia.
© 2004 H. David Marshak, All Rights Reserved
