Robinson Crusoe Island known as Más a Tierra, is the second largest of the Juan Fernández Islands, situated 670 km west of San Antonio, Chile, in the South Pacific Ocean. It is the more populous of the inhabited islands in the archipelago, with most of that in the town of San Juan Bautista at Cumberland Bay on the island's north coast; the island was home to the marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk from 1704 to 1709, is thought to have inspired novelist Daniel Defoe's fictional Robinson Crusoe in his 1719 novel about the character. This was just one of several survival stories from the period. To reflect the literary lore associated with the island and attract tourists, the Chilean government renamed the place Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. Robinson Crusoe Island has a mountainous and undulating terrain, formed by ancient lava flows which have built up from numerous volcanic episodes; the highest point on the island is 915 m above sea level at El Yunque. Intense erosion has resulted in the formation of steep ridges.

A narrow peninsula is formed in the southwestern part of the island called Cordón Escarpado. The island of Santa Clara is located just off the southwest coast. Robinson Crusoe Island lies to the west of the boundary between the Nazca Plate and the South American Plate, rose from the ocean 3.8 – 4.2 million years ago. A volcanic eruption on the island was reported in 1743 from El Yunque. On 20 February 1835, a day-long eruption began from a submarine vent 1.6 kilometres north of Punta Bacalao. The event was quite minor—only a Volcanic Explosivity Index 1 eruption—but it produced explosions and flames that lit up the island, along with tsunamis. Robinson Crusoe has a subtropical climate, moderated by the cold Humboldt Current, which flows to the east of the island, the southeast trade winds. Temperatures range from 3 °C to 34 °C, with an annual mean of 15.4 °C. Higher elevations are cooler, with occasional frosts. Rainfall is greater in the winter months, varies with elevation and exposure; the Fernandezian Region is a floristic region.

It is in the Antarctic Floristic Kingdom, but also included within the Neotropical Kingdom. As World Biosphere Reserves since 1977, these islands have been considered of maximum scientific importance because of the endemic plant families and species of flora and fauna. Out of 211 native plant species, 132 are endemic, as well as more than 230 species of insects. Robinson Crusoe Island has Lactoridaceae; the Magellanic penguin is found there. The Juan Fernández firecrown is an endemic and critically endangered red hummingbird, best known for its needle-fine black beak and silken feather coverage; the Masatierra petrel is named after the island's former name. The island was first named Juan Fernandez Island after Juan Fernández, a Spanish sea captain and explorer, the first to land there in 1574, it was known as Más a Tierra. There is no evidence of an earlier discovery either by Polynesians, despite the proximity to Easter Island, or by Native Americans. From 1681 to 1684, a Miskito man known as Will was marooned on the island.

Twenty years in 1704, the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was marooned there, living in solitude for four years and four months. Selkirk had been gravely concerned about the seaworthiness of his ship, Cinque Ports, declared his wish to be left on the island during a mid-voyage restocking stop, his captain, Thomas Stradling, a colleague on the voyage of privateer and explorer William Dampier, was tired of his dissent and obliged. All Selkirk had left with him was a musket, carpenter's tools, a knife, a Bible, some clothing; the story of Selkirk's rescue is included in the 1712 book A Voyage to the South Sea, Round the World by Edward Cooke. In an 1840 narrative, Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. described the port of Juan Fernandez as a young prison colony. The penal institution was soon abandoned and the island again uninhabited before a permanent colony was established in the latter part of the 19th century. Joshua Slocum visited the island between 26 April and 5 May 1896, during his solo global circumnavigation on the sloop Spray.

The island and its 45 inhabitants are referred to in detail in Slocum's memoir, Sailing Alone Around the World. During World War I, Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee's German East Asia Squadron stopped and re-coaled at the island 26–28 October 1914, four days before the Battle of Coronel. While at the island, the admiral was unexpectedly rejoined by the armed merchant cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich, which he had earlier detached to attack Allied shipping in Australian waters. On 9 March 1915 SMS Dresden, the last surviving cruiser of von Spee's squadron after his death at the Battle of the Falklands, returned to the island's Cumberland Bay hoping to be interned by the Chilean authorities. Caught and fired upon by a British squadron at the Battle of Más a Tierra on 14 March, the ship was scuttled by its crew. On 27 February 2010 Robinson Crusoe Island was hit by a tsunami following a magnitude 8.8 earthquake. The tsunami was about 3 m high. Sixteen people lost their lives, most of the coastal village of San Juan Ba

Roxalana "Roxana" Druse, was the last woman hanged in the state of New York. The first woman to be hanged in four decades in Central New York, her botched execution resulted in the decision to replace the gallows with the electric chair in 1890. Mrs. Druse murdered William Druse, in their home in Warren, New York; the murder unfolded with the help of her son and daughter and Mary Druse, nephew Frank Gates. The family members were threatened with death if they refused and all had an involvement with the murder case. Druse claimed that her motive was that her husband was abusive to her and was not supporting the family because he had left for a number of days after an argument. Frank Gates and George Druse were released due to their lack of involvement in the murder. During the trial, Mary Druse admitted to assisting in the murder, was sentenced to life at the Onondaga Country penitentiary. On October 6, 1885 Roxalana was sentenced to be hanged on November 25, 1885 but, due to multiple changes, this was changed to a final, official date of February 28, 1887.

On December 18, 1884, in the morning before the murder, the Druse couple had a fight. Fights were common between the Druses, many residents reported signs of foul play; the couple were known in the community for their disagreements. During this dispute, Roxalana concealed a revolver under her apron, which she placed in another room. Upon instruction from his mother, George Druse, aged ten, left the house while Roxalana's daughter Mary, aged nineteen, remained in the house. Mary tied a rope around her father's neck while Mrs. Druse fired the revolver, wounding Mr. Druse. Due to misuse of the weapon, Roxalana forced fourteen-year-old nephew Frank Gates to further fire at her husband. After pleading for help and unable to move, Mr. Druse was decapitated by his wife with an axe; the body parts were taken into the parlor. There, Mrs. Druse burnt it to ash on a stove, she burned William’s clothes to further destroy evidence and erase evidence of his presence from the house. The conspirators produced false documents which read that Mr. Druse had left the house after an argument and his whereabouts were unknown.

In order to further the idea that William disappeared, Roxalana threatened that she would kill her daughter and the boys, if they admitted to the crime. The ashes were dumped in a nearby swamp, while the axe and the revolver were wrapped up and dumped in a pond. On December 18, 1884, William Druse was reported missing by the police. Investigation led to the murder weapon, an axe sold to William Druse, wrapped in paper in a pond, along with the revolver. Multiple allegations were reported against wife Roxalana, yet due to lack of evidence, nothing was reported. On January 16, 1885, Frank Gates admitted to the crime after consistent harassment by neighbors. Gates and Mrs. Druse were arrested and brought to trial on September 21, 1885; when Druse was sentenced to death in Herkimer County, New York, suspension hanging was the method of execution. The process jerked the prisoner upwards by a weighted rope instead of the dropping the body dropping through a trap door, but Druse was a small woman, the suspension force failed to break her neck, leaving her to die agonizingly by strangulation.

The scene was so upsetting, officials decided to switch the primary method of execution in New York to the electric chair. List of individuals executed in New York Capital punishment in the United States Two Famous Murder Trials

William Haynes Truesdale was an American railroad executive. He served as the president of the Delaware and Western Railroad from 1899 to 1925. Truesdale was born on December 1851 in Youngstown, Ohio, he was the oldest of Charlotte Truesdale's four children. He was educated in Illinois. Truesdale began his career as a clerk with the Rockford, Rock Island and St. Louis Railway in 1869. In 1876, he was hired as passenger and freight agent for the Logansport division of the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad, with offices in Terre Haute, Indiana. In 1881, Truesdale accepted a job as traffic manager of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway and soon became vice president. In 1887, he was hired as the president of the St. Louis Railway. Following a brief tenure in this role, Truesdale served as the first Vice President and General Manager of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, a position he kept through the last decade of the 19th century. Truesdale became president of the DL&W in March 1899.

He cemented his reputation as a relentless visionary by launching one of the most ambitious railroad modernization programs in American history. Until the dawn of the twentieth century, the DL&W — like most railroads dealing with adverse geography — followed the contours of the land when laying track. Steep long hours aboard a train remained commonplace. Truesdale's efforts to rebuild his 900-mile system set the standard for U. S. rail construction. Heavier bridges and track were installed to permit heavier locomotives and cars to travel over them faster. Dozens of new stations were built. Many curves were straightened. Where conditions demanded, entire stretches of track were replaced by new alignments. One example was a 28.45-mile stretch of fast track with no grade crossings. Built to replace the DL&W's "Old Road", this enormous construction project involved huge amounts of cut and fill through the Pequest Valley of northwest New Jersey, it shortened the route by only 11 miles, but enabled trains to travel at speeds approaching 100 miles an hour.

Under Truesdale's leadership, the railroad constructed the Nicholson Cutoff north of Scranton, including the Tunkhannock Viaduct, the largest concrete bridge and one of the largest concrete structures in the world. The Tunkhannock Viaduct is still in use. DL&W launched its Phoebe Snow marketing campaign, one of the best-known in American advertising, in 1902, shortly after Truesdale became president; the campaign built its name-branded character upon the reputation for clean operations cultivated by Truesdale. Truesdale retired as DL&W president in 1925, but remained chairman of the board until 1931. Truesdale married Annie Topping on October 2, 1878, she was the daughter of Lt. Col. Melville Douglas Topping, killed August 20, 1862, at the Battle of Richmond, while commanding the 71st Indiana Regiment, they had two sons and Melville, a daughter, who married Richard M. Bissell. Truesdale resided in Greenwich, he was predeceased by his wife. Truesdale "suffered from a breakdown" in 1931, he died on June 2, 1935 in Greenwich, Connecticut, at 83.

List of railroad executives Taber, Thomas Townsend. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Nineteenth Century. Muncy, Pennsylvania: Privately printed. Taber, Thomas Townsend; the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Twentieth Century. 1. Muncy, PA: Privately printed. ISBN 0-9603398-2-5. Taber, Thomas Townsend; the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Twentieth Century. 2. Muncy, PA: Privately printed. ISBN 0-9603398-3-3

The Society of Catholic Worker Circles is an association created in 1871 by Count Albert de Mun, one of the founders of the magazine monarchist legitimist named the Catholic Association. The association included among its founders and leaders René de la Tour du Pin, Felix de Roquefeuil-Cahuzac and Maurice Maignen; these Social Reformers wanted to re-Christianize the people and contribute to the defense of its moral and material interests, to prevent another tragedy like the Paris Commune. In 1865, the "Association of Young Workers", founded by Maurice Maignen in 1855, became the "Circle of Young Workers", better known as "Circle Montparnasse", located at 126 boulevard du Montparnasse. In 1871, the first circle was inaugurated in Lyon, in the district where the Canut revolts occurred, the Croix-Rousse; the circle included many notables of the clergy, the judiciary, the military. In the second and third circles that started shortly thereafter, the presence of officers became less conspicuous; these "Circles", managed by workers, remained under the care of persons of the Bourgeoisie and benefactors.

By 1878, the association in France grew to a total of 375 clubs, 37,500 workers and 7,600 members of the ruling classes. In Lyon, the circles survived until the early 1930s. Despite numerous activities, the association had little influence on the working class. However, it was within it, born the Catholic Association of French Youth and "Corporation of Christian Journalists". In 1886, magistrate and journalist, Victor de Marolles, became the first president of the French Union of Journalists and created the Journal of the Society of Catholic Worker Circles. Http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5500174v Instruction sur l'oeuvre / Oeuvre des cercles catholiques d'ouvriers

The Wednesbury by-election, 1932 was a by-election held on 26 July 1932 for the British House of Commons constituency of Wednesbury in Staffordshire. The by-election was triggered by the elevation to the peerage of the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament Viscount Ednam; the seat had been held by Labour since 1918, but had fallen to the Conservatives with a majority of over 4,000 as part of the 1931 election landslide less than a year earlier. The election was dominated by the continuing effects of the Great Depression. Labour, whose candidate was William Banfield, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Operative Bakers and Confectioners, fought on the issue of the means test for unemployment benefit; the Conservative candidate was Captain Rex G. Davis, whose election address focused on the economy and the Empire; the Labour party had every reason to hope to regain the seat a safe one for the party.'There will be acute surprise and disappointment if Mr Banfield is not elected,' according to a report in The Times, which pointed out that the constituency had 12,000 unemployed and several factories had closed down.

The newspaper felt that Davis had the better of the argument, but the contest'had resolved itself into a fight between the Socialist and Conservative machines'. The result was a victory for Labour, as expected, with a majority of well over 3,000. Captain Davis accused the party of misrepresenting the facts about the means test and complained that in the three weeks of the campaign he'had not had the time to dispel the fears created in the minds of the local unemployed'; the seat continued in Labour hands until its abolition in 1974. List of United Kingdom by-elections Wednesbury constituency

Maria-Pia Geppert was a German mathematician and biostatistician who co-founded the Biometrical Journal. Geppert was the first woman to become a full professor at the University of Tübingen. With Emmy Noether, Hilda Geiringer, Ruth Moufang, Hel Braun, Geppert was one of only a handful of women to work in mathematics in Germany before World War II and convert their degrees into research careers as full professors. Geppert was born with Italian descent through her mother. Breslau is now Wrocław, in Poland, her older brother, Harald Geppert became a mathematician, a supporter of the Nazis. She studied mathematics in Breslau and in Giessen, in 1932 completed a doctorate at the University of Breslau, her dissertation, Approximative Darstellungen analytischer Funktionen, die durch Dirichletsche Reihen gegeben sind, concerned analytic number theory and was supervised by Guido Hoheisel. Edmund Landau, in his last publication before Hitler came to power, commented unfavorably on one of her papers. Next, Geppert moved to Rome, where from 1933 to 1936 she studied actuarial science and statistics for a second doctorate under the supervision of Guido Castelnuovo.

She completed a habilitation in 1942 at the University of Giessen. Her dissertation was Comparison of Two Observed Frequencies. Seneta & Phipps write that her habilitation dissertation was "important but forgotten" because of the circumstances of the war, they adopt her title for their own. In 1940, Geppert became director of the Department of Epidemiology and Statistics for the William G. Kerckhoff Heart Research Institute in Bad Nauheim to become the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, she joined Goethe University Frankfurt in 1943, as a lecturer in biostatistics. In 1964 she became chair for medical biometry at the University of Tübingen. In doing so, she became the first female full professor at the University of Tübingen, she retired in 1975. With Ottokar Heinisch, Geppert founded the Biometrical Journal in 1959, she was co-editor-in-chief with Heinisch from its founding until 1966, remained co-editor-in-chief with Erna Weber until 1969. In 1951, Geppert became the first German elected into the International Statistical Institute in the post-war period.

She became an honorary member of the International Biometric Society in 1965, the first person from the German region of the society to be so honored