Southern Cross is the sole wordless novel by Canadian artist Laurence Hyde (1914–1987). Published in 1951, its 118 wood-engraved images describe the effect of atomic testing on Polynesian islanders. Hyde (pictured) made the book to express his anger at the US military's nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll. The story tells of the American military evacuating villagers from a Polynesian island before testing nuclear weapons. A drunken soldier attempts to rape a fisherman's wife during the evacuation, and the fisherman kills him. Their child witnesses the death of its parents and destruction of its environment from the atomic tests. The wordless novel genre had flourished primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, but by the 1940s even the most prolific practitioners had abandoned it. Hyde was familiar with some such works by Lynd Ward, Otto Nückel, and the form's pioneer Frans Masereel. The high-contrast artwork of Southern Cross features dynamic curving lines uncommon in wood engraving and combines abstract imagery with realistic detail. (Full article...)
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Damien Chazelle
A suicide bombing at a shrine in Sehwan, Pakistan, kills at least 83 people and injures more than 250 others.
1637 – Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, a Spanish fleet intercepted an Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of 44 vessels and 6 warships, destroying or capturing 20 of them.
1766 – A mutiny by captive Malagasy began on the slave ship Meermin, leading to the ship's destruction on Cape Agulhas in present-day South Africa and the recapture of the instigators.
1957 – Kenyan independence leader Dedan Kimathi, who spearheaded the Mau Mau Uprising, was executed by British authorities, who saw him as a terrorist.
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