Timeline Switzerland
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Switzerland is about 2 times the
size of New Jersey.
(SSFC, 10/9/05, Par p.27)
Swiss democracy starts in its 2,800
odd communities. The 26 cantons form the next tier. The federal tier is
responsible for foreign and security policy, national legislation,
customs and currency matters.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.7)
210Mil BC The
Plateosaurus, a peaceful herbivore measuring up to 10 meters from head
to tail, roamed river deltas in large herds about this time, when most
of Switzerland was covered with desert and its landscape may have
looked much like the estuary of the Nile now.
(Reuters, 8/9/07)
152 Million In 2004 a Swiss paleontologist said
hundreds of dinosaur prints dating back this time had been discovered
in the Jura mountains in the northwest of Switzerland.
(AFP, 10/11/04)
c45BC Colonia Julia Equestris, a
veterans’ colony, was founded in what is now Nyon, Switzerland. Nyon is
derived from the Celtic name Noviodunum.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.10)
c111AD A Roman amphitheater was built at Nyon. An
inscription at the site had a dedication to the emperor Trajan.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.10)
c990 A set of instructions on
chess, the Versus de Scachis (Poem About Chess), emerged in Switzerland.
(Arch, 1/05, p.40)
1291 Aug 1, The Everlasting League
formed and became the basis of Swiss Confederation. The people of the 3
small cantons (Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden) formed a co-operative pact
called the Bundesbrief following the death of Habsburg Emp. Rudolf I.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.6)
1294 Jun 30, Jews were expelled
from Bern, Switzerland.
(MC, 6/30/02)
1315 Nov 15, Swiss soldiers
ambushed and slaughtered invading Austrians in the battle of Morgarten.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1348 Sep 21, Jews in Zurich
Switzerland were accused of poisoning wells.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1348 Nov 15, Rudolph of Oron
claimed Jews confessed to poisoning wells.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1349 Jan 9, In Basel, Switzerland,
700 Jews were burned alive in their houses.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1349 Feb 13, Jews were expelled
from Burgsdorf, Switzerland.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1349 Feb 22, Jews were expelled
from Zurich, Switzerland.
(HN, 2/22/98)
1365 Basel, Switzerland, was
wrecked by an earthquake.
(AP, 8/4/07)
1378 Sep 20, The election of
Robert of Geneva as anti-pope by discontented cardinals created a great
schism in the Catholic church.
(HN, 9/20/98)
1386 The counts of Habsburg tried
to reach their goals by military force but were again defeated by Swiss
forces at the battle of Sempach.
(http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/old-swiss-confederacy-1291.html)
1388 The counts of Habsburg tried
to reach their goals by military force but were again defeated by Swiss
forces at the battle of Naefels.
(http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/old-swiss-confederacy-1291.html)
1427 May 10, Jews were expelled
from Berne, Switzerland.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1444 Aug 26, In the Battle of St.
Jakob an der Birs, fought near Basel in Switzerland, a Swiss force of
some 1,600 soldiers stopped some 30,000 French mercenaries on their way
to relieve a siege of Zurich.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_St._Jakob_an_der_Birs)
1460 Apr 4, University of Basle,
Switzerland, formed.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1476 The Swiss overcame Burgundy’s
Charles the Bold at the Battle of Murten.
(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.C5)
1477 Jan 5, Swiss troops defeated
the forces under Charles the Bold of Burgundy at the Battle of Nancy.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1478 The Swiss began annexing the
southern approaches to the strategic and lucrative St. Gothard Pass
over the Alps.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T4)
1489 Apr 6, Hans Waldmann, Swiss
military, mayor (Zurich), was beheaded.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1493 May 1, Phillippus Paracelsus
(d.1541), physician and alchemist, was born in Switzerland. He was
christened as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.
(HN, 5/1/98)(NH, 6/00, p.30,34)(MC, 5/1/02)
1494 Carol Verardi in Basel
published an illustrated report of the first expedition to the new
world by Christopher Columbus.
(HNPD, 10/12/98)
1506 Jan 22, The Swiss Guard
mercenaries, summoned by Pope Julius II to protect the pope and the
Vatican, arrived in Rome. In 2006 Robert Royal authored “The Pope’s
Army.”
(USAT, 5/6/98, p.6A)(AP, 1/22/06)(WSJ, 4/14/06, p.W5)
1507 Jan 15, Johann Oporinus
[Herbster], Swiss book publisher (Koran), was born.
(MC, 1/15/02)
1513 The Swiss completed the
acquisition of the southern province of Ticino.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T4)
1515 Sep 13, King Francis of
France defeated the Swiss army under Cardinal Matthias Schiner at
Marignano, northern Italy. Switzerland was last involved in a war.
French armies defeated the Swiss and Venetians at the Battle of
Marignano and Milan fell to the French. Francis I conquered
Lombardy in northern Italy.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.11)(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A12)(HN, 9/13/98)
1515 Hans Holbein the Younger
arrived in Basel, the European center of book publishing. The city in
1997 owned 340 prints by Holbein.
(WSJ, 6/24/97, p.A20)
1516 Mar 26, Konrad von Gesner,
naturalist (Bibliotheca Universalis), was born in Zurich, Switzerland.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1516 Hans Holbein painted a wooden
shingle as a sort of advertisement for the schoolmaster Oswald
Geishüsler. It marked the beginning of "profane" painting in the
West.
(WSJ, 6/24/97, p.A20)
1518 Ulrich Zwingli, a Swiss
clergyman, supported Martin Luther’s Reformation.
(TL-MB, p.11)
1523 Hans Holbein completed the
first of several portraits of Erasmus in Basel. He also began the
design of 51 plates on the "Dance of Death," which reflected ideas of
the Reformation.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.12)(WSJ, 6/24/97, p.A20)
1524 Ulrich Zwingli abolished the
Catholic mass in Zurich.
(TL-MB, p.12)
1529 Jun 9, Zurich declared war on
Catholic cantons.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1529 Oct 1-3, Martin Luther met
with Huldrych Zwingli.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1531 Oct 11, The Catholics
defeated the Protestants at Kappel during Switzerland’s second civil
war.
(HN, 10/11/98)
1531 Oct 11, Huldrych Zwingli,
Swiss church reformer (Zwinglian), died. Ulrich Zwingli, Swiss
Protestant reformer, was killed in the Swiss civil war between the
Protestant and Catholic cantons.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.14)(MC, 10/11/01)
1531 Nov 23, Peace of Kappel ended
the second civil war in Switzerland.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1535 Oct 4, The 1st full English
translation of the Bible was printed in Switzerland. Miles Coverdale’s
translation of the Bible into English (from Dutch and Latin) was the
first complete version in English and was dedicated to Henry VIII.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.15)(MC, 10/4/01)
1538 May 26, Geneva threw out John
Calvin and his zealots. Calvin was exiled from Geneva for three years
and lived in Strasbourg.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.15)(MC, 5/26/02)
1539 Apr 17, Tobias Stimmer, Swiss
painter, cartoonist (Comedia), was born.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1540 The pulmonary circulation of
the blood was discovered by Michael Servetus, a Spanish theologian and
physician. In 1553 he was burned at the stake in Geneva for heresy.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.16)(WSJ, 9/18/02, p.D8)
1541 Sep 24, Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus (b.1493), Swiss alchemist, physician and theologian, died.
The 1835 poem "Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim" by Robert Browning
was based on the life of Paracelsus. In 2006 Philip Ball authored ”The
Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the Renaissance World of Magic and
Science.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus)(Econ,
1/21/06, p.81)
1554 John Knox fled to Geneva
where he met Jean Calvin.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.18)
1527 Theophrastus von Hohenheim
established chemotherapy and the modern school of medical thinking at
the Univ. of Basel in Switzerland.
(TL-MB, p.13)
1529 Bernardino Luini, a pupil of
Leonardo da Vinci, completed his fresco of the Passion and Crucifixion
at the Santa Maria degli Angioli church in Lugano.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T4)
1536 May 21, The Reformation was
officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1540 The pulmonary circulation of
the blood was discovered by Michael Servetus, a Spanish theologian and
physician. In 1553 he was burned at the stake in Geneva for heresy.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.16)(WSJ, 9/18/02, p.D8)
1541 Sep 23, Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus (b.c1493), Swiss physician and alchemist, died at 47. The
1835 poem "Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim" by Robert Browning was
based on the life of Paracelsus.
(HC, 1/9/98)(WUD, 1994, p.1045)(MC, 9/23/01)
1553 Oct 27, Michael Servetus
(b.1511), Spanish theologian and physician, was burnt for heresy in
Geneva, Switzerland. His last book "Christianismi Restitutio" included
a chapter on the pulmonary circulation of blood. In 2002 Lawrence and
Nancy Goldstone authored "Out of the Flames." [see 1540]
(HN, 10/27/98)(WSJ, 9/18/02, p.D8)(WSJ, 1/18/08,
p.W10)
1554-1562 Pierre Eskrich (aka Pierre DuVase), a
French illustrator, produced a collection of 218 bird paintings. He had
fled Lyon to Geneva to escape the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551), a
crackdown on Protestantism in France.
(SFC, 3/17/06, p.E7)
1559 May 13, Excavated corpse of
heretic David Jorisz was burned in Basel.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1564 May 27, John Calvin (54), one
of the dominant figures of the Protestant Reformation, died in Geneva.
(HN, 5/27/99)(MC, 5/27/02)
1570 The hotel Crusch Alva in Zuoz
in the Engadine dates back to this time.
(Hem., 2/97, p.28)
1622 Dec 28, Francois de Sales
(55), French bishop of Geneva, writer and saint, died.
(MC, 12/28/01)
1648 Oct 24, Switzerland's
independence was recognized with the Peace of Westphalia.
(MC, 10/24/01)
1654-1705 Jacob Bernouilli, Swiss mathematician and
physicist. The Bernouilli effect is named after him.
(WUD, 1994, p.141)
1667-1748 Johan Bernouilli, Swiss mathematician,
brother of Jacob.
(WUD, 1994, p.141)
1684 Jan 11, In Switzerland this
day “was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze,"
said an entry by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and "weatherman" of
the Einsiedeln Monastery. The Einsiedeln abbots, princes within the
Holy Roman Empire until 1798, were powerful leaders who ruled over
large swaths of central Switzerland's mountainous terrain.
(AP, 9/15/07)
1700 Jan 29, Daniel Bernoulli,
mathematician (10 time French award), was born in Basel, Switzerland.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1708 Oct 16, Albrecht von Haller,
Swiss experimental physiologist, was born.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1712 Jun 28, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(d.1778), writer and philosopher, was born in Geneva, Switzerland. His
books include "The Social Contract" (1762) and Emile (1762).
(www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rous.htm)(HN, 6/28/99)
1724 May 18, Johann K. Amman (54),
Swiss-Dutch doctor for deaf-mutes, died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1738 Daniel Bernouilli
(1700-1782), Swiss physicist, mathematician and son of Johan explained
how lift is created, as in a backward spinning golf ball, by a
difference of air pressures. He is known for the Bernouilli equation.
(WUD, 1994, p.141)(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.A12)
1741-1801 Johann Kaspar Lavater, Swiss theologian: "I
am prejudiced in favor of him who, without impudence, can ask boldly.
He has faith in humanity, and faith in himself. No one who is not
accustomed to give grandly can ask nobly and with boldness."
(AP, 1/2/99)
1754 The Carouge area of Geneva
was ceded to the Kingdom of Sardinia.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T8)
1761 Dec 1, Madame Tussaud,
Swiss-born modeler in wax, was born. She founded the world-famous
exhibition in London's Baker Street. [see Dec 7]
(HN, 12/1/99)
1761 Dec 7, Madame Tussaud [Marie
Grosholtz], creator of the wax museum, was born. [see Dec 1]
(MC, 12/7/01)
1767 Horace de Saussure, Swiss
scientist, developed a solar cooker using the greenhouse effect, in the
form of several glass boxes set inside one another and placed on a dark
surface.
(SFC, 7/11/07, p.F5)
1782 Mar 4, Johann Wyss, Swiss
folklorist, writer (Swiss Family Robinson), was born.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1782 In Switzerland Anna Goeldi
was beheaded as a witch for an alleged case of poisoning. A museum on
Goeldi was opened in Mollis in 2007 on the 225th anniversary of her
death. In 2008 the canton of Glarus said she should be exonerated
because the execution was a miscarriage of justice. Goeldi was
exonerated on August 27, 2008.
(AP, 6/11/08)(AP, 8/27/08)
1783 The great Swiss mathematician
Leonhard Euler introduced latin squares as a new kind of magic squares.
It later formed the basis for the “sudoku” number game.
(www.cut-the-knot.org/arithmetic/latin.shtml)(Econ,
5/21/05, p.67)
1787 Aug 2, Horace de Saussure,
Swiss scientist, reached the top of Mont Blanc.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1798 Mar 29, Republic of
Switzerland formed.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1798 Henri Jomini of Switzerland
began his military career, volunteering his services to the French
Army. He used the campaigns of Napoleon to formulate theories of
warfare that influenced military commanders through much of the 19th
century. With the peace of Amiens, he left the army and wrote his
Treatise of Grand Military Operations. The book impressed Napoleon
enough to have Jomini appointed a staff colonel in 1805, Jomini having
volunteered again in 1804. Jomini rose to become chief of staff under
Marshall Ney, but left the French army to fight for Russia in 1813 as a
general and aide-de-camp of Alexander I. By the time of his death in
1869, he had written several other works, organized the Russian
military academy and advised kings on tactics for their various
military campaigns.
(HNQ, 9/10/02)
1803 Feb 15, John Augustus Sutter
(d.1880), Swiss-US colonist (New Helvetia, Ca., Sutter Mill), was born.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1803-1933 Carouge creamware ceramics were produced by
local artisans.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T8)
1807 May 28, Jean Louis Agassiz
(d.1873), Swiss naturalist and educator, was born. He wrote a
succession of papers [1840] outlining continental glaciation not only
of Europe but of North America.
(DD-EVTT, p.129)(AHD,1971, p.24)(HN, 5/28/01)
1809 May 5, Citizenship was denied
to Jews of Canton of Aargau, Switzerland.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1812 Swiss explorer Jean Louis
Burckhardt rediscovered the ancient city of Petra in present-day Jordan.
(HNQ, 5/26/01)
1815 Feb 3, World's 1st commercial
cheese factory was established, in Switzerland.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1815 The city-state of Geneva,
briefly the capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy, and then a republic,
became part of the Confederation of Switzerland.
(Hem., 1/96, p.81)
1815 Switzerland became officially
neutral.
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A12)
1816 Lord Byron and guests
gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, Switz. It was here that
Byron challenged his guests to write a ghost story. This led Mary
Shelley to produce Frankenstein in 1818 and John Polidori to create his
short story “The Vampyre” (1819).
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.75)
1818 May 25, Jacob Christoph
Burckhardt (d.1897), Swiss cultural historian, was born. "The people no
longer believe in principles, but will probably periodically believe in
saviors." "Neither in the life of the individual nor in that of mankind
is it desirable to know the future."
(AP, 5/6/98)(AP, 6/11/98)(SC, 5/25/02)
1818 Jun 16, An ice-dammed lake in
the Val de Bagnes above Martigny broke through its barrier causing many
deaths. This event led Jean de Charpentier to focus on Swiss glaciers
and then influence Louis Agassiz with his ideas regarding glacier
development.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Venetz)
1821 Ignatz Venetz, Swiss civil
engineer, presented a paper titled “Temperature Variation in the Swiss
Alps” to the Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences, in which he
described retreating ice glaciers and acknowledged Jean-Pierre
Perraudin, a hunter and mountain guide, as the originator of the idea
that a glacier had once occupied the full length of the Val de Bagnes.
In 1833 Jean de Charpentier (1786-1855), a German-Swiss geologist,
arranged to have the paper published.
(ON, 10/08,
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Charpentier)
1821-1881 Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss critic:
"The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings."
(AP, 8/3/97)
1823 Steam powered shipping began
on Lake Geneva.
(SFEC, 7/19/98, p.T3)
1827 Feb 17, Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi (81), Swiss educator, died.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1827 Jun 12, Johanna Spyri
(d.1901), Swiss author, was born as Johanna Louise Heusser. She is best
known for her novel Heidi, the story of a young girl who leave her home
in the Swiss Alps for adventures in the world below. [see June 12, 1829]
(WUD, 1994 p.1379)(HN, 6/12/99)
1828 May 8, Jean Henri Dunant
(d.1910), Swiss philanthropist, was born. He founded the Int’l.
Committee of the Red Cross and was the first recipient (jointly) of the
Nobel Peace Prize.
(HN, 5/8/99)
1829 Jun 12, Johanna Spyri
(d.1901), Swiss author (Heidi), was born. [see June 12, 1827]
(HN, 6/12/01)
1837 Louis Agassiz (1807-1873),
Swiss paleontologist, proposed to the Helvetic Society that ancient
glaciers had not only flowed outward from the Alps, but that even
larger glaciers had simultaneously encroached southward on the plains
and mountains of Europe, Asia and North America, smothering the entire
northern hemisphere in a prolonged Ice Age.
(ON, 10/08, p.12)
1840 Apr 27, Edward Whymper, first
to climb the Matterhorn on the border of Switzerland and Italy, was
born.
(WUD, 1994, p.885)(HN, 4/27/98)
1847 A religious quarrel led to a
short Swiss civil war.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.6)
1848 A Swiss constitution was
enacted that included a mandate for neutrality. It was revised in 1874
and a new one was adopted in 1999.
(SFC, 7/6/99, p.C6)(SFC, 7/18/02, p.A15)(Econ,
2/14/04, Survey p.7)
1850 Apr 16, Marie [Gresholtz]
Tussaud (89), Swiss-born maker of wax figures, died.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1852 Nov 30, Jean Henri Dunant
(1828-1910), Swiss Calvinist, founded the Geneva branch of the YMCA. In
1855 he took part in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of its
international organization.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dunant)
1855 Dec 12, Jean de Charpentier
(b.1786), a German-Swiss geologist, died in Bex, Switzerland.
(ON, 10/08,
p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Charpentier)
1855 The World Alliance of
the YMCA was established at the first International Conference held in
Paris. Jean Henri Dunant (1828-1910), Swiss Calvinist, founded the
Geneva branch of the YMCA in 1852. In 1855 he took part in the Paris
meeting devoted to the founding of its international
organization.
(http://www.ymca.int/index.php?id=15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dunant)
1859 Jun 24, At the Battle of
Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the French
army led by Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army under Franz Joseph
I in northern Italy. Some 6,000 men died in the battle and thousands of
wounded were effectively abandoned as witnessed by Henri Dunant (31), a
Swiss businessman seeking Napoleon for a land development proposal. In
1862 Dunant published “A Memory of Solferino” and began a campaign for
a volunteer society to aid wounded soldiers.
(HN, 6/24/99)(ON, 4/08, p.11)
1861 Italy and Switzerland drew a
border line through the Monte Rosa Masif of the Alps with the line at
several places set at the watershed of glaciers. In 2009 shrinking
glaciers due to global warming forced the line to be reset.
(Econ, 4/18/09, p.56)
1862 Nov, Jean Henri Dunant
(1828-1910) published "A Memory of Solferino." His ideas about creation
of a volunteer committee to care for war-wounded led to the creation in
1863 of the Permanent International Committee for Relief to Wounded
Combatants, later called the International Red Cross. Dunant, a Swiss
businessman, had witnessed the plight of thousands of wounded left
helpless on the battlefield at Solferino, Italy, on June 24,
1859. Organizing local volunteers to help, Dunant brought aid to
as many of the victims as he could.
(WUD, 1994, p.442)(HNQ, 9/16/99)(ON, 4/08, p.11)
1863 Feb 9, Henri Dunant
(1828-1910) addressed the Geneva Society for Public Welfare and asked
the members to form a volunteer society to aid wounded soldiers. The
Intl. Committee of Red Cross (Nobel 1917, 1944, 1963) was formed in
Geneva, Switz. The red cross design based on the Swiss flag with the
colors reversed.
(ON, 4/08, p.11)(www.redcross.org)(SFC, 6/20/06,
p.A4)
1863 The first road to Vissoie in
the Val d’Anniviers was built.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, p.T14)
1864 Aug 8, The 1st Geneva
Convention was issued on protecting the war wounded.
(www.redcross.org)
1864 Aug 22, In Geneva,
Switzerland, representatives of 12 nations agreed to sign the First
Geneva Contention “for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded
in Armies in the Field.” By 1866 twenty countries had signed. 194
states were signatories as of 2008.
(ON, 4/08, p.12)
1865 Jul 14, Whymper, Hudson,
Croz, Douglas & Hadow became the 1st to climb Matterhorn, on the
border of Switzerland and Italy.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1865 A Latin Monetary Union was
established amongst France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Greece, but
quickly weakened as members pursued their own economic policies.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A1)
1872 Sep 14, Britain paid US $15
million for damages during Civil War. The British government paid
£3 million in damages to the United States in compensation for
building the Confederate commerce-raider Alabama. The confederate
navy‘s Alabama was built at the Birkenhead shipyards. Despite its
official neutrality during the American Civil War, Britain allowed the
warship to leave port, and it subsequently played havoc with Federal
shipping. The U.S. claimed compensation, and a Court of Arbitration at
Geneva agreed, setting the amount at £3 million.
(HNQ, 9/2/00)(ON, 9/01, p.12)
1872-1887 The Bad Ragaz resort helped revitalize
Johanna Spyri, author of the "Heidi."
(SFEC, 9/24/00, p.T6)
1873 The Lake Geneva Gen’l.
Shipping Co. was founded. The 232-sq ml lake is bordered by Switzerland
and France.
(SFEC, 7/19/98, p.T3)
1874 May 29, The present
constitution of Switzerland took effect.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1875 Jul 26, Carl Jung (d.1961),
Swiss psychiatrist and analytical psychologist who identified the
introvert and extrovert types, was born in Kesswil, Switzerland. He saw
the I Ching as a tool to help tune into the noncausal connectedness of
the universe-- what he called synchronicity.
(NH, 9/97, p.13)(WUD, 1994, p.774)(SFEC,10/19/97, BR
p.3)(HN, 7/26/98)
1877 Jul 2, Herman Hesse (d.1962),
German philosopher poet and author, was born in Switzerland. His work
included "Steppenwolf" and he won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1946.
(HN, 7/2/99)(WUD, 1994, p.666)(SC, 7/2/02)
1879 Dec 18, Paul Klee (d.1940),
Swiss abstract painter best known for The Mocker Mocked, was born.
(HN, 12/18/98)
1880 "Heidi’s Years of Wandering
and Learning" was published. It was later made famous by a film version
with Shirley Temple. It was partly set in Maienfeld, Switzerland.
Johanna Spyri authored the 2-volume Heidi novel published in 1880-1881.
The 2nd volume was titled "Heidi Makes Use of Her Experience."
(WSJ, 10/2/97, p.A11)(SFEC, 9/24/00, p.T6)(SFC,
7/5/01, p.C7)
1881-1882 Dr. Muller of Germany was said to be
working at the Swiss Geisenheim viticultural station when he made the
crossing that joined the late-ripening Riesling and the early-ripening
and prolific Silvaner. The grape became know as Muller-Thurgau.
Müller-Thurgau entered the well-kept records of Germany's
vineyards in 1921, but it was not until a major symposium on the
crossing was held at Alzey in 1938 that it gained any widespread
acceptance.
(www.winepressnw.com/features/story/4842844p-4779998c.html)
1882 May 20, The St.
Gotthard-railroad tunnel opened between Switzerland and Italy.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1882 The Hotel Weisshorn was built
in the Val d'Anniviers by an Englishman who brought in all required
materials by mule.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, p.T14)
1883 Nov 11, Ernest Ansermet,
conductor, was born in Vevey, Switzerland.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1884 Jan 28, Jean Felix Piccard,
scientist, explorer (balloonist), was born in Switzerland.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1884 Nov 8, Hermann Rorshach,
Swiss psychiatrist, was born. He was the inventor of the inkblot test.
(HN, 11/8/00)
1885 The Brissago Islands on Lago
Maggiore were bought by a Russian baroness. she built a villa there to
house her salon of artists and writers.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T5)
1886 May 10, Karl Barth (d.1966),
Swiss theologian, was born. "Conscience is the perfect interpreter of
life."
(AP, 3/9/01)(HN, 5/10/02)
1886 Sep 9, The Berne
International Copyright Convention took place at the instigation of
Victor Hugo and backed the individual copyright laws of the European
states. It was updated in 1971. In 1993 the Brussels directive brought
in a Europe-wide 70-year rule.
(HN, 9/9/00)(WSJ, 1/31/02,
p.A16)(www.ifla.org.sg/documents/infopol/copyright/ucc.txt)
1886 The Forces Motrices power
station was built over the Rhone in Geneva.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T8)
1887 Oct 6, Charles-Edouard
Jeanneret (d.1965), aka Le Corbusier, Swiss-born French architect and
city planner, was born. He became known for trenchantly stated
principles, such as "a house is a machine for living in" and "a curved
street is a donkey track, a straight street, a road for men."
(HN, 10/6/00)(V.D.-H.K.p.363)
1887 The Marxist Hunchakian
Revolutionary Party, called the Hunchaks, was founded in Geneva,
Switzerland by Armenians from Russia.
(http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson/Armenia/justin.html)
1887 A. Eugen Fick, a Swiss
physician, published the results of experiments with glass lenses that
fit over the entire eye, the first contact lenses.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R21)
1888 Dr. Eugen Frick made the
first set of contact lenses.
(SFEC, 1/24/99, Z1 p.8)
1890 Bobsled racing was introduced
at St. Moritz, Switz.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E14)
1892 The Brienz Rothornbahn
steam-powered cog-wheeled train began operating a 5-mile run from
Brienz to the 7,700 Rothorn mountain top.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, p.T5)
1893 Aug 20, Shechita (ritual
slaughtering) was prohibited in Switzerland.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1896 Oct 30, Kaspar Wicki, Swiss
inventor, received Swiss patent Nr. 13329 for a key configuration for
the concertina, that made fingering identical in any key.
(WSJ, 12/7/07,
p.W4)(www.concertina.com/gaskins/wicki/)
1896 Antoine Borel, San Francisco
banker and Swiss consul, purchased the medieval castle of Gorgier in
the Canton of Neuchatel, Switzerland,.
(Ind, 4/5/03, 5A)
1896 F. Hoffman-La Roche & Co.
was founded in Switzerland.
(SFC, 3/13/09, p.A10)
1897 The first Zionist Congress
was held in Basel, Switzerland.
(SFEC, 4/26/98, BR p.1)
1898 Feb 14, Fritz Zwicky, Swiss
astronomer (super nova), was born.
(MC, 2/14/02)
1898 Aug 13, Sigmund Freud (42)
signed into the Schweizerhaus, a Swiss Alps inn, with Minna Bernays
(33), his wife’s sister, and registered her as his wife.
(SFC, 12/25/06, p.A23)
1900 May 19, Simplon Tunnel opened
as the world's longest railroad tunnel at 12 miles; it linked Italy
& Switzerland through the Alps.
(DT internet 5/19/97)
1901 Jul 7, Johanna Spyri, author
of the Heidi books, died.
(SFC, 7/5/01, p.C7)
1901 Oct 10, Alberto Giacometti
(d.1966), sculptor and painter, was born in Borgonovo, Switzerland. He
was later quoted saying "there is less reality in the work of
contemporary sculptors than in tin soldiers in toy shop windows." His
biography was written by David Sylvester and titled: "Looking At
Giacometti." Another biography by James Lord was titled: "Giacometti: A
Biography."
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.BR-4)(WSJ, 9/30/96, p.A14)(HN,
10/10/01)(WSJ, 12/19/01, p.A16)
1901 Henry Dunant (1828-1910),
Swiss businessman, won the 1st Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in
establishing the Int’l. Red Cross and the First Geneva Convention
covering treatment of those wounded in war. The prize was shared with
Frederic Passy (1822-1912), French economist, for his efforts toward
international peace.
(ON, 4/08,
p.12)(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1901/passy-bio.html)
1903 Jun 19, The young school
teacher, Benito Mussolini, was placed under investigation by police in
Berne, Switzerland.
(HN, 6/19/98)
1905 Jean Lanfray, a Swiss
laborer, murdered his wife and children after drinking 2 glasses of
absinthe. The murder led to a ban on the sale of absinthe. The ban was
lifted in 2005.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.A3)(SFC, 11/4/04, p.A2)
1906 Jan 11, Albert Hoffmann,
Switzerland, chemist (discovered LSD in 1943), was born.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1907-1917 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin frequently lived in
Switzerland.
(WSJ, 12/1/97, p.A18)
1908 Jacques Brandenberger, a
Swiss chemist, came up with cellophane when he tried to invent a
stain-proof tablecloth. [2nd source says 1912]
(SFC, 2/19/99, p.E5)(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.B7)
1909 Aug 21, C. Dillon Douglas, US
Secretary of Treasury (1961-65), was born in Geneva, Switz.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1910 Oct 30, Jean Henri Dunant
(b.1828), Swiss philanthropist, died. His book “A Memory of Solferino”
(1862) led to the foundation of the Int’l. Committee of the Red Cross.
He was the first recipient (jointly) of the Nobel Peace Prize.
(http://tinyurl.com/gbxhd)
1911 May 15, Max Frisch (d.1991),
Swiss architect and writer, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Frisch)
1911 Eugene Bleuler, Swiss
psychiatrist, coined the term “schizophrenia.”
(Econ, 10/29/05, p.84)
1913 Feb 22, Ferdinand de Saussure
(b.1857), Swiss linguist and founder of Structuralism, died in Geneva.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9065908)
1915 Mar 26, Antoine Borel, former
SF banker and Swiss consul, died while visiting home.
(Ind, 4/5/03, 5A)
1916 Mar 1, A conference of
Lithuanians in Berne (Mar 1-5) demanded for the 1st time the full
independence of Lithuania.
(LHC, 3/1/03)
1917 May 13, Ernest Bloch
(1880-1959), Swiss composer, premiered his work "Schelomo."
(WUD, 1994 p.159)(MC, 5/13/02)
1918 The Swiss Fatherland
Association, an anti-Semitic and anti-immigration, group was founded.
(SFC, 6/10/98, p.A10)
1920 Feb 8, Swiss men voted
against women's suffrage.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1920 Feb 13, The League of Nations
recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.
(AP, 2/13/98)
1920 Oct 27, League of Nations
moved headquarters in Geneva.
(MC, 10/27/01)
1920 Nov 15, Forty-one nations
opened the first League of Nations session in Geneva.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1920 Dec 8, President Wilson
declined to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.
(HN, 12/8/98)
1921 Jan 5, Friedrich Durrenmatt
(d.1990), Swiss author and playwright, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_D%C3%BCrrenmatt)
1922 Jul 28, Jacques Piccard,
undersea explorer (bathyscaph Trieste), was born in Switzerland.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1923 Jul 24, The Treaty of
Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern Turkey, was concluded
in Switzerland. It replaced the Treaty of Sevres and divided the lands
inhabited by the Kurds between Turkey, Iraq and Syria.
(AP, 7/24/97)(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.A14)
1923 Oct 16, John Harwood patented
a self-winding watch in Switzerland.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1923 Jul 24, The Treaty of
Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern Greece and Turkey, was
concluded in Switzerland. It replaced the Treaty of Sevres and divided
the lands inhabited by the Kurds between Turkey, Iraq and Syria.
Article 39 allowed Turkish nationals to use any language they wished in
commerce, public and private meetings, and publications. The treaty
specifically protected the rights of the Armenian, Greek and Jewish
communities. The former provinces of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul were
lumped together to form Iraq. Both countries agreed to a massive
exchange of religious minorities. Christians were deported from Turkey
to Greece and Muslims from Greece to Turkey. In 2006 Bruce Clark
authored “Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern
Greece and Turkey.”
(WSJ, 3/20/97, p.A17)(AP, 7/24/97)(SSFC, 12/22/02,
p.A14)(Econ, 3/19/05, Survey p.9)(Econ, 10/14/06, p.50)(Econ, 12/9/06,
p.92)
2008 Jul 29, WTO Director-General
announced on that the latest negotiations for a much-delayed trade
liberalization deal under the so-called Doha Round had broken down
after nine days due to unresolved differences. The deadlock centered on
a row between the US and India over special tariff measures to protect
poor farmers from surging imports or price falls.
(AFP, 7/30/08)
1925 In debates over the Geneva
Protocol opponents touted poison gas as a "decisive offensive weapon."
A ban on chemical and biological weapons was signed by most nations,
but not the US until much later. The Geneva Convention outlawed the use
of biological warfare, but did not prohibit nations from continuing the
production of biological agents.
(SFC,11/12/97, p.C2)(NH, 10/98, p.18)(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1926 Sep 25, The Convention to
Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, an international treaty created
under the auspices of the League of Nations, was first signed in Geneva
to be effective March 9, 1927.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Slavery_Convention)
1927 The Brissago Islands on Lago
Maggiore were sold to a wealthy German businessman, who added a Roman
bath to the villa there.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T5)
1928 Mar 20, Hans Kung, Swiss
religious theologian, was born.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1928 The Winter Olympic were held
at St. Moritz, Switz.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E14)
1928 Switzerland’s 1st ski school
was introduced at St. Moritz.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E14)
1928 Jean-Leon Reutter, a Swiss
engineer, developed the Atmos clock, which was powered by changes in
the atmosphere. LeCoultre & Cie bought the patent in 1935 and began
making the clock a year later. In 1937 the Swiss company became
Jaeger-LeCoultre.
(SFC, 11/19/08, p.G6)
1930 The Bank for International
Settlements (BIS) was founded in Basel, Switzerland.
(Econ, 10/11/08, SR p.20)
1930 Adolf Wolfli (66), Swiss
outsider artist, died. He had been consigned to the Bern psychiatric
hospital from age 30 to his death. He created thousands of drawings and
45 large illustrated books. Elka Spoerri (d.2002 at 77), art historian,
deciphered and transcribed much of his work.
(SFC, 6/15/02, p.A19)
1932 In France the Basler
Handelbank affair broke out. The president and vice-president of the
commercial bank in Basle were arrested in Paris by the French police.
In their trunks, the investigators found the list of 2,000 French
clients who had confidentially deposited their holdings in Switzerland.
They represented all of French high society: a few senators, a former
minister, bishops, generals and manufacturers.
(Econ, 3/7/09,
p.62)(http://swiss-bank-accounts.com/e/banking/secrecy/handelsbank.html)
1934 Mar 26, Switzerland banned
all slanderous criticism of state institutions in the press and
threatened the suspension of publications if the ban was not heeded.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1934 Jun 11, The Disarmament
Conference in Geneva ended in failure.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1934 The Swiss set up banking
secrecy laws.
(SFC, 10/24/96, p.C2)
1934 The Eispalast at Jundfraujoch
was carved 65 feet below the surface of a glacier. It was later
enlarged and decorated with sculptures.
(WSJ, 7/21/00, p.W12)
1935 Ella Maillart (d.1997 at 94),
Swiss sportswoman, wrote "Among Russian Youth: from Moscow to the
Caucasus." In 1947 she took a trip to Afghanistan with a sick,
morphine-addicted friend and wrote "The Cruel Way, Two Women and a Ford
in Afghanistan."
(SFC, 3/29/97, p.A20)
1936 Feb 20, Switzerland bared all
Nazis from entering the country.
(HN, 2/20/98)
1936 Jul 20, Turkey signed a
treaty, the Montreux Convention, by which it agreed not to interfere
with transit through the Bosporus. It granted ships unrestricted
passage except in times of war.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A23)(WSJ, 7/28/05,
p.A7)(http://tinyurl.com/6lyog2)
1936 Aug 26, The Anglo-Egyptian
Treaty, calling for most British troops to leave Egypt, except those
guarding the Suez Canal, was signed in Montreux, Switzerland. It was
abrogated by Egypt in 1951.
(AP, 8/26/05)
1938 May 28, Hindemith's opera
"Mathis der Maler," premiered in Zurich.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1938 Nov 9, Maurice Bavaud (25), a
Swiss theology student, failed in his attempt to shoot Hitler at a Nazi
parade in Munich. Switzerland, which followed a policy of neutrality
toward Germany before and during World War II, failed to intervene on
Bavaud's behalf, and he was guillotined in May, 1941, in Berlin's
notorious Ploetzensee prison.
(AP, 11/8/08)
1938 In Lucerne, Switzerland, the
International Festival of Music began its annual event. Toscanini and
Ernest Ansermet created the music festival of Lucerne, Switzerland, at
Tribschen, the house in which Wagner wrote "Die Meistersinger."
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.T1,5)(Hem, 6/96, p.141)(SFEC,
6/7/98, p.T3)
1938 Switzerland asked Berlin to
stamp German passports with "J" so that they could bar most Jews. This
was later acknowledged.
(WSJ, 5/19/97, p.A18)
1938 Swiss chemists Albert Hofmann
discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD) in 1938 while studying
the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the
Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm, later part of Novartis. Hofmann was the
first person to test the drug when a tiny amount of the substance
seeped on to his finger during a repeat of the laboratory experiment in
April 1943.
(AP, 1/11/06)
1939 Sep 1, Switzerland proclaimed
neutrality.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1939 Sep, Paul Hermann Muller, a
Geigy pesticide researcher in Switzerland, first synthesized DDT. He
combined chloral hydrate with chlorobenzene and a catalyst to make
dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. The discovery was reported 2 years
later.
(SFC, 9/1/96, z1 p.2)(ON, 11/01, p.6)
1939-1945 US Intelligence revealed in 1997 that
during WW II the Swiss National Bank sent 280 truckloads of Nazi gold
to Spain and Portugal.
(USAT, 1/13/97, p.3A)
1939-1945 Switzerland took in nearly 30,000 Jews
fleeing Nazi terror and turned away at least 24,500. Refugees were
forced to work in labor camps.
(SFC, 1/15/98, p.A12)(SFC, 12/11/99, p.C1)
1940 Jun 29, Paul Klee (b.1879),
Swiss-German painter, tutor (Modern Art), died in Switzerland. In 2005
the Klee Center, designed by Renzo Piano, opened in Bern.
(www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/klee/)(Econ, 7/23/05,
p.79)
1940 Jun, The Germans began to
loot the artwork of Paris and more than 70,000 residences were
plundered. A lot of artwork was sold to the industrialist Emil G.
Buhrle and his Foundation in Switzerland, the largest buyer of
confiscated French art. The story is told by Hector Feliciano in his
1997 book: "The Lost Museum." The best book on the fate of European art
in WW II was reported to be "The Rape of Europa" by Lynn Nicholas.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.7)(SFC,11/19/97, p.E6)
1940 Denis de Rougemont
(1906-1985), Swiss writer who wrote in French, authored “Love in the
Western World,” a sweeping history of 8 centuries of romantic passion.
(WSJ, 1/5/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_de_Rougemont)
1941 Jan 13, Novelist James Joyce
(58) died in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1983 Richard Ellmann authored the
900-page "James Joyce" biography. In 1999 Edna O'Brien authored the
pocket bio "James Joyce."
(AP, 1/13/98)(SFC, 12/9/99, p.B1)
1941 Apr 19, B. Brecht's 1939 play
"Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and her Children),"
premiered in Zurich.
(www.theatre.ubc.ca/mother_courage/subject.shtml)
1942 May, Jacob Spirig was
arrested by Swiss police for helping Jews escape from Austria to
Switzerland. Spirig (22) was sentenced to 3 months in prison.
(WSJ, 6/5/01, p.A1)
1942 Aug 8, Gerhart Riegner
(d.2001 at 90), World Jewish Congress official in Geneva, cabled the US
vice consul to describe Hitler’s plan to deport an estimated 4 million
Jews to Eastern Europe and to annihilate them.
(SFC, 12/4/01, p.A19)
1942 Oct 17, Eduard von Steiger,
Justice Minister and minister of police, told leaders of the Swiss
Fatherland Assoc. that the government had decided on a "fundamental
slowing" of Jewish immigration.
(SFC, 6/10/98, p.a10)
1942 Switzerland passed a
euthanasia law to enable those with just a few weeks to live the
opportunity of a dignified death. Swiss law made assisted suicide
lawful under some conditions.
(WSJ, 11/22/02, p.A1)(Econ, 10/15/05, p.59)
1943 Apr 16, Swiss chemist Albert
Hoffman (1906-2008) felt the first rush of LSD when a tiny amount of
the substance seeped onto his finger during a laboratory experiment.
(AP, 4/30/08)
1943 Apr 19, Swiss chemist Albert
Hoffman, following up on an experiment on April 16, deliberately
ingested .25 milligrams of LSD and soon began to feel its effects.
Hallucinations continued on his bicycle ride home and lasted for some 6
hours.
(SFC, 5/9/96, p.A-1)(Econ, 5/10/08, p.98)
1943 Aug 9, Bertolt Brecht's
"Galileo," premiered in Zurich.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1944 Aug 17, Japanese and Swiss
officials agreed to divert 40% of millions of dollars, paid by the US
and Britain for the care of prisoners of war held by the Japanese, to
pay off Japan’s debts to Swiss businesses. The other 60% was for the
free disposal by the Japanese government.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A10)
1944 Oct, In Hungary Eduard
Benedek Brunschweiler, a Swiss representative of the International Red
Cross, took charge of the Pannonhalma Abbey and kept it under Red Cross
protection until Soviet forces expelled him in April 1945. Some 3,000
people, mostly children, spent the end of the war in the abbey,
including dozens of Jews. In 2006 Hungarian officials unveiled a
memorial at the abbey honoring Brunschweiler.
(AP, 10/16/06)
1945 Apr 28, US 5th army reached
the Swiss border.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1945 The Swiss constitution
introduced the concept of paid maternity leave, but did not create
provisions for payment.
(SFC, 6/14/99, p.A14)
1945 Switzerland agreed with the
US to freeze financial transactions with Germany in early 1945. The
agreement was violated.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A10)
c1945 After the war the US and its
allies made a deal with the Swiss to accept repayment of $60 million
and waived further claims. The claims were for gold acquired from the
Nazis during the war. Much of the gold was from occupied countries and
Jews.
(FB, 9/12/96, p.A9)
1945 The Union Bank of Switzerland
took over the Eidgenoessische Bank which had built up an extensive
business with Germany during the Third Reich.
(SFC, 1/17/96, p.A1)
1945-1988 The Swiss maintained contingency plans for
building 400 nuclear warheads. A supply of uranium was maintained in
Wimmis, 21 miles southeast of Berne.
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A12)
1946 Apr 8, The
League of Nations assembled in Geneva for its last session.
(AP, 4/8/08)
1946 Sep 19, Winston Churchill
made a speech in Zurich where he said: If Europe were once united in
the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the
happiness, prosperity, and glory of which its 300 or 400 million people
would enjoy."
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A22)
1946 Hermann Hesse (1877-1962),
Swiss-born German philosopher poet and author, was awarded the Nobel
Prize in literature "for his inspired writings which, growing in
boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals
and high qualities of style."
(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1946/)
1946 The "Washington accord" was
designed to wrap up Switzerland's obligations to the Allies following
WW II.
(SFC, 3/15/00, p.A20)
1946 The Swiss government agreed
to turn over half of some German assets in vaults to help war refugees
and other victims. The agreement was not kept.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A10)
1947 Apr 7, At Mont Pelerin,
Switzerland, Friedrich A. von Hayek invited a group of classical
liberals to discuss the threat of freedom posed by the expansionist
governments of the day. The group founded the Mont Pelerin Society to
continue meetings and discussions in the future. They viewed central
planning as the single most important threat to liberty.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A22)
1947 The US began holding a seat
on the Human Rights Commission based in Geneva. It lost its elected
seat in 2001.
(WSJ, 5/4/01, p.A1)
1948 Paul Hermann Muller (d.1965),
a Geigy pesticide researcher in Switzerland, won the Noble Prize in
medicine for his 1939 synthesis of DDT.
(ON, 11/01, p.6)
1948 The Winter Olympic were held
at St. Moritz, Switz., for a 2nd time.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E14)
1948 George de Mestral
(1907-1990), a Swiss inventor, began studying the burdock plant because
of the plant’s ability to attach its seed to his clothes and dog’s fur.
His analysis of the hook and loop system of plant led to the
development of velcro, patented in 1955.
(Econ, 6/11/05, TQ
p.18)(http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa091297.htm)
1949 Aug 12, Four Geneva
Conventions were signed on this date. Signatories agreed that occupiers
would not settle occupied territory with their own people. Protection
of civilian life and property was added to the 4th Geneva Conventions.
The Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War
began on April 21. Two additional protocols were signed in 1977.
(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)(Econ, 8/27/05,
p.39)(www.spj.org/gc-texts.asp)
1950 Dec
2, Dinu Lipatti (b.1917), Romania-born pianist, died of leukemia in
Geneva, Switz.
(www.inkpot.com/classical/lipatti.html)
1951 Aug 15, Artur Schnabel
(b.1882), Austrian born US pianist (Reflections on Music), died in
Switzerland.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1951 Sep 20, Swiss males voted
against female suffrage.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1951 Switzerland and the US signed
an accord on income tax that dealt with issues of bank secrecy and
exchange of sensitive information. The accord was renegotiated in 1996.
(WSJ, 2/28/96, p.A-1)
1954 Oct 22, As a result of the
Geneva accords granting Communist control over North Vietnam, U.S.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized a crash program to train the
South Vietnamese Army.
(HN, 10/22/98)
1955 Jul 18, A summit opened in
Geneva, Switzerland, attended by Pres. Eisenhower, Soviet Premier
Nikolai Bulganin, British PM Anthony Eden and French Premier Edgar
Faure.
(AP, 7/18/05)
1955 Jul 21, During the Geneva
summit, President Eisenhower presented his "open skies" proposal under
which the United States and the Soviet Union would trade information on
each other's military facilities and allow aerial reconnaissance.
(AP, 7/21/07)
1955 Nov 16, Big Four talks,
taking place in Geneva on German reunification, ended in failure.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1956 E.G. Buehrle (b.1890),
German-born Swiss industrialist, died. Emil Buhrle provided arms to the
Third Reich during World War II and amassed one of Europe's greatest
private collections in the aftermath of the war.
(www.buehrle.ch/collection.php?lang=en)
1959 Nov 20, Seven European
nations (Austria, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden,
Switzerland) signed the Stockholm Convention to form the European Free
Trade Association (EFTA). The organization becoming operative on May 3
1960.
(www.iceland.org/efta/the-mission/int-organizations/efta/)
1959 A Swiss gentleman’s agreement
gave 2 cabinet seats each to the 3 major parties, the Free Democrats,
The Christian People’s Party, and the Social Democrats. One went to the
right-wing Swiss People’s Party, SVP.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.5)
1960 Mar 6, The Swiss granted
women the right to vote in municipal elections.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1960 Mar 15, Ten nations met in
Geneva to discuss disarmament.
(HN, 3/15/98)
1961 Jun 6, Swiss psychiatrist
Carl Gustav Jung (b.1875), one of the founders of modern psychiatry,
died. In 1997 Richard Noll published "The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life
of Carl Jung." Frank McLynn published "Carl Gustav Jung, A Biography."
In 2003 Deirdre Bair authored "Jung: A Biography."
(HN, 6/6/98)(SFEC,10/19/97, BR p.3)(SSFC, 12/7/03,
p.M6)
1962 Mar 25, Auguste Piccard (78),
Swiss explorer, balloonist, died.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1962 Apr 5, St. Bernard Tunnel was
finished and Swiss and Italians workers shook hands.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1962 Aug 9, Hermann Hesse (85),
winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1946), died in Switzerland.
(iUniv. 7/2/00)(MC, 8/9/02)
1963 Jan 28, Jean Felix Piccard,
Swiss explorer, died on his 79th birthday.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1963 Werner Thomas, accordionist,
began performing a tune he’d written in the late 1950s at his
restaurant in Davos. The tune later became known worldwide as the
chicken dance.
(WSJ, 7/16/01, p.A1)
1964 Feb, Yuri Nosenko
(1927-2008), Soviet KGB officer, defected under CIA guidance in Geneva.
He had begun passing information in June, 1962. He was incarcerated for
his first 3 years in the US and settled there under a new name in 1969.
(Econ, 9/6/08,
p.101)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko)
1965 May 22, Heinrich Barth, Swiss
philosopher (Das Sein in der Zeit), died.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1965 Aug 27, Le Corbusier
(b.1887), Swiss-French architect and writer, died. He was born as
Charles Edouard Jeanneret-Gris in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. His
book included books include “Vers une architecture” (Towards a New
Architecture) (1923), “The City of Tomorrow” (1925), and “When the
Cathedrals Were White” (1937).
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lecorbu.htm)
1965 Oct, Paul Hermann Muller
(d.1965), a Geigy pesticide researcher in Switzerland, died. He
discovered DDT in 1939 and won a Nobel prize in 1948.
(ON, 11/01, p.6)
1966 Jan 11, Albert Giacometti
(64), Swiss-French painter and sculptor, died.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1966 Jun 24, A Bombay to NY Air
India flight crashed into Mont Blanc (Switz) and 117 died.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1966 Nov 20, Men in Zurich voted
against female suffrage.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1967 The Brissago Islands on Lago
Maggiore passed to the local government.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T5)
1967 Adrienne von Speyr (b.1902),
Swiss mystic, author and physician, died. From her conversion to
Catholicism in 1940 on she experienced episodes of trance from Good
Friday to Holy Saturday reliving the passion of Jesus.
(WSJ, 4/18/03, p.W13)
1968 Mar 2, In Switzerland the
World Ice Pairs Figure Skating Championship in Geneva was won by
Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov (USSR). The Ladies Figure
Skating Championship was won by Peggy Fleming (USA). The Men's Figure
Skating Championship was won by Emmerich Danzer (Austria).
(SC,
3/2/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Figure_Skating_Championships)
1969 Feb 18, The PLO (PFLP-GC)
machine-gunned an Israeli El-Al plane in Zurich, Switzerland. One
Palestinian was killed and 4 were arrested.
(SFC, 5/21/02,
p.A16)(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/incidents.html)
1969 Feb 20, Ernest Ansermet
(b.1883), Swiss conductor and composer, died.
{Composer, Switzerland}
(www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Ansermet-Ernest.htm)
1969 May 13, Paul Wild,
Swiss astronomer, discovered asteroid #1775, Zimmerwald.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1775_Zimmerwald)
1969 Sep 14, Males of Swiss canton
Schaffhausen rejected female suffrage.
(www.keesings.com/search?kssp_a_id=23580n02swi&kssp_selected_tab=article)
1970 Feb 24, 29 Swiss Army
officers died in avalanche at Reckingen, Switzerland.
(http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/avalanches/casestudies.shtml#54)
1970 The PFLP-GC planted a time
bomb on a Swissair jet that blew up on a flight from Zurich to Tel
Aviv. All 47 aboard were killed.
(SFC, 5/21/02, p.A16)
1971 Feb 7, Switzerland voted to
introduce female suffrage at the federal but not the cantonal level.
(WUD, 1994, p. 1688)(AP, 2/7/01)
1971 Jul 24, The Berne Convention
for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works was promulgated in
Paris. It was first accepted in Berne in 1886 at the instigation of
Victor Hugo.
(www.ifla.org.sg/documents/infopol/copyright/ucc.txt)(PNI, 2/5/97, p.4)
1971 Oct 11, Switzerland
established diplomatic relations with North Vietnam.
(www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/reps/asia/vvnm/bilvie.html)
1971 The World Economic Forum at
Davos was founded by Klaus Schwab. By 2000 it became a powerful player
in global economic affairs.
(WSJ, 1/27/00, p.A18)
1971-1985 In 2005 Peter Hug, history professor at the
Univ. of Bern, reported that a Swiss nuclear research center aided
South Africa between 1971 and 1985 in the sectors of acceleration
technology and uranium enrichment.
(AP, 10/28/05)
1972 Switzerland signed a free
trade treaty with the European Common Market.
(SFC, 3/15/00)
1973 Jul 6, Otto Klemperer
(b.1885), German-born conductor and composer, died in Zurich. He had
taken United States citizenship in 1937 and Israeli citizenship in 1970.
(WSJ, 8/20/96,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Klemperer)
1973 Jul 27, Eddie Rickenbacker
(b.1890), American WW I fighter pilot, died in Zurich. He and several
associates bought Eastern Airlines in 1938 and guided it to become one
of the most profitable airlines in the postwar era.
(HNPD,
10/7/98)(www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=324)
1973 Dec 21, Israel, Egypt, Syria,
Jordan, US and USSR leaders met in Geneva. The Geneva Conference of
1973 was an attempt to negotiate a solution to the Arab-Israeli
conflict as called for in UN Security Council Resolution 338 which was
passed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conference_(1973))
1973 Paul Sacher (d.1999 at 93),
industrialist and symphony conductor, set up the Paul Sacher Foundation
to house manuscripts and letters of composers in Basel. Sacher and
other family members controlled Roche Holding AG and their joint
fortune was valued at $17-20 billion.
(SFC, 5/27/99, p.C6)
1974 Feb 8, Fritz Zwicky (75),
Swiss-US astronomer (supernova), died.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1975 Vladimir Prelog (d.1998 at
age 91), a Swiss chemist, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work
in stereochemistry and the architecture of molecules like cholesterol
and antibiotics.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A19)
1976 Dec 6, Dutch War criminal
Pieter Menten (1899-1987) was arrested in Switzerland after fleeing
there in November.
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Menten)
1977 Jul 2, Vladimir Nabokov,
Russian-born author, died in Switzerland. In 1996 a 3-volume collection
of his prose work was issued by the Library of America. In 1999 Kurt
Johnson and Steven Coates authored "Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific
Odyssey of a Literary Genius."
(WSJ, 4/22/99, A20)(SFEC, 10/17/99, BR
p.4)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nabokov.htm)
1977 Jun 7, Protocols I and II
were added to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. They prohibited
environmental damage during int’l. and internal armed conflict.
Protocol I prohibited "widespread, long-term and severe damage to the
environment." Guerrilla warfare was affirmed as a legitimate means of
conflict by the Geneva Conventions in 1977, when prisoner of war status
was extended to guerrilla fighters.
(SFC, 8/11/00,
p.A15)(www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/93.htm)
1977 Dec 25, Comedian Sir Charles
Chaplin died in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland at age 88. In 2006
Richard Schickel edited “The Essential Chaplin.”
(AP, 4/16/00)(WSJ, 6/23/06, p.W6)
1977 Protocols I and II were added
to the Geneva Conventions. They prohibited environmental damage during
int’l. and internal armed conflict. Protocol I prohibited "widespread,
long-term and severe damage to the environment." Guerrilla warfare was
affirmed as a legitimate means of conflict by the Geneva Conventions in
1977, when prisoner of war status was extended to guerrilla fighters.
(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)(HNQ, 10/14/01)
1978 Mar 3, The remains of
comedian Charles Chaplin were stolen by extortionists from his grave in
Cosier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. The body was recovered near Lake Geneva
11 weeks later.
(AP, 3/3/98)
1978 The Wild-2 comet was
discovered by Swiss astronomer Paul Wild.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A8)
1979 Sep 24, Russian ice skaters
Protopopov and Beloussova asked for asylum in Switzerland.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1979 Dec 3, Christie's in
Switzerland auctioned a thimble for a record sum. A London dealer bid
$18,000 for a Meissen porcelain thimble that dated to about 1740.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thimble)
1979 The new Swiss canton of Jura
was separated from Bern.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.7)
1979 At Davos, Switzerland, the
World Economic Forum became the first nongovernmental institution to
initiate a partnership with China’s economic development commissions.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A8)
1980 Sep 5, The St. Gotthard
tunnel in the Swiss Alps, the world's longest auto tunnel, opened.
(HFA, '96,
p.38)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Road_Tunnel)
1980 Sep 8, Jean Piaget, Swiss
psychologist, theorist and educator, died at 84.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1981 Nov 30, The United States and
the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing
nuclear weapons in Europe.
(AP, 11/30/97)
1981 The SEC sued the Swiss bank
Svizzera Italiana to freeze the assets in trades it suspected were
based on material, nonpublic information, i.e. insider trading. It
eventually got the names.
(WSJ, 9/19/96, p.C18)
1982 Nov 29, An 88-nation world
trade conference meeting in Geneva agreed on a new set of guidelines
for encouraging free trade and halting a tide of global protectionism.
(http://tinyurl.com/36ozv8)
1982 Dec 20, Artur Rubinstein
(95), pianist (My Young Years), died in Geneva.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1982 Klaus Jacobs (1936-2008),
head of the German coffee dealer Jacobs AG, orchestrated the takeover
of Switzerland’s Interfood SA, maker of the Toblerone candy bar. In
1990 Philip Morris bought Jacobs Suchard for $3.8 billion. Klaus went
on to buy a Swiss staffing firm and in 1996 merged it with France’s
Ecco SA to form Adecco SA, which became one of the world’s largest
staffing firms.
(WSJ, 9/20/08, p.A12)
1983 Jul 29, David Niven (b.1910),
actor, died in Switzerland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Niven)
1984 Feb 29, In Switzerland a
court ruled that the villagers of Zermatt owned the Matterhorn.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A1)
1984 Aug 5, Actor Richard Burton
(58) died at a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland.
(AP, 8/5/97)
1984 Paul Jolles (d.2000),
diplomat and architect of economic foreign policy following WW II,
retired from government service. He then joined the Board of Nestle
S.A.
(SFC, 3/15/00, p.A20)
1985 The Swiss Nestle S.A.
corporation bought the SF based Hills Bros. Coffee and MJB. In 1997 it
had 494 production facilities in 71 countries.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.D2)
1985-1999 Swiss glaciers lost at least 18% of their
surface area during this period.
(NH, 2/05, p.17)
1985-2000 The number of Swiss working in agriculture
declined by 32% to 200,000. The number of farms dropped by 29% to
70,000.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.11)
1986 Jun 14, Jorge Luis Borges
(b.1899), Argentine author (Book of Sand), died in Geneva. In 1998 a
new English translation by Andrew Hurley of his "Collected Fictions"
was published. In 1999 Alexander Coleman edited "Selected Poems." Also
in 1999 Eliot Weinberger edited "Selected Non-Fictions." In 2004 Edwin
Williamson authored “Borges: A Life.”
(SFEC, 12/13/98, BR p.1)(SFEC, 4/18/99, BR p.3)(WSJ,
8/17/99, p.A18)(WSJ, 8/5/04, p.D8)
1986 Nov 1, A fire in a Sandoz
factory in Basel left 30 tons of chemicals in the Rhine.
(http://tinyurl.com/yhsjad)
1987 Jul 23, Hussein Hariri (21),
a Lebanese hijacker, commandeered an Air Afrique DC-10 flying from
Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, to Paris. He was captured during a
refueling stop in Geneva and was sentenced to life in prison for
killing a passenger and seriously wounding a flight attendant. In 2004
he was released and deported to Lebanon.
(AP, 10/17/04)
1988 Dec 13, PLO chairman Yasser
Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where it had
reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a visa to
visit New York.
(AP, 12/13/98)
1988 In Switzerland banking
regulators published the first Basel Capital Accord, Basel 1. It
recognized that some loans and investments were less risky than others
and weighed them accordingly. Work on the Basel 2 accords, Int’l.
Convergence of Capital Measures and Capital Standards,” began in 1996
and were published in 2004.
(Econ, 5/20/06, Survey p.10)
1988 At Davos, Switzerland, during
the World Economic Forum, Prime Ministers Papandreou of Greece and Ozal
of Turkey embarked on a peace initiative, setting up a hot-line and
vowing to avoid war.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A8)
1989 Apr 19, Adnan Khashoggi, a
Saudi financier, was arrested in Switzerland at the request of the US
Government, which is seeking his extradition to New York to stand trial
on charges of racketeering, fraud and obstruction of justice. He faced
charges stemming from ''illegal property dealings'' on behalf of
Ferdinand E. Marcos, the ousted President of the Philippines, and his
wife, Imelda. In 1992 Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos were found not
guilty of racketeering by a jury in Manhattan.
(http://tinyurl.com/qp8da)(www.maykuth.com/Archives/marcos90.htm)
1989 In Zurich authorities
experimented with an open access to drugs program, which caused an
escalation in drug dealing and violence.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, p.A21)
1989 Tim Berners-Lee wrote a
proposal at CERN, Switzerland, that a global hypertext space be created
in which any network-accessible information could be referred to by a
single "Universal Document Identifier". In 1990 he wrote a program
called WorldWideWeb.
(SFEC, 3/15/98,
p.W26)(http://www3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory.html)
1990 Nov 27, The canton Appenzell
Rhodes-Interieur was required to count women’s votes by a decision of
the Swiss Federal Tribunal. It was the last Swiss state to finally give
women the right to vote.
(Hem., 2/97, p.26)
1990 Dec 14, Friedrich Durrenmatt
(b.1921), Swiss author and playwright, died. In 2006 the Univ. of
Chicago published a translation of his selected writings in 3 volumes.
"What was once thought can never be unthought."
(AP,
11/15/00)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_D%C3%BCrrenmatt)
1990 In Switzerland legislation
was passed to punish bankers who knowingly accepted money that came
from a crime.
(WSJ, 7/3/96, p.A8)
1990 Kazem Rajavi, exiled Iranian
opposition leader, was shot to death in Geneva.
(AP, 4/9/06)
1991 Mar 3, Switzerland voted on
lowering voting age from 20 to 18.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1991 Mar 25, Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre, a rebellious conservative in the Roman Catholic Church, died
in Martigny, Switzerland, at age 85.
(AP, 3/25/01)
1991 Apr 4, Max Frisch (d.1991),
Swiss architect and writer, died. His books included “I’m Not Stiller”
(1958), a look at the nature of identity.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Frisch)(WSJ,
4/25/09, p.W8)
1991 Swiss-based Roche Corp. paid
Cetus Corp. of Emeryville, Ca., $300 million for its PCR gene
amplification business, a DNA copying method that became the foundation
for genetic diagnostics.
(SFC, 3/13/09, p.A10)
1991 A dye-sensitized solar cell,
also known as Gratzel cells, was invented by Michael Gratzel and Brian
O'Regan at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de
Lausanne. He pioneered research on energy and electron transfer
reactions in mesoscopic-materials and their optoelectronic applications.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye-sensitized_solar_cell)
1992 May 20, Switzerland formally
applies to join the European Communities.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 Aug 7, The 39-nation
Conference on Disarmament in Geneva produced the final draft of a
treaty to ban chemical weapons, ending 24 years of talks.
(AP, 8/7/97)
1992 Dec 6, A narrow majority of
Swiss referendum voters rejected the idea of joining the European
Economic Area, a free trade club embracing the EU and Liechtenstein.
(Econ, 5/22/04,
p.46)(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)
1992 In Zurich, Switzerland, a
festival was begun known as the Street Parade to celebrate techno music
under the motto: "Love, peace and tolerance." From 2,000 people at the
first event it grew to some 400,000 by 1997.
(SFC, 8/18/97, p.E4)
1993 Sep 11, Austrian born US
conductor and author Erich Leinsdorf died in Zurich, Switzerland, at
age 81. His work included "Cadenza."
(AP, 9/11/98)
1993 Dec 15, In Geneva, 117
countries completed the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade, agreeing on a reform package intended to jump-start
the global economy.
(AP, 12/15/98)
1994 Jan 1, The North American
Free Trade Agreement went into effect. Under the system a complaint is
referred to a panel of experts who debate it and render a decision. The
losing nation must then change its practices or offer compensation to
the injured nations. Members who refuse to comply can be subjected to
trade retaliation, such as tariffs to their exports. It was run out of
Geneva by Renato "Rocky" Ruggiero. GATT gave poorer countries 10 years
to strengthen their drug-patent laws and a similar period for the US to
lift its textile quotas. The World Trade Organization (WTO), founded as
the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a
relatively weak regulator of int’l. trade, was a product of the Uruguay
Round of negotiations (1986-1994). In 2000 John R. MacArthur authored
"The Selling of "Free Trade:" NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of
American Democracy."
(SFC, 10/17/96, A9)(WSJ, 12/3/96, p.A1)(WSJ,
12/13/96, p.A1)(AP, 1/1/98) (SFC, 11/24/99, p.A1)(SFEC, 7/2/00, BR p.3)
1994 Sep 25, Swiss voters approved
a ban on racist propaganda. The law became effective Jan 1,1995.
(http://natall.com/national-vanguard/114/freedom.html)(www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n4p-2.html)
1994 Oct 5, 48 members of a secret
religious doomsday cult were found dead in apparent murder-suicides
carried out simultaneously in two Swiss villages; five other bodies
were found in a sect apartment in Montreal, Canada.
(AP, 10/5/99)
1994 Oct, Seven Picasso paintings
worth an estimated $44 million are stolen from a gallery in Zurich.
They are recovered in 2000.
(AP, 2/11/08)
1994 Switzerland began a
controversial 3-year experimental heroin distribution program. The
program led to a huge drop in crime and survived a ballot challenge in
1997.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A14)
1995 Feb, In Zurich the police
clamped down on the open drug scene and dispersed the junkies. There
were an estimated 30,000 addicts in the country.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A11)
1995 Oct, Swiss astronomers Michel
Mayor (b.1942) and Didier Queloz (b.1966) revealed that the spectrum of
light from the star 51 Pegosi shifts on a regular 4.23-day period and
concluded that the shifts were due to a nearby planet.
(SFC, 2/27/97,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Mayor)
1995 A group of 7 Swiss artists
registered the domain name of Etoy.com with Network Solutions. In 1999
the toy company EToys.com sued the artists and forced them to shut
their web site down. In 2003 Adam Wishart and Regula Bochsler authored:
"Leaving Reality Behind: "Etoy vs. eToys.com & Other Battles to
Control Cyberspace."
(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.AM3)
1995 Binjamin Wilkomirski authored
his memoir "Fragments," which purported to be about his survival at the
Majdanek concentration camp. In 2002 Blake Eskin authored "A Life in
Pieces" that told the story of how Bruno Doessekker (b.1941) fabricated
the story.
(WSJ, 2/5/02, p.A16)
1995 Prompted by Jewish groups
Swiss banks searched their dormant accounts and claimed to have found
only $32 million.
(SFC, 10/24/96, p.C2)
1996 Mar 8, In Zurich Ciba-Geigy
and Sandoz planned a merger valued at $30 billion. The new company was
named Novartis.
(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.R2)(WSJ, 6/6/00, p.A1)
1996 May 3, A weak compromise
treaty was passed in Geneva that aimed to phase out non-detectable
plastic mines, and introduced rules to limit the lifespan of
anti-personnel mines planted outside marked fields to 3 months. The new
treaty will go into effect once it is signed by 20 countries and
revised an outdated 1980 weapons protocol signed by 57 nations. It has
few enforcement provisions. The international conference in Geneva
ended 30 months of arduous negotiations over whether to ban land mines
with a weak compromise treaty giving countries nine years to switch to
detectable, self-destructive devices.
(SFC, 5/4/96, p.A-1)(AP, 5/3/97)
1996 Jul 4, The defense ministry
hoped to save $476,000 a year by pensioning off 7,000 carrier pigeons.
(SFC, 7/4/96, p.C1)
1996 Jul 7, The average cost of a
Big Mac in Switzerland was $4.80.
(SFC, 7/7/96, Par, p.17)
1996 Jul 12, Gottfried von Einem
(b.1918), Swiss composer, died in Oberduirnbach.
(www.einem.org/en/komp_ll.htm)
1996 Oct 30, The government
announced that it would join NATO’s Partnership for Peace program to
promote European security.
(SFC, 10/31/96, p.A12)
1996 The independent Volcker
commission was set up to find the truth about assets deposited by
Holocaust victims in Swiss banks. In 1999 the committee presented a
list of some 54,000 accounts with "possible or probable relationships"
to Holocaust victims with a total value of as much as $1.3 billion.
(SFC, 12/7/99, p.A10)
1996 The Independent Commission of
Experts on Switzerland and WW II was set up. It was led by Francois
Bergier, Swiss historian. In 2001 the commission published their report
"Switzerland as a Hub for German Covert Operations from 1939-1952."
(SFC, 12/7/01, p.F5)
1996 The French firm Ecco merged
with Adia of Switzerland to form Adecco. The merger made Adecco the
world’s largest employment firm ahead of Manpower.
(Econ, 1/6/07, p.57)
1996 Karl Muller, Swiss engineer,
invented a new type of shoe designed to re-create the positive effects
of walking barefoot. The shoes were named MBTs (Masai Barefoot
Technology) after the African Masai tribe.
(SSFC, 11/25/07,
p.F3)(www.sunsetbirkenstock.com/shop/mbt.php)
1997 Jan 5, Jewish leaders blasted
the remark of former Swiss Pres. Jean-Pascal Delamuraz, who called
Jewish demands for the compensation of Holocaust victims "blackmail."
(SFC, 1/6/97, p.A9)
1997 Jan 9, Christoph Meili, night
watchman at the Union Bank of Switzerland, salvaged an armful of books
and papers that contained bank records from the Nazi era that were
about to be shredded. His dismissal from the security company for which
he worked, effective at the end of April, was announced Feb 24.
(SFC, 1/17/96, p.E1)(SFC, 2/24/96, p.A14)
1997 Jan 27, The Swiss ambassador
to the US, Carlo Jagmetti, resigned after remarks against groups that
represented Holocaust victims seeking recompense from Swiss banks.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A6)
1997 Jan 31, Pres. Arnold Koller
expressed regret to Israeli PM Netenyahu for the wrongdoings of the
Holocaust.
(SFC, 2/1/97, p.C1)
1997 Feb, Three Swiss banks
announced that they had put about $70 million into an account with the
Swiss National Bank to establish a "Humanitarian Fund" for the victims
of the Holocaust.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.C2)
1997 Mar 22, In Lausanne, Switz.,
Tara Lipinski, at age 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest
women's world figure skating champion.
(AP, 3/22/97)
1997 Mar 27, Ella Maillart
(b.1903), Swiss sportswoman and travel writer, died. She chronicled the
savage collectivisation of Karakalpak agriculture in Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan in the 1930s.
(Econ, 5/16/09,
p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Maillart)
1997 May 17, In Zaire rebel forces
entered Kinshasa and Laurent Kabila declared himself president of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kabila requested Swiss authorities to
block Mobuto Sese Seko’s access to his Swiss villa. The house was
seized and searched and documents were found that related to his
wealth. The seizure was declared legal Aug 7.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.6)(SFC, 8/8/97, p.E3)(AP,
5/17/98)
1997 Jul 10, A 3 year pilot heroin
distribution program was declared a success.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A14)
1997 Jul 23, Swiss banks published
a list of 2,000 WW II-era dormant accounts that included assets of
holocaust victims.
(SFC, 7/23/97, p.A8)
1997 Aug 7, In Switzerland the
measures to freeze the assets of deposed Zairian Pres. Mobuto Sese Seko
were declared legal.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.E3)
1997 Sep 1, In Switzerland robbers
made off with $37 million in cash from a Zurich post office. By Sep 8
Swiss and Italian police had detained 13 suspects. A total of 19 people
in five countries were arrested in connection with the case.
(WSJ, 9/2/97, p.A1)(SFC, 9/9/97, p.A11)(AP, 9/1/07)
1997 Sep 29, It was reported that
Swiss voters backed the continuation of a 3-year experiment in more
lenient drug laws that included free heroin to hard-core addicts to cut
crime.
(WSJ, 9/29/97, p.A1)
1997 Oct 13, Swiss bank officials
said that 4,000 more unclaimed accounts from the Holocaust era were
found containing about $4 million.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A12)
1997 Oct 24, The Swiss government
announced plans to sell up to half of its gold reserves. The
announcement sent gold prices to a 12-year low to $308.80.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.D1)
1997 Oct 29, Swiss banks released
findings of an additional $12.4 million in unclaimed funds from WW II.
(SFC,10/30/97, p.A13)
1997 Nov 2, Franziska Rochat-Moser
of Switzerland led the women in the 28th New York City Marathon in two
hours, 28 minutes and 43 seconds.
(WSJ, 11/3/97, p.A1)
1997 Nov 8, It was reported that
Swiss authorities had evidence that 7 Israeli secret service agents
were involved in a plot to kidnap Athena Roussel, the 12-year-old
daughter of Christina Onassis and heir to a $2.4 billion trust fund.
(SFC,11/8/97, p.A10)
1997 Nov 18, Holocaust survivors
from Latvia received the first checks from a $200 million fund set up
by Swiss banks. Individual survivors were to each receive $1000.
(SFC,11/19/97, p.C4)
1997 Dec 8, Union Bank of
Switzerland and the Swiss Bank Corp. announced a merger. It will create
the world’s 2nd largest bank.
(SFC,12/897, p.A16)
1997 Dec 12, Negotiators in Geneva
for the World Trade Organization (WTO) signed an accord to open up the
banking and insurance sectors of some 70 member countries to foreign
competition.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A10)
1997 Dec 12, The high court told
Swiss banks to send some $500 million in assets of the late Ferdinand
Marcos back to the Philippines.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A14)
1997 The Swiss film "Fire in
Paradise" was directed by Markus Imhoof. It was set in 1912 and was
about an woman who takes another’s place for an arranged marriage in
Asia.
(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D6)
1997 Urs Kamber, a national track
star, introduced the Heidiland concept for the town of Sargans.
(SFEC, 9/24/00, p.T6)
1997 A Swiss federal law made
money laundering and abetting it a criminal offense.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.12)
1997 Endeavor, a New York-based
non-profit group dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship in emerging
economies, was founded. Initial operations began in Argentina and Chile
with seed capital from Stephan Schmidheiny, a Swiss industrialist.
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.69)
1997 Peter Brabeck took over as
CEO of Nestle SA.
(WSJ, 3/18/04, p.A1)
1997 Prionics AG developed the 1st
efficient test for mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
(WSJ, 1/08/00, p.A23)
1998 Jan 28, From Switzerland 3
balloonists set out to circle the globe in the Breitling Orbiter 2.
They failed to get clearance from flying over China in time and were
forced down in Burma on Feb 7 after traveling a record 4,730 miles.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.11)
1998 Feb 19, Police arrested 3
Israeli Mossad agents for spying on diplomats in Berne.
(SFC, 2/26/98, p.A9)
1998 Feb 25, The first legal
brothel opened in Zurich.
(SFC, 2/26/98, p.A13)
1998 Feb, The Schwab Foundation
for Economic and Social Development was established with Klaus Schwab
as president.
(WSJ, 1/27/00, p.A18)
1998 Mar 26, Three major Swiss
banks pledged to set up a compensation fund in the US for a global
settlement with Holocaust victims. The Swiss government announced a
blunt non-involvement in the global settlement.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A12)(SFC, 4/2/98, p.C2)
1998 Apr 1, The Swiss government
announced a blunt non-involvement in the global settlement by banks
with Holocaust victims.
(SFC, 4/2/98, p.C2)
1998 Jun 28, The 12th World AIDS
Conference opened in Geneva with some 12,000 participants.
(SFC, 6/29/98, p.A1)(AP, 6/28/99)
1998 Aug 12, Representatives of
Swiss banks and holocaust survivors agreed to a settlement of $1.25
billion in reparations for victims of the Nazi regime.
(SFC, 8/13/98, p.A1)
1998 Aug 19, The new Kultur and
Knogresszentrum designed by Jean Nouvel will open.
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.T5)
1998 Sep 18, A secret, 269 page
Swiss report asserted that Raul Salinas assumed control of practically
all drug shipments in Mexico in 1988 when his brother became president.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A12)
1998 Oct 4, Former Swiss Pres.
Jean-Pascal Delamuraz died at age 62. He served his one year rotating
term in 1996 and made headlines that Dec. when he described Jewish
demands for compensation for Holocaust victims as blackmail.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)
1998 Oct 20, In Switzerland
officials announced that they seized over $90 million from Raul Salinas
after an investigations revealed that the money was received for
protecting drug shipments. Swiss authorities requested that Britain
seize an additional $23.4 million deposited in England.
(SFC, 10/21/98, p.A10)
1998 Nov 29, The Swiss voted on
whether to legalize drug use.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, p.A21)
1998 Dec 12, Marc Hodler
(1919-2006), Swiss lawyer and International Olympics Committee
official, unleashed a series of corruption allegations that included
systemic buying and selling of votes in Olympic bidding, particularly
for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
(SFC, 10/21/06, p.B6)
1998 Dec, Swiss authorities
indicted Pavlo Lazarenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine, on money
laundering charges. Sergei Mikhailov, an alleged Moscow kingpin, was
tried on charges that he belonged to a criminal organization. Mikhailov
was acquitted on insufficient evidence.
(SFEC, 12/20/98, p.A32)
1998 In Switzerland Ludwig Minelli
founded Dignitas, a physician assisted suicide organization for
foreigners.
(WSJ, 11/22/02, p.A1)
1998 In Zurich 815 man-made Swiss
brown milking cows were used to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of
the constitution.
(SFC, 7/6/99, p.C6)
1998 In Lucerne the new $134
million, 1,840 seat Culture and Convention Center auditorium opened. It
was designed by Jean Nouvel of France and the acoustics were done by
Russell Johnson.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, p.T10)
1999 Jan 2, Rolf Liebermann, Swiss
composer, died in Paris. He led the Hamburg Opera from 1959-1972 and
the Paris Opera from 1973-1980. His work included "Eleonore 40/45,"
"Penelope," "L'Ecole des Femmes" and "La Foret."
(SFC, 1/4/99, p.D2)
1999 Feb 1, In Switzerland the IOC
adopted its first ethics commission and code of conduct.
(SFC, 2/2/99, p.A10)
1999 Feb 3, In Switzerland 60 of
the 105 members of the IOC met to formulate an assault on performance
enhancing drugs.
(WSJ, 2/4/99, p.A1)
1999 Feb 23, Heavy rain and snow
in the Alps left 5 people dead and 13 missing in Austria, Switzerland,
France and Germany. An avalanche in the Austrian Alps at Galtuer killed
9 people and at least 30 were missing.
(WSJ, 2/23/99, p.A1)(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A8)
1999 May 20, The US Justice Dept.
settled charges against Roche Holding AG and BASF AG, two of the
largest vitamin makers, for price fixing. Roche agreed to pay $500
million with a guilty plea, and BASF agreed to pay $225 million with a
guilty plea.
(SFC, 5/21/99, p.A3)
1999 Jun 13, Swiss voters defeated
government plans to introduce paid maternity leave 61-39%. Voters
endorsed the state distribution of heroin to addicts by a vote of 54%.
(SFC, 6/14/99, p.A14)
1999 Jul 27, In Switzerland 19
people were killed as they tried to "canyon" down a narrow gorge on the
Saxeten River off Lake Brienz. Two people were still missing and 13
were identified as Australians. 18 tourists and 3 guides died in the
flash flood. In 2001 6 former employees of the adventure company were
convicted of negligent manslaughter and given suspended sentences with
fines.
(SFC, 7/28/99, p.A1)(SFC, 7/29/99, p.A10)(SFC,
12/12/01, p.A7)
1999 cAug 22, The chief of the
secret service was suspended amid reports that he had embezzled
millions of dollars and was using the money to assemble a private army.
Accountant Dino Bellasi was accused of embezzling $6 million from the
Defense Ministry and used the money to train a secret army.
(WSJ, 8/23/99, p.A1)(SFC, 9/3/99, p.A8)
1999 Oct 24, In Swiss
parliamentary elections the right wing People's Party gained 14 seats
in the 200 member lower house for a total of 44.
(SFC, 10/25/99, p.A11)
1999 Dec 26, In Europe heavy winds
and rain killed 88 people in France, 17 dead in Germany and 13 dead in
Switzerland. A 2nd storm hit a day later. Damages from the storms were
later estimated to be at least $4 billion with 90 people dead. The
storms destroyed an estimated 400 million trees across France.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A12)(WSJ, 12/27/99, p.A1)(SFC,
12/28/99, p.A8)(SFC, 1/4/00, p.A11)(SFC, 1/15/00, p.A1)(AP, 1/25/09)
1999 At Davos, Switzerland, during
the World Economic Forum, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced a
Global compact to give a human face to the global market. He also
called on business leaders to set global labor and environmental
standards.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A8)
1999 The Swiss-based Center for
Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD) was founded by 4 people. By 2008 it had a
staff of over 70 and had helped resolve major conflicts in Indonesia
and Kenya.
(Econ, 7/5/08, p.71)
1999 Pres. Nazarbayev grew more
self-protective after he came under suspicion of stowing funds in Swiss
bank accounts. The Swiss froze over a dozen Kazakhstan bank accounts
for alleged money laundering.
(WSJ, 9/12/02, p.A8)(WSJ, 5/6/03, p.A24)
2000 Jan 10, In Switzerland a
Crossair Saab-340 airplane crashed after takeoff from Zurich and all 10
people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 1/11/00, p.A11)
2000 Jan 29, Pres. Clinton
addressed the World Economic Forum at Davos and urged corporate leaders
to help lift the burden of debt from developing countries and to
examine environmental concerns. Some 1000 protestors demonstrated
outside.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.A16)
2000 Feb 21, An avalanche in
Switzerland killed 3 skiers at Davos.
(SFC, 2/22/00, p.A10)
2000 Jun 5, Jeanne Hersch,
philosopher, died at age 89. She was the 1st woman to be appointed a
professor at a Swiss university. Her books included ""The Right to Be a
Man," Ideologies and Reality," and "The Power of Freedom."
(SFC, 6/6/00, p.A21)
2000 Oct 14, A mudslide in Gondo
left 18 people missing.
(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.A20)
2000 Oct 15, The Palestinian
Hezbollah seized an Israeli colonel, Elchanan Tennenbaum, in
Switzerland.
(SFC, 10/16/00, p.A1)
2000 Oct 15, At least 31 people
were killed as landslides due to heavy rains continued in the Alps of
Switzerland and Italy. 23 died in northern Italy and 8 in southern
Switzerland
(SFC, 10/16/00, p.F8)(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A14)(SFC,
10/19/00, p.C4)
2000 Nov 17, Jurgen Graf,
prominent Swiss revisionist author, arrived in Iran. He fled his
homeland rather than serve a 15-month prison sentence for "Holocaust
denial."
(www.ihr.org/conference/beirutconf/background.html)
2001 Jan 27, Riot police prevented
some 1,000 protestors from reaching the World Economic Forum at Davos.
(SFC, 1/29/01, p.A14)
2001 Feb 18, Balthus (b.1908),
painter aka Count Balthazar Klossowski de Rola, died at age 92 in
Switzerland. In 2002 His memoir "Vanished Splendors," as told by Alain
Vircondolet, was published.
(SFC, 2/21/01, p.A18)(AP, 2/18/02)(SSFC, 1/12/03,
p.M3)
2001 Mar 4, Swiss voters rejected
membership talks with the EU by 77%.
(SFC, 3/5/01, p.A11)
2001 Mar 23, Parliament voted to
permit abortions until the 12th week. The centrist Christian People’s
Party planned to force a national referendum on the issue.
(SFC, 3/24/01, p.A11)
2001 Apr 1, The Pritzker Prize for
Architecture was awarded to Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Mueron of
Basel, Switzerland.
(SFC, 4/2/01, p.D1)
2001 Jun 1, Police in Geneva found
the decomposed body of a 16-month-old girl whose mother, a Portuguese
immigrant, was arrested May 8 for stealing a cell phone.
(SFC, 6/21/01, p.A10)
2001 Jun 10, Swiss voters by a
narrow margin approved arming their soldiers on int’l. peacekeeping
missions and to allow them to train with NATO.
(SFC, 6/11/01, p.A9)
2001 Sep 10, In Switzerland nurse
Roger Andermatt (32) was reported to have confessed to killing of 27
elderly and ailing patients over a 6-year period (1995-2001). In 2005
he was sentenced to life in prison for killing 22 elderly nursing home
residents.
(SFC, 9/12/01, p.C4)(AP, 1/28/05)
2001 Sep 27, In Switzerland gunman
Friedrich Leibacher killed at least 14 people at the regional
parliament of Zug.
(SFC, 9/28/01, p.D2)
2001 Oct 2, Cash-strapped Swissair
shut down flight operations and stranded thousands of passengers around
the globe.
(SFC, 10/3/01, p.D3)
2001 Oct 4, Swissair resumed
flying following a 2-day shut down propped by a $281 million Swiss
government loan. [see Jan 31, 2002]
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.B4)
2001 Oct 24, In Switzerland 2
trucks collided in the 10.6 mile Gotthard tunnel and at least 10 people
were killed. 11 were later confirmed dead with 30 people missing. The
tunnel was expected to stay closed for weeks.
(SFC, 10/25/01, p.A15)(SFC, 10/26/01, p.D2)(SFC,
10/27/01, p.C1)
2001 Nov 24, In Switzerland a
Swiss Crossair Jumbolino Avro RJ-100 crashed with 33 people on board.
24 were killed including American pop singer Melanie Thornton.
(SSFC, 11/25/01, p.A18)(WSJ, 11/26/01, p.A1)(AP,
11/24/02)
2001 Dec 13, It was reported that
83 vanadium miners at the Vantech Tech. mining operations in Steelport,
South Africa, were let go between 1998 and 2001 after suffering
respiratory problems. Vantech was a subsidiary of the Swiss-based
Xstrata.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.E2)
2002 Jan 22, The Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established as a Swiss
Foundation.
(www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/publications/)
2002 Jan 31, Crossair, a regional
carrier and successor airline to the bankrupt Swissair, announced plans
that will make it Europe's 4th largest international airline, under the
new name Swiss.
(EB, 2002, p.11)(Econ, 2/14/04, p.10)
2002 Feb 23, Switzerland largest
bank said it was freezing accounts containing money of the family of
Sani Abacha of Nigeria, dictator from 1993-1998. The total blocked now
reached $720 million.
(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.A20)
2002 Mar 3, Switzerland voted in a
referendum to join the UN, the 190th member, abandoning almost 200
years of formal neutrality.
(SFC, 3/4/02, p.A2)(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.4)(AP,
3/3/07)
2002 Apr 17, The Swiss government
announced that the family of Sani Abacha will return $1 billion to
Nigeria in an out-of-court settlement that allowed them keep $100
million.
(SFC, 4/18/02, p.A11)
2002 May 15, The National
Exhibition, Expo.02, opened. The $823 million production, scattered
around 3 lakes and 4 town, was set to close Oct 20.
(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.C5)
2002 Jun 2, About 72% of Swiss
voters approved a measure permitting abortions in the 1st 12 weeks of
pregnancy.
(SFC, 6/3/02, p.A6)
2002 Jun 2, It was reported that
atrazine, a commonly used herbicide made by Sygenta AG of Switzerland,
had been linked to cancer in humans and deformities in frogs.
(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.A3)
2002 Jul 1, Bashkirian flight 2937
with 45 Russian children headed for a beach vacation in Spain were
among 71 people killed when their chartered Tupolev airliner slammed
into a Boeing 757 DHL cargo plane over southern Germany. The flights
were under Swiss air control. An onboard device told the pilot to climb
but he followed a controller’s order to dive instead. In 2007 four
employees of a Swiss air traffic control company were convicted of
negligent homicide for the crash of flight 2937.
(AP, 7/2/02)(SFC, 7/2/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/2/02,
p.A1)(SFC, 7/3/02, p.A6)(WSJ, 7/9/02, p.A1)(AP, 9/4/07)
2002 Jul 3, Swiss authorities said
a collision-warning system was out of service in the Zurich tower when
it took control of a Russian airliner and a cargo jet shortly before
they collided on July 1 at 35,000 feet, killing 71 people, including 45
children headed for an end-of-school beach holiday. One of 2 required
air controllers was on a break.
(AP, 7/3/02)(SFC, 7/4/02, p.A8)
2002 Jul 8, Peter Friedrich,
Switzerland's ambassador to Luxembourg, was arrested on suspicion of
money laundering.
(AP, 7/11/02)
2002 Ju 17, Switzerland formally
requested membership to the United Nations.
(SFC, 7/18/02, p.A15)
2002 Aug 20, The Swiss government
returned to Peru about $77.5 million linked to former Peruvian spy
chief Vladimiro Montesinos, saying the money came from corrupt arms
deals. The money includes assets of Gen. Nicolas de Bari Hermoza Rios,
Peru's former armed forces chief, who also faces corruption charges.
$33 million linked to Montesinos remained blocked in Swiss banks.
(AP, 8/21/02)
2002 Sep 8, Georges-Andre
Chevallaz (87), a former Swiss president (1980) and member of the
ruling cabinet for 10 years, died in Lausanne.
(AP, 9/9/02)
2002 Sep 10, Switzerland became
the 190th member of the UN, preserving its historic neutrality but
stepping more actively onto the world stage.
(AP, 9/10/02)
2002 Sep 22, Switzerland held a
referendum on the use of tons of "excess" gold sold weekly from the
vaults of Switzerland's central bank. The government wants to split the
money three ways: a third to Swiss cantons, or states, a third to its
social security program exclusively for Swiss residents and a third to
be divided evenly between self-help projects for use at home and abroad.
(AP, 9/21/02)
2002 Sep 29, Hans Peter Tschudi
(88), twice Swiss president (1965, 1970) and interior minister for 14
years, died.
(AP, 9/30/02)
2002 Nov 5, In Switzerland
representatives of over 40 countries along with industry
representatives and advocacy groups passed a UN-backed certification
plan to block the trade of illicit diamonds.
(SFC, 11/6/02, p.A18)
2003 Feb 9, Swiss voters approved
measures to further extend their direct democracy.
(AP, 2/10/03)
2003 Mar 1, In Geneva more
than 170 nations agreed, despite US objections, on a text for a tobacco
treaty that would impose worldwide restrictions on advertising and
labeling, while clamping down on smuggling and second-hand smoke.
(AP, 3/1/03)
2003 Mar 2, Landlocked Switzerland
became the first European country to win the America's Cup as "Alinghi"
swept Team New Zealand in five races.
(AP, 3/2/04)
2003 Apr 9, In Geneva inventions
from around the planet were presented during the world's largest
inventions fair.
(AP, 4/10/03)(SFC, 4/10/03, p.A2)
2003 May 18, Swiss voters agreed
to modernize their armed forces, overhaul the country's civil defense
and keep nuclear energy.
(AP, 5/19/03)
2003 Jul 8, In Switzerland a
swerving car plowed through pedestrians on a downtown bridge in
Lausanne. Two people were killed, including a woman pushing her child
in a stroller.
(AP, 7/8/03)
2003 Jul 17, Walter Zapp (97),
inventor of the Minox mini camera featured in spy movies, died, in
northern Switzerland. Zapp was born in 1905 in Riga, Latvia.
(AP, 7/28/03)
2003 Sep 28, A nationwide power
blackout in Italy hit virtually the whole population in the dead of
night. Power was out for as much as 18 hours. Problems began after a
tree branch hit power lines in Switzerland.
(AP, 9/28/03)(WSJ, 10/1/03, p.A1)(AP, 10/1/03)
2003 Oct 19, The nationalist Swiss
People's Party (SVP), led by Christoph Blocher, won elections to become
the leading party in the lower house of parliament with 55 of 200 seats.
(AP, 10/19/03)(SFC, 10/20/03, p.A8)(Econ, 2/14/04,
Survey p.5)
2003 Dec 10, The World Summit on
the Information Society began a 3-day meeting in Geneva, Switz.
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.C2)
2003 Aug, In Switzerland Sheikh
Falah bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the brother of the president of
the United Arab Emirates, hit an Italian-American, Silvano Orsi, with
the buckle of his belt in a hotel. in a trial in June, 2008, he was
ordered to pay 540,000 Swiss francs (337,000 euros, 532,000 dollars) by
the court, suspended for three years. The sheikh was also sentenced to
pay legal costs of nearly 3,000 Swiss francs. In 2009 he was acquitted
on appeal against the imposed fines.
(AFP,
3/28/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falah_bin_Zayed_bin_Sultan_Al_Nahyan)
2004 Jan 8, Teams of Swiss police
in 5 cantons arrested 8 suspected accomplices in the May 12 al Qaeda
car bomb attack in Saudi Arabia.
(SFC, 1/10/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 24, Some 2,000 opponents
of the World Economic Forum marched in Davos, Switz., to protest the
meeting, which they say is elitist and does nothing for ordinary people.
(AP, 1/24/04)
2004 Feb 8, Swiss voters approved
a measure to put into effect some of Europe's harshest laws on violent
criminals and pedophiles.
(SFC, 2/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Feb 24, In Switzerland Vitaly
Kaloyev of Russia killed Pieter Nielsen, a Danish air traffic
controller with the Swiss company Skyguide. Nielsen had been on duty
during the July 1, 2002, collision between a Bashkirian Airlines plane
and a DHL cargo jet. Kolayev’s family was killed in the crash. In 2007
Switzerland's highest court ordered Kolayev’s release because he had
served more than two-thirds of his sentence with good behavior.
(AP, 11/8/07)
2004 Jun 14, The Swiss parliament
voted to end a 96-year ban on absinthe. The green spirit was allowed
back into shops in much of western Europe following an European Union
directive in 1981, but it remained outlawed in Switzerland.
(AFP, 6/14/04)
2004 Jun 26, The world’s top
central bankers approved Basel 2, “Int’l. Convergence of Capital
Measures and Capital Standards,” a new capital-adequacy framework for
banks.
(Econ, 7/3/04,
p.61)(www.bsp.gov.ph/about_bsp/CAF/basel2.htm)(Econ, 5/20/06, Survey
p.10)
2004 Jul 31, World Trade
negotiators in Geneva broke months of deadlock and put together a
framework for the rest of the Doha trade round.
(Econ, 8/7/04, p.59)
2004 Aug 22, Ota Sik (b.1920)
Czech economist and painter, died in St. Gallen, Switz.
(SFC, 8/25/04, p.B7)
2004 Nov 13, A 61-year-old German
engineer, Gotthard L., was arrested in Switzerland on an international
warrant on suspicion that he helped Libya's past efforts to build a
nuclear bomb.
(AP, 11/16/04)
2004 Nov 18, A survey said Swiss
teenagers smoke more cannabis than their peers in every other European
country.
(Reuters, 11/19/04)
2004 Nov 23, The UN Working Group
on Internet Governance (40 delegates) met in Geneva.
(Econ, 11/20/04, p.65)
2005 Jan 1, A new Swiss law took
effect that legalized the production of absinthe.
(SFC, 11/4/04, p.A2)
2005 Jan 1, Switzerland was
forecast for 2% annual GDP growth with a population at 7.4 million and
GDP per head at $51,490.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.90)
2005 Jan 9, In Basel, Switzerland,
central bankers, joined by commercial counterparts and financial
regulators from around the globe, opened a 2-day meeting to discuss
ways to ensure smooth economic growth amid worries over widening U.S.
deficits.
(AP, 1/10/05)
2005 Jan 26, The World Economic
Forum, the global business meeting that attracts world leaders and
Hollywood stars, opened in Davos, Switzerland. A Chinese economist said
that China has lost faith in the stability of the US dollar and would
seek to broaden the exchange rate for the yuan to a more flexible
basket of currencies.
(AP, 1/26/05)(SFC, 1/27/05, p.C1)
2005 Jan 30, The World Economic
Forum ended 5 days of talks in Davos, Switz. Chinese Vice Premier Huang
Ju said Chinese per capita income will triple during the next 15 years
and there was no reason for the world to fear his country's emergence
as a global giant.
(AP, 1/30/05)
2005 Mar 1, In Geneva, Switz.,
Edouard Stern, French financier and former Lazard banker, was found
dead in his home. Swiss police later arrested Cecile Brossard (36), his
French lover, who confessed to the sex-related killing of banker
Edouard Stern. During her trial in 2009 she said that she lost control
after Stern called her a whore. On June 18, 2009, Brossard was
sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.
(WSJ, 3/3/05, p.A1)(AP, 3/16/05)(WSJ, 4/14/05,
p.A1)(SFC, 6/15/09, p.A2)(AP, 6/18/09)
2005 Mar 4, Swiss police said they
have detained five purported Islamic extremists suspected of running
Web sites that showed the execution of hostages and provided details of
how to make bombs and carry out attacks.
(AP, 3/4/05)
2005 Mar 12, In Lenzerheide,
Switzerland, Bode Miller became the first American in 22 years to win
skiing's overall World Cup title.
(AP, 3/12/06)
2005 Mar 17, Stephane Lambiel of
Switzerland won the men's title at the World Figure Skating
Championships in Moscow.
(AP, 3/17/06)
2005 Apr 17, A Swiss tourist bus
carrying 27 people plunged into an Alpine ravine near the Great St.
Bernard Pass, and at least 100 rescuers descended to the wreck on ropes
to try to aid the injured. 12 people were killed.
(AP, 4/17/05)(AP, 4/17/06)
2005 Apr 28, Swiss engineers
blasted through the final four yards of rock to complete the bore of
the first of two deep rail tunnels under the Swiss Alps linking north
and south Europe. The 21-mile Loetschberg tunnel, part of a massive
construction project to move heavy European Union trucks off
Switzerland's narrow highways and onto transport trains, will shorten
the travel time between Germany and Milan, Italy, by an hour.
(AP, 4/28/05)
2005 May 31, In Switzerland
Griselidis Real (76), writer and well-known prostitute who campaigned
for the rights and dignity of sex workers, died in Geneva. In 2009 she
was re-buried in the presence of 200 people at the Cemetery of the
Kings, which is reserved for individuals that have profoundly marked
Swiss or international history.
(www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/griselidis-real-493264.html)(AP,
3/10/09)
2005 Jun 5, Swiss voters approved,
by a 55-45% majority, joining the European Union in the Schengen
passport-free travel zone, abolishing checks on the country's border by
2007. They also granted same-sex couples more rights.
(AP, 6/6/05)(Econ, 6/11/05, p.48)
2005 Jun 6, IBM and Ecole
Polytechnique of Lausanne, Switz., announced a partnership to begin
building a computer model of the human brain.
(Econ, 6/11/05, p.75)
2005 Aug 20, The 184-pound
"Unspunnenstein," named after the site of Switzerland's most revered
stone-throwing contest, was stolen from a hotel in the central Swiss
city of Interlaken where it was on display before the competition
scheduled for Sept. 3-4.
(AP, 8/20/05)
2005 Aug 25, Rescue workers began
evacuating more people from submerged sections of the Swiss capital as
central and southern Europe struggled with the aftermath of flooding
that has killed at least 42 people.
(AP, 8/25/05)
2005 Sep 1, The Swiss firm
Novartis AG said it is offering $4.5 billion in cash for the remaining
stake in Chiron Corp. to complete its takeover of the US-based biotech
company.
(AP, 9/1/05)
2005 Sep 5, UBS said it will sell
three of Switzerland's oldest private banks and asset manager GAM to
Julius Baer for 5.6 billion Swiss francs ($4.6 billion), to enable it
to focus on its own private banking business.
(AP, 9/5/05)
2005 Sep 25, A majority of the
Swiss electorate voted to allow citizens of the 10 new EU member states
to work in Switzerland, according to the final results of a national
referendum.
(AP, 9/25/05)
2005 Oct 3, Switzerland decided to
extradite Russia's former nuclear minister to the US on charges of
stealing up to $9 million that was intended to improve security of
nuclear plants. Russia has been fighting the US extradition request for
Yevgeny Adamov out of fear that he could reveal nuclear secrets while
facing the charges in the United States.
(AP, 10/3/05)
2005 Oct 17, Serono Laboratories,
a Swiss drug-maker, pleaded guilty to US federal conspiracy charges and
agreed to pay $740 million for kickbacks to doctors for the AIDS drug
Serostim and for manipulating a test for AIDS patients.
(SFC, 10/18/05, p.E1)
2005 Oct 26, A Swiss court found
Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect, guilty of premeditated homicide
for the Feb 2004 killing of the air traffic controller on duty at the
time of the Jul 1, 2002, midair plane collision in which his wife and
child were lost.
(AP, 10/26/05)
2005 Oct 31,
Chiron Corp., a biotech operation in Emeryville, Ca., merged with
the Swiss firm Novartis. Novartis paid $5.1 billion for Chiron.
(SFC, 11/1/05, p.D1)
2005 Nov 18, Swiss Reinsurance
Co., the world's second-largest reinsurer, said it will acquire most of
General Electric Co.'s insurance unit for $6.8 billion in cash and
stock.
(AP, 11/18/05)
2005 Nov 22, Nestle SA, the
world's biggest food company, said it has recalled hundreds of
thousands of gallons of baby milk from France, Portugal, Spain and
Italy after traces of ink from the packaging were found in the product.
(AP, 11/22/05)
2005 Nov 25, Swiss authorities
said they will block major foreign acquisitions by the
telecommunications operator Swisscom because of financial risk to the
state, which holds most of the company's shares.
(AFP, 11/25/05)
2005 Nov 27, Swiss voters approved
a blanket five-year ban on the use of genetically modified organisms in
farming. Switzerland already prohibits most of such technology from
being used in agriculture.
(AP, 11/27/05)
2005 Dec 1, in northern
Switzerland a pack of dogs mauled a boy walking to his kindergarten
class killing him instantly.
(AP, 12/01/05)
2005 Dec 29, Switzerland's top
court ordered the extradition of Yevgeny Adamov, Russia's former
nuclear minister, to his homeland instead of the US, where he's been
indicted for allegedly diverting $9 million in US aid money to his
businesses. The Swiss court made its ruling Dec. 22 but it was made
public Dec 29.
(AP, 12/30/05)
2005 In Geneva the large Hadron
Collider of CERN was expected to be completed for $6 billion. The US
provided over $500 million towards the construction of a the new atom
smasher.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A9)
2006 Jan 25, The World Economic
Forum opened in Davos, Switzerland. 15 heads of state, top business
leaders and celebrities attended the session to brainstorm on key
issues facing the globe, including high oil prices, Iran's nuclear
ambitions, new business models and the shifting balance of power in
Asia.
(AP, 1/25/06)
2006 Mar 23, Stephane Lambiel of
Switzerland won his second straight World Figure Skating Championships
title, in Calgary, Alberta.
(AP, 3/23/07)
2006 Mar 31, Swiss prosecutors
said they have filed charges against 19 former top executives and board
members of the defunct Swissair for their part in the national
airline's 2001 bankruptcy.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Apr 9, A Swiss investigator
has issued an international arrest warrant for Iran's former
intelligence chief in the killing of an exiled Iranian opposition
leader. It demands the arrest of Ali Fallahian, intelligence minister
from 1989-1997, on grounds he "decided and ordered the execution of
Kazem Rajavi." Rajavi was shot to death in Geneva in 1990.
(AP, 4/9/06)
2006 Jun 7, Swiss senator Dick
Marty, the head of an investigation into alleged CIA clandestine
prisons, said 14 European nations colluded with US intelligence in a
"spider's web" of secret flights and detention centers that violated
international human rights law. Marty asserted that at least 7 European
governments were complicit in the transports.
(AP, 6/7/06)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.49)
2006 Jun 19, Swiss chocolate-maker
Nestle AG said it will fatten up its weight-loss business by buying
Jenny Craig Inc. for $600 million.
(AP, 6/19/06)
2006 Jul 1, In Geneva developing
countries emerged from a failed World Trade Organization meeting more
united than ever and warned rich countries not to undermine the
development thrust of the Doha Round of global trade talks.
(AFP, 7/1/06)
2006 Jul 24, WTO members in Geneva
called a halt to more than five years of commerce liberalization talks
(the Doha talks) as differences over farm aid proved unbridgeable. The
25-nation EU criticized US intransigence over agricultural subsidies
for the breakdown, while the US blamed Brazil and India for being
inflexible on cutting barriers to industrial imports and the EU for
refusing to make deeper cuts in its farm import tariffs.
(AP, 7/24/06)
2006 Aug 9, A Justice Ministry
official said Swiss authorities will provide the US with details from
bank accounts US investigators suspect of being used for terrorist
funding.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Sep 14, The Swiss central
bank raised its key Libor interest rate by a quarter of a percentage
point to a range between 1.25% and 2.25% to dampen the threat of
inflation.
(AFP, 9/14/06)
2006 Sep 24, Swiss voters in a
national referendum backed tougher asylum rules put forth by justice
minister Christoph Blocher, despite fears that the new rules will deny
refugees a fair hearing. 68% approved a new immigration law which was
meant to tackle what authorities say is the lack of integration of many
foreigners into Swiss society.
(AP, 9/24/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.61)
2006 Oct 26, Sri Lanka's warring
parties arrived in Geneva for their first face-to-face meeting in eight
months as the EU racked up international pressure for a halt to ethnic
bloodshed.
(AP, 10/26/06)
2006 Oct 27, Swiss officials said
authorities have found enough evidence to seek a full investigation
into allegations the CIA was trying to obtain personal details of about
500 labor union members, most of them Arabs.
(AP, 10/27/06)
2006 Nov, Swiss-based Novartis,
the world’s 4th largest pharmaceutical company, announced plans to
invest $100 million in a new research facility in Shanghai.
(Econ, 11/11/06, p.72)
2006 Dec 8, In Basel, Switzerland,
a 3.4 magnitude tremor was accidentally triggered by engineers drilling
deep into the Earth's crust to tap its inner heat, in the world's
search for new sources of energy.
(AP, 8/4/07)
2007 Jan 22, Scientists warned
that glaciers will all but disappear from the Alps by 2050, and that
most would be gone by 2037.
(SFC, 1/23/07, p.A4)
2007 Jan 24, Some 2,400 registered
participants gathered at Davos, Switzerland, for the 4-day World
Economic Forum, whose theme this year was: "The Shifting Power
Equation."
(AP, 1/24/07)
2007 Jan 20, Richard Vollenweider
(1922-2007), Swiss scientist, died. He developed methods for
quantifying the eutrophication of freshwater. His methods were used to
save Lake Erie and helped form the basis of the 1972 Great Lakes Water
Quality Act.
(http://tinyurl.com/ygrc3p)(WSJ, 2/3/07, p.A8)
2007 Jan 27, In Switzerland major
powers at Davos agreed to resume global free trade talks. A meeting of
the world's top commercial powers yielded only a vague pledge of
commitment to global trade liberalization efforts, a disappointment
after business and political leaders called for progress in the World
Trade Organization talks.
(AP, 1/27/07)
2007 Feb 2, A ruling by
Switzerland's highest court opened up the possibility that people with
serious mental illnesses could be helped by doctors to take their own
lives.
(AP, 2/2/07)
2007 Feb 9, Bolivia’s Pres. Evo
Morales declared the Vinto tin smelter to be nationalized. Glencore,
the Swiss based owner, demanded compensation saying the seizure
violated a 1991 bilateral agreement between Bolivia and Switzerland.
(Econ, 2/17/07, p.40)
2007 Feb 13, In Geneva the US
clashed with China and Russia during a disarmament debate over how to
prevent an arms race in outer space, and Washington criticized Beijing
for its recent test of an anti-satellite missile. Russia and China, in
turn, condemned the "one state" that refuses to consider a treaty
banning space weapons, a reference to the US.
(AP, 2/13/07)
2007 Feb 28, A Swiss court
acquitted seven men of providing logistical support to a Saudi terror
cell in the first Swiss trial of alleged al-Qaida associates.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Mar 4, Avalanches killed at
least five skiers in the Swiss and French Alps following days of heavy
snow.
(AP, 3/5/07)
2007 Mar 9, A prominent Turkish
politician was convicted of breaching Swiss anti-racism laws by saying
that the early 20th-century killing of Armenians could not be described
as genocide. Perincek was charged with breaking Swiss law by denying
during a visit to Switzerland in 2005 that the World War I-era killings
of up to 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide. He was ordered to
pay a fine of $2,450 and was given a suspended penalty of $7,360.
(AP, 3/10/07)
2007 Mar 29, A Swiss man was
jailed for 10 years for insulting Thailand's revered king by
vandalizing his portraits during a drunken spree.
(AP, 3/29/07)
2007 Apr 12, The Swiss-based
Nestle SA, the world's biggest food and drink company, said it will buy
Gerber Products Co. from pharmaceutical maker Novartis SA for $5.5
billion, giving it the largest share of the global baby food market.
(AP, 4/12/07)
2007 Apr 10, In Switzerland
thieves stole jewelry worth about $825,000 from the Baselwood fair, the
world's biggest and most luxurious watch and jewelry fair.
(AP, 4/15/07)
2007 May 13, One of Switzerland's
central bankers said further increases in Swiss interest rates are
still on the cards, while also praising the management of the euro
currency.
(AP, 5/13/07)
2007 May 24, In Switzerland an
arson fire gutted the interior of Hekhal Haness Synagogue, Geneva's
largest synagogue.
(AP, 6/1/07)
2007 Jun 7, In Switzerland all 19
managers and consultants accused in the collapse of former national
carrier Swissair were acquitted and will receive compensation totaling
more than $2 million.
(AP, 6/7/07)
2007 Jun 14, The Swiss National
Bank raised interest rates by a quarter point.
(Econ, 6/16/07, p.80)
2007 Jun 15, Swiss officials
inaugurated the Loetschberg Base Tunnel, the world's longest overland
tunnel, a 34.6-kilometer-long (21-mile-long) rail link under the Alps
meant to ease highway traffic jams.
(AP, 6/15/07)
2007 Jun 20, In Switzerland 2
people accused of running al-Qaida-linked Web sites that showed the
slaying of hostages and gave details of how to make bombs and carry out
attacks went on trial. Moez Garsallaoui (39), a Tunisian based in
Switzerland, and Malika El Aroud 948), the Belgian-born widow of an
al-Qaida suicide bomber, appeared in court on charges that included
providing support for terrorists.
(AP, 6/20/07)
2007 Jun 27, A Swiss investigator
said European governments have built a "wall of silence" surrounding
their complicity with a CIA program that included holding terrorist
suspects in secret jails.
(AP, 6/27/07)
2007 Jul 3, The Alinghi team from
Switzerland successfully defended sailing's coveted America's Cup,
beating Emirates Team New Zealand 5-2.
(AP, 7/3/08)
2007 Jul 5, Peter Wuffli, chief
executive of UBS, a Swiss-based global bank, was dismissed. In May UBS
shut down a hedge-fund operation, which invested in American mortgages,
at a cost of $425 million.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.77)
2007 Jul 12, In the Swiss Alps 6
soldiers on an alpine training exercise were killed when an avalanche
sent them plummeting thousands of feet into a valley.
(AP, 7/12/07)
2007 Jul 23, An attempt to break
an aviation speed record went horribly wrong when a small
"experimental" plane crashed through an apartment building in the Swiss
city of Basel, killing the pilot and injuring at least three other
people.
(AP, 7/23/07)
2007 Sep 24, The Swiss drugmaker
Novartis AG said that the European Commission had approved its Exelon
skin patch to treat Alzheimer's disease.
(AP, 9/24/07)
2007 Oct 1, Swiss banking giant
UBS warned that the crisis in the US housing market had cost it around
4.0 billion Swiss francs, as it announced a major management shakeup
and plans to cut 1,500 jobs.
(AP, 10/1/07)
2007 Oct 18,
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced more than 1,200 job
losses in the US after its third quarter results weakened on sharper
competition from generic drugs.
(AP, 10/18/07)
2007 Oct 21,
A Swiss nationalist party rode an anti-immigrant wave to the best
showing of any party in parliamentary elections since 1919, while the
Greens made gains by appealing to environmental concerns. The Swiss
People's Party (SVP), led by justice minister Christoph Blocher, won 62
seats and received 29% of the vote, after a bitter campaign blaming
foreigners for much of the country's crime.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/22/07)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.62)
2007 Oct 21,
In Brazil activists trying to invade a 304-acre biotech seed
farm, owned by the Swiss firm Syngenta AG, clashed with guards
and at least two people were shot dead.
(AP, 10/22/07)
2007 Oct 21, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich
(86), a Jewish religious philosopher, died at his home in Basel, Switz.
He had escaped the Nazis and became a European bridge-builder between
Christians and Jews.
(AP, 10/24/07)
2007 Oct 30, Switzerland's largest
bank, UBS, reported its first quarterly loss in five years after its
third quarter results were hit in the financial crisis caused by the
ailing US home loans market.
(AP, 10/30/07)
2007 Nov 30, In Geneva the
International Red Cross said 7 countries including the US and Britain
have joined in a new move to ensure the safety of journalists in war
zones. France, Germany, Australia, Canada and Denmark also committed
themselves to accept a new nonbinding accord on protecting
correspondents in line with the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of
warfare.
(AP, 12/1/07)
2007 Dec 10, Swiss banking giant
UBS AG said it will write off a further $10 billion on losses in the US
subprime lending market and will raise capital by selling substantial
stakes to Singapore and an unnamed investor in the Middle East.
(AP, 12/10/07)
2008 Jan 6, In Zurich Sonntag
newspaper reported that Credit Suisse faces a fresh assets write-off of
2.5 billion Swiss francs (1.5 billion euros, $2.3 billion) from the US
sub-prime crisis.
(AP, 1/6/08)
2008 Jan 24, In Davos,
Switzerland, fears of world recession briefly took a back seat at the
World Economic Forum, where leaders from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq
focused on how to establish security in their volatile regions. Afghan
Pres. Karzai stressed how extremists used economic exploitation to
recruit bombers.
(AP, 1/24/08)(AFP, 1/24/08)
2008 Jan 24, In Switzerland the
country's supreme court said prosecutors acted within the law when they
froze funds belonging to the Russian central bank at the behest of a
Swiss firm. The funds were frozen over a legal dispute with
Geneva-based trading firm Noga dating back to the end of the Soviet era.
(AP, 1/24/08)
2008 Jan 25, At Davos,
Switzerland, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced at the World
Economic Forum that his foundation would give $306 million to use green
technology and farming techniques to boost millions out of hunger and
poverty.
(AP, 1/25/08)
2008 Jan 30, Subprime-related
problems at UBS AG mounted as the Swiss bank unveiled $4 billion in new
write-downs in a surprise statement and sank deep into the red for the
year, depressing its shares.
(AP, 1/30/08)
2008 Feb 6, In eastern Switzerland
2 paintings by Pablo Picasso worth nearly five million Swiss francs
(4.5 million dollars, 3.1 million euros) were stolen from a museum. The
two oil paintings, "Tete de Cheval" from 1962 and "Verre et pichet"
from 1944, were stolen from a cultural centre in the eastern town of
Pfaeffikon.
(AFP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 10, In Switzerland armed
robbers stole paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet worth
$163.2 million from the E.G. Buehrle Collection in Zurich, one of
Europe's finest private museums for Impressionist and
post-Impressionist art. 2 of the paintings were recovered in an
abandoned car on Feb 18.
(AP, 2/11/08)(AP, 2/19/08)
2008 Feb 14, In Switzerland UBS AG
posted a 4th-quarter net loss of $11.28 billion, and a loss for the
entire year, besieged by investments in US subprime mortgages. Chairman
Marcel Ospel announced his resignation on Feb 27.
(AP, 2/14/08)(Econ, 4/5/08, p.72)
2008 Apr 1, In Switzerland UBS
AG's chairman abruptly resigned as the Swiss bank reported a
first-quarter loss of $12.1 billion and said it would seek $15.1
billion in new capital.
(AP, 4/1/08)
2008 Apr 7, Switzerland's Novartis
AG said it will spend about $39 billion in a two-step bid for a
majority stake in U.S. eye-care company Alcon.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 23, Switzerland said it
had frozen the assets of a further 12 Iranian companies in accordance
with new UN sanctions aimed at stopping Tehran's alleged nuclear
program.
(AP, 4/23/08)
2008 Apr 29, Albert Hofmann (102),
the father of the mind-altering drug LSD, died. His medical discovery
inspired, and arguably corrupted, millions in the 1960s hippie
generation. The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25
in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat
and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel. He became
the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the
substance seeped onto his finger during a laboratory experiment on
April 16, 1943. Hofmann to LSD for the last time when he was 97.
(AP, 4/30/08)(Econ, 5/31/08, p.21)
2008 May 6, Swiss bank UBS, hard
hit by the US subprime crisis, reported a first-quarter loss of $10.97
billion and said it will slash almost 7 percent of its work force.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 14, A Swiss pilot
strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane for the first
public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and
soaring high above the Alps.
(AP, 5/15/08)
2008 Jun 1, Voters in Switzerland
rejected a plan to give local communities the power to decide which
immigrants should be granted Swiss citizenship. Currently, after living
at least 12 years on Swiss soil, foreigners who wish to acquire Swiss
citizenship face a naturalization procedure that includes a knowledge
of the country's traditions, history and culture.
(AFP, 6/1/08)
2008 Jun 4, Swiss pharmaceutical
Novartis announced it had bought Protez Pharmaceuticals for $100
million (64.8 million euros), thus acquiring the rights to a new
antibiotic.
(AP, 6/4/08)
2008 Jun 19, Bradley Birkenfeld, a
former UBS executive, pleaded guilty to helping clients hide hundreds
of millions of dollars and evade US taxes in a case that is part of a
probe into whether the Swiss banking giant did the same for other
wealthy individuals.
(AP, 6/19/08)(Econ, 7/5/08, p.79)
2008 Jun 26, Swiss police said
they have arrested about 30 people in a crackdown on a large drug
trafficking network.
(AP, 6/27/08)
2008 Jul 9, German investigators
carried out raids on 600 homes in Austria, Switzerland and Germany
seeking chemicals used to produce an illicit date-rape drug.
(AP, 7/9/08)
2008 Jul 15, In Switzerland
Hannibal Kadhafi (32), the son of Libya’s leader, was arrested along
with his wife Aline at a luxury hotel in Geneva after the servants, a
Moroccan and a Tunisian, alleged they had been abused by the couple.
The 2-day detention led to reprisals by Libya. The servants later
dropped their legal complaints after receiving some compensation.
(AP, 9/2/08)
2008 Jul 17, An official of the
Swiss bank UBS announced that it was halting its offshore banking
services for US citizens after it came under scathing criticism for
facilitating massive tax evasion.
(AFP, 7/18/08)
2008 Jul 21, Swiss pharmaceutical
giant Roche offered 43.7 billion dollars to acquire the remaining
shares in US subsidiary Genentech, the bio-tech pioneer underpinning
its dominance of the cancer treatment market.
(AP, 7/21/08)
2008 Jul 24, Libya said it will
halt fuel supplies to key oil client Switzerland in the latest reprisal
for last week's brief detention in Geneva of a son of Libyan leader
Moamer Kadhafi.
(AFP, 7/24/08)
2008 Aug 8, UBS AG agreed to buy
back $19 billion in auction rate securities improperly sold as
higher-rate equivalents for super-safe money market funds.
(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.A1)
2008 Aug 8, The Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) near Geneva, began initial tests.
(Econ, 8/2/08,
p.78)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider)
2008 Aug 20, Swedish wireless
equipment maker LM Ericsson AB and Swiss chip-maker STMicroelectronics
NV unveiled plans to create a 50-50 joint venture that will make a key
component known as chipsets for mobile phones.
(AP, 8/20/08)
2008 Sep 3, Swiss prosecutors said
police have broken up an Internet child pornography ring operating in
at least four European countries where men exchanged details about
their contacts with young girls. In all investigators said they had
identified 600 people in Germany, 40 in Austria, 13 in Switzerland and
four in Liechtenstein using the forum.
(AP, 9/3/08)
2008 Sep 10, In Geneva the Large
Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle collider, passed its
first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions
around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring in what scientists
hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the
universe. On Sep 19 it started leaking helium and had to be turned off.
The technical problems delayed for at least two months the quest for
scientists to learn more about the nature of the universe and the
origins of all matter.
(AP, 9/10/08)(AP, 9/20/08)(Econ, 9/27/08, p.96)
2008 Sep 10, Ruedi Rymann (75), a
farmer and cheesemaker and renowned yodeler, died at his home in
Giswil, Switzerland. In 2007 Viewers of a Swiss television series
devoted to popular national music voted Rymann’s “Dr Schacher Seppli”
as the greatest Swiss hit of all.
(SFC, 10/9/08,
p.B8)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmsy6wA-T0o)
2008 Sep 26, Yves Rossy of
Switzerland leapt from a plane and into the record books, crossing the
English channel in 13 minutes on a homemade jet-propelled wing.
(AP, 9/26/08)
2008 Oct 6, Switzerland's top
prosecutor charged 10 people with laundering more than US$1 billion
dollars (1.349 billion euros) during a decade-long mafia cigarette
smuggling operation. Authorities said they broke up the smuggling ring
in 2004.
(AP, 10/6/08)
2008 Oct 7, Harvard Univ. said
medical device billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, chairman of Swiss-based
Synthes Inc., had donated $125 million, the largest one-time gift in
the history of the school. In 2004 Wyss had donated $25 million to
support doctoral programs at Harvard.
(WSJ, 10/8/08, p.A6)
2008 Oct 8, Six central banks
jolted markets by cutting interest rates together in an attempt to
shore up confidence in the world's crisis-stricken financial system.
The US Fed reduced its key rate from 2% to 1.5%. The Bank of England
unexpectedly slashed its key lending rate by a half-point to 4.5%. The
Bank of Canada cut its key interest rate by 50 basis points to 2.5%.
China also cut its key interest rates for a second time in less than
one month to 6.9%. The European Central Bank sliced its rate by half a
point to 3.75%. Sweden, and Switzerland also cut rates. Earlier in a
day Japan's Nikkei showed its biggest drop since the October, 1987
stock market crash. The IMF said the world economy is entering a major
downturn.
(AP, 10/8/08)(AFP, 10/8/08)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.100)
2008 Oct 9, The Libyan oil company
Tamoil said the Libyan government has again decided to halt oil
deliveries to Switzerland.
(AFP, 10/9/08)
2008 Oct 10, The Libyan news
agency JANA said Libya will withdraw $7 billion of assets in Swiss
banks, cut economic ties with Switzerland and stop supplying it with
oil to protest against poor treatment of Libyan diplomats and
businessmen.
(AP, 10/10/08)
2008 Oct 12, Pope Benedict XVI
gave the Roman Catholic church four new saints, including an Indian
woman whose canonization is seen as a morale boost to Christians in
India who have suffered Hindu violence. They included Sister Alphonsa
(1910-1946) of the Immaculate Conception, a nun from southern India and
India’s first woman saint; Gaetano Errico (1791-1860), a Neapolitan
priest who founded a missionary order in the 19th century; Sister Maria
Bernarda, born as Verena Buetler (1848-1924) in Switzerland, who worked
as a nun in Ecuador and Colombia; and Narcisa de Jesus Martillo Moran
(1832-1869), a 19th century laywoman from Ecuador who helped the sick
and the poor.
(AP, 10/12/08)
2008 Oct 13, Swiss authorities
said they have found high concentrations of melamine in biscuits from
Thailand and Sri Lanka and have called on other European countries to
withdraw the products.
(AP, 10/13/08)
2008 Oct 13, Stock markets
rejoiced after governments worldwide launched multibillion-dollar
bailouts to shore up banks, and Britain called for a new Bretton Woods
agreement to reshape the world financial system. The US Central Bank
said it would provide unlimited dollars the European Central Bank, the
Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank. Britain committed
£37 billion ($64 billion) to capitalize its big banks. Wall
Street rebounded with the biggest stock rally since the Great
Depression. The DJIA rose 936 points to close at 9,387.61, its largest
point gain ever and one of its largest percentage increases.
(Reuters, 10/13/08)(SFC, 10/14/08, p.A1)(WSJ,
10/14/08, p.A3)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.83)
2008 Oct 30, A Swiss court
convicted 2 brothers from Kosovo of running a massive drug smuggling
ring that prosecutors said supplied Western Europe with up to half of
its heroin. Ragip and Kemal Shabani channeled 1.5 tons of heroin
through Europe from the mid-1990s until 2003, when they were shut down.
(AP, 10/30/08)
2008 Nov 1, Jacques Piccard
(b.1922), a scientist and underwater explorer who plunged deeper
beneath the ocean than any other man, died in Geneva, Switzerland.
(AP, 11/1/08)
2008 Oct 10, Heinz Imhof, known as
the Father of Syngenta, died, He orchestrated the 2000 merger of the
crop-protection and seeds divisions of Switzerland’s Novartis AG and
Anglo-Swedish Astra-Zeneca PLC, creating Sygenta, the biggest
agrichemical business in the world.
(WSJ, 11/8/08, p.A6)
2008 Nov 12, US prosecutors
charged Raoul Weil, a senior executive of Swiss bank UBS AG, of helping
some 20,000 rich clients evade federal income taxes on assets of some
$20 billion from 2002-2007.
(WSJ, 11/13/08, p.A1)
2008 Nov 18, Spanish artist Miquel
Barcelo unveiled his lavish, $23 million ceiling painting at the
European headquarters of the United Nations in Switzerland, a project
that has evoked controversy over its hefty price tag.
(AP, 11/18/08)
2008 Nov 20, Switzerland’s central
bank cut its benchmark interest by a full percentage point, the latest
in a global round of aggressive rate cuts amid stuttering economic
growth.
(WSJ, 11/21/08, p.A16)
2008 Nov 27, Switzerland reached
an agreement wit the EU to join the European Union's passport-free
travel zone effective next month.
(AP, 11/27/08)
2008 Nov 30, A pioneering Swiss
program to give addicts government-authorized heroin was overwhelmingly
approved, according to projections that showed voters simultaneously
rejecting the decriminalization of marijuana.
(AP, 11/30/08)
2008 Dec 2, In Switzerland Alex
Widmer (52), head of private banking at Julius Baer Holding AG,
committed suicide.
(www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/05/europe/baer.php)(WSJ, 2/2/09, p.C4)
2009 Jan 9, Lithuania’s FlyLAL
airline, privatized in 2005, announced that SCH Swiss Capital Holdings,
a Switzerland-based firm, has purchased it for $1 million and debt of
about 1 million euros. On Jan 17 FlyLAL airline said it has suspended
its operations after a buyout deal by Swiss investment firm SCH Swiss
Capital Holdings failed.
(AP, 1/9/09)(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 15, Swiss pharmaceutical
giant Novartis AG said it has secured a $486 million contract to build
a new flu vaccine plant in North Carolina.
(AP, 1/15/09)
2009 Jan 15, A Luxembourg court
ordered Swiss bank UBS AG to pay French financial company Oddo &
Cie euro30 million ($40 million) it had invested in a fund linked to
the alleged fraud perpetrated by US financier Bernard Madoff.
(AP, 1/15/09)
2009 Jan 21, Germany banned the
production, sale or possession of a synthetic marijuana-like drug known
as "Spice," effective as of Jan 22, becoming the 4th nation to ban the
substance, marketed as an herbal room-freshener, after Austria, the
Netherlands and Switzerland.
(AP, 1/21/09)
2009 Jan 28, In Switzerland some
2,500 business and political leaders met at Davos for the World
Economic Forum, as the worst financial crisis since the Great
Depression served to mute the enthusiasm of previous years. China’s
Premier Wen Jiabao and Russia’s PM Vladimir Putin blamed the US-led
financial system for the global economic slump.
(AP, 1/28/09)(WSJ, 1/29/09, p.A1)
2009 Jan 29, Swiss police said
they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation last year while using
Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping software.
They arrested 16 people and seized 1.1 tons (1.2 US tons) of marijuana
as well as cash and valuables worth 900,000 Swiss francs ($780,000).
(AP, 1/29/09)
2009 Jan 29, At the economic forum
in Davos, Switzerland, Israel’s Pres. Peres (85) traded accusations
with Turkey’s PM Erdogan, who declared: “You kill people,” and
criticized Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Erdogan stalked off stage after
being cut short during the exchange.
(SFC, 1/30/09, p.A4)(WSJ, 1/30/09, p.A1)
2009 Jan 31, In Geneva,
Switzerland, riot police fired tear gas after some 1000 demonstrators
began throwing bottles protesting against the annual World Economic
Forum meeting at Davos.
(AP, 1/31/09)
2009 Jan, Four tourists, two
Swiss, a German and a Briton, were kidnapped on the Mali-Niger border.
They were transferred to Al-Qaida's North Africa branch, which asked
for a ransom and the release of a radical Islamist preacher held in
Britain. A Swiss and a German tourist were released in April. Edwin
Dyer of Britain, was killed by his captors on May 31. The 2nd Swiss
citizen, Werner Greiner, was released in July.
(AP, 4/23/09)(AP, 7/12/09)
2009 Feb 1, In Switzerland the
5-day World Economic Forum at Davos ended with the realization that the
depth of the global financial crises is still unknown and that the
solution remains elusive.
(SFC, 2/2/09, p.A10)
2009 Feb 8, Voters in Switzerland
approved an expanded labor deal with the European Union that allows
Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the Alpine republic.
(AP, 2/8/09)
2009 Feb 9, In Switzerland Paula
Oliviera (26), a lawyer from Brazil, claimed she was attacked by three
skinheads, one with a Nazi symbol tattooed on the back of his head,
outside a Zurich train station. On Feb 13 investigators said was
not pregnant and probably cut wounds into herself.
(AP, 2/13/09)
2009 Feb 19, Banking giant UBS
said it has agreed to pay $780 million and turn over once-secret Swiss
banking records to settle allegations it conspired to defraud the US
government of taxes owed by thousands of American clients.
(AP, 2/19/09)
2009 Feb 20, Banking details of
eight American clients of Switzerland's largest bank were sent to US
authorities along with the names of more than 240 other American
clients of UBS. A Swiss court order blocking the move came too late to
stop the action.
(AP, 2/21/09)
2009 Mar 9, Helg Sgarbi, a man
dubbed "the Swiss gigolo" by the German media, was sentenced to six
years in prison for defrauding BMW heiress Susanne Klatten (46),
Germany's richest woman, of euro7 million ($9 million) and attempting
to blackmail her for tens of millions more.
(AP, 3/9/09)
2009 Mar 12, Swiss pharmaceutical
giant Roche agreed to pay $46.8 billion to buy the 44 percent of
biotech pioneer Genentech that it doesn't already own, ending a long
corporate struggle with its US-based cancer drug partner.
(AP, 3/12/09)
2009 Mar 13, The Swiss government
said it would cooperate on cases of international tax evasion, breaking
with a long-standing tradition of protecting wealthy foreigners accused
of hiding billions of dollars in the Alpine nation.
(AP, 3/13/09)
2009 Apr 3, The Swiss central bank
said UBS has transferred its final installment of toxic assets to a
special state aid fund, bringing the total to 38.7 billion dollars.
(AP, 4/3/09)
2009 Apr 6, The US Federal Reserve
said it will supply new lines of credit worth up to $287 billion to the
central banks of Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and EU.
(AP, 4/6/09)
2009 Apr 12, The Pritzker jury
named Peter Zumthor (65), a Swiss architect, as the 2009 winner of the
Pritzker Architecture Prize.
(AFP, 4/12/09)(SFC, 4/13/09, p.A7)
2009 Apr 20, A UN racism
conference opened in Geneva. Iran’s Pres. Ahmadinejad accused Israel of
being the "most cruel and racist regime," sparking a walkout by angry
Western diplomats. The US, Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy,
Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland boycotted the conference out of
concern that it could be used by Muslim countries to criticize Israel
and to limit free speech when it comes to criticizing their religion.
(AP, 4/19/09)(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 21, In Geneva over 100
countries agreed on a declaration to combat racism and related forms of
intolerance worldwide. The US was not among them, prompting sharp
criticism from African-American groups participating in the UN's second
global conference on racism.
(AP, 4/21/09)
2009 Laurent Keller, Swiss prof.
of ecology, and Elisabeth Gordon authored “The Lives of Ants.” The
englis translation was by James Grieve.
(Econ, 4/11/09, p.85)
2009 Apr 26, Voters in the heart
of the Swiss Alps passed legislation banning naked hiking after dozens
of mostly German nudists started rambling through their picturesque
region.
(AP, 4/26/09)
2009 May 12, In Switzerland a rare
7.03-carat blue diamond sold for 9.3 million Swiss francs (more than
$8.4 million), the highest price ever for a gem of its kind, according
to Sotheby's.
(AP, 5/12/09)
2009 May 29, In Geneva a 65-nation
Conference on Disarmament broke a dozen years of deadlock and opened
the way to negotiate a new nuclear arms control treaty.
(AP, 5/29/09)
2009 May 29, In Argentina Swiss
architect Peter Zumthor (66) received the 2009 Pritzker Architecture
Prize. He compared his creative process to the arc of a love affair.
(AP, 5/30/09)
2009 Jun 12, Swiss pharmaceuticals
company Novartis AG said it has successfully produced a first batch of
swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of expectations.
(AP, 6/12/09)
2009 Jun 26, In Switzerland Solar
Impulse, a project run by aviators Bertrand Piccard and Andre
Borschberg, unveiled a prototype solar powered airplane, the HB-SIA.
(AP, 6/26/09)(Econ, 6/13/09, p.83)
2009 Jun 28, Swiss police said
they have uncovered a child pornography ring involving more than 2,000
people in 78 countries.
(AP, 6/28/09)
2009 Jul 1, Switzerland said it
had refused a request to extradite a Rwandan national wanted in his own
country for alleged genocide and war crimes. Other European countries
have also refused extradition requests arguing that suspects cannot at
present receive a fair trial in the country.
(AFP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 8, Switzerland's
government said it would forbid the Swiss bank UBS AG from complying
with any court-ordered transfer of data on tens of thousands of
American clients to the US government, and would consider seizing
documents to prevent that.
(AP, 7/8/09)
2009 Jul 10, In Switzerland
British conductor Edward Downes (b.1924) died with his wife Joan (74)
at an assisted suicide clinic. He was a longtime stalwart at the Royal
Opera and maestro of the first-ever performance at Sydney's iconic
Opera House.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 12, Swiss police divers
harpooned a zander fish, which was 70 centimeters (two feet three
inches) long and weighed eight kilos (17.5 pounds), after it bit six
swimmers over the weekend in Lac Majeur.
(AFP, 7/13/09)
2009 Aug 3, In Switzerland there
was an arson attack at Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella's lodge in Bach,
Austria. An attack on his mother's grave took place a week earlier. The
next day drug maker Novartis said animal rights militants were
responsible.
(AP, 8/4/09)
2009 Aug 14, A Swiss court backed
the government's plan to give aid agencies 7 million Swiss francs ($6
million) seized from bank accounts linked to Haiti's former dictator
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The Duvalier family, which wants to
reclaim the money, can now appeal the case to Switzerland's highest
court. The accounts have been blocked since 2002.
(AP, 8/14/09)
2009 Aug 19, Swiss banking giant
UBS AG agreed to turn over to the IRS the details of 4,450 accounts
suspected of holding undeclared assets by American customers, piercing
Switzerland's long-standing tradition of banking secrecy.
(AP, 8/19/09)
2009 Aug 20, Swiss President
Hans-Rudolf Merz and Libyan PM al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi signed an
accord pledging to restore relations between the two countries and to
have Hannibal Gadhafi July 15, 2008, arrest examined by a joint
arbitration tribunal in London. The next day Merz defended his apology
to Libya for the arrest of Moammar Gadhafi's son, saying it was the
only way to secure the release of two Swiss citizens detained by
Tripoli.
(AP, 8/21/09)
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Subject = Switzerland
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