On March 12, ...... 1918 (90 years ago today), Elaine Marie Catherine Fried was born in Brooklyn, New York. A student of art, she married the Netherlands-born painter Willem de Kooning in 1943, though the couple spent much of their marriage apart. Elaine de Kooning is known for her own sculpture and painting; in particular, her portraits of luminaries like U.S. President John F. Kennedy (here), not to mention the self-portrait at right. (credit) An art critic as well as an artist, the chain-smoker died from lung cancer in 1989.
... 1938 (70 years ago today), Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, stood clad in a brown stormtrooper uniform, stood in an open car as it drove into Austria's capital, Vienna. The next day he proclaimed that the "Anschluss" -- unification of German-speaking Austria with Nazi Germany -- was complete. Installed to govern the country, now deemed a Third Reich province, was Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who would be hanged following conviction as a war criminal in 1946 by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
