On August 9

On this day in ...
… 1942, Edith Stein (left), known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was executed in Auschwitz. (photo credit) Born in 1891 to a Jewish family, Stein converted to Roman Catholicism in 1921. She took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in 1933, and entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery, where she wrote her metaphysical masterwork Finite and Eternal Being. On July 20, 1942, the Dutch Bishops' Conference had a public statement read in all the churches of the Netherlands condemning Nazi racism. On July 26, 1942, all Jewish converts, who had previously been spared, were ordered arrested. Stein was among those who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Stein was beatified as a martyr on May 1, 1987 by Pope John Paul II, and canonized by him on October 11, 1998.
… 1942, Indian leader, Mohandas Gandhi (far right) was arrested in Bombay by British forces, launching the Quit India Movement. (photo credit) By 1942, Indians were divided over World War II, as the British Governor-General of India had unilaterally and without consultation entered India into the war. On July 14, 1942, the Indian National Congress, including Gandhi (and Jawaharlal Nehru, near right), passed a resolution threatening massive civil disobedience if their demands for complete independence from Britain were not heeded. On August 8, Gandhi told Indians to follow non-violent civil disobedience and to act as an independent nation. Less than twenty-four hours after Gandhi's speech, almost the entire Congress leadership was put into confinement.
(Prior August 9 posts are here and here.)

On February 10, ...

... 1947, Louise Arbour (right) was born in Montréal, Canada. A professor at the Osgood Hall Law School, York University in Toronto, Canada, beginning in 1970, she became a judge in 1987, serving 1st at the Supreme Court of Ontario (High Court of Justice) and then at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. In 1996, the U.N. Security Council appointed her Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda; she resigned 3 years later to join Canada's Supreme Court. Since 2004 she has been U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Arbour made news Friday when she stated that "[t]he controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture." Referring to the international arrest warrant issued in 1998 against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Arbour added that "[v]iolators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations:

'There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of redress.'

... 1952, the Congress Party won victory in India's 1st general election, a result that made its leader, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister.

On August 15,...

... 1947 (60 years ago today), India won "long sought independence" from Britain, which transferred sovereignty "to the two dominions into which that land of 400,000,000 persons has been divided, India and Pakistan." Jawaharlal Nehru became the 1st Prime Minister of India. In Pakistan, which had won independence the day before, Mohammed Ali Jinnah was sworn in as Governor General. Violence spawned by the partition continued, however, a fact that the New York Times' reporter feared "cast a grim shadow over future." See an August 1947 newsreel on the events here.
... 1938, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cal.) was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
... 1937 (70 years ago today), U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) was born in Chicago.