On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Brokers are increasingly bringing in design consulants to give homes more polished look so they sell faster and for more; 'stagers,' also known as 'home enhancers' or 'fluffers,' will usually work with homeowner's furniture, perhaps adding few outside pieces; seek to strip much of owner's personality from property; photos (M)
Pres Bush's paradoxical relationship with Wall Street discussed; Bush, grandson and nephew of patrician East Coast bankers, campaigns at time like prairie populist, while raising millions of dollars from Wall St to finance campaigns; pursues pro-Wall Street fiscal policies, but has kept bankers at arm's length in his administration; Wall St seems equally conflicted over Bush, providing much financing for Republican National Convention while openly debating Bush's policies; graph of campaign contributions by employees of financial firms; drawing; photo (M)
Article on use of focus groups by political campaigns to determine what language provides best spin to their issues; photo (M)
Article holds that negative political advertisements work; while voters say they want candidates to stay positive, they respond more readily to attack ads; Pres Bush has already spent majority of over $100 million he has spent on television ads attacking John Kerry, and liberal groups have spent over $60 million bashing Bush; photos (M)
In Najaf, Moktadr al-Sadr has shown how cleric with dedicated militia and grasp of Shiite street politics can confront US power; in Baghdad, Ayad Allawi has used his place as Iraq's interim prime minister to warn Sadr that time for his insurrection is running out; Sadr and Allawi are each seeking path to power in Iraq that will eventually emerge from turmoil that has followed downfall of Saddam Hussein; photos (M)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of August 18, 2004, covering August 22, 2004.
Ashlee Simpson
Various Artists
Jimmy Buffett
Usher
Gretchen Wilson
2004Konstantin Aseev, Russian chess player and trainer (born 1960)[†]
Konstantin Aseev was a Russian chess Grandmaster and trainer.
2004Angus Bethune, Australian soldier and politician, 33rd Premier of Tasmania (born 1908)[†]
Sir Walter Angus Bethune was an Australian politician and member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly. He was Premier of Tasmania from 26 May 1969 to 3 May 1972.
2004Daniel Petrie, Canadian director and producer (born 1920)[†]
Daniel Mannix Petrie was a Canadian film, television, and stage director who worked in Canada, Hollywood, and the United Kingdom; known for directing grounded human dramas often dealing with taboo subject matter. He was one of several Canadian-born expatriate filmmakers, including Norman Jewison and Sidney J. Furie, to find critical and commercial success overseas in the 1960s due to the limited opportunities in the Canadian film industry at the time. He was the patriarch of the Petrie filmmaking family, with four of his children all working in the film industry.
2004Versions of The Scream and Madonna, two paintings by Edvard Munch, are stolen at gunpoint from a museum in Oslo, Norway.[†]
The Scream is an art composition created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. The Norwegian name of the piece is Skrik ('Scream'), and the German title under which it was first exhibited is Der Schrei der Natur. The agonized face in the painting has become one of the most iconic images in art, seen as symbolizing the anxiety of the human condition. Munch's work, including The Scream, had a formative influence on the Expressionist movement.
In 2004, the world population was approximately 6,503,377,772 people[†]