His second request for parole was denied in 2006, after service of 30 years, although the others in the group had already been free for at least 17 years. After this parole denial, Croatian government along with the Croatian Helsinki Committee, launched a campaign to secure his release on humanitarian grounds, arguing that Bušić had served out his sentence and therefore should be released.
Bušić spent his last two years of imprisonment at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, transferred there from Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
Croatian National Resistance (Otpor) idealized Bušićes and their gang. Marin Sopta, the former North American Otpor leader, said: "The Bušićes were our heroes. They did more to promote the Croatian cause than anyone else". Sopta visited Zvonko Bušić regularly when he was serving time in Pennsylvania.
Bušić was granted parole in July 2008 and turned over to immigration authorities for deportation proceedings. A condition of his parole was that he could not return to the U.S.
Freeing this terrorist from a life sentence and shipping him to his homeland caused the disgust of relatives of the city cop he murdered more than 30 years ago.
Lt. Terence McTigue, who was blinded in the blast that killed Murray, had spoken against the release of Bušić and his crew at earlier parole hearings but, he said, he was never notified of the last, fateful one. McTigue saw this event as a political favor done for the Croatian government and said, "It is like killing Brian Murray and injuring me all over again." Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) protested Bušić's release without hearing from the victims, to Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Zvonko Bušić had been the object of suspicion of many of those who looked into the La Guardia bombing which happened on December 29 1975. The suspicion was raised by Lt. McTigue, Edwin T. Dreher, who, as a deputy police chief at the time, was put in charge of solving this case, Frank McDarby, a detective who interrogated Zvonko Bušić in an F.B.I. office 33 years ago; the crime writer Kevin F. McMurray, who spoke with Zvonko Bušić for three hours in 1997 in a visitors’ room at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pa.; and Robert K. Tanenbaum, a former prosecutor from the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Each of them reviewed this case anew and wondered anew if Zvonko Bušić escaped punishment for one of the biggest unsolved terrorist acts in the USA. Zvonko Bušić denied any involvement in the La Guardia bombing. But Lt. McTigue was struck by the similarities in the two bombings:
"Both bombs were in a public locker in a transportation facility, a few days after a holiday, and both were large and heavy," Mr. McTigue said. He noted that both devices utilized dynamite and "a 9-volt battery, possibly for a lantern."
Bušić died by suicide on 1 September 2013 with firearm in his apartment near Zadar, Croatia. He was discovered by his wife Julienne.
Luna 1
Luna 1 (also known as the First Cosmic Ship, Cosmic Rocket and Mechta (, Literal translation: "Dream")) was a space probe of the Soviet Union. It was the first mission in the Luna programme and it was the first spacecraft to reach the Moon. Luna 1 made some key scientific discoveries and it is one of the best achievements of the Soviet Union space programme.
The spacecraft was sphere-shaped. Five antennae came out of one end. Instrument ports came out of the surface of the sphere. It also had various metallic emblems with the Soviet coat of arms.
Luna 1 had radio equipment, a tracking transmitter and a telemetering system for communication with Earth. The spacecraft carried several scientific devices too. These included a magnetometer, a device for measuring magnetic fields, a scintillation counter, a device for detecting high energy particles and a geiger counter, a device for measuring radiation. Luna 1 also carried a micrometeorite detector and other equipment.
The space probe was launched on January 2, 1959 at Baikonur Cosmodrome by a SS-6 Sapwood rocket. The launch was successful and Luna 1 became the first man-made object ever to reach the escape velocity of the Earth.
On January 3, 1959, the spacecraft released a cloud of sodium gas so that astronomers could track the probe and also to serve as an experiment on the behaviour of gas in space.
Luna 1 was intended to impact the Moon's surface. However, on January 4, 1959, it passed within 5995 km of the Moon and began to orbit the Sun between the orbits of Earth and Mars, where it is still orbiting now, on a 450 day orbit. Thus, Luna 1 became the first spacecraft to orbit the Sun.
Lyonel Feininger
Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871– January 13, 1956) was a German-American painter. He also drew cartoons (caricaturist).
Lyonel Feininger's father was the German violinist Karl Feininger. His mother was the American singer Elizabeth Feininger. Feininger grew up in New York City.
Feininger married Clara Fürst, the daughter of the painter Gustav Fürst. They had two daughters. He also had several children with Julia Berg whom he later married. His sons, Andreas Feininger and T. Lux Feininger, both became artists. Andreas was a photographer and T. Lux became a photographer and a painter.
He moved to Berlin in 1887 to study at the Königliche Akademie Berlin under Ernst Hancke. Then he studied at art schools in Berlin with Karl Schlabitz, and in Paris with sculptor Filippo Colarossi. He started as a caricaturist in 1894 for several German, French and American magazines. These included "Harper's Round Table", "Harper's Young People", "Humoristische Blätter", "Lustige Blätter", "Das Narrenschiff", "Berliner Tageblatt" and "Ulk".
In February of 1906, James Keeley, editor of The "Chicago Tribune" traveled to Germany. He was looking for artists to draw cartoons for his newspaper. He recruited Feininger to draw two comic strips ("The Kin-der-Kids" and "Wee Willie Winkie's World") for the "Chicago Tribune". People liked the comic strips for their humor and experimental drawing style. Fenininger also worked as a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for various newspapers and magazines in both the USA and Germany. Later, Art Spiegelman wrote in "The New York Times Book Review," that Feininger's comics have “achieved a breathtaking formal grace unsurpassed in the history of the medium.”
Feininger's art was chosen to be a part of the annual Berlin Secession art show in the years 1901 through 1903.
Feininger started to work as a fine artist at the age of 36. He was a member of the "Berliner Sezession" in 1909. He was associated with expressionist group Die Brücke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919, the Blaue Reiter circle and The Blue Four. When Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Germany in 1919, Feininger became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop. He designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist woodcut 'cathedral'. He taught at the Bauhaus for several years. Among the students who attended his workshops were Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (German/Australian, 1893–1965), Hans Friedrich Grohs (German 1892 - 1981) and Margarete Koehler-Bittkow (German/American, 1898–1964)
In 1933, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. Feininger's wife was partly Jewish, and they decided to leave Germany. The Nazi Party declared his work to be "degenerate." They moved to America after his work was exhibited in the 'degenerate art' ("Entartete Kunst") in 1936, but before the 1937 exhibition in Munich. After moving to the United States, Feininger taught at Black Mountain College.
In addition to drawing, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in front of drawn backgrounds.
Feininger also worked sometimes as a pianist and composer. Music historians still keep several of Feininger's piano compositions and fugues for organ.
Margaret Olley