3 ottobre

After Loyalist and Haudenosaunee raids on the frontier, Washington ordered “the total destruction and devastation of their settlements”. Sullivan’s army burned about 40 towns of the Seneca and Cayuga and their crops. Thousands of refugees spent a bitter winter near Fort Niagara, where many died.…

Seward finds Renfield on his cell floor “in a glittering pool of blood”, and as he dies he tells them he fought the Count to keep him from Mina: “I didn’t mean Him to take any more of her life, till I saw His eyes.” At the Harkers’ door the party breaks in and finds the Count and Mina: Jonathan…

In the dining-room of the Piccadilly house the party has found “eight boxes only out of the nine”. While they wait for Godalming and Morris to come back from the other houses, the Count walks in; Harker’s kukri cuts his coat open and bank-notes and gold fall out; he leaps through the window and…

“As I must do something or go mad, I write this diary.” Jonathan records what the day holds: the party sterilises the earth-boxes at Carfax by laying a piece of the Sacred Wafer in each, then goes for the Piccadilly boxes. Van Helsing touches Mina’s forehead with a piece of Wafer and it burns a…

Lord Godalming and Quincey Morris go to fetch a locksmith, so that Jonathan, a solicitor, need not risk the Law Society’s displeasure, and the other three wait on a bench in the Green Park. The smith opens the door of the empty house under the eyes of a policeman, “not a soul took the slightest…

Jonathan thinks the day will never end. All they know is that one earth-box remains and the Count alone knows where. He swears that if Mina must become a vampire, “she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone.”

A packed meeting raised money for refugee scholars. He spoke for the freedom of learning and never named Germany. Four days later he left Europe for good.

AtlantisSpace Shuttle Atlantis

OV-104. 33 missions, from a classified Defense Department flight to the last of all. It launched the Magellan and Galileo probes, docked with Mir seven times and made the final visit to Hubble.

At midnight the flag of the Federal Republic went up in front of the Reichstag, and East Germany ceased to exist. Moscow had agreed, in the Two Plus Four Treaty, to let a united Germany stay in NATO.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program had two years to commit its money. It was meant to buy bad mortgage assets and bought almost none: most of it went into banks’ shares, AIG, the car makers and homeowners’ loans.

The House passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act 263–171 and President Bush signed it the same afternoon. It released 250 billion dollars at once and the rest of the 700 billion in stages.

A new tax ruling made Wachovia’s losses worth more to a buyer. Wells Fargo offered about 15 billion dollars for the whole company, with no government help, and Wachovia’s board dropped Citi.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program had two years to commit its money. It was meant to buy bad mortgage assets and bought almost none: most of it went into banks’ shares, AIG, the car makers and homeowners’ loans.

Two years to the day after it was signed, the Treasury’s authority to make new commitments ran out. By the Treasury’s later count TARP paid out about 426 billion dollars and got back about 442 billion.