Walter J. Ong

Reverend Walter Jackson Ong, Ph.D. (November 30, 1912 – August 12, 2003), was a thinker known today as an honorary guru among technophiles. He was a Jesuit priest, professor of English literature, cultural and religious historian, linguist, and philosopher.

Biography

Walter Jackson Ong, Jr. was born in Kansas City, Missouri to a Protestant father and a Roman Catholic mother; he was raised as a Roman Catholic. In 1933 he received a bachelor of arts degree from Rockhurst College, where he majored in Latin. He worked in printing and publishing prior entering the Society of Jesus in 1935. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1946. In 1941 Ong earned a master's degree in English at Saint Louis University. His thesis on sprung rhythm in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (see An Ong Reader, 2002: 111-74) was supervised by the young Canadian Marshall McLuhan, who was working at that time on his Cambridge University dissertation on Thomas Nashe and the verbal arts. Ong also received the degrees Licentiate of Philosophy and Licentiate of Sacred Theology from Saint Louis University. After completing his massively researched dissertation on Peter Ramus (1515-1572) and Ramism under the supervision of Perry Miller at Harvard University in 1954, Ong returned to Saint Louis University, where he would teach for the next 30 years. In 1955 he received his Ph.D. in English from Harvard University. In 1963 the French government honored Ong for his work on the French logician and educational reformer Peter Ramus by dubbing Ong a knight, Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academique. In 1966-1967 Ong served on the 14-member White House Task Force on Education that reported to President Lyndon Johnson. In 1971 Ong was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In April and May of 1974, he served as Lincoln Lecturer, presenting lectures in French in Cameroun, Zaire, and Senegal and in English in Nigeria. In 1967 Ong served as president of the Milton Society of America. (Milton's Logic is a textbook based on Ramus's logic, which Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger translated in Yale's Complete Prose Works of John Milton (8: 206-398); Ong also supplied a magnificent introduction to it (144-205).) In 1978 Ong served as elected president of the 30,000-member [http://www.mla.org/ Modern Language Association of America]. In addition to being very active in professional organizations, he was very active on the lecture circuit.

Contributions in perspective

Introduction

In 2004, the University of Chicago Press reissued Ong's 1958 Harvard University Press book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason, with a new foreword by Adrian Johns. On the back cover, we are told that Ong today "enjoys the status of honorary guru among technophiles." As we shall see below, from the time of Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue onward over his long and productive life, Ong works with a thesis regarding cultural development that can be styled his technology thesis -- his thesis regarding technological transformations of the word and their impact through cultural conditioning on human consciousness. In Ong's most notable works from the 1950s onward, we could say that he is constructing a multidimensional model of Western culture from its preliterate oral matrix through the development of alphabetic writing in the ancient Hebrew and Greek traditions to the development of the Gutenberg printing press and to the more recent development of communication media that accentuate sound. This sequence of historical developments is arguably the most widely known part of Ong's thought. But he does work with a number of over themes as well, which can be characterized as dimensions of his multidimensional model of Western culture: (1) the historical development of visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought; (2) the mathematical transformation of thought in medieval and early modern logic and beyond; (3) oral cyclic thought (which can be found even in Plato's Republic) versus linear or historical or evolutionary thought, as Ong variously characterizes this dimension of our Judaeo-Christian tradition; (4) the movement from oral heroic poetry to mock-heroic poetry in print culture to the realist tradition in literature to the modern antihero; (5) the historical development in manuscript culture and print culture of the inward turn of personalized ego-consciousness, or inner-directedness as David Riesman styles this historical development in The Lonely Crowd (1950; reissued in 2000 by Yale University Press with a foreword by Todd Gitlin); (6) the new dimensions of orality fostered by communication media that accentuate sound, which Ong styles secondary orality to distinguish these developments from all earlier forms of ordinary talking and public speaking.

Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (1958)

Ong's most important work is Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (1958), which is a pioneering work not only in the field known today as print culture but also in the field known today as cultural studies. Ong elaborates the contrast between the visual and the oral that he found in Louis Lavelle's La parole et l'ecriture (1942). In addition, Ong details how the spatialization and quantification of thought in dialectic and logic during the Middle Ages enabled "a new state of mind" to emerge in print culture, as he himself puts it in The Barbarian Within (1962: 72) -- a state of mind representing "a real mathematical transformation of thinking" (ibid.) associated with the emergence of modern science. The companion volume, Ramus and Talon Inventory (1958) is a notable work that is a rudimentary contribution to the field known today as book history, because Ong briefly describes more than 750 volumes (mostly in Latin) that he had tracked down in more than 100 libraries in the British Isles and Continental Europe. On the back cover of the 2004 edition of Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, the University of Chicago Press has aptly characterized Ong's book as a "challenging study." Because Lavelle's key works on visualism (1921, 1942) are not easily found today, readers might want to read Andrea Nightingale's Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context (2004) beforehand. For a penetrating related account of visualism in philosophic thought (the tendency to equate knowing with "taking a good look"), see Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) by Bernard Lonergan, S.J. Ong himself further discussed visualism in four essays reprinted in The Barbarian Within (1962: 26-40, 68-87, 164-76, 220-29) and in two other essays reprinted in Faith and Contexts: Volume Three (1995: 69-90, 91-111). Between Lavelle's books and Ong's 1958 book, the visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought had been documented well enough for Ong to turn his attention more toward the oral-aural dimension of life.

Works of related interest

As mentioned above, Ong supplied a lengthy introduction to the 1982 English translation of Milton's Logic, which is based on Ramus's work. In his introduction, Ong describes the historical development of personalized ego-consciousness under the influence of visualist cultural conditioning. In general terms, this development can be characterized as the development of a greater sense of inwardness, or inner-directedness as David Riesman has characterized this process. For recent studies of this historical development, see Phillip Cary, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self (2000); Ineke van 't Spijker, Fictions of the Inner Life: Religious Literature and Formation of the Self in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (2004); Denis Renevey, Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries on the Song of Songs (2001); Anthony Low, Aspects of Subjectivity: Society and Individuality from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare and Milton (2003); and Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998). Apart from studies of manifestations of the inward turn, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola should be mentioned here, because the exercises aim to enable the person to develop his or her inwardness. In addition, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) by Bernard Lonergan, S.J., should also be mentioned in this context, because it is a extended guidebook for developing one's inwardness and self-appropriation. On a more modest scale, the rational-emotive-behavior therapy developed by Albert Ellis and others is also designed to guide persons in developing their inwardness and self-reflection. In addition to the studies of visualism in Western culture by Lavelle, Ong, Nightingale, and Lonergan, see Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (German irig. 1954; English trans. 1960); Raymond Adolph Prier, Thauma Idesthai: The Phenomenology of Sight and Appearance in Archaic Greek (1989); Robert Hahn, Anaximander and the Architects: The Contributions of Egyptian and Greek Architectural Technologies to the Origin of Greek Philosophy (2001); Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (2002); Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson, and Nicolette Zeeman, eds., Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and Visual Image (2002); Allison Thorne, Vision and Rhetoric in Shakespeare: Looking through Language (2000); Richard Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions: Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture (2001); David Michael Levin, The Philosopher's Gaze: Modernity in the Shadows of Enlightenment (1999); David Michael Levin, ed., Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (1993); Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (1994); Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay, eds., Vision in Context: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight (1996); Gary Shapiro, Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying (2003); Anthony Woodiwiss, The Visual in Social Theory (2001). In addition to Ong's two 1958 books on Ramus and Ramism, mentioned above, and McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), other pioneering studies of print culture are Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (1957); Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book (French orig. 1958; English trans. 1976); Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (German orig. 1962; English trans. 1989); Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. (1979); Roger Chartier, The Order of Books (French orig. 1992; English trans. 1994).

The Presence of the Word (1967)

Ong's second most important work is The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (1967), the expanded version of his 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University, which is also pioneering work both in the field known today as cultural studies and in the field known today as media ecology. We should note here that, prior to 1964, Ong had established himself as a cultural and religious historian through the essays collected together in Frontiers in American Catholicism (1957), American Catholic Crossroads (1959), and The Barbarian Within (1962) as well as in the collection of essays that he edited and contributed to entitled Darwin's Vision and Christian Perspectives (1960). From the 1950s onward, the theme of cyclic versus evolutionary thought runs through Ong's work the way the Mississippi runs through the United States. Ong's technology thesis in The Presence of the Word, as we may style it, "is sweeping, but it is not reductionist, as reviewers and commentators, so far as I know, have all generously recognized: [my] works do not maintain that the evolution from primary orality through writing and print to an electronic culture, which produces secondary orality, causes or explains everything in human culture and consciousness. Rather, [my] thesis is relationist: major developments, and very likely even all major developments, in culture and consciousness are related, often in unexpected intimacy, to the evolution of the word from primary orality to its present state. But the relationships are varied and complex, with cause and effect often difficult to distinguish" (Interfaces of the Word, 1977: 9-10). Ong works with this thesis implicitly in Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, even though he does not happen to advert explicitly there to secondary orality today. However, despite the emphasis that Ong places on the role of technology, he should not be characterized as a technological determinist or as a media determinist in any serious sense of the term "determinist," because he does not deny the role of human freedon and creativity in determining what kinds of new things under the sun emerge. For Ong, technology contributes a determinative dimension by establishing contexts and conditions, but human freedom and creativity contribute in determining the shape of what emerges over time.
Works of related interest
Marcel Gauchet does not happen to refer to Ong's account of cultural and religious history in The Presence of the Word (1967), but Gauchet surveys much of the same historical terrain in The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (French orig. 1985; English trans. 1997). Even though Ong does not happen to advert explicitly to the phrase "the disenchantment of the world" associated with Max Weber (but first used by F. Schiller), Ong's account of cultural and religious history suggests that the disenchantment of the world (also known as secularization) is a historical byproduct of the ascendancy of visualist tendencies, especially after the impact of the Gutenberg printing press. Ong himself suggests as much in his essay "Post-Christian or Not?" in In the Human Grain (1967: 147-64). In this important essay he sets forth the extended passage in which Nietzsche discusses the "death of God." Nietzsche's discussion shows the historical development that can be described as the disenchantment of the world, or secularization. Ong considers this larger historical development to be related to visualist tendencies. In short, this historical development represents the movement away from the ancient oral sense of life as an event, and movement toward the growing interiorization of literacy and visualist tendencies in personalized ego-consciousness. When we consider Ong's technology thesis in light of his account of visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought, we should bear in mind that he is studying the historical development of personalized ego-consciousness, not the archetypal level of the human psyche described by Robert L. Moore and Douglas Gillette in their recent series of five books. Ong's account of visualist tendencies suggests that personalized ego consciousness is somewhat distanced from the archetypal level of the human psyche through visualist cultural conditioning and the development of a greater sense of inwardness. When Ong toward the end of The Presence of the Word expresses hope about the impact of what he styles secondary orality, his hope can be understood better now in light of Moore and Gillette's work on the archetypal level of the human psyche. In effect, Ong's hope is that the cultural conditioning of the communication media that accentuate sound will help enable people in the Western world today to learn how to access the energies of the archetypal level of the human psyche. In the culminating essay in Frontiers in American Catholicism (1957: 104-25), Ong calls on his coreligionists to develop what he styles a new "mystique" toward life. Even though he repeats the term "mystique" several times, he gives no examples of persons who have developed such a mystique. However, Hopkins develops something like a mystique in his well-known poem "God's Grandeur." Ong himself was one of the first American writers to call attention to the thought of the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose books The Human Phenomenon and The Divine Milieu can be understood as contributions to the development of a new sense of mystique toward life. But today instead of referring to a mystique, we would probably speak of a spirituality. Through a well-developed personal spirituality, such as the Ignatian sprituality that Ong and Hopkins and others Jesuits appropriated, men and women usually are able to learn how to access the energies of the archetypal level of the human psyche that Moore and Gillette describe. But as Moore knows, people usually also need the help of ritual processes that can enable them to have truly liminal experiences, not just liminoid experiences (Moore takes these terms from Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure [1969]). Jean Houston has been using trial and error approaches to try to develop fresh ritual processes for people today in her Mystery School, a school or program for the cross-cultural study of spirituality and ritual process.

Fighting for Life (1981)

Ong subsequently developed his observations regarding polemic in The Presence of the Word (192-286) in his book-length study Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (1981), the published version of his 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University. As C. Jan Swearingen has suggested in Media, Consciousness, and Culture (1991: 210-22), Ong deserves to be credited for being a male voice calling attention to a strong male tendency toward agonism. Even though Ong does not happen to advert explicitly to what Plato refers to as thumos, the agonism that Ong refers to can be understood as the psychodynamism of what Plato refers to as thumos. No doubt this dynamism in the human psyche can be over-developed. But it can also be under-developed.
Works of related interest
For related discussions of thumos and male development, see Maurice B. McNamee, Honor and the Epic Hero: The Shifting Concept of Magnanimity in Philosophy and Epic Poetry (1960); Harold Bloom, Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism (1982); Robert L. Moore and Douglas Gillette, The Warrior Within" Accessing the Knight in the Male Psyche (1992); Angela Hobbs, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good (2000); Barbara Koziak, Retrieving Political Emotion: Thumos, Aristotle, and Gender (2000); Lin Foxhall and John Salmon, Thinking Men: Masculinity and Its Self-Representation in the Classical Tradition (1998); Ralph M. Rosen and Ineke Sluiter, eds., Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity (2003); Matthew Biberman, Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern English Literature: From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew (2004); Richard Terry, Mock-Heroic from Butler to cowper: An English Genre and Discourse (2005); Stephen P. Clifford, Beyond the Heroic "I": Reading Lawrence, Hemingway, and "Masculinity" (1998); Thomas J. Farrell, "Faulkner and Male Agonism" in Time, Memory, and the Verbal Arts: Essays on Walter Ong's Thought (1998: 203-21); Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness (2006, forthcoming from Yale University Press).

Orality and Literacy (1982)

Ong's most widely known work, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982), a volume in the New Accents Series, has been translated into eleven other languages. In it he reviews the transition from an oral culture to a written culture, that is to the use of the technologies of written words for communication. Writing is described as a technology that must be laboriously learned, and which effects the first transformation of human thought from the world of sound to the world of sight. This transition has implications for structuralism, deconstruction, speech-act and reader-response theory, the teaching of reading and writing skills to males and females, social studies, biblical studies, philosophy, and cultural history generally. For works of related interest, see Thomas J. Farrell, Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies (2000: 229-87); Farrell's Introduction to An Ong Reader (2002: 58-68); and the related works listed below in the subsection on An Ong Reader.

Hopkins, the Self, and God (1986)

Ong's fifth book-length study is Hopkins, the Self, and God (1986), the published version of his 1981 Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto. Starting with his 1941 Master's thesis on Hopkins's sprung rhythm, mentioned above, Ong's interest in Hopkins was expressed in book reviews and articles over the decades, most notably in his 1966 article "Evolution, Myth, and Poetic Vision" (see Ong's In the Human Grain, 1967: 99-126).
Works of related interest
As his 1986 book on Hopkins illustrates, Ong is especially fond of contrasting the cyclic patterns of thought in indigenous religious traditions and in Plato with the linear pattern of thought in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which he likes to style as evolutionary thought. Regarding cyclic patterns of thought, Ong frequently refers to Mircea Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return, which has recently been reissued by Princeton University Press with a new introduction by Jonathan Z. Smith (2005). For related studies, see Lynne Ballew, Straight and Circular: A Study of Imagery in Greek Philosophy (1979); Donald L. Fixico, The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge (2003). Regarding evolutionary thought, Ong frequently refers to Teilhard's thought, mentioned above.

An Ong Reader (2002)

Because Ong has written so extensively on orality and on rhetoric, this 600-page selection of works by him has been organized around these two extensive and diversified themes in his rather wide-ranging list of over 400 publications. An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry includes his 1967 encyclopedia article on the "Written Transmission of Literature" (331-44); his most frequently cited article, his 1975 PMLA article "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction" (405-27); and his most frequently reprinted article, his 1978 ADE Bulletin article "Literacy and Orality in Our Times" (465-78). Taken together, these three essays make up a coherent approach to the study of written literature against the background of oral tradition. Even so, these three essays are best read in conjunction with Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg's The Nature of Narrative (1966) and Erich Kahler's The Inward Turn of Narrative (1973) -- also see the studies of the historical development of inner-directedness mentioned above. (Professor Scholes reports that a second edition of this landmark book is currently being prepared.)
Works of related interest
For recent works related to different themes developed in An Ong Reader, see Jeff Opland, Xhosa Oral Poetry: Aspects of a Black South African Tradition (1983); Donald Wesling and Tadeusz Slawek, Literary Voice: The Calling of Jonah (1995); Paolo Vivante, Homeric Rhythm: A Philosophical Study (1997); Jed Wyrick, The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions (2004); Jeffrey Walker, Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity (2000); Mark W. Edwards, Sound, Sense, and Rhythm: Listening to Greek and Latin Poetry (2002); Shane Butler, The Hand of Cicero (2002); Jonathan A. Draper, ed., Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism in Antiquity (2004); Jonathan Boyarin, ed., The Ethnography of Reading (1993); Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, eds., A History of Reading in the West (1999); Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama (1992); Emily Steiner, Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature (2003); D. H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature 800-1300 (1994); David Robey, Sound and Structure in the Divine Comedy (2000); Stephan Fussel, Gutenberg and the Impact of Printing (2005); Margaret J. M. Ezell, Social Authorship and the Advent of Print (1999); David McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order 1450-1830 (2003); Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (1999); Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500-1700 (2000); Wes Folkerth, The Sound of Shakespeare (2002); Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, eds., Reading, Society, and Politics in Early Modern England (2003); Alexis Tadie, Sterne's Whimsical Theatres of Language: Orality, Gesture, Literacy (2003); Janine Barchas, Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the eighteenth-Century Novel (2003); William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004); Jonathan A. Draper, ed., Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism in Southern Africa (2003); David Vincent, The Rise of Mass Literacy: Reading and Writing in Modern Europe (2000); John M. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes (2003); Paul Goetsch, The Oral and the Written in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (2003); Patricia Crain, The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter (2000); Gerd Hurm, Rewriting the Vernacular Mark Twain: The Aesthetics and Politics of Orality in Samuel Clemens's Fiction (2003); Willi Erzgraber, James Joyce: Oral and Written Discourse as Mirrored in Experimental Narrative Art (2002); Richard Swigg, Look with the Ears: Charles Tomlinson's Poetry of Sound (2002); John McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like Care (2003).
Works about Ong
The most thorough study of Ong's thought has been written by his former student and friend Thomas J. Farrell: Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (Hampton Press, 2000). Farrell has responded in detail to the allegation about a 'great divide theory' (16-26, 200-04). The most notable critique of Ong has been written by the British literary critic Frank Kermode; it was originally published in the New York Review of Books (March 14, 1968: 22-26), and later reprinted in Kermode's Modern Essays (Fontana, 1971: 99-107). A 400-page Festschrift for Walter Ong has been published as a double issue in the journal Oral Tradition (1987). Subsequently, two other collections of essays have been published about his thought: Media, Consciousness, and Culture (1991) and Time, Memory, and the Verbal Arts (1998). Further information about Ong's thought can be found in The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (1st ed. 1994: 549-52; 2nd ed. 2005: 714-17); Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms (U of Toronto P, 1993: 437-39); Encyclopedia of Literary Critics and Criticism (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999: 822-26). See also: secondary orality.
Publications

Lectures

- 1985 Wolfson College Lectures at Oxford University, Opening Lecture, "Writing Is a Technology That Transforms Thought." In The Written Word: Literacy in Transition, ed. Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1986).
- 1981 Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto, Hopkins, the Self and God (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1986).
- 1979 Cornell University Messenger Lectures on the Evolution of Civilization, Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981).
- 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New Haven: Yale UP, 1967).
Books

- Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002) has been translated into 11 languages.
- An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton P, 2002).
- Faith and Contexts, 4 vols. Ed. Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup. (Atlanta: Scholars P, 1992-1999).
- Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1971).
- Interfaces of the Word (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977).
- Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1958).
- Ramus and Talon Inventory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1958).
- The Barbarian Within (New York: Macmillan, 1962).
- In the Human Grain (New York: Macmillan, 1967).
- Frontiers in American Catholicism (New York: Macmillan, 1957).
- American Catholic Crossroads (New York: Macmillan, 1959).
External links

- [http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/orality_and_literacy.html Orality and Literacy page from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory]
- [http://homepages.udayton.edu/~youngkin/ Walter J. Ong's Publications compiled by Betty R. Youngkin]
- [http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/ENG/ong/ Walter J. Ong Project - digital archives Saint Louis University]
- [http://www.rememberingwalterong.com/ Remembering Walter Ong]
- [http://rsparlourtricks.blogspot.com/2005/11/ong-orality-and-literacy.html Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Ong, Orality and Literacy]
Categories
Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J.

1912
1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday.
Events

January-March

- January 1 - Establishment of Republic of China.
- January 5 - Prague Party Conference
- January 6 - New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U.S. state.
- January 17 - British polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four begin the second expedition to reach the South Pole.
- January 23 - The International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague.
- February 8 - Mexican Revolution - Military rebellion against the rule of Francisco Madero begins in Mexico City. Battles last for 10 days
- February 12 - Republic of China adopts the Gregorian calendar
- February 14 - Arizona is admitted as the 48th U.S. state.
- February 14 - In Groton, Connecticut, the first diesel-powered submarine is commissioned.
- February 18 - Francisco Madero is forced to resign - battle ends. All members of Madero's government are arrested.
- February 19 - Prizes are included in Cracker Jack candy boxes for the first time
- February 22 - Francisco Madero and Pino Suarez are shot, allegedly when they "tried to escape"
- March 1 - Albert Berry makes the first parachute jump from a moving airplane.
- March 1 - Georg Ritter von Trapp, head of the famous Austrian singing family memorialized in the musical The Sound of Music marries Agathe
- March 5 - Italian forces are the first to use airships for a military purpose by using them for reconnaissance west of Tripoli behind Turkish lines.
- March 7 - Roald Amundsen announces discovery of the South Pole
- March 7 - French aviator Henri Seimet makes the first non-stop flight from Paris to London in three hours
- March 12 - The Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts) are founded.
- March 16 - Lawrence Oates, ill member of Scott's South Pole expedition leaves the tent saying, "I am just going outside and may be some time"
- March 27 - Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo gives 3,000 cherry blossom trees to be planted in Washington, D.C. to symbolize the friendship between the two countries.
- March 30 - France establishes a protectorate over Morocco.
April-September

- April 15 - Sinking of the RMS Titanic.
- April 17 - Solar eclipse in Europe.
- April 19 - United States Senate inquiry into the Titanic sinking begins.
- May 2 - British Board of Trade inquiry into the sinking of Titanic begins.
- May 3 - The first victims of the RMS Titanic are buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
- May 5 - The 1912 Summer Olympics open in Stockholm, Sweden.
- May 13 - In the United Kingdom, the Royal Flying Corps (forerunner of the Royal Air Force) is established.
- June 4 - Fire in Constantinople - 1120 buildings destroyed
- June 5 - US Marines land on Cuba
- June 6-June 8 - Eruption of Novarupta in Alaska, second largest volcanic eruption in historic time.
- June 8 - Carl Laemmle incorporated Universal Pictures.
- July 12 - Greek island of Icana declares independence (Greece annexes it in November)
- July 19 - A meteorite with an estimated mass of 190 kg exploded over the town of Holbrook in Navajo County, Arizona causing approximately 16,000 pieces of debris to rain down on the town.
- July 30 - the Meiji Emperor of Japan, dies. He is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, the Taisho Emperor. In Japanese History, the event marks the end of the Meiji period and the beginning of the Taisho Era.
- August 12 - Sultan Abd al-Hafiz of Morocco abdicates.
- August 25 - Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party is founded.
- September 25 - Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism founded in New York,_New York.
October-November

- October 8 - First Balkan War begins: Montenegro declares war against Turkey.
- October 14 - While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, former president Theodore Roosevelt is shot by saloonkeeper William Schrank. With a fresh flesh wound and the bullet still in him, Roosevelt still delivers his scheduled speech.
- October 16 - Bulgarian pilots Radul Minkov and Prodan Toprakchiev perform the first bombing with an airplane in history at the railway station of Karaagac near Edirne against Turkey.
- November 5 - U.S. presidential election, 1912: Democratic challenger Woodrow Wilson wins a landslide victory over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft. Taft's base was undercut by Progressive Party candidate (and former Republican) Theodore Roosevelt, who finished second, ahead of Taft.
- November 7 - The Deutsche Opernhaus (now Deutsche Oper Berlin) opened in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg with a production of Beethoven's Fidelio.
- November 11 - Chios declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
- November 24 - Mine explosion in Hokkaido, Japan - 245 dead
- November 27 - Spain declares a protectorate over the north shore of Morocco.
- November 28 - Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
December

- December 3 - First Balkan War ends temporarily - Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League) sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the two-month long war.
Unknown dates

- Sea Scouting begins under the aegis of the Boy Scouts of America.
- Kazimierz Funk identifies vitamins.
- The first blues song, "The Memphis Blues," is published.
- Alfred Wegener proposes the theory of continental drift.
- Mount Katmai in Alaska explodes.
- Piltdown Man presented in Britain.
- British treasure hunters try to drain Lake Guatavita to find gold – they find nothing.
- African National Congress
Births

January-February

- January 1 - Kim Philby, British spy (d. 1988)
- January 3 - Armand Lohikoski, Finnish director (d. 2005)
- January 6 - Jacques Ellul, French philosopher (d. 1994)
- January 7 - Charles Addams, American cartoonist (d. 1988)
- January 8 - José Ferrer, Puerto Rican actor (d. 1992)
- January 19 - Leonid Kantorovich, Russian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
- January 21 - Konrad Emil Bloch, German-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 2000)
- January 28 - Jackson Pollock, American painter (d. 1956)
- January 30 - Barbara W. Tuchman, American historian (d. 1989)
- February 4 - Erich Leinsdorf, Austrian conductor (d. 1993)
- February 6 - Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's mistress (d. 1945)
- February 11 - Roy Fuller, English poet and novelist (d. 1991)
- February 19 - Stan Kenton, American musician (d. 1979)
- February 20 - Pierre Boulle, French author (d. 1994)
- February 27 - Lawrence Durrell, British writer (d. 1990)
March-April

- March 5 - David Astor, British newspaper publisher (d. 2001)
- March 8 - Preston Smith, Governor of Texas (d. 2003)
- March 12 - Irving Layton, Canadian poet
- March 14 - Les Brown, American band leader (d. 2001)
- March 15 - Lightnin' Hopkins, American musician (d. 1982)
- March 16 - Pat Nixon, First Lady of the United States (d. 1993)
- March 17 - Bayard Rustin, American civil rights activist (d. 1987)
- March 18 - Lucien Laurin, Canadian horse trainer (d. 2000)
- March 22 - Karl Malden, American actor
- March 23 - Betty Astell, British actress (d. 2005)
- March 23 - Wernher von Braun, German-born physicist and engineer (d. 1977)
- March 27 - James Callaghan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 2005)
- April 8 - Sonja Henie, Norwegian figure skater (d. 1969)
- April 12 - Walt Gorney, American actor (d. 2004)
- April 15 - Kim Il Sung, President of North Korea (d. 1994)
- April 19 - Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
- April 22 - Kathleen Ferrier, British contralto (d. 1953)
- April 26 - A. E. van Vogt, Canadian-born writer (d. 2000)
- April 28 - Odette Sansom, French World War II heroine (d. 1995)
May-July

- May 3 - Virgil Fox, American organist (d. 1980)
- May 9 - Pedro Armendáriz, Mexican actor (d. 1963)
- May 9 - Per Imerslund, "The aryan idol" (d. 1943)
- May 11 - Foster Brooks, American actor and comedian (d. 2001)
- May 12 - Archibald Cox, Watergate special prosecutor (d. 2001)
- May 14 - Ben Hogan, American golfer (d. 1997)
- May 16 - Studs Terkel, American writer and broadcaster
- May 18 - Perry Como, American singer (d. 2001)
- May 18 - Walter Sisulu, South African anti-apartheid activist (d. 2003)
- May 21 - Monty Stratton, baseball player (d. 1982)
- May 22 - Herbert C. Brown, English-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
- May 23 - Jean Françaix, French composer (d. 1997)
- May 23 - John Payne, American actor (d. 1989)
- May 25 - Princess Dukhye of Korea (d. 1989)
- May 27 - Sam Snead, American golfer (d. 2002)
- May 28 - Patrick White, Australian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990)
- May 30 - Julius Axelrod, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 2004)
- May 31 - Alfred Deller, English countertenor (d. 1979)
- June 6 - Maria Montez, Dominican actress (d. 1951)
- June 23 - Alan Turing, British mathematician (d. 1954)
- June 25 - William T. Cahill, American politician (d. 1996)
- June 26 - Jay Silverheels, American actor (d. 1980)
- June 27 - Chen Kenmin, Japanese chef (d. 1990)
- June 30 - Ludwig Bölkow, German aeronautical engineer (d. 2003)
- July 1 - David R. Brower, American environmentalist (d. 2000)
- July 14 - Woody Guthrie, American folk musician (d. 1969)
- July 17 - Art Linkletter, American television host
- July 31 - Milton Friedman, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- July 31 - Irv Kupcinet, American newspaper columnist (d. 2003)
August-November

- August 9 - Anne Brown, American soprano
- August 10 - Jorge Amado de Faria, Brazilian author (d. 2001)
- August 11 - Thanom Kittikachorn, Prime Minister of Thailand (d. 2004)
- August 11 - Norman Levinson, American mathematician (d. 1975)
- August 13 - Salvador Luria, Italian-born biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1991)
- August 15 - Julia Child, American chef (d. 2004)
- August 16 - Ted Drake, English footballer (d. 1995)
- August 16 - Wendy Hiller, English actress (d. 2003)
- August 23 - Gene Kelly, American actor (d. 1996)
- August 25 - Erich Honecker, East German leader (d. 1994)
- August 30 - Edward Mills Purcell, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
- August 30 - Nancy Wake, New Zealand World War II heroine
- September 5 - John Cage, American composer (d. 1992)
- September 11 - David Packard, American electrical engineer (d. 1996)
- September 19 - Kurt Sanderling, German conductor
- September 21 - Chuck Jones, American animator (d. 2002)
- September 22 - Martha Scott, American actress (d. 2003)
- September 24 - Don Porter, American actor (d. 1997)
- September 29 - Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian film director
- October 5 - Karl Hass, Nazi war criminal (d. 2004)
- October 5 - Kristina Söderbaum, German actress (d. 2001)
- October 17 - Pope John Paul I (d. 1978)
- October 21 - Georg Solti, Hungarian conductor (d. 1997)
- October 22 - Johan Hendrik Weidner, Belgian World War II resistance fighter (d. 1994)
- October 25 - Minnie Pearl, American commedienne (d. 1996)
- October 27 - Conlon Nancarrow, American composer (d. 1997)
- November 4 - Vadim Salmanov, Russian composer (d. 1978)
- November 10 - Birdie Tebbetts, baseball player and manager (d. 1999)
- November 11 - Larry LaPrise American songwriter (d. 1996)
- November 14 - Barbara Hutton, American socialite (d. 1979)
- November 14 - T. Y. Lin, Chinese-born civil engineer (d. 2003)
- November 19 - George Emil Palade, Romanian cell biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- November 21 - Eleanor Powell, American actress and dancer (d. 1982)
- November 26 - Eugene Ionesco, Romanian-born playwright (d. 1994)
December

- December 11 - Carlo Ponti, Italian film producer
- December 12 - Henry Armstrong, American boxer (d. 1988)
- December 25 - Natalino Otto, Italian singer (d. 1969)
- December 27 - Conroy Maddox, British painter (d. 2005)
Deaths

- January 28 - Gustave de Molinari, Belgian economist (b. 1819)
- February 16 - Nikolai of Japan, Eastern Orthodox monk and saint (b. 1836)
- February 25 - Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (b. 1852)
- March 1 - George Grossmith, English actor and comic writer (b. 1847)
- March 29 - Robert Falcon Scott, British Antarctic explorer (froze to death) (b. 1868)
- March 30 - Karl May, German author (b. 1842)
- April 15 - Victims of the sinking of the RMS Titanic:
- Edward J. Smith, ship's captain (b. 1850)
- John Jacob Astor IV, American businessman (b. 1864)
- Archibald Butt, American presidential aide (b. 1865)
- Benjamin Guggenheim, American businessman (b. 1865)
- William Thomas Stead, English journalist (b. 1849)
- Isidor Straus, German-American owner of Macy's (b. 1845)
- Thomas Andrews, Jr., Titanic shipbuilder (b.1873)
- May 14 - August Strindberg, Swedish playwright and painter (b. 1849)
- May 14 - Frederick VIII, King of Denmark (b. 1843)
- May 25 - Austin Lane Crothers, American politician (b. 1860)
- May 30 - Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneer (b. 1867)
- June 12 - Frédéric Passy, French economist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1822)
- July 1 - Harriet Quimby, American pilot (b. 1875)
- July 2 - Tom Richardson, English cricketer (b. 1870)
- July 30 - Meiji Emperor of Japan (b. 1852)
- August 7 - François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist (b. 1841)
- August 8 - Ross Winn, American anarchist writer and publisher (b. 1871)
- October 6 - Auguste Marie Francois Beernaert, Belgian statesman, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1829)
- October 24 - Mykola Lysenko, Ukrainian composer (b. 1842)
- October 30 - James S. Sherman, Vice President of the United States (b. 1855)
- November 10 - Louis Cyr, Canadian strongman (b. 1863)
- November 28 - Walter Benona Sharp, American oil pioneer (b. 1870)
- December 23 - Otto Schoetensack, German anthropologist (b. 1850)
Nobel Prizes

- Physics - Nils Gustaf Dalén
- Chemistry - Victor Grignard, Paul Sabatier
- Medicine - Alexis Carrel
- Literature - Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann
- Peace - Elihu Root Category:1912 ko:1912년 ms:1912 ja:1912年 simple:1912 th:พ.ศ. 2455

2003

2003 (MMIII) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. It was designated the:
- International Year of Freshwater
- European Disability Year
- Blog Year See also Wikipedia's almanac of events for this year.

Events

January

- January 1 - Luíz Inácio Lula Da Silva becomes the 37th President of Brazil.
- January 1 - Pascal Couchepin becomes President of the Confederation in Switzerland.
- January 8 - US Airways flight 5481 crashes at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina killing all 21 people aboard.
- January 15 - The United States Supreme Court hands down its decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft allowing the extension of copyright terms in the U.S.
- January 24 - The new United States Department of Homeland Security officially begins operation.
- January 25 - Central Line train crashes into the tunnel wall at Chancery Lane station in London, injuring 34 people.
- January 25 - An international group of volunteers left London and headed for Baghdad to act as voluntary human shields, hoping to avert a U.S. invasion.
- January 30 - Iraq disarmament crisis: The leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and the Czech Republic release a statement, the letter of the eight, demonstrating support for the United States' plans for an invasion of Iraq.

February

February
- February 1 - The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas upon reentry, killing all seven astronauts onboard.
- February 1 - In Northern Ireland, The Protestant UDA Belfast leader John Gregg is killed by a loyalist faction.
- February 3 - The worldwide movie premiere of Shanghai Knights was held at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.
- February 5 - Iraq disarmament crisis: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the UN Security Council on Iraq.
- February 9 - Cricket World Cup begins in South Africa.
- February 15 - Global protests against Iraq war - more than ten million people protest in over 600 cities worldwide, the largest war protest to take place before the war occurred.
- February 17 - Antwerp Diamond Center in Belgium opens its vaults after weekend and discovers that unknown burglars had stolen diamonds worth $100 million - largest diamond theft so far.
- February 26 - An American businessman is admitted to the Vietnam France Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. WHO doctor Carlo Urbani reports the unusual highly contagious disease to WHO. Both the businessman and Carlo Urbani die of SARS in March.

March

- March 1 - Iraq disarmament crisis: The United Arab Emirates calls for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to step down to avoid war. The sentiment is later echoed by Bahrain and Kuwait
- March 1 - The Turkish parliment vetos the access of the U.S troops to airbases in Turkey in order to attack Iraq from the north. The Bush administration starts working on the B Plan, namely attacking Iraq from the south, through the Persian Gulf.
- March 1 - The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the United States Customs Service, and the United States Secret Service moves to the United States Department of Homeland Security
- March 1 - Boxer Roy Jones Jr. beats John Ruiz to become WBA champion
- March 1 - War on Terrorism: Authorities in Pakistan capture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks along with money man Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.
- March 1 - Ohio celebrates its bicentennial statehood.
- March 5 - The Supreme Court of the United States by a 5-4 margin upholds California's "three strikes and you're out" law.
- March 11 - Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraqi fighters threaten two U.S. U-2 surveillance planes, flying missions for U.N. weapons inspectors, forcing them to abort their mission and return to base.
- March 12 - Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić assassinated in Belgrade
- March 12 - WHO issues a global alert on SARS.
- March 12 - Iraq disarmament crisis: British prime minister Tony Blair proposes an amendment to the possible 18th U.N. resolution, which would call for Iraq to meet certain benchmarks to prove that it was disarming. The amendment is immediately rejected by France, who promises to veto any new resolution.
- March 13 - Human evolution: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints had been found in Italy
- March 15 - Hu Jintao becomes president of the People's Republic of China, replacing Jiang Zemin.
- March 16 - Iraq disarmament crisis: The leaders of the United States, Britain, Portugal, and Spain meet at a summit in the Azores Islands. U.S. President Bush calls Monday, March 17th, the "moment of Truth", meaning that the "coalition of the willing" would make its final effort to extract a resolution from the U.N. Security Council that would give Iraq an ultimatum to disarm immediately or to be disarmed by force.
- March 17 - Iraq disarmament crisis: U.S. President George W. Bush gives an ultimatum: Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his sons must either leave Iraq, or face military action at a time of the U.S.'s choosing
- March 19 - First American bombs dropped on Baghdad, Iraq. President Saddam Hussein and his sons do not comply with President Bush's 48 hour mandate demanding their exit from Iraq.
- March 20 - 2003 Iraq war: Land troops from United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invade Iraq.
- March 22 - The United States and the United Kingdom begin their shock and awe campaign with a massive air strike on military targets in Baghdad.
- March 23 - Cricket World Cup ends as Australia wins over India in Centurion, South Africa.
- March 29 - WHO doctor Carlo Urbani, who first identified SARS, dies of the disease.
- March 30 - The Undertaker defeated the Big Show and A-Train in a handicap match, boosting his Wrestlemania record to 11-0.

April

April.]]
- April 3 - Passenger bus hits remote-controlled land mine in the Chechen capital, killing at least 8.
- April 9 - U.S. forces seize control of Baghdad, apparently ending the regime of Saddam Hussein.
- April 14 - Human Genome Project successfully completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
- April 17 - The Stevens Report concludes that members of the RUC and British Army cooperated with the UDA in the killings of Catholics in Northern Ireland
- April 21 - Retired U.S. Army General Jay Garner becomes Interim Civil Administrator of Iraq.
- April 30 - The last American owned vehicle frame manufacturer, [http://web.archive.org/web/20010623093543/www.immsp.com/index.htm Midland Steel Products] goes [http://www.newsnet5.com/news/2166844/detail.html out of business] after almost 110 years in business, laying off almost 250 people.

May

- May 1 - George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing end of major combat in the Iraq war.
- May 2 - Monkeyman superhero hoax begins in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK
- May 3 - Old Man of the Mountain, rock formation in New Hampshire, crumbles after heavy rain
- May 4-10 - A major severe weather outbreak spawned more tornadoes than any week in U.S. history. 393 tornadoes were reported in 19 states.
- May 11 - Benvenuto Cellini's Saliera is stolen from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
- May 12 - Suicide truck-bomb attack kills at least 60 at a government compound in northern Chechnya.
- May 12 - In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 26 people are killed in the Riyadh Compound Bombings.
- May 14 - Female suicide bomber blows up explosives strapped to her waist in crowd of thousands of Muslim pilgrims, killing at least 18 people in Chechnya.
- May 16 - In Casablanca, Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks.
- May 19 - Pen Hadow becomes the first man to walk alone, without any outside help, from Canada to the North Pole
- May 23 - The birth of Dewey, the first cloned deer by scientists at Texas A&M University
- May 26 - A draft of the proposed European constitution is unveiled.
- May 28 - The birth of Prometea, the first cloned horse by Italian scientists.
- May 31 - Eric Rudolph, the suspected person to have carried out the Centennial Olympic Park bombing is captured in North Carolina behind a Save-A-Lot store.

June

- June 1 - The People's Republic of China begins filling the reservoir behind the massive Three Gorges Dam, raising the water level near the dam over 100 metres.
- June 4 - Martha Stewart and her broker are indicted for using privileged investment information and then obstructing a federal investigation. Stewart also resigned as chairperson and chief executive officer of Martha Stewart Living.
- June 5 - Female suicide bomber detonates bomb near a bus carrying soldiers and civilians to a military airfield in Mozdok, a major staging point for Russian troops in Chechnya, killing at least 16 people.
- June 15 - 2003 NBA Finals end. The San Antonio Spurs defeat the New Jersey Nets, 4 games to 2.
- June 22 - The largest hailstone ever recorded falls in Aurora, Nebraska, USA.
- June 23 - U.S. Supreme Court upholds affirmative action in university admissions in Grutter v. Bollinger
- June 26 - U.S. Supreme Court rules sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas

July

- July 1 - 500,000 Hong Kong people march to protest Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23, which redefined treason controversially.
- July 2 - International Olympic Committee session in Prague. Vancouver ,Canada is declared the Host City for the XXI Olympic Winter Games in 2010.
- July 5 - SARS is declared to be contained by WHO.
- July 5 - Double suicide bombing at a Moscow rock concert kills the female attackers and 15 other people.
- July 6 - Residents of Corsica reject a referendum for increased autonomy for the region from France by a very narrow margin.
- July 7 - Canon Jeffrey John, first would-be gay bishop in the Church of England, withdraws his acceptance of the post of The Bishop of Reading after discussions with the church leaders
- July 10 - Russian security agent dies in Moscow while trying to defuse a bomb a woman had tried to carry into a cafe on central Moscow's main street.
- July 14 - U.S. columnist Robert Novak publishes the name of Valerie Plame, blowing her cover as a CIA operative. CIA leak scandal begins.
- July 18 - Convention on the Future of Europe finishes its work and proposes the first European constitution
- July 18 - The body of Dr. David Kelly, a scientist at the Ministry of Defence, is found a few miles from his home, leading to the Hutton inquiry
- July 23 - Operation Warrior Sweep is the first major military deployment of the Afghan National Army
- July 24 - The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands, Operation Helpem Fren, led by Australia, begins in the Solomon Islands
- July 30 - The last old-style Volkswagen Beetle rolls off its production line in Puebla, Puebla, Mexico.

August

- August 1 - Suicide bomber rams truck filled with explosives into a military hospital near Chechnya, killing 50 people, including Russian troops wounded in Chechnya.
- August 2 - The United Nations authorizes an international peacekeeping force for Liberia.
- August 10 - The highest temperature ever recorded in the UK - 38.1°C (100.6°F) at Gravesend in Kent and Kew Botanic Gardens, London. It is the first time the UK has recorded a temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
- August 11 - NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
- August 11 - Jemaah Islamiah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand.
- August 14 - Widespread power outage affects northeast United States and Canada.
- August 14 - 6.4 Richter scale earthquake near the Greek Ionian island of Lefkada - 24 injured
- August 22 - 21 killed at the Brazilian rocket complex in Alcântara due to a premature ignition of a solid rocket booster.
- August 25 - 52 killed in two bomb blasts in Mumbai, India.
- August 27 - Perigee of Mars

September

- September 5 - Roller coaster accident at Disneyland injures 10 and kills one.
- September 10 - Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh is stabbed in a Stockholm department store and dies the next day.
- September 14 - Sweden rejects adopting the Euro in a referendum. (Results.)
- September 14 - Estonia approves joining the European Union in a referendum.
- September 15 - ELN kidnaps 8 foreign tourists in the Ciudad Perdida - they demand a human rights investigation and release last of the hostages three months later
- September 16 - Two suicide bombers drive a truck laden with explosives into a government security services building near Chechnya, killing three people and injuring 25.
- September 27 - Smart 1 is launched.
- September 27 - The Uniterran Church was founded in Victor, NY
- September 28 - a power failure affected all of Italy except Sardinia, cutting service to more than 56 million people.
- September 29 - Hurricane Juan makes landfall at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada as a category 2 storm. Two were killed directly and 5 indirectly.

October

October
- October 7 - 2003 California recall: Voters recall Governor Gray Davis from office and elect Arnold Schwarzenegger to succeed him.
- October 10 - Facing an investigation surrounding allegations of illegal drug use, American Right Wing radio host Rush Limbaugh publically admits that he is addicted to prescription pain killers and will seek treatment.
- October 14 - The Florida Marlins defeat the Chicago Cubs in Game 6 of Major League Baseball's National League Championship Series; the game is remembered for Cubs fan Steve Bartman interfering with a foul ball which could have helped Chicago win the game and the series.
- October 15 - China launches Shenzhou 5, their first manned space mission.
- October 16 - The Boston Red Sox lose to their hated rivals, the New York Yankees in Game 7 of Major League Baseball's American League Championship Series, blowing a three-run, eighth-inning lead.
- October 23 - Luis A. Ferre, the third Democratically Elected Governor of Puerto Rico, dies at age 99.
- October 24 - Concorde makes its last commercial flight, bringing the era of airliner supersonic travel to a close, at least for the time being.
- October 25 - The Florida Marlins defeat the New York Yankees 4 games to 2 to win the 2003 World Series, behind a complete-game shutout by ace pitcher, Josh Beckett.
- October 25 - Cedar Fire begins in San Diego County burning 280,000 acres (1,100 km²), 2,232 homes and killing 14
- October 31 - Mahathir Mohamad resigns as Prime Minister of Malaysia after 22 years in power.

November

- November 5 - Gary Ridgway, The "Green River Killer", confesses murders of 48 women
- November 9 - Lunar eclipse (the Americas, Europe, Africa, Central Asia)
- November 12 - Occupation of Iraq: In Nasiriya, Iraq, at least 23 people, among them the first Italian casualties of the 2003 Iraq war are killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base.
- November 15 - Two car bombs explode simultaneously in Istanbul, Turkey targeting two synagogues, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 300; Al-Qaida claims responsibility.
- November 18 - US President George W. Bush makes a state visit to London in the midst of massive protests.
- November 18 - Goodridge v. Department of Public Health rules anti-same-sex marriage laws unconstitutional in Massachusetts
- November 20 - Several bombs explode in Istanbul, Turkey destroying the Turkish head office of HSBC Holdings and the British consulate.
- November 20 - Michael Jackson is arrested by police on charges of child molestation, a charge that can carry an 8 year jail term.
- November 22 - England wins the Rugby Union World Cup defeating Australia 20-17 after extra time.
- November 23 - Georgian Rose Revolution ends with overwhelming victory - president Eduard Shevardnadze resigns following weeks of mass protests over fraudulent elections.
- November 23 - Total solar eclipse (Antarctica)
- November 24 - The High Court in Glasgow imposes a minimum sentence of 27 years for Al Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

December

December
- December 1 - The use of hand-held mobile phones while driving is made illegal in the United Kingdom.
- December 1 - Boeing chairman and CEO Phil Condit resigns unexpectedly. He is replaced by Lewis Platt as non-executive chairman and Harry Stonecipher as president and CEO.
- December 5 - Suicide bombing on commuter train in southern Russia kills 44 people. President Vladimir Putin condemns attack as bid to destabilize the country two days before parliamentary elections.
- December 7 - Parliamentary election in Russia.
- December 9 - Female suicide bomber blows herself up outside Moscow's National Hotel, across from the Kremlin and Red Square, killing five bystanders.
- December 12 - Paul Martin becomes the 21st Prime Minister of Canada
- December 12 - Olympic Airlines, Greece's new flag carrier is launched.
- December 13 - Saddam Hussein, former President of Iraq, is captured in Tikrit by the U.S. 4th Infantry Division.
- December 16 - The United Kingdom announces plans to build a new runway at Stansted Airport in Essex and a short-haul runway at Heathrow Airport sparking anger from environmental groups.
- December 17 - The film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King released, effectively completing the Lord of the Rings Trilogy directed by Peter Jackson.
- December 18 - The Soham Murder Trial ends at the Old Bailey in London with Ian Huntley found guilty of two counts of murder. His girlfriend, Maxine Carr is found guilty of perverting the course of justice.
- December 20 - Libya admits that it was building a nuclear bomb.
- December 22 - An earthquake shakes up California, killing two people.
- December 22 - Parmalat is first accused of falsifying accounts to the tune of USD $5 billion, later admitted by founder Calisto Tanzi; observers call it "Europe's Enron".
- December 24 - A BSE outbreak in Washington State is announced. Several countries including Brazil, Australia and Taiwan place a ban on the import of