1699 -- New World: Witch One? Massachusetts holds day of fasting for wrongly persecuting "witches."

In a cold world woolly thinking is comfortable when worn next to the skin.

1742 -- Edmund Halley, genius eclipsed by Newton, dies at 86.

Halley himself spelled his first name Edmond, though many people since have used the more usual spelling of Edmund.

— Bleedster Philip, 1999

PS: Seattle - I know it well, vicariously at least, through the novels of my favorite contemporary novelist, Tom Robbins: I can list its attractions (according to him)... rain, rain, &, er, rain.

Rain? We are currently setting a new record, some 30+ days with measurable precip...

— WetMeister Dave, Jan 14, 2006

1784 -- Treaty of Paris, officially ending US War of Independence, ratified by Congress. By its terms, "His Britannic Majesty" is bound to withdraw his armies without "carrying away any Negroes or other property of American inhabitants."

Bakunin played a principal role in the May 3rd uprising with the famed composer Richard Wagner. The rebellion was crushed & Bakunin today is sentenced to die.

[Details / context]

1850 --

Pierre Loti, whose themes anticipate some of the central preoccupations of French literature between the world wars, lives, Rochefort. His career as a naval officer took him to the Middle East & East Asia & provided ample material for his writing, starting with Aziyadé (1879) & Madame Chrysanthème (1887).

1858 -- France: Italian Nationalists led by Felice Orsini, a Free Mason, bowls three bombs under Napoleon III's carriage in front of the Paris Opera, killing eight bystanders & injuring 148. Orsini thought that killing Louis-Napoleon would precipitate a general popular revolution in France that would spread to Italy to expel the various foreign regimes then ruling the divided peninsula.

Beloved & Respected Comrade Leaders Empress Eugenie, only only slightly wounded, stepping from the wreckage of the carriage, was heard to comment,

‘ C’est le metier’ – ‘It’s all part of the job.’ http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/india/italy1859.htm http://www.beyond-the-illusion.com/files/New-Files/990630/scarletAndTheBeast.txt

1860 -- High Seas:

Strange Stuff:

Fall of irregular-shaped pieces of solid ice of different dimensions, up to the size of half a brick, in a thunderstorm, upon Capt. Blakiston's vessel [London Roy. Soc. Proc., 10-468] http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damned/damn03.htm

1862 -- Scotland:

BLACK RAIN:

Fall of black rain, Slains [Rev. James Rust. Scottish Showers] (Hmmmmm ... & you thought this was normal in Scotland.... ) http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damned/damn03.htm

1866 -- US: Art Young, "Masses" cartoonist, lives Orangeville, Illinois. Daily Bleed Saint December 29.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTyoung.htm


1875 -- Albert Schweitzer lives, Kaysersberg, Alsace-Lorraine, Germany. Medical humanitarian, organist, historian of the apocalyptic enigmas of early Christianity & the end-times. Nobel Prize-winner, 1952.


1878 -- US: Supreme Court rules unconstitutional any state law requiring railroads to provide equal accommodations for passengers, regardless of race or color.

1882 -- Thomas Nast, in "Harper's Weekly," lampoons Mother Shipton in a cartoon about the Apocalypse, for her false prediction that the world would end in 1881. Mother Shipton is England's most well-known prophetess, a British version of Nostradamus. Currently, about 100,000 people per year reportedly visit the Mother Shipton Cave in her home town, apparently seeing light at the butt-end of the tunnel.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0114.html



1886 -- France: Louise Michel est conduite par la police au domicile que lui ont trouvé ses camarades, 89, route d'Asnières, à Levallois.
[Source: Michel Chronologie]




1886 -- Hugh Lofting, creator of the children's Dr. Doolittle series, lives, Maidenhead, Berkshire. Though avoiding the word "nigger", he referred to Africans as "coons", which is no better. Presumably neither was used in the movie.

1886 -- France: Peter Kropotkin, imprisoned for the past three years, is released from prison, on or about today, due to pressure from national & international protests. (I don't have the exact day — ed.)

"In the middle of January, 1886, both Louise Michel & [Emile] Pouget, as well as the four of us who were still at Clairvaux, were set free..."

— Memoirs of a Revolutionist, pp485
[Details / context]

1888 -- Maurice Dommanget lives, Paris. Labor historian & revolutionary syndicalist. Wrote many works on the French Revolution: Manifeste des enragés; Babeuf et la conjuration des égaux, for example, as well as books on Blanqui, the Paris Commune & the history of socialism.
http://struggle.ws/talks/paris.html


1888 -- Émile Bachelet lives (1888-1967). Wrote Trimards (roman) 1951
http://ytak.club.fr/janvier2.html#bachelet


1888 -- France: Jean-Baptiste André Godin (b.1817) dies. (See January 26, 1817)
http://ytak.club.fr/janvier2.html#14


1892 -- Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984), pacifist pastor, lives, Germany.

In Germany they came first for the Communists, & I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, & I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, & I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, & I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, & by that time no one was left to speak up.

      — Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor

1893 -- England: Independent Labour Party founded, Bradford, headed by Keir Hardie.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Plabour.htm



1894 -- His seaman's career over, Joseph Conrad returns to London & finishes the manuscript of a tale he has been writing for five years. Almayer's Folly, his first novel, is published the following year.
http://www.stfrancis.edu/en/student/kurtzweb/conrad.htm


1895 -- US: Brooklyn trolley strike begins (-Feb. 2); militia is later called out.



1896 -- John Dos Passos, lefty novelist/capitalist realist (the U.S.A. trilogy), & later Cold War warrior, lives, Chicago. An integral part of the Lost Generation crowd in Paris in the 20s. His increasing fascist leanings estranged him from most of his associates, including Hemingway.
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/aaron-chap15.html

1898 -- Reverend Charles L Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, dies at 66.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lcarroll.htm
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/



1909 -- US: Dr. Ben Reitman & Emma Goldman arrested on charges of conspiracy against the government; both are held on bail. Buwalda arrested for disturbing the peace. Supporters of Goldman & Reitman rally to protest the arrests tomorrow; police forcibly end gatherings.

In jail, Emma learns about her father's death. She is released on January 18, & participates in a public debate on "Anarchism versus Socialism."

Emma's anticipated departure for Australia Jan. 23 is postponed. The case dropped Jan. 28.



1909 -- Samuel Coleridge-Taylor cantata "Bon-Bon Suite" is performed for the first time in its full orchestral version, Brighton Music Festival, England.



1909 -- Spain: Félix Likiniano lives (1909-1983).

A Basque anarchist, Likiniano was in the anarchist militia during the Spanish civil war, & later designed the separatist ETA's logo. «Likiniano decided to leave the CNT in 1945 when it refused to recognize the Basque right to self-determination. He participated in diverse resistence actions, including an attempt to assassinate Franco, the Spanish dictator.» http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:ETA.jpg http://www.elmundo.es/papel/2003/12/03/espana/1534406.html http://www.lafogata.org/paisvasco/pais_24-5.htm

1910 -- US:

More Strange Stuff:

"Mysterious white aircraft" seen & heard about noon, Chattanooga, TN (also seen on previous two days) [New York Tribune, Jan 15] http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damned/damn03.htm

1912 --

American author / socialist / feminist Tillie Olsen lives, about this time. (1912 or 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska; she is not sure of the date because it was never recorded.)		"& when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?" — Tillie Olsen, (d.2007) http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/olsen/north.htm http://www.geometry.net/authors/olsen_tillie_page_no_3.php

1914 -- US: Hog-Wild? Henry Ford's assembly line begins production of the Model T. Each car requires 90 minutes for assembly. His ideas for the assemblyline were first formulated after visiting the Chicago slaughterhouses, where 75,000 hogs a day were being routinely butchered.


1914 -- US: IWW (Industrial Workers of the World)-Suhr Trial begins, Marysville, California.
http://www.iww.org/

1918 -- US: The Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the selective service law, affirming all criminal charges arising from non-compliance with the draft.

On January 28th the Court mandates the return of Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman to fulfill their prison sentences. On January 30th, from Petrograd, in Russia, the US ambassador notifies the State Department of Russian anarchists threatening to hold him personally responsible for Goldman's & Berkman's safety in prison.

1919 -- Russia: Voline, Russian revolutionary & anarchist historian, arrested & dragged from one prison to another.

Trotsky, pretender to the throne, already had ordered his execution, & Voline escaped death only by sheer accident...

[Details / context]

1921 -- Murray Bookchin, American anarchist, lives.

Prolific author, philosopher, ecologist (under the pseudonym Lewis Herber during the 50s Red Scare & blacklist), historian, advocate of 'Libertarian Municipalism', head of the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont.

Bookchin was a young communist, expelled in the 40s. He became a labor organizer & a libertarian socialist working with dissident German exile Marxists in New York city, then an anarchist. During the 50s he pioneered writing on ecological issues.

During the 60s he founded the Anarchos Collective & his writings, particularly his critiques of Marxism & Leninism (Listen, Marxist!), profoundly influenced the American New Left.

http://www.social-ecology.org/harbinger/vol2no1/bookchin.html

1925 -- Self-Criticism?: Novelist/playwright Yukio Mishima (Kimitake Hiraoka) lives, Tokyo, Japan, into a samurai family. Right-wing gay fascist, novelist who put the finishing touches to his The Sea of Fertility tetralogy, committing suicide a few hours later.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mishima.htm

1927 --

"Hungarian Varsovienne" Henry Ford's Old Fashioned Dance Orchestra, recorded

This pre-Depression recording exists thanks to Henry Ford's ironic role as patron of the folk arts. The automotive mogul had a 19th-century rural sensibility, even as his assembly lines & Model-Ts inexorably pushed America into the 20th century. He sponsored fiddling contests & a dancing school, their uplifting value lost on the anonymous worker who told Edmund Wilson: "A man checks 'is brains & 'is freedom at the door when he goes to work at Ford's." In this case, the "Hungarian Varsovienne" (a relative of the mazurka) reflects the magnet the automobile industry was for immigrants of varied backgrounds. To Ford, a lover of American dance music, the irony of his own recording may have been lost. — Mark Humphrey, "The Great Depression: American Music in the '30s" Source no longer online, the original page has been rescued/archived at the Stan Iverson Memorial Library, http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/mirror/Depressionmusic2.html http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/mirror/Depressionmusic2.html http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,301462,00.html

1929 -- Canada: Doggin It? First International dogsled mail arrives in Montreal. See 2 February.

1933 -- Avant-guard film-maker Stan Brakhage lives. Regarded as one of the most important experimental filmmakers of the 20th century, made over 400 films.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Brakhage



1938 -- England: Ethel Mannin & Emma Goldman speak on "The Betrayal of the Spanish People" at a CNT-FAI program in London; the audience turns against the Communists when they attempt to break up the meeting.

[Details / context]

1939 -- Nederlands: Working every day since late December at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, Emma Goldman finds it impossible to arrange Alexander Berkman's papers without also organizing her own; she finally finishes the work today.
http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/e/10749603.php


1941 -- US: A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters & chief spokesperson for the African American working class, calls for a March on Washington, demanding racial integration of the military & equal access to defense-industry jobs.

The call prompts black enthusiasm too great for the government to ignore.
[Details / context]

1941 -- Picasso begins writing his play "Desire Caught by the Tail", finishing in three days.


1944 -- US: Nisei eligibility for the draft is restored. The reaction to this announcement by those interred in the American concentration camps is mixed.
[Sources]


1945 -- France: Jean Ajalbert dies.

Avocat, poète impressionniste, écrivain naturaliste & anarchiste. Active in the decadent movement with Tailhade, et al., transposing the effects of impressionist painting into poetry. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ajalbert http://ytak.club.fr/juin2.html#ajalbert

1946 -- India: Two jetties collapse in Ganges — 160 Hindu pilgrims are crushed.



1952 -- The Modern Jazz Quartet is formally incorporated.



1957 -- Humphrey Bogart, (Whiskey Straight) dies at 57, at 2:30 in the morning. Bogart, arguably America's most famous film actor, had cancer of the esophagus. News programs treated his funeral as a national event. Humphrey always Bogarted the joint. Humphrey Bogart also was an expert chess player & played for stakes.

A target of the conservative & liberal American witch hunters of the 40s & 50s.

[Details / context]

1961 -- England: Prison revolts at Maidstone & Shrewsbury.
'Calendar Riots'



1962 -- France: Justin Olive (1886-1962) dies. Militant anarchist & revolutionary syndicalist.

[Details / context]

1963 -- US: George Wallace sworn in as Governor of Alabama, his address states "segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!."

1966 -- US: March on Atlanta to protest ouster of Julian Bond, African American pacifist, from Georgia House of Representatives, after his endorsement of SNCC statement critical of US involvement in Vietnam; Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

          — Martin Luther King Jr.

1966 -- Houston, We Have a Problem?: David Jones changes his last name to Bowie to avoid confusion with Davy Jones from the Monkees.
http://www.notbored.org/bowie.html

Speakers also include
Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Timothy Leary. Participants were urged to bring food to share, flowers, beads, costumes, feathers, bells, cymbals & flags. The Be-In was produced by Michael Bowen.