Elizabeth's unabashed hostility toward Spain led to a failed Spanish invasion, & the Spanish Armada, the greatest naval force in the world at the time, was destroyed by storms & a persistent English navy. With increasing English domination, she encouraged voyages of discovery, such as Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the world, & Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions to the North American coast. The long reign of Elizabeth, known as the "Virgin Queen" for her reluctance to endanger her authority through marriage, also coincided with the flowering of the English Renaissance, associated with such renowned authors as William Shakespeare.

"Without music, no State could survive," Jaques Attali quotes a character in Moliere as saying.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/moliere.htm

Project Gutenberg (& several mirror sites) has online texts of What is Property & The Philosophy of Poverty (his attack on Marx; Marx responded in kind with The Poverty of Philosophy).

"Property is theft!"

"Anarchy is order."

"Whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is a usurper & a tyrant. I declare him my enemy."

http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/ppl/rev/proudhon/

http://ytak.club.fr/janvier3.html#15
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/ProudhonNewPalgraveDictEco.htm
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/Proudhon/proudhon.html

"To be governed is to be ... /siml/library/anarchQuotes.htm#ProudhonQuote

1811 -- US: Acting in secret session, Congress authorizes the President to annex Spanish East Florida, without consent of inhabitants, if local authorities consent, to "protect US interests".


1815 -- Lady Byron takes her one-month-old daughter Augusta Ada from Lord Byron's London apartments & goes to stay with her family. Byron never saw his wife or child again.


1827 -- M. Chabert, wearing an asbestos suit, enters an oven carrying a steak. He emerges after 12 minutes, with the steak well-done. We suspect he was too.



1829 -- Honore de Balzac signs a contract with publisher for "Les Chouans", the first work to appear under his own name. He is so anxious to perfect the text that the publisher has difficulty getting him to surrender the manuscript.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/balzac.htm


1831 -- US: First American-built locomotive to pull a passenger train makes first run; first US railroad honeymoon trip, Mr & Mrs Pierson, Charleston, South Carolina. First train on a train.


1831 -- Victor Hugo completes his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.


1842 -- Author Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law) lives. Wrote The Right to Be Lazy in 1893 while in layin about in prison. Translated & published by Charles Kerr Publishing Co-op in Chicago, 1907.

"Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving & drinking, except in being lazy."

       — Lessing

1850 -- Mihail Eminescu, poet who transforms both the form & content of Romanian poetry, creating an influential school of poetry, lives, Ipotisti, Moldavia. His talent is recognized in 1870 after two poems are published in "Convorbiri literare".
http://www.luceafarul.com


1857 -- US: Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison declares, "No union with slaveholders," at the State Disunion Convention, Worcester, Massachusetts.


1869 -- England:

Strange Stuff:

Something frightened flocks of sheep (see Jan 9, 13, 1869), Swaffham, Norfolk - [London Standard] Damn perverts! http://www.passarola.com/strange/decfort.html http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damned/damn03.htm

1870 -- US: Democratic Party first depicted as an ass, in a political cartoon appearing in "Harper's Weekly."


1870 -- Spain: First issue of "Solidaridad" appears, in Madrid. This newspaper, created by Anselmo Lorenzo & friends, is the first paper published by the Spanish anarchist section of the A.I.T.
http://ytak.club.fr/janvier3.html#15


1877 -- US: Stuck? Standing Bear, Ponca chief, refuses to move to reservation because it is within lands already given to Lakota.


1877 --

More Strange Stuff:

Fall of snakes after localized ("in a space of two blocks") violent rainstorm, Memphis, TN [Monthly Weather Review] http://www.passarola.com/strange/decfort.html http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damned/damn03.htm

1881 --

---

Pierre Monatte lives (1881-1960) .

Monatte was a central figure of French anarcho-syndicalist movement. Influenced by Emile Pouget, friends with Albert Camus, he fought the Stalinist & reformist positions in the trade unions. Monatte had joined the Communist Party for a few years after the Russian Revolution, but was kicked out for challenging its authoritarianism. In 1925, Monatte founded Révolution prolétarienne, an anarchist-syndicalist publication which many anarchists wrote for. The review stopped publishing in 1939, resuming again in 1947. Camus' biographer Herbert Lottman comments on his association with numerous anarchists, with Pierre Monatte, with Giovanna Berneri of Volontà, Jean Paul Samson who published Témoins, Maurice Joyeux of Le Libertaire & Le Monde Libertaire, & with Spanish exiles producing Solidaridad Obrera until, as Lottman explains, "the paper was eventually banned by the de Gaulle government to avoid giving offence to General Franco.'' In his political isolation he had recourse to "the men & women of political movements with which he could still sympathize, those of the far-out left, who on their own chosen terrain were often as lonely as he was." — noted by Colin Ward http://www.socialanarchism.org/mod/magazine/display/20/index.php

---

1891 -- Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (Mandel'shtam) (1891-1938), memorialized in his widow Nadezhda's Hope Against Hope, lives, in Warsaw. Victim of Uncle Joe Stalin's Gulag.

Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mandelst.htm

1896 -- Matthew Brady, photographer, dies.



1902 -- US:

Even Morer Strange Stuff:

Fall of a meteor near Crater Mountain, AZ [Amer. Jour. Sci., 4-21-353] http://www.passarola.com/strange/decfort.html http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/damned/damn03.htm

1908 -- France: Colony Aiglemont issues the first number of "Le Communiste."

The semi-monthly, organ for "Communist-Libertarian Propaganda, Workers Education & Social Achievements", is founded & managed by Fortuné Henry, the founder of the community, is designed as the successor to "Cubilot", but the paper folds after only two numbers. "Les politiciens sont usés, c'est pourquoi nous apparaissons." Source & Image courtesy of Ephéméride Anarchiste

1909 -- US: Great Boston Molasses Flood leaves 21 dead (many drowning), 150 injured.

The holding tank of the Purity Distilling Corporation in Boston explodes under the pressure of 2.3 million gallons of molasses & spews tons of the syrup in a sudden flood.

The first wave, 30 feet high poured down Commercial Street, oozes into the adjacent waterfront area, overpowering everything in its way, reducing buildings to rubble. Neither pedestrians nor horse-drawn wagons can outrun it. The flood carries off helpless people & animals like driftwood. The tank itself launches shrapnel-like metal pieces, severing a pillar that leads to the collapse of a Boston Elevated Railway section.

After the flood subsides, pools of molasses up to three feet deep clog streets. The molasses (weighing 27 million pounds), originally destined for rum, engulfes 21, & leaves buildings crumbling. Numerous horses can not be extracted from the "liquid" & are shot by the police.

1913 -- Mexico: This month is marked by the rise of anarcho-syndicalism in Mexico City as Casa del Obrero Mundial (COM; House of the World Worker) undermines the government’s Gran Liga union, & dominates organized labor in the city. COM was founded in late September (1912).
[Details / context]


1915 -- US: During these winter months, despite a heavy lecture schedule, Emma Goldman helps organize defense of Matthew Schmidt & David Caplan, arrested for complicity in the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building. Today she attends the concert of her nephew David Hochstein, a violinist of exceptional talent.

January-April, Emma Goldman delivers a series of lectures on the war & on sexuality in New York City, Albany, Schenectady, & Boston.

Topics include "Anarchism & Literature," "Feminism — A Criticism of Woman's Struggle for the Vote & 'Freedom'," "Nietzsche, The Intellectual Storm-Center of the Great War," "The Intermediate Sex (A Study of Homosexuality)," & "Man — Monogamist or Varietist?"

By the end of the year Ben Reitman reports that Emma has delivered a total of 321 lectures.

1916 -- US: During this month Matthew Schmidt is convicted & sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity in the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building.




1916 -- US: Alexander Berkman announces publication of the first issue of his San Francisco-based anarchist journal The Blast.

• Berkman's editorial for the first issue of The Blast published in San Francisco on 15th January 1916,
  

• The Blast was co-edited by M. Eleanor Fitzgerald, a Wisconsin labor advocate, political lecturer, & theatrical manager.

  Through her involvement with the anarchist movement, Fitzgerald met Emma Goldman & Berkman, joining them in the publication of the Mother Earth Bulletin around 1906.

• During World War I (1914-1918) she turned her attention to the "political prisoners" — the conscientious objectors. She raised money for their bail & defense & spoke in their behalf. She left the movement in 1918 when Goldman & Berkman were deported.

1918 -- France: In Paris the group of musicians called Les Six give their first concert.


1919 -- Russia: Peasants in central Russia rise against the Bolsheviks.


1919 -- Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebnecht, libertarian communists, are murdered by police.

They are arrested & taken to the Eden Hotel in Berlin, then taken out, smashed in the head repeatedly with rifle butts before being shot in the head at separate locations.

Luxemburg's body was dumped in a canal & not recovered until March.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/luxembur.htm

Excellent collection of materials on & by other left communists at the John Gray website, http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/
http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/

1922 -- Ireland: Irish Free State established.



1923 -- France: "La Brochure mensuelle" (The Monthly Booklet) begins publishing in Paris.

"La Brochure mensuelle" is published by Emile Bidault & the Groupe de Propagande par la Brochure. The first number is a text by Peter Kropotkin "To Young People." Devoted to spreading libertarian ideas, it publishes the writings of over 100 authors in 190 issues before its cessation in December of 1937. Source & Image courtesy of Ephéméride Anarchiste

1925 -- China: US marines land in Shanghai to protect foreigners during fighting.



1929 -- US: American Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. lives, Atlanta, Georgia. The government has made the observance of his birth one of those moveable feasts.



1929 -- US: Congress passes the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, signed by 62 nations outlawing war. Yup.


1932 -- US: The Rand School in New York City holds a symposium on Emma Goldman's book, Living My Life.




1934 -- Canada: Emma Goldman gives a well-attended series of lectures, January 15-31, at Hygeia Hall in Toronto.

Topics include "Germany's Tragedy & the Forces That Brought It About," "Hitler & His Cohorts," "The Collapse of German Culture," & "Dictatorship Right & Left — a Religious Hysteria."

A talk to a Jewish meeting also raises money for anarchists forced to flee repression in Nazi Germany.

During this month US Department of Labor approves a three-month visa, effective Feb. 1, for Goldman to lecture on nonpolitical subjects, which may include Living My Life under the category of literature. Once word of her tour leaks out, many lecture agencies in the United States offer their services.

1935 -- Russia: Grigori Zinoviev & other Soviet leaders are convicted of treason.



1939 -- Agustin Gomez Arcos (1939-1998) lives, Almeria, Andalusia. Spanish anarchist, gay dramatist/novelist. Wrote many novels about pro-Franco Spain: L'agneau carnivore (1975), Maria Republica (1976), Ana non (1977), L'enfant pain (1983), Un oiseau brûlé vif (1984).

Often in winter the end of the day is like the final metaphor in a poem celebrating death:

there is no way out.

— Agustin Gomez-Arcos, A Bird Burned Alive, 1988

see the Anarchist Encyclopedia, http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/Gomez-ArcosAgustin.htm

1941 -- Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" premiers, at the Nazi concentration camp Stalag CVIII-A, outside of Gorlitz in Silesia...in -4 degrees fahrenheit.

A devout Catholic with an interest in mysticism & the supernatural, Messiaen was also a poet & an accomplished amateur ornithologist. He mixed sounds as a painter mixes colors, associating specific shades with certain modes & chords.

Inmate Messiaen (1908-92), chose the prediction of the Apocalypse in the Revelation of St. John to guide his composition, based three movements on earlier-composed material & wrote five in the camp. The writing & this performance of "Quartet for the End of Time," in a German POW camp in the bitter winter of 1941, is called one of the great stories of 20th century music.

See Rebecca Rischin, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet (Cornell University, 2003).

http://www.b24.net/pow/greatescape.htm

1943 -- US: The Halt & the Lame?: 1,000 workers complete the air conditioning system for the Pentagon, unconditionally. The Pentagon, originally planned as a research hospital & then built as a military facility in eleven months during World War II, is completed in Arlington, Virginia.


1944 -- US: Who's Got The Biggest Baton? Police attend the Boston Symphony to file a complaint against Igor Stravinsky for his arrangement of "The Star Spangled Banner", but its performance is canceled.

1946 -- US: 260,000 US electrical workers strike GE, Westinghouse & General Motors.


1948 -- Jean Cocteau movie "Beauty & the Beast" is released in the US.