Our Daily Bleed...

--

      By the fireside, but in the cooler shade
       Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep
      Under a sycamore, & all things keep
      Time with the season; only she doth carry
      June in her eyes, in her heart January.

      — Thomas Carew, The Spring

JANUARY 21

EMELYAN PUGACHEV
18th-century Russian peasant revolt leader.

Alternate Saints for this day:
MARIJA GIMBUTAS
Renowned pioneer feminist anthropologist,
theorist of the pacific, nurturing prehistoric goddess.

ROGER BALDWIN, Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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US: NATIONAL HUGGING DAY

FEAST OF JOLLY ROGER

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879 -- Boudouin with the Iron Arm Earl of Flanders, dies.


1324 -- Japan: Zen Buddhists Tendai & Shingon hold a religious debate.


1647 -- US: Margaret Brent becomes first US woman to ask for the vote (in Maryland assembly).


1661 -- England: Quaker Peace Testimony presented to Charles II.


1769 -- England: The anti-governmental Junius letters first appear, attacking the corrupt nature of the monarchy of King George III. In Byron's The Vision of Judgment, Lucifer calls the shadowy figure of Junius to testify against King George's entrance into Heaven.


1775 -- Russia: Russian peasant rvolt leader Emelyan Pugachev dies, Moscow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emelyan_Pugachov


1789 -- The first American novel, William Hill Brown's epistolary romance The Power of Sympathy, or the Triumph of Nature, is published anonymously in Boston (once attributed to Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton).


1793 -- France: Louis Capet, aka Louis XVI. Profession: King of the French. Loses his head. Guillotined on the site of the present Place de la Concorde (or as a punster has it, a French chopping center).

"[...] I forget which issue, you mentioned Louis XVI as the last French king. Actually there were three or 4 others after the Restoration: Louis XVIII, then one or two successors, then the "citizen king" Louis-Philippe, who came to power in the 1830 revolution (sort of analogous to the 1688 revolution in England) & then fled during the 1848 one. He was the last "king," but there was one more monarch: Emperor Louis Napoleon (1851-1871).

Cheers,

— Bleedster Ken

1801 -- US: "Federal Bonfire Number Two": a mysterious fire sweeps the offices of the Department of Treasury, destroying books & papers, after Republicans demanded proof that the expenditures of Timothy Pickering, the recently replaced Federalist Secretary of War, could be properly accounted for. (see November 8).


1818 -- John Keats writes his poem "On a Lock of Milton's Hair."


1863 -- Ireland: Short Leash? City of Dublin leases part of Cattle Market for 100,000 years.



1867 -- US: An foolish & overzealous Patrol Special Officer, Armand Barbier, arrests His Majesty Norton I, Emperor of the United States & Protector of Mexico, for involuntary treatment of a mental disorder & thereby creates a major civic uproar.

Frisco Police Chief Patrick Crowley apologizes to His Majesty & orders him released. Several scathing newspaper editorials follow the arrest.

All police officers begin to salute His Majesty when he passed them on the street.

http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/nort.html
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist3/crowley.html



1879 -- Henrik Ibsen play "A Doll's House" premiers.




1883 -- France: Victor Pengam lives (1883-1920), Brest. The government's "Notebook B" (files on radicals & antimilitarists) notes:

"Anarchist propagandist & most militant of antimilitarists (...) Measure to be taken in the event of mobilization: arrest. "

He now has a street named for him in Brest, where he was born & was active as a dock worker & founder of a cooperative restaurant on the docks.

See the Anarchist Encyclopedia page,

1884 -- US: Roger Baldwin lives, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Friend & defender of social activists whose civil liberties were trampled on — a still common phenomena in the 21st centruy under the administration of Bush League & Co.


1884 -- Guy de Maupassant story "Coco" is published.


1887 -- England: Sir Joseph Whitworth, the man who standardized screws, is screwed for the last time, as they used nails on his coffin.


1888 -- Blues great Leadbelly (Huddie Leadbetter) lives. American blues singer, who twice sang himself out of jails, & who helped to inspire the folk & blues revivals of the Fifties & Sixties.

"The number one man on the number one gang on the number one farm in the state."

       — Pete Seeger

http://www.leadbelly.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadbelly
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ledbelly.htm

1891 -- Jules Chazoff lives.
http://ytak.club.fr/janvier3.html#21


1892 -- John Couch Adams English co-discoverer of Neptune, dies.



1895 -- Japan: Ito Noe lives, Fukuoka. Anarchist, social critic, author, translator & feminist. Married the Dadaist author & poet Tsuji Jun (an individualist anarchist, he translated Stirner's The Ego & His Own). Noe was brutally murdered in 1923 by military police, along with Osugi Sakae, & his six-year-old nephew, in what became known throughout Japan as the "Amakasu Incident".

[Details / context]

1898 -- US: Emma Goldman lectures on anarchism in English & Yiddish in Providence without (!) interference from the mayor or police; Emma is assisted by John H. Cook, former president of the Central Labor Union. To help cover traveling expenses, she earns a percentage on sales she makes for Brady's stationery business while on tour.




1898 -- French author Emile Zola is sued for libel over his defense of Dreyfuss.



1900 -- England: Emma Goldman travels to Glasgow, Dundee, & Edinburgh, Scotland to lecture. Today in Dundee she speaks on "Authority versus Liberty" & "The Aim of Humanity." In Edinburgh, she meets the anarchist Thomas Bell.


1903 -- Try This At Home?: Harry Houdini escapes police station Halvemaansteeg in Amsterdam.


1904 -- Richard P. Blackmur, reclusive poet/critic, lives, probably in Massachusetts. Commenting on the problems of "the serious writer," he characterizes those who work for Henry Luce (of 'Time" & "Life") as choosing "a kind of fur-lined purgatory."


1907 -- John M. Synge writes the preface to "The Playboy of the Western World."


1908 -- US: Ordinance makes public smoking illegal for women in New York City.


1908 -- August Strindberg play "The Ghost Sonata" premiers, Stockholm.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/socsig/strindberg.html


1911 -- US: Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin establishes the National Progressive Republican League. Yup.


1919 -- US: New York City Police Inspector Thomas J. Tunney testifies before a Senate subcommittee, chaired by Senator Overman, investigating links between German agents & the US Brewers' Association & allied liquor interests.

Tunney also recounts his investigation of Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman in connection with the Hindu revolutionary Har Dayal. He claims Goldman & Berkman are close associates of Leon Trotsky. He describes Goldman as "a very able & intelligent woman & a very fine speaker."

Not bad for a flatfoot; he got the last part right.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/SouthAsia/gadar.html
http://www.corpse.org/issue_5/critical_urgencies/elias.htm

1920 -- US: Palmer "Red" Raids target labor activists & radicals for US government repression. The Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Attorney General orders the roundup of all suspected for prosecution & deportation where possible. Thousands of people are arrested in a nationwide sweep, most arrests are illegal, without warrants or justification.


1920 -- Author Ernest Hemingway returns to America after his World War I experiences.


1921 -- Lithuania: Feminist anthropologist Marija Gimbutas lives, Vilnius.

MARIJA GIMBUTAS
Renowned pioneer feminist anthropologist,
theorist of the pacific, nurturing prehistoric goddess.

1922 -- Actor Paul Scofield lives. He played Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons & King Lear in the 1972 film. He appeared in Zefirelli's production of Hamlet as the Ghost.



1924 -- Russia: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik party, dies of a stroke at 54. Lovingly known as "Major" in George Orwell's Animal Farm.

The statue pictured here, salvaged from the former Czechoslovakia, now resides in Seattle's Fremont District, a few blocks from BleedMeisterDave's home.

"Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none."

— Peter Kropotkin

(Lenin was reportedly seen alive & photographed in Vilnius, Lithuania, the summer of 1996):

http://www.connection.se/hem/anders/resor/lenin/
http://www.whatrain.com/seattle/publicArt/RoF.htm


1924 -- Benny Hill, comedian, lives (1924-1992; many sources also say he was born in 1925). Selected a SubGenius Saint for Sept. 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Hill



1929 -- Harry Crosby asks Hart Crane if The Black Sun Press can publish his as yet unfinished poem "The Bridge."



1929 -- Russia: Snowball In Hell? Stalin's "wannabe", Leon Trotsky, is officially banished from the Soviet Union. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Leon Trotsky (aka, the "Red Butcher" of Kronstadt; "Snowball" in Orwell's Animal Farm) is sent skeedaddling from the country by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Uncle Joe Stalin.

---

I have this listed for January 21 (the Bleed originally had this on both the 21 & the 31st). Trotsky dates also depend on what source you are reading...I couldn't find any evidence about this date on the Web. I searched for an hour today.

— Bleedster Bob

---

http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html
http://www.corpse.org/issue_5/critical_urgencies/elias.htm

1931 -- US: It's Depressing?: Ted Lewis & his band records "Headin' For Better Times."

The plight of homeless & hungry Americans so moves the Cameroons in Africa that a collection of $3.77 is raised & mailed to New York City with instructions that it be used for "the relief of the starving."

In July, in Henryetta, Oklahoma, 300 jobless men threaten to beat up & kill local storekeepers unless they are given food.

The storekeepers choose their lives.

1932 -- Lytton Strachey, biographer/literary critic with the wonderful, gently mocking, ironic, enormously articulate style, dies in Ham Spray House, Berkshire.

Though bitterly attacked throughout his life, he retains his position as a preeminent humorist & wit. Lovers with John Maynard Keynes & Duncan Grant. A conscientious objector during World War I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytton_Strachey

1939 -- Spain: Rafael Torres Escartín, a former member of Los Solidarios, who lost his sanity while in prison & sent to an asylum in 1931, is taken out & shot in Barcelona.



1941 -- England: London's communist "Daily Worker" is suppressed.


1942 -- Count Basie & His Orchestra record "One O'Clock Jump" in New York City for Okeh Records.


1942 -- Ivan Dzerzhinsky one-act opera "Blood of the People" premiers, Leningrad.


1946 -- US: Steel Strike.


1946 -- "The Fat Man" (created by the leftwing author Dashiell Hammett) premiers on ABC radio.


1946 -- France: Isidore Isou & Gabriel Pomerand, forming the lettrist movement in Paris earlier this month, cause their first lettrist scandal at the Théatre du Vieux-Colombier.



1950 -- Novelist/activist George Orwell (Eric Blair) age 46, Buys the [animal] farm, dies, London, England.

"When I see an actual flesh & blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the police[man], I do not have to say which side I am on."

       — George Orwell

http://www.levity.com/corduroy/orwell.htm
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/anderson2.htm
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/

1950 -- US: Alger Hiss found guilty of perjury & gets five years in prison. A former State Department official, indicted for perjury, after denying he passed secret documents to Whittaker Chambers for a communist spy ring.


1953 -- US: 13 communists convicted of plotting the overthrow of the American government.



1954 -- US launches first nuclear-powered submarine.


1956 -- William Shawn succeeds Harold Ross as editor of the "New Yorker."



1959 -- Former "Little Rascal" Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer shot & killed while threatening a debtor with a jack knife; the death is later ruled a justifiable homicide, Sun Valley, California.
http://www.rivalquest.com/ourgang/


1959 -- T.S. Eliot play "The Cocktail Party" (Alec Guinness) opens, Broadway (409 performances).


1960 -- South Africa: Rock fall traps 437 workers at Coalbrook; 417 die of methane poisoning. (or the 22nd?)


1961 -- High Seas: Spanish, Portuguese & South American activists hijack Portuguese liner "Santa Maria" to protest the Franco & Salazar dictatorships.

Portuguese opposition to Salazarism smouldered within the armed forces, & this even before the onset of the colonial wars. One of the most spectacular attempts to call attention to Portuguese (& Spanish) fascism was the highjacking of the liner ‘Santa Maria’.

Today a group of army & ex-army men seize the ship on her journey from Miami to Caracas. International press & TV took up the incident. Henrique Galvâo explained, in an interview with a French newspaper, the position of DRIL (Revolutionary Command for Iberian Liberation):

‘We don’t merely want a change of government, but a revolution both in Spain & in Portugal’.

After twelve days the liner eventually docked in Brazil. Galvâo & others were forced into exile.

Phil Mailer, Portugal: The Impossible Revolution (Solidarity, 1977).
http://libcom.org/library/portugal-impossible-revolution-phil-mailer-intro

1964 -- Spain: In San Sebastian, psychiatrist / novelist, Luis Martin-Santos, dies, after completing only the first volume of a projected trilogy. The first part, Tiempo de silencio ("Time of Silence"), is a novel about a medical student, Pedro, who is thrust among the inhabitants of the Madrid slums & confronted with their often violent adaptation to severe conditions.


1966 -- Trips Festival. Jan 21-23, Stewart Brand's Trips Fest held at the Longshoreman's Hall, Frisco, California: holds the first light show; 10,000 people show. The Festival at 400 North Point St. featured the Grateful Dead, Big Brother & the Holding Company, The Loading Zone, Chinese New Years' Lion Dancers & Drum & Bugle Corps, Stroboscopic Trampoline, & Ken Kesey & His Merry Pranksters.
Called the first hippie conclave.

"Pray for the (grateful) dead & fight like hell for the living!"

      — (with apologies to) Mother Jones

http://wild-bohemian.com/kesey.htm


1967 -- China: Workers & peasants clash with Red Guards in Kiangsi.


1968 -- Four thermonuclear bombs lost when a US B-52 crashes, North Star Bay, Greenland.


1969 -- US: The Navajo Community College, the first tribally established & operated community college in the U.S., opens at Many Farms, Arizona.


1969 -- Switzerland : Coolant malfunction from an experimental underground reactor at Lucens Vad, results in the release of a large amount of radiation into a cavern, which was then sealed.


1970 -- US: A Chicago coroner's jury rules the police murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton was "justifiable" (nuthin' threatens a gang of cops like a black man asleep in his bed).


1973 -- Anarchist / composer John Cage piano work "Cheap Imitation" premiers, NYC.


1974 -- US: Oneida Nation wins US Supreme Court decision to sue state of New York for rent on five million acres.


1974 -- US: Four-day postal strike begins at Jersey City, N.J.



1974 -- US: At the insistence of his son Chip, then governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter invites Bob Dylan to a post-concert party at his mansion. Says Carter of the musician, "(Dylan) never initiates conversation, but he'll answer a question if you ask him. Cool.


1976 -- US: Continental Walk for Disarmament & Social Justice starts in Ukiah, California, headed for Washington, D.C.


1977 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Jimmy Carter issues unconditional pardon to most Vietnam draft resisters on his first full day in office. Affects between 100,000 to 500,000 people.




1981 -- US: A Bit of No-Java-Jive History? Nation's first museum honoring the dishonorable Dick M Nixon opens in San Clemente, California — well, actually it's more a roadside coffee shop housing some Nixon memorabilia:

"We call it a bit of history," explains manager Pete Mitchell, "because, of all the history in the United States, this is just a little bit."

Percolating along, just like the Daily Bleed.

1981 -- This Will Never Fly?: Alfredo Bizarri patents the flying saucer (UK Pat No. 1,582,980). Oddly, Alfredo was a Little Green Guy living in Texass.



1982 -- Blues guitar giant B.B. King donates his entire record collection (including about 7,000 rare blues records he played when he was a disc jockey) to the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture.

http://www.worldblues.com/bbking/

1983 -- The Bollingen Prize for poetry is awarded to Anthony E. Hecht.


1984 -- Netherlands: Women's resistance camp set up, Volkel airbase.


1985 -- Author Don DeLillo's post-modern novel White Noise wins American Book Award.


1986 -- God dies.



1994 -- Crazy As A Fox?: Lorena Bobbitt found temporarily insane for chopping off spouse's penis.

1995 -- Colombia: 93 prisoners are freed when anti-government rebels storm Mocoa prison.
[Source: Calendar Riots]



1996 -- Cannibal & the Headhunters lead singer Francisco Garcia dies at the age of 49.

http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/cannibals1.html

1997 --

US: 60 protesters with bathrobes, shower caps, & toothbrushes traipse through upscale stores (Nordstrom's & NikeTown) in downtown Seattle, looking for a place to take a shower, in an Eat the State!-inspired protest, drawing attention to City Council plans to kill a proposed downtown public hygiene center for the homeless.

1999 -- Romania: Striking miners, backed by residents, use stones & clubs to force their way through riot police in a ravine, & swept closer to Bucharest. State television said at least 80 people were hit by flying rocks, or were suffering from tear gas. Most were police officers.

It is the second time in three days that the miners, who are demanding pay increases & a reversal of decisions to close uneconomical mines, had overwhelmed cordons of police in central Romania's hilly countryside.

The miners, who have a reputation for militancy dating from communist times, have confronted President Emil Constantinescu with his worst crisis since he took office in 1996.

"WE NO LONGER FACE A PROTEST, BUT A BRUTAL ATTACK ON AUTHORITY."

— Emil Constantinescu, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Romanian President

http://www.ainfos.ca/99/jan/ainfos00192.html


1999 -- Greece: Continuing demonstrations against "2525/97 Act" in many cities with clashes in many. Over 40 people arrested, including anarchists.
http://www.ainfos.ca/99/jan/ainfos00190.html

All Animals Are Equal
But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

       — George Orwell, Animal Farm (the book was rejected by such eminent publishing figures as Victor Gollancz, Jonathan Cape & T. S. Eliot at Faber & Faber)

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.

Find out just what people will submit to, & you have found the exact amount of injustice & wrong which will be imposed upon them; & these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

       — Frederick Douglass

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