---

Ancient Rome: LUPERCALIA, popular Roman sex fest & love lottery (which christians attempted to over-write by introducing Valentine's Day a day before): revellers whip each other to frenzy & fertility with 'februa' — thongs — from which the name of the month is derived.

A goat was sacrificed & skinned. Two young men were dressed in loin-cloths made of the skin. They held long strips of skin in each hand & ran through the community whipping everyone.

Yohoto, Japan: KAMAKURA, the snow cave festival.

---

399 -- [BC] Philosopher Socrates sentenced to death.


1549 -- Il Sodoma, Italian painter (Marriage of Alexander & Roxane), dies.
’Robert Braunwart’


1564 -- Astronomer Galileo Galilei lives. The Pope is pissed, he goes out alignment.


1748 -- Jeremy Bentham, utilitarian philosopher, lives, London. Extols "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."


1779 -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) joins in the squabble between Hume, Voltaire, & Rousseau, suggesting that Rousseau be indentured to work on the plantations.


1781 -- Gotthold Lessing dies, Braunschweig, Brunswick. German dramatist/critic/writer on philosophy & aesthetics. His The Education of the Human Race expresses his belief in the perfectibility of the human race.


1782 -- Doomsday prophet(eer) William Miller lives.
http://www.earlysda.com/miller/views1.html


1819 -- Se celebra el Congreso de Angostura por iniciativa de Simón Bolívar.
http://www.patriagrande.net/uruguay/eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/18190215.htm



1820 -- Susan B. Anthony lives, Adams, Massachusetts, early feminist & suffragist.

Daily Bleed Saint 2007
Arrested for trying to vote in 1872
(Now that women can vote, note the difference?)

1820 -- In his journal Lord Byron calls John Keats "A tadpole of the Lakes".


1829 -- S. Weir Mitchell lives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Physician/novelist who wrote The Case of George Dedlow (1866) after serving as a surgeon in the Civil War, about an amputee. Notable for its psychological insights & realistic war scenes.


1845 -- US: Sarah Bagley, who leads the Lowell Female Reform Association, testifies to the Massachusetts legislature on deplorable working conditions in the state's mills.

Bagley helped force the legislature to hold public hearings on working conditions — the first such investigation ever held by a U.S. governmental body. In the end, however, the committee's report echoes industry's concern about putting Massachusetts at a competitive disadvantage with textile mills in other states. The committee finds nothing unhealthy about the long hours, low wages & the poor working conditions. The Lowell Female Reform Association unanimously passes a resolution chastising the committee, beginning a political campaign that will oust committee chair Colonel William Schouler from the legislature.

http://www.corpwatch.org/
Source: [Insurgent Radio Kiosk]

1869 -- US: Charges of Treason against Jefferson Davis are dropped, as are indictments against 37 other ex-Confederates, including Robert E. Lee.




1881 -- Guy de Maupassant story "En Famille" (A Family Matter) is published.


1886 -- British author Sax Rohmer lives. His novels establish the stereotypically sinister Asian (the Dr. Fu Manchu series).
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rohmer.htm



1892 --

Belgium: Premier issue of the exemplary "L'Antipatriote," in Bruxelles.
[Details / context]

1894 -- England: The Royal Observatory, in Greenwich, is the apparent target of Martial Bourdin, a 26 year old French anarchist, who is armed with a bomb, which explodes in his hand.

 

Some believe Bourdin was duped into carrying the bomb or put to it by an agent provocateur.

 

Later today police raid the Club Autonomie in London, arresting everyone, mostly foreign anarchists. Many were deported without ever being charged with any crime.

 

The incident became famous with Joseph Conrad's book The Secret Agent (1907) who used it to create a literary tale of conspiracy & tragedy all his own invention. The story also inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film "Sabotage."

 

The echoes of this long gone incident continue to resonate: in July 1996 the FBI described how the 'Unabomber', Theodore Kaczynski, was inspired by Conrad in his 18 year bombing campaign against "scientific" institutions.

[Details / context]

1898 -- Cuba: US battleship Maine mysteriously & conveniently explodes, sinks in Havana Harbor, killing 260. The event prompts US intervention in the Cuban-Spanish conflict on the "behalf" of Cuba. A pretext for war with Spain, the US picked up, among other new properties, Puerto Rico, Guam & the Philippines in the deal, & used its new presence in the Pacific as an excuse for "annexing" the independent nation of Hawai'i later this year. Some claime this was the maine idea.

No evidence of sabotage was found, but the Hearst newspapers claim the ship was intentionally blown up by the Spanish. The accusation increased the newspapers' circulation & drew the US inevitably towards war with Spain. "Remember the Maine" was used as pretext for setting off Spanish-American War.

In the 1970s it was determined that the USS Maine sinking was due to an accidental fire.

1898 -- Novelist Masuji Ibuse (1898-1993) lives, Kamo. Noted for psychologically sharp & sympathetic short stories of ordinary people. Influenced by surrealism & Marxism. Collaborated with Osamu Dazai, whose suicide in 1948 deepened Ibuse's views on the fragility of life. Black Rain, a book on Hiroshima is one of the world's best known Japanese novels.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ibuse.htm



1898 -- France: Ne voulant pas prendre parti dans l'affaire Dreyfus,
Louise Michel repart pour Londres.

Not wanting to take party in the Dreyfus Affair,
Louise Michel splits, once again, for London.

[Source: Michel Chronologie]



1899 -- Anthony Gilbert (1899-1973) lives. Prolific British mystery writer. Pseudonym for Lucy Malleson, writing under a man's name, whose most famous character is lawyer-detective Arthur G. Crook.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/agilbert.htm



1907 --

Bulgaria: "Free Society" premiers, the first anarchist periodical in the country.

Published on the initiative of Mikhael Guerdjikov, the intended semi-monthly is subject to repression.
[Details / context]

1908 -- Socialist/dramatist George Bernard Shaw responding to attacks by Hilaire Belloc & G. K. Chesterton, in the New Age dubs the pair "the Chesterbelloc ... a very amusing pantomime elephant."

"G. K. Chesterton's novel The Man Who Was Thursday is a blatant articulation of populist & imperialist ideology that treats anarchism as a threat to the British way of life exemplified by the figure of the "common man." This construction is further determined by anarchism's articulation within the context of Catholic ideology as a form of spiritual fakery associated with the demonic."

1910 -- US: "The Uprising of the Twenty Thousand," the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union Triangle Shirtwaist strike that began September 27, declared officially over by ILGWU; by now 339 manufacturing firms have reached agreements with the union; 13 firms, including Triangle, with 1,100 workers, did not settle.

"If the union had won," explained 1909 Triangle Shirtwaist Company striker Rose Safran,

"we would have been safe. Two of our demands were for adequate fire escapes & for open doors from the factories to the street. But the bosses defeated us & we didn't get the open doors or the better fire escapes. So our friends are dead."

• Triangle Fire, Ladder Company 20 Plaque, New York
  Dedicated to the firemen who fought the flames at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, March 25, 1911.
• Triangle Fire Plaques
  Washington Place & Green Street, New York
  Garment workers marked the site near Washington Square of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of March 25, 1911, where 146 lost their lives. National Park Service plaque designating the Asch Building (Triangle Shirtwaist Factory site) as a national historic landmark.

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/178/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

1915 -- Publication of "Manifesto Against the War", signed by 35 anarchists, including Errico Malatesta, Domela Nieuwenhuis, Louis Lecoin, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Alexander Schapiroetc. The Manifesto takes to task numerous socialists & anarchists who have taken sides or are participating in the slaughter of WWI, particularly as is later reflected in the "Manifeste des Seize" (Manifesto of the Sixteen; 1916), by a few anarchists (notably Peter Kropotkin, Jean Grave) in support of the allies.

"Propaganda & anarchist action must endeavor with perseverance to weaken & disaggregate the various States, to cultivate the spirit of rebellion & to give birth to dissatisfaction in the people & the armies."

[Details / context]

1917 -- US: American Calvary gallops into México in pursuit of Pancho Villa.


1930 -- Spain: Barcelona, aparece el primer número del semanario "Acción", órgano de los sindicalistas (grupo Solidaridad). Tras 47 números, desaparecerá en abril de 1931.
http://www.alasbarricadas.org/ateneovirtual/index.php/15_de_febrero


1931 -- Lillian Leitzel, circus performer, dies.



1933 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago is fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, by an assassin's bullet intended for Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Franklin D. Roosevelt.



1933 -- US: Signing of original 11-state master trucking agreement, involving 200,000 truckers, which forms the basis for the Teamsters Union.


1933 -- Nicaragua: National guard kills disarmed Sandinistas, Pueblo Nuevo.


1933 -- Germany: Karl Radek praises the invincible force of the German Communist Party; meanwhile the Social Democratic newspaper "Vorwarts" is banned again in Berlin.


1934 --

"All Austrian schools, meanwhile, were closed for an indefinite period under a government decree issued to keep children off the hazardous streets"

— "San Francisco Chronicle" 15 February 1934

The poem "There is a Lesson" is preceded by the newspaper excerpt above.

Keep the children off the streets,
    Dollfuss,
there is an alphabet written in blood
    for them to learn,
there is a lesson thundered by collapsed
    books of bodies.

They might be riddled by the bullets
    of knowledge

. . .

there is a volume written with three
    thousand bodies that can never
    be hidden,
there is a sentence spelled by the
    grim faces of bereaved women
there is a message, inescapable, that
    vibrates the air with voices of
    heroes.

— Tillie Olsen, "There Is a Lesson"

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/olsen/north.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Olsen

1934 -- Edgar Rice Burroughs novel Pirates of Venus is published.


1935 -- Edgar Rice Burroughs novel Lost on Venus is published.


1936 -- Edgar Rice Burroughs novel Swords of Mars is published.


1939 -- France: Alphonse Cannone (1899-1939) dies.

Algerian-born militant, one of the anarchist participants in the Black Sea Mutiny of 1919, combatant in the Spanish Revolution of 1936.

1939 -- Lillian Hellman play "The Little Foxes" opens in NY (191 performances).


1939 -- Edgar Rice Burroughs novel Carson of Venus is published.



1941 -- Duke Ellington & his Orchestra records one of big band's all time classics. "Take the "A" Train" was recorded at Victor Records' Hollywood studio & became the Duke's signature song.

See "Some Thoughts on Jazz ..." by Kenneth Rexroth,
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/jazz.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Ellington
http://www.redhotjazz.com/duke.html

1941 -- France: Henri Portier lives (d.2007) Anarcho-syndicaliste, pacifiste, antimilitariste, & historien du mouvement Freinet.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#HenriPortier


1944 -- Italy: US drops 400 tons of bombs on Monte Cassino abbey, Italy, destroying it & killing a bishop, under the false belief there are Germans there.

1946 -- France: The film Zéro de conduite (1933), by the anarchist Jean Vigo is finally released, after being banned since 1933.

Jean VIGO: Zero De Conduite

With this film, legendary filmmaker Jean Vigo's lyrical genius reinvents schoolyard rebellion as all-purpose, anti-authoritarian anthem. Essential radical viewing in any year. Needless to say, Vigo’s film of rebellion in a boarding school was too much for the authorities at the time. After its first showing in 1933 there was an immediate outcry, & fears that it might result in civil unrest caused the film to be banned. The ban remained in force until 1945, after which Zéro de conduitefinally received the appraisal & status it merited. It is now regarded as one of the most significant films in the history of cinema.

1948 -- Bertolt Brecht play "Die Antigone des Sophokles" premiers, Switzerland.


1950 -- US: The CIO expels the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers; the Food, Tobacco & Agricultural Workers; & the United Office & Professional Workers for Ccommunist tendencies.


1950 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Representative Clare Hoffman (R-Michigan), speaking against a civil-rights bill, says "The group that needs protection in this country are the white taxpaying Gentiles."


1951 -- US: Movie Great Ronald Reagan movie Bedtime for Bonzo premiers, Indianapolis. Stars a real live chump.


1954 -- US: Ronnie Reagan opens his stand-up act at the Las Vegas Ramona Room. So good he can take it all the way to the White House.


1957 -- US: Impresario Irvin Feld debuts his "Greatest Shows of 1957" in Pittsburgh.

On the bill: Clyde McPhatter, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Lavern Baker, Bill Doggett, the Moonglows, the Five Satins & more. Before it closes, the tour goes through every American region, including some such as the northern Rocky Mountain states, which have never seen a live rock & roll show before.

1957 -- ¶ Beatser Jack Kerouac departs New York on the S.S. Slovenia en route for Tangier to see William Burroughs.

February-March: In Tangier, Kerouac stays in a room above Burroughs at the Villa Muniria; types Burroughs' Naked Lunch manuscript (Kerouac has provided the title for the novel which Burroughs originally called Word Hoard.) In March Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky arrive in Tangier to visit Kerouac & Burroughs.

1958 -- Jerry Lee Lewis performs "Great Balls of Fire" & "Breathless" on "American Bandstand." Later in the day, "The Dick Clark Show," a new Saturday night rock & roll television program, debuts.


1959 -- Beginning date of the movie "Chocolat" (approximate).


1961 -- US: Postmaster General Day is briefed on the CIA's illegal mail-opening project.


1961 -- Protesters disrupt UN sessions over the slaying (US-supported) of Congo PM Lumumba.



1965 -- Nat "King" Cole, 48, dies of complications following surgery for lung cancer in Santa Monica.

http://members.tip.net.au/~bnoble/natkcole/nat_cole.htm

http://www.alamhof.org/colenat.htm

1966 -- US: Nisqually tribe engages in protest "fish-in" to demand treaty fishing rights, Washington State.
http://www.alphacdc.com/sapadawn/
http://salmonpage.com/
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth481/salmon.html


1966 -- Colombia: Father Camilo Torres killed by government troops.

"We know that hunger is mortal"

said the priest Camilo Torres. "& if we know that, does it make sense to waste time arguing whether the soul is immortal?"

Camilo believed in Christianity as the practice of loving ones neighbor, & wanted that love to be effective. He had an obsession about effective love. That obsession made him take up arms, & because of it, he has died, in an unknown corner of Colombia, fighting with the guerrillas.

— Eduardo Galeano, Century of the Wind, p192

‘The Catholic who is not a revolutionary is living in mortal sin.'

— Camilo Torres

http://www.patriagrande.net/uruguay/eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/19660215.htm

1967 -- US: Carrying huge photos of napalmed Vietnamese children, 2,500 members of the group Women Strike for Peace storm the Pentagon, demanding to see (quote) "the generals who send our sons to Vietnam" while more troops are shipped overseas & casualties mount.

Women Strike for Peace members always dress neatly & appear as they are — middle-class homemakers. When Pentagon guards lock the main-entrance doors, the women take off their shoes & bang on the doors with their heels. They're finally allowed inside, but Defense Secretary Robert McNamara will not meet with them. Senator Jacob Javits agrees to meet a few hundred of the women, but he's roundly booed & heckled when he denies the US is using toxic gas in Vietnam.

During this month Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks out against the war, University of Wisconsin students push Dow Chemical recruiters off the campus to protest Dow’s production of napalm, & Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D., NY) proposes that bombing of North Vietnam be halted so that troop withdrawal may be negotiated. Antidraft rallies bring out demonstrators in many cities.

http://women.edgewood.edu/timeline_of_events.htm

1967 -- US: Short & Sweet? Longest dream (REM sleep) on record, Bill Carskadon, Chicago (2:23).

listen to the devils in my ear

tell me what what i want to hear

http://coffin.notamouth.org/PHOTO/TFC/REM/rem.html

1967 -- Short & Sweet of It?: Rosalind Russell movie "Oh Dad, Poor Dad - Mama's Hung You in the Closet & I'm Feeling So Sad" is released, US.


1969 -- US: A Florida woman is arrested for impersonating Aretha Franklin during a concert. Vickie Jones' impersonation is so convincing that nobody in the club asks for a refund.


1970 -- The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) impose a ban against rock concerts at their Washington D.C. auditorium, Constitution Hall, after Sly & the Family Stone arrive five hours late & the crowd inflicts $1,000 worth of damage on the building.


1970 -- England: "Third World First" launched, London. A UK student action movement on world poverty & the environment.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Third+World+First%22


1971 -- England: After 1200 years Britain abandons 12-shilling system for decimal.



1975 -- Korea: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader South Korean President Park says he will free most of the 203 political prisoners jailed in 1974 for antigovernment activities. Whatta sweetie!


1977 -- Sid Vicious replaces Glen Matlock as bass guitarist of the Sex Pistols.


1980 -- Author Lillian Hellman sues Mary McCarthy for libel. (The suit is dropped after Hellman's death.)



1981 -- US: Rocket-powered ice sled attains 399 kph, Lake George, New York.



1984 -- Iraq: 500,000 Iranian soldiers invade.


1985 -- World chess championship match is abandoned: Karpov 25, Kasparov 23.


1986 -- England: Running strike fights break out between police & striking printers protesting Rupert Murdoch's scab printing operations, Wapping, London.



1988 -- No Joke? Scientist, wit, free thinker Richard P. Feynman dies. Winner of the 1965 Nobel for physics.

http://www.scs-intl.com/online/
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynmanWeb.html

1989 -- US: President's Day?:

"Now like, I'm President. It would be pretty hard for some drug guy to come into the White House & start offering it up, you know? . . .

I bet if they did, I hope I would say, Hey, get lost. We don't want any of that."

— Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader George Bush

1990 -- US: Secret Service raids Craig Neidorf, editor of "Phrack" on-line magazine.


1991 -- El Salvador: 15,000 march for peace & a purge of the armed forces.


1991 -- US: 74 antiwar protesters are arrested at four Seattle locations. Auntie Dave miraculously remains unarrested.


1993 -- Germany: Government demands Iran lift the death sentence on author Salman Rushdie.


1995 -- US: Computer hacker Condor (Kevin Mitnick) is arrested, Raleigh, NC.


1995 -- Algeria: Nabla Djanine, president of Algerian women's group Cris de Femmes, shot. One of a wave of assassinations of prominent Algerian women by Islamic fundamentalists.


1996 -- Wales: Tanker Sea Empress runs aground, spilling 72,000 tons of crude oil.


1996 -- England: Scott report says Tory government misled Parliament over arms sales to Iraq. Not to worry, Blair will go to war & get them back, righto?


1997 -- In "Railway Tracks Action Day," some 15,000 in Wendland, Germany block & dismantle railroad lines scheduled to be used for shipment of nuclear waste.


1997 -- France: The anarchist bookshop in Lyon, "La plume noire," is torched by rightwing extremists. The books & furniture suffer heavy fire damage but, thanks to a wonderful show of solidarity, the bookstore reopens in a few months.
http://ytak.club.fr/fevrier3.html#15


1999 -- US: Airdate: February 15, 1999, "Another Brother," a one-hour PBS documentary. A moving biographical mosaic of one ordinary yet extraordinary man, Clarence Fitch. A slice-of-life view of Vietnam War, addiction, & the African-American experience.


1999 -- Kenya: Abdullah Ocalan, PKK leader, arrested. Turkish advocate for independent Kurdistan, arrested & extradited to face Turkish charges of terrorism.


2000 -- US: BleedMeister's housefire. Just another cheap excuse to get out of work. Homeless for the next 4 months. It's cold outside.


2002 -- US: Three Florida prison guards are acquitted of beating a prisoner to death to keep him from exposing guard brutality; their defense? that he beat himself to death in a locked cell.


2003 -- Millions around the world, in over 300 cities, demonstrate in opposition to the American government's agenda to overthrow the government of Iraq. Up to 2 million demonstrate against the Bush-Blair war, London; up to 3 million demonstrate in Roma; 1.3 million in Barcelona, 600,000 in Madrid; up to 500,000, Berlin; 200,000 in Damascus; 200,000 protest in NYC, ringed by police snipers; 30,000 protest in Los Angeles; about 25,000 in Seattle hit the streets. More massive demonstrations ae also held tomorrow.

On a very frequent basis, the US is bombing somewhere. Here's a short boring list of some previous adventures: China 1945-46, Korea & China 1950-51, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-61, Guatemala (again) 1960, Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69), El Salvador & Nicaragua 1980, Grenada 1983, Lebanon & Syria 1983-84, Libya 1986, Iran 1987, Panama 1989, Iraq & Kuwait 1991, Somalia 1993, Bosnia 1994-95, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001. "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Shock & Awe: Guernica Revisited By Gar Smith, AlterNet January 27, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/story/15027

2003: Another torturous year ahead? "Nothing changes on New Year's Day..." (U2) By Mickey Z.
http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/000835.html#000835

Arms, Climate Change, & The Grand Media Deception by Dave Edwards ZNet Commentary, April 4, 2002
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-04/01edwards.cfm

The 21st Century Blues by Kenny Ausubel, AlterNet January 9, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/story/14901

2003 -- Peace flags appear around the globe when, for the first time in world history, millions across the globe unite, to protest US war on Iraq. One million rally in Rome alone.

Official government figures for number of demonstrators worldwide on February 15th in opposition to War in Iraq: 8 million

Number of times in the history of the world that 8 million people have gathered on one day for any reason other than February 15th: 0

Number of American politicians acting to end the war: 0

Number of years Benevolent America will occupy Iraq in its war against Oceania ...

Number of buckaroonies American corporate profiteers extract from Iraq ...

Number of innocent Iraqi men, women & children murdered by American troops & mercenaries in the effort to ...
http://www.folkmusic.com/mccutcheon_index.htm