1184 -- England: Pretending to be barmy, the wise fools of Gotham deceive King John & prevent establishment of a crown highway through Nottinghamshire.
[Source: Calendar Riots]


1239 -- First known MCF.


1649 -- England: Diggers occupy St. George's Hill, near Cobham, Surrey, seizing land to hold in common & to plant; other communities follow in Northants, Bucks, Kent, Herts, Middx, Leics, Beds, Glos & Notts.


1755 -- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, gourmet, lives to eat — appropriately — in Belley, France. After 30 years simmering, his Physiology of Taste is published in 1825 — at his own expense.



1755 -- Switzerland: Blood-red rain falls at Locarno this month. Sorry, don't know exact day, so I picked one at random.



1766 -- Horace Walpole's hoax letter to the half-mad Rousseau is published in the "The Saint James Chronicle," in which he pretends to be Frederick the Great, offering political asylum.



1816 -- Jane Austen writes one who has suggested that she make her next work an "historical romance."



"I could not seriously sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life."

1841 -- US: Brook Farm, history's most famous utopian community, is founded near West Roxbury, Massachusetts. It's primary appeal was to young Bostonians who shrink from the materialism of American life, & the community was a refuge for dozens of transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson & Nathanial Hawthorne.
[Details / context]


1847 -- US: Michigan becomes first state to abolish the death penalty.



1856 -- Charles Maurin lives (1856-1914). French painter, engraver, & anarchist.
Friend of Toulouse-Lautrec, collaborates in "La Revue Blanche" directed by Félix Fénéon, & initiates Felix Vallotton to engraving & anarchism.

(fragment d'un autoportait, Musée Crozatier); below, woodcut by Maurin, of Ravachol at the guillotine


http://www.ephemanar.net/avril01.html#maurinch

1866 -- US: Congress overrides Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Andrew Johnson's veto of Civil Rights Bill, gives equal rights to all men born in the US — except Indians.


1867 -- US: Joshua Norton I, "Dei Gratia" Emperor of the United States & Protector of Mexico, claims Maximillian as a POW.

To Mr. Seward:
It is my desire that, in case Maximillian will surrender, he be sent here a prisoner of war, but that in the event of his continuing the war, or refusing to surrender, then he be shot.

— April 1867 (exact date unknown).

http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/nort.html

1868 -- Edmond Rostand, poet/dramatist lives, Marseilles. Best known for the verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rostand.htm



1871 -- France: Emile Digeon is arrested, following the army's defeat of the Narbonne Commune yesterday.
[Details / context]



1872 -- Russia: Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai lives, St. Petersburg.



ALEXANDRA KOLLANTAI, 1998 Saint
Tried to bring women's rights to the Bolshevik counter-revolution.

http://flag.blackened.net/agony/wsa1.gif

1875 -- Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) lives. British novelist, playwright, journalist who produced popular detective & suspense stories, practically inventing the modern "thriller." His prolific output, however, undermined his reputation as a fresh & original writer.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ewallace.htm


1882 -- Egypt: Coalheavers strike against the Suez Canal Company in Port Said.
http://stiobhard.tripod.com/east/egypt.html

1883 -- Lon Chaney, man of a thousand faces, lives.

1883 -- France: Louise Michel: Elle est incarcérée à la prison de Saint-Lazare.
 [Source: Michel Chronologie]


1896 -- US: Back in New York this month, Emma Goldman resides with Edward Brady in a German neighborhood on Eleventh Street.

Emma earns a meager living as a midwife & nurse, witnessing the plight of many women suffering from unwanted pregnancies....& is active on many other fronts as well.

[Details / context]






Several members of Nosotros, an FAI action group. Those pictured include the three most well-known figures, Garcia Oliver, Francisco Ascaso, & Buenaventura Durruti.
Image source, Anarchy Archives



Francisco Ascaso Abadia was part of "Los Solidarios" with Durruti, Gregorio Jover, Juan García Oliver, Antonio Ortiz, Ricardo Sanz, etc. They fought against the "Pistoleros" (hired by cleric employers to assassinate trade unionists).



Ascaso died on July 20, 1936 in the famed assault against the Atarazanas barracks...



[Details / context]



1907 -- Anna Bondestam lives. Finnish-Swedish author, one of the few describers of the Swedish speaking working class in Finland. Also written poems & translated Finnish literature to Swedish.



1912 -- Paul Brousse dies (1844-1912). Member of the Swiss anarchist Jura Federation, helping James Guillaume publish its bulletin. Later a socialist & electoral reformist, stooping, at the International Congress in London, August 1886, with Jules Guesde, to vote for the expulsion of the anarchists. Consequently, Brousse's name is associated with the Socialist Party, reformism & vote-catching manoeuvres.
http://www.ephemanar.net/avril01.html#brousse



1915 -- US: Harrison Narcotic Act.


1916 -- US: Emma Goldman prepares for her birth control trial scheduled for the 5th & continues to lecture this month in New York; drama critique includes discussion of British playwright Harley Granville-Barker.



1917 -- US: During this month Emma Goldman speaks at several meetings chaired by John Sloan of the New York Art Students League.


1918 -- US: During this month the final issue of "Mother Earth Bulletin" produced; future publication is made impossible by ongoing government seizures.

Today Harry Weinberger meets with the assistant superintendent of prisons in Washington, D.C., to complain about government tampering & confiscation of Emma Goldman's mail.

Also this month, the Ferrer Center (see Modern School) in New York closes.

1919 -- The final game for the 1919 Stanley Cup is canceled because of the worldwide epidemic of influenza. No winner is declared in the series between the Montreal Canadiens & Seattle Metropolitans.


1920 -- US: T-Bone Slim's The Popular Wobbly published in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) "One Big Union Monthly".anarchist


1920 -- US: The American Way? Five members of NY state legislature expelled as Socialists.


1922 -- Historian William Manchester lives, Attleboro, Massachusetts.

1924 -- Germany: Adolf Hitler imprisoned for involvement in the Beer-Hall Putsch, begins dictating Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess. 

Its original title — Four-&-a-Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity & Cowardice; Settling Accounts with the Destroyers of the National Socialist Movement — seemed too light-hearted. Leads one wag to comment: "Everyone needs an editor."

1924 -- Automatic Record Changer introduced.



1924 -- Czech novelist, short-story writer, playwright, poet Milan Kundera, lives, Brno. Kundera's works combine erotic comedy with political criticism. Until 1989, all of his books were banned in his country.
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/english016/kundera/kundera.html



1924 -- US: One of West Virginia's most unusual strikes begins today, when union miners walk out at the Coal River Collieries.



God,  if You had but the moon
     Stuck in Your cap for a lamp,
 Even You'd tire of it soon,
     Down in the dark & the damp.



Nothing but blackness above
     & nothing that moves but the cars. . . .
 God, if You wish for our love,
     Fling us a handful of stars.



— Louis Untermeyer
 excerpt from Caliban in the Coal Minesfrom Challenge, 1914
(Untermyer's poem is based on the the historical character of Few Clothes Johnson, the character played by James Earle Jones in Sayles' film Matewan.)



Miners often went on strike in West Virginia during the early 1920s, but this strike was exceptional because the Coal River Colliery Company (CRC) was an investment venture of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE). The company's stock was owned by members of the Brotherhood.

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), called the miners out of CRC mines because the company refused to pay the current union wage scale. 

That a union would be compelled to conduct a strike against a union-owned company for refusing to pay the union scale sparked a controversy which called into question the principles & goals of both labor organizations.

See Conflict at Coal River Collieries: The UMWA verses the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, by Thomas J. Robertson & Ronald L. Lewis.

http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh52-6.html

1926 -- France: Charles Angrand (1854-1926) dies. Impressionist, Pointillist painter & anarchist illustrator. Friends with Seurat, Cross, Luce & Signac & other libertarian artists & illustrators. Angrand designed a now-famous black cat & provided illustrations to Jean Grave's "Les Temps Nouveaux" as well as helping to finance it with the sale of his paintings.



1930 -- France: Cultural theorist, philosopher Pierre Bourdieu lives.
Source: Autonomedia Calendar


1932 -- US: 500 school children, most with haggard faces & in tattered clothes, parade through Chicago's downtown section to the Board of Education offices to demand that the school system provide them with food.

See Mauritz Hallgren, Seeds of Revolt.


1936 -- England: During this month Emma Goldman leaves London, arriving in Nice on April 6. 
[Details / context]



1937 -- US: Abe Bluestein & Selma Cohen head to Spain to aid the anarchists.


1938 -- Spain: The Lincolns are overrun by the fascist armies near Gandesa; the battalion suffers heavy casualties, among them Commander Robert Merriman; during the next week they re-assemble at Mora la Nueva on the Ebro, only 120 Lincolns remain.

Early April: The Lincolns in training at Darmos, near Mora la Nueva, where they are joined by more than 400 young Spanish recruits.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/chronology.htm
[ Resources & sources on the Spanish Revolution of 1936 ]

1939 -- Alley Oop steps into a time machine.

1939 -- Spain: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Franco declares the Spanish Civil War at an end. The democracy-loving US rushes to recognize his fascist dictatorship.


More than 90 Americans in Nationalist prisons are, fortunately, sent home by the end of this month.

The end of the war & the defeat of the Spanish Revolution, on April 1, 1939, did not end the killings, however.

Franco systematically slaughtered some 200,000 of his opponents ... in a carnage of genocidal proportions that was meant to physically uproot the living source of the revolution...

[I]t was a vindictive counterrevolution that had its only parallel, given the population & size of Spain, in Stalin's one-sided civil war against the Soviet people.





http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/bookchin/sp001642/fifty.html
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/stalin.htm
http://struggle.ws/spaindx.html
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/




1940 -- Canada: Emma Goldman returns home to her Toronto apartment today, after regaining consciousness but not the ability to speak. She will suffer a second hemorrhage on May 6.




1942 -- Samuel Delany lives. Science fiction writer, composer, musician. Bisexual African American, husband (1961-1980) of poet Marilyn Hacker.

http://www.uic.edu/depts/quic/history/samuel_delaney.html
http://www2.pcc.com/staff/jay/delany/
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/delany/

1945 -- Japan: US forces attack Okinawa.


1946 -- US: Strike by 400,000 mine workers.

Yet Truman ultimately suppressed this strike wave (1945-46) by calling out the military ("workers in uniform") not only to restore social order but also to run key sectors of the economy until the more rebellious elements of this strike wave could be rebridled. The contentious April 1, 1946 strike by 400,000 mine workers led by the then independent UMW was ended when the US government used the army to seize the mines to continue production.

[Sources]
http://www.diehippiedie.com/maximum/leftysept97.html

1949 -- The revolution will not be televised: Gil Scott-Heron lives.



Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, & Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, &
Women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.

The revolution will not be televised.

http://www.tvtrecords.com/artists/?art_id=134
http://www.gilscottheron.com/lyrevol.html

1951 -- ¶ During this month Beatster Jack Kerouac writes a new version On the Road on a paper scroll. He & Joan Haverty also separate. Kerouac goes to North Carolina to his sister's home. In May he learns Joan is pregnant.



1952 -- Big Bang theory proposed in Physical Review by Alpher, Bethe & Gamow.
http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Physics/Cosmology/


1952 -- ¶ During this month Beatster Jack Kerouac is in Mexico, where he writes Dr. Sax using "spontaneous prose" method & marijuana.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/kerouac.htm



1954 -- US: "Great Cheese Scandal." Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, disregarding the fact that Wisconsin cheese distributors had contracted to sell the government 90 million pounds of cheese at 37 cents per pound, drops the price support level on dairy products from 90 to 75 percent parity. The cheese distributors promptly repurchased the title to their product at 34 cents per pound, realizing a $2.2 million profit on cheese that never left their warehouse.


1954 -- First H-bomb tested on Bikini Atoll. First aerial test of an H-Bomb also occurs here, May 21, 1956.


1954 -- ¶ During this month Beatster Jack Kerouac takes a bus back from California to his mother's house in Richmond Hill (New York). Works briefly on the Brooklyn waterfront but quits because of phlebitis condition. 
¶ April-August: Starts writing science fiction story "cityCityCITY."



1955 -- South Africa: Boycott of segregated schools begins.
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/history.html


1955 -- ¶Jack Kerouac's "Jazz of the Beat Generation" (parts of chapters 10 & 14, Book Three from On the Road), in New World Writing #7 (under the pseudonym Jean Louis).

Kenneth Rexroth's intersection with the Beat Generation vortex began in 1955. Initially he had nice things to say about Kerouac's "Jazz of the Beat Generation" & on October 7, 1955 Rexroth was the master of ceremonies at the historic & legendary Six Gallery reading. Together with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rexroth heavily influenced the San Francisco renaissance which became swept up in the vortex during the 1950s. 

But the personal relationship between Rexroth & Kerouac was quickly infused with bad karma, & he panned On The Road when it was published in 1957.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/kerouac.htm

1960 -- US: Launching of the first weather satellite, Tiros I. Now everything is sunny, we see the light at the end of the tunnel.


1961 -- US: Local 101 begins 6-week strike against Brooklyn Union Gas Company.
[Sources]

1963 -- US: Longest newspaper strike in US history ends. The nine major papers in New York City ceased publication over 100 days ago.


1966 -- China: Start of “cultural revolution”. Mayor of Peking, P’eng Chen, dismissed & several cultural officials, including Chou Yang, removed from office.
[Source: K.S. Karol]


1968 -- Spain: Las facultades de Sevilla, clausuradas hasta después de Semana Santa.
http://www.el-mundo.es/larevista/num132/textos/crono.html

1969 -- First collective anarchist pizza made as Morningtown Pizza & Subs opens in Seattle, Washington.

Ace, Carol Anderson, Kirsten Anderberg , Warren Argo, Phil Arnautoff, Al Arnold, Becky, Sandy Blue, Dan Brown, BleedMeister (Dave Brown, aka "Mr. (PH)un"), Steve Coleman, Shawn Crowley, Kevin Cunningham, Dave Dederer (later band member of All the Dead Presidents), Doug Dipple, Paris Fletcher, Lana Hair, Tom Harris (Samot), Gus Hellthaler, Jeffrey Hummel, Stan Iverson, Shana Iverson (like father, like daughter), Celia James, Gregor Jamrock, songster/photographer Jef Jaisun, David Jensen (Kid Carrot), Cathy Kauflin & Bill, Diane Kucera, Sue Letsinger, Jim Logie, Phil McCrudden, Tia Matthias, Steve Minkler, Tom Nast, Claudia Neva, Tom Ninkovitch, Ben, The Pammer, Albert Richards, Kermit Rosen, Cranky John Severin, Tom Strangland, John Turnbow (aka Strongbow), John Webster (who paid himself in advance, he always announced, in case he died [survived Hurrican Katrina!]), Penny Wilson, Tina Wolfe, & Wilma are just a few of the 100+ luniaries who work & play here in its 10+ years — where one case of beer per shift was the limit [imposed]during "working" hours.

Now online, The Stan Iverson Memorial Library
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/


"Morningtown: Morningtown pizza, a counter-culture pizza joint that was located for many years in the U District, between Roosevelt & 12th, just north of the University Bridge."

— A Seattle Lexicon
http://www.callihan.com/seattle/past.htm


See also "Anarchism & Pizza,
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/morningtown/Pizza&Anarchism1.htm



"In the folk tradition, Carter & I had not played for years, but we dug out the guitars & set up the mics & tried to remember how to play stuff we had made up about 10 years before. Isn't that a cool sounding compressor on the Mosrite? It was home-made by Ed Streeter (on a totally funky hand etched circuit board that looks like it was layed out using electrical tape & an exacto knife). He gave it to me in the parking lot in front of Morningtown Pizza in about 1969. I've still got it, buried under a pile of other stuff on my electronics bench.

— Joe Breskin
http://www.olympus.net/personal/airstream/breskintunes.htm

David The Minstrel, Troubadour Extrodinaire!!, also played at Morningtown,
http://www.efn.org/~dan_m/DavTMins.html


http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/morningtown/Morningtown.htm
http://seattle.wikia.com/wiki/Community_currency

1969 -- US: Ralph Nader's last chance to buy a car: Last Chevrolet Corvair built.



1971 -- Six months after his death, Jimi Hendrix's "The Cry of Love" goes gold. It is the last LP on which the guitarist was a willing participant & some say it might have gone higher than #3 had it not been for an LP by another deceased rock star, "Pearl," by Janis Joplin.




1972 -- France: Dissolution of the Situationist International.

Real Split  The Real Split in the International: a public circular of the Situationist International (Éditions Champ-Libre, Paris), a book by Guy Debord & Gianfranco Sanguinetti, appears during this month.  The central chapter 'Theses on the SI & its time' announces the dissolution of the Situationist International.  "And now... we will become even more inaccessible, even more clandestine. The more our theses become famous, the more we will ourselves be obscure."  1972  http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]




1973 -- Vietnam: Hanoi releases last 591 acknowledged American POWs.
http://servercc.oakton.edu/~wittman/chronol.htm


1974 -- North Vietnam: "Hanoi" Jane Fonda arrives on her second visit — & the American right wing is still livid.

1976 -- Max Ernst, artist in many media, dies in Paris on the eve of his 85th birthday. Remembered primarily for his activities in the Dada period, he was also one of the most important artists identified with the Surrealist movement, until André Breton "excommunicated" him. For most of his life, Ernst rejected identification with any group. He hated to be categorized.

See Daily Bleed Saints Gallery page, http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/saints/StMaxErnst.htm

The German painter-poet Max Ernst was a member of the dada movement & a founder of surrealism. A self-taught artist, he formed a Dada group in Cologne, Germany, with other avant-garde artists. He pioneered a method called frottage, in which a sheet of paper is placed on the surface of an object & then penciled over until the texture of the surface is transferred. In 1925, he showed his work at the first surrealist painting exhibition in Paris.



http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Ernst.html

1982 -- Marvin Gaye is killed by a gunshot wound in Los Angeles in an argument with his father. He was 44 years old. Gaye's father received probation after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
http://members.tripod.com/~Lionsgrrr/scandalrap.html


1982 -- "Pacific Peacemaker" damaged by French police boats during nuclear weapons testing protest, Muroroa Atoll, South Pacific.


1983 -- England: Human chain 14 miles long linked Brughfield, Greenham Common & Aldermaston to oppose Cruise & Pershing missiles.



1984 -- Winston Smith discovers Freedom resides at 7-11 Store.



1985 -- US: Environmental Protection Agency orders end to dumping of sludge off the New Jersey coast. Apparently even they can't swim in the stuff.

1986 -- US: Smog-Brains? The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors votes to lobby the US Congress to rename the Angeles National Forest the "Reagan National Forest." Says Sierra Club spokesman Bob Hattoy,

"Naming a national forest after Ronnie Reagan is like naming a day care center after W C Fields."

http://www.webtrec.com/wcfields/
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/reagan.htm

1990 -- Beginning of Juan García Ordoño novel Tres crímenes y algo más


1994 -- China: Dissident Wei Jingsheng is arrested outside Beijing.

1999 -- US: Loafers Glory, with U. Utah Phillips, labor organizer, IWW Wobbly, anarchist, exquisite bullshitter ("My God! That's Moose Turd Pie...Good, Though!"), songster, hits the airwaves, Pacifica Radio online, 9am Thursdays; some stations, like Seattle's KBCS-FM, tape the program for rebroadcast on a different date & time. [Radio show suspended April 2002 for lack of funding].

Utah Phillips is described as "a national treasure, a writer of haunting songs, a storyteller of hilarious presence & subtle depth, a union organizer, historian & scholar, a Celtic-Yiddish bard, a Pleistocene bon vivant, a post-modern ne'er-do-well, & a heck of an engineer." A 40-year member of the IWW, he is the most entertaining labor troubadour of our time...
http://cdbaby.com/cd/utahphillips6



RADICAL FOLK
A conversation with Ani Difranco & Utah Phillips, kindred spirits & collaborators on a daring new album
http://members.tripod.com/~Dykeland/acoustic.html

http://www.pacifica.org/programs/



2001 -- Bangladesh: Three-day general strike against the government begins.


2001 -- Scotland: Greenpeace protesters occupy a Conoco oil exploration rig.


2001 -- France: Suzanne Allen (1920-2001) dies. French poet & novelist, born in India. A member of the Groupe surréaliste révolutionnaire in 1946-47, her works are as much philosophical as poetic & often libertarian in spirit. Published her first novel, La mauvaise conscience in 1955.
 http://cira.marseille.free.fr/lettres/lettre019.pdf
http://www.archivosurrealista.com.ar/mujera.html

2003 -- US: Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder impales a mask of Beloved & Reinspected Comrade Leader President Bush the Junior, Denver, Colorado. Encore! Encore!!


2009 -- England: G-20 protesters break into the Royal Bank of Scotland. Protesters carrying placards that read "Hang the Bankers" target banks in London's financial district, spray-painting the word "Thieves" on the side of the building, breaking into the Royal Bank & smashing windows. Unfortunately the coffers were found empty, CEO's having made off with all the loot long ago. Elsewhere, some 4,000 protesters pelt police with beer cans, fruit & flour in a valiant effort to storm the Bank of England.



9003 --

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