"No man is an island entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; & therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

                            — John Donne

MAY 26

JACOB RIIS
Compassionate photographer, champion of the poor.

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FEAST OF VOODOO ECONOMICS.

FLITTING DAY in Scotland. Celebrate Mandrin's memory in style: it is traditional for residents to move house (particularly recommended if rent arrears appear to be mounting).

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735 -- The Venerable Bede dies at Jarrow. His Historia Ecclesiastica Centis Anglorum.


946 -- Edmund I, King of the English, murdered by the outlaw Leofa at Puckleborough, Glos, in his palace. The Queen is elected to his seat on an "anti-crime" plank.


1096 -- Prussia: Crusaders massacre the Jewish community of Neuss.
Source: [Robert Braunwart][Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]


1171 -- France: Jewish men & women are burnt at the stake in Blois, in the firt ritual-murder case on the European continent.


1232 -- Spain: The Pope sends the first Inquisition team to Aragon.

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition"

1521 -- New Old World: Cortes destroys the aqueduct carrying water to Tenochtitlan.


1608 -- Spain: Good Injun-Bad Injun? King Phillip III decrees non-Roman Catholic Indians can be legally enslaved.



1637 -- New Old World: English colonists under Captains John Mason & John Underhill attack & burn Pequot forts near Mystic, Connecticut, massacreing 600 Indians & starting Pequot War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pequot_War
http://www.pequotwar.com/


1703 -- Samuel Pepys, naval administrator/diarist, dies.


1755 -- Louis Mandrin — France's 'Robin Hood' — unfortunately caught & executed.
Source: [Calendar Riots]

1770 -- Oliver Goldsmith publishes The Deserted Village.

http://www.arvincasas.com/prisoner.html
http://www.retroweb.com/prisoner.html

1788 -- A No-Brainer?: Mary Clark of England gives birth to a baby without a brain:


1791 -- France: King Louis XVI is forced by the revolutionary French Assembly to relinquish his crown & state assets.


1822 -- France: Edmond Goncourt lives, Nancy. Collaborator with brother Jules on historical works, novels, & Le Journal des Concourt.


1831 -- Polish revolutionaries defeat the Russians in the Battle of Ostrolenka.


1836 -- Gag Me?: US House of Representatives adopts what is called the Gag Rule.


1851 -- US: San Francisco Stevedores & Longshoreman's strike. One page in Frisco claims the first labor strike was June 6, 1852, but is no longer online.


1851 -- US: Riot at Hoboken, NJ between Germans & "short-boy" rowdies from NY results in loss of life. No idea where the tall boys were.


1864 -- Francis Vielé-Griffin lives. American-born French poet who became an important figure in the French Symbolist movement. Francis Vielé-Griffin écrit dans La Phalange:

« La littérature depuis bien des années, s’était murée dans sa Tour d’Ivoire, désormais, elle se mêlerait activement aux problèmes quotidiens ».

1868 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Andy Johnson avoids impeachment by one vote. Eat yer heart out Dick M Nixon Bill Clinton....



1871 -- France: Paris Commune (Bloody Week). Battles at the Bastille & Villette, the Communards are defeated this evening at Belleville & Père Lachaise. The Versailles forces assassinate casualties in their ambulances; a crowd seeks revenge by executing 50 hostages on rue Haxo, despite the protests of Eugene Varlin.

I know too the last heavy maggot;
& know the trapped vertigo of impotence.
I have traveled prone & unwilling
In the dense processions through the shaken streets . . .

— Kenneth Rexroth, excerpt, "From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion" (1936)

http://www.wsm.ie/news_viewer/3136
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune
http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/siege/
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/pariscommune/Pariscommunearchive.html

1876 -- HMS Challenger returns from 128,000-km oceanographic exploration.



1878 -- American modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan lives, San Francisco.
Daily Bleed Saint, September 14.




1894 -- US: Western Federation of Miners (WFM) strike for eight-hour day in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/haywood/haywood.htm


1894 -- Lasker beats Steinitz 12-7 for the world chess championship.



1895 -- US: Socially-aware photographer Dorothea Lange lives, Hoboken, New Jersey.

DOROTHEA LANGE
Daily Bleed Saint 2003-2005
Compassionate photographer, champion of the poor.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/fsa/lang.html
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0013.html

1895 -- Dorothy Gretchen Steeves lives. Founding member of the Canadian CCF & NDP. labor


1897 -- Bram Stoker novel Dracula goes on sale, London.
Nancy Joyce Peters on Backyard Bombs, http://books.google.com/books ...Horror Films on TV


1899 -- Canada: French-Canadian poet Émile Nelligan reads his poem "Romance du vin" at the 4th (last) meeting of Ecole litteraire de Montreal.


1899 -- England: Australian Lawrence Hargrave demonstrates his box kites in London. Harrrummmmmppphhh. Next thing you know it'll be his box shorts.


1903 -- Start of Sherlock Holmes' "The Adventure of the Three Gables".


1907 -- Marion Morrison, Academy Award-winning actor, lives. As in John Wayne.



1908 -- France: Abbe Gueniot of Remiremont, France & 107 other witnesses see vast quantities of hailstones bearing the likeness of a woman's face. This is pre-Bridget Bardot.



1914 -- US: In Los Angeles, Emma Goldman continues delivering propaganda & modern drama lectures (May 15-June 11), which includes discussion of Irish playwright Seamus O'Kelly.

Her propaganda lectures include "Revolution & Reform — Which?" & "The Place of the Church in the Labor Struggle."

Emma reports to Margaret Sanger, birth-control advocate, that "Not one of my lectures brings out such a crowd as the one on the birth strike & it is the same with the W[oman] R[ebel]." (May 26, 1914).

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Guide/chronology6900.html

1914 -- US: Jacob Riis, Social Realist photographer lives, Barre, Massachusetts. Photojournalist whose tenement images initiated reforms.
http://masters-of-photography.com/R/riis/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Riis


1917 -- Author W. Somerset Maugham, bisexualist, marries Syrie Wellcome, mother of his 18-month-old daughter, Liza.
http://web.archive.org/...knittingcircle.org.uk/wsmaugham.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/maugham.htm


1918 -- May (late): The Czechoslovak legion mutinies against the Bolshevik government. Using the railways they are able to sweep away Bolshevik control from vast areas of Russia. The Socialist Revolutionaries support the rising.
http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/russ/rusrev.html
http://slav-db.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/fmi/xsl/link-e.xsl
http://fbuch.com/posters.htm
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html



1920 -- US: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Marine Transport Workers strike, Philadelphia.

The IWW Marine Transport Workers strike cited in:
The I.W.W. — Its History, Structure & Methods by Vincent St. John,
http://www.library.arizona.edu/...019.html
Police files:
http://www.phila.gov/phils/Docs/Inventor/graphics/archser/S079.htm

1922 -- Italy: I fascisti chiedono la destituzione del prefetto Cesare Mori (che diventerà famoso durante il fascismo per la durissima repressione della mafia in Sicilia) accusandolo di aver contrastato le azioni delle squadre fasciste.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1924 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Pres. Calvin Coolidge signs the 1924 immigration bill into law, effectively ending Japanese immigration to the US.
[Sources]


1926 -- US: A motion is filed for a new trial for the anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti case based upon Medeiros’ confession & information about the Morelli gang, an Italian gang that robbed freight cars in Providence, R.I. & New Bedford, Mass.

The prosecution leaves a trail of doctored eyewitness accounts, altered testimony & false ballistics reports....

[Details / context]

1927 -- Italy: In uniscorso, Mussolini sostiene l'inutilità delle opposizioni all'interno di un regime politico, riassumendo il suo pensiero nello slogan : "Tutto nello stato, niente contro lo stato, nulla al di fuori dello stato".
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1931 -- Sven Delblanc (-1992) lives. Swedish novelist, playwright, scholar.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/delblanc.htm

1933 -- Jimmie Rodgers (1897 - 1933) dies.

"Tea for Texass, Tea for Thelma, Tea for Ice-Tea, gonna be the death of me..."

— Jimmie Rodgers

http://www.southernmusic.net/jimmierodgers.htm

1937 -- US: Battle of the Overpass in Detroit Michigan, involving Walter Reuther & the United Auto Workers (UAW).

Ford factory police brutally beat labor leader Walter Reuther.

Henry Ford's opposition to collective bargaining is in evidence on this day in 1937, when company goons attack United Auto Workers (UAW) organizers at the "Battle of the Overpass" outside of the River Rouge plant. Though General Motors & Chrysler signed collective bargaining agreements with the UAW in 1937, Ford held out until 1942.

http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/fmc/battle.asp
http://apps.detnews.com/apps/history/index.php?id=172

1937 -- US: "Little Steel" strike.

This evening thousands of steelworkers, their families & supporters crowd around the mill gates of northeastern Ohio to cheer the second shift workers as they came off the job.

At the main gate of Republic's mill in Cleveland, over 600 workers maintained a mass picket through the night. By daybreak, the huge mill, which normally employed 6500 workers, was a ghost town.

Little Steel Strikes: As the Youngstown mills rapidly geared up to full operation, the National Guard successively shifted forces to Canton, Massillon, Warren & then Cleveland, completely breaking the strike in all locations by mid-July.

http://academic.csuohio.edu/clevelandhistory/Issue3/articles/steelpage3content.htm

1937 -- Spain: Issue No. 2 of El Amigo del Pueblo appears, having evaded the censor. Jaime Balius is jailed a few days later as the director of a clandestine publication, following a complaint from the PSUC.
Source: Anarchist chronology, Friends of Durruti Group 1937-39, Agustin Guillamon alternate spelling Jaume Balius
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/spain/sp001780/chap1.html



1938 -- US: Under the Bed Check?: House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) begins its (dirty) work, engaging in un-American activities. Martin Dies of Texass is the first chairman. Strange word that ("work"): Over the next 30 years its "legislative" function & record will be the most dismal in American history.

The HUAC hearings were degradation ceremonies... The anti-Communist hysteria of the cold war provided an ideal environment.

[Details / context]

1944 -- France: Insurrectional General Strike against the Nazis is called in Marseille; A US bombing raid on Marseille kills 6,000 civilians in the workers' districts. More than die during the terrorist 9/11, but hey, who is keeping score?


1945 -- Japan: 50 km of Tokyo are ablaze after US B-29 bombing raids (WWII).


1946 -- Henri Philippe Pétain writes in the Observer:

"To write one's memoirs is to speak ill of everybody except oneself."

1946 -- US: Snake Oil? Janos von Neuman & Klaus Fuchs file for a patent on the H-bomb. America of course corners the market in yet another sub-category of "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Cost, financial or human, is of no consequence.


1953 -- US: HailToTheChief? Radioactive hail falls in Washington, DC. Politicians now glow in the dark.


1954 -- US: Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend use of atomic weapons in Indochina.


1957 -- US: Labor honcho Dave Beck says he will not seek reelection as Teamsters' president.


1958 -- England: Jerry Lee Lewis plays the third & last of what should have been a 37-date tour. The London Morning Star runs an editorial calling him "an undesirable alien" & demands his deportation. That night, Lewis is booed from the stage. The next day, gone.

"GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!"

1960 -- Italy: "The Italian political tendency of Bordiga whose arguments we combat here (IL Programma Communista, May 26, 1960) defends the conservative union tactic from the most revolutionary point of view. But many Trotskyist & anarchist groups (if not all) fall into the same error with an opportunist flavor. Even those who claim to be against the unions, like "Socialisme ou Barbarie," in fact fall into the same old routine practices."

— G. Munis, Unions Against Revolution

http://libcom.org/library/unions-against-revolution-g-munis


1962 -- René Darsouze dies (1876-1962). French typographer. Co-founder, in 1908, of a community, "Le Phalanstère du Clos-des-Brunes," near Limoges. Member of the l'Association des Fédérations Anarchistes founded by Sébastien Faure, & from 1929 to 1932 a writer for that organization's newspaper, La Voix Libertaire.
http://www.ephemanar.net/mai26.html


1962 -- Hat Trick? Anton Webern's "Three Poems for Voice & Piano" premiers, Seattle; Webern's "5 Songs After Poems by Richard Dehmel" premiers, Wash.; Webern's "3 Songs After Poems by Avenarius" premiers, Seattle.


1962 -- Songster Willie Nelson makes his country chart debut, with "Touch Me."


1963 -- Voted Down With Tires?: Gregory Lambrakis, pacifist & member of Greek Parliament, is run down & killed by military police in Salonika.


1966 -- England: Bob Dylan & the Hawks rock the Royal Albert Hall in London. Attendees include the Stones, some Beatles, etc. The concert, heard on various bootleg albums, substantiate claims of this concert being one of the high-water marks of live rock & roll.



1966 -- US: Second day of International Days of Protest: 20,000 march on Fifth Ave, NY City; called by the "National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam."


1967 -- US: The Charlatans, The Salvation Army Banned, & Blue Cheer at the Avalon Ballroom in Frisco, California.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rock.html



1968 -- France '68: The May Days continue. A General Strike has essentially paralyzed the government which is on the verge of collapse.

"Every intelligent person now realizes that there is something radically wrong with the social system under which we are living.

Everyone, excepting the beneficiaries of this system, agrees that something ought to be done about it. The trouble is that people at present seem unable to agree on any common program of action. Some accept their unhappy lot with a patience & fortitude worthy of a better cause, others theorize ineffectually & do little, while still others complain bitterly & strike out blindly. Nearly everyone rushes hither & tither seeking escape but without having any clear-cut objective in view . . .

The argument for the General Strike is based on the persistent & very logical working class conviction that the ruling class will refuse to permit itself to be dispossessed by any power weaker than its own & that public opinion, political action & insurrection therefore will not be permitted to be developed or used to any appreciable extent.

— Ralph Chaplin, The General Strike (1933)

1968 -- ¶ Beatster Jack Kerouac jailed for carrying an open bottle of beer on the street, spends night in jail.


1969 -- US: Seattle police arrest 34 during clashes at Garfield High School & Seattle Central Community College. A few years before BleedMeister's tenure at SCCC, where he became editor of the City Collegian (to the chagrin of an administration which twice tries to fire him).


1969 -- Canada: John & Yoko begin their 2nd bed-in for peace, Montreal.


1969 -- Newsweek publishes an article on the novel The Andromeda Strain.


1971 -- US: Labor contractor Juan Corona arrested after police dig up a grave holding the bodies of nine migrant workers in an orchard near his house; later convicted of 25 murders, Yuba City, California.


1972 -- Anti-Ballistic Missile (SALT I) Treaty signed by US & USSR.



1972 -- 911?: First "Watergate break-in" attempt by agents of Dick "I am not a Crook" Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) fails.

CIA/Keystone Kops operatives E. Howard Hunt & Virgilio Gonzales spend the night hiding in a staircase in the Watergate complex, unable to open a door leading to the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Dumb, but dedicated, tomorrow night another attempt to pick the lock fails. They finally succeed on their third try the following night, but the tap they put on Democratic Chairman Lawrence O'Brien's phone fails to operate.

1972 -- US: Publication of Emmett Grogan's seminal work, Ringolevio: A Life Played For Keeps, his story of the Diggers, is first reviewed today in The New York Times, by C. Lehmann-Haupt, p. 33.
http://www.diggers.org/ringolevio.htm


1974 -- Critical Mass?: England: A teenage girl dies, three others hospitalized, over 1,000 treated after a David Cassidy concert. Head of the British Safety Council calls the show the "suicide concert." Cassidy says "I do feel responsible, but I can handle critics."


1976 -- Nazi sympathizer/philosopher Martin Heidegger dies.


1977 -- US: Spare Change Artist? George Willig climbs World Trade Center, New York City. Three & a half hours to climb, it costs him $1.10 in fines — a penny per floor. See also yesterday's Bleed for a similar climb of Chicago's Sears tower.


1978 -- US: 15,000 demonstrate for disarmament in New York City.


1981 -- High Seas: Marine combatant aircraft crashes during a nighttime landing on the U.S.S. Nimitz during maneuvers off Florida. Three fliers on the plane & 11 crewmen die; 45 others injured, some critically.


1983 -- $110,000 is paid for a Frank Lloyd Wright stained-glass door, NYC. How much would it have fetched if the door hadn't been so badly stained?


1984 -- US: Frisbee kept aloft for 1,672 seconds in Philadelphia.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/ArchiveMirror/Parascope/rainufo.htm


1989 -- US: To illustrate the power of radio, over 8,000 stations nationwide go silent for 30 seconds at 7:42am. However, since the average listener has an attention span of 6.9 seconds, no one noticed.


1991 -- Israel: 20,000 in Arab-Jewish peace rally, Tel Aviv.


1992 -- Taiwan: 100 environmental protesters are injured by police, Taipei.


1993 -- Ecuador: A general strike begins.


1994 -- Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie marries the self-proclaimed "King Of Pop" Michael Jackson in the Dominican Republic.



1996 -- US: Seattle songster Jim Page plays the Speakeasy Cafe (burned out in May 2001 — the cafe, not Page). Staunch supporter of Real Change & the StreetLife Art Gallery, Page also led the move to legalize street singing when the city government tried to outlaw busking.

Jim Page is acerbic, powerful, poignant, clever & very funny — & can improvise a song in a flash. He reveals the nuances, twists & turns of political & everyday life in songs that are crafted to be engaging, one interesting lyric at a time.

Two songs can be heard online:
Whose World is This
Stranger In Me

Page links:
Interview from Real Change
http://www.realchangenews.org/index.php/site/archives/2304/
http://www.flyingdisk.com/didn't_we.htm
http://www.acousticmusic.com/fame/x00008.htm

Of Seattle songwriter Jim Page, the Grateful Dead's Robert Hunter has said, "If Jim Page ain't the bastard son of Woody Guthrie, I'm T-Bone Walker!"

http://singingbear.tripod.com/jimblues.html

One of a number of Eco-warrior Minstrels listed at
http://web.archive.org/...geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/9901/minstrels.html

1997 -- Australia: PM Howard publicly apologizes to the "Stolen Generation" of Aborigine children forcibly removed from their families.


1998 -- Greenpeace sues Argentina over endangered jaguar habitat.


2001 -- US: Congress approves a $1.35-trillion tax cut bill. Former "Balanced Budget" Republican Voodooers, now in control of the White House, change their tune, send the American economy deeper into the tank.


2001 -- NY artist Spencer Tunick photographs 2,000 naked people on a Montreal street. Strip Malls have nothing on this town.


2010 -- Iraq: Whistle blower Bradley Manning arrested on suspicion of passing restricted material (250,000 diplomatic cables) to WikiLeaks. Charged with transferring classified data onto his personal computer, & communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source. Twenty-two charges were added in March 2011, including "aiding the enemy," a capital offense (death penalty). Held in maximum-custody solitary confinement until Amnesty International publicized concern & 295 American legal scholars sign a protest letter in April 2011.
http://www.standwithbrad.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/tag/bradley-manning/
http://wikileaks-movie.com/blog/2011/exclusive-interview-the-wikileaks-truck-driver-clark-stoeckley-of-the-anonymous-theater-art-group/


3000 --

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— Ralph Waldo Emerson

4500 --

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