Alfred Levitt, Michele Schirru, Emma Goldman, Ben Reitman , Li Shizeng, Eugène Bizeau, August Strindberg

'Twas the twenty-ninth of May, /'twas a holiday
Four & twenty tailors / set out to hunt a snail;
The snail put forth his horns / & roared like a bull,
Away ran the tailors, / & catch the bull who will.

— Anonymous

MAY 29
LOUISE MICHEL

Feminist hell-raiser, key figure in the Paris Commune of 1871. Verlaine was inspired to write a Ballade for her.
http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/siege/

US: MEMORIAL DAY. Old soldiers fade away.

Netherlands: LUIAK (LAZY BONES DAY).
Troops of young people whistle & beat on pots & pans, ringing doorbells & waking everyone up.
Anyone refusing to join the fun is branded Luilak.

1453 -- Constantinople, the capital of Eastern Christianity from A.D. 324, falls to the Turks, Byzantine Empire ends. The city became the capital of the Ottoman Empire & was renamed Istanbul. Marks the end of the Middle Ages. Now we're heading into dark ages of the 1950s, Y2k, Halliburton, etc.

1588 -- Poet & founder of Spanish drama Lope de Vega sets off to join the Spanish Armada.

1630 -- New Old World: John Winthrop begins his Journal or History of New England.
Source: [Robert Braunwart] [Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]

1660 -- The Glorious Revolution.

1736 -- Give Me Malls, or Give Me Death?: Patrick Henry, American revolutionary patriot lives.

1792 -- US: Spanish fort established at Neah Bay, the first white settlement in Washington State. It was abandoned after four months. (Or 1791?)

1826 -- Ebenezer Butterick inventor (tissue paper dress pattern) lives.

1829 -- US: "Hollow Earth" theorist John Cleves Symmes dies, New Jersey.

1830 -- France: The Red Virgin & Parisian Communard leader Louise Michel lives, Vroncourt.
http://libcom.org/history/michel-louise-1830-1905
http://durru.chez.com/lmichel/lacommune.htm
http://www.inventati.org/louisemichel/index.php?mod=04_Chi_era_L.Michel
http://www.blackrosebooks.net/louise.htm

1830 -- Leather Boys? Duty on leather is abolished in England & Ireland.

1832 -- Alexandre Dumas play The Tower of Nesle opens.

1835 -- Australia: Where's Robin? Batman arrives at Port Phillip (Vic.).

1838 -- Americans burn British steamer Sir Robert Peel, in revenge for the British destruction of the Caroline, which had been smuggling arms to Canadian nationalists.

1839 -- México: Revolution against the government breaks out in Yucatan.

1842 -- US: In Vein? Patent for lifting vessels granted to Abraham Lincoln.

1844 -- US: First dark horse lives, at the Democratic Convention in Baltimore, Maryland. With the political rush of support for James K. Polk, after just seven ballots, Polk's name appeared to break the deadlock. Polk won the nomination on the ninth ballot &, eventually, the US Presidency.

1848 -- US: No Silver Lining? The Californian suspends publication because most of its subscribers have left for the gold fields.

1854 -- US: Lydia Flood Jackson, civil rights activist, starts first school for black children in Sacramento, California.

1874 -- G. K. Chesterton lives (-1936). Prolific English critic, wrote verse, essays, novels, & short stories, known for his series about the priest-detective Father Brown who appears in 50 stories. Converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism & wrote several theologically oriented works.
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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."

http://www.chesterton.org/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gkchest.htm

1880 -- Germany: Historian Oswald Spengler lives, Blankenburg.

1881 -- Li Shizeng lives. Headed the anarchist Jinde Hui group (Society for Progress & Virtue), along with Wu Zhihui, & Zhang Ji. Also a key figure in the attempt to turn the Guomindang on an anarchist course.
See Arif Dirlik’s Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution.
http://www.ephemanar.net/mai31.html

1883 -- France: Eugène Bizeau lives. Vine-grower, pacifist, anarchiste poet & songster, member of the "Muse Rouge" who fought for his ideals until his death at 105.

1884 -- England: Oscar Wilde marries Constance Lloyd, Paddington.
The fact is that the public have an insatiable desire
to know everything, except what is worth knowing."

— Oscar Wilde

1889 -- August Strindberg play The People of Hemso premiers, Djurgardsteatern.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/socsig/strindberg.html

1892 -- Palestine: Death of Baha'u'llah, founder of Baha'i faith.

1892 -- US: A shower of eels falls in Coalburg, Alabama.

1892 -- Argentinean poet Alfonsina Storni lives. Much of Storni's work focuses on the repression of women by men. This often takes the form of personal insults directed at men ("the enemy") in general.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonsina_Storni

1895 -- Germany: One-time ardent militarist & nihilist, Ernst Jünger, lives, Heidelberg. His son's death while fighting in Italy brought about a change as manifested in Der Friede (The Peace, 1946).
[Details / context] alternately, Ernst Jüenger

1896 -- Ireland: James Connolly's Irish Socialist Republican Party is founded.

1903 -- Leslie Townes Hope lives.

1904 -- Rubén Darío poem "Oda a Roosevelt" appears in Pluma y L piz, Madrid.
Crees que...en donde pones la bala
el porvenir pones.
Tened cuidado. ¡Vive la América Española!

1906 -- Novelist T. H. White lives, Bombay, India. Wrote the tetralogy The Once & Future King). A critic described his work as "a shakeup of Evelyn Waugh, Laurel & Hardy, John Erskine, & the Marquis de Sade."

1907 -- US: Ballard is annexed to Seattle. Inspires bumper stickers: "Free Ballard" & "Vizualize Ballard."

1911 -- US: Another Snuff Flick? Supreme Court breaks up American Tobacco Company Trust & American Snuff Co.
I was with some Vietnamese recently, & some of them were smoking two cigarettes at a time. That's the kind of customers we need!
— US Senator Jesse Helms, on his meeting with the Vietnamese ambassador designate at a dinner given by the R J Reynolds Company

1912 -- US: Trotskyites? 15 young women workers fired by Curtis Publishing for dancing the "Turkey Trot" during their lunch break.

1912 -- US: Emma Goldman & Ben Reitman conclude a series of lectures, begun May 18 in San Francisco, on anarchism & the San Diego free-speech battle. Reitman & Goldman drew large audiences despite condemnation of Goldman in the press.

The Socialists deny Emma use of their Oakland auditorium.

1913 -- France: Spectacle becomes festival: the audience at the opening of The Rites of Spring, in Paris, riot due to the sensuality of the dance & Stravinsky's disturbing music — see also 27 April.
Source: [Calendar Riots]

1914 -- Edgar Lee Masters' first poems are published, in Reedy's Mirror.

1919 -- Charles Strite patents pop-up toaster.

1922 -- US: Today's Joke? Supreme Court rules Major League baseball is a sport — not a business — & thus not subject to antitrust laws.

1922 -- Author Eleanor Coerr lives. Shocked by the horror of the aftermath of the atom bombs, she wrote newspaper articles & a book for children. Wrote Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes.
http://www.sadako.org/
http://www.scholastic.com.au/common/books/contributor_profile.asp?ContributorID=38&channel=kids

1922 -- Macau: Portuguese army & police open fire on 10,000 protesters outside the police station demanding release of three Chinese barbers who beat up soldiers for sexually harassing a Chinese woman. Seventy people are shot dead & over 100 people beaten. A general strike is declared.
[Details / context]

1923 -- High Seas: What's The Hitch? Sandar Din & his bride, Berilla Nutter, get married at sea outside California's three-mile limit.
Both Sutter & Contra Costa counties refused the mixed-race couple a marriage license. The state's county clerks often apply anti-miscegenation laws to Punjabi men, even though they fall into the "Caucasian" category. Consequently, couples must travel to other states or find an imaginative way to wed.

1923 -- Britain suspends the Palestinian constitution for refusal of Arabs to "cooperate."

1927 -- Italy: Nella casa del fascio di Bologna il re accende una lampada votiva alla lapide dei caduti per il fascismo, a sancire l'accordo pieno tra corona e fascio.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1927 -- Italy: Il deputato fascista Alfredo Misuri denuncia alla Camera le illegalità commesse dagli squadristi. Per questo sarà aggredito, bastonato ed espulso dal partito.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1930 -- Edgar Rice Burroughs novel Tanar of Pellucidar is published.

1931 -- Italy: In Rome, 32-year-old anarchico Michele Schirru is executed by a fascist firing squad.
... show details

Schirru had emigrated to the US. A committed antifascist, he then returned to Italy, where he was arrested, tried & found guilty by "il Tribunale Speciale", of hoping to assassinate the notorious thug, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Mussolini.

His "trial," on May 28th, was presided over by Cristini — a fascist cut-throat raised to the highest ranks in the government as a reward for his bloody propensities.

No judge, no jury, no witnesses & no lawyers were allowed. Schirru was shot 8-1/2 hours after sentencing.

Schirru’s execution was plain murder; he had not killed anybody. The death penalty, as capital punishment existed in Italy at that time only for the murder of the king, the crown prince & Mussolini.

— MAN! Vol. 1, Nos 5-6 (May-June 1933)

http://www.ephemanar.net/mai29.html#schirru
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_Schirru

1932 -- US: Bonus Babies? Bonus March on Washington. WWI veterans, demanding full payment of their bonuses from Congress, are disbanded by the Army on Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Herbert "Hooverville" Hoover's orders.

1938 -- US: First American National Science Fiction Convention is held, Newark, NJ. Heads up, Orson!

1942 -- Child abuser & crooner Bing Crosby records the Christmas classic, Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" in Los Angeles. It became the biggest selling single of all time. Until the Princess stopped Waling?

1942 -- US: National Japanese-American Student Relocation Council founded.
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Largely organized by Quaker leader Clarence E. Pickett, the National Japanese-American Student Relocation Council is formed in Philadelphia with (Seattle's) University of Washington Dean Robert W. O'Brien as director. By war's end, 4,300 Nisei are in college.

[Sources]

1943 -- Germany: Women & Children Beware! RAF drops 1,500 tons of bombs on Wuppertal ...719 bombers, dropping 1,900 tons of bombs & killing 2,450 civilians & claim that half of Wuppertal has been ‘wiped off the map’. Nearly 4,000 houses are completely destroyed. WMD TERRORISM
http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/may43.html
http://www.worldwar-2.net/timelines/war-in-europe/european-air-war/european-air-war-index-1943.htm

1950 -- US: United Auto Workers (UAW) at General Motors win hospitalization plan....important given all the beatings from anti-union thugs & police over the years.

1951 -- Baseball pitcher, Billy Joe Davidson signed for a record bonus said to be $120,000.

1953 -- Edmund Hillary & his guides are the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Actually his guide, Nepalese mountaineer Tenzing Norkay (alt. sp., Tensing Norgay), is the first person & was a hero back in Katmandu, to Hillary's ire. Later Hillary returned to the Himalayas to find the Abominable Snowman, but the latter refused to meet with him.
... show details

"It has been a long road...From a mountain coolie, a bearer of loads, to a wearer of a coat with rows of medals who is carried about in planes & worries about income tax."

— Tenzing Norgay
http://www.tenzing-norgay.com/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/history/norgay.html

1956 --

US: Permaculturalist, Dreamtime Villager, poet, Elizabeth Perl Nasaw aka Elizabeth Was aka Lyx Ish lives (d.2004).
Daily Bleed Saint February 28
http://www.dreamtimevillage.org/articles/interview.html

1958 -- Author Juan Ramón Jiménez, Nobel Prize winner, dies, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1956/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jimenez.htm

1962 -- US: Buck (John) O'Neil is the first black coach in major-league baseball, for the Chicago Cubs.

1962 -- Italy: La polizia di stato reprime una manifestazione a Ceccano (Frosinone) : un operaio è ucciso e due sono feriti.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1963 -- Patricia Neal/Paul Newman movie "Hud" opens; based on novelist / used book dealer Larry McMurtry's, Horseman, Pass By.

1964 -- US: St. Augustine, Florida "night raiders" shower a car with bullets, narrowly missing an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1966 -- South Vietnam: Buddhist nun immolates herself in Hue, the first of 11 immolations in the next few weeks.

1967 -- US: Poor Peoples' Campaign begins in Washington, DC.

1968 -- France: In the midst of the Upheavals of 1968, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President de Gaulle, his wife & aides climb into three helicopters & vanish. Panic has the country's propertied classes on the edge of madness; on the streets the mood is the greatest jubilation imaginable...
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[Details / context]
29 mai 68 Rencontre secrète du général de Gaulle avec le général Massu à Baden-Baden (Allemagne).
Manifestation CGT de la Bastille à Saint-Lazare (300 à 400 000 personnes).

De Gaulle cancels weekly ministerial meeting & arrives at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises at 18:00, after making secret visit to General Massu, who leads French troops stationed in Baden-Wurttemberg.

A demonstration called for by the CGT brings out several hundreds of thousands in Paris.

[Sources]

1968 -- US: Anti-war demonstrations on Michigan State University campus. Hard working "real" students keep their heads in the ground so they can "prepare themselves for a contributive future..."
... show details

http://digital.lib.msu.edu/collections/index.cfm?CollectionID=31

1969 -- Argentina: Anticipated, but wholly spontaneous, violence triggers General Strikes in Cordoba & La Plata. Opposing the military regime, a wildcat General Strike & two days of massive rioting throughout the Cordoba province, involving students & workers in the car & heavy industries.
Source: [Calendar Riots] labor

1969 -- Vietnam: US troops abandon "Hamburger Hill," 8-days after "winning" one of Vietnam War's bloodiest battles. Of no strategic value to the US, the fighting raged for 19-days, with 11 American assaults in 10 days. Apparently this was a gonad contest to see who could pile up the most dead & wounded.

1969 -- US: Nixon's FBI wiretaps Henry Brandon, London "Times" Washington, DC correspondent.

1975 -- Japan: Katsumi Suzuki sets a rope-jumping treble-turn record, 381, quadruple-turn record of 51, & a record five quintuple turns. Inspires politicians around the world!

1978 -- Guatemala: Troops massacre 100 campesinos protesting against eviction. Panzos, Alta Vehapaz.
Oh the companies keep a sharp eye
And pay their respects to the army
To watch for the hot-blooded leaders
And be prepared for the junta to
crush them like flies.

— Phil Ochs, "United Fruit"

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/

1979 -- US: That's White of You?: An all-straight jury convicts former San Francisco city supervisor Dan White of the lightest charge possible in the assassination of city supervisor Harvey Milk & Mayor George Moscone.
White's defense argued White was depressed because of an overconsumption of junk food (Twinkie Defense). Thousands march on city hall in response, provoking a police riot.

1979 -- Dominican Republic: Troops fire into a crowd of demonstrators, killing one person.

1980 -- US: An assassin critically wounds civil-rights leader Vernon Jordan, Indiana.

1985 -- England: 39 die at Heysel Stadium in Liverpool in a riot prior to soccer match.
Correction: "While the match was Liverpool versus Juventus (Italy) for the European Cup Final, the match took place in the Heysel Stadium, Brussels, Belgium."

— Bleedster Paul T., 31 May 2002 Paul Taylor, Shefield anarchist
http://web.archive.org/...http://www.rising7.force9.co.uk/rising7.html

1986 -- US: Christic Institute files lawsuit charging US complicity in Contra assassination bombing at La Penca, Nicaragua, & the CIA role in smuggling cocaine into the US to fund Contra wars.
The American mainstream media ignores the allegations for 10 years; a federal judge throws the suit out as frivolous &, at government request, assesses all government court costs to Christic, forcing it out of business.

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied today,

then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged."

— Noam Chomsky

1986 -- US: Edward Marks, the first apprehended mid-'80s drug tamperer arrested for lacing Smith Kline medicines (Contac, etc.) with rat poison to lower the stock price; although no one dies, he gets 27 years; Orlando, Florida.

1987 -- Keep On Trunkin?: Michael Jackson attempts to buy Elephant Man's remains.
... show details

The Elephant Man was not the Elephant Man.
To be more precise, John Merrick did not suffer from the genetic disorder which has come to be known as "Elephant Man disease." Recent studies of his remains confirmed theories that Merrick was the victim of a much rarer disease that was unidentified until a century after his death.

1987 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Interior Secretary Donald Hodel is reported to be backing away from strict controls on fluorocarbons to protect the ozone layer.
The new plan calls for a PR campaign to encourage people to protect themselves by wearing sunglasses, hats & sun-screen lotion. How the planet's lotionless creatures are to avoid skin cancer is not addressed.

1989 -- China: Student protesters in China erect a replica of the Statue of Liberty.

1990 -- US: Supreme Court rules Indian tribes do not possess authority to exercise criminal jurisdiction over anyone other than tribal members on their reservations. This ruling, in some dispute, involving Russell Means.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/bulletin/backissues/summer99/article5.html

1991 -- Greenpeace says 200,000 died during the US Gulf war & 5 million are displaced.

1991 -- Ethiopia: Large anti-rebel, anti-US demonstrations in Addis Ababa.

1992 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Bush refuses to sign the UN Biodiversity Treaty; also today, the Bush administration drafts regulations for when to lie to the public. Always & forever, right?

1993 -- Mauritania: Amnesty granted to the military & cops for the killing of black citizens.

1994 -- Scotland: Anarchist Summer School, Glasgow. 29th-31st (1994?)
[Details / context]

1997 -- Indonesia: Ruling party wins by a landslide in corrupt elections.

1997 -- US: CIA says it has destroyed all records of its murderous 1953 Guatemala coup.

1997 -- Amnesty International says Texass is approaching Iran, Iraq & Saudi Arabia in execution rate.

1998 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Barry "Nuke'm" Goldwater dies.

2000 -- US: Artist Alfred Levitt (b.1894) dies. Artist, anarchist, philosopher, spelunker & adventurer, kicks off at the ripe old age of 105.
His friends & colleagues included the likes of Jack London, Marcel Duchamp & Emma Goldman. Produced hundreds of paintings. Influenced by American artist & teacher Robert Henri, & he modeled nude at the Ferrer Modern School so he could hear Henri's lectures for free. He grew fond of cubism after studying under modernist artist Hans Hofmann. Levitt was part of a group of artists, including Milton Avery & Mark Rothko, who painted together & adapted cubism to US themes & helped Americanize modernism.

http://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=2191
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/FerrerFrancisco/levitt.html

2001 -- US: Followers of Osama bin Laden are convicted in NY for the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in east Africa.

2001 -- Hungary: NATO refuses to endorse Beloved & Respected Comrade George Bush's missile defense plan, Budapest.

2001 -- US: Armed kids hold off sheriff's deputies near Sandpoint, Idaho after their only parent, their mother, is arrested for child neglect.

2002 -- Argentina: 24-hour general strike against the Duhalde government.

2010 -- Canada: Montreal's 11th Annual Anarchist Bookfair. Over 100 booksellers, distributors & groups, sharing their publications & materials, most of which are hard or impossible to find at mainstream book stores.
http://www.anarchistbookfair.ca/

2010 -- Ireland: 5th Dublin Anarchist Bookfair, Liberty Hall, Dublin.

3000 --

"This is the place to jump, the place to dance! This is the wilderness! Was there ever any other?

"It remains a secret.

It is publicly known but not avowed. Publicly the wilderness is elsewhere, barbarism is abroad, savagery is on the face of the other."

— Fredy Perlman, Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!