Our Daily Bleed...
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MAY 30
RANDOLPH BOURNE
Birth-injured Greenwich Village literary radical.
MR BUCKET'S GOT A HOLE DAY.
849 -- Early Worms?: Frankish Empire divided between Charles, Louis & Lothar, Worms.
1431 -- France: As she burns at the stake, 19-year-old Joan of Arc screams & calls on God, the Virgin Mary & archangels [ark-angels].[Details / context]
1593 -- Christopher Marlowe, dramatist, poet, brawler, & government agent, is fatally stabbed with his own dagger in an argument over a tavern bill.Elizabethan poet-dramatist Christopher Marlowe was not killed in 1593, but banished; he continued writing under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare."
http://www.marlovian.com/
1640 -- Peter Paul Rubens, painter, dies.
1741 -- New World: Thirteen black men burned at the stake, & 17 black men, two white men, & two white women hanged, for their roles in planning a slave revolt in New York City.
1778 -- France: Philosopher, satirist Voltaire dies. Possibly the greatest 18th-century European writer, noted for his wit, satire, & critical capacity. His greatest work is Candide (1759).
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7308/deathbed.htm
1783 -- US: Pennsylvania Evening Post begins, first daily newspaper in the country.
1811 -- Vissarion Grigoryevitch Belinsky lives (1811 - 1848). Eminent Russian literary critic, often called the father of the Russian radical intelligentia."The basis of religion is pietism, reverence, fear of God. Whereas the Russian man utters the name of Lord while scratching himself somewhere."
1814 -- Russia: Anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin lives, Prjamuchino. [New style calendar; May 18 by the Julian calendar.] Conspirator, rival of Marx, assassin of God.
"It clearly follows that to make men moral it is necessary to make their social environment moral. & that can be done in only one way; by assuring the triumph of justice, that is, the complete liberty of everyone in the most perfect equality for all.
Inequality of conditions & rights, & the resulting lack of liberty for all, is the great collective iniquity begetting all individual iniquities."
Mikhail Bakunin
1835 -- Alfred Austin lives. Successor of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as British poet laureate, memorable now for attacking Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, Hugo, & Wordsworth as inferior poets.
1838 -- Léon Metchnikoff lives (1838-1888). Geographer, anarchist & secretary to Elisée Reclus.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/reclus/ishill/ishill1-25.html
1842 -- England: Near Miss? John Francis attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria as she drives down Constitution Hill with Albert.
[Source: Calendar Riots]
1854 -- US: Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals Missouri Compromise & opens Northern Territory to slavery.
1868 -- US: Memorial Day first observed as two women in Columbus, Mississippi place flowers on both Confederate & Union graves.
1875 -- Giovanni Gentile lives. Italian idealist poet philosopher, politician, educator, sometimes called the philosopher of Fascism. His works show the strong influence of G. W. F. Hegel.
1876 -- Russia: During this month Prince Peter Kropotkin is finally transferred from the prison at Peter & Paul Fortress to the St. Petersburg Military Hospital (I don't have the exact day ed.). His mental & physical health improved but he hid this from his doctors. The security here is much more lax & Peter immediately begins planning an escape.
[Further details]
1883 -- US: Panic on the Brooklyn Bridge, six days after its opening, results in 12 people trampled to death.
1886 -- US: Randolph Bourne lives, (1886-1918). American literary radical, anarchist.It is in literature itself that Randolph Bourne appears most unforgettably, in a haunting stanza from 1919 (1932), centerpiece of the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos:
This little sparrowlike man,
tiny twisted bit of flesh in a black cape,
always in pain & ailing,
put a pebble in his sling,
& hit Goliath squarely in the forehead with it.
. . . If any man has a ghost,
Bourne has a ghost,
a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak
hopping along the grimy old brick & brownstone streets
still left in downtown New York,
crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:War is the health of the State.
1887 -- Julian West goes to sleep.When West was finally awakened, he did not see the face of his servant, but the face of a stranger, who identified himself as Dr. Leete. West found himself in a house he had never before seen & when he demanded an explanation, the reluctant Dr. Leete told him that the date was September 10, 2000.
West had slept for 133 years, three months, & 11 days.
Looking Backward
1894 -- Italy: Il tribunale militare di Palermo condanna De Felice-Giuffrida a 18 anni di carcere, Rosario Bosco, Nicola Barbato e Bernardino Verro a 12 anni di carcere quali capi dei Fasci siciliani. L'indomani a Palermo si svolgono grandi manifestazioni a favore dei condannati.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1896 -- Howard Hawks lives (1896 - 1977). American film director, screenwriter, & producer whose works gained considerable stature first among French film cultists, then among American critics. Awarded honorary Oscar in 1975. Directed Viva Villa; To Have & Not Have (co-scripted by William Faulkner); The Big Sleep (ditto); Rio Bravo.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hhawks.htm
1900 -- Italy: Pio Turroni lives (1900-1982), Cesena-Forli. Fled to Belgium in 1923, to escape the repression of the Italian fascist government, then to France in 1925. Publisher of the long running anarchist review "Volonta".
1901 -- Russia: Maxim Gorky, arrested on charges of printing revolutionary literature, is released from prison after the anarchist/novelist Count Leo Tolstoy intercedes on his behalf. Gorky later served a similar role by interceding on the behalf of many writers victimized by Stalin's regime."What queer people you are!" said the mother to the Ukrainian one day.
"All are your comrades the Armenians & the Jews & the Austrians. You speak about all as of your friends; you grieve for all, & you rejoice for all!"
"For all, mother dear, for all! The world is ours! The world is for the workers! For us there is no nation, no race. For us there are only comrades & foes..."
Maxim Gorky, Mother
When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.
Maxim Gorky
1902 --Belgium: Hem Day lives (1902-1969). Belgian scholar, secondhand bookseller, pacifist, anarchist, & writer (aka Marcel &/or Henri Dieu).See the Anarchist Encyclopedia page,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/DayHem.htm
1903 -- Countee Cullen lives (1903-1946). American poet, born in Louisville, Kentucky(?). One of the finest writers of the Harlem Renaissance, along with Langston Hughes.
1904 -- US: Last Chance? Baseball's Frank Chance gets hit by a pitch FIVE times in a doubleheader.
1908 -- Mel Blanc voice of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd & Porky Pig, lives.
1909 -- US: National Conference on the Negro convened, resulting in the formation of the NAACP.
1909 -- Benny Goodman, swinger, lives.
1911 -- US: Ray Harroun wins first 500-mile auto race at The Brickyard Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Won with an average speed of 74.59 mph.
1912 -- US: Two companies of Marines rushed to Nicaragua to "protect US interests.""So heavy the price that they pay
As daily the fruit it is stolen
Over the blue Caribbean
But the lengthening shadow of Cuba
will hinder the way. Phil Ochs, "United Fruit"
See Peter Werbe's interview with Michael Schumacher about Phil Ochs, http://goodfelloweb.com/werbe/oats.htm
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~trent/ochs/lyrics/united-fruit.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
1912 --US: Emma Goldman & Ben Reitman speak in Sacramento about their recent experience in San Diego, attempting to exercise their "free" speech rights in the land of the free.
1913 -- First Balkan War ends, Treaty of London.
1913 --
1917 -- Russia: Peter Kropotkin arrives in Petrograd. Kropotkin's notoriety results in a large crowd to gather to greet him, & even the new government sends representatives to meet with the old anarchist.
1919 -- France: Militants of the C.D.S. join the first Communist Party (PC), French section of the Communist International, largement inspiré des thèses anarchistes.
Italy:
England: The Stoke Newington Eight trial begins, lasting until December, making a record as the longest trial in British history. Four defendants are sentenced to 10 years after a plea for clemency by the jury, four are acquitted.
