JUNE 19

German anti-fascist collage artist, propagandist.

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Berkshire, England: Election of the "MORRIS MAYOR." Residents elect a Morris dancer who is carried through town on a flower-trimmed rocking chair, preceded by an ox-head on a long pole, with stops at every tavern to refill the Mayor's chalice.

First of the month of MESSIDOR (harvest) in the French revolutionary calendar.

Noah leaves the Ark (according to Islamic tradition).

Brazil: BEGGARS' BANQUETS.

FESTIVAL OF THE COMING ICE AGE.

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1157 -- Bertrand de Blanquefort, 6th Master of the Templars, captured by the Moslems at the Siege of Bayas.


1498 -- Machiavelli appointed Secretary to the Signoria.


1502 -- England: Henry VII of England agrees to pay Maximilian I to banish English rebels from the Empire.
[Source: Robert Braunwart]
[Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]


1507 -- Author Annibale Caro lives.


1566 -- James VI, minor poet & King of Scots, lives. Known as "the wisest fool in Christendom."


1623 -- Blaise Pascal lives. French mathematician, physicist, theologian, inventor of first digital calculator, barometer, hydraulic press, & the syringe.

After a mystical experience he joined Jansenists, against the Jesuits in Provincial Letters. His principle of empiricism ("Experiments are the true teachers which one must follow in physics") pitted him against René Descartes, whose starting point was human reason. Pascal´s idea of intuitionism (Pensees) influenced Rousseau, Edmund Husserl & Bergson.

GOT LOTTO?

"Pascal´s wager" says the smarts bet their lives on the existence of God. If he exists, you win big time; if he doesn't, what have you lost?

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Pascal/RouseBall/RB_Pascal.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bpascal.htm

1754 -- New World: Benjamin Franklin introduces Albany Plan of Union, based on the Iroquois Confederacy. The Plan is rejected, but its essential elements adopted a quarter century later as the US Constitution.
http://unauthorised.org/anthropology/anthro-l/july-1996/0039.html



1816 -- Staying up all night to tell ghost stories with his wife & Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley suddenly becomes hysterical & runs shrieking from the room.
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/anarwoman/chapter10.html


1861 -- Philippines: Novelist & poet José Rizal lives. A militant reformist, publication of his novel El Filibusterismo led to his being tried & executed by the military in 1896. His death was the catalyst that precipitated the Philippine Revolution.
[Details / context]


1865 -- US: Slaves declared free in state of Texass. Now celebrated each year nationally, mostly by people of color, as the holiday "Juneteenth."


1867 -- Mexico: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Emperor Maximilian, overthrown on May 15, is executed.
http://www.patriagrande.net/uruguay/eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/18670619.htm



1880 -- W. A. Dwiggins, designer of a number of typefaces — including Electra — lives, Martinsville, Ohio.


1886 -- US: Kangaroo trial of eight anarchists for the Haymarket bombing begins, Chicago.
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/haymarket.html


1888 -- Korea: US marines begin fighting in Seoul, Korea (-June 30).



1891 -- Anti-fascist collage artist Helmut Herzfeld (John Heartfield) lives, Berlin.

http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/HeartfieldJohn/

1893 -- Lizzie Borden acquitted of murdering her parents.



1897 -- Moe Howard lives.
http://members.aol.com/liz6099/moe.htm
http://www.3-stooges.com/text/moe.html



1898 -- Shell Game?: Guam is shelled by the U.S.S. Charleston. American Empire building.

The Island's Spanish governor, unaware his country is now at war with the US, apologizes that a lack of ammunition renders him unable to return the salute.

1900 -- Author Laura Z. Hobson lives.


1902 -- US: Congress provides allotments on Spokane reservation, in Washington State, freeing up "surplus" land for sale to white farmers.


1902 -- US: Paterson, New Jersey labor strike.


1905 -- US: Nickelodeon movie theatre opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1909 -- Osamu Dazai lives (1909-1948). Japanese novelist, literary voice of his generation after WWII. Joined the communist movement briefly. Friends with writer Masuji Ibuse. The tone of his postwar works reflect emotional crisis & suicidal thoughts. In 1948 Dazai drowned himself & left behind the unfinished novel Goodbye.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/dazai.htm



1910 -- US: First Father's Day is celebrated, Spokane, Washington. Heads up, you rotten kids!
http://whales.greenpeace.org/
http://www.thespermbankofca.org/



1911 -- Mexico: Federales & Maderistas retake Mexicali, BC from Magonista (anarchist) rebels.


1912 -- US: Alleged eight-hour work-day adopted for US government workers. By the end of the century American workers are putting in more hours at work than most other countries in the world.


1914 -- Mexico: Anarchist Zapatistas ratify the Plan de Ayala against Beloved & Respected comrade Leader Pres. Huerta; meanwhile Pancho Villa & his forces arrive at Calera to begin the siege of Zacatecas.


1914 -- Canada: 189 die in a coal-mine explosion, Hillcrest, Alta. (Canadian record).



1914 -- Portugal: Luísa Adão lives (1914-1999). Nurse & an anarchist, & life-long companion (from the age of 16) of Acácio Tomás de Aquino, a militant anarcho-trade unionist.
http://ytak.club.fr/novembre2.html#aquino


1917 -- England: After WW I King George V ordered members of British royal family to dispense with German titles & surnames; they take the name Windsor. The faces, however, remain the same.


1923 -- The "Seattle Times" fires reporter E.B. White, 24; White goes on to gain fame as an essayist & children's book author.


1925 -- China: Strike in Hong Kong & boycott of British goods in Canton, lasting until October, 1926.
[Source: K.S. Karol]


1926 -- England: Peacemakers Pilgrimage ends in Hyde Park, London.


1926 -- Premier performance of George Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique," Paris (without dancers).
Source: See Geoffrey Wolff, Black Sun (Random House, 1976).
http://www.banger.com/banger/crosby/bio.html


1930 -- Nicaragua: US & Nicaraguan troops attack Sandinistas [at El Saraguaza?].
http://www.jorian.com/san.html



1934 -- A Cool Million by Nathanael West is published. Features the dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin.

"I was very very very influenced by Nathanael West for a while..."

— Philip K. Dick

alt: Nathaniel West


1937 -- James Barrie, novelist/dramatist, dies.

1937 -- US: A preliminary battle leading up to Youngstown Riots & Poland Avenue Riot on the 21st (Ohio Steel Strike of 1937). Some say that it was deliberately staged to test the probable extent of union resistance in the real fight.

If you happened to have a Pennsylvania license, you were particularly suspected because, as every cop & official in Youngstown will tell you, Pennsylvania has gone Bolshevik...

[Details / context]

1937 -- US: The Women's Day Massacre. When the cops in Youngstown, pursuing the American Dream, couldn't find any union leaders to beat up, they went after women picketers sitting in chairs supporting the strike. They beat 'em good & left a few bodies in their wake. A good day's work (if you're a cop).
http://academic.csuohio.edu/clevelandhistory/Issue3/articles/steelpage6content.htm




1938 -- Canada: Bloody Sunday: The RCMP & Vancouver police attack strikers with tear gas & clubs; Police battle unemployed workers at post office in Vancouver, brutally ejecting them. Michael John Thompson Rare Books thinks NATO is out to get him.


1945 -- Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, lives.


1945 -- Tobias Wolff, US writer (This Boy's Life), lives.



1947 -- Salman Rushdie lives. Anglo-Indian novelist, who connects in his works tales from various genres - fantasy, mythology, religion, oral tradition. Described as a magic realist like such authors as Peter Carey, Angela Carter, E.L. Doctorow, John Fowles, Mark Helprin or Emma Tennant.

Condemned to death by Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February 14, 1989 after publishing Satanic Verses. This "fatwa" has not been cancelled. Continues to write, but keeps a low profile to avoid assassins. Religion moves in mysterious ways.

http://www.levity.com/corduroy/rushdie.htm
http://www.notbored.org/rushdie.html
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rushdie.htm

1952 -- Swede Sausage guitarist/songwriter, bodyman & bucker of hay lives, Spo.


1953 -- US: Black community begins bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — two & a half years before the more famous Montgomery, Alabama protest.


1953 -- US: Despite widespread international protest & compelling evidence of their innocence, Julius & Ethel Rosenberg electrocuted for alleged sale of atomic secrets to Russians, Sing-Sing Prison, Ossining, NY. The first native-born Americans to die for committing espionage in peacetime: Julius danced three times with Mr. Electricity before blowing his fuse. His lovely wife Ethel twitched five times before popping her breaker.

In one of her last letters before being executed, Ethel Rosenberg wrote: "My husband & I must be vindicated by history... We are the first victims of American Fascism."

http://www.hatchoo.com/deathrow/

1953 -- US: Bodies of aliens are reportedly recovered from a UFO, Laredo, Texass. Perhaps one of the Little Grey Guys can be resuscitated & made President of the US by the Supreme Court?


1953 -- US: ILWU begins a four day general strike in sugar, pineapple, & longshore to protest the Smith Act convictions of Jack Hall & six others (suspicion of being commies, apparently a Live Free or Die crime).
http://homepages.uhwo.hawaii.edu/~clear/Timeline.html

1957 -- México: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos allegedly lives, Tampico, Tamaulipas.

"Delegado Zero"

Spokesperson for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). His nickname (Marcos) is presumably an acrostic combining the names of the communities where the EZLN first rose in arms: Las Margaritas, Amatenango del Valle, La Realidad, Comitán, Ocosingo, & San Cristóbal. Prolific author, essayist, novelist, antiauthoritarian. "I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet," Marcos says. "We teach [children of the EZLN] that there are so many words like colors & that there are so many thoughts because within them is the world where words are born...& we teach them to speak the truth, that is to say, to speak with their hearts." "Marcos is the voice for many voices. His words, fashioned from humor & poetry, reveal the deep roots & abundant branches of the Zapatista insurrection in Chiapas. It is an original language for an original movement that is transforming Mexico & is helping to change the world." — Eduardo Galeano Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

"The only way to get their attention is to kill or be killed. If you ask us what's going to happen in the near future, we have no fucking idea. Sorry for using the word 'idea.' We are ready to go to war or move on to peace."

1961 -- US: God is Dead? Supreme Court strikes down a provision in Maryland's constitution requiring state office holders to believe in God. Gone to the devil & commies ever since.
http://www.deathclock.com/
http://atheism.about.com/library/weekly/aa042600a.htm

1963 -- Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space returns to Earth. Claims zero-g sex is "socialism at it's purest, with no one on top."


1963 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader JFK orders NSC to proceed with top-secret sabotage program in Cuba.


1964 -- US: Carol Doda dances in a Rudi Gernreich topless bathing suit in The Condor nightclub, North Beach, Frisco, California.


1964 -- US: 200 college students leave Oxford, Ohio to join 1,000 total civil rights volunteers as part of Civil Rights "Freedom Summer" to register Negro voters.


1965 -- Australia: Hundreds respond to newspaper advertisement placed by 144 draft resisters.


1965 -- Earliest dated piece in Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice," Folsom Prison.



1967 -- Paul McCartney admits on TV that he took LSD.


1968 -- Brazil: Violent protests in Rio de Janeiro against alienating culture, confrontations with police result in 22 injuries.


1968 -- US: Over 50,000 demonstrators participate in the Poor People's Campaign Solidarity Day March in Washington, D.C.


1968 -- US: "Soul Scene" benefit dance for the Blackman's Free Store, held at the Carousel Ballroom, Frisco, California.



1970 -- US: Two banks bombed in Berkeley.



1970 -- Baseball player Jim Bouton's controversial Ball Four is published.


1972 -- Reporter Kevin Buckley charges the US with thousands of civilian murders in Vietnam.


1972 -- Airline pilots in 64 nations stage a 1-day strike against hijacking.


1977 -- For a second time in two days, one of the Sex Pistols is attacked by men with knives (drummer Steve Cook this time).


1981 -- Heaviest known orange 5.5 lbs (2.5 kg) exhibited, Nelspruit, South Africa.

If I see three oranges I have to juggle.

& if I see two towers, I have to walk.

— Philippe Petit

http://www.juggling.org/books/alvarez/part7.html

1981 -- Mexico: Senya Fleshin (alternate spellings, Fléchine, Fleshine) dies in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a few months after the death of his lifelong companion Mollie Steimer. Fleshin was forced into exile by the Russian Bolsheviks after numerous arrests & imprisonment by the Cheka. Pictured (left) with Voline & Mollie Steimer in 1927.

Picture below, front row, second from right, in the Bound Together Books Mural. Mollie Steimer is on his right.

[Details / context]

1981 -- Guatemala: Soldiers kill 200, Coy , Huehuetenango [see July 19].


1981 -- Scifi author Rudy Rucker writes the preface to Infinity & the Mind (nonfiction).


1982 -- 1,000 islanders occupy key islands in protest against French nuclear tests, Kwajalein Atoll, South Pacific.



1982 -- John Cheever (The Wapshot Chronicle) dies, age 70, in Ossining, New York.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cheever.htm


1985 -- El Salvador: Contingent of armed gunmen opens fire on an outdoor restaurant in a posh district of San Salvador known as the Zona Rosa. 13 killed, including four US Marines & two US businessmen. A radio broadcast of June 24, Radio Venceremos, says,

"If US Army members & CIA agents died in San Salvador, it was because they came to attack our people. No one had summoned them; they died as a result of the interventionist policy carried out by President Reagan, whose intervention grows day by day. Reagan will have to assume full responsibility for his deeds."

1986 -- US: Len Bias, first pick of Celtics, suffers fatal cocaine-induced seizure. Congress fills the prisons, in a cocaine-induced seizure, as crack crazes the nation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/memories/bias/launch/bias19.htm



1987 -- US: Supreme Court rules school teaching evolution need not teach creation.



1987 -- Ben & Jerry Ice Cream & the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia announce a new ice-cream flavor, Cherry Garcia.


1988 -- Haiti: Civilian government overthrown by U.S.-backed military coup.


1988 -- Germany: Separate But Equal? Michael Jackson plays a concert for East Berliners, with the Berlin Wall in between.


1991 -- Two of Mia Farrow's daughters arrested for shoplifting lingerie . . . for Woody(?!).


1996 -- South Korea: Large parts of the auto industry are shut down because laborers at Kia Motors Corp., the country's second largest auto corporation, struck in a wage dispute.


1997 -- Italy: Cops raid anarchist centers & homes across the country. The Italian Anarchist Federation denounced the raids as a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate & criminalize the movement.

On July 17, 1997, the judge presiding over the preliminary inquiry of the Roman Tribunal, Claudia D'Angelo, read the following sentence: "Let us remind you that all of the defendants were accused of: subversive association..."

[Details / context]

Zeno of Elea, Greek philosopher, whose paradoxes raised 'modern' problems of space & time (Achilles can never overtake a tortoise in a race if space can be infinitely divided: whenever he reaches where the tortoise was, the tortoise will have moved just ahead of him.)

Zeno of Citium, Greek founder of Stoic philosophy. Pantheistic & materialist, finds happiness in acceptance of the laws of the universe, advocating the brotherhood of man & condemning slavery.

(Of course, underlying Stoicism is Cynicism, with its adherents through the ages — most recently associated with beatniks, hipphippies, yippies, counter culuralists... It is often said that every family has one or two.)

New pictures have been added in 2003...
http://www.buelinckx.be/familie-web/zeno.html

1999 -- Christine? Author Stephen King is hit & seriously injured by a van, Maine.


2000 -- Germany: Court rules parents cannot give a child 13 first names.


2002 -- Iraq: US or British jets attack.


2002 -- Air traffic controllers strike in Europe.

3000 --