May 29. 1986: Christic Institute files lawsuit charging US complicity in Contra assassination bombing at La Penca, Nicaragua, and CIA role in smuggling cocaine into US to fund Contra wars. Mainstream media ignores the allegations for 10 years; a federal judge throws the suit out as frivolous and assesses all government court costs to Christic, forcing it out of business.

May 30. 1431: French military leader Joan of Arc burned at the stake. 1741: Thirteen black men are burned at the stake, and 17 black men, two white men, and two white women are hanged, for their roles in planning a slave revolt in New York City.

May 31. 1678: Tax protester Lady Godiva rides naked through Coventry. 1819: Birth of Walt Whitman, famous queer. "To states everywhere, resist much; obey little."

June 1. 1963: 531 people, including NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins, are arrested at a peaceful civil rights march in Jackson, Mississippi. 1964: US Supreme Court strikes down a Washington state law requiring loyalty oaths for state employees. 1992: United Nations Earth Summit begins in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. United States government obstructs passage of most proposed agreements.

June 2. 1967: Riots in West Berlin protesting the visit of US puppet dictator, the Shah of Iran. One person dies. 1970: Maggie Kuhn founds the Gray Panthers senior activist group.

June 3. 1980: Computer malfunction--specifically, failure of a 46 cent computer chip--in the Colorado headquarters of NORAD signals a Soviet nuclear attack on US; US forces are called back in the nick of time.

June 4. 1789: US constitution goes into effect. It has a nice run of about 200 years.

June 5. 1995: Twenty-five hundred peasants shut down Mexico City stock exchange.

June 6. 1638: Under guise of a soccer game, English anti-enclosure rioters destroy landlords' ditches. 1778: Debtors prisons abolished in US; at some later point, going into overwhelming debt shifted from being a mark of moral failure to being Americans' patriotic duty. 1971: Forty Native Americans camp at sacred Black Hills site atop Mount Rushmore; 20 are arrested.

June 8. 1917: 164 miners killed in Butte, Montana mine fire. 1937: American Medical Association recognizes right to birth control. 1999: Thousands of Iranian students protest for six days for greater freedom; largest public demonstration since the 1979 revolution.

June 9. 1934: Birth of Donald Duck. 1984: 150,000 march in London, England for nuclear disarmament.

June 10. 1692: Bridget Bishop is the first person hanged, during the ordeal known to history as the "Salem Witch Trials," for witchcraft. Massachusetts. 1997: Former Black Panther Geronimo Pratt released from prison after being jailed 27 years on a false FBI murder charge. Santa Ana, Calif.

June 11. 1381: Priest "John Ball hath rungen his bell": Peasant revolt in England. 1880: Birth of Jeannette Rankin, first women member of Congress; only member to vote against US entry to both World Wars, and led anti-Vietnam War protests at age 90. Missoula, Montana.