Section » History
June 1, 1660: Quaker Mary Dyer hanged on Boston Common for heretical preaching. 1914: Eighty militia men refuse to board train as reinforcement for US invasion of Veracruz, Mexico.
June 2, 1863: Harriet Tubman frees 750 slaves in raid. 1924: US Congress agrees to give citizenship to some Native Americans. What generosity!
June 3, 1952: Chinese officials mark campaign against opium with a rally of 4,000 ex-addicts. Guangzhou, China. The opium trade was introduced to China in the early 19th century by Western colonial powers which made huge profits from developing a “market ” of millions of Chinese addicts. 1979: World’s largest oil spill (until Deepwater Horizon!) occurs as a blowout at the Ixtoc oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico spews 600,000 tons of crude into the gulf near the Yucatan Peninsula. 1991: Willie Nelson releases his “Who’ll Buy My Memories–The IRS Tapes” LP. The album is compromised of tunes seized by the feds and will go towards paying off his $16 million tax bill.
June 4, 1989: Chinese army massacres at least 2,000 unarmed student demonstrators, Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Chinese government still officially denies any deaths occurred. Thousands who were arrested “disappeared” and remain unaccounted for.
June 6, 1813: US invasion of Canada halted at Stoney Creek, Ontario.
June 7, 1981: Israel bombs suspected Iraqi nuclear installation, creating a “dirty bomb” effect that sprays radioactive material over a heavily-populated area of Iraq. US stops shipping arms to Israel for 4 months, when a new agreement to “protect the peace and security” of the Middle East is reached with Israel. 1988: Palestinian Liberation Organization announces its willingness to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
June 8, 1976: Trial begins for Bob Robideau and Dino Butler for murdering two FBI agents at Oglala, South Dak. They would be acquitted on grounds of self-defense; later, a third Native American activist, Leonard Peltier, would be convicted of the same charges after most evidence and witnesses used by Robideau and Butler were disallowed in Peltier’s trial.
June 9, 1934: Birth of Donald Duck.
June 10, 1871: American military force landed in Korea to “protect US interests.” 1975: Release of Rockefeller Commission report detailing a secret CIA-sponsored domestic program, CHAOS, that monitored over 300,000 anti-war dissidents and organizations in the United States.
June 12, 1917: 260 people die in a mine disaster in Butte, Montana, sparking a strike of 14,000 people against unsafe conditions. 1967: US Supreme Court overturns a Virginia law banning interracial marriage.
June 13, 1966: US Supreme Court’s now-eviscerated Miranda decision; suspect must be informed of rights. 1971: First installment of “The Pentagon Papers” published by the New York Times.
June 14, 1903: The “New York World” newspaper reports that Theodore Roosevelt’s White House has drawn up detailed plans to have the province of Panama secede, with US support, from the nation of Colombia, and then hand over control of a proposed trans-isthmus canal to the US Five months later, the plan unfolded exactly as reported.
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May 1, 1654: “Under penalty of death, no Irish man, woman, or child, is to let himself, herself, itself be found east of the River Shannon.” An Order from the Parliament of England. 1830: Birth of Irish-American anti-war activist and labor organizer Mary Harris, better known as Mother Jones. Cork, Ireland. May 2, 1896: US [...]
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The more things change . . . Apr. 16, 1291: Rudolph Hapsburg purchases rights to govern Lucerne, Switzerland. 1934: Los Angeles County Supervisor Roger W. Jessup calls for deporting some 7,000 indigent Filipinos on welfare rolls. 1947: Massive oil refinery explosion and resulting fire kill 500, Texas City, Texas. 1987: US Patent Office announces that [...]
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Apr. 1, 1932: Five hundred school children with haggard faces and tattered clothes, parade through Chicago’s downtown to Board of Education offices to demand the school system provide them with food. Now Mayor Rahm is taking away their schools. 1949: Untelevised birth of Gil Scott-Heron. Apr. 2, 1980: Pres. Jimmy Carter signs the “Windfall Profits [...]
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Special “Free Tibet” Edition March 16, 2008: In Sichuan province, rioters and police clash in response to March 15 riots in Lhasa which left 18 civilians dead. In Ngawa county, traditionally Tibetan, monks stage protest, kill a policeman and set fire to several police vans. In response, 30 protesters are shot dead. Four hundred protesters [...]
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Mar. 1, 1847: Michigan becomes first state to abolish death penalty. 1875: Civil Rights Bill enacted by US Congress gives blacks the rights to equal treatment in public places and transport. Yeah, right. 1907: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) strike Portland, Oregon sawmills. 1954: First H-bomb test, Bikini Atoll, South Pacific. Over 7,000 square [...]
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32 Forgotten Heroes Feb. 16, 1833: Anastasio Aquino, indigenous rebellion leader, passes revolutionary laws in El Salvador. Feb. 17, 1944: Italy: Anarchist, freedom fighter Pietro Bruzzi captured and shot by the fascists. Feb. 18, 1847: Birth of Jean Baguet. French anarchist, sentenced in absentia to five years prison. 1887: Birth of Juan Peiro Belis, Barcelona. [...]
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Feb. 2, 1779: Anthony Benezet, French-born abolitionist and educator, who formed the first anti-slavery society in North America, refuses to pay revolutionary war taxes. 1905: Birth of Ayn Rand, “ojectivist” libertarian writer. Self-styled defender of the individual against the state and collectivism, she enthusiastically cooperated with HUAC and other McCarthyist government persecutions. Now the hero [...]
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Special Slave Rebellion Issue Jan. 1, 1804: Haitian slaves, led by Jean Jacques Dessalines, declare independence. Haiti becomes first free black nation-state in the world; US refuses to recognize Haiti for the next 70 or so years. 1832: First meeting of New England Anti-Slavery Society. 1834: “On the first of January, 1834, I left Mr. [...]
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Special Labor Hero Edition: Lum Williams Item: November 22, 1919: Lum Williams and two other union members are shot dead for cross-racial labor organizing, Bogalusa, Louisiana. Story:In 1917 workers at the Great Southern Lumber Company mill in Bogalusa called for help in forming a union, to protect themselves from unsafe working conditions and low pay. [...]
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