Reclaim Our History July 31-August 10

July 31, 1977: One person is killed in 60,000 strong demonstration against Super-Phenix nuclear reactor, Malville, France. 1991: START I nuclear arms reduction treaty signed by George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Aug. 1, 1790: Spaniards under Quimper first sight Neah Bay, Washington. Neighborhood declines. 1946: Atomic Energy Commission established. 1976: First occupation of Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear reactor site; 18 arrested. 1982: Blockade of nuclear missile site begins, Grossenstringen, West Germany.

Aug. 2, 1931: Albert Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work. 1986: Fire in nuclear power plant kills two workers, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Aug. 3, 1977: One man killed, seven injured when a bomb explodes at New York City’s Mobil Oil building. The FALN, a Puerto Rican independence movement, claimed responsibility.

Aug. 4, 1987: After the assassination of its anti-nuclear President and strong lobbying by the United States, the Pacific island nation of Belau (a former US protectorate) reverses six previous votes and agrees to eliminate a clause in its constitution prohibiting nuclear weapons.

Aug. 6, 1945: US drops atomic bomb on civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan. An estimated 140,000 die from the immediate effects of the bombing; tens of thousands more in subsequent decades from radiation-induced illnesses. 1977: First occupation of Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, on Columbia River near Rainier, Oregon. 1985: South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty signed.

Aug. 7, 1990: President (and former CIA head) George H.W. Bush orders deployment of US troops to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region, for what would become the Gulf War.

Aug. 8, 1997: Eight arrested at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, during protest of the scheduled launch of the nuclear-payload space probe Cassini.

Aug. 9, 1945: Three days after destroying the city of Hiroshima, US drops second, superfluous atomic bomb on civilian population of Nagasaki, Japan. An estimated 70,000 die from the immediate effects of the bombing. 1971: British reintroduce internment without trial to Northern Ireland. Responding to increased activity by the Irish Republican Army, emergency powers of preventive detention without trial invoked. By December, more than 1,500 people will be in prison. Many IRA inmates, known as “blanket men,” refuse clothing and smear their cell walls with excrement after prison authorities’ deny their political status. During a demonstration in Derry against the arrests, British troops shoot 13 civilians. 1987: Hundreds arrested in all-day blockade of Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, Golden, Colorado.

Aug. 10, 1970: In a measure of just how far to the right both parties in Congress have lurched over the past 40 years, US House of Representatives passes the Equal Rights Amendment by a vote of 350 to 15. 1981: Pres. Reagan approves work order for the neutron bomb, which kills people but leaves private property intact, thus avoiding costly litigation.