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December 15
December 15 is the 15th day in December.
Events[edit]
921 — Rabbi Saadiah Gaon cautions the Jews of Egypt to reject the religious calendar adopted by Rabbi Aaron b. Meir of Palestine. Probably a spat over Day Light Savings. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1585 — The first notable poet in Scotland to write deliberately in English, William Drummond, lives, Edinburgh. He is also be the first to use the canzone, an Italian metrical form, in English verse.
1616 — Cervantesʼs “Persiles y Sigismunda†is accepted for publication. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1634 — Thomas Kingo, clergyman and poet whose works are the high point of Danish Baroque poetry, lives, Slangerup.
1683 — Biographer/author Izaak Walton (The Compleat Angler), 90, dies at Winchester. “His landscapes are enameled like the meadows about the feet of Medieval saints. His innkeepers are both gentle and jovial. His barmaids are as wholesome as the ale they serve.†— Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited [1]
1711 — Trumpeter John Shaw invents the tuning fork. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1766 — Oliver Goldsmithʼs “Poems for Young Ladies†is published. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1787 — United States of America: First street person arrested for illegal goofing off.
1791 — United States of America: Bill of Rights ratified as first 10 amendments to Constitution. Numerous modern polls have shown that, with questions couched in law and order terms, most Americans oppose the Bill of Rights.
1796 — “Mad Anthony†Wayne dies.
1814 — United States of America: Convention of New England States recommends protection of citizens from possible draft, Hartford, Connecticut. (or 1815?)
1815 — Jane Austenʼs Emma is published, one day before her 40th birthday. In it she notes: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.â€
1854 — First streetâ€cleaning machine used.
1855 — George Meredith novel The Shaving of Shagpat is published. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1866 — Italy: Luigi Molinari lives. Teacher, militant libertarian.
1869 — United States of America: Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, and the greatest American ruler in history, leaves San Francisco to seek his yearly tribute from the legislature and lobbyists. He inspects the new capitol during the gala ball celebrating the buildings’ inauguration. [2] [3]
1870 — France: Achille Daude lives (1870 — 1963). Trade unionist, anarchist especially involved in coâ€operatives. [4]
1876 — United States of America: There is a rain of snakes, Memphis, Tennesee. Skin, man. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1880 — First Henrik Ibsen play in England is produced, “Pillars of Societyâ€, London. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1882 — Australia: First womenʼs trade union in Australia, of tailoresses, is formed. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1888 — American playwright Maxwell Anderson lives. Noted for his efforts to make verse tragedy a popular form.
1890 — United States of America: Sioux Chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) murdered, South Dakota, as he stepped from his cabin to submit to arrest as the alleged “power†behind the outlawed Ghost Dance Movement — a Messianic religion which preached that all Indians would soon be free. Visionary war chief of the Ogalala Sioux; eliminated Custer at Battle of the Little Big Horn. [5] [6]
1896 — Paul Citroen lives, Berlin.
1896 — Henrik Ibsen play “John Gabriel Borkman†is published. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1904 — Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, lives, in this NY borough.
1908 — Donald Grant Mitchell, American farmer and writer (Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life), dies in Norwich, Connecticut.
1910 — Musical producer John Hammond, Jr. lives, New York City.
1913 — United States of America: Poet Muriel Rukeyser lives, New York City.
1913 — United States of America: Emma Goldman hosts a social gathering for British syndicalist Tom Mann. Mann was Secretary of the British ILP, and a leader of the famous ‘dockers tanner’ strike and later a founding member of the British Communist Party (in 1920). [7] [8]
1916 — United States of America: Dr. Ben Reitman is again arrested for distributing illegal birth control literature at one of Emma Goldmanʼs lectures in Rochester, NY. See Mecca Reitman Carpenter, No Regrets: Dr. Benjamin Reitman and the Remarkable Women Who Loved Him. A Biographical Memoir. (Lexington: Southside Press, 1996). [9]
1919 — Edna St. Vincent Millay play “Aria Da Capo†premiers, NY. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1921 — Russia: Mollie Steimer, Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lipman, and Hyman Lachowsky arrive in Moscow after being deported from the US as victims of the Red Scare in America. They find that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman have already departed for the West, disillusioned by the turn the revolution has taken. On 1918 August 23 Mollie Steimer, along with other members of her group (one of whom, Jacob Schwartz, was beaten to death in his cell by the cops) was arrested for distributing leaflets against the American invasion of Russia. The resulting Abrams case, as it became known, is a landmark in the repression of civil liberties, cited in all standard histories as one of the most flagrant violations of constitutional rights during the Red Scare hysteria.
1923 — United States of America: President Calvin Coolidge releases 31 World War I conscientious objectors still imprisoned five years after the end of the war.
1925 — United States of America: First road with a depressed trough, opened to traffic, Texas. Probably so all the blood from the state prison executions will have a place to flow.
1930 — Albert Einstein urges militant pacifism and an international war resistance fund.
1932 — Edna OʼBrien lives, Twamgraney, County Clare, Ireland. Novelist, shortâ€story writer, screenwriter noted for portrayals of women and sexual candor. Like James Joyce and Frank OʼConnor, Ireland has banned her books. [10]
1933 — Canada: Emma Goldman arrives in Toronto from France, where she applies for a visa at the U.S. consulate for a proposed threeâ€month lecture tour. Roger Baldwin works with the U.S. immigration authorities, attempting to secure a visa for Emma Goldman, while the committee organized by Mabel Carver Crouch issues a formal invitation to Emma to visit the US. Commissioner of Immigration. Daniel W. MacCormack advises Baldwin that it is Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins who has the legal right to admit her. Emma Goldman is offered, but declines, a large sum to appear in vaudeville theaters in the United States.
1936 — George Orwell dispatches manuscript of The Road to Wigan Pier to publishers and leaves for the revolution in Spain. [11] [12] [13]
1936 — Lillian Hellman play “Days to Come†premiers, NY (7 performances). [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1939 — “Gone With the Wind†movie makes its world premiere, Atlanta, Ga. Actress Hattie McDaniel cannot attend because the theater is for whites only. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1941 — United States of America: After a brief visit to Hawaii, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox tells the press,
1941 — United States of America: The AFL labor union pledges there will be no strikes in defenseâ€related industry plants for the duration of the war.
1943 — Black American jazz singer Fats Waller (Hot Chocolate), dies at 38, in Kansas City, Missouri. [14] [15]
1944 — Bandleader, Major Glenn Miller, lost over English Channel.
1944 — Brazil: Ecological martyr Chico Mendes lives, Pote Seco. Murdered in 1988 by landowners because of his efforts to stop the destruction of Amazon rainforests.
1948 — United States of America: Alger Hiss, former State Department official, indicted for perjury, after denying he passed secret documents to Whittaker Chambers for a communist spy ring. His second trial ended in conviction and five years in prison, on 21 January 1950.
1953 — United States of America: Veteran James Kutcher, who lost both his legs in WWII, informed his disability is being cut off due to his membership in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). This is in America, Land of Freedom, by the way… first they come for your legs, then your food…
1954 — Kirk Douglas/James Mason movie “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea†released. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1957 — Sammy Davis Jr. initiates a Westinghouse syndicated radio talk show with a “roundâ€table†discussion of rock and roll. His guests are Columbia Records executive Mitch Miller and MGM Records president Arnold Maxim. When Davis and Miller blast rock and roll as “the comic books of music,†Maxim takes an opposing viewpoint and says, “I donʼt see any end to rock and roll in the near future, as long as Buddy Holly is alive.â€
1960 — United States of America: Government announces it backs rightâ€wing group in Laos; it seizes power tomorrow.
1965 — United States of America: Labors AFLâ€CIO pledges “unstinting support†for the US war effort in Vietnam. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1965 — United States of America: Communist Party Honcho Gus Hall delivers an address later published as “Communism, Mankindʼs Bright Horizonâ€, Columbia University. Yup. Bright and receding. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1966 — United States of America: Animator and fascist sympathizer Walt Disney dies.
1966 — United States of America: 67 arrested in blockade of Manhattan army induction center, New York City.
1968 — Grace Slick, performing with the Jefferson Airplane on the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,†appears in blackface and raises a blackâ€leather glove in the black power salute at the conclusion of “Crown of Creation.†The incident is one of several which leads to the TV showʼs cancellation the following season.
1969 — Italy: Anarchist railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli dies, “accidentally†defenestrated from the 4th floor of police station in Milan where he had been held following the attack against the Bank of Agriculture of December 12.
1969 — United States of America: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) reaffirms its Biblically ordained exclusion of blacks from the ministry.
1970 — Poland: Youths and workers torch the Gdansk Communist Party HQ and quietly watch it burn.
1970 — United States of America: President Nixon signs the Taos Land Bill. 48,000 acres of land are returned to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, the first U.S. legislation ever to return a sizable amount of federal land to the Native Americans from whom it was stolen.
1970 — United States of America: The Nez Perce tribe of Idaho and Confederated Tribe of Colville, Washington, win $1.1 million for loss of tribal lands in 19th century.
1970 — Outer Space: Soviet Venera 7 is the first human spacecraft to land on another planet; Venus. [16]
1970 — Poland: ZOMO riot police shoot miners striking at “Manifest Lipcowy†mine in Jastrzebie, Upper Silesia, 4 wounded. [Source: Piero]
1972 — Italy: Government recognizes the right to conscientious objection to military service.
1973 — United States of America: Itʼs a Psychiatric Associationʼs prerogative to change its mind, and the American Psychiatric Association did so on this date when it declared that homosexuality was not a mental illness.
1976 — United States of America: Argo Merchant goes aground at Nantucket, Massachusetts, spills 7,700,000 gallons of oil.
1980 — France: As part of an ongoing campaign of terror, a group of about 30 rightwing students attack students on Nanterre campus. But those attacked fight back this time, and a few hundred even chase the rightwingers off campus and catch them attempting to escape by subway, returning blow for blow.
1980 — Allen Ginsberg completes his poem “Capitol Airâ€, Frankfurt and NY. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1980 — Japan: The semiâ€monthly “The Japanese Libertarian†reaches its 131st issue. [17]
1982 — United Nations General Assembly calls for nuclear weapons freeze.
1985 — Beginning of the contemporary section in Fannie Flagg novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1986 — United States of America: Central Intelligence Agency director William Casey suffers a cerebral seizure, at work, before he can answer questions about Iranâ€Contra Affair. [18]
1989 — El Salvador: 70,000 Salvadorans demonstrate for democracy — hundreds are “disappearedâ€. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1990 — England: Broughton Tin Can Band, Northants: saucepanâ€banging for no good reason just after midnight. A council ban of 1929 is defied by a huge faceâ€blackened crowd, whose din can be heard for miles. Those charged with breach of the peace are cheered on their way to court, and their fines paid by a supper dance on the evening of the sentence. The next year, those bound over merely hold cans — which are struck by others, and the ban is lifted. (1990? I may have year wrong — ed.) [Source: Calendar Riots]
1992 — Poland: 300,000 coal miners strike. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1993 — Nobel author Gabriel Garcia Marquez calls for legalization of drugs. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1994 — Italy: Raid on the house where anarchist weekly “Canenero†is edited and printed, with a warrant seeking “documentation concerning the committing of armed robberies.†Part of a long, dragged out legal farce to suppress the Italian libertarian movement. http://www.freewebs.com/frameup/chronology.html [19]
1996 — Italy: Circolo Anarchico Ponte della Ghisolfa de Milan (CAPDG) commemorates 27° anniversaire de la mort de Giuseppe Pinelli (murdered by the police). [20]
1999 — United States of America: Seattle songster Jim Page plays the Freight and Salvage. [21] [22]
2000 — Canada: Vancouver becomes the first Canadian and nonâ€American city to host a full on Santa event. The tradition started in San Francisco in 1995 and has since spread the US. [23] [24]
2000 — United States of America: Congress mandates Internet censorship software for libraries. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
2000 — United States of America: Rev. Edward Pinkney announced from Berrien County Jail that he will be on a hunger strike until he is free.
