December 20

December 20 is the 20^th day in December.

Events

1579 — John Fletcher baptized in Rye, Sussex. Before the age of 12, he is admitted to Beneʼt (now Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge. English dramatist who collaborated with Francis Beaumont and others on comedies and tragedies.

1629 — Dutch Baroque artist Pieter de Hooch lives — among Merry Company and empty courtyards. [1] [2]

1669 — United States of America: First jury trial in Delaware: Marcus Jacobson condemned for insurrection and sentenced to flogging, branding and slavery. [3]

1764 — Horace Walpole writes a friend: “The works of [Samuel] Richardson … are pictures of high life as conceived by a bookseller, and romances as they would be spiritualized by a Methodist preacher.” “The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel.”

1786 — Hannah Ocuish is at 12 years and 9 months the youngest person legally executed in America[4]

1792 — France: Primarily in order to de‐Christianise the country, revolutionary Franceʼs National Convention authorises the Committee of Public Instruction to investigate reform of the existing 7 day, 52 week, 12 month calendar — see September 22. [Source: Calendar Riots]

1803 — United States of America: Louisiana Territory transferred from France to the U.S., without consultation with any of the native peoples living there.

1812 — Sacagawea Shoshone, interpreter for Lewis and Clark, dies. [5] [6]

1820 — United States of America: Maryland (or Missouri) imposes a $1 per year bachelorʼs tax on unmarried men aged 21 to 50.

1835 — United States of America: Cherokee Indians forced to cede their Georgia lands and cross the Mississippi River when gold was discovered on their territory. The evacuation was carried out, during the winter of 1838-9, by federal troops commanded by General Winfield Scott. Along the way, 10% of the tribe was wiped out by disease, fatigue, and exposure. The march hence known as the “Trail of Tears.” [7]

1838 — Edwin Abbott, author of the classic mathematical science fiction fantasy Flatland, lives. [8]

1842 — William Miller dies.

1860 — United States of America: In response to the victory of Republican Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election six weeks before, South Carolina becomes the first Southern state to secede from the United States.

1868 — United States of America: Harvey Samuel Firestone, manufacturer, lives.

1871 — In the Chicago Tribune, Mark Twain compares himself to George Washington: “I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I wonʼt.” “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.”

1875 — Novelist and short story writer Theodore Francis Powys (Black Bryony), brother of Llewellyn and John Cowper Powys, lives, Shirley, Derbyshire.

1878 — United States of America: Ezra Heywood, anarchist, imprisoned for “obscenity” back in June for his advocacy of “free love”, is pardoned by US President Hayes after popular agitation for his release.

1891 — Strongman Louis Cyr withstands the pull of four horses.

1891 — The French adventurer and anarchist Zo dʼAxa (1864 — 1930) exposed all kinds of misbehaviour in his magazine lʼEndehors. In his opinion, hypocrisy ranked high in the spectrum of vice and he spotted this quality among the rich people in the first place. In lʼEndehors today he notes that as soon as a calamity occurs, the rich organize a party for themselves. His anger was triggered by a benefit performance in the Comédie Française for the victims of a mine disaster yielding 35.000 French Francs. A despicable, vile and condescending act, according to Zo dʼAxa, and a hypocritical showing of benevolence. [9] [10]

1902 — Miura Seiichi lives.

1905 — Russia: Start of 11-day general strike against Tsarist regime.

1912 — United States of America: Emma Goldman lectures on Leonid Andreyevʼs King Hunger in Brownsville.

1914 — United States of America: Emma Goldman delivers lecture on the war to an audience of 1,800 people at an event organized by her niece Miriam Cominsky in Rochester, NY. During December Emma has been on a whirlwind tour. Days later, Emma speaks on “The Birth Strike.”

1917 — Australia: Referendum defeats proposal to conscript single men.

1917 — United States of America: Emma Goldman meets Helen Keller during this month at a benefit ball for “The Masses”. Most of the people working for “The Masses,” such as Dorothy Day, John Reed, Floyd Dell, Art Young, Boardman Robinson and H. J. Glintenkamp and many others, believed WWI was caused by the imperialist competitive system and that the US should remain neutral. When the US declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, The Masses came under government pressure to change its policy. Refusing to do so, the journal lost its mailing privileges. Then it was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, forcing the paper to cease publication. [11] [12] [13] [14]

1920 — Väinö Linna lives. Novelist, essayist, one of the great writers of post‐war Finland. His major works (The Unknown Soldier, Here Beneath the North Star) are in nearly every home in Finland. [15]

1920 — Italy: Si acutizza la lotta tra fascisti e socialisti (e talvolta anche tra fascisti e repubblicani) con pestaggi e uccisioni. Questi gruppi sono in concorrenza per strappare voti dallo stesso elettorato, proletario e piccolo borghese. Le forze dello stato operano prevalentemente a favore dei fascisti. [Source: Crimini e Misfatti]

1923 — Paris - Danish explorers have informed the world that they have found in the Arctic a warlike tribe of Eskimos bearing the proud name of Avrilisarmints, all of whom, men women and children, are poets. The Eskimo Poets sing poems of their own composition, and they have exceedingly long memories, in that respect resembling the ancient bards of Greece and Scandinavia. If the Poetry Society does not fit out an expedition to mingle with the Avrilisarmint tribe, exchange ideas, candy, blubber, tallow and calorific conceptions, it will miss such an opportunity as may never occur again.

1925 — After finishing up a lecture series, Emma Goldman leaves for France where she spends the holidays in Nice at the home of author Frank and Nellie Harris.

1943 — Death of German feminist and pacifist Anita Augsburg. [16]

1945 — Austria: Karl Renner, leader of Austrian Socialist Party, elected President.

1946 — Andrei Codrescu lives, Sibiu, Romania. Emigrated to the US in 1966; poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter; columnist on National Public Radio; editor of Exquisite Corpse, a literary journal on line at www.corpse.org; MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. [17]

1951 — Atomic energy first used to generate electricity in U.S.

1954 — American novelist Sandra Cisneros lives. Cisneros, the author of The House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, is a poet and fiction writer. Self‐described as a “terrorist,” “anarchist,” and a “Chicana feminist,” she has said, “I’m trying to write stories that haven’t been told. I feel like a cartographer. I’m determined to fill a literary void.”

1957 — Birth of British working class songster and activist Billy Bragg, the Barking Bard. [18] [19]

1958 — England: 36 arrested for re‐entering Thor rocket base to prevent construction, North Pickenham, Norfolk.

1961 — One of the most successful American playwrights of the 20th century, Moss Hart, dies in Palm Springs, California. Many of his successful plays were written with George S. Kaufman.

1962 — Dominican Republic: Juan Bosch elected President in first free elections in 38 years. Overthrown by the champ of democracy in yet another US‐backed coup in September 1963. See April 28.

1966 — Otis Redding Show opens at the Fillmore Auditorium, Frisco, California. [20]

1968 — United States of America: Officials say more than 300 Americans are believed missing in Vietnam; at least 50 are believed to be prisoners of Vietcong.

1968 — American social activist writer John Steinbeck dies, New York City. Wrote Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, script writer for the film, “Zapata!” [21] [22]

1968 — Franz Kafkaʼs friend, Jewish author Max Brod, dies in Tel Aviv (Jaffa). Having ignored Kafkaʼs last will (“burn all the manuscripts”), he handed down the writings of one of the most important German‐speaking writers of the 20th century to posterity. Brod also wrote the first biography of Kafka, which ignored Franz Kafkaʼs involvement in anarchist groups and activities, which he apparently disapproved of. Costanini, Kafka, anarchist “The Revolution evaporates, and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. The chains of tormented mankind are made out of red tape.” As a Jew Kafka was isolated from the German community in Prague, but his friend and biographer Max Brod tried to promote his career as a writer. However, Kafka published only a few stories and instructed that upon his death his manuscripts be destroyed. Brod betrayed him and got them published. “A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.” [23] [24] [25] [26]

1976 — United States of America: Mayor Richard Daley, Lord and Ruler of Chicago for 20 years, dies. Daley was an intellectual giant, rivalling Judge Julius Hoffman, and proof that any idiot can be a successful politician or crook.

1986 — United States of America: Three black men attacked by bat‐wielding young whites in Howard Beach neighborhood, Queens, New York City; one of them, Michael Griffith (23) is hit by a car and dies during his attempt to escape.

1987 — Philippine inter‐island ferry and tanker collide, Tablas Strait, south of Manila. Over 1,600 people missing, presumed dead. Only 26 are rescued alive. The ferryʼs manifest listed 1,583 passengers and 60 crew members, but there was speculation that over 3,000 were aboard.

1988 — Animal rights terrorists fire‐bomb Harrodʼs department store, London, after finding poodle fur collars on some coats. [27]

1989 — US invades Panama, “to protect US interests”. Thousands of Panamanians die but and former Central Intelligence Agency asset Manuel Noriega is jailed in the US. Drug running and corruption continue, now under a US investor‐friendly government. US corporate media bleats. [28] [29] [30]

1990 — United States of America: Kansas reservist Dr. Yolanda Huet‐Vaughn refuses orders for the Gulf War. She is later sentenced to prison, and the Kansas medical board strips Huet-Vaughn of her license to practice, because of her conscientious objection.

1991 — United States of America: Central Intelligence Agency classifies task force report on greater openness as “secret”.

1994 — Chechnya: Hundreds of thousands link hands in a human chain to protest Russian invasion.

2006 — United States of America: Issuing yet another “signing statement,” Beloved and Respected Comrade Screw Your Liberties George Bush quietly asserts a Presidential right to open private mail, contrary to existing law and the very legislation he has signed today.

External link

• Daily Bleed - Anarchist Calendar