Still working to recover. Please don't edit quite yet.
December 3
December 3 is the 3rd day in December.
Events[edit]
1315 — Albertino Mussato, poet, is crowned with laurel for “Ecerinis,†Padua. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1587 — England: Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes, from Colombia.
1730 — Colley Cibber appointed poet laureate; target of much venom.
1755 — Portrait artist Gilbert Stuart lives.
1798 — Robert Southey publishes a poem about St. Keyneʼs Well in the “London Morning Post.†[Source: Robert Braunwart]
1805 — France: Fourier publishes his Universal Harmony (or 1803?), announcing the theory of “passional attraction†which will “lead the human race to opulence, to sensual pleasures, to the unity of the globe.†But, hey, who has time? [1]
1805 — United States of America: William Clark reaches Pacific Ocean after floating down the Snake and Columbia Rivers.
1847 — United States of America: Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delaney start “North Star,†first issue of the antiâ€slavery newspaper.
1848 — José GarcÃa Viñas lives (1848 — 1931), Málaga (Andalusia). Militant internationalist, pioneer advocate of anarchism in Spain. [2]
1854 — Australia: Eureka Rebellion suppressed. [3]
1857 — Joseph Conrad lives, Berdichev, Polish Ukraine, then under Russian rule.
1866 — United States of America: Textile strikers win 10-hour work day, Fall River, Massachusetts.
1883 — Composer Anton V. Webern lives; Shot dead 1945 September 15. [4]
1894 — Robert Louis Stevenson, 44, dies suddenly of apoplexy in Apia, Samoa, leaving his Weir of Hermiston unfinished. Superb travel writer, conspiratologist, adventure novelist. Daily Bleed Saint 1998
1897 — William Gropper (1897 — 1977), artist, lives.
1903 — United States of America: Cooper Union mass meeting protests in NY City against antiâ€anarchist proceedings against John Turner, who is still awaiting deportation.
1906 — U.S. Supreme Court jails Samuel Gompers and other workerâ€union organizers for violating an injunction against Buckʼs Stove and Range Co. [5]
1910 — Industrial Workers of the World Brotherhood of Timber Workers Union organized. [6] [7] [8]
1911 — United States of America: Emma Goldman lectures, in New York City, on “Socialism Caught in the Political Trap.†[Source: Traffic in Women published by Times Change Press]
1916 — Australia: Seven Wobblies sentenced to 15 years in prison for their antiâ€war efforts during the “Great†War that Ended All Wars. Others IWWs are sentenced to five and 10 years. In 1917 August Industrial Workers of the World is made illegal and membership rolls made available to employers (blacklisted). Despite widespread government and business repression, the Industrial Workers of the World helps lead the General Strike of 1917. Source: A Brief History of the Industrial Workers of the World outside the US (1905 — 1999) by Morgan Miller
1921 — Antiâ€authoritarian educator A.S. Neill establishes his school, Summerhill, with Lyme Regis, in England. Moves it three years later to Leiston (Suffolk). Proponent of children sharing in running schools, Neill told of this anarchist experiment in numerous books. “We decided, my wife and I, to have a school where we would grant to the pupils the freedom of expression. For that it was necessary for us to give up any discipline, any direction, any suggestion, any preconceived morals, any religious instruction whatsoever.†[9]
1926 — Mystery writer Agatha Christie mysteriously disappears for 11 days. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1926 — Emma Goldmanʼs lectures on Russian drama this month cover Griboyedev, Gogol, and Ostrovsky, though the attendance is disappointing. More successful are Emmaʼs three lectures to the Arbeiter Ring: 600 attend her December 12 lecture in Yiddish on Gorki. In addition, she lectures twice at Hygeia Hall, on modern education on December 3 and on the dictatorships of Bolshevik Russia and Fascist Italy on December 5. Among her visitors are her brother Morris, her sister Lena, and Lenaʼs children, Saxe Commins and Stella Ballantine.
1927 — United States of America: Blind Willie Johnson records “Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground),†a haunting impression of the “lining out†of a hymn and church ʼmoaners’ in prayer. In the coming Depression years, Johnson enjoys a brief vogue on records. This haunting impression of the ‘lining out’ of a hymn and church ʼmoaners’ in prayer is the distillation, filtered through generations of Africanâ€American experience, of a hymn penned in 1792 by English cleric Thomas Haweis as “Gethsemane.†Johnson was the greatest of the ‘guitar evangelists’ who enjoyed a brief vogue on record before the Depression. His work was widely influential and enduring: Roebuck “Pops†Staples still performs Johnsonʼs “Nobodyʼs Fault But Mine.†(For more of Johnsonʼs music, see The Complete Recordings of Blind Willie Johnson, Columbia/Legacy C2K 52835.) — Mark Humphrey, “The Great Depression: American Music in the ‘30s†[10] [11] [12]
1930 — Film maker Jeanâ€Luc Godard lives.
1931 — United States of America: Unemployment in American reaches 13.5 million — almost 1/3 of the American work force. In Los Angeles alone, shelters give asylum to over 200,000 persons. Many choose instead to hit the road — another 200,000 become freight car migrants on the Missouri Pacific Line. Severe drought hits the midwestern and southern plains. As the crops die, the ‘black blizzards†begin. Dust from the overâ€plowed and over-grazed land begins to blow. [Source: Vanessa Collection] [13]
1939 — United States of America: Convicted “trunk murderess†Winnie Ruth Judd escapes from Arizona State Insane Hospital for the second time. Recaptured 12 days later, having trudged barefoot 200 miles across the desert. [14]
1945 — France: Augustin Hamon (1862 — 1945) dies. French sociologist and an anarchist who later became a socialist.
1946 — United States of America: Oakland General Strike begins 7am, inclement weather: 100,000 walk off jobs for six days. Bars were allowed to stay open, but they could serve only beer and had to put their juke boxes out on the sidewalk to play at full volume and no charge. In the months that followed, the populist Oakland Voters League brought together progressive factions in the city to elect four out of five labor candidates to the city council. Three million workers struck in the first half of 1946; workersʼ insurgency went beyond contending unions, reformists and vanguards. About 21% of the workforce, some 6 million workers participated in the tumultuous series of strikes and general strikes between 1945-46…
1947 — Tennessee Williamsʼs A Streetcar Named Desire, opens today at New Yorkʼs Ethel Barrymore Theater and runs for 855 performances. Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden star.
1948 — High Seas: Chinese refugee ship “Kiangya†explodes in East China Sea, killing 1,100.
1948 — United States of America: “Pumpkin Papers†come to light.
1948 — United States of America: First woman army officer not in medical corps swornâ€in.
1950 — Local 893 wins its first COLA raise at Vought, $.03
1953 — During this month, the foundation of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus begins. [Exact day not given — ed.] This movement was Founded in Alba, Piedmont, Italy by Asger Jorn, Giuseppe Pinotâ€Gallizio, and Piero Simondo in September 1955. 1957 July 28 The IMIB fused with the Lettrist International and the London Psychogeographical Association to form the Situationist International. Baj was excluded from this process. Sergio Dangelo and Elena Verrone were also involved in this movement. [15]
1956 — Soviet artist Aleksandr Rodchenko dies, Moscow. [16]
1964 — United States of America: Police arrest 796 to end Berkeley Free Speech Movementʼs (FSM) illegal sitâ€ins, strikes and occupation of Sproul Hall on the University of California-Berkeley Campus. A student strike tomorrow closes the school. United States of America: The Free Speech Movement (FSM) upheavals effectively end. See Gerald Howard, The Sixties (Paragon House, 1991).
1967 — South Africa: First human heart transplant performed, Dr. Christian Barnard. [17]
1967 — SciFi author Fred Pohl speaks on “Morality for the Space Age,†Manhattan. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1969 — United States of America: Protesters destroy files at eight New York draft boards.
1969 — John Lennon is offered role of Jesus Christ in “Jesus Christ Superstar.†[18]
1969 — France: Lucien Haussard (1893 — 1969) dies.
1970 — England: Spanish Embassy in London is machine gunned, following international protests against the trial of the Basque nationalists, the Burgos Six. This is not reported in the media. It is claimed at a later trial that the same gun had been used in the August 1967 attack on the US Embassy and is offered as proof of a “Christie link†[the anarchist Stuart Christie] though he was in a Spanish jail until September 1967 for his plan to assassinate the fascist Franco. Part of large series of guerrilla actions and bombings this year, usually attributed to The Angry Brigade.
1971 — Bangladesh: War breaks out.
1971 — The Montreaux Casino burns to the ground during a show by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The incident is immortalized by Deep Purple in their song “Smoke on the Water.â€
1976 — A 40-foot long inflatable pig being photographed for the cover Pink Floydʼs “Animals†breaks loose from the guide wires and takes off from the Battersea Power Station outside London. It heads east, attaining a height of 18,000 feet before coming down in Kent.
1976 — Jamaica: Seven gunman spray bullets into Bob Marleyʼs house in Kingston, where he and the Wailers are rehearsing. The shots hit Marley, his wife Rita, a friend and Wailer manager Don Taylor. None are severely hurt. The shooters are never caught, the show goes on, and they perform two nights later.
1979 — Eleven Who fans are trampled to death in stampede to get into Cincinnatiʼs Riverfront Coliseum. Results: The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island cancels the Whoʼs upcoming concert there, law suits are filed by families of the dead and festival seating itself is universally blamed for the tragedy. (Except Walter Cronkite, who on tonightʼs “CBS Evening News,†paragon of objectivity and factual reporting, blames it on “a drugâ€crazed mob of kidsâ€).
1980 — United States of America: Yesterday three U.S. Maryknoll nuns and a lay missionary were raped and murdered and buried in a field in El Salvador by USâ€trained troops. The Reagan administration goes into immediate denial and coverup. Alexander Haig suggests the nuns provoked the incident, running a roadblock in Marxist jeeps, and were shot trying to flee. The Federal Bureau of Investigations and Central Intelligence Agency report this is a total fabrication. 18 years later relatives and friends are still trying to get the truth.
1982 — Beginning date of Tom Clancy novel The Hunt for Red October. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1984 — India: Union Carbide pesticide leak in Bhopal, sending a cloud of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas aloft. Up to 10,000 deaths, some 50,000 injuries. Devastating after effects for years to follow. U.S. blocks extradition of Union Carbide officials facing criminal prosecution in India. The Bhopal Disaster: In the early morning of 1984 December 3 a Union Carbide pesticide producing plant leaked a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate onto the densely populated region of Bhopal, central India. Of the 800,000 people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 died immediately, 300,000 were injured and as many as 8,000 have died since.
1989 — George Bush and Mihail Gorbachev end summit in Malta, with a toast of malta liquor.
1990 — United States of America: Marine Jeff Paterson begins court martial after refusing to board a plane bound to Saudi Arabia to fight media war in Gulf.
1993 — Lewis Thomas, physician author (Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahlerʼs Ninth Symphony, 1983) dies in New York. Best known for his collections of essays, meditations and reflections on the larger truths invoked by the study of biology.
1997 — United States of America: Abe Bluestein, a lifelong anarchist, dies, age 88. Fought to embody libertarian principles all his life. Like many anarchists born in the early 20th century, Abe came from a radical, immigrant family. His Russian parents were active in the anarchist group in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and part of the Modern School of Stelton, NJ.
1999 — United States of America: World Trade Organization delegates meet as the core offâ€limits area is reduced from a 50 block area of downtown Seattle to 25 blocks. The “civil emergency†declared on the 1st, and a curfew, remain in effect. Over 600 protesters have now been arrested and most denied access to lawyers or phones as shoppers continue to flee to the malls. Because of lawsuits filed by the ACLU, a judge has ruled protesters must be granted access to lawyers within 8-hours or released. Another lawsuit challenging police civil rights violations in singling out protesters and denying them access to the downtown area result in police banning all shoppers from the area as well. Many businesses have closed, and yesterday the Pike Place Market was closed down. Some small business owners believe the loss of business will put them out of business permanently. However, they have the comfort of knowing that the streets of Seattle are safe for (Global)corporate America and WTO delegates — if not for Seattle citizens. Meanwhile, the Electrohippies WTO Virtual Sitâ€in begins today… [19] [20] [21]
1999 — United States of America: Seattle Police Chief Assistant Ed Joiner says he reviewed all the WTO video and media, and no one was bloodied. [22]
2000 — Gwendolyn Brooks, Pulitzer Prizeâ€winning poet, dies at 83. Her candidly written poetry often delved into poverty, racism and drugs.
2002 — United States of America: An antimissile missile, in a test delayed by weather, scores a hit on a dummy warhead. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
2004 — 150th anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion is celebrated. [23]
2005 — The Netherlands: The 7th Annual Dutch Anarchist Bookfair at De Kargadoor, Oudegracht 36, Utrecht. Many organisations, bookshops and groups from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and England will be present. [24]
