December 8

December 8 is the 8^th day in December.

Events

65 BCE — Roman lyric poet Horace lives, Venusia. [1]

1542 — Mary Queen of Scots, lives. Queen consort of France (1559—60). Her unwise marital and political actions provoked rebellion among the Scottish nobles, forcing her to flee to England, where she was beheaded, on 8 February 1587, as a Roman Catholic threat to the English throne.

1810 — Elihu Burritt lives.

1828 — United States of America: Laureate of the Confederacy, Henry Timrod, lives, Charleston, South Carolina.

1828 — Joseph Dietzgen, socialist, lives, near Cologne, Germany.

1832 — Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson lives. Norwegian writer, editor, and theatre director, known with Henrik Ibsen, Alexander Kielland and Jonas Lie as one of the “four great ones” of 19th century Norwegian literature. Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1903. [2]

1859 — Lifelong opium‐eater, romantic writer Thomas De Quincey dies, Lasswade, near Edinburgh, 74. Author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. [3] [4] [5] [6]

1861 — Aristide Maillol, with a penchant for washerwomen and other sturdy female types, lives. French Art Nouveau sculptor, 1861-1944. [7] [8]

1863 — Chile: over 2,000 are killed when the Church of Campania, in Santiago, burned.

1864 — Pope Pius IX issues the Syllabus Errorum, condemning Liberalism, Socialism and Rationalism.

1881 — Austria: A lamplighter brushes the scenery on the stage of Viennaʼs Ring Theater, starting a fire and stampede that kills 850.

1886 — United States of America: American Federation of Labor is founded.

1886 — Radical Mexican muralist Diego Rivera lives, Guanajuato. Fridaʼs man and Trotskyʼs host. [9]

1889 — Hervey Allen, author of Anthony Adverse, a rambling work set in Europe, Africa, and the Americas during the Napoleonic era, lives, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [10]

1894 — James Thurber, American humorist (Is Sex Necessary?) lives, Columbus, Ohio. Humorist and cartoonist known for his dyspeptic wit. “Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.” “It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.” [11] [12]

1896 — Germany: John (Johann) Neve (1844 — 1896) dies in Moabit Prison, Berlin. Active in the anarchist and workersʼ movements in Denmark, Belgium, England, and Germany. [13]

1913 — American author Delmore Schwartz lives.

1915 — United States of America: Emma Goldman lectures December 8-21 in St. Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Akron, Cleveland, and Youngstown. Goldman remarks that the Akron newspaper reports on her birth control lectures were among the most intelligent she had ever seen. Later in the month Goldman returns to New York ill and exhausted; seeks better accommodations at the Theresa Hotel in New York, as the “Mother Earth” office has no bath. Hotel management refuses to grant her residence. Attorney Harry Weinberger protests on Goldmanʼs behalf.

1919 — United States of America: Jailed at Ellis Island on the 5th, “Made Anarchists” Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman appear in federal court before Judge Julius M. Mayer, who declares that as aliens, they have no constitutional rights. They remain in detention at Ellis Island.

1925 — “The Cocoanuts,” starring the Marx Brothers, opens on Broadway. [14]

1927 — England: British Premier presented with 128,770 signatures of persons refusing war service.

1932 — Gertrude Jekyll dies.

1937 — France: Emma Goldman is in Paris December 8-17 for the International Workingmenʼs Association (IWMA) Congress at Vazquezʼs request: French comrades, knowing she is publicly sympathetic to the CNT‐FAIʼs policies, try to prevent Goldman from addressing the Congress because she is not an official delegate. Spanish and Swedish delegates prevail to have her speak, and she defends the CNT-FAIʼs actions and the difficult decisions it has made against criticism from comrades outside Spain. During the month Emma Goldman continues her campaign against the imprisonment of anti‐Stalinist leftists and anarchists in Spain, writing an article on the subject for Spain and the World and trying to enlist the assistance of sympathetic members of Parliament in England. [15]

1939 — France: Jean Grave dies.

1940 — England: 400 German planes bomb London.

1941 — United States of America: The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, called the “Day of Infamy,” a US declaration of war against Japan is passed by Congress, and the US formally enters World War II. Representative Jeanette Rankin casts the only vote in Congress against American entry into World War II.

1943 — Jim Morrison lives.

1943 — American poet James Tate lives.

1949 — Novelist Mary Gordon (Final Payments) lives, Long Island, New York.

1950 — Italy: 42nd national Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation held (8th — 10th), Ancône.

1963 — United States of America: Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members attack the home of a black voter‐registration worker in Dawson, Georgia with small arms fire and at least one dynamite bomb.

1963 — United States of America: Three fuel tanks explode when a jetliner is struck by lightning, crashing near Elkton, Maryland. The only known case of a lightning‐caused crash.

1969 — United States of America: Los Angeles police raid local Black Panther Party offices.

1969 — Canada: Testifying at his trial for possession of hashish and heroin in the Toronto Supreme Court, Jimi Hendrix claims that he has smoked pot four times and hashish five times, taken LSD five times and sniffed cocaine twice and that he had now “outgrown” drugs. After eight hours of deliberations, the jury finds him not guilty.

1970 — England: Big demonstrations against the Tory Governmentʼs Industrial Relations Bill. In the wee hours of December 9 the Department of Employment and Productivity in St James Square, London, is bombed. The police had searched the building and no sooner left it than it went off. Action claimed by the anarchist Angry Brigade.

1970 — Gianfranco Sanguinetti declares his solidarity with the November 11 tendency.

1979 — United States of America: The Oneida Nation files suit in an effort to regain control of the three million acres illegally taken by New York state.

1980 — United States of America: John Lennon permanently loses his voice; killed by a fan. The former Beatle is shot and killed outside his apartment building in New York City by Mark David Chapman, a former psychiatric patient.

1983 — Slim Pickins, western actor, dies at 64 after brain surgery. Cracked his skull open, but it was slim pickins. [16]

1987 — Protester Hatem Abu Sisseh, 16, killed by Israeli soldiers, igniting the Intifadah for self‐rule. In the seven years to follow 1,306 Palestinians are slain by Israelis (Americaʼs attack dogs in the Middle East), 192 Israelis are killed by Palestinians.

1987 — President Reagan and Soviet Premier Gorbachev met in Washington, D.C. and sign an agreement calling for the dismantling of all 1,752 U.S. and 859 Soviet missiles with a 300-3,400 mile range.

1988 — West Germany: Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II rams into a Remscheid suburb on a training flight. The pilot and five people on the ground are killed, and a fire is ignited, destroying two dozen homes.

1990 — United States of America: PeaceWorks Park vigilists present a sunset candlelight memorial at Gas Works on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. This evening, they co‐sponsor a panel entitled “What kind of Movement are we trying to build?” Panelists include Saba Mahmood of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, and the anarchist Paul Zilsel of the International Jewish Peace Union, among others. [17]

1995 — Japan: Accidental leakage at a fast breeder nuclear reactor in Monju, calls into question the future of Japanʼs extensive high‐tech nuclear energy program.

2001 — Fair Trade Coffee Day of Action. The Sleepless Goat Cafe and Workersʼ Cooperative. [18]

2006 — I Canʼt Dance, I Donʼt Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution: title of the performance comes from the words of anarchist Emma Goldman. In this visual performance of dance, theatre and music, at De Appel Contemporary ArtTheatre in Amsterdam.

2006 — United States of America: Society of the Spectacle (a multimedia digital remix) exhibits (8 — 12th).

2007 — United States of America: Protest against Huntington Life Sciences in New York City.

External link

• Daily Bleed - Anarchist Calendar