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March 30
March 30 is the 30th day in March.
Events[edit]
1282 — Sicily: Sicilian Vespers Massacre: Sicilians launch a successful revolt against the French occupation with a riot at a Palermo church, killing 2000 on the first day.
1327 — England: Chartering of the Most Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.
1536 — Strangulation of Ibrahim, Grand Vizier of Turkey.
1746 — Spanish painter Francisco Goya lives. [1]
1763 — After dining with Lord Eglinton, James Boswell observes in his London Journal: "We drank tea. We talked on human happiness. I said I wondered if any man ever passed a whole day pleasantly." [2]
1820 — English writer Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty, lives, Norwich.
1844 — Poet Paul Verlaine (Bonheur; Elegies) lives, Metz, France. [3]
1849 — The first issue of the weekly periodical "Household Words" appears, edited by Charles Dickens; it includes the first installment of a novel, Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell. [4]
1853 — Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh lives, Groot Zundert, Brabant, Netherlands. Van Gogh painted furiously and "The Starry Night" vibrates with rockets of burning yellow while planets gyrate like cartwheels. The hills quake and heave, yet the cosmic gold fireworks that swirl against the blue sky are somehow restful.
1853 — Patent granted to Hyman Lipman for a pencil with an eraser!
1855 — United States of America: Bands of proslavery "Ruffians" from Missouri cross the Kansas border to intimidate "free-soil" voters, and to cast illegal ballots themselves. The result: the election of legislators that strongly supported slavery in the territory.
1855 — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, writes "My Lost Youth."
1857 — In Podhajce, Galicia, Austria (now Pidhaytsi, Ukraine), Gabriela Zapolska, lives. She first pursues an acting career in Paris and being unsuccessful, turns to writing novels and plays.
1867 — United States of America: Alaska purchased from Russia for $7,200,000.
1869 — Lithuania: Anarchist writer/activist and feminist Emma Goldman lives, Kaunas.
1870 — United States of America: Black men win the right to vote. Poll taxes and ridiculous literacy tests to subvert the 15th Amendment of the US Constitution soon follow — enacted by the same great patriots who wave flags, gush about a free democratic society and the holy Constitution.
1880 — Around the corner from 7 Eccles Street, Sean O'Casey lives, in the working-class ghettos of Dublin that he would later make famous. Irish playwright renowned for realistic dramas of the Dublin slums in war and revolution, in which tragedy and comedy are juxtaposed.
1883 — France: Sur le chemin de la préfecture Louise Michel est arrêtée et conduite au dépôt. [Source: Michel Chronologie]
1886 — Granddaughter of Charles Darwin, Frances Cornford, lives, Cambridge, England, about which many of her short poems are penned. Her first book of poems was published in 1910. "Scientific American" Gives Up On Darwin [5]
1900 — Nicolas Faucier lives, in Orleans. French anarchist, trade unionist and pacifist.
1915 — Spain: Francisco Sabaté (El Quico), anarchist guérilla extraordinaire, lives, in Barcelona. [6]
1915 — United States of America: Red Emma Goldman invited by the students of the Union Theological Seminary in New York to speak on "The Message of Anarchism," but the administration cancels the engagement.
1919 — India: Closure of shops in protest against Rowlatt Bills begins, New Delhi.
1925 — Anthroposophist Rudolph Steiner dies, Dornach, Switzerland.
1928 — Carl Solomon lives, Bronx, New York State.
1930 — United States of America: The New-Kanawha Power Company breaks ground on the Hawks Nest Tunnel and Dam, part of the New River power project, with an estimated 800 men employed. Over the next five years, at least 476 workers, mostly migrant blacks from the South, die from silicosis. Some of the dead are buried in a mass grave to hide the actual number of casualties. Fifty years later, one study places the death toll as high as 764, making it the worst industrial disaster in US history. [See Martin Cherniack, Hawks Nest Incident: Americaʼs Worst Industrial Disaster, and Tim McKinney, Elkem Metals: Ninety Years of Progress in the Kanawha Valley.] [7]
1932 — Amelia Earhart is first woman to make solo crossing of the Atlantic.
1934 — United States of America: Native Rights activist Janet McCloud lives, Tulalip reservation in Washington state. Descended from the Chief Seattle family. The Tulalip comes from fishing people and their legends are linked to salmon. Salmon to the Tulalip are like corn to the Iroquois, or buffalo to the Sioux. She became a political activist for threatened Native Fishing Rights. [8]
1936 — Italy: Le polizie dello stato tedesco e di quello italiano concordano una strategia dei repressione di movimenti di opposizione ai loro regimi. [Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1945 — Ezra Pound is turned over to the American Army by Italian partisans. After being imprisoned for several weeks in Genoa, he is transferred to solitary confinement in an outdoor wire cage near Pisa. Meanwhile the US government is rehabbing Naziʼs (especially police and spies) all over Europe and helping others escape to South America and the US with new identities. "Go swallow a bottle of Coke and let it fizz out your ears." — William Carlos Williams, to fellow poet Ezra Pound
1945 — Eric Clapton, guitarist/vocalist with Cream, Derek and the Dominoes, Bluesbreakers, Blind Faith and the Yardbirds, lives. [9]
1953 — Einstein announces revised unified field theory. [10]
1961 — United States of America: Former Judge Joseph Peel, Jr., convicted in Fort Pierce, Florida of masterminding the murder of another judge, who allegedly threatened to expose Peelʼs involvement in a liquor and lottery protection racket.
1965 — First Owsley acid.
1967 — Australia: Aboriginals occupy part of Wave Hill Station, Northern Territory. Gurindji cattle workers began a nine-year strike on 1966 August 23 for wage improvements which developed into a successful claim for return of traditional Gurindji lands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_title#1966_.E2.80.93_Wave_Hill_Walk-Off [11]
1968 — Italy: Independently conducted Fiat strike of all 100,000 workers leads to new forms of autonomous struggles nationwide in '68-'69.
1970 — United States of America: After years of struggle and a nationwide boycott, the United Farm Workers sign the first table-grape contract with two of Californiaʼs largest grape growers. But the victory will prove to be only one battle in a long war. By 1974, the union is threatened not only by growers but by more powerful unions. The mob-controlled International Brotherhood of Teamsters will muscle its way into the fields and sign sweetheart contracts with growers who havenʼt signed with United Farm Workers. The combined wealth and political power of the Teamsters and the growers nearly destroys the UFW.
1972 — Ireland: Great Britain imposes direct rule on Northern Ireland.
1978 — Philippines: 10,000 demonstrate against Marcos.
1979 — Airey Neave has the INLA take a look under the bonnet of his car and see what they can fix for him. [Source: Calendar Riots]
1980 — Henry Poulaille dies. Henry Poulaille, anarchiste French author, anarchist, director of éditions Grasset, where he published proletarian authors, and the journal "Le nouvel âge littéraire," promoting worker literature and gained him the enmity of the Communist Party. See the Anarchist Encyclopedia page, [12]
1981 — United States of America: Acting President Ronald Reagan shot by John Hinckley Jr. Near miss. Moral is, think about what you're going to do today and try to get it right first time — you may only have one shot at it. [13]
1981 — United States of America: Secretary of State Alexander Haig declares he has assumed (illegally) Acting control of the US. The Bit Part suits him, but he needs a new scriptwriter.
1982 — West Germany: 80,000 demonstrate against nuclear power, Wackersdorf.
1987 — Vincent van Goghʼs "Sunflowers" sells for 39.9 million, almost four times the previous record paid for a single work of art. [14]
1989 — Gladys Knight performs solo for the first time since grammar school without The Pips during a gig at Ballyʼs in Las Vegas. Pips down.
1991 — New York Times editorial today claims: "Americaʼs victory in the Persian Gulf war… provided special vindication for the US Army, which brilliantly exploited its firepower and mobility and in the process erased memories of its grievous difficulties in Vietnam." Black poet June Jordan, like many other Americans, thinks otherwise: "I suggest to you itʼs a hit the same way that crack is, and it doesnʼt last long." See Howard Zinn, People's History of the US, p588
1996 — United States of America: First annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Festival held. [15]
1996 — United States of America: 500 march in Sunnyside, Washington in a United Farm Workers-sponsored commemoration of Cesar Chavez. [16]
2001 — United States of America: Seattle raconteur and Blue Mooner Ross Lavroff (1936 — 2001), "voice" of the historic 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking among other assignments as an interpreter, dies. Ukraine-born interpreter who served numerous US government and international agencies. A long-time houseboat resident on Lake Union and a regular at the Blue Moon Tavern, where he delighted in entertaining Soviet guests and annoying the KGB. [17]
2002 — United States of America: 7th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, Frisco, California. Admission is free. Includes The Emma Goldman Papers Project with project literature and Emmarabilia.
