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May 3
Events[edit]
425 — Pope Gelasius asserts his spiritual power is superior to the temporal power of the Emperor.
1324 — John of Nottingham and Robert Marshall test their witchcraft murder plot on an image of Richard de Sowe.
1382 — Belgium: Rebel weavers of Ghent, led by Philip van Artevelde, take Bruges. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1469 — Niccoló Machiavelli lives (1469 — 1527).
1488 — First printed edition of Pentateuch with commentary of Ibn Ezra, Napoli. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1679 — England: Archbishop Sharp pulled from his coach and murdered, near St. Andrews. [Source: Calendar Riots]
1689 — William Broome, British scholar/poet, lives, England. Best known as collaborator with Alexander Pope and Elijah Fenton in a project to translate Homerʼs Odyssey.
1715 — Edmund Halley observes total eclipse phenomenon "Bailyʼs Beads."
1808 — French execute Spanish rebels — see Goyaʼs "Executions of the 3rd of May." [1] [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1810 — Lord Byron swims the Hellespont, emulating the legendary Greek Leander. Byron did the four miles in an hour and ten minutes. He celebrates the feat in Don Juan: "A better swimmer you could scarce see ever / He could, perhaps, have pass'd the Hellespont, / As once (a feat on which ourselves we prided) / Leander, Mr. Ekenhead, and I did."
1843 — Edward Dowden lives, Cork, Ireland.
1848 — France: At Vienne, Dauphin, 20 witnesses saw an army in the sky. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1849 — Germany: Popular rebellion breaks out in Dresden and the militant Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin emerges as an "heroic" leader. During the Dresden insurrection, Bakunin proposes that the insurgents take paintings from the museums and put them on the barricades at the entrance to the city to inhibit the attacking troops. He is arrested and thrown into prison. In July he is transferred to Konigstein fortress. He is eventually condemned to death. [Source: Calendar Riots]
1865 — Charles Bon is murdered (character in Faulknerʼs Absalom, Absalom). [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1886 — United States of America: Police kill four and wound at least 200 as Chicagoʼs finest attack McCormick Reaper Works strikers.
1886 — United States of America: Amid the struggle for the eight-hour day, a thousand Milwaukee brewery workers — on strike for a wage increase — march to the Falk Brewery and convince workers to quit. The strikers are members of the radical industrial union the Knights of Labor. Employees at the huge Reliance Works turn water hoses on the marchers…. The Bay View Tragedy occurs two days from now.
1886 — France: Robert Collino lives (1886 — 1975), Marseilles.
1887 — Canada: Two explosions at Mine #1 in Nanaimo, BC kill 97 Caucasian and 52 Chinese miners and one rescue worker; the mayor of the town is saved by a mule. [2] [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1888 — Juhani Siljo (1888 — 1918) lives.
1888 — Australia: A mass meeting in Sydney protests Chinese immigration. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1891 — Mikhail Bulgakov lives, Kiev, Ukraine.
1892 — Hugo Gellert lives, (1892 — 1985) Budapest, Hungary.
1893 — Italy: Difende a Viterbo l’anarchico individualista Paolo Schicchi che viene condannato a 11 anni di galera. / During this month [I donʼt have specific date — ed.] Pietro Gori defends individualist Paul Schicchi (he is condemned to 11 years in prison). [Source: Chronology by Franco Bertolucci] [3]
1897 — United States of America: Emma Goldman speaks in Philadelphia, early May; her lecture on "The Women in the Present and Future" is "loudly applauded." Emma is credited with the ability to relate anarchism to the working people of Philadelphia, thus helping to boost the movement there. Returning to New York, she undergoes an operation on her foot, requiring several months of recuperation.
1898 — United States of America: President Benjamin Harrison says, "We Americans have no commission from God to police the world." [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1898 — Italy: Bread riots begin in Milano — put down May 8 with heavy loss of life. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1899 — Italy: Per evitare una discussione parlamentare sulla vicenda cinese Luigi Pelloux presenta le dimissioni. Verrà sostituito da Luigi Pelloux (ancora lui) a cui il re ha conferito il nuovo incarico. Magia della politica. [Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1901 — United States of America: Fire destroys 1,700 buildings in Jacksonville, Florida.
1912 — May Sarton, lives, Wondelgem, Belgium, author. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1913 — American author William Inge lives. Playwright (Picnic, Bus Stop).
1914 — United States of America: Emma Goldman addresses large meeting organized by the Anti-Militarist League of Denver to protest the use of federal troops in the Colorado mining strike and the war with Mexico. Emma attributes the Denver Industrial Workers of the World free-speech victory in part to the efforts of Dr. Ben Reitman, who helped secure the release of 27 Wobblies from the county jail.
1915 — Lt.-Col. John McCrae writes his poem "In Flanders Fields" in 20 minutes while overlooking the grave of a fellow officer at Ypres. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1916 — Pierre Emmanuel lives, French poet (Tombeau d'Orph‚e, Sodome). [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1916 — John Collier lives, London, England. Sci-fi and mystery author (His Monkey Wife). [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1916 — Ireland: Ireland: Patrick Henry Pearse, Irish revolutionary, poet, educator, age 36, is shot by a firing squad in Dublin. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1916 — Vietnam: Uprising is suppressed by the French. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1917 — French 21st Div. soldiers refuse orders to attack after repeated suicide charges during the glorious War to End All Wars.
1917 — United States of America: This month Emma Goldman lectures in New York, Springfield, Mass., and Philadelphia. Topics include "Billy Sunday (Charlatan and Vulgarian)," "The State and its Powerful Opponents: Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Stirner, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Thoreau, and Others," "Woman's Inhumanity to Man," and Russian literature.
1919 — United States of America: Radical songster Pete Seeger lives, Patterson, New York.
1920 — Germany: Nazis officially change 'German Worker's Party' to 'National Socialist German Workers Party', recuperating both "socialist" and "worker" into an anti-workerist corporate ideology.
1920 — United States of America: The anarchist typographer / printer Andrea Salsedo plunges to his death from the 14th floor of the "Department of Justice" where he was being questioned and tortured by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, apparently tossed by his captors.
1926 — England: The British general strike is called off by the Trades Union Congress after nine days, though the coal miners remain out through the summer.
1928 — Argentina: In Buenos Aires, to protest against the Italian dictatorship, the anarchist Severino Di Giovanni bombs the Italian consulate (which was being used to eliminate Italian antifascists in exile). Nine killed, 34 wounded. [4]
1928 — Anton Wildgans, Austrian poet, dramatist, dies at 51. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1932 — United States of America: May. Some World War I veterans in Portland, Oregon decide that since they are living on the brink of starvation, now is as good a time as any to ask Congress to pay them the bonuses that they were promised for helping "make the world safe for democracy" earlier than the afore-promised year of 1945. They begin a trek across the country, walking, riding freight cars and surviving on the good will of others along the way. [Vanessa Collection]
1932 — Anomalous events man Charles Fort dies, The Bronx, New York City. [5]
1933 — "Godfather of Soul" James Brown lives! in Barnwell, South Carolina. Singer, jail bird, soul brother #1 ('Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud' (1968). A massive influence on most forms of black music — soul, hip-hop, funk, RandB and disco. Brown claims he was born in 1933 in Macon, Georgia. [6] [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1934 — Famous Funnies appear, first comic book published in US.
1934 — United States of America: IWW strikes at Draper Manufacturing Co. begins, Cleveland, Ohio. [7] [8]
1937 — Spain: Republican government attacks workers; beginning of open resistance to both the Republican and Communist authorities by radical workers, anarchists, and others opposing the regional government takeover of the worker-run telephone company in Barcelona. Fighting spreads to all parts of the city, lasting for four days. Stalinists denounce Trotskyite P.O.U.M. as "Franco's Fifth Column," in preparation for liquidating (assassinations, etc.) independent Spanish leftists and anarchists (similar to Stalinʼs purges in Russia).
1938 — United States of America: The first book review telecast in the US is made, by station W2XBS, NY. Sorry, donʼt know if it was a Danielle Steel title. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1943 — United States of America: War resistor Igal Roodenko declares his refusal to work (in prison?) until the hunger strike of Stanley Murphy and Lou Taylor in Danbury Prison was ended. Four days later it was, and he went back to his duties "until the next time."
1944 — Isaac Katzenelson (or Yitzhak or Itzhak), Hebrew and Yiddish poet, dies in Auschwitz concentration camp. [ [Source: Robert Braunwart]] [9]
1949 — Ken Hom, cookery author and TV presenter, lives. [ [Source: Robert Braunwart]]
1949 — United States of America: Willie Johnson, a black church deacon, is shot to death by 2 cops in Brunswick, Ga., who claim "he was looking at a house suspiciously". [ [Source: Robert Braunwart]]
1953 — First American public reading of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, Harvardʼs Fogg Museum. Thomas gave the one-man performance. [10]
1954 — Australia: Fabian Dattner lives, Victoria. Author, prison reformer. [ [Source: Robert Braunwart]]
1958 — Outside the Boston Arena after a show hosted by Alan Freed, teenagers allegedly attack policemen with stones and bottles. Several injuries occur and the press calls it a "riot." Authorities will later claim stabbings, looting, rapes and narcotics were also involved. Police blame Freedʼs remark during the show, "The police donʼt want you to have any fun here." Freed counters the cops were hostile to both him and audience.
1958 — Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers (1876 — 1958) dies.
1962 — Japan: Express train crashes into commuter and freight train wreckage, killing 163, injuring 400, Tokyo.
1963 — United States of America: In Birmingham, Alabama, paragon of American values, "Bull" Connor, paragon of "law and order", orders fire hoses and dogs turned on children marching out of the 16th St Baptist Church to keep them from marching out of the "Negro section." This after jailing 900+ yesterday. Teach your children well. Next lesson, children, comes on the May 6th.
1965 — United States of America: Drop City commune founded, in New Mexico(?) on Interstate Hwy 125 leading into Colorado.
1965 — Coward-McCann publishes Beatster Jack Kerouacʼs Desolation Angels with an introduction by Seymour Krim. During this spring, before heading off to Paris in June, Kerouac reads Voltaire and Chauteaubriand.
1966 — United States of America: Culture Symposium at SF State College: Ron Davis, director of the SF Mime Troupe, and the poet/anarchist Kenneth Rexroth participate in a symposium on the state of the arts in Frisco at which Rexroth proposes a neighborhood arts movement.
1967 — United States of America: NY Times reports on a "Cosmic Love In."
1968 — The Beach Boys open a 17-date tour of the US in New York. Half of the concert is given over to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who lectures on "spiritual regeneration." The audiences reaction is so negative, over half the tour dates are canceled.
1968 — United States of America: Black students seize the finance building at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), demanding African-oriented curriculum.
1968 — France: First fights of the May Upheaval occurs in the Latin Quarter. Students meeting at the University of Sorbonne to protest repression at Nanterre breaks up, but cops move in and arrest 500. Revolt breaks out all along the route taken by police vans and thousands fight the police energetically. The beginning of upheavals which last throughout the month and into June, with schools, factories and offices occupied and a generalized resistance to authority throughout France and inspires similar revolts all over Europe. … show details The Paris, May 68 student coalition fermented and gained momentum around a series of events: the arrest of student members of the National Vietnam Committee, police brutality, and government and university hierarchical impertinence. Paris May '68 Things came to a violent confrontation between student demonstrators and the police on May 10th ('Night of the Barricades'). By May 13 government discontent spread into the labor force and workers began joining in the protest with a series of strikes and factory occupations. By May 24, barely two weeks after the great demonstration of May 13, approximately ten million workers were on strike in France. Due to many factors, most prominent being the divisions within the French left, de Gaulleʼs 5th Republic government was able to diplomatically end the strikes by negotiating with the PCF (the French Communist Party), and the CGT (Confédération général du travail). The uprising was a failure in the minds of the radical French left (called 'gauchistes') whose goal was the overthrow of the de Gaulle government and establishment of socialism. On a symbolic level, however, May '68 represented a moral victory in demonstrating the far reaching effects of a small but united collective front. [11] [12]
1968 — Paris: As the first barricades go up, the whole Latin Quarter becomes a battleground on a scale unseen in recent European history. By morning some 600 are arrested and hundreds were injured, including 83 policemen.
1968 — France: "Perhaps one tends to forget too much that, from February on, the riots of Nantes showed the real face of the 'Situationists', 1500 students behind red and black flags, the federal courthouse occupied…" —Rivarol
1968 — United States of America: Thelonious Monk and Dr. John the Night Tripper at the Carousel Ballroom in Frisco.
1968 — The US and North Vietnamese delegations agree to begin peace talks in Paris later this month. The formal talks will begin on May 10. [Source: WholeWorld is Watching]
1968 — Dutch pirate radio station VRON becomes Radio Veronica International. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1970 — United States of America: Yale Day: 15,000 in continuing protests of nine Black Panthers awaiting trial in New Haven.
1970 — Italy: Nononstante questo il 3 maggio 1970 il caso per lo stato è chiuso: il procuratore Gaizzi archivia la morte di Pinelli come "Morte accidentale." Nel giugno 1971 nel processo contro Calabresi accusato dal giornale 'Lotta continua' di essere responsabile di omicidio viene riesumata la salma di Pinelli. Sul collo viene riscontrata una ecchimosi di cm 6x3 presumibilmente provocata da un colpo di karaté (metodo usato dalla polizia) sicuramente precedente alla caduta.Vengono fatte prove con un manichino che escludono completamente il suicidio. [13] "
1970 — United States of America: Ohio Gov. Rhodes vows to "use every weapon" against antiwar protesters at Kent State University. Tomorrow he does. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1971 — First NPR broadcast of "All Things Considered."
1971 — United States of America: 7,000 people arrested in attempt to shut down the Pentagon. Last of the 14,000 arrests related to May Day Vietnam War protests (Chronologist Robert Braunwart notes Nixon admin. illegally arrests 12,614 antiwar protesters in three days).
1972 — Canada: Cree and Inuit of northern Quebec file for permanent injunction to halt construction of James Bay Hydroelectric Project. They would fail, but 24 years later would succeed in stopping a second, even larger project.
1974 — France: Spanish banker Balthasar Suarez kidnapped by the "Groups of International Revolutionary Action" (GARI ) in Paris in an action aimed at securing the release of 100 political prisoners in Spain (under the Franco governmentʼs own laws).
1981 — United States of America: 100,000 march on the Pentagon to protest US aid/intervention in El Salvador.
1982 — United States of America: NY Times reports that the military will get 25% of NASAʼs budget.
1983 — Catholic bishops vote 238-9 against production of nuclear weapons. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1984 — Iran, Iraq attack ships in Persian Gulf. Both are well-armed with weapons supplied by the US and other global powers.
1984 — Albano Franchini (1901 — 1984) dies.
1986 — United States of America: The University of Maryland announces that hundreds of boxes of papers and memorabilia donated 12 years ago by Spiro Agnew will remain uninspected for three to five more years. [14]
1986 — Australia: Anarchist Centenary Celebration.
1990 — Guatemala: Luis Miguel Solis Pajarito, leader of the Consejo Nacional de Desplazados de Guatemala (CONDEG; National Council of the Displaced of Guatemala), is disappeared by the government. All but one of his relatives were previously killed or disappeared. [Source: Robert Braunwart] [15]
1990 — Germany: Protesters pour polluted Elbe River water on steps of E. German parliament. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1990 — United States of America: A Busy Day at the government office: J. Edgar Hooverʼs body lies in state in the Capitolʼs rotunda; Patrick Gray is appointed acting head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (-1973; inspires all those "Little Gray Men" in Texass); White House thugs attack Daniel Ellsberg at a peace rally. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1991 — Novelist Jerzy Kosinski paints birds no more, a suicide at 57. Author of Being There. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1995 — United States of America: Ex-CIA/Pres. George Bush resigns from the NRA (National Rifle Association), citing their reference to federal agents as "jackbooted government thugs." [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1995 — Argentina: Navy and air force admit to atrocities during the "Dirty War."
1996 — [[Angel Wallenda], tightrope walker, dies at 28 of cancer, Philadelphia. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1996 — Hermann Kesten, German-US author (The Children of Guernica), dies at 96.
1996 — William Dickey, US poet (Of the Festivity), dies at 65. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1996 — The US is voted off the UN Human Rights Commission. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1996 — Jailed Burmese journalist U Win Tin wins the International Press Freedom Prize. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1997 — Beginning date of Ellen Gilchrist story "In the Land of Dreamy Dreams." [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1997 — Italy: Remo Tartari (1902 — 1997) dies, Ferrara. Mort de et antifasciste, combattant en Espagne, fondateur de la FAI après 1945 et encore actif en 1968. [16]
2000 — England: The Vote Nobody election campaign proves successful today in the Bristol ward of Easton. An Autonomous Zone is declared after 145 people voted for Nobody and just 5 for the council. One staunch anarchist spoiled his ballot paper.
2003 — The Layabouts, urban agriculture benefit, Trumble Theater.
