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November 23
November 23 is the 23rd day in November.
Events
1170 BCE — First recorded strike for better working conditions and pay takes place in Egypt, by laborers working on pyramid who are tired of belaboring the point.
1760 — French revolutionary Francois-Noel Babeuf lives, St. Quentin, France.
1828 — United States of America: William Silvus, American labor activist, lives (1828 — 1869).
1831 — France: The Silk Workers' Revolt in Lyon continues. Workers occupy the Town Hall and an attempt at an insurrectionary government is made. For lack of a clear politics, or by a trick of the authorities, the latter regain control of the city on December 2. [1] [2] [3]
1852 — United States of America: Just past midnight, a sharp jolt causes Lake Merced to drop 30' (9m). [4]
1859 — United States of America: Western outlaw, gunslinger, Billy the Kid (Bonney) lives. [5] [6]
1874 — Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy is published.
1883 — Radical Marxist muralist Jose Orozco lives, Zapatlan, Jalisco, Mexico. [7]
1884 — Playwright Guy Bolton (The Dark Angel; Lady Be Good) lives, Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.
1887 — Screen monster Boris Karloff lives.
1888 — Film comedian Harpo Marx lives.
1889 — United States of America: First jukebox installed, Frisco, California.
1903 — U.S. Army troops dispatched to Cripple Creek, Colorado to put down a rebellion by striking coal miners. Paid by mine owners & the State, General Sherman Bell & his men arrive & throw 600 union workers into a military bullpen, holding them for weeks without charges.
1906 — Sait Faik Abasiyanik, major modern Turkish writer/short-story writer, lives, Adapazari, Ottoman Empire.
1906 — United States of America: Mother Earth Masquerade Ball at Webster Hall in New York City disrupted by police; owner is forced to close the hall.
1907 — A Tribute to Mother Jones, by Eugene V. Debs, published in the "Appeal to Reason"; later reprinted in Debs: His Life, Writing & Speeches (Chicago: Charles Kerr Cooperative Publishing, 1910). [8] Julius Wyland's Kansas-based socialist newspaper, An Appeal to Reason, by 1902 was the fourth largest weekly in the US, with a circulation of 150,000, peaking in 1913 with 750,000 subscribers. [9] [10] [11]
1909 — United States of America: Wright Brothers forms million dollar corp to manufacture airplanes called, Wright On Brothers, Inc.
1913 — Jean Cocteau reviews Marcel Proust's Swann's Way: "It resembles nothing that I know of, and reminds me of everything I admire."
1917 — United States of America: Supreme Court strikes down Louisville, Kentucky ordinance requiring blacks & whites to live in separate residential areas.
1919 — United States of America: The anti-war activists and anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman begin a short lecture tour in Detroit; today's event is attended by 1,500 people & Emma says 2,000 people had to be turned away for lack of space. Large Jewish audience attends a meeting on November 25.
1920 — Paul Celan lives, Romania.
1926 — English poet Christopher Logue lives, in Portsmouth, Hampshire.
1928 — Albert Laisant (1873 — 1928), anarchist, dies.
1931 — USSR: In the face of sabotage and 'irresponsibility' and only two years after its introduction, the Soviet authorities are forced to abandon Nepreryvka, the five-day week — see August 26 December 1. [Source: 'Calendar Riots']
1935 — Ethel Leginska (1886 — 1970) becomes the first woman to write an opera — & conduct it. Her original work titled, "Gale" opens at the Chicago City Opera Company. She broke down gender barriers in concert halls around the world (she was the first woman to conduct opera in America & the first woman to conduct at the Hollywood Bowl), a composer of originality & power & also a formidable teacher who inspired in her Los Angeles studio a new generation of pianists. Leginska was tragically cut down in her prime, killed by a lightning bolt.
1936 — Pacifist/anti fascist writer Carl Von Ossietzky who has been sent to a German concentration camp, is awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize. As a peace activist, journalist, editor-in-chief & contributor to "Die Weltbühne", Ossietzky was sentenced to prison in the early 30s for "defaming the German Army". He was imprisoned in a concentration camp after the Nazis came to power as a political prisoner & "a traitor". In 1936, still a concentration camp inmate, Ossietzky received the Nobel Peace Prize. Released as an invalid under "protective custody", he died in Berlin in 1938. In Norway, the press had debated his nomination intensely: socialist, communist & liberal newspapers were in favour of an award to Ossietzky, conservative newspapers were skeptical or negative because of the anti-fascist "statement" it sent & rightwingers tried to smear him as a communist. [12] [13]
1939 — poet bill bissett lives, Halifax, Canada, "the same day as Gerald Lampert, P.K. Page & Billy the Kid." He really did run away from home in his early teens to join a circus, which led him from his home town, Halifax, to Vancouver. In the 1960s, bissett assumed an almost godlike pre-eminence in the counter-culture movement in Canada & the UK. [14] [15]
1942 — In a letter to Felix Frankfurter, Alexander Woolcott imparts H.L. Mencken's "Happy Formula" for answering controversial letters, which is final, courteous, and can be employed without reading the missive to which it replies. He merely says: "Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right."
1942 — High Seas: Poon Lim set adrift for 133 days after his boat is torpedoed.
1945 — United States of America: Wartime food rationing ends.
1946 — French Navy opens fire on Haiphong, Vietnam, kills 6,000.
1955 — Milly Witkop Rocker (1877 — 1955) dies. Anarchist, labor organizer, lifelong companion of Rudolf Rocker. See Milly Witkop-Rocker, by Rudolf Rocker (Berkeley Heights: Oriole Press, 1956.)
1958 — United States of America: Ronald & Nancy Reagan appear together in the "GE Theatre" production of "A Turkey for President". [16]
1964 — United States of America:. Supreme Court refuses to strike the phrase "under God," instituted in 1954, from the Pledge of Allegiance.
1967 — Rolling Stone quotes Frisco's veteran disco jockey Tom Donahue: "Top Forty radio, as we know it today & have known it for the last ten years, is dead, & its rotting corpse is stinking up the airwaves."
1968 — Canada: RCMP arrests 114 during anti-Vietnam War protests on campus of Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia.
1970 — Lithuanian radio operator seeking asylum leaps from Russian trawler onto the deck of the Coast Guard cutter Vigilant. Commander Ralph Eustis allowed Soviet sailors to board his vessel, tie up the would-be defector, and drag him back.
1975 — Friendly Neighborhood Narco Agent - Jef Jaisun on the Dr. Demento Show live. [17]
1976 — Police arrest Jerry Lee Lewis outside the gates of Graceland after he shows up for the second time that night & makes a scene, shouting, waving a pistol and demanding to see Elvis Presley.
1980 — Italy: Earthquake in Campania and Basilicata. The reconstruction will see the Italian state engaged in pillage & waste (il cui ammontare si aggirerà intorno ai 50mila miliardi). [Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1981 — United States of America: Acting Prez Ronnie Reagan authorizes CIA to form paramilitary squads of Nicaraguan exiles to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. (This is the same clown who, on September 28, 1990, with a straight face, claims "We have never interfered in the internal government of a country". & of course, from 1855 to 1981 there have been at least 40 US military interventions in Mexico, Central America & the Caribbean alone.)
1987 — Max Sartin, 97, dies, Salt Lake City, Utah.
1990 — After a successful, yet tragic personal life, popular British writer Roald Dahl dies in Oxford.
1990 — Bo Diaz catcher, crushed to death by a satellite dish, at 37.
2007 — United States of America: The Animal Defense League of Long Island joins Caring Activists Against Fur and loads of other activists in New York City for this years Fur Free Friday event.
