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September 1
September 1 is the 1st day in September. It is a global DON'T BUY GA$$ DAY and a Knowledge Day in Russia.
Events
69 -- Traditional date of the destruction of Jerusalem.
1661 -- First yacht race — England's King Charles vs. his brother James.
1666 -- Great London Fire begins in Pudding Lane. 80% of London is destroyed.
1729 -- Richard Steele dies in Carmarthen, Wales. Founder, with Joseph Addison, of The Tatler & The Spectator.
1789 -- Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, lives, County Tipperary. Author of such racy & successful novels as Confessions of a Femme de Chambre.
1807 -- US: Aaron Burr acquitted of charges of plotting to set up an empire.
1836 -- US: First European woman to cross the continent arrives at Fort Walla Walla (Washington State).
1858 -- US: Cavalry, infantry, & artillery defeat Kamiakan's Yakama forces near Spokane River, ending three-year Yakama War.
1858 -- First transatlantic cable, completed just 26 days ago, fails. Phone service, as we all know, never recovers. [1]
1864 -- Ireland: Irish patriot, homosexual, Roger Casement lives, Sandycove, near Dublin. A patriot to the Irish, a traitor to the English, & a footnote in the history of homosexuality & of "the war to end all wars". [2] [3]
1873 -- Switzerland: Congress at Saint-Imier (September 1 to 6), founding of the anti-authoritarian international AIT. Among those present are José GarcÃa Viñas, Rafael Farga Pellicer, Carlos Alerini, José Marquet, and Paul Brousse.
1875 -- Edgar Rice Burroughs lives, Chicago. The creator of Tarzan bemoans: "I am one of those fellows who...always gets to the fire after it is out."
Before Tarzan, Burroughs led a full life of failure, flunking entrance exams for West Point & trying to be a clerk, cowboy, railroad cop, gold miner & shop owner.
Most of his works have been adapted to radio, comic strips & movies. During World War II Burroughs served at the age of 66 as a war correspondent in the South Pacific.
While criticized as repetitious & clumsy, Burroughs' stories share the colorful imagination & superb pacing as in the works of H.G. Wells & H. Rider Haggard.
Further reading: Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs by H.H. Heins (1964); Edgar Rice Burroughs by Irwin Porges (1975); Edgar Rice Burroughs by Erling B. Holtsmark (1986)
1880 -- US: Oneida Community dissolves after 32 years. Founded in upstate New York in 1834, as a communistic utopian community in which work & life are to be shared. Friendly cooperation with surrounding Indian tribes was actively sought & achieved.
1887 -- Author Blaise Cendrars lives. [4]
1893 -- Yasuo Kuniyoshi, American painter (1893-1953), lives. Works by Yasuo Kuniyoshi are found in six online exhibits, links from Artcyclopedia: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/kuniyoshi_yasuo.html
1894 -- US: Scofflaws? Residents of Sandstone, Minnesota scoff at a warning of a huge forest fire approaching, refuse to board an evacuation train. Twenty minutes later, the inferno swept through the town, razing it & killing 47.
1903 -- US: 30,000 working women from 26 trades march in Chicago Labor Day parade.
1911 -- Mexico: A botched attempt is made to arrest Zapata at Chinameca: The Zapata Revolt begins; Zapata flees to Puebla; on the 27th he issues an anti-government manifesto; widespread executions by Huerta’s forces in Morelos, then they go after Zapata on the 26th.
1912 -- Samuel Coleridge-Taylor dies, Croyden, England. English-born composer of "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" & the most important black composer of his day. Toured the U.S. three times, where he played with Will Marion Cook, Clarence Cameron White, & collaborated with Paul Laurence Dunbar in setting several of his poems to music.
1912 -- Mexico: Juan Francisco Moncaleano is deported to the Canary Islands because of his militancy at a meeting & his article published in the anarchist periodical "Luz". [Source: Casa Obrero Mundial] http://www.antorcha.net/biblioteca_virtual/historia/com/casaobreromundial.html
1912 -- US: Eugene Debs’s campaign stop, Everett, Washington.
1917 -- US: The People's Council in Minneapolis convenes; although elected by various anarchist groups to serve as a delegate, Emma Goldman refuses, objecting to its implicit prowar stance. Also this month, her journal Mother Earth is denied second-class mailing privileges by Post Office authorities.
1917 -- Germany: The first issue of the brick-red, brick-shaped anarchist journal Der Ziegelbrenner (The Brickburner — as in the profession of making bricks) is published by Ret Marut (aka the novelist B. Traven):
1920 -- Italy: Between the 1st & 4th of September metal workers occupy factories throughout the Italian peninsula....
With the mass factory occupations in September 1920 a defining moment is reached. Things have gone so far that turning back is not a real option. As the anarchist Errico Malatesta predicted:
If we do not carry on to the end, we will pay with tears of blood for the fear we now instill in the bourgeoisie.
1920 -- Azerbaijan: The Communist International stages 'Congress of the Peoples of the East' in Baku to support the revolution in Central Asia. Besides Zinoviev, Karl Radek, Bela Kun & John Reed attended the conference at Baku. In April the Soviet Red Army occupied Azerbaijan. http://www.iisg.nl/today/en/01-09.php
1921 -- US: The Battle of Blair Mountain starts more or less today; Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Harding sends in Federal troops to bust the strike; Coal company thugs drop bombs on the miners from planes on the 2nd of September. It takes the combined efforts of the US Army & the coal company thugs to quell the labor uprising.
1923 -- Japan: Earthquake strikes Tokyo & Yokohama, kills 106,000.
1923 -- US: George W. Linn climbs into a rickety Ford outside his father's print shop in Columbus, OH to make the 50-mile trek north to the late president Harding's hometown of Marion. By his side is a box of envelopes that he has printed on "In Memorium" (sp) of Harding & affixed a 2c stamp of the president. The resulting postmarked envelopes become the first First Day Covers. (Linn will go on to establish his own line of printed cachets which will be very popular in the 30's & 40's.)
"Because they are made by collectors, for collectors, FDCs may never have the random rarity of the earliest & greatest gems in the hobby. But, for precisely that reason, U.S. FDCs offer an eloquent & unrivaled insight into the images & icons, the people, places & events, that we value & celebrate."
— Fred Baumann, Stamp Collector Magazine, August 2000
1925 -- Rosa Guy lives, Trinidad. Wrote The Friends, Ruby, & Edith Jackson.
1927 -- Canada: Memorial meeting for Sacco & Vanzetti (in Toronto?). Speakers include Emma Goldman, who has spent the summer trying to research & write a new lectures for her fall series despite the impending executions, & had addressed a meeting on the case in Toronto on August 18, a few days before their execution on August 23.
1932 -- US: James J. Walker resigns as Mayor of New York amid widespread charges of graft & corruption in his administration.
1933 -- Songster Conway Twitty lives.
1934 -- US: Strike begins in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, part of a national movement to obtain a minimum wage for textile workers. Last to the 23rd; Over 420,000 workers ultimately go on strike, & three workers are killed.
http://www.providence.edu/polisci/students/labor/labor_timeline_1806-present.htm
1935 -- Henry Miller, 43, responding to a laudatory letter from Lawrence Durrell, 23, asks, "I am curious to know if you are not a writer yourself."
Miller was first published in the US by Bern Porter who published his anti-war tract, "Murder the Murderers." He was also an admirer of the anarchist novelist & poet Kenneth Patchen, & wrote Patchen: Man of Anger & Light
1938 -- Italy: Council of Ministers revokes the citizenship of Jews granted after 1 January 1919 & requires Jews to move from certain areas. Tomorrow children are excluded from registering in schools & teachers excluded from the Academies & the Institutes of sciences, letters & arts. [Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1939 -- Germany invades Poland, starts World War II.
". . . it is an abuse of language to say that our poor soldiers, slaughtered at the front, died a "heroic death". That is sentimentality.
"Of course the soldiers who died in the war are worthy of our deepest sympathy. Many of them did great things & suffered greatly, & in the end they paid with their lives. But that does not make them "heroes". The common soldier, at whom an officer bellows as he would a dog, is not suddenly transformed into a hero by the bullet that kills him. To suppose that there can be millions of "heroes" is in itself an absurdity.
"The obedient well-behaved citizen who does his/her duty is not a "hero". Only an individual who has fashioned his/her "self-will", their noble, natural inner law, into their destiny can be a hero."
— Herman Hesse. If The War Goes On. 1919
1947 -- Germany: 3,000 demonstrate for No More War, Berlin.
1956 -- Elvis Presley shares his success with his family by purchasing his mother a pink Cadillac. http://www.caddydaddy.com/songs.htm
1957 -- Singer Gloria Estefan lives, Havana, Cuba. http://coloquio.com/famosos/estefan.html
1965 -- Dominican Republic: A provisional president installed, following the "Act of Reconciliation." It has lasted 132 days, this war of wood & knife & carbines against American mortars & machine guns.
The city smells of powder & sweepings & dead.
They have not accepted treason nor consolation & thus are crushed. They fought at night, every night, all the night, ferocious battles house-to-house, hand-to-hand, inch-to-inch, until from the bottom of the sea they raised the sun.
& then they hid until the following night.
& after many such nights of horror & glory, the invading American troops install again a puppet who knows well the song & dance of US business.
http://www.ralphmag.org/dominican.html http://hrw.org/worldreport/Americas-05.htm http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43/051.html
1968 -- US: Beloved & Respected comrade Leader Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey kicks off his presidential campaign at New York City's Labor Day parade.
[Source: WholeWorld is Watching]
1971 -- US: Baseball's Danny Murtaugh, manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, hands in his lineup card to the umpire: it contains the names of nine black baseball players — the first all African American starting lineup in major league baseball.
1972 -- Bobby Fischer (US) defeats Boris Spassky (USSR) for world chess title.
"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
— Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position http://www.chessusa.com/
1972 -- US: Life magazine publishes "Bored On the Job: Industry Contends with Apathy & Anger on the Assembly Line".
While the position of the unions is usually ignored, since 1970 there has appeared a veritable deluge of articles & books on the impossibility to ignore rebellion against arbitrary work roles.
From the covers of a few national magazines: Barbara Garson's "The Hell With Work," Harper's, June, 1972; & "Who Wants to Work?" in the March 26, 1973 Newsweek.
Many other articles reveal the disaffection is not confined to industrial workers & applies as much to the labor unions as to the workplace.
"Absenteeism, wildcat strikes, turnover, & industrial sabotage [have] become an increasingly significant part of the cost of doing business."
See John Zerzan's Organized Labor versus "The Revolt Against Work", http://geocities.com/cordobakaf/zerzan.html
1977 -- Billy Idol's former band, Generation X, release their debut single, "Your Generation." Elton John reviews it for a British newspaper calling it "really dreadful garbage. The Ramones do this sort of thing so much better."
1979 -- Pioneer 11 makes first fly-by of Saturn, discovers new moon ... with a familiar ring to it.
1983 -- USSR shoots down Korean Air flight 007 over Sea of Okhtsk, killing 267 civilians. Evidence released years later suggests the U.S. was using the civilian flight for intelligence purposes.
A Soviet fighter shoots down the airliner when it strays into Soviet airspace. The dead include right-wing congressman Larry McDonald. George Schultz calls Tip O'Neill to tell him about the incident. "What does the President think about this?" asks the Speaker of the House.
"We'll tell him when he wakes up," says Schultz.
1985 -- US: To avert Senate passage of South African sanctions, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Acting Wide Awake Reagan announces more restrained sanctions (11 western nations have already imposed sanctions).
1986 -- Charles Liteky & George Mizo begin Fast For Life against US support of Nicaraguan contras, Washington D.C.
1987 -- US: During a nonviolent protest at Concord Naval Weapons Station, a Navy munitions train runs over blockader S. Brian Willson. Willson loses both legs but remains an active & articulate leader in the anti-military movement.
Protesting American arms shipments to the contras by blocking a military train, San Francisco activist S. Brian Willson loses both legs below the knees when the train fails to stop.
He is later sued by civilian members of the train crew for the "humiliation, embarrassment & emotional distress" the incident caused them.
1989 -- US: No Wise Cracks?: Bush administration decides to purchase some crack cocaine so Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Big President George Bush can hold the illegal drug in his hands during a national address.
On the first attempt, the drug dealer didn't show up. On the second try, an undercover drug agent's body microphone didn't work. Today, trying for the third time, Big Shrub's team scores the crack, but the operator videotaping the deal misses the action as a homeless person assaults him.
Bush's son, Little Shrub, a drug user & 1999 presidential candidate, refuses to talk of his cocaine use — or about all the people doing long prison-time in Texass (where he is state Governor) for the same crime.
http://www.austinlizards.com/songs/teenage_immigrant_mothers.mp3
1989 -- Ireland: A judge in Dublin decides not to convict U2 bassist Adam Clayton of marijuana possession, even though he had admitted to the crime. http://hempfest.org/
1996 -- Germany: 16 activists in Stuttgart arrested at EUROCOM, the U.S. Armed Forces command HQ for Europe, Africa, & the Middle East (& central NATO command), in a protest of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe.
1997 -- Englnad: Kurdish & British activists blockade an arms trade exhibition outside London. 89 arrested.
1999 -- US: Real Turkeys? Turkey Plant Devastated By Fire, Flies the Coop. Consequently, 235 union workers are now unemployed.
2000 -- US: Twin Oaks Community hosts its annual Communities Conference. Twin Oaks is an intentional community of around 80 people living on 456 acres of farm & forest land in rural Virginia, begun in 1967. http://www.twinoaks.org/
2006 -- Canada: Edmonton Anarchist Bookfair, September 1-3
