December 17

December 17 is the 17^th day in December.

Events

908 — al‐Mustada is caliph for one day, before being deposed and murdered. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1493 — Paracelsus lives. Swiss physician, chemist, alchemist, and one of the fathers of modern medicine. Paracelsus was the pseudonym of Dr Theophrastus Bombastus Hohenheim, which meant ‘beyond Celsius’, implying that he was a greater physician than the then‐revered Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsius. [1]

1526 — Pope Clemens VII publishes degree Cum ad zero, forms Inquisition. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1531 — Pope Clement VII founds the Inquisition in Lisboa. Frei Diogo da Silva is appointed the first inquisitor‐general of Portugal. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1660 — Andrew Marvell petitions House of Commons to release John Milton from prison. [2]

1737 — Writer John Almon lives.

1790 — The great Aztec stone calendar discovered, Mexico.

1791 — United States of America: New York City creates the first one‐way street.

1807 — John Greenleaf Whittier lives. American author/abolitionist. Many of his poems are sung as church hymns.

1826 — France: A gigantic red cross is reported in the sky over a church in Migne. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1827 — Writer Rose Terry Cook lives.

1830 — Colombia: Latin American liberationist Simón Bolivar dies, Santa Marta. [3]

1843 — Charles Dickensʼs A Christmas Carol is published.

1860 — France: Passport system abolished, considering it “both absurd and vexatious”. [Source: Calendar Riots]

1862 — Urbain Gohier (Urbain Dégoulet) lives, Versailles.

1873 — Ford Madox Ford lives, England. Novelist, international influence in early 20th‐century literature. See Kenneth Rexrothʼs More Classics Revisited. Also editorsʼ introduction to a selection by Rexroth of recent British poetry “Five Earnest British Poets” (n.d.).

1875 — Canada: Violent bread riots in Montreal.

1878 — A meeting is held at L.L. Zamenhofʼs home to celebrate the creation of Esperanto. [4] [5] [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1883 — France: Hoche Meurant lives (1883 — 1950). Anarcho‐syndicalist, antimilitarist.

1885 — Alphonse Barbé lives.

1890 — France: Pierre Lentengre (aka Pierre Lentente) lives, Paris.

1893 — Theatrical director Erwin Piscator lives (1893 — 1966), Ulm, Germany. Famed for ingenious Expressionistic staging techniques, originator of epic theatre style later developed by German playwright Bertolt Brecht. [6]

1898 — Chekhovʼs play The Seagull is revived in Moskva — a success. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1900 — 1st prize of 100,000 francs offered for communications with extraterrestrials. Little Grey Martians from Texass executed excluded because they are considered too easy.

1903 — American author Erskine Caldwell lives, Coweta County, Georgia. Unadorned novels and stories (Tobacco Road, Godʼs Little Acre) about rural poor of the American South mix violence and sex in grotesque tragicomedy — and he is particularly esteemed in France and the former Soviet Union. He struggled with censorship more than any other writer in his time. [7]

1903 — Wright brothers perform the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The crowd cheered, “Wright on!” 65 years later men flew to the moon.

1904 — Paul Cadmus, lives to see the Fleet arrive in port. Gay painter of sailors on liberty and suchlike. His notorious erotic painting The Fleetʼs In! launched his career as a full‐time artist. [8] [9] [10]

1908 — New Zealand writer/teacher Sylvia Ashton‐Warner lives, Stratford, N.Z. Adapts British teaching methods to needs of Maori children, aiming for peace and communication between radically different cultures — which her fiction and nonfiction reflects.

1910 — Jean Maitron lives. French libertarian historian. Wrote numerous works, including Histoire du mouvement anarchiste en France (1880 — 1914). [11] [12]

1910 — France: Rafael Barrett Álvarez de Toledo dies at age 34. Correspondent and journalist who covered the revolution and conditions in Paraguay which got him deported to Uruguay. By 1907 he was more radicalized as he became preoccupied with social issues. In 1908, he declares himself as an anarchist, publishing the article “Mi Anarquismo.”

1911 — United States of America: Emma Goldman presents a farewell lecture, in New York City, before departing for annual lecture tour with Dr. Ben Reitman.

1913 — Ford Madox Ford begins writing The Good Soldier. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1913 — Edgar Rice Burroughs completes his novel Nu of the Neocene. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1914 — The Turks expel the Jews from Tel Aviv and send them to Egypt. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1917 — Ford Madox Hueffer [Ford] writes his poem “One Last Prayer”. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1917 — Russia: The Bolsheviks confiscate all church property in Russia. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1919 — South African author/teacher Ezekiel Mphahlele lives. His autobiography (Down Second Avenue [1959]), a South African classic, combines a young manʼs coming of age with penetrating social criticism of apartheid. [13]

1921 — Gabriela Zapolska, Polish novelist/playwright of the naturalist school, dies in Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine). Wrote cheap, sensationalist novels, full of bitterness toward middle‐class values, morality, and hypocrisy.

1926 — Nigerian poet/scholar S(olomon) Adeboye Babalola lives. Known for his illuminating study of Yoruba ìjalá (a form of oral poetry), folk tale translations, and collecting and preserving the oral traditions of his homeland.

1927 — United States of America: Submarine S-4 collides with Coast Guard destroyer Paulding off Provincetown, Massachusetts. All 40 men aboard the sub die.

1936 — Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy make first appearance.

1936 — USSR: In Moscow, Pravda announces that in Catalonia (Spain), the “cleaning” out of Trotskyites and the anarcho‐syndicalists has already started. Stalinʼs agents will carry out these purges: “As for Catalonia, the purging of Trotskyist and anarcho‐syndicalist elements has begun; this work will be carried out with the same energy with which it was done in the USSR.” [14] [15]

1936 — Spain: The anti‐Stalinist Marxist party POUM is expelled from the Catalan government. [16]

1936 — Spain: Large international meeting organized by the Regional Committee of the C.N.T. Among the many speakers are Pierre Besnard, secretary of the A.I.T; Paul Lapeyre, C.G.T- S.R delegate; Gaston Leval, for the C.N.T. of Catalonia; Lorenzo Justi for the Italian section; etc. [17]

1937 — Spain: Snow storm in Teruel. A veritable blizzard cut communications between headquarters and advancing troops. Planes are grounded and trucks stranded on the icy roads, but the Republican infantry is moving forward, lightly wounded men rising from the snow to rejoin the advancing march. Soldiers in the freed outskirts are embraced and celebrated by the population. (General Franco, after recapturing the city in February 23, orders the killing of the remaining civil population for their support of the Republican soldiers!) [18]

1943 — United States of America: The Chinese Exclusion Repeal Actis approved, setting an annual immigration quota of 105. As a result of our wartime alliance with China, this act was passed by the U.S. Congress to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and subsequent acts, allowing for the first time in 60 years the legal immigration of Chinese into the U.S. However, the quota for Chinese was very low compared to European countries, a fact which was not altered until 1965.

1944 — Abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky dies. [19]

1944 — United States of America: Japanese‐Americans released from detention camps. US Army announces end of excluding Japanese-Americans from West Coast.

1948 — Brazil: Anarchist Congress convenes in São Paulo, marking the resurgence of the movement after the “derrubada” (the falling trees) of the dictatorship. Held at Nossa Chácara, in the Itaim barrio (December 17—19), a diverse cross‐section of ideas and experience is represented by this mix of Brazilians and the many Italian, Spanish and Portuguese militants living in the country. [Source: Arquivo de História Social]

1951 — Netherlands: Dutch Communist Party members are forbidden to be civil servants. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1952 — Charles Laisant (1911 — 1952) dies. A pacifist and anarcho‐syndicalist, Charles is part of a generational family of anarchists: His father Albert Laisant, his brother Maurice, and his grandfather Charles Ange Laisant (1841 — 1920), were all militant libertarians. [20]

1957 — United States of America: America tests its first Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

1960 — Germany: US Air Force C-131 Convair smacks into Munich, West Germany church steeple, falls on a streetcar, kills all 20 on the plane, 18 passengers in the trolley, and 11 more on the street.

1963 — United States of America: Congress passes first Clean Air Act.

1965 — Philippines: Ferdinand Marcos is “elected” president. To protect US interests and get Imelda some decent shoes.

1965 — United States of America: Largest newspaper ever — Sunday New York Times at 946 pages ($0.50).

1965 — United States of America: Ken Kesey holds his 4th Acid Test, Muir Beach Lodge. [21] [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1966 — Against US wishes, U.N. General Assembly approves an international treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.

1966 — Tom Alder, Bound Together BooksDeath and Rebirth of the Haight‐Ashbury (Hairy Henry and Fyllis busted). Current home of the anarchist Bound Together Books Collective. Emmett Grogan, Ringolevio, p 261 and Counterculture Timeline 1966-1967: [22] [23]

1966 — United States of America: Benefit for Legalization of Marijuana (LEMAR) at California Hall. Country Joe and the Fish entertained. [24]

1969 — Miss Vicki, 17, married Tiny Tim, 47, on the TVʼs Tonight Show.

1969 — United States of America: USAF closes Project Blue Book, concluding no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings. [25]

1973 — During this month, sortie à Lyon du premier numéro du magazine “I.R.L” Information Rassemblées à Lyon (qui deviendra ensuite “Informations et Réflexions Libertaires”), journal dʼexpressions libertaires, paraissant tous les deux mois. Indépendant des organisations anarchistes existantes, ce magazine de qualité saura sʼentourer de nombreux collaborateurs. [26]

1977 — Elvis Costello and the Attractions appear on NBC‐TV “Saturday Night Live” in place of the Sex Pistols, who canʼt get a visa to enter the country. Producer Lorne Michaels refuses to allow Costello to perform “Radio, Radio” (because of the songʼs criticism of the broadcasting industry), but a few measures into “Less than Zero,” Costello halts his group and goes into “Radio, Radio.” He will never be invited back.

1982 — United States of America: Federal District Court Judge decides not to grant preliminary injunction against completion of the Gasquet‐Orleans Road thru Siskiyou Indian religious area.

1986 — South Africa: Nine members of End Conscription Campaign placed on trial. [27]

1987 — Marguerite Yourcenar dies, Northeast Harbor, Maine. First woman elected to the Académie Française. Her most important works are historical novels, especially Memoirs of Hadrian (1951). [28]

1991 — Spain: First Palestinian‐Israeli peace talks begin in Madrid.

1996 — Yugoslavia: 200,000 demonstrators protest Milosevicʼs murderous regime, Belgrade. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1997 — Chechnya: Five Poles, including members from the Polish Anarchist Federation (FA) kidnapped, while delivering medicine, food and other supplies from a Polish‐Chechen friendship society. Their van was found 40 kilometers west of Grozny with its two front tires shot out. They were attacked by a gang of 15. Two Chechen bodyguards (friends of one of the hostages) shot two of the attackers. [29]

1999 — United States of America: Welcome mat for WTO in Seattle, Washington.

2001 — United States of America: Martin Glaberman (1918 — 2001) dies.

2002 — United States of America: George W. Bush orders deployment of an illegal “Star Wars” missile defense system even though it doesnʼt work. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

External link

• Daily Bleed - Anarchist Calendar