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October 19
October 19 is the 19th day in October.
Events[edit]
1433 — Marsilio Ficino lives, Figline. Great Renaissance neo-Platonist and occultist.
1605 — Author Thomas Browne lives.
1720 — Birth of John Woolman, Quaker anti-slavery activist.
1745 — Irish satirist and scatological critic Jonathan Swift, 77, dies, Dublin. Declared of unsound mind, lonely, paralyzed.
1762 — United States of America: Total darkness occurs for most of the day, Detroit. [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1781 — United States of America: Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown; world turned upside down.
1784 — Poet/essayist Leigh Hunt — the model for the parasitic Skimpole in Dickens' Bleak House — lives, Southgate. [1]
1833 — Edgar Allen Poe's "Ms. Found in a Bottle" appears in "Baltimore Sunday Visitor." [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1841 — United States of America: Surrender of Tallahassee chief Tiger Tail after his battle against forced removal to the west.
1842 — United States of America: Military forces, believing war has begun, occupy Monterey, Calif., Mexico. [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1849 — United States of America: Elizabeth Blackwell became first woman in the country to receive medical degree.
1856 — Australia: James Kelly & Jack Smith fight bare knuckle for 6 hours 15 minutes in Melbourne.
1862 — Auguste Lumiere, French film pioneer, lives.
1868 — United States of America: Bertha Landes first woman elected mayor of a major US city (Seattle, Washington), lives.
1878 — Henry James spends an awkward afternoon with George Eliot & George Henry Lewes. As James leaves, Lewes, not realizing he is talking to the author of the volumes, thrusts a pair of blue bound volumes — the first edition of The Europeans — into his hands, saying, "Take them away, please, away!" [2] [3]
1878 — Germany: Anti-Socialist Law passed. (or October 22nd?)
1889 — Scotland: The first nationwide school strike against corporal punishment begins in Hawick, Roxborough & quickly spreads across the Scottish lowlands then to Tyneside & as far south as London, Bristol & Cardiff. [Source: Calendar Riots]
1895 — Architect and culture critic Lewis Mumford lives.
1899 — Guatemala: Miguel Angel Asturias lives, Guatemala City.
1905 — Norway: Bertha von Suttner becomes the first woman Nobel Peace laureate, Oslo.
1910 — France: Death of Luigi Lucheni, found hanging in his cell. Anarchist advocate of "propaganda by the deed," he killed the impératrice Elisabeth of Austria, (1878 September 10) and got, at age 25, life in prison.
1913 — Valev Uibopuu lives. Estonian scholar, short story writer, novelist, and journalist, highly acclaimed exile writer during the years when Estonia was part of the Soviet Union. [4]
1920 — Spain: Clash between cenetistas & pistoleros del Libre (rightwing gunmen) on the street of Riera Alta (Madrid?). Cenetista Jaime MartÃnez Palau is arrested; also apprehended are Juan Lopez & Bartholomew LLabrés. The latter cenetistas are implicated in several "atentados" & end up spending six years in jail. [5] [6]
1921 — Portugal: Revolution begins in Lisboa. [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1923 — War Resister's League founded by Jessie Wallace Hughan. [7] [8]
1931 — John le Carre‚ spy novelist, lives, Poole, Dorset, England.
1936 — Chinese revolutionist, writer Lu Xun dies, Shanghai.
1936 — United States of America: Watertown High becomes the first school to fingerprint its students.
1938 — Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson musical "Knickerbocker Holiday" opens, NY. [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1944 — Peter Tosh lives, Westmorland, Jamaica. Called the founding father of reggae music. [9]
1944 — Italy: The post-fascist police in Palermo open fire on demonstrators protesting a fuel shortage: 30 die and over 150 injured. [Source: Crimini e Misfatti]
1945 — United States of America: Patricia Ireland is born in Oak Park, Illinois. She is a U.S. administrator and feminist.
1946 — First exhibition of the work of Josef Nassy, an American citizen of Dutch-African-Jewish descent, is held in Brussels. The exhibit consists of 90 paintings and drawings rendered while in a Nazi-controlled concentration camp during World War II. [10]
1956 — United States of America: Acy Lennon, a secretary to Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, is convicted of income tax evasion. A second Powell secretary, Hattie Freeman Dodson, was jailed in a similar charge in July 1956, & a third, William Hampton, still awaits trial.
1956 — Poland: Central Committee of the United Workers' Party of Poland prepares to elect a new Politburo' instigates an unexpected visit by Khrushchev & several other Soviet Beloved & Respecteds, all anxious to prevent Gomulka’s election to the leadership of the Polish party. A 3-day uprising against Soviet control begins. See also October 20th and October 23rd. [Source: K.S. Karol]
1959 — France: President Mitterand escapes assassination by jumping out of motorcade during a high speed chase, leaping over a hedgerow, burying himself in a bed of petunias. (After his death Miterrand's wife asks his mistress to attend his funeral.) [11]
1960 — United States of America: Martin Luther King, Jr., and 35 students choose jail after arrest for sit-in requesting service at the snack bar of Atlanta's Rich's department store.
1960 — United States of America: Imposition of a "temporary" trade embargo on Cuba following nationalization of US enterprises. See The Fifties by David Halberstam.
1964 — United States of America: Seattle, Washington CORE announces a campaign to boycott downtown merchants for discriminatory hiring practices.
1966 — The Yardbirds arrive in NY for their first U.S. tour, with Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page on lead guitars. After two dates of the tour, Beck leaves & Page takes over lead guitar. [12]
1966 — United States of America: Ken Kesey, novelist and anarchist, back from Mexico, arrested. [13] [14]
1967 — The Jefferson Airplane perform at Loews Warfield Theatre on Market Street, San Francisco. [15] [16]
1968 — Italy: Death of Aldo Capitini, co-founder of Movimento Nonviolento.
1969 — Japan: Thousands of anti-Vietnam War activism protesters paralyze the streets of Tokyo.
1977 — South Africa: 18 organizations working for black liberation closed down by government. [17]
1980 — United States of America: J.P. Stevens & Co. forced to sign a first labor contract with a union after a 17 year struggle in the South.
1981 — United States of America: Martin Luther King, Jr. Library and Archives opens in Atlanta. Founded by Coretta Scott King, it is the largest repository in the world of primary resource material on King, nine major civil rights organizations, and the American civil rights movement.
1981 — United States of America: California state senator John Schmitz tells a TV interviewer that if Reagan's policies fail, "the best we could probably hope for is a military coup or something like that." He explains that he is talking about "a good military coup, not a bad military coup."
1982 — United States of America: Jock Ewing dies in an air crash, Dallas.
1982 — United States of America: John Delorean, chairman of Delorean Motor Co., arrested in LA on possession of 59 pounds of cocaine.
1982 — United States of America: Acting Pres. Ronnie Reagan tells the Lebanese foreign minister, "You know, your nose looks just like Danny Thomas's." [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1987 — "Black Monday" stock market crash, world-wide.
1989 — Russia: Murka the Cat, banished 400 miles from Moscow apartment for eating 2 canaries, returns on its own one year later.
1989 — England: The Guildford 4 are freed from jail 15 years after British police framed them for a pub bombing. [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1991 — United States of America: Anti-Dave is on vacation from aka Used Books for two weeks. Tom, Carol & Noreen cover for him, but it ain't the same with the slacker gone.
1992 — El Salvador: Government halts demobilization of terrorist military battalions. [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1992 — South Africa: Nelson Mandela admits that the African National Congress has tortured detainees. [Source:Robert Braunwart]
1993 — France: Air France workers strike against layoffs; direct action closes airports.
1998 — Italy: Pier Carlo Masini (1923-1998) dies, in Firenze. Mort de ce grand historien de l’anarchisme, militant libertaire lui-même surtout pendant les années 1940 et 1950. [18]
1998 — United States of America: Earth Liberation Front, committed to "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation & destruction of the natural environment," torches the Vail Mountain ski resort in Colorado, causing $12 million in damage.
2001 — Mexico: Digna Ochoa (1964-2001) assassinated. Abogada, incansable defensora de los Derechos Humanos, asesinada el 19 de octubre de 2001 en la Ciudad de México.
2001 — Afghanistan: US special forces begin ground operations. [Source:Robert Braunwart]
2002 — England: 21st Annual Anarchist Book Fair. Camden Centre, Judd Street. Followed by benefit gig with Chumbawamba and Gertrude. [19]
2005 — Iraq: Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.
