April 1

April 1 (aka "April Fools Day") is the 1^st day in April.

Events

1184 — England: Pretending to be barmy, the wise fools of Gotham deceive King John and prevent establishment of a crown highway through Nottinghamshire. [Source: Calendar Riots]

1239 — First known MCF.

1649 — Diggers occupy St. George's Hill, near Cobham, Surrey, seizing land to hold in common and to plant; other communities follow in Northants, Bucks, Kent, Herts, Middx, Leics, Beds, Glos and Notts.

1755 — Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, gourmet, lives to eat — appropriately — in Belley, France. After 30 years simmering, his Physiology of Taste is published in 1825 — at his own expense.

1755 — Switzerland: Blood-red rain falls at Locarno this month. Sorry, don't know exact day, so I picked one at random.

1766 — Horace Walpole's hoax letter to the half-mad Rousseau is published in the "The Saint James Chronicle," in which he pretends to be Frederick the Great, offering political asylum.

1816 — Jane Austen writes one who has suggested that she make her next work an "historical romance."

1841 — United States of America: Brook Farm, history's most famous utopian community, is founded near West Roxbury, Massachusetts. It's primary appeal was to young Bostonians who shrink from the materialism of American life, and the community was a refuge for dozens of transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathanial Hawthorne.

1847 — United States of America: Michigan becomes first state to abolish the death penalty.

1856 — Charles Maurin lives (1856-1914). French painter, engraver, and anarchist. Friend of Toulouse-Lautrec, collaborates in "La Revue Blanche" directed by Félix Fénéon, and initiates Felix Vallotton to engraving and anarchism. [1]

1866 — United States of America: Congress overrides Andrew Johnson's veto of Civil Rights Bill, gives equal rights to all men born in the US — except Indians.

1868 — Edmond Rostand, poet/dramatist lives, Marseilles. Best known for the verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac. [2]

1871 — France: Emile Digeon is arrested, following the army's defeat yesterday, of the Narbonne Commune.

1872 — Russia: Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai lives, St. Petersburg. [3]

1875 — Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) lives. British novelist, playwright, journalist who produced popular detective and suspense stories, practically inventing the modern "thriller." His prolific output, however, undermined his reputation as a fresh and original writer. [4]

1882 — Egypt: Coalheavers strike against the Suez Canal Company in Port Said. [5]

1883 — Lon Chaney, man of a thousand faces, lives.

1883 — France: Louise Michel: Elle est incarcérée à la prison de Saint-Lazare. [Source: Michel Chronologie]

1896 — United States of America: Back in New York this month, Emma Goldman resides with Edward Brady in a German neighborhood on Eleventh Street. Emma earns a meager living as a midwife and nurse, witnessing the plight of many women suffering from unwanted pregnancies….and is active on many other fronts as well.

1901 — Francisco Ascaso lives, Almudevar, Spain. Anarchist militant/Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo member. Member of "Los Justicieros" and "Los Solidarios."

1907 — Anna Bondestam lives. Finnish-Swedish author, one of the few describers of the Swedish speaking working class in Finland. Also written poems and translated Finnish literature to Swedish.

1912 — Paul Brousse dies (1844 — 1912).

1915 — United States of America: Harrison Narcotic Act.

1916 — United States of America: Emma Goldman prepares for her birth control trial scheduled for the 5th and continues to lecture this month in New York; drama critique includes discussion of British playwright Harley Granville-Barker.

1917 — United States of America: During this month Emma Goldman speaks at several meetings chaired by John Sloan of the New York Art Students League.

1918 — United States of America: During this month the final issue of "Mother Earth Bulletin" produced; future publication is made impossible by ongoing government seizures. Today Harry Weinberger meets with the assistant superintendent of prisons in Washington, D.C., to complain about government tampering and confiscation of Emma Goldman's mail.

1919 — The final game for the 1919 Stanley Cup is canceled because of the worldwide epidemic of influenza. No winner is declared in the series between the Montreal Canadiens and Seattle Metropolitans.

1920 — United States of America: T-Bone Slim's The Popular Wobbly published in the Industrial Workers of the World One Big Union Monthly.

1920 — United States of America: Five members of NY state legislature expelled as Socialists.

1922 — Historian William Manchester lives, Attleboro, Massachusetts.

1924 — Germany: Adolf Hitler imprisoned for involvement in the Beer-Hall Putsch, begins dictating Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess.

1924 — Automatic Record Changer introduced.

1924 — Czech novelist, short-story writer, playwright, poet Milan Kundera, lives, Brno. Kundera's works combine erotic comedy with political criticism. Until 1989, all of his books were banned in his country. [6]

1924 — United States of America: One of West Virginia's most unusual strikes begins today, when union miners walk out at the Coal River Collieries.

1926 — France: Charles Angrand (1854-1926) dies, Rouen. Impressionist, Pointillist painter and anarchist illustrator. Friends with Seurat, Cross, Luce and Signac and other libertarian illustrators. Angrand designed a now-famous black cat and provided illustrations to Jean Grave's "Les Temps Nouveaux" as well as helping to finance it with the sale of his paintings.

1930 — France: Cultural theorist, philosopher Pierre Bourdieu lives. [Source: Autonomedia Calendar]

1932 — United States of America: 500 school children, most with haggard faces and in tattered clothes, parade through Chicago's downtown section to the Board of Education offices to demand that the school system provide them with food.

1936 — England: During this month Emma Goldman leaves London, arriving in Nice on April 6.

1937 — United States of America: Abe Bluestein and Selma Cohen head to Spain to aid the anarchists.

1938 — Spain: The Lincolns are overrun by the fascist armies near Gandesa; the battalion suffers heavy casualties, among them Commander Robert Merriman; during the next week they re-assemble at Mora la Nueva on the Ebro, only 120 Lincolns remain. Early April: The Lincolns in training at Darmos, near Mora la Nueva, where they are joined by more than 400 young Spanish recruits. [7]

1939 — Franco declares the Spanish civil war at an end. US recognizes fascist Franco's government in Spain. [8] [9] [10] [11]

1940 — Canada: Emma Goldman returns home to her Toronto apartment today, after regaining consciousness but not the ability to speak. She will suffer a second hemorrhage on May 6.

1942 — Samuel Delany lives. Science fiction writer, composer, musician. Bisexual African American, husband (1961-1980) of poet Marilyn Hacker. [12] [13] [14]

1945 — Japan: US forces attack Okinawa.

1946 — United States of America: Strike by 400,000 mine workers. [15]

1949 — The revolution will not be televised: Gil Scott-Heron lives. [16] [17]

1951 — During this month Beatster Jack Kerouac writes a new version On the Road on a paper scroll. He and Joan Haverty also separate. Kerouac goes to North Carolina to his sister's home. In May he learns Joan is pregnant.

1952 — Big Bang theory proposed in Physical Review by Alpher, Bethe and Gamow. [18]

1952 — During this month Beatster Jack Kerouac is in Mexico, where he writes Dr. Sax using "spontaneous prose" method and marijuana. [19]

1954 — United States of America: "Great Cheese Scandal." Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, disregarding the fact that Wisconsin cheese distributors had contracted to sell the government 90 million pounds of cheese at 37 cents per pound, drops the price support level on dairy products from 90 to 75 percent parity. The cheese distributors promptly repurchased the title to their product at 34 cents per pound, realizing a $2.2 million profit on cheese that never left their warehouse.

1954 — First H-bomb tested on Bikini Atoll. First aerial test of an H-Bomb also occurs here, 1956 May 21.

1954 — During this month Beatster Jack Kerouac takes a bus back from California to his mother's house in Richmond Hill (New York). Works briefly on the Brooklyn waterfront but quits because of phlebitis condition. April-August: Starts writing science fiction story "cityCityCITY."

1955 — South Africa: Boycott of segregated schools begins. [20]

1955 — Jack Kerouac's "Jazz of the Beat Generation" (parts of chapters 10 and 14, Book Three from On the Road), in New World Writing #7 (under the pseudonym Jean Louis). [21]

1960 — United States of America: Launching of the first weather satellite, Tiros I. Now everything is sunny, we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

1961 — United States of America: Local 101 begins 6-week strike against Brooklyn Union Gas Company.

1963 — United States of America: Longest newspaper strike in US history ends. The nine major papers in New York City ceased publication over 100 days ago.

1966 — Start of “cultural revolution” in China. Mayor of Peking, P’eng Chen, dismissed and several cultural officials, including Chou Yang, removed from office. [Source: K.S. Karol]

1968 — Spain: Las facultades de Sevilla, clausuradas hasta después de Semana Santa. [22]

1969 — First collective anarchist pizza made as Morningtown Pizza and Subs opens in Seattle, Washington.

1971 — Six months after his death, Jimi Hendrix's "The Cry of Love" goes gold. It is the last LP on which the guitarist was a willing participant and some say it might have gone higher than #3 had it not been for an LP by another deceased rock star, "Pearl," by Janis Joplin.

1972 — France: Dissolution of the Situationist International. [23]

1973 — Vietnam: Hanoi releases last 591 acknowledged American POWs. [24]

1974 — North Vietnam: "Hanoi" Jane Fonda arrives on her second visit — and the American right wing is still livid.

1976 — Max Ernst, artist in many media, dies in Paris on the eve of his 85th birthday.

1982 — Marvin Gaye is killed by a gunshot wound in Los Angeles in an argument with his father. He was 44 years old. Gaye's father received probation after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter. [25]

1982 — "Pacific Peacemaker" damaged by French police boats during nuclear weapons testing protest, Muroroa Atoll, South Pacific.

1983 — England: Human chain 14 miles long linked Brughfield, Greenham Common and Aldermaston to oppose Cruise and Pershing missiles.

1985 — United States of America: Environmental Protection Agency orders end to dumping of sludge off the New Jersey coast. Apparently even they can't swim in the stuff.

1986 — United States of America: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors votes to lobby the US Congress to rename the Angeles National Forest the "Reagan National Forest." Says Sierra Club spokesman Bob Hattoy, "Naming a national forest after Ronnie Reagan is like naming a day care center after W C Fields." [26] [27]

1990 — Beginning of Juan García Ordoño novel Tres crímenes y algo más [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1994 — China: Dissident Wei Jingsheng is arrested outside Beijing. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

1999 — United States of America: Loafers Glory, with U. Utah Phillips, labor organizer, IWW Wobbly, anarchist, exquisite bullshitter ("My God! That's Moose Turd Pie…Good, Though!), songster, hits the airwaves, Pacifica Radio online, 9am Thursdays; some stations, like Seattle's KBCS-FM, tape the program for rebroadcast on a different date and time. [Radio show suspended April 2002 for lack of funding]. Utah Phillips is described as "a national treasure, a writer of haunting songs, a storyteller of hilarious presence and subtle depth, a union organizer, historian and scholar, a Celtic-Yiddish bard, a Pleistocene bon vivant, a post-modern ne'er-do-well, and a heck of an engineer." A 40-year member of the IWW, he is the most entertaining labor troubadour of our time… [28] [29]

2001 — Bangladesh: Three-day general strike against the government begins. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

2001 — Scotland: Greenpeace protesters occupy a Conoco oil exploration rig. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

2001 — France: Suzanne Allen (1920 — 2001) dies.

2003 — United States of America: Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder impales a mask of President Bush the Junior, Denver, Colorado. [Source: Robert Braunwart]

2004 — Three leaders of the Anti-imperialist Camp together with two Turkish militants of the DHKC were arrested for alleged membership in a terrorist organisation.

External link

• The Daily Bleed: Anarchist Calendar