March 10

March 10 is the 10^th day in March.

Events

1410 — Wire invented.

1582 — England: Two of Britain’s best-known magicians, the astrologer Dr, John Dee & necromancer Edward Kelley, meet. Dee, when spying abroad for Queen Elizabeth I, signed his letters “007” — perhaps a prototype for Ian Fleming’s James Bond?

1739 — Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray depart together for the Grand Tour. "The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel." [1]

1772 — Friedrich von Schlegel (1772—1829) lives. German writer, contemporary of Goethe, Schiller and Novalis, a pioneer in comparative Indo-European linguistics and comparative philology, critic, and philosopher who influenced early German Romantic Movement. [2]

1783 — United States of America: Revolutionary War officers consider refusing to disband until certain "grievances" with Congress are settled, thus bringing the infant US to the verge of civil war.

1791 — John Stone patents the pile driver. [3]

1812 — First two cantos of Lord Byronʼs Childe Harold's Pilgrimage are published, causing a national sensation and immediately establishing the author as a public figure: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1817 — England: The Blanketeers: Impoverished and hungry handloom weavers and spinners assemble in St Peter's Field, Manchester, each equipped with a blanket for their march to London to present a petition to the Prince Regent. After intimidation from the authorities, only a few reach Macclesfield, and no organised marchers get further than Derby. [4] [5]

1849 — United States of America: Abraham Lincoln applies for a patent; only US president to do so.

1875 — Australia: Eleanor May Moores, pacifist activist, lives.

1876 — First coherent message transmitted by telephone.

1883 — England: Founding of the Women's Co-operative Guild, England. [6]

1893 — United States of America: New Mexico State University cancels its first graduation ceremony — its only graduate, Sam Steele, was robbed and killed last night.

1898 — Prominent leaders of the Puerto Rican section of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, Dr. Julio J. Henna and Robert H. Todd, began to correspond with United States President McKinley and Senate in hopes that they would consider including Puerto Rico in whatever intervention is planned for Cuba. Henna and Todd also provided the US government with information about the Spanish military presence on the island.

1906 — France: Catastrophe de Courrières (Pas-de-Calais). Coal dust explosion kills 1,060 workers in Courrieres, France. Over 1,000 die in the worst mining disaster of the 20th century. 45,000 miners go on strike for 55 days against the disastrous working conditions, which the army suppresses.

1908 — Philip Rahv lives, Ukraine. American radical writer, "Partisan Review" cofounder.

1912 — United States of America: Red Emma has speaking engagements, March 10-April 13, in Grand Rapids, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, and Lawrence, Kansas.

1913 — United States of America: Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman dies, New York City. Tubman was closely associated with abolitionist John Brown, and well acquainted with others, including Frederick Douglass, Jermain Loguen, and Gerrit Smith. She worked closely with Brown, and reportedly missed the raid on Harper's Ferry only because of illness. [7]

1914 — England: Mary Richardson slashes Velasquezʼs "Rokeby Venus" in London's National Gallery with a meat cleaver in order "to destroy the most beautiful woman in mythological history" as a response to continued harassment of the suffragettes. Source: 'Calendar Riots'

1916 — United States of America: Mass meeting held in San Francisco to protest Emma Goldmanʼs February 11 arrest.

1916 — Manuel "Manny" Greenhill lives (1916—1996), NY. Longtime folk music manager. Spent several years as a union activist, before establishing Folklore Productions in 1958. Josh White, his guitar teacher from union days, was the first artist Manny presented in formal concert. Others featured in those days included Pete Seeger, Odetta and Theodore Bikel. Later he went on to work with Flatt and Scruggs, Mahalia Jackson, Bob Dylan, Lightnin' Hopkins, and perhaps most crucially, Joan Baez, who became his first managerial client. He found that he enjoyed guiding her career, and by the mid-Sixties his roster included Doc Watson, Reverend Gary Davis, and Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller, among many others. [8] [9]

1920 — Boris Vian lives. Vehemently anti-militarist and a pacifist, best known as an extremely gifted writer and jazz musician.

1921 — Russia: Attack on Kronstadt, which had rebelled against Bolshevik absolutism, for Free Soviets. See: radiotelegramme to the workers of all countries, from the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt

1923 — Spain: Salvador Segui Rubinat, "El noi del sucre," assassinated. Born in 1890, Segui, "El noi del sucre," was an anarcho-syndicalist in the very large and popular CNT in Catalonia. He was assassinated today along with another trade unionist, Francesc Comes (murders financed by the governor of Catalonia). Fundacion Salvador Segui now exist in Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid. [10] [11]

1926 — Viking Press publishes Sylvia Townsend Warnerʼs Lolly Willowes, or the Loving Huntsman. The first selection of the newly formed Book-of-the-Month Club, it is unpopular with the clubʼs 4,750 members. She publishes more popular works, including 144 short stories that appear in The New Yorker, novels, poetry, French translations, and, following her original vocation as musicologist, contributions to the 10-volume Tudor Church Music and Grove's Dictionary of Music.

1938 — Spain: Nationalists begin major offensive in Aragón; the Lincoln Brigades retreat south out of Belchite and are overrun by rebel offensive, with many taken prisoner; the beginning of the Great Retreats. [Sources] [12]

1939 — Armand Guerra dies. Spanish filmmaker and anarchist.

1942 — United States of America: Workers in Local 101 win recognition from Brooklyn Union Gas Co. [13] [14]

1945 — Japan: US kills 100,000 civilians and leaves 1.5 million people homeless. These are primarily women, children and the aged, an act of terror by the American government purposely targeted to demoralize Japan. This war crime — and many more like it — is not found in American school textbooks. [15] [16]

1945 — Bulgaria: 90 members of the Bulgarian Anarchist Federation meet (or attempt to meet?) in an extraordinary session, seeking ways of resisting the new communist regime (which has closed all meeting places and prohibited the anarchist newspapers), are stopped by the communist militia and sent in concentration camps, where they are tortured and compelled to do forced labor. [17]

1948 — United States of America: Zelda Fitzgerald and eight other women killed in sanitarium fire in Asheville, North Carolina. Trapped on the third story, she dies at 48. Zeldaʼs marriage to novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald was successful only while she subordinated her considerable artistic talents to Scottʼs. When Zelda demanded time and space to develop her dancing and writing, he accused her of egotism and insanity. After Scott put her in the hospital, Zeldaʼs male psychiatrists declared her ambitions self-deceptions and the good doctors tried to re-educate her as a wife. But Zelda said she saw no difference between institutionalization and marriage, so her husband and doctors effectively imprisoned her.

1951 — United States of America: President Ike Eisenhower states willingness to launch a first-strike nuclear attack.

1952 — Batistats hordes staged their 'coup d'etat' to seize Cuba,

1958 — United States of America: A B-47 accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on the town of Mars Bluffs, South Carolina. A 50-foot wide crater was dug, and six injured by conventional explosives incorporated in the weapon, but there was no atomic blast.

1964 — Italy: Ugo Fedeli (1898—1964) dies. Librarian, writer, anarchist. [18] [19] [20]

1966 — Holland: Provos smoke bomb the Dutch Royal wedding. [21]

1966 — Italy: La polizia di stato arresta a Milano 8 persone per aver diffuso manifesti in cui si rivendica l'uscita dell'Italia dalla Nato e ci si pronuncia a favore dell'obiezione di coscienza. [Source: Crimini e Misfatti]

1968 — United States of America: César Chávez breaks his fast at a mass in Delanoʼs public park with 4,000 supporters at his side, including ambitious politico Senator Robert Kennedy. [22]

1969 — France: commando of situationists 'returns' a statue of Charles Fourier to its plinth, left vacant since its removal by the Nazis.

1972 — Stephen Mac Say (1884—1972) dies. French anarchist, professor, bee-keeper. Wrote L'école laïque contre l'enfant; De Fourier à Godin; Les bêtes proches de l'homme; Propos sans égards. See 1884 October 15. [23] [24]

1972 — England: South African Airways, London, firebombed. [25]

1974 — Pennsylvania Crime Commission finds police corruption in Philadelphia "ongoing, widespread, systematic, and occurring at all levels of the Police Department." It also accuses Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo of trying to block its investigation. Clothespin Claes Oldenburg, Philadelphia "The streets are safe — it is only people who make them unsafe." — former Police Chief and Mayor Frank Rizzo [26]

1974 — Philippines: A Japanese soldier is found hiding out on the island of Lubang , believing World War II was still going.

1975 — England: Dog spectacles patented.

1976 — United States of America: Jailbreak by John Sherman, a George Jackson Brigade member, from Walla Walla prison in Washington State. He was aided by Mark Cook, the only black member of the Brigade (the only Brigade member still in prison). Sherman’s guard was shot in the chest as he reached for his gun. [27]

1977 — After EMI nullified contracts with the Sex Pistols, A&M Records signs the band, in front of Buckingham Palace. The group has been banned from airplay and virtually every U.K. concert venue. Nine days later, A&M terminates the deal because of the reputation for attracting violence which the media has pinned on them. [28] [29]

1982 — Outer Space: The dreaded "Jupiter Effect" occurs. [30] [31]

1985 — Esotericist and mystic writer Israel Regardie dies.

1987 — United Nations recognizes conscientious objection to military service as a human right.

1988 — Andy Gibb, youngest of the bros. Gibb who is best remembered for his solo hit "I Just Want To Be Your Everything," dies penniless of a heart virus, Oxfordshire, England.

1988 — Tibet: In Lhasa, demonstrations against the Communist regime are put down by Chinese troops. [32]

1990 — England: Poll tax riots in Brixton and Swindon — during the latter, good sense and ingenuity are displayed as cop radios are jammed. Source: 'Calendar Riots'

1998 — United States of America: Libertarian Book Club memorial for Abe Bluestein. Bluestein and Selma Cohen went to Spain in 1937 to aid the anarchists; they and Emma Goldman helped Frank Brand (aka Enrico Arrigoni) escape from prison in Spain.

1999 — United States of America: Microradio movement news accounts on the struggle to free the airwaves: The Texan pirates who are ruling the waves ("Independent," London). [Source: Pirate Radio Kisok] http://www.infoshop.org/news6/radio_pirates.php

2005 — England: Maurice Brinton (1923—2005) dies. Brinton, the pen name of the distinguished neuro-surgeon Chris Pallis (Neurologist who defined brainstem death) was a Communist, then a Trotskyite before becoming a libertarian socialist in the early 1960s. He was an influential writer and historian on the left, and translator and mainstay in the London Solidarity group. He died today, aged 81, after suffering from Parkinson's disease for many years. Author of For Workers' Power, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, The Irrational in Politics and many magazine articles. [33] [34]

External link

• The Daily Bleed: Anarchist Calendar