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Finland: Kalevalan päivä — KALEVALA DAY, commemorating the first printing of the ancient national epic, in 1835, compiled by Elias Lönnrot.

The material, old Finnish ballads & lyrical songs depicting "the sons of Kalevala," were published in two editions, first 35 cantos in 1835 & then with 50 cantos in 1849.

The central characters are old & wise Väinämöinen, skilled smooth Ilmarinen, adventurer-warrior Lemminkäinen, Louhi, the female ruler of Pohjola, & tragic hero Kullervo. The epic ends with decline of paganism: maid Marjatta gives birth to a son who is baptized king of Karelia & Väinämöinen departs the land of heroes.

Kalevala, translated into 35 languages, has inspired many Finnish artists, the most prominent among them painter Akseli Gallén-Kallela & composer Jean Sibelius.

http://www.helsinki.fi/kasv/nokol/kalevala.html

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1525 -- México: Cuauhtémoc is assassinated.
http://web.archive.org...eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/15250228.htm
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Cuauht%E9moc


1533 -- Essayist Michel de Montaigne lives. French courtier & author of Essaies, which established a new literary form. In 1588 he was arrested in Paris & spent a few hours in Bastille.
See Kenneth Rexroth's essay on Montaigne in his Classics Revisited.



1574 -- First New World victims of Spanish Inquisition burned at the stake.

Moe to Curley: "How would you like to die, burnt at the stake or your head chopped off?"

Curley: "I'd rather have steak than cold cuts."

http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/three_of_stooges.html

1791 -- March to Vincennes.


1832 -- Signing herself "L'Etrangère,' Ewelina Hañska first writes to Balzac. An ardent exchange of letters ensues between the 32-year-old writer & the married Polish noblewoman.


1844 -- US: During an official inspection tour of the U.S.S. Princeton, a 10-inch gun (the Navy's largest at the time) blew up, killing Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas W. Kilmer, & 10 others. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President John Tyler, who at the time of the explosion was in a cabin below with Miss Julia Gardiner (the daughter of one of those killed) was unharmed. They subsequently married.


1854 -- US: The Republican Party forms in Ripon, Wisconsin, due to opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The act, which became law on 30 May, left the issue of slavery to the settlers of each state.


1854 -- Simón Rodríguez (aka Samuel Robinson), philosopher & educator, notably Simón Bolívar's tutor & mentor, dies in Perú. Mouse ears, bourbon nose, mouth like a mailbox. Friend of European socialists, proponent of mixed education for all — "El Loco".
See Eduardo Galeano's Faces & Masks (Norton, 1998; pp 81, 130, 131, 173, 177).



1861 -- US: The Southern Cheyenne & Arapaho peoples sign the Treaty of Fort Wise, agreeing to cede their land & live on a small reservation in southwest Colorado. US Commissioner of Indian Affairs Colonel A.B. Greenwood issues medals, blankets, sugar & tobacco. But only six of 44 Cheyenne chiefs sign the treaty, casting doubt on the gala affair's legality.



1861 -- Antoine Cyvoct lives (1861-1930). French anarchiste, Lyons militant. Wrongly accused of being the author of the bombing of the Bellecour Theatre restaurant in Lyon on October 22, 1882.
[Details / context]


1877 -- US: The American Government, like a common thief, seizes Black Hills from Lakota Sioux in violation of treaty.



1886 -- Painter & writer, José Solana Gutiérrez lives, in Madrid, Spain.

http://www.abelmartin.com/LG/solana2.html
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/solana_jose_gutierrez.html
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Guti%C3%A9rrez_Solana

1886 -- Spain: Numéro 2 of the bimonthly El Socialismo appears today. ANARCHIST / ANARQUISTA

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Le journal créé par l'anarchiste andalous Fermín Salvochea (qui vient de sortir de prison pour sa participation à la "Commune de Cadix" durant l'été 1873), va tenter de remobiliser les anarchistes andalous>victimes de la répression en 1882-1884. Mais le journal sera à son tour persécuté par les autorités, ce qui vaudra à Fermín Salvochea plusieurs séjours en prison qui le contraindront à arrêter la publication du journal en août 1891. Salvochea was one of the most influential figures in Andalusian anarchism. 50,000 people attend his burial in 1907 & his tomb never lacks a daily renewal of flowers. http://www.andalucia.cc/almenara/105-11.htm http://www.ephemanar.net/fevrier28.html#socialismo

1887 -- France: The anarchist burglar & member of the "Panthers of Batignolles," Clément Duval, has his death sentence (see 11 January 1887) commuted to life by the President of the Republic.

[Details / context]

1893 -- Ben Hecht lives. American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, novelist lives. Authored 35 books & created some of the most entertaining screenplays or plays, among them The Front Page (filmed as His Girl Friday), Twentieth Century, Underworld, The Scoundrel, Some Like It Hot, Viva Villa!, etc.

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Hecht was for a short time a circus acrobat & at 17 he ran away to Chicago, where he worked as a reporter. After WW I he was sent to Berlin to witness the revolutionary movements, which was the basis of his first novel, Erik Dorn (1921).

His criticism of British policies in Palestine & support of the Jewish resistance movement caused his credits to be removed from all films shown in England for some years. In his honor an illegal immigrant ship was named "Ben Hecht."

Hecht died while working on the script of Casino Royale (1967), receiving no screen credits. Also among productions credited to other writers are Queen Christina, Gone With the Wind, Foreign Correspondent, The Outlaw, Lifeboat, Gilda, The Paradine Case, Rope, & Roman Holiday.

1893 -- Russia: Vsevelod Pudovkin lives (Feb 16 that other Russian style), Penza.

Daily Bleed Patron Saint June 26, 2003-2006
Pioneering Soviet experimental filmmaker, writer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vsevolod_Pudovkin



1901 -- American chemist, geneticist activist Linus Pauling lives for vitamin C, Portland, Oregon. Double Nobel Prize winner &, when he came up with an alternative cure for cancer, 'madman' & 'quack.'

Daily Bleed Patron Saint 2004, LINUS PAULING
Chemist, geneticist, anti-nuclear & anti-war activist.

"Young people should always listen to their elders, but not necessarily believe what they say."

1910 -- A. E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad; Terence; This is Stupid Stuff) writes of his sparse output: "In barrenness . . . I hold a high place among English poets, excelling even Gray."


1916 -- Henry James dies in London at 72, saying "So here it is at last, the distinguished thing." T. S. Eliot comments acidly: "James had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it." H.G. Wells had written just before his death, "Ought there to be such a thing as a literary artist?" "Ought there, in fact, to be Henry James?" "I don't think so..."
http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway/


1916 -- The "Manifeste des Seize" (Manifesto of the Sixteen) issued by some 15 anarchists (Peter Kropotkin, Jean Grave, et al) in support of the allies. This proclamation was published in France in the pages of the daily newspaper La Bataille, March 14. It was reprinted in La Libre Fédération on the 14th of April, this time accompanied by 100 signatures, including those of many Italians.
http://www.lelibertaire.net/article131.html

[Details / context]

1917 -- US: Following a large rally in support of Dr. Ben Reitman the prior evening, Reitman is acquitted on charges from his Dec. 15, 1916 birth control arrest in Rochester, NY.



1919 -- India: Gandhi launches satyagraha campaign.

1921 -- Russia: Kronstadt Revolt.

It is here Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Leon Trotsky utters his infamous line,

"Shoot them down like partridges."

http://libcom.org/tags/kronstadt

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The Kronstadt Revolt begins, critical of Bolshevism & in sympathy with the resistance in Petrograd. As opposed to the Bolshevik Party dictatorship they demand workers' rule.

"Kronstadt is of great historic significance. It sounded the death knell of Bolshevism with its Party dictatorship, mad centralization, Tcheka terrorism & bureaucratic castes. It struck into the very heart of Communist autocracy. At the same time it shocked the intelligent & honest minds of Europe & America into a critical examination of Bolshevik theories & practices. It exploded the Bolshevik myth of the Communist State being the "Workers' & Peasants' Government."        — Alexander Berkman, The Kronstadt Rebellion (Berlin: Der Syndikalist, 1922), pp. 41-42. Kenneth Rexroth (See his poem "From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion"), was among those few Americans who saw through Bolshevik pretenses as early as 1921, when Trotsky & Lenin crushed the libertarian revolt of the Kronstadt Soviet in their drive to impose their dictatorship. While clearly opposing all forms of "Communism" he did not, like so many others of his generation, react into supporting Western capitalism or becoming a "Cold War Warrior." The Kronstadt Revolt was a topic at meetings he helped organize with the San Francisco Libertarian Circle in the 1940s. http://libcom.org/tags/kronstadt

I am far better aware of
The evils of Stalinism
Than you are, you ex-Trotskyite
Warmonger. But it won’t get you
Anywhere to tell me I should
Welcome the beast who devours me
Just because a bigger lion
Is eating somebody else on
The other side of the arena.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/PS/rexroth3.htm
http://struggle.ws/russia.html

1921 -- El Salvador: Last Chance?: Shoemakers win strike for higher wages — prompting a government crackdown.
http://www.shoemakerswarehouse.com/

1921 -- CGT Meeting protesting the union position assumed by the CROM.
Source: Photographic file of the CTM.

1922 -- Russia: Soviet semiotician Yuri (also Juri, Jurij) Lotman lives, Petrograd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Lotman
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lotman.htm
http://www.phillwebb.net/history/Twentieth/Continental/%28Post%29Structuralisms/Structuralism/Lotman/Lotman.htm


1933 -- Germany: Following yesterday's burning of Berlin's Reichstag, torched by Marinus Van Der Lubbe, the Nazi's initially blame it on anarchists & today arrest Erich Mühsam, but Rudolf Rocker manages to slip their grasp.
http://www.ephemanar.net/fevrier27.html#reichstag


1936 -- England: Emma Goldman lectures again to the Workers Circle in London.
Source: 'Emma Goldman Papers'


1937 -- England: 1,000 rally against war, Hyde Park, London.


1937 -- England: With novelist Ethel Mannin, Emma Goldman speaks on the revolution in Spain, in Bristol.




1939 -- John Fahey lives (1939-2001). Eccentric bluegrass wizard / folk guitarist heralded as a unique alchemist of American roots music & a powerful influence on his peers.

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1941 -- Happy birthday Alice Brock. Who is Alice Brock? You know the song "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie? Oh, that Alice!

"What the hell are all these freaking forks doing on the forking floor?!"

— Mrs. G.

http://www.arlo.net/
http://web.archive.org...sims.net/massacre/

1958 -- England: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) founded in London.


1959 -- The playwright most known for his verse tragedy, Maxwell Anderson dies in Stamford, Connecticut. His tragedy Winterset (1935), a poetic drama inspired by the Sacco & Vanzetti anarchist case is his most famous, but Anderson also wrote musicals, such as Knickerbocker Holiday (1938) & Lost in the Stars (1949).


1965 -- US: First UAW (United Auto Workers) Aerospace Conference.


1967 -- Fast Track?: Variety reports that the pace of the last six months had reduced Monkee Davy Jones to just 109 pounds & he would be declining all personal appearances for an indeterminate time. In his autobiography, he later admitted he had gone on a fast in an attempt to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War.


1967 -- US: Radical human rights activist Ramsey Clark named as US Attorney General by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Johnson.


1970 -- Jefferson Airplane is fined $1,000 for singing the "F word" in an Oklahoma City concert.
http://www.jeffersonairplane.com/


1970 -- Led Zeppelin performs in Copenhagen under the pseudonym Nobs, because of a threat of suit by Count Evan von Zeppelin, a relative of the airship designer Ferdinand, if the band play under the name Zeppelin in Denmark.


1970 -- US: Winter Festival for Peace, Madison Square, New York City.



1970 -- US: Bicycles permitted to cross Golden Gate Bridge in Frisco, Caligornia. A new escape route ! ! ! ! ! !
http://www.blazingsaddles.com/
http://www.brasscheck.com/cm/
http://www.ahalenia.com/sfbma/history.html


1970 -- France: Bomb attack on the Bank of Bilbao & the Spanish State Railways in Paris.




1972 -- US: Angela Davis trial starts, San Jose, California.
http://www.speakoutnow.org/userdata_display.php?modin=50&uid;=46


1974 -- Australia: Aborigines demonstrate for recognition of land rights.


1979 -- Everybody's favorite talking horse, Mr. Ed, dies.


1980 -- Cat climbs 70-foot wall in Yorkshire, England, to hide on roof from a dog.


1986 -- Sweden: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Prime Minister Olof Palme assassinated in Stockholm.


1986 -- US: Though the comments are on tape, badacting Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Ronnie Reagan denies that he called reporters "sons-of bitches" for asking questions at a photo op. Presidential mouthpiece Larry Speakes claims Reagan said, "It's sunny & you're rich."


1988 -- US: Passaic County judge signs the order dismissing the 1966 indictment of Hurricane Carter.


1989 -- Nevada-Semipalatnisk Movement to Stop All Nuclear Testing founded in USSR.


1991 -- Cease fire ends US offensive in Iraq.


1991 -- US: Three soldiers seek sanctuary as objectors to Gulf War in Riverside Church, New York City.



1993 -- US: Feds storm Branch Davidians cult compound near Waco, Texass, starting a 7-week siege that ends in a weenie roast.



1996 -- France: Maximilien Rubel (1905-1996) dies in Paris. Council Communist, maintained contacts with the libertarian socialists of Socialisme ou Barbarie (who in their turn greatly influenced the British Solidarity group) & the anarchist communists of the excellent magazine Noir et Rouge. Rubel was closely allied to Rene Lefeuvre whose Spartacus publishing house brought out a vast series of anarchist, council communist & critical Marxist books.

Maximilien RUBEL

[Details / context]


1998 -- US: Even though the imminent threat of military strikes has been averted by a UN agreement, 5,000 rally in New York City protesting US war & sanctions against Iraq. Demonstrations also held in at least 30 other cities.


1998 -- Andre Senez, French shoemaker, dies.

Militant in the Jeunesse Anarchiste Communiste (Anarchist Communist Youth) then in the Union Anarchiste, its parent organization, & then in the post-war Federation Anarchiste. Leaving the Federation in the 1950s, Senez attended meetings of Socialisme ou Barbarie along with Georges Fontenis. With Fontenis & Daniel Guérin, he was one of the founders of the Mouvement Communiste Libertaire (MCL).

http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue49/senez.html
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xub80_ici-et-maintenant-federation-anarch_news

2004 --

US: Permaculturalist, Dreamtime Villager, poet, Lyx Ish (b.1956) dies, LaForge, Wisconsin. Aka Elizabeth Perl Nasaw aka Elizabeth Was. Daily Bleed Patron Saint 2007 Permaculturist, polyartist, gourdista, Dreamtime Village stalwart (aka Elizabeth Was). "Xexoxial Endarchy" (Miekal & & the late Lyx Ish aka Liz Was) were the co-publishers of Novel Approach. They founded Dreamtime Village, “a rural experiment in combining the ancient technology of permaculture with the unlimited possibilities of hypermedia arts.” http://www.dreamtimevillage.org/articles/interview.html http://www.bigbridge.org/issue11/bios.htm

2008 -- Australia: "Radical ecosophist" Val Plumwood (b.1939) dies. Ecofeminist intellectual & activist, prominent in the development of radical ecosophy from the early 1970s through the remainder of the 20th century. Wrote the contemporary classic Feminism & the Mastery of Nature (1992).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/mar/26/australia.world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Plumwood
http://www.greenspirit.org.uk/resources/EcoFeminism.shtml



3000 --

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"We must have research for peace...

It would embrace the outstanding problems of morality. The time has come for man's intellect, his scientific method, to win over the immoral brutality & irrationality of war & militarism...

Now we are forced to eliminate from the world forever this vestige of prehistoric barbarism, this curse to the human race."

— Linus Pauling

http://www.nogw.com/