MAY 8 -- VERA ZASULICH  Russian anarchist, Direct-action assassin.

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England: FURRY DAY. A day of mischief, revels, entering houses by windows, Morris dances & the Furry Dance.
Bands of rogues prevent anyone from going to work or to school.

Sweden: AKE NAME DAY

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1429 -- France: Joan of Arc raises the Siege of Orleans.


1737 -- Stand By Me?: Very large historian Edward Gibbon lives (1737-1794). Revered for his command of historical perspective & literary style rather than his conclusions. His personal habits were peculiar &, according to some contemporary comment, he was so filthy that one could not stand close to him.

Gibbon was smitten with Lady Elizabeth Foster, the Duke of Devonshire's mistress. He dropped, one day, to his knees with a proposal of marriage. When she bids him rise, the corpulent author, after a brief struggle, is obliged to admit that he can do no such thing.

Religious reformer Hannah More writes: "How many souls have his writings polluted! Lord preserve others from their contagion!"

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/egibbon.htm
http://www.his.com/~z/gibbon.html

1781 -- US: Maple Leaf Rag? American colonel Ethan Allen & his brothers, desperate to secure Vermont's independence from New York, opened private negotiations with the British, allegedly aimed at making the area between the Connecticut & Hudson Rivers a province of Canada.


1783 -- England: Philidor plays three simultaneous games of blindfold chess; he wins 2 & draws 1 (first blindfold chess match in Britain).
[Source: Robert Braunwart] [Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]


1784 -- US: First recorded deaths from hail in America occurs, Winnsborough, North Carolina, where hailstones up to 9 inches in diameter kill several men & numerous farm animals (kills "negroes, sheep, lambs & geese"). First recorded human fatalities from hail in the US.


1788 -- The last three volumes of "The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire" appear.


1788 -- Moliere play "The School for Wives" opens in NY.



1792 -- Canada: British Captain George Vancouver sights, renames, Mt. Rainier (Washington State). The Indian name was (truthfully!), Mt. Fred.



1794 -- Robert Burns poem "Scots Wha Hae" is published, "Morning Chronicle."


1796 -- France: Francois Bebeuf's conspiracy to restore the 1793 constitution begins.


1802 -- Hungary: An ice mass 1 x 1 x « m falls from the sky.


1824 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader William Walker filibuster, American president of Nicaragua, lives.


1828 -- US: American Peace Society founded.


1838 -- England: Working Men's Association draws up the People's Charter; Chartist movement for British workers' rights.


1848 -- Poland: Insurrection in Posen against the Prussians is crushed.



1853 -- France: First Major Train Wreck: near Bellevue, a locomotive axle breaks on a train returning from a celebration of the King's birthday; the passenger cars telescope into each other & catch fire, killing 53.
http://www.seacoastnh.com/The_Arts/For_Better_or_Verse/The_Locomotive_and_the_Snow-flakes/


1854 -- US: William Walker's invaders of Sonora surrender to the US, in California.


1863 -- International Red Cross founded.


1876 -- Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, lives.

...But this is a good time to reflect on how dusty,
scarred by worn sandals, dirty between the toes, grime
on the calloused soles, the apostles' feet would have been.
And mind moves on to worse: old winos stumbling along,
unwashed, their long nails thick as horn, shoes wrong-sized, broken.
And not just winos — anyone homeless, who has to keep moving all day
with no place to go, even if shelter at night
gives them a chance to bathe their blisters, must know
week by week an accretion of weariness, once-good shoes
grown thin...

— from Feet by Denise Levertov

http://www.catholicworker.org/

1877 -- Mary Marcy, libertarian socialist, lives.



1878 -- US: First unassisted triple play in organized baseball, by Paul Hines, of Providence (in retrospect, it looks like this was not unassisted); Glenn Wright had one, in 1925, as noted in yesterday's Bleed.

http://www.littleleague.org/



1880 -- French writer Gustave Flaubert dies.


1884 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Harry S. Truman, famed in Missouri for his corrupt politics ("The Buck Stops Here"), & nationally for being defeated by Dewey (Dewey decimal system defeats Truman) in the 1948 Presidential election, lives.

Say hello to my god, I'd like you to meet my dealer
He split with my wad, you know I'd never squeal or
He'd damage my bod, he'd pull out his rod, he'd plant me in sod
Could be danger
I'll move to Brazil
Forget the bucks, bucks in the bank
Bucks, bucks in the bank
Bucks, bucks in the bank

— The Bobs, Art for Art's Sake

http://www.metrolyrics.com/art-for-arts-sake-lyrics-bobs.html

"I fired MacArthur because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail."

1885 -- Italy: La Camera approva la spedizione di Massaua (180 a favore e 97 contro) dopo che la stessa č gią stata effettuata. E gli storici parlano di democrazia parlamentare!
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]



1886 -- US: John Styth Pemberton's Coca-Cola goes on sale, at an Atlanta pharmacy. Syrup for Coca Cola perfected, dentists rejoice!

http://www.cocacolaclub.org/


1891 -- Theosophical kingpin Madame Helena Blavatsky dies.


1895 -- Edmund Wilson, journalist, critic, poet, novelist, lives, Red Bank, N.J. e. e. cummings, characterizes him as "the man in the iron necktie." Wrote the banned Memoirs of Hecate County & To the Finland Station .



1896 -- US: Moses Harman begins publishing the weekly "Lucifer, The Light-Bearer" in Chicago. Previously published in Kansas since 1883.



1899 -- Kultured Kops?: Irish Literary Theatre is inaugurated in Dublin with W. B. Yeats's The Countess Cathleen . . . with cops present to protect the players.

Billy "Bud" Yeats was in love, hopelessly in love with Maud Gonne, for most of his life.

Maud married Major John McBride in 1901, their son was Sean McBride, co-founder of Amnesty International, & winner of the Nobel Peace prize.

John McBride was executed by the British for his involvement in the Easter Rising, 1916.

1902 -- Mt. Pele, on the island of Martinique, erupts, wipes out St.-Pierre, killing over 30,000, the largest number of people ever directly wiped out by a volcanic eruption.


1903 -- Drop-out painter Paul Gauguin dies.



1904 -- Photographer Eadweard Muybridge dies, Kingston upon Thames, England.

Daily Bleed alternate Saint   Photographic pioneer, theorist of motion & memory.



1911 -- México: Tijuana is captured by the anarquista Magonistes of the Mexican Liberal Party. Lower California is now almost entirely in their hands. The Magonistes encouraged the people to take collective possession of the lands, to create co-operatives & refuse the establishment of any new government.
[Details / context]
http://www.ephemanar.net/imagesdeux/tijuana.gif


1911 -- France: Archbishop of Paris calls for a boycott of Debussy's "Le Martyre de Saint-Sebastien" because Ida Rubinstein, a Jew, sings the saint's role.



1912 -- Canada: George Woodcock lives, Winnipeg.
Daily Bleed Saint May 12, 2008
Great Canadian anarchist, historian, educator.

Active in anarchist politics in the 1930s when his family returned to England from Canada to escape poverty. He was educated in England, where he worked in railway administration & as a farmer, free-lance writer, & editor. For a long period he was editor of the anti-war paper, "War Commentary" & the anarchist newspaper, "Freedom". Taught at the University of Washington in Seattle...

1913 -- Saima Harmaja (1913-1937) lives. Finnish poet, published her central works from 1932 to 1937. Her poems, after her death at the age of 22, gained cult status among young female readers.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/harmaja.htm


1914 -- Romain Gary lives (1914-1980). Also wrote as Émile Ajar. Lithuanian-born French writer. Samuel Fuller's film White Dog was based on one of his books, as was The Roots of Heaven by John Huston.
http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html


1915 -- Milton Meltzer lives. Author of books on social justice themes.


1916 -- US: Dr. Ben Reitman convicted & sentenced to 60 days in Queens County Jail.


1916 -- US: Founding of the American Federation of Teachers.
[Sources]


1916 -- Harold Lloyd film short, "Luke & the Bomb Throwers," is released (now lost).


1918 -- US: J.F. Rutherford & other Jehovah's Witnesses are arrested for interfering with the draft, Brooklyn, NY.


1919 -- First successful transatlantic airplane flight begins. US Navy Seaplane left Rockaway, New York, reached Lisbon, Portugal (with stops in Newfoundland & the Azores) 27 May.
http://www.creativity-portal.com/howto/artscrafts/paper.html



1919 -- Vera Zasulich (1849-1919) dies. Russian anarchist, then a Menshevik. Left a family of nobility for revolutionary activities.
[Details / context]

"As to Vera Zassoulitch, who also was acquitted by the jury, the Government ordered her re-arrest at the very doors of the court, & re-arrested she would have been if her comrades had not rescued her, leaving one dead in the riot which ensued."

— Peter Kropotkin, In Russian & French Prisons

1920 -- US: Socialist Party meets, NY, nominates Eugene Debs for US president (-5/14).


1921 -- France: Nathalie Lemel (1827-1921) dies, blind & miserable in an old people's home in Ivry. Revolutionist & feminist. Founded a bookshop in Quimper, then moved to Paris & became a bookbinder.

A Parisian Communard, she was sent to prison along with the anarchist Louise Michel.

Pardoned in 1879, she returned to Paris, working with "the intransigent." Nathalie eventually went blind & died in miserable conditions.

[Details / context]

1925 -- US: A. Philip Randolph organizes the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, [see August 25].


1926 -- US: Founding of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters by A. Philip Randolph & Milton P. Webster.
[Sources]


1928 -- Author / publisher Harry Crosby receives the Walter Berry library — 8,000 rare books. Berry was a friend, & Crosby was named residual legatee in July 1927. Berry died on October 12, 1927.
Source: See Geoffrey Wolff, Black Sun (Random House, 1976).
http://www.banger.com/banger/crosby/bio.html



1930 -- One of the earliest of the Beat Poets, Zen anarchist Gary Snyder, lives in Frisco, California.
http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html
http://www.bluesforpeace.com/six-poets.htm


1933 -- India: Gandhi begins 31-day fast in jail.


1936 -- Japan: In Tokyo, the Japanese anarchist movement is beheaded with heavy prison sentences of 19 of its major activists for "illegal activities". Toshio Futami, aged 34, is about to be sentenced to death (commuted). The anarchist stronghold, the Tōkyō Printworkers' Union, was crippled when nearly 100 of its members were arrested. During this month a further 300 anarchists are swept up in mass arrests.
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/world/as/japan/



1937 -- Reclusive American novelist Thomas Pynchon lives, Glen Cove, New York. Wrote V, The Crying of Lot 49 & Gravity's Rainbow.

She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like that, as the epileptic is said to- an odor, color, pure piercing grace note announcing his seizure. Afterward it is only this signal, really dross, this secular announcement, & never what is revealed during the attack, that he remembers. Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back.

— From The Crying of Lot 49

http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html

1937 -- Spain: (Saturday): Barricades are dismantled, except for the PSUC barricades, which persist into June. The Friends of Durruti distribute a manifesto reviewing the events of May. In that manifesto there is talk of "treachery" by the CNT leadership. ANARCHIST chronology, Friends of Durruti Group 1937-39, Agustin Guillamon
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/DurrutiColumnEarly.htm
http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/spain/sp001780/chap5.html
http://www.reocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8195/Durruti.html


1937 -- Spain: Creation of the International Antifascist Solidarity (S.I.A.).
... show details

Herrera was secretary of the General Council of the S.I.A. (International Antifascist Solidarity); his replacement in 1938 is Lucia Sanchez Saornil, the Spanish poet & artist, & founder of Mujeres Libres.

1942 -- US: The first "volunteers" arrive at Poston, Arizona (from Imperial Valley, California), one of 10 "relocation centers" imprisoning Japanese Americans. Through the rest of the summer, Japanese Americans were transferred from the "assembly centers" to Manzanar & Tule Lake, California; Amache, Colorado; Minidoka, Idaho; Topaz, Utah; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Rohwer & Jerome, Arkansas; & Gila River & Poston, Arizona. (In America we do not call these "concentration camps"...we are the Good Guys.)
[Sources]


1943 -- India: Mahatma Gandhi begins a 21-day fast for Untouchables.


1944 -- El Salvador: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Pres. Hernandez Martinez retires during a general strike.

1945 -- Germany surrenders (VE Day), ending World War II in Europe.

http://www.suite101.com/ww2history

1945 -- Canada: 10,000 servicemen loot & vandalize downtown Halifax (2nd day).


1950 -- US: Agreement with France for arms assistance in Indochina is announced.


1952 -- US: Eisenhower announces $60 million in US aid for France's Indochina War; also US Army Sec. Frank Pace announces a 75-ton atomic cannon.


1954 -- US: First shot-put over 60 feet — Parry O'Brien, Los Angeles.


1955 -- Gore Vidal teleplay "Visit to a Small Planet" premiers, on "Goodyear Television Playhouse."


1956 -- John Osborne play "Look Back in Anger" is first produced, London.


1957 -- US: Eisenhower calls visiting South Vietnamese Pres. Diem the "miracle man" of Asia. The US later gives the okay for his assassination.


1958 -- Peru: Everybody Must Get Stoned? War On Drugs? Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Vice-President Dick M Nixon is shoved, booed & spat upon, while being stoned, by protesters during his official visit. The war on Peruvian Marching Power begins.


1962 -- Belgium: An estimated 9,000,000 people participate in a ten-minute work stoppage to protest nuclear weapons.


1963 -- Vietnam: Troops fire on Buddhist religious celebration, Hue, in South Vietnam - 9 die; Buddhist uprisings against Diem begin.


1965 -- Well Put? First shot put over 70' (Randy Matson 70' 7").


1966 -- Harry Partch's "And on the Seventh Day the Petals Fell in Petaluma" premiers, UCLA.



1967 -- US: A federal grand jury indicts heavyweight boxing champion Muhammed Ali for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces. An all-white jury speedily convicts on June 20th.



1968 -- Paris 1968. Things are not what they were.

Wednesday Strong police forces still occupied the Sorbonne & the student union delivers an ultimatum to the Government. If the demands were not met they would 'liberate' the Sorbonne. Mon general changed his tune & said: 'The Government is ready to take the steps necessary for the adaptation of education to the modern world'. M. Pierre Sudreau, of the Party of Modern Democracy, said in the French Assembly that extremists had been trained in street fighting at two anarchist camps.

8 mai 68  Fermeture des lycées les uns aprčs les autres.

1968 -- Benefit for poster artist, one of the founders of the Family Dog, Alton Kelley at the Carousel Ballroom in Frisco.
http://www.rockument.com/kelley.html


1968 -- The world's 3rd most common book, "The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life," is published by Jehovah's Witnesses - 105 million copies are distributed by 1984.


1969 -- Vietnam: Worst helicopter disaster of the Vietnam War - 34 die (2,595th lost). Meanwhile the Vietcong offers a 10-point peace plan, including immediate US withdrawal.


1970 -- US: NY "hardhats" turn on a crowd of student antiwar protesters & beat them up as police look on.

Dick M Nixon & White House applaud.

On May 8, 1970, a large group of hard-hat construction workers assaulted peace demonstrators in Wall Street & invaded Pace College & City Hall itself to attack students & others suspected of not supporting the prosecution of the Vietnam war.

The riot, in fact, was supported & directed by construction firm executives & union leaders...

[Details / context]

1970 -- US: Born To Quit?: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dick M Nixon fires Gen. Lewis Hershey as director of the Selective Service (SS) & agrees to withdraw all US troops from Cambodia within 30 days. More than 250 US State Department employees send a letter to Secretary Rogers criticizing the US invasion of Cambodia; Daniel Ellsberg gives his first antiwar speech, St. Louis; University of Washington in Seattle closes in memory of the Kent State victims.


1970 -- Australia: Demonstrations against the Vietnam War are held in all major cities (70,000 in Melbourne, lead by MP Jim Cairns).


1971 -- US: Rev. Carl McIntire leads 15,000 bible-toters in a call for victory in Vietnam, Washington, DC.


1972 -- Vietnam: US institutes "Operation Linebacker" — the mining of North Vietnam's Haiphong Harbor; bombing of Hanoi.



1972 -- US: University of Michigan protest against ROTC & protests on dozens of US campuses, against the renewed bombing of North Vietnam (eg, Columbia University).



1972 -- US: Quite Odd? California starts odd-even license gas distribution . . . no one shows up on even days.


1973 -- US: Indians holding South Dakota hamlet of Wounded Knee for 10 weeks, surrender.


1974 -- Papa May I?: John Papa blew 140 smoke rings on one lungful of cigarette smoke.


1975 -- "NY Times" correspondent Sydney Schanberg reports that the Khmer Rouge is forcibly evacuating almost the entire population of Phnom Penh & at least 2 other cities. They can now join all refugees the US bombings have displaced.


1976 -- Bob Dylan & Willie Nelson perform a duet (Will the Circle Be Unbroken) at a benefit for Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, Houston, Texass.


1977 -- US: David Berkowitz pleads guilty in "Son of Sam" 44-caliber shootings. Claims he is "dog tired."


1979 -- El Salvador: Police kill 23 people & wound 70 outside the municipal cathedral of San Salvador. The victims were members of the Popular Revolutionary Bloc, a coalition of anti-government students, teachers, peasants & workers.


1983 -- USSR: This evening in Georgia 20 demonstrators are killed.



1983 -- John Fante dies, age 74. Stricken with diabetes in 1955, its complications brought about blindness in 1978, but he continued to write by dictation.

Despite his near invisibility, Fante still maintains a strong cult following. He remains a favorite of readers who enjoy bohemian urban fiction in the vein of Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, & Knut Hamsun.

http://www.genordell.com/stores/spirit/JFante.htm

1985 -- US: Unabomber's 8th bomb explodes at Boeing, Auburn, Washington — no injuries.


1988 -- Time Enough? Science fiction author Robert Heinlein dies. Avid supporter of the Vietnam War (along with Anne McCaffrey, Keith Laumer, et al). See Michael Moorcock's Starship Stormtroopers on SciFi Fascists,

Coffee comes in five descending stages:

Coffee,
Java,
Jamoke,
Joe,
& Carbon Remover."

       — Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

http://www.reocities.com/NapaValley/1872/rah.htm

1989 -- US: Putting the Cartel Before the Horse? Government scientists testify in the Senate that the first Bush Oil regime changed their scientific findings to minimize the global-warming threat — setting a fine paradigm for Sonny Boy.


1990 -- In the Chips?: Tom Waits wins $2.5 million when a Los Angeles court rules that Frito-Lay unlawfully used a Waits sound alike in its Doritos ads.
http://www.tomwaits.com/
http://www.prollos.com/tomwaits/list.html


1991 -- Iraq: We'll Be Back! The last US troops pull out of southern Iraq.


1992 -- Robert Redford documentary about Leonard Peltier, "Incident at Oglala," opens in NY & Los Angeles.
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/


1993 -- US: Claims it has evidence Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Saddam Hussein plotted to kill Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader George Bush (the old one rather than the idot youth).


1999 -- First annual New England Anarchist Bookfair, Boston, Massachusetts.
[Details / context]



1999 -- France: André Dupont (aka Aguigui Mouna; 1911-1999) dies, Paris. Agitator, propagandist pacifist, philosophical & individualistic libertarian.

Mixes pacifism & anarchist individualism, dating from 1951. Going bankrupt in Paris leaves him in the streets — where he develops his talent as agitator:

"It is while speaking that one becomes a loudspeaker."

Demonstrating alone, he harangues passersby in the streets of Paris. An early anti-nuke protester, he began his own newspaper, "Mouna Frčres." Seeking opportunities to be heard, Dupont, on several occasions runs in presidential elections as a "Non-Candidate." Bernard Baissat devoted a film to this anti-conformist & Anne Gallois wrote the biography, Aguigui Mouna: "Gueule ou crčve".

http://www.ephemanar.net/octobre01.html#mouna

1999 -- Yugoslavia: NATO bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade - three Chinese are killed. Chinese protesters burn the US consulate in Chengdu. Meanwhile Pope John Paul II & Romanian Patriarch Teoctist call for an immediate end to NATO bombing.


2001 -- The International Rescue Committee says 2 million people have died in the last two years as a result of the civil war in eastern Congo.


2006 -- Canada: Montreal's newly created 'Anarchist Theatre Festival' presents theatre pieces (8th & 9th). North America's first ever festival of anarchist theatre. Part of Montreal's annual 'Festival of Anarchy' culminating in the city's 7th annual 'Anarchist Bookfair,' May 20 & 21st, the largest anarchist event in North America.
http://www.ainfos.ca/06/feb/ainfos00018.html

3000 --

"A friend is someone you know about, someone you can trust.

A brand's a bit like that. You meet this friend through advertising....

Without advertising, how would you recognize your friends?"

— International Association of Advertisers

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