Vijfde van Kan

May 4
Things that happened on this day that you never had to memorize in school:

1886: During a demonstration protesting the previous day's murders, a bomb explodes in Haymarket Square, Chicago. Between the bomb and the indiscriminate police firing that followed, eight police are killed and 60 wounded. The "Haymarket Massacre" results in the arrest of eight leading anarchists for conspiracy to commit murder; four are later executed, one dies in prison and three are pardoned.
*note: the murders referred to above, happened at a pro-labor demonstration. May day (the first of May) is celebrated in memory of the Haymarket Massacre and it's significance in the labor movement. If it wasn't for this demonstration and the drama surrounding it, we probably wouldn't have the 8 hour workday, 40 hour work-week, and overtime pay. Now, 118 years later, Dubya will probably take all that away because he 'won' the Iraqi war and most Americans are dumb motherfuckers.

1912: Great parade of women suffragists in New York City.

1938: Gestapo imprison (and later murder) Carl von Ossietzky, pacifist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Ossietzky died in a Nazi concentration camp.

1961: Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) begins organizing "Freedom Rides" to desegregate bus terminals in U.S. South.

1969: Several thousand march in the Arboretum to protest construction of a freeway that would have followed the Lake Washington shoreline throughout Seattle. Partially built ramps which would have connected the freeway to the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (Route 520) are still visible.

1970: Four students killed, 15 others wounded when National Guard opens fire on anti-war demonstration at Kent State Univ., Ohio.

1970: The city of Chicago unveils a new monument to policemen killed in Haymarket Square.

1983: Nuclear freeze resolution approved by U.S. House of Representatives.

1989: Thirty thousand students march for democracy to Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China.

1989: Oliver North is convicted in the Iran-Contra Affair.

1993: Dhammayietra, walk for peace, to Phnom Penh, begins, Siem Reap, Kampuchea (Cambodia).

1996: Six arrested in New York City museum of U.S.S. Intrepid in honor of Fr. Daniel Berrigan's 75th birthday.
*note: Daniel Berrigan and his brother Phillip are well-noted pacifists, priests, and outspoken lifelong protesters of war

May 5
Things that happened on this day that you never had to memorize in school:

1780: Units in George Washington's Revolutionary War Camp in New Jersey mutinied, but the rebellion was put down by Pennsylvania troops.

1818: Karl Marx born.

1821: Wycomb, England issues order that all unemployed shall be whipped.

1862: Battle of La Puebla marks Mexican Army victory over imperial France.

1865: First train robbery occurs.

1918: Maiju Lassila, Finnish author, journalist, and revolutionist, arrested and was shot and killed while trying to escape imprisonment.

1920: Arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti on alleged murder charges climaxes postwar anti-radical and anti-immigrant hysteria, Boston.

1920: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-American anarchists, are arrested in Boston for murder and payroll robbery. Eventually they are executed for a crime they did not commit. Climaxes postwar anti-radical hysteria of the Wilson-Mitchell period.

1925: In Scopes Trial, John T. Scopes is tried for violating a Tennessee law that forbids the teaching of evolution in schools.
*note: George W. Bush is an avid Creationist, i.e. he believes that the first humans were Adam and Eve, and that all evolution is God's will.

1960: A government spokesman announces that the plane shot down by the Russians on May 1 was a "weather research plane" and that Francis Gary Powers was a "civilian employed by Lockheed."

1969: Draft resisters burn 231 military induction orders, Los Angeles.

1970: In response to Kent State killings, protests engulf campuses across United States. The first protest occupation of I-5 occurs in Seattle as 1,000 U.W. marchers spontaneously seize the freeway.

1971: Last of 14,000 arrests in Washington D.C. anti-war May Day protests. 18 are arrested in Seattle during a 2,000 person anti-war march downtown.
*note: during last year's anti-war/pro-labor rights May Day protests, HUNDREDS of thousands of people were arrested around the world.

1979: Fifteen hundred gather in Livermore, Calif. to protest nuclear research laboratory run by the Univ. of California. Livermore becomes the focus of numerous rallies and direct actions in subsequent years.

1980: Bobby Sands, Irish political prisoner and member of Parliament, dies of hunger strike.

1982: Basque separatist group ETA murders nuclear engineer, Bilbao.

1991: Last U.S. cruise missile leaves Greenham Common Air Base, Britain, site of a decade of strident women's anti-nuclear protests.

1992: Mothers of soldiers demand return of sons from extra-territorial fronts, Belgrade, Serbia.

2000: Conjunction of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Moon. And we all know what that means.
*note: I have no idea what that means, could someone please enlighten me?