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| July |
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8000
anti-war marchers demonstrated in Boston. Their banners
read:
“
IS THIS A POPULAR WAR, WHY CONSCRIPTION?
WHO STOLE PANAMA? WHO CRUSHED HAITI?
WE DEMAND PEACE.”
The parade was attacked by soldiers and sailors, on orders from their
officers.
|
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A massive general strike and nonviolent protest in Guatemala
led to the resignation of dictator Jorge Ubico who
had harshly ruled Guatemala for over a decade.
|
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Juan
José Arévalo Bermejo |
Jorge
Ubico |
 |
On
March 15 of the following year, Dr. Juan José Arévalo
Bermejo took office as the first popularly elected
president of Guatemala, and promptly called for democratic
reforms establishing the nation’s social security
and health systems, land reform (redistribution of
farmland not under cultivation to the landless with
compensation to the owners), and a government bureau
to look after native Mayan concerns. A decade of peaceful
democratic rule followed, until a CIA-backed coup in
1954 ushered in a new, even more brutal era of dictatorial
and genocidal regimes.
[see
June 27, 1954]
|
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| The
United States exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini
Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. |
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|
Sixty-one
nations, including the United States, Britain and the
Soviet Union, signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which set up systems to monitor
use of nuclear technology and prevent more nations from
acquiring nuclear weapons. 190 countries are now signatories;
Israel, India and Pakistan remain outside the Treaty.
North Korea joined the NPT in 1985, but in January 2003
announced its intention to withdraw from the Treaty.
|
text
of the Treaty  |
|
 |
Publication
of the first monthly issue of Ms. Magazine, founded by Gloria
Steinem (“The truth will set you free.
But first, it will piss you off”), Letty Cottin Pogrebin
(“Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed
to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so
competent at everything else”), and others.
|
The
first issue |
|
 |
Vermont's
civil unions law went into effect, granting gay couples
most of the rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities
of marriage under state law. In the first five years,
1,142 Vermont couples, and 6,424 from elsewhere, had
chosen a Vermont civil union. |
|
| New
Jersey became the first British colony in America to grant
partial
women's suffrage. The new constitution (temporary if there
were a reconciliation with Great Britain) granted the vote
to all those “of full age, who are worth fifty pounds
proclamation money,” including non-whites and widows;
married women were not able to own property under common
law. |
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Alarmed
by the growing encroachment of whites squatting on Native
American lands, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh called on
all Indians to unite and resist. By 1810, he had organized
the Ohio Valley Confederacy, which united Indians from
the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee,
Ottawa, and Wyandotte nations.
For several years, Tecumseh's Indian Confederacy successfully
delayed further white settlement in the region.
Chief
Tecumseh
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Slave
ship
|
Early
in the morning, captive Africans on the Cuban slave ship
Amistad, led by Joseph Cinquè (a Mende from what
is now Sierra Leone), mutinied against their captors,
killing the captain and the cook, and seized control
of the schooner. Jose Ruiz, a Spaniard and planter from
Puerto Principe, Cuba, had bought the 49 adult males
on the ship, paying $450 each, as slaves for his sugar
plantation.
|
read
more
Joseph
Cinquè
|
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|
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Jobs
and Freedom march April 28, 1963
Washington DC
|
U.S.
Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of
1964 into law, thus barring discrimination in public accommodations,
employment, and voting. The law had survived an 83-day
filibuster in the U.S. Senate by 21 members from southern
states.
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|
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| "We have lost the South for a generation," said Pres. Johnson to an
aide, immediately after signing the Act, referring to an expected shift in white
southern voting from the Democratic to the Republican party in response to the
law. Massive demonstrations a year earlier had helped ensure passage of the Act. |
|
| President George
H.W. Bush (the elder) announced that the United States had
completed the worldwide withdrawals of all its
ground- and sea-launched tactical nuclear weapons [see September
27, 1991]. |
|
| Children
employed in the silk mills at Paterson, New Jersey, went
on strike for an eleven-hour workday and a six-day workweek.
With the help of adults, they won a compromise settlement
of a 69-hour week. |
|
4000
Britons chanting, “Hands off Vietnam,” demonstrated
against escalation of the Vietnam War in London. U.S. warplanes
had recently bombed the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi
as well as the port city of Haiphong. Police moved in after
scuffles broke out at the demonstration outside the U.S.
Embassy in Grosvenor Square; 31 were arrested.
read
more
|
 Actress
Vanessa Redgrave joins 25,000 two years later at Anti-Vietnam
war protest, Grosvenor Square.
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The
U.S. Declaration of Independence from King George III and
Great Britain began the first successful anti-imperial
revolution in world history. Signed in Philadelphia by
56 British subjects who lived and owned property in thirteen
of the American colonies, the document asserted the right
of a people to create its own form of government. The signers
were members of the 2nd Continental Congress which had
voted two days earlier for independence from the British
crown.
Read
the Declaration
|
|
Slavery was outlawed in
New York State as the result of the Gradual Emancipation
law passed ten years earlier. This freedom applied only to
those who had been 18 at the time of its passage. Enslaved
children born during the subsequent ten-year period would
not be freed until they reached the age of 21.
|
 |
At
the urging of Rev. William Hamilton, a freedman and carpenter,
and others, the end of slavery was celebrated in churches.
The Fourth of July had in the past been marred by young
white men attacking black Americans. |
More
on William Hamilton |
|
| The Republic of Hawaii
was proclaimed with Sanford B. Dole as president. It was
recognized immediately by the United States government. This
was the result of the successful overthrow of the Hawaiian
monarchy, then held by Queen Lydia Liliuokalani, and the
support by white Americans on the islands for annexation
by the United States. |
|
The Freedom of Information
Act, P.L. 89-487, became law.
It established the right of
Americans to know what their government
is doing by establishing
procedures for getting access to internal documents. |
|
|
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"Give
Peace a Chance" by the Plastic Ono Band was released
in the United Kingdom.
"Give
Peace a Chance" by the Plastic Ono Band was released
in the United Kingdom. The song was recorded May 31,
1969, during a "Bed-In" John Lennon and Yoko
Ono staged at the Queen Elizabeth's Hotel in Montreal
as part of their honeymoon. John and Yoko stayed in bed
for 8 days, beginning May 26, in an effort to promote
world peace.
Some of the people in the hotel room who sang on this were
Tommy Smothers, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Petula
Clark. Smothers also played guitar. This event promoting
peace received a great deal of media attention.
|
| Watch footage
from the hotel room recording session |
 |
|
|
A national
anti-war conference in Cleveland, Ohio, mapped out activities
against the Vietnam War and resulted in the founding of
New Mobe (mobilization).
read
more about the mobes
|
|
|
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| The Women's
Encampment for a future of Peace and Justice began eight
weeks on a farm just outside the Seneca Army Depot near Romulus,
New York. The purpose of the gathering was for the women
to learn about and together protest the escalation of militarism
and the weapons build-up being led at the time by the Reagan
administration. |
The flyer for the event |
|
The newly
freed African-American population of New York, led by men
on horseback, marched in an Emancipation Day Parade from
the Battery at the
foot of Manhattan to City Hall. |
Follow the route of the
parade |
|
| Buildings
for the 1892 Columbian Exposition in Chicago's Jackson
Park was set ablaze, and seven were reduced to ashes. The
fire was part of the chaos in reaction to Pres. Grover
Cleveland’s calling out federal troops to end the
Pullman Strike. The Pullman Palace Car Company produced
the sleeping cars used by most of the railroads. The contingent
of federal, state and local forces equalled the number
of striking workers. |
The
Pullman employees, who lived in company-owned housing in
Pullman, Illinois, had suffered massive layoffs and pay
cuts averaging 25%. The company refused
to cut the rent on the housing its employees were required to occupy, nor
would it bargain with workers’ representatives.
The Pullman workers’ cause had been taken up by Eugene V. Debs, the leader
of the American Railway Union, who helped organize a nationwide boycott of any
train that included a Pullman car. |
 |
Federal troops guarding the Arcade Building
in Pullman, Illinois |
read
the Pullman Strikers’ Statement read
more
|
|
|
|
On "Bloody Thursday," police
armed with machine guns opened fire against striking longshoremen
and their supporters, killing two, wounding 32 more by gunfire,
and injuring 75 others at Rincon Hill in San Francisco. |
Bloody Thursday, July 5, 1934, near Rincon Hill. |
|
|
The
National Labor Relations or Wagner Act became law,
recognizing
workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively.
It was signed into law by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
read
more about the act
|
|
|
Former
National Security Council aide Oliver North received a
$150,000 fine and a suspended prison term for his part
in the Iran-Contra scandal. That was a secret arrangement
directed from the Reagan White House that provided funds
to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels (despite specific congressional
prohibition) from profits gained by selling arms to Iran
(at war with Iraq at the time) in hopes of their releasing
hostages, despite Pres. Reagan’s claim that he would
never negotiate with the hostage-takers.
North’s conviction was later overturned because evidence
revealed in the congressional Iran-Contra hearings had compromised
his right to a fair trial.
|
The
real details on
Ollie North’s activities
|
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|
In
one of the worst cases of violent union-busting, a fierce
battle broke out between
the striking employees (members of the Amalgamated Association
of Iron and Steel Workers) of Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead
Steel Company and a Pinkerton Detective Agency private
army brought on barges down the Monongahela River in the
dead of night. Twelve were killed.
Henry C. Frick, general manager of the plant in Homestead,
near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had been given free rein by
Carnegie to quash the strike. At Frick's request, Pennsylvania
Gov. Robert E. Pattison then sent 8,500 troops to intervene
on behalf of the company.
read
more
|
|
 |
In
Nazi-occupied Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish diarist
Anne Frank and her family were forced to take refuge in
a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse under
threat of arrest and deportation to a concentration camp
by the Einsatzgruppen (Task Force), a part of the German
Gestapo.
read
more
|
|
|
Irene Morgan, a 28-year-old black woman, was arrested for refusing to
move to the back of the bus eleven years before Rosa Parks
did so. Her legal appeal, after her conviction for breaking
a Virginia law (known as a Jim Crow law) forbidding integrated
seating, resulted in a 7-1 Supreme Court decision barring
segregation in interstate commerce.
read
more
|
 |
| |
|
| As many as 500 students in Berkeley,
California, attempted to block trains carrying troops destined
for Vietnam along the Santa Fe Railroad tracks; there were
no casualties. Organized by the Vietnam Day Committee, this
was the first civil disobedience at UC-Berkeley against the
Vietnam War. |
|
| The
first military draft was instituted in the U.S. to provide
troops for the Union army in the American Civil War. Once
called, a draftee had the opportunity to either pay a commutation
fee of $300 to be exempt from a particular battle, or to
hire a replacement that would exempt him from the entire
war. |
|
|
Labor
organizer Mary Harris "Mother" Jones led the "March
of the Mill Children" over 100 miles from Philadelphia
to Pres. Theodore Roosevelt's Long Island summer home in
Oyster Bay, New York, to publicize the harsh conditions
of child labor and to demand a 55-hour work week. It is
during this march, on about the 24th, she delivered her
famed "The Wail of the Children" speech. Roosevelt
refused to see them.
the
March of the Mill Children
|
“ Fifty
years ago there was a cry against slavery and men gave up
their lives to stop the selling of black children on the block.
Today the white child is sold for two dollars a week to the
manufacturers.”
from
Mother Jones’s autobiography
|
 |
read
more about Mother Jones |
|
| Convened
at the onset of the Cold War, a group of scientists held
their first peace conference in the village of Pugwash,
Nova Scotia, Canada. The mission of the Pugwash Conference
was to “. . . bring scientific insight and reason
to bear on threats to human security arising from science
and technology in general, and above all from the catastrophic
threat posed to humanity by nuclear and other weapons of
mass destruction . . . .” |
|
Bertrand
Russell
|
Wealthy
industrialist and Pugwash son Cyrus Eaton had invited the
world’s greatest minds to his family home in Nova
Scotia and address the emerging threat of nuclear war.
The Conference became the basis for an ongoing organization
that deals with issues of weapons of mass destruction.
The 1995 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Joseph Rotblat
(one of the original signatories of the Pugwash Manifesto)
and to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. |
|
Albert Einstein |
Pugwash
home |
Fifty
years later . . .
25 scientists, diplomats and former military officers from
15 countries gathered for a “Revitalizing Nuclear Disarmament” strategy
workshop. The meeting was held near the Thinkers’ Lodge,
the site of the first meeting in 1957.
“
Fifty years ago from Pugwash, Nova Scotia, nuclear scientists
helped alert the world to the dangers of nuclear weapons, and
especially the newly developed hydrogen bomb,” said Paolo
Cotta-Ramusino, Secretary General, Pugwash Conferences on Science
and World Affairs. “Today, we are working with experts
from around the world for global action to revitalize nuclear
disarmament and the final elimination of nuclear weapons.”
Senator Roméo Dallaire, Honorary Patron of the Pugwash
Peace Exchange, said “It is appalling to observe the
increasing potential for many regional nuclear arms races,
shameless plans to modernize nuclear arsenals and bald-faced
threats of pre-emptive nuclear use,” said Senator Dallaire. “Only
by revitalizing discussion and implementation of disarmament
leading to abolition can we ensure that these genocidal devices
will never again be used.” |
|
The United States conducted its first test of the neutron bomb. The neutron
bomb was a tactical thermonuclear weapon designed to cause very little
physical damage through limited blast and heat but was designed to
kill troops through localized but intense levels of lethal radiation.
a
neutron bomb explosion at a test site
|
 |
|
| 2,000
American Indian activists and anti-nuclear demonstrators
marched through the Black Hills of western South Dakota to
protest the development of uranium mines on sacred native lands. |
|
|
Vermont became the first
British colony in America to abolish slavery when adopting
its first constitution following its breaking away from
New York.
|
read more |
|
The
Women's Peace Crusade organized a protest against the first
world war in Glasgow, Scotland. Processions from two sides
of the city, accompanied by bands and banners, wound their
way toward the Glasgow Green where they merged into one
demonstration of some 14,000 people.
read
more
|
|
|
Vietnamese
guerillas ambushed two U.S. advisors, Maj. Dale Buis
and Sgt. Chester Ovnand, are killed by Viet Minh guerrillas
at Bien Hoa, South Vietnam, making them the first U.S. casualties
in Vietnam since 1946.
|
|
|
Roy
Wilkins became the executive director of NAACP, the National
Association for the Advancement
of Colored People. He had edited the organization’s
magazine, Crisis, for fifteen years, and was one of the
most articulate of civil rights leaders. |
 |
Roy Wilkins
|
the
Roy Wilkins Memorial in Minneapolis
|
|
| The
International Court Of Justice declared that, in almost all
circumstances, use of nuclear weapons is illegal. |
|
|
During
World War I, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, leaders
of the No-Conscription
League, spoke out against the war and the draft. Both were
found guilty in New York City of conspiracy against the
draft, fined $10,000 each and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment
with the possibility of deportation at the end of their
terms.
more
about Emma and Alex
|
 |
| Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman in New York, 1917,
awaiting
trial on charges of opposing the draft during World War I. |
|
|
Albert
Einstein
|
Albert
Einstein, Bertrand Russell and nine other scientists warned
that the development of weapons of mass destruction had
created a choice between war and survival of the human
species. The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was published in
London and became the basis for the Pugwash Conference
of scientists two years later.
read
the manifesto
|
Bertrand
Russell
|
“Here,
then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful
and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or
shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative
because it is so difficult to abolish war.
The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations
of national sovereignty....”
|
“We
have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to
ask ourselves ... what steps can be taken to prevent a
military contest of which the issue must be disastrous
to all parties?”
|
|
Ku
Klux Klan (KKK) members near Georgetown, Illinois, gathered
for an ill-fated cross-burning. The meeting started an
hour late. When the Klansmen went to plant their cross,
it was too heavy to move. Three hours later, after the
cross was chopped down to a portable size, it was planted,
but would not light.
Finally, the Klan members gave up
and went home. |
 |
The
ugly history of the KKK |
|
 |
The
Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior (named after a North
American Indian legend), was blown up in Auckland Harbour,
New Zealand, killing one and sinking the ship.
The Rainbow Warrior then
|
The attack had been authorized by French President
François Mitterand because the environmental organization
had plans to protest France’s nuclear bomb tests in the
South Pacific.
The Rainbow Warrior today
|
 |
|
The
Niagara Movement, precursor of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), was formed in Buffalo, New York. Meeting at
the home of Mary Burnett Talbert were W.E.B. DuBois, John Hope
and 30 others who rejected the accommodationist approach of
Booker T. Washington (“The wisest among my race understand
that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest
folly . . . .”)
The Niagara Movement's manifesto was, in the words of DuBois, "We
want full manhood suffrage and we want it now . . . We are
men! We want to be treated as men. And we shall win." |
|
Founders of The
Niagara Movement at Niagara Falls
|
read
more about the Niagara Movement |
|
| The
American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, by George Mitchell, Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt
and 200 others. They gathered to organize in order to deal
with widespread and persistent poverty among native Americans,
and unjust treatment from all levels of government. |
 |
American
Indian Movement
|
more
background |
|
|
|
The
federal appeals court in Boston reversed the convictions
of Dr. Benjamin Spock and Michael Ferber who had been found
guilty of conspiring to counsel evasion of the military
draft in 1968. The judges considered their activities opposing
the Vietnam War covered under the 1st Amendment right to
free speech
[see July 9, 1917].
|
 |
Dr.
Benjamin Spock and
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. |
read
A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority co-authored by
Dr. Spock (1967)
|
|
John
Ehrlichman, former top aide to President Richard Nixon, and
three others were convicted of conspiring to violate a citizen’s
civil rights. Ehrlichman had approved a recommendation for
a covert investigation of Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 by writing
on a memo: "If done under your assurance that it is
not traceable."
Looking for information to discredit Ellsberg, agents of
Pres. Nixon’s re-election campaign broke into the office
of his psychiatrist. Ellsberg, a former Defense Dept. analyst,
had been responsible for public release of The Pentagon Papers,
a collection of documents outlining the U.S. history and strategy
in Vietnam, that had been classified as secret to avoid public
scrutiny. |
 John
Ehrlichman |
A simple Watergate
chronology |
|
| Massive
New York City protests decrying the first-ever wartime
draft lottery led to a bloody riot as a mob of 50,000
burned buildings (including the Colored Orphan Asylum
on Fifth Avenue), stores and draft offices, and attacked
police. Some clubbed, lynched, and shot large numbers
of blacks, whom they blamed for the war. |
|
By
the time troops returning from Gettysburg finally
restored order, 1200 had died over five days.
New Yorkers, spurred on by the Democratic leadership of Tammany
Hall and tired of the seemingly endless war, had been angered
by Pres.
Abraham Lincoln’s recent call for 300,000 more troops.
They especially resented the legal provision allowing a cash
payment ($300 commutation fee) as a way for those with the
means to avoid military service in the Union Army.
|
New York City draft riot , 1863 |
read
more about the 1863 draft riots |
|
The first Live Aid concert raised $75 million for agricultural
and technical assistance to Africa, many times what was
expected. Described as the Woodstock of the ‘80s,
the world's biggest rock festival (in London, Philadelphia,
Moscow and Sydney, Australia, simultaneously and linked
by satellite) was organized by Boomtown Rats singer Bob
Geldof to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. |
 |
 Bob
Geldof |
The
Republic of Ireland (Éire) gave the most donations
per capita, despite being in the throes of a serious economic
depression at the time. The single largest donation (£1m)
came from the ruling family of Dubai (Al Maktoum). |
|
more
about Live Aid '85 |
|
| Bastille
Day in France: Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops
stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a royal fortress converted
to a state prison, that had come to symbolize the tyranny
of the Bourbon monarchy. This dramatic action was proof that
power no longer resided in the King as God's representative,
but in the people, and signaled the beginning of the French
Revolution and the First Republic. |
 |
|
A
mere 22 years after the Declaration of Independence, Congress
passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to ".
. . unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent
to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the
United States . . . or to excite any unlawful combinations
therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United
States, or any act of the President of the United States
. . . ."
The Declaration: “...whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government....” |
read
the act |
|
Adrian
C. “Cap” Anson, both manager and captain
of the Chicago Whitestockings (National League), refused to
let his baseball team take the field as long as the Newark
Little Giants included their starting African-American pitcher,
George Stovey, in the lineup. "Get that nigger off the
field!" Anson was heard to say. Newark refused to allow
him to dictate the use of their personnel, but the game was
ruled a forfeit to Chicago.
The same day, the directors of the International League (which
included Newark) barred any of their teams from hiring black
players in the future. By the following year there were only
six black players left in four leagues. All-black teams were
formed, but the last of them, the Acme Colored Giants from
Celeron, New York of the Iron and Oil (I&0) League, stopped
playing in 1898. No African-American would play in white organized
baseball again until Jackie Robinson nearly 50 years later. |
|
The
Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 became law, the first in
a series of laws that ultimately became the Clean Air Act
in 1963.
This first law merely provided funding to the Public
Health Service to conduct research.
|
 |
read
more
|
|
 |
A
group of Iraqi army officers staged a coup in Iraq and
overthrew the monarchy of King Faisal II (who had ascended
to the throne at age four). The new government, led by
Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted in 1963 by a coup helped
by the CIA and led by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party—later
dominated by Saddam Hussein.
|
read
more |
|
|
|
The Spanish Inquisition, a centuries-long brutal effort by
the Catholic Church to root out heresy, begun in 1481,
was officially abolished by King Bonaparte. Spain’s
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had chosen Catholicism
as their religion and asked the pope to help purify the
people of Spain. Many thousands were forced to convert,
were tortured to encourage confession, or burned at the
stake.
|
 |
more
on the Inquisition |
witch
burning during the Inquisition |
|
| Following
World War I, the U.S. War Department announced that it had
classified more than 337,000 American men as "draft
dodgers." |
read
a brief history of Conscientious Objection in America |
|
| The
Longest Walk, a peaceful transcontinental trek for Native
American justice, which had begun with a few hundred departing
Alcatraz Island, California, ended this day when they arrived
in Washington, D.C. accompanied by 30,000 marchers.They
were calling attention to the ongoing problems plaguing
Indian communities
throughout the Americas: |
 |
 |
lack
of jobs, housing, health care, as well as dozens of pieces
of legislation before Congress
canceling treaty obligations of the U.S. government toward
various Indian tribes. |
They
submitted petitions signed by one-and-a-half million Americans
to Pres. Jimmy Carter. |
Alcatraz
is not an island |
|
 |
Soldiers
from all over Catholic Europe, known as Crusaders, overtook
the defenses of Jerusalem and slaughtered both the Jewish
and Muslim populations. “Many fled to the roof of the
temple of Solomon, and were shot with arrows, so that they
fell to the ground dead. In this temple almost ten thousand
were killed. Indeed, if you had been there you would have
seen our feet colored to our ankles with the blood of the
slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left
alive; neither women nor children were spared,” according
to Fulk of Chartres in his contemporaneous account.
Pope Urban II initiated the effort to wrest the Holy Land
from the hands of the “Infidel” (the city had
been under Islamic rule for 460 years) and assured those
who joined the
first crusade that God would absolve them from any sin associated
with the venture. |
| The
Sacking of Jerusalem |
read
first-hand accounts of the seige of Jerusalem
|
|
Firemen
and brakemen for the Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio
Railroads refused to work, and refused to let replacements
be sent in. They managed to halt all railroad
traffic at the Camden Junction just outside of Baltimore. The
railroad companies had cut wages and shortened the workweek.
After a second pay cut in June, Pennsylvania RR announced that
the same number of workers would be expected to service twice
as many trains.
The work stoppage spread west and eventually became the first
nationwide strike. |
 |
| A
contemporary artist’s rendering of the clash in Baltimore
between workers
and the Maryland Sixth Regiment during the
Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
The governor had called out
the troops on behalf of the railroad company. |
Background
and growth of the Strike |
|
The
U.S. Army’s
Manhattan Project succeeded as its first hand-made experimental
atomic bomb, known as the “Gadget,” was successfully
detonated at the top of a 30m (100 ft.) tower in the desert
near Alamogordo, New Mexico (at the Trinity test site now part
of the White Sands Missile Range). The original $6,000 budget
for the intensive and secret weapons development program during
World War II eventually ballooned to a total cost of nearly
$2 billion (more than $25 billion in current dollars).
|
 "Gadget"
explodes |
| |
Assembled
in the McDonald Ranch house nearby, the orange-sized plutonium
core, weighing 6.1 kg (13.5 lbs.), yielded an explosive
force of more than 20 kilotons (equivalent of 20,000 tons
of TNT).
|
| | |
