DECEMBER 5

1349 -- Good christians massacre Jews at Nuremberg.

1770 -- Six of the British troops involved in the Boston Massacre found innocent, largely due to defense attorney John Adams' intimation that Crispus Attucks, America's first black hero, may have caused "the dreadful carnage of that night" with his "mad behavior...at the head of...[a] rabble of Negroes..."

1892 -- Someone call an abortionist! Josephine Herbst born, Sioux City, Iowa. Radical author of Rope of Gold (1939), The Executioner Waits (1934), & Behind the Swastika (1936).

1912 -- General Strikes in both Germany & US in response to declarations of war yesterday forcing cancellation of the "war" within the week. They were just lazy. Real patriots like Bush and Cheney may not have fought, but at least they worked, occationally.

1919 -- Representative Isaac Siegel, after a trip to Ellis Island yesterday, declares he has discovered how anarchists are made:

"Books in our public libraries help to make anarchists," he said. "I found a boy on the Island -- Thomas Buhokanob, 17 years old, a native of Russia, who came here seven years ago. He was educated in Public School 38. He read anarchist books out of the Harlem Public Library. Then he helped circulate Emma Goldman's 'Mother Earth.' After that he went to Greenpoint, where he organized Russians who could not speak English and taught them what he had learned about anarchy.

"He told me he did not believe in the Constitution, in any form of government or in God."

1929 -- American League for Physical Culture, (nudist society) founded New York City. Sick, degenerate perverts.

1932 -- German physicist and socialist Albert Einstein fleeing patriotic Germany, granted a Visa by fellow socialists.

1941 -- Lead domestic American news stories today are a car crash in Baltimore, a train wreck in Kentucky, the death of a Civil War veteran, and the murder of a 12-year-old girl at a "petting party." In Seattle, a gun-toting burglar breaks into a local doctor's home at 4:30 a.m., and makes off with a purse's entire contents: 15 cents. As there are only 16 shopping days til Christmas, newspapers are packed with ads, which link consumer goods to the defense push ("This Christmas...Give the 8 Freedoms of (Glover) Pajamas That Really Fit!") The New York Times headlines its story on Japan's aggressive tone: "Japan rattles sword but echo is pianissimo." Life magazine says "Japan is desperate and getting weaker every day."

1955 -- Two largest US labor organizations merge to form the AFL-CIO, with membership about 15 million. George Meany president. Wage inflation makes baby Jesus cry.

1955 -- Montgomery, Alabama civil-rights bus boycott begins. Lasts for 54 weeks. Whiners want the preferential treatment of getting to sit whereever they want.

1963 -- French soldiers stop negro protest march from Accra, Ghana against French nuclear weapons tests. Western Sahara, Africa.

1965 -- Aircraft loaded with a nuclear bomb rolls off a US aircraft carrier somewhere in the mid-Pacific.

1981 -- The small-government Reagan administration acts to widen the role of intelligence agencies and enable the CIA to spy on US citizens.

1982 -- Reagan says General Efrain Rios Montt, ruler of Guatemala, is "totally dedicated to democracy," despite Montt having declared a state of seige which, he said, would let his government "kill people legally." Amnesty International says his government practiced "widespread killing, including extrajudicial execution of large numbers of rural noncombatants, including entire families as well as persons suspected of sympathy with violent or nonviolent opposition groups." Reagan calls these charges "a bum rap", and says he is leaning toward providing military aid to Montt.

1984 -- 93 workers killed in mine disaster in Taiwan. Gods wraith for too many government safty regulations. Maybe they should have gotten REAL jobs.

1985: According to his later testimony, John Poindexter, the day after taking over the post of National Security Advisor, gets Reagan to sign a "finding" retroactively authorizing the trade of arms for hostages.

Back to main page

Who we are, what we can do