The God Who Wasn't There

A Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy

When Corporations Rule the World

Alternatives to Economic Globalization

Feminism Without Borders

Commercializat of Intimate Life
By Arlie Russell Hochschild

The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Skeptic's Dictionary

Be A Goddess

1892 Death of Jay Gould, entrepreneur.

1899 Philippine-American War: The Battle of Tirad Pass, termed 'The Filipino Thermopylae', was fought.

1900 The US Supreme Court declared that Puerto Ricans do not qualify for US citizenship.

1901 King Camp Gillette marketed in the USA a safety razor with a double-edged disposable blade.

1907 The liner Mount Temple was shipwrecked off the coast of Nova Scotia, and 730 people were rescued.

1908 Pu Yi became Emperor of China.

1911 Chinese republicans captured Nanking.

1911 Douglas Mawson began his Australasian Antarctic Expedition, which lasted three years.

1927 Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company unveiled the Ford Model A as its new automobile.

1928 London got its first public phone boxes.

1929 The first skull of Peking Man was found, at Tsjoe Koe Tien, about 50 km from Peking.

1930 Great Depression: US President Herbert Hoover went before Congress to request a US$150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.

1932 The Adventures of Charlie Chan was first broadcast, on NBC-Blue radio network, USA.

1942 Manhattan Project, USA: Following the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, at Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, one of the scientists, Enrico Fermi (pictured), sent a coded message to Harvard President James B Conant: "The Italian navigator has landed in the New World". 

"How were the natives?" came the reply. "Very friendly." The message was then sent to US President Franklin D Roosevelt.

Fermi then moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to start work on the nuclear bomb.

1952 The international press reported that George Jorgensen, Jr, a former member of the US armed forces, had been medically and surgically transformed into Christine Jorgensen. This was the world's first publicized sex change operation.

1954 Red Scare: The United States Senate voted 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute".

1956 The boat Granma, with 82 expeditionaries under Fidel Castro, headed off to Cuba to fight against Batista.

1972 Gough Whitlam became the first Australian Labor Party Prime Minister of Australia for 23 years. He was famously sworn in on the election night, shared all the ministerial portfolios for two days with his deputy, Lance Barnard, and took immediate first action using executive power to order the withdrawal of all Australian personnel from the Vietnam War.

"Custom dictated that Whitlam should have waited until the process of vote counting was complete, and then call a Caucus meeting to elect his Ministers ready to be sworn in by the Governor-General. Meanwhile, the outgoing Prime Minister would remain in office as a caretaker. However, unwilling to wait, Whitlam had himself and Deputy Leader Lance Barnard sworn in as a two-man government as soon as the overall result was beyond doubt, on 5 December 1972, the Tuesday after the Saturday election; they held all the portfolios between them. Whitlam later said: 'The Caucus I joined in 1972 had as many Boer War veterans as men who had seen active service in World War II, three from each. The Ministry appointed on the fifth of December 1972 was composed entirely of ex-servicemen: Lance Barnard and me.' The full ministry was sworn in on 19 December."   Source

1975 The Communist Pathet Lao seized power from the constitutional monarchy in the Kingdom of Laos, and established the Lao People's Democratic Republic.

1980 El Salvador: Four Catholic missionary women were killed by government-backed death squads (heavily supported by the USA).

1981 White mercenaries failed in the early stage of their coup against the left-wing government of the Seychelles. Forty-four of them were posing as golfers on holiday when a golf bag fell open at the airport to reveal a gun. All the mercenaries were arrested.

1982 Death of Marty Feldman, English comedian, witness at the Oz Trial.

1983 The international convention prohibiting inhumane weapons came into force. 

1986 Eurythmics lead singer, Annie Lennox, ripped off her bra while performing 'Missionary Man' in front of 10,000 fans in Birmingham, England.

1988 A cyclone with winds of more than 170 kph flattened Bangladesh, leaving five million homeless.

1989 VP Singh replaced Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister of India.  

1993 War on Drugs: Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, was shot and killed in Medellín.

1993 Space Shuttle program: STS-61 – NASA launched the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair an optical flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope.

1998 Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates donated $100 million to help immunize children in poor countries.

1999 The United Kingdom devolved political power in Northern Ireland to the Northern Ireland Executive.

1999 WTO Day Three: World Trade Organization delegates met as the core 50-block area of downtown Seattle was declared off-limits to protestors and most businesses in the area closed.

The 'civil emergency' declared on December 1, and a curfew, remained in effect. More than 225 protestors were arrested and held overnight, denied access to lawyers or phones. For the second night in a row, police and protestors clashed in the nearby Capitol Hill area, where many residents were gassed or shot with rubber bullets. Protests continue in other US cities and around the world as well (6,000 in the Philippines). Relative calm returned to Seattle.

"Seattle media begins to blame confrontations and acts of vandalism on Oregon's Eugene anarchists

"It was largely these protesters, sometimes swelling to 100, who broke windows throughout downtown, spray-painted the anarchist logo of an A in a circle on walls, windows and police cars, and punctured the tires of police cruisers, limousines and other cars.

"A movement of young anarchists in Eugene surrounds local writer John Zerzan, according to a recent Seattle Weekly article. A message from Eugene anarchists published in that paper criticized unions and other WTO opponents a 'part of the glue holding a rotting order together.'

"'It's time to create a new world from the ashes after the ruined one . . . Fight back and don't get caught.'"

Excerpt, December 1, 1999, Seattle Times

Source: The Daily Bleed

2000 American rock band, The Smashing Pumpkins, played their final gig at The Metro in Chicago, Illinois.

2001 USA, Enron scandal: Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection five days after Dynegy cancelled a US$8.4 billion buyout bid – it was one of the largest bankruptcies in the history of the United States.

When the Enron scandal hit the front pages, it has been shown by textual analysis of USA newspapers, Osama bin Laden (who had been front page news for three months, about the limit of the public's attention span for top stories), gave way to Saddam Hussein as the demon that George W Bush said American should now go gunning for. Critics have noted that Bush was closely allied with certain of the top executives of Enron, and also note the strage 'coincidence' of the insertion of Hussein into the mainstream media discourse at this time.

The Lies that Led to War (video)    Myths of the 'War on Terrorism' and Iraq

2004 The Nintendo DS was launched in Japan.

2005 At 6:07 am SGT, despite pleas for clemency from the Australian government, Amnesty International, the Holy See, as well as other individuals and groups, Australian citizen Van Tuong Nguyen (25) was executed by hanging in Singapore for drug trafficking. Throughout his trial, Nguyen claimed that he was carrying the drugs in a bid to pay off debts that he owed and to repay legal fees his twin brother Khoa (a former heroin addict), had incurred in defending drug-trafficking and other criminal charges.

Tomorrow: Agatha Christie's real-life mystery; Eureka Stockade

 Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

Rummy wins foot in mouth award

December 2, 2003 - 10:48AM

"US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld has won this year's Foot in Mouth award with a spectacular piece of gobbledegook.

"His dubious achievement is courtesy of the Plain English Campaign, a British pressure group that lobbies for government, consumer and other public information to be presented in clear, straightforward language.

"Judges felt Rumsfeld was speaking as clear as mud when he uttered the following at a press briefing:

"'Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.'

"Rumsfeld faced tough competition for his Foot in Mouth, including actor-turned-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said: 'I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.' 

"The Foot in Mouth award is to be presented at a ceremony in London tomorrow, along with seven Golden Bulls for corporate gobbledygook and laurels for good use of English by government, civil servants and the media.
Source

Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft' and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.

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