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387 Death of St Monica.

1471 Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Tewkesbury – Edward IV of England defeated a Lancastrian Army and killed Edward, Prince of Wales.

1493 Pope Alexander VI divided the New World between Spain and Portugal along the so-called 'Demarcation Line'.

1626 Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland (present day Manhattan Island) aboard the See Meeuw to become director.

1776 Rhode Island became the first American colony to renounce allegiance to George III.

1799 The Tipu of Mysore, Indian Muslim military leader, fought to the death when the British overwhelmed his capital at Seringapatam.

1814 Napoleon I of France arrived at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile.

1839 Sir Samuel Cunard founded the Cunard shipping line.

1842 Moreton Bay, Australia was declared a free settlement.

Founded on September 2, 1824, by John Oxley, Moreton Bay had a reputation as one of the cruellest penal settlements in the British Empire, inspiring an unknown balladeer to compose the folk song, 'Moreton Bay'. On September 10, 1825 the settlement, in what was then known as New South Wales, was formally called Brisbane. On June 6, 1859, Queensland, formerly known generally as the Moreton Bay District, was granted separation from New South Wales, Australia, as a new state, with Brisbane as its capital city.

1849 Death of Hokusai, painter and ukiyo-e artist.

The Vigilance Committee rousting the Sydney Ducks

1851 Members of California's first known gang, and the most-feared in San Francisco, the Sydney Ducks (from Sydney, Australia), were blamed by some San Franciscans for a fire in their town which followed an earthquake on May 1. Both events occurred during the California Gold Rush (1848 - '58).

It might well have been arson, and might well have been arson by an Australian: San Francisco had already been devastated by fire on December 24, 1849, and in 1850 on May 4, June 14, and September 17 – and it was alleged a man recognized as a Sydney-Towner was seen running from a paintshop on the southern side of Portsmouth Square, just before the building burst into flames. Hordes of Australians started looting once the fire took hold. It was commonly believed at the time that Australians had burned down San Francisco four times in a two-year period, all for illegal gain.

"Several looters were shot by enraged citizens, and at least one innocent man was killed—a sailor who was fired upon as he picked up a burning brand with which to light his pipe. As on the previous occasions when San Francisco was well-nigh destroyed by fire, the incendiaries had chosen a night on which the wind blew from the east and the north. The flames were thus carried away from Sydney-Town, and that vicious quarter was almost the only section of the city left intact by the conflagration. Three-fourths of San Francisco lay in ruins when the fire finally burned itself out ..."   Source

In San Francisco's gold rush days on the 'Barbary Coast', some of the Australian gold diggers (mostly ex-convicts) had formed tribes or gangs with names such as the 'Sydney Ducks' and 'Sydney Coves'. There were so many of them that the district in which they congregated, along the waterfront at Broadway and Pacific Street, and on the slopes of Telegraph Hill, had come to be known as Sydney-Town, on Sydney Cove. In June, a Vigilance Committee of 400 influential men was established. Many Aussies left the district after the June 10, 1851 lynching of John Jenkins, and the lynching of two Sydney Ducks named Samuel Whittaker and Robert McKenzie on August 24, and the vice and crime of the district petered out, but there was a Sydney-Town of sorts for half a century.

"A fifth Great Fire almost destroyed San Francisco. The entire business district was destroyed as the fire jumped from street to street. In less than 10 hours, 18 blocks, with 2000 buildings, had burned. Fire loss was estimated $12,000,000. Fire destroyed all but the buried hulk of the ship 'Niantic.' There was suspicion that the fire was set by the Hounds and Sydney Ducks. Loot from the fire was found in Sydney Town. The fire started at 11 p.m. on May 3 in a paint and upholstery store on the south side of Portsmouth Square and burned for 10 hours. James Welch of the Monumental Engine Co. was killed along with four others when they were trapped in an iron-shuttered building during the fire. The flames were so bright they were seen in Monterey."   Source

"These colonial criminals lived in ramshackle tenements and some used their ill-gotten gains to open pubs, giving them home themed names such as 'The Magpie' and 'Jolly Swagman'. The taverns doubled as brothels, gaming halls and opium dens where the currency was gold dust. Pubs and opium dens were always busy due to the miserable lives men were forced to live, a successful prospector could make $8 a day but profiteering was astronomical, eggs were sold for $3 each, an apple $1 and a pair of new boots could cost as much as $100. However most prospectors weren't successful, most saw their dreams go up in smoke. One in five died as a result of disease, accidents working their claim, malnutrition, homicide or suicide so alcohol, drugs and sex were popular distractions. Two of the more infamous pubs were 'The Boar's Head' and 'Goat & Compass', the first run by former NSW convict George Haggerty who attracted crowds by getting one of his prostitutes to have sex with a boar on stage. The second, owned by another Sydney ex-con, paid down and out Aussie prospector 'Dirty' Tom McAlear to eat and drink excrement to entertain crowds. McAlear made a living eating anything people gave him for 10c, when he was arrested in 1852 for bizarre public behavior he told police he had been continually drunk for seven years and hadn't bathed in that period of time either.

"The Australian pubs were frequented by the worse element of San Francisco, robbery, murder and assault were regular occurrences outside when prospectors lost or won gold gambling. The streets and alleyways along the waterfront at Broadway & Pacific Streets were lined with beggars, prostitutes and criminals waiting for a victim. 'It was dangerous in the highest degree for a single person to venture within its bounds. Even the police hardly dared enter there; and if they attempted to apprehend some known individuals, it was always in a numerous, strongly-armed company. The lawless inhabitants of the place united to save their luckless brothers and generally managed to drive the assailant away' Arson, burglary, vicious rape and assaults were all hallmarks of the Sydney Ducks, whenever an atrocious crime was committed locals would say, 'the Sydney Ducks are cackling in the pond'.

"Not before or since had the Americans seen a criminal element so vicious or all powerful as the Sydney Ducks, the blood stained streets of Prohibition era Chicago tame by comparison to the terror these Australians unleashed on San Francisco."   Source

Infamous USA lynchings    Crimes of the SF Committees of Vigilance

Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld    More

1855 The first women's hospital opened, New York, USA.

1863 Battle of Taranaki between white settlers and Maoris, New Zealand.

1863 American Civil War: Battle of Chancellorsville – The battle ended with a Union retreat.

1886 The Haymarket Square Bombing

A bomb killed seven Chicago, Illinois, USA, police officers as they attacked demonstrators at a labor rally protesting police brutality the previous day at McCormick Reaper Works. Policeman Mathias J Degan was killed almost instantly and seven other policemen later succumbed to injuries; four others besides were killed.

Earlier in the day there had been anarchists addressing the crowd, so the crime was slated home to proponents of the political ideology of anarchy, despite the fact that no evidence for such a link could be demonstrated.

A frame-up ensued and all the men targeted by the police were found guilty: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg and George Engel were given the death penalty; Oscar Neebe, Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab were sentenced to life imprisonment. On November 10, 1887, Lingg committed suicide by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth. The following day Parsons, Spies, Fisher and Engel were executed.

Eventually those convicted of the crimes were pardoned by the State of Illinois after a worldwide protest at a frame-up. Unfortunately, this did not occur in the lifetime of all the victims of the police revenge. On June 26, 1893, Neebe, Fielden, and Schwab, Haymarket anarchists not already hanged by the State of Illinois the previous day, were pardoned by Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld. The show trial and convictions were a travesty, but conservative reaction to Altgeld's action effectively ended his political career. The Haymarket case gained worldwide attention for the labor movement, and sparked off the tradition of May Day labor rallies in many cities around the world.

More    Haymarket Square Riot, at Wikipedia    Haymarket Affair Downunder

More on Haymarket    The Dramas of Haymarket    Haymarket chronology

Evidence from the Haymarket affair    The Physiognomy of the Anarchists

On-Line Textual Resources: Representing Dissent: Immigrant-American Anarchists

1887 Sydney, Australia: WHT McNamara and six others met as a socialist group and began taking members. They held debates on Sundays and out of these, and open-air meetings, grew the foundation of the Australian Socialist League (launched on August 26 at 533 George St, Sydney), with McNamara, George Black and Thomas Walker as leaders. On August 27 someone showed the leaders a copy of 25-year-old Bob Winspear's newspaper, the Radical, which had been launched on March 12, and McNamara decided to arrange with Winspear to make it the official organ of the ASL. From August, 1888, it was called Australian Radical. The ASL reading rooms housed more than 220 foreign newspapers, many of them radical. Winspear was a Modern Socialist – a follower of William Morris – and the ASL was not. Winspear wrote:

"There are two kinds of Socialists – those who follow LIBERTY, and those who follow AUTHORITY; the latter are State Socialists ... State Socialism is unrestricted AUTHORITY, which involves a denial of true co-operation, and winds up in slavery, as Herbert Spencer has so well and ably shown. Modern Socialism aims at unrestricted Liberty and equitable co-operation."

The newspaper finished up on September 28, 1889, with recriminations flying between Winspear and the League. The League itself fell to pieces around that time, and the Australian Radical re-emerged even more strongly in 1890. The Australian Workman, which commenced publication on September 22, 1890 inauspiciously with a conman (Joseph Crouch aka 'Rev. Dr Oswald Keating') as first editor, filled the vacuum left by the demise of the ASL's failed paper, and although officially published by the Trades & Labor Council of Sydney, was more or less controlled by the ASL.

Early progressives in the Book of Days    More

1887 The first modern communitarian experiment in Washington state, USA: The Puget Sound Cooperative Colony was founded at Port Angeles.

CounterCulture Wiki     More

1891 Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland: Sherlock Holmes, locked in a titanic hand-to-hand struggle with his archenemy Professor James Moriarty ("the Napoleon of crime"), fell to his presumed death, as did the villain.

However, Holmes's creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, received so many letters demanding that he bring Holmes back, and such criticism from his publishers, that he was convinced to resurrect his famous character. The Adventure of the Empty House had Conan Doyle explaining that only Moriarty fell over the cliff, but Holmes had allowed the world to believe that he too had perished while he dodged the retribution of Moriarty's underlings. Holmes hid out in England for two years, unbeknown to the public, although known to criminals and the police.

In his memoirs Conan Doyle quotes a reader, who judged the later stories inferior to the earlier ones, to the effect that when Holmes went over the Reichenbach Falls, he may not have been killed, but he was never quite the same man after.

Conan Doyle himself is inconsistent on Watson's familiarity with Moriarty. In The Final Problem, Watson tells Holmes he has never heard of Moriarty. But in The Valley of Fear, set earlier on, Watson already knows of him as "the famous scientific criminal".

Sherlock Holmes at Wikipedia    Reichenbach Falls at Wikipedia 

The Final Problem online    Shop Sherlock Holmes 

1895 Australian boxer Young Griffo (1871 - 1927) starred in Young Griffo vs. Battling Charles Barnett (filmed on the roof of Madison Square Garden, on this day), the first motion picture to be screened before a paying audience, on May 20, 1895 at 153 Broadway in New York City.

1904 Charles Rolls and Henry Royce signed a provisional agreement to collaborate in the manufacture of automobiles.

1910 The Royal Canadian Navy was created.

1912 Italy occupied the island of Rhodes.

1919 May Fourth Movement: Student demonstrations took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which had transferred Chinese territory to Japan.

1921 The libertarian and utopian 'Home Colony' in Washington State, USA, ended.

1926 British workers began the first-ever general strike.

1930 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience, was arrested by armed policemen and imprisoned in Yeravada jail without trial. One hundred thousand persons were arrested. There was no session of the Congress in December as all the leaders were in jail.

1932 In Atlanta, Georgia, mobster Al Capone began to serve an eleven-year sentence for tax evasion.

1942 World War II: Battle of the Coral Sea – The battle began with the launch of attack aircraft from American and Japanese aircraft carriers.

1945 World War II: Liberation of the concentration camp Neuengamme near Hamburg by the British army.

1945 World War II: Surrender of the North Germany army to Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

1946 In San Francisco Bay, US Marines from the Treasure Island Marine Barracks stopped a two-day riot at Alcatraz federal prison. Five people were killed in the riot.

1948 Norman Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published.

1959 The first Grammy Awards were announced.

1961 American civil rights movement: 'Freedom Ride' (biracial) bus trips began throughout the American South, organised by James Farmer and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to desegregate bus terminals. Many northern civil rights activists joined their southern compatriots in demonstrations for integration of public places, challenging non-compliance of 1957 and 1960 civil rights legislation.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1969 USA: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was cancelled after the brothers failed to submit an episode before its broadcast date.

1970 Vietnam War: Kent State shootings – The Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after the ROTC building was burnt down, opened fire on students protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia. Four students were killed and 9 wounded. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young wrote a famous song, 'Ohio', about the killings.

The story behind the famous Kent State killing photo

1970 Journalist Seymour Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for his story on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

1975 Death of Moe Howard (b. 1897), comedian (Three Stooges).

1979 Margaret Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1980 Death of Josip Broz Tito (b. 1892), president of Yugoslavia.

1983 USA President Ronald Reagan announced support for the Nicaraguan Contras in their struggle against the Sandinistas.

1987 Paul Butterfield (Butterfield Blues Band), 44, died due to complications of a drug overdose.

1989 Thirty thousand students marched for democracy to Tienanmen Square, Beijing. The action led to the Tienanmen Square Massacre of June 4.

1989 Iran-Contra Affair: Former White House aide Oliver North was convicted of three crimes and acquitted of nine other charges. The convictions, however, were later overturned on appeal.

1994 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed a peace accord regarding Palestinian autonomy granting self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

1998 A federal judge in Sacramento, California gave 'Unabomber' Theodore Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepted a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.

1999 Several tornadoes hit the Midwest of the United States during the night, killing at least 45.

1983 Space Shuttle Challenger made its maiden voyage into space.

2005 Death of David Hackworth  (b. 1930), US Army officer and military journalist who moved to Australia and wrote extensively against war.

2006 "On the subject of numbers, the Mail reports that Thursday [ie, today – PW] will be 'a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and one that has gone largely unnoticed until now. [It] will see us hit precisely 01.02.03.04.05.06.' -- or two minutes and three seconds past 1am.

"'The world has not seen a date like it since 0.0.0.0.0.0 -- midnight at the turn of the millennium. Unless, of course, you live in the US, when the date was 01.02.03.04.05.06 on April 5 this year. This is because in the US format the month comes before the day'."   The Wrap

Tomorrow: Napoleon's Aussie willow trees

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