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Man > August 16-31
The Man is always up to his dirty little
tricks. Let's take a step back and review the timeline of The Man
and the fight against Him in history:
August 16:
1923 - Carnegie Steel Corporation established an eight-hour
work day for its workers. Wouldn't it be nice to have an eight hour
work day now?
1962 - Layoffs even hit the Beatles. Brian Epstein, manager
of The Beatles, handed drummer Pete Best his walking papers. Best had
been with the group for 3-1/2 years. Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) was
picked to take his place. One month later, the group recorded, Love
Me Do. According to Pete, he was the most popular Beatle, and "a
certain member of the group" didn't like this. (More
Info)
August 17:
1982 - Enton Eller becomes first draft
resister since the Vietnam War to be convicted for refusal to register
for the draft.
August 18:
1503 - Pope Alexander VI dies. He was
the father of seven illegitimate children, and during his reign chose
as his lover the lovely sixteen year old Guilia Farnese. A portrait
of Guilia dressed as the Virgin Mary appeared over Alexander's bedchamber
door, but by no means was she his only liaison.
1891 - A Presidential decree opens
900,000 acres in the Oklahoma Territory to white settlement, following
agreements by the Sauk, Fox, and Potawotamie Indians ceding those acres
to the United States. I'm sure they had a choice (sigh)...
August 19:
1953 - CIA ousts Iran's elected Mossadegh
Government (because it confiscated oil fields) and installs Shah. Shah
eventually murders tens of thousands.
1996 - Pageant officials order Miss Universe, Alicia Machado,
to lose 27 pounds in two weeks, or lose her crown. After all, they couldn't
have a beautiful, yet normal-sized, woman on television crowning the
next Miss Universe. (More
Info)
August 20:
1985 - Yet another tool of The Man to increase office
productivity .... The machine that revolutionized the world’s
offices, the original Xerox 914 copier, took its place among the honored
machines of other eras at the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Museum of American History. The document copier had been formally introduced
to the world in March of 1960. In just twenty-five years, the machine,
invented by Chester Carlson, a patent lawyer, had become obsolete enough
to make it into the museum.
1990 - Iraq moves Western hostages to military installations
as human shields.
August 21:
1831 - Nat Turner slave revolt kills
55 (Southampton County, Virginia).
August 22:
565 - Do you think The Man had something
to do with this? St Columba reported seeing a monster in Loch Ness.
August 23:
1972 - Republican convention (Miami Beach, Fla) renominates
VP Agnew but not unanimous - 1 vote went to NBC newsman David Brinkley.
August 24:
1961 - This is downright shameful - Former Nazi leader
Johannes Vorster becomes South Africa's minister of justice. What's
worse? That he got a job or that it had to do with "justice"?
August 25:
1988 - "What you guys want, I'm
for." -- Senator Dan Quayle to farmers on a local pork issue.
August 26:
1947 - 1st black baseball pitcher Don Bankhead (Hit a
HR on 1st at bat).
August 27:
1893 - William G. Taylor is executed at Auburn Prison
in New York. The equipment failed after one shock was administered,
but by the time repairs were made the prisoner had died. He is restrapped
into the chair and the dead man executed again. (More
Info)
1950 - General Foods blacklists Jean Muir of Aldrich Family
as a communist. (More
Info)
August 28:
1963 - Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech"
at Lincoln Memorial
1990 - Iraq declares Kuwait its 19th province.
August 29:
1904 - David Hyrum Smith, son of Mormon founder Joseph
Smith, dies in an insane asylum after 27 years of lunacy. His father
in 1844 had predicted that his unborn son would be named David and that
he would be "President and King of Israel". At least he got
the name right. (More
Info )
1957 - Strom Thurmond (Sen-D-SC) , deciple of The Man,
found the strength to speak for 24 hours and 18 minutes in order to
stall the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act -- that's right, the
act of Congress that provided for the establishment of the Civil Rights
Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors
to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote.
He began his filibuster by reading the texts of the election laws of
all 48 states. (More
Info)
1990 - Saddam Hussein declares America can't beat Iraq.
1994 - The Orange County Register prints the story that
China harvests organs from executed prisoners prior to executions. And
furthermore, that executions are scheduled according to organ transplant
needs.
August 30:
 1979
- The Man must be breeding killer rabbits! President Carter attacked
by a rabbit on a canoe trip in Plains Georgia. "It was hissing
menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight
for the president," a press account said. On this date, The Washington
Post put the bunny story on page one complete with a cartoon takeoff
of the famous "Jaws" movie poster entitled "Paws."
(More
Info)
August 31:
1935 - President Franklin Roosevelt's Revenue Act, which
aimed to take a cut out of the nation's fattest pocketbooks, was passed
into law. Aptly referred to as the Wealth Tax Act, the legislation increased
taxes on rich citizens and big business, while lowering taxes for small
businesses. Though the taxes were a seeming boon to a nation mired in
the Depression, they raised the hackles of business leaders and the
wealthy elite. The president, himself a child of affluence, was branded
a "traitor to his class," as well as a Communist.
The Revenue Act hardly paved the way for a wholesale redistribution
of wealth, but it did seek to rectify the imbalances in the American
economy. "Our revenue laws have operated to the unfair advantage
of the few," FDR reasoned when the act passed. "They have
done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic
power." (History
Channel)
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