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> History of The
Man > October 16-31
The Man is always up to his dirty little
tricks. Let's take a step back and review The Man and the fight against
Him in history:
October 16:
1859 - Abolitionist John Brown led a group of about 20
men in a raid on Harper's Ferry.
2001 - Enron startled Wall Street by issuing a press release
announcing $1 billion in "one-time charges." In the press
release CEO Ken Lay assured investors that they shouldn't be too worried
about the announcement, because "the continued excellent prospects
in [our energy trading] businesses and Enron's leading market position
make us very confident in our strong earnings outlook."
October 17:
1978 - President Carter signed a bill restoring U.S. citizenship
to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
1979 - Trent Lott was awarded the Jefferson Davis medal
by the United Daughters of the Confederacy for his successful efforts
to get Jefferson Davis' citizenship restored. A tremendous event in
the legitimizing of the Confederacy in this country. Another win for
The Man. (More
Info)
1984 - A manual created by the CIA for distribution in
Nicaragua is revealed to suggest kidnappings and assassinations of civil
officials such as judges and police. (More
Info)
October 18:
1944 - Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia during World
War II.
October 19:
1960 - Martin Luther King Jr arrested in Atlanta sit-in.
October 20:
1973 - In the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, special
Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox was fired. For their refusal to dismiss
Cox, Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson resigned and Deputy Attorney
General William B. Ruckelshaus was fired. (More
Info)
October 21:
1967 - Thousands opposing Vietnam War try to storm the
Pentagon.
October 22:
1938 - Sure it's fun to photocopy your ass, but the copier
is really a tool of The Man. Another piece of equipment to make us work
harder, faster and keep up the breakneck pace The Establishment has
set. Today, in history, the first Xerox copy was made.
October 23:
1973 - Nixon agrees to turn over White House tape recordings
to Judge Sirica.
October 24:
1992 - "There. I paid for my ice tea and I even left
you a penny." -- Vice President Dan Quayle at Bob's Big Boy in
Claymont, DE. The waitress who served Dan Quayle said he had given the
cashier $1.00 for a 99 cent iced tea, said this, and then laughed. On
a stop to a Delaware restaurant, in Feb. 1992, Quayle bought a coffee
at Dempsey's Diner and left no tip whatsoever. On that occasion, he
had just come from a $500 a plate fundraiser at the Hotel Du Pont. This
time, after leaving his 1 cent tip, he went to a $250 a plate fundraiser
at the Rodney Square Club in downtown Wilmington. (Wilmington News-Journal,
10/24/92)
October 25:
1983 - U.S. invades Grenada, a country 1/2,000 its population
(U.S. wins).
October 26:
1944 - Harry S Truman publicly denies that he was ever
a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Harry S Truman reportedly joined the Klan for a short time in 1922,
for political reasons. Truman reportedly sought Klan backing in his
race for a judgeship in Jackson County, Missouri. In Hooded Americanism:
The First Century of the Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1965, author David M. Chalmers
writes: "Truman's own story was that when he was told to promise
not to give any jobs to Catholics he angrily withdrew and got his money
back." Another version cited by Chalmers "was that the future
President did go through with his initiation although he was never an
active member."
Bonus Truman quote: in 1911 Truman (who was 27) wrote to his future
wife, Bess: "I think one man is just as good as another so long
as he's honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. (More
Info)
1985 - On a poor call in 6th game, umpire Don Deckinger
starts a string of events costing Cardinals the 82nd World Series.
1988 - Donald Trump bills Mike Tyson $2,000,000 for 4
month advisory service.
October 27:
1988 - Larry Flynt paid hitman $1M to kill Hefner, Guccione
& Sinatra.
1994 - U.S. prison population exceeds one millionThe U.S.
Justice Department announces that the U.S. prison population has topped
one million for the first time in American history. The figure - 1,012,851
men and women were in state and federal prisons--did not even include
local prisons, where an estimated 500,000 prisoners were held, usually
for short periods. The recent increase, due to tougher sentencing laws,
made the United States second only to Russia in the world for incarceration
rates.
Of the characteristics of the prison population, the vast majority of
prisoners were male and behind bars on drug-related convictions, while
there was an extremely disproportional number of African Americans behind
bars compared with their distribution in American society as a whole
- more than half the nation's prisoners were African American, while
African Americans made up only 13 percent of the overall U.S. population.
This racial imbalance was also present in the 2,890 prisoners under
sentence of death in 1994 - 42 percent of the prisoners on death row
were African American. (More
Info)
October 28:
1955 - Birthdate of William
Gates, billionaire CEO of Microsoft. We hope we don't have to explain
to you why he is The Man...
1965 - The Jews, who killed Jesus, are absolved of this
unpleasantness by Pope Paul VI. This reverses a stand taken in 1205
A.D., where they were subjugated to eternal damnation.
October 29:
 2001
- Enron changes 401(k) plan administrators; employees' retirement plans
frozen during the middle of stock slide. Employees can't sell until
November 13.
There's some dispute about the length of the lockdown - Enron says it
lasted from Oct. 29 to Nov. 13; employees claim they couldn't make changes
between Oct. 17 and Nov. 19 - but what's clear is that employees were
unable to shift their investments away from Enron stock as its price
tumbled ever lower. Specifically, on Nov. 8, when the company restated
its earnings from 1997 to 2001, employees who had Enron stock in their
retirement accounts could not sell. They had to hold the stock, which
was then falling below $9 per share (from a high of $90 in September
2000). (More
Info)
October 30:
1954 - Defense Department announces elimination of all
segregated regiments.
2001 - Ford CEO Jacques Nasser was awarded $17.9 million
in compensation for his final year, during which the company posted
a $5.5 billion loss. In a related story, In January, 2002, Ford announced
plans to cut 35,000 workers from its payroll. (More
Info1, More
Info2)
October 31:
1517 - This guy stuck it to The Man...Luther posts 95
theses on Wittenberg. church. This marks the beginning of the Protestant
Reformation.
1984 - Puerto Rican tanker, San Francisco explodes spilling
2 million gallons of oil as the ship caught fire.
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