“History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.”
~Winston Churchill
1775 – In response to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill, King George III delivered his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James, stating that the American colonies had proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.
The Proclamation was written before Colonial Secretary Lord Dartmouth had been given a copy of the Olive Branch Petition which had been adopted by the Second Continental Congress one month earlier, ostensibly in a final attempt to avoid a full scale war between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain. The petition affirmed American loyalty to Great Britain and implored the king to prevent further conflict.
However, that petition was followed the next day by the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, making the success of the Olive Branch Petition highly improbable even if it had been received.
1926 – Silent film star Rudolph Valentino died at the age of 31. In his brief film career, the Italian-born actor established a reputation as the archetypal screen lover, and his death from a ruptured ulcer sent his fans into a hysterical state of mass mourning, with dozens of suicide attempts reported.
Tens of thousands of people paid tribute at his open coffin in New York City, and 100,000 mourners lined the streets outside the church where funeral services were held. Valentino’s body then traveled by train to Hollywood, where he was laid to rest after another funeral.
1927 – Despite worldwide demonstrations in support of their innocence, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were electrocuted in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery.
On April 15, 1920, a paymaster for a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts, was shot and killed along with his guard. The murderers, who were described as two Italian men, escaped with more than $15,000. After going to a garage to claim a car that police said was connected with the crime, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the crime. Although both men carried guns and made false statements after their arrest, neither of them had a previous criminal record.
The trial was regarded by many as unlawfully sensational. Authorities had failed to come up with any evidence of the stolen money, and much of the other evidence against them was later discredited. In the days leading up to the execution, protests were held in cities around the world, and bombs were set off in New York City and Philadelphia.
1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty. Believing that Britain would never take him on alone, Adolf Hitler decided to set aside his loathing of communism and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Agreeing basically to carve up parts of Eastern Europe – and leave each other alone in the process – Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, flew to Moscow and signed the non-aggression pact with his Soviet counterpart, V.M. Molotov.
Of course history proved that once Poland was German-occupied territory, the alliance did not last for long.
1970 – 5,000-7,000 UFW workers – led by Mexican American labor union leader César Chávez – struck the Salinas Valley growers in what was the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history .More workers walked off the job in the next few weeks while other unions supported the strike. Shipments of fresh lettuce nationwide almost ceased, and the price of lettuce doubled almost overnight.
The real purpose for the strike was a contract which included a special agreement by the growers to give the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, not the UFW, access to farms and the right to organize workers into unions.
The Salad Bowl strike did not end until March 1971 when the Teamsters and UFW signed a new jurisdictional agreement reaffirming the UFW’s right to organize field workers.
1996 – Osama bin Laden issued a fatwā (a legal opinion or decree handed down by an Islamic religious leader) against the United States, which was first published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a London-based newspaper. It was entitled “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.”
Saudi Arabia is sometimes called “The Land of the Two Holy Mosques” in reference to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in Islam. The reference to “occupation” in the fatwā referred to U.S. forces based in Saudi Arabia for the purpose of controlling air space in Iraq
2003 – Former Roman Catholic priest John Geoghan, a convicted child molester, was strangled and stomped to death in his cell by a fellow inmate in a Massachusetts prison.
Over a 30-year career in six parishes, Geoghan was accused of sexual abuse involving more than 130 boys. He was prosecuted in Cambridge, Massachusetts for charges of molestation that took place in 1991. Defrocked by Pope John Paul II in 1998, Geoghan was found guilty in January 2002 of indecent assault and battery on a 10-year-old boy in a swimming pool at the Waltham Boys and Girls Club in 1991, and was sentenced to nine to ten years in prison.
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2016 RayLemire.com. All Rights Reserved.
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