3.28.2017 Day in History

Both the Czech Republic and Slovakia today celebrate Spring with Teachers Day; on a path to plutocracy and plunder in Rome nineteen hundred eighty years ago, Caligula availed himself of the title of Principate en route to the dictatorial regime that has ever characterized the imperium; a hundred fifty-six years later, in 193, as if to confirm this point, Praetorian guards murdered Pertinax, whom their charge was to protect, so as to auction off the throne to a higher bidder; another six and a half centuries, plus two years, onward in time and space, in 845, a slightly different sort of imperial bribery transpired when a Viking leader extorted a ransom to discontinue his followers’ sacking of medieval Paris; five hundred thirty-four years before the here and now, the male infant cried out who would mature as the renowned artist and architect, Raphael; two hundred forty-three years ago, British Parliament adopted the Coercive Acts; twenty years further onward in time, in 1794, the estimable philosopher and theorist Marquis de Condorcet breathed his last; two decades exactly henceforth, in 1814, British naval forces routed American ships in a battle off the Chilean port of Valparaiso; another forty years past that point in space and time, in 1854, France joined England in declaring war on Russia over Crimea; fourteen years thereafter, in 1868, the baby boy opened his eyes who would rise as the esteemed thinker and writer, Maxim Gorky; ten hundred ninety-five days yet later on, in 1871, rebels and their sympathizers established the Paris Commune, in opposition to which the French and German military combatants joined forces; in a precursor of the first Sino French War a dozen years subsequent to those precise space-time coordinates, in 1883, around the globe in Vietnam, French imperial forces won a victory at Gia Cuc on the way to their country’s conquest of Indochina; twenty-six years past that instant, in 1909, around the globe in North America, a male baby bounced into our midst who would become the crafty and popular storyteller and author Nelson Algren; half a decade afterwards, in 1914,  the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal was born; twenty years nearer to now, in 1934, another baby boy took an initial breath on his way to a life as interlocutor of wealth and environmental causes, Lester Brown; three hundred sixty-five days farther along time’s path, in 1935, St. Louis gas plant workers became the first wage-earners to attempt a strike against a utility company; an additional year after that, in 1936, the male child shouted out whom fate had designated as the writer and Nobel Laureate, Maria Vargas Llosa; three additional years henceforth, in 1939, fascist Spanish forces consolidated their control of the country when they overran Madrid’s defenses after a three year siege; two years more proximate to the present pass, in

CC BY by atelier de betty

1941, the iconic storyteller and feminist thinker, Virginia Woolf, lived out her final passage; another year yet further down the pike, in 1942, a baby boy was born who would rock the worlds of philosophy and criticism as Daniel Dennett; a thousand four hundred sixty-one days subsequently, in 1946, the nascent Atomic Energy Commission issued the critically important Acheson-Lilienthal Report that called for international ‘control’ of nuclear matters under the aegis of the United States government that had just incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki; another half decade forwarded toward the future, in 1951, on the other side of the planet, French troops won an initial battle in the First Indochina War against Viet Minh fighters; seven years nearer to now, in 1958, the purported father of the blues W C Handy drew his last breath; forty-nine years back, fascist police in Brazil escalated their reign of terror against citizens by shooting down a high school student protester in Rio, under the auspices of a coup-formed government that U.S. establishment leaders fully backed, and Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march of sanitation workers in Memphis to which the police responded with brutal impunity a few days before King died from the bullet of an assassin whom the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew was about to strike; just a single year later, in 1969, Greek poet and Nobel Laureate Giorgos Seferis spoke out on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s World Service against the fascist junta that controlled his country; a year less than a decade afterward to the day, in 1978, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Stump v. Sparkman that provided immunity to judges who issued nuclear radioactivesterilization orders against minors without the youngsters’ consent; a year forward in time precisely, in 1979, the accident at Three Mile Island’s nuclear power plant unfolded on its way to a partial core meltdown, breach of containment, billions of dollars expense, loads of official cover-up, and uninvestigated health consequences; eleven years even closer to now, in 1990, the original Bush President posthumously awarded Olympian Jesse Owens the Congressional Gold Medal; four years more along the temporal arc, in 1994, clashing Zulu and African National Congress combatants in Johannesberg caused the deaths of eighteen citizens, and the master of surrealist drama, Eugene Ianesco, played out his final scene; ten years hence, in 2004, the well-respected performer and screenwriter Peter Ustinov died; seven hundred thirty more days in the direction of today, in 2006, over a million French workers flooded the nation’s highways and byways to protest a regressive new employment law which overturned many workers rights; half a dozen years yet later, in 2012, the popular and potent thinker and writer Harry Crews drew a final breath.