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Welcome to the Round Table for Wednesday, September 2, 2009.
Good day to all
Events on this date
* 44 BC – Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion. * 44 BC – The first of Cicero’s Philippics (oratorical attacks) on Mark Antony. He will make 14 of them over the next several months. * 31 BC – Final War of the Roman Republic: Battle of Actium – off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeat troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra. * 1649 – The Italian city of Castro is completely destroyed by the forces of Pope Innocent X, ending the Wars of Castro. * 1666 – The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings including St Paul's Cathedral. * 1752 – Great Britain adopts the Gregorian calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe. * 1789 – The United States Department of the Treasury is founded. * 1792 – During what became known as the September Massacres of the French Revolution, rampaging mobs slaughter three Roman Catholic Church bishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to be royalist sympathizers. * 1807 – The Royal Navy bombards Copenhagen with fire bombs and phosphorus rockets to prevent Denmark from surrendering its fleet to Napoleon. * 1833 – Oberlin College is founded by John Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart. * 1856 – Tianjing Incident in Nanjing, China. * 1859 – A solar super storm affects electrical telegraph service. * 1862 – American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope's disastrous defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. * 1864 – American Civil War: Union forces enter Atlanta, Georgia a day after the Confederate defenders flee the city. * 1867 – Mutsuhito, Emperor Meiji of Japan, marries Masako Ichijō. The Empress consort is thereafter known as Lady Haruko. Since her death in 1914, she's called by the posthumous name Empress Shōken. * 1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan – Prussian forces take French Emperor Napoleon III and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner. * 1885 – Rock Springs massacre: In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners, who are struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack their Chinese fellow workers, killing 28, wounding 15, and forcing several hundred more out of town.
Quote
The riot, between Chinese immigrant miners and white, mostly immigrant, miners, was the result of racial tensions and an ongoing labor dispute over the Union Pacific Coal Department's policy of paying Chinese miners lower wages than white miners. When the rioting ended, at least 28 Chinese miners were dead and 15 were wounded. Rioters burned 75 Chinese homes resulting in approximately US$150,000 in property damage.[1][2][3]
Tension between whites and Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century American West was particularly high, especially in the decade preceding the violence. The massacre in Rock Springs was the violent outburst of years of anti-"coolie" sentiment in the United States. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, but not before thousands of immigrants came to the American West.
Most Chinese immigrants to Wyoming Territory took jobs with the railroad at first, but many ended up employed in coal mines owned by the Union Pacific Railroad. As Chinese immigration increased, so did anti-Chinese sentiment from whites. The Knights of Labor, one of the foremost voices against Chinese immigrant labor, formed a chapter in Rock Springs in 1883, and most rioters were members of that organization. However, no direct connection has ever established that the riot was caused by the national Knights of Labor organization.[1]
In the immediate aftermath of the riot, federal troops were deployed in Rock Springs. They escorted the surviving Chinese miners, most of whom had fled to Evanston, Wyoming, back to Rock Springs a week after the riot. Reaction came swiftly from the era's publications. In Rock Springs, the local newspaper endorsed the outcome of the riot, while in other Wyoming newspapers, support for the riot was limited to sympathy for the causes of the white miners.[2] The massacre in Rock Springs touched off a wave of anti-Chinese violence, especially in the Puget Sound area of Washington Territory.
* 1898 – Battle of Omdurman – British and Egyptian troops defeat Sudanese tribesmen and establish British dominance in Sudan. * 1901 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
* 1925 – The U.S. Zeppelin the USS Shenandoah crashes, killing 14. * 1935 – Labor Day Hurricane of 1935: a large hurricane hits the Florida Keys killing 423. * 1939 – World War II: following the invasion of Poland, Free City of Danzig Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) is annexed by Nazi Germany. * 1945 – Combat in World War II ends in the Pacific Theater: The final official surrender of Japan is accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. * 1945 – Vietnam declares its independence, forming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. * 1946 – Interim Government of India is formed with Jawaharlal Nehru as Vice President. * 1958 – United States Air Force C-130A-II is shot down by fighters over Yerevan, Armenia when it strays into Soviet airspace while conducting a sigint mission. All crew lost. * 1960 – The first election of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration, in history of Tibet. The Tibetan community observes this date as the Democracy Day. * 1963 – CBS Evening News becomes U.S. network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes. * 1967 – The Principality of Sealand is established, ruled by Prince Paddy Roy Bates. * 1969 – The first automated teller machine in the United States is installed in Rockville Centre, New York. * 1970 – NASA announces the cancellation of two Apollo missions to the Moon, Apollo 15 (the designation is re-used by a later mission), and Apollo 19. * 1990 – Transnistria unilaterally proclaimed as Soviet republic; the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev declares the decision null and void. * 1991 – The United States recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithu * 1996 – A peace agreement is signed between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front in Malacañang Palace. * 1998 – Swissair Flight 111 crashes near Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia. All 229 people on board are killed. * 1998 – The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda finds Jean Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide.
Born on this date in 1917
May you spend the day in
Life is a banquet -- and most poor suckers are starving to death -- Auntie Mame You are born naked and everything else is drag - RuPaul
even went for a few drinks last night and didnt smoke!
Huzzah
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." (Philip K.Dick)
Good for you, Schlack - when I quit smoking I quit going into bars entirely for a couple of years. Now that smoking is banned indoors life is much easier - still, that atmosphere ruined several of my earlier attempts.
Man, at those prices the savings mount up pretty quickly, don't they?
Morning everyone - nice opener, Phil, I really like the painting. It reminds me a bit of one of my favorite places in Scotland. although the water there wasn't quite so blue.
Julia A 45’s quicker than 409 Betty’s cleaning’ house for the very last time Betty’s bein’ bad
Congratulations, Shlack! From the very beginning I refused to give up my coffee when I quit and within a month I had a few glasses of wine. You've got to face and deal with all the triggers and alcohol might be about the toughest one.
Hey there, boys and girls! Now you can track the flu as it inexorably makes its way into your town, into your neighborhood, into your home. Just go to Google Flu Trends. And stay away from New Zealand, for now.
"When all think as one, only one is thinking." --"Big Jim" Byrne
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