http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=17393#16August 16
Things that happened on this day that you never had to memorize in school
1617: First African slaves delivered to Virginia.
1812: Imminent American attempt to invade and annex Canada fails before it begins when General William Hull, reportedly frightened into "a state of near incoherence," surrenders his entire army at Detroit without firing a shot to a lesser British and Indian force. He is court-martialed two years later.
1819: Manchester Massacre of protesting workers by government police, killing six. Manchester, Britain.
1894: Birth of labor leader George Meany; first president of AFL- CIO.
1896: Birth of radical photographer and model Tina Modotti, Udine, Italy.
1911: Bystanders pursued African American Zacharia Walker after he shot and killed a guard in a Coatesville, Pennsylvania robbery. Under gunfire, Walker tried unsuccessfully to kill himself. The good citizens of Coatesville took him to a hospital for his wound. Then they tied him to an iron bedstead in his cot, put him on a pyre, and burned him to death. A short distance from Walker's execution, local children made a game of kicking his scorched torso down the road.
1911: Birth of Alternative economist E. F. Schumacher ("Small is Beautiful"), Bonn, Germany.
1914: Three thousand anti-war socialists demonstrate against WWI in Buffalo, N.Y.
1938: Revolutionary blues singer Robert L. Johnson dies a mysterious death in Greenwood, Miss. A revival of interest in his music occurs in the 1990s when a boxed set of 41 of his recording is issued to critical and popular acclaim.
1942: Residents of Dr. Janusz Korczak's children's home in Warsaw, Poland, deported to Treblinka concentration camp.
1943: Bialystok Jewish ghetto is “liquidated” by Nazis.
1948: Baseball legend Babe Ruth dies of cancer in New York at 53.
1949: Margaret Mitchell, 48, dies in Atlanta shortly after being struck down by a taxi. Wrote one novel, a glorification of slave- owning culture called "Gone With the Wind."
1955: Fiat Motors orders first private atomic reactor.
1962: Anarchist publications and public activities banned in Cuba. As part of a concerted drive against political and social dissenters, the Cuban government force the Libertarian Association of Cuba to cease publishing its journal "El Libertario" and suspend public activity because they had voiced minor criticisms of the Communist role in the government and their domination of the labor unions.
1963: Buddhists stage protests across South Vietnam; a Buddhist monk immolates himself in Hue.
1967: Broadcasting from Cuba, Stokely Carmichael tells black Americans to prepare for "total revolution."
1968: Riots erupt in Cincinnati, Ohio, after police kill a black youth.
1970: Electoral reform group Common Cause founded with the goal of trying to end the undue influence of money in U.S. politics.
1971: Prisoner strike at San Quentin prison, California, to end indeterminate sentencing.
1972: King Hassan II of Morocco survives a brief attack by his country's own air force while traveling by plane.
1973: United Farm Workers begin second boycott of commercially grown grapes, California.
1977: Elvis Presley does the world (but not his pharmacist) a tremendous favor and dies...or so we're told! Memphis, Tennessee.
1979: Seven hundred textile workers occupy building, hold managers hostage in El Salvador.
1987: Charles Wesley dies in Washington, D.C. Noted historian, wrote over a dozen books on African-American life, including The Negro in the Americas' The Quest for Equality; Negro Labor in the U.S. 1850-1925; Richard Allen, Apostle of Freedom; and The History of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, published when he was 92 years old.
1987: The Harmonic Convergence, remember?
1988: New York's Mayor Koch says he plans to wipe out street-corner windshield washers.
1988: San Francisco's Mayor Agnos starts arresting Food Not Bombs volunteers.
1989: Solidarity-led government elected to power, Poland.
1996: Firing of 737 Mexican police for inadequate “ethical profiles.”
1997: Seven Greenpeace activists suspend themselves from Seattle's Aurora Bridge for 48 hours to block outgoing ocean factory trawlers and draw attention to the depletion of fish populations by Seattle-based corporate fleets.
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