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Breaking News, Bulletins & Almanac, Jan.-Feb. 2007
Yesterday, today and tomorrow
CURRENT NEWS BULLETINS, ALMANAC+ARCHIVES
Also see NevadaLabor.com's Statewide U-News RoundupClick here to get on our news & bulletins mailing list...
But before you do so, please read this note. —AB[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2007 Dennis Myers.]]
Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits
and Ego Trips
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006"Our long national nightmare is over."
Did I say that a dozen years ago?
CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough
Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator
Time to bring back NAGPAC?
CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006
UPDATE: Feb. 28, 2007, 8:55 a.m PST, 16:55 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 28, 1993, a gun battle erupted near Waco, Texas, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve warrants on the Branch Davidians; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1574, the Inquisition, now operating in the new world, burned two men at the stake in Mexico for the crime of Lutheranism; in 1865, Storey County Senator Charles Sumner presented a petition to the senate urging "passage of a law allowing blacks and mulattoes [to] testify in the courts of justice of this State"; in 1898, Hugh O'Flaherty, an Irish Catholic priest who organized an operation that rescued and secreted at least 3925 Allied prisoners and Jews in Nazi-occupied Rome, was born in Cahersiveen, Ireland (O'Flaherty received the Order of the British Empire and the U.S. Medal of Freedom, but in his native Ireland is remembered only with a grove of trees in Killarney National Park; see below); in 1903, the Nevada State Journal editorialized that "just is his [U.S. Senator Ben Tillman's] observation that the President has no moral right to outrage the sentiment of almost the entire white population of the south by appointing obnoxious negroes among them"; in 1910, a mob in Mina tarred and feathered a man named Tony Leyden, who the mobsters suspected of arson and other misdeeds (Leyden staggered to Luning); in 1919, Gandhi founded the Satyagraha Sabha whose members peacefully violated the law of sedition (satyagraha combines two Hindu words, one meaning truth, the other meaning to hold firm, a philosophy of nonviolence that is not passive, like pacifism, but forceful); in 1933, Nazi claims that the Reichstag fire was set by communists prompted a gullible President Paul Von Hindenburg to issue a decree placing emergency powers in the hands of Chancellor Adolf Hitler (an even more gullible Associated Press reported the nazi claims as fact: "Evidence uncovered today indicated that the reichstag fire, which left the main hall of the legislative building a mass of charred ruins, but which spared the library of the historic edifice, was deliberately set by a Dutch communist named An Der Luebbe [Marinus van der Lubbe], acting in concert with a number of other conspirators); in 1941, Alice Brock was born (you can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant); in 1943, the federal war relocation center in Topaz, Utah, notified Nevada Governor Edward Carville that it would provide 100 Japanese Americans evacuated from the west coast to assist Moapa farmers with their tomato crop, but Carville, to the farmers' consternation, objected to the entry of the evacuees into Nevada; in 1944, the Gestapo raided the ten Boom family home in Haarlem in the Netherlands, arresting 30 Dutch resistance workers and members of the family but missing the Jews hidden there; in 1955, a group of Israeli commandos attacked and destroyed an Egyptian military camp near the town of Gaza on the Gaza strip, an unprovoked attack (in an area that rarely saw violence) that Danish, Belgian and Swedish investigators later condemned as a "shocking outrage of extreme gravity and a clear provocation to the Egyptian military forces" and that set off an arms race between Egypt and Israel; in 1986, former Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, a hero to U.S. troops and peace activists for opposing the Vietnam war and providing a refuge in Sweden for war objectors, and for his criticism of Soviet suppression of the Czech uprising, was assassinated in Stockholm; in 1989, the Nevada/Semipalatnisk Movement to Stop All Nuclear Testing was started in Russia, inspired by 1980's anti-nuclear protests at the Nevada Test Site.
Hugh O'Flaherty's Trees
by Brendan Kennelly
There is a tree called freedom and it grows
Somewhere in the hearts of men,
Rain falls, ice freezes, wind blows,
The tree shivers, steadies itself again,
Steadies itself like Hugh O'Flaherty's hand,
Guiding trapped and hunted people, day and night,
To what all hearts love and understand,
The tree of freedom upright in the light.Mediterranean Palm, Italian Cypress, Holm Oak, Stone Pine;
A peaceful grove in honour of that man,
Commemorates all who struggle to be free.
The hurried world is a slave of time,
Wise men are victims of their shrewdest plans.
UPDATE: Feb. 27, 2007, 6:55 a.m PST, 14:55 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 27, 1897, England's prime minister recognized the authority of the United States over the western hempshere (neglecting to check with the other hemispheric nations, which did not agree); in 1898, the Nevada State Journal raised the issue of the 35 year-old debt supposedly owed by the U.S. government to Nevada for the cost of fighting against state tribes during the civil war: "As there is now a probability of an appropriation being made for the payment of those claims, as several States are interested in the passage of the bill, the press of the State should agitate the subject and publish facts from old settlers relative to the manner in which the depredations were committed and the hardships endured by reason of the loss of their cattle, and provisions and the burning of their houses by hostile Indians."; in 1920, Woodrow Wilson set a pattern for U.S. presidents by rebuffing a friendly overture from the Soviet Union; in 1933, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur, in a letter to U.S. Senator Tasker Oddie of Nevada, said plans to make Boulder City a virtual military reservation (which Oddie opposed) were made necessary by permissive "Nevada law and customs" involving liquor, prostitution and gambling; in 1933, the Nevada Senate approved a $4 a day minimum wage (the Assembly had passed a $5 version of the bill); in 1934, Ralph Nader, named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, was born in Connecticut; in 1937, it was announced that the workforce of the U.S. Forest Service work camp funded by the Works Progress Administration at Galena Creek south of Reno would be cut from 206 men to 78; in 1937, in the Nevada Supreme Court, attorney George Marshall, representing Lieutenant Governor Fred Alward, attacked price fixing by the Clark County Bar Association as part of his defense of Alward for accepting $44 instead of $100 for a divorce action; in 1939, the NBC Radio series I Love A Mystery began a month-long serial The Case Of The Nevada Cougar about killings at a Nevada gold mine; in 1956, Little Richard's Slippin' and Slidin' b/w Long Tall Sally was released; in 1962, a coup was attempted against Saigon dictator Ngo Dinh Diem, during which what may have occurrred the first death of a U.S. citizen in Vietnam; in 1964, heavyweight champion Cassius Clay confirmed that he had converted to Islam (the World Boxing Association suspended him because his conversion was "conduct detrimental to the best interests of boxing" but state boxing regulators declined to honor the suspension); in 1964, the Peter and Gordon recording of Lennon/McCartney's World Without Love was released; in 1970, The New York Times reported the U.S. army had ended its domestic surveillance program, which was not true; in 2003, Mr. Rogers died.
UPDATE: Feb. 26, 2007, 7:23 a.m. PST, 15:23 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On Feb. 26, 1616, Catholic Cardinal Robert Bellarmine warned Galileo Galilei not to hold Copernican opinions, or to defend or teach them; in 1863, the Cherokee Indian National Council, which seceded from the union with the south, now seceded from the Confederacy to rejoin the union; in 1877, at a meeting at Wormley's Hotel in Washington, Republican and Democratic congressional leaders carved up the winner of the 1876 presidential election, Samuel Tilden, and agreed to appoint the loser, Rutherford Hayes, as president, a case of the winner of both the popular and the electoral votes being deprived of the presidential office; in 1899, a day after the Nevada Assembly used a bill making changes in the Purity of Elections Law for an amendment repealing the Purity of Elections Law, the Nevada State Journal called the maneuver "a cowardly, sneaking and most contemptible method of killing a bill"; in 1915, the Nevada Legislature approved measures to disincorporate Virginia City, Gold Hill and Austin; in 1923, Bessie Smith recorded Gulf Coast Blues for Columbia Records; in 1927, the Las Vegas Review published an extra after a U.S. Senate cloture motion failed to muster the two thirds vote needed to break a filibuster against the Boulder Dam bill, killing it for the year; in 1928, Antoine "Fats" Domino was born in New Orleans; in 1937, the Idaho House of Representatives approved a $15,000 appropriation for an investigation of the state government of Nevada's water permitting on the Salmon River watershed in Elko County; in 1937, the Reno Central Trades and Labor Council sent wires to President Franklin Roosevelt and the members of the Nevada congressional delegation demanding that only Nevada workers be employed on the construction of Boca Dam in California; in 1969, physicians Stanley Ames and Louis Tyrer spoke on the medical features of abortion before an audience of ministers at the Clergy Counseling Center (a Las Vegas association created to counsel women on alternatives to abortion or, when unable to dissuade them, to aid them to obtain safe abortions); On Feb. 26, 1969, in the half-finished showroom of the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Elvis signed a contract to appear at the hotel when it opened, marking his return to live performance for the first time in nine years [EDITOR'S NOTE: Future Assemblyman Bob Price, D-North Las Vegas, worked as an electrician (IBEW Local 357) on that job and still has his lunch pail signed by Elvis during that construction]; in 1969, two professors and a grad student were the speakers at a campus forum on Vietnam at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas; in 1997, thirt- three years after their arrival in the U.S., The Beatles won three Grammys (Best music video/long form, best music video/short form, and best pop performance by a duo or group); in 1998, the U.S. refused entry to an international weapons inspection team seeking to determine whether there were weapons of mass destruction at the submarine base at Bangor, Washington; in 1998, the first of the gullible Judith Miller's "news" stories claiming that Iraq was in the weapons of mass destruction business appeared in The New York Times, the start of a years-long series that stenographically reported all kinds of official U.S. claims, but failed to subject them to scrutiny and trivialized or ignored conflicting contentions, culminating in an unsavory batch of 2003 stories that aided the Bush administration's propaganda push which led to war; in 2001, the government of Afghanistan ordered the destruction of Buddha images in the country, some of them dating back centuries; in 2003, in a message to a joint session of the houses of the Nevada Legislature, Nevada Chief Justice Deborah Agosti called on the lawmakers to fund efforts to bring the state supreme court into the computer and digital age.
UPDATE: Feb. 25, 2007, 1:59 a.m. PST, 9:59 GMT/SUT — On Feb, 25, 1570, in his Regnans in Excelsis ("ruling from on high") bull, Pope Pius V released Britons from allegiance to Queen Elizabeth (thus subjecting English Catholics to suspicion of their national loyalties) and also excommunicated her; in 1880, the Nevada Southern Railroad (an extension of the Nevada Central from Ledlie Station to Cloverdale) and Nevada Northern Railroad (from Battle Mountain to the Idaho line) corporations were organized; in 1893, the Lyon County Times reported that horses on a local ranch had died of charbon (anthrax); in 1937, the Nevada State Journal published a letter from former interim Nevada district judge George Brown to U.S. Senator Key Pittman denouncing President Roosevelt's supreme court packing plan (the next day, the Journal published Pittman's reply supporting the FDR plan); in 1949, actor Robert Mitchum completed his two-month sentence for marijuana possession; in 1957, The Crickets recorded That'll Be the Day; in 1963, Vee Jay Records, the home label of The Four Seasons, released a record it licensed from Britain: Please Please Me b/w Ask Me Why by The Beatles (it stayed in the record stores by the tens of thousands); in 1964, Cassius Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston when Liston refused to answer the bell for the seventh round (Clay fought round five blind after Liston allegedly juiced his gloves); in 1967, in a speech at a Nation Institute conference in Los Angeles, Martin Luther King, Jr., broke with the Johnson administration on Vietnam (Lyndon Johnson promptly ordered stepped-up FBI activities against King); in 1969, small counties Senator James Slattery, an extreme conservative Republican who served in the legislature during the governorships of Charles Russell, Grant Sawyer and Paul Laxalt, said the most effective governor he had seen was Sawyer (Sawyer did not return the admiration, criticizing Slattery in his autobiography); in 1969, Senator Warren Magnuson, D-Wash., labor unions, and competing airlines all called for tough scrutiny of Howard Hughes' proposed acquisition of Air West airlines (which, under Hughes‚ ownership, became known as Air Worst); in 1969, an avalanche on Mt. Charleston pushed a home containing a mother and her nine year old son down a hill and buried it under tons of snow; in 1969, Assemblymember Harry Reid introduced a package of five bills to invest customers with control of the local telephone company in Las Vegas; in 1974, a federal grand jury in Washington secretly named President Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Watergate coverup, a decision that has never actually been disclosed to the public by federal officials but was disclosed in a leak on June 6 by The Los Angeles Times; in 1986, "people power" street protests overthrew Phillippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and installed popularly elected Corazon Aquino as president; in 1996, Imelda Marcos marked the tenth anniversary of the Phillippine revolution by offering a prayer for the secrecy of Swiss banks (I'm not making this up — see below); in 2003, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed in a postwar Iraq occupation. For his trouble he was publicly derided by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — "it's not logical to me that it would take as many forces following the conflict as it would to win the war" — and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz ("quite outlandish"). Shinseki was ostracized and retired from the military 14 weeks later amid anger in the military about Rumsfeld's contempt for the professional officer corps.
Imelda Marcos: May the Lord enlighten ... the Swiss banks, that they might uphold justice and preserve the integrity of their own laws and the laws of confidentiality, trust and basic decency between the banks and their clients.
Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits
and Ego Trips
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006"Our long national nightmare is over."
Did I say that a dozen years ago?
CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough
Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator
Time to bring back NAGPAC?
CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006
UPDATE: Feb. 24, 2007, 8:22 p.m. PST, 04:22 2-25-2007 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 24 , 1208, twenty-six year-old Francis of Assisi decided to become a priest; in 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in Marbury vs. Madison, establishing the power of judicial review of laws; in 1868, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson; in 1866, the Nevada state seal, designed in 1864, was adopted by the state legislature; in 1904, a day after U.S. Senator Francis Newlands of Nevada voted against the Panama Canal treaty, the Carson City News labeled him a traitor and called for his tarring and feathering; in 1912, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn led 20,000 textile workers in the "Bread and Roses" strike (opposed by the AFL) in Lowell, Massachusetts; in 1912, Christian Wellesley and Josephine Callicott were married in New York City (Wellesley, an English lord, would go to Reno in 1933 for a divorce and stay to become a tax resident); in 1917, Woodrow Wilson made public the decoded Zimmerman telegram sent from the German foreign secretary to the German ambassador in Mexico, offering Mexico restoration of land taken by U.S. aggression in the Mexican war if Mexico entered the First World War on Germany's side; in 1918, manganese mining in Las Vegas was becoming a major part of the city's economy, with about 60 tons of ore hauled each day by motor truck (a Caterpillar taking 20 tons daily, a White truck 20 tons, Jeffries quad 10 tons and Peerless truck 12 tons), team-drawn wagons having been discontinued and expectations of railroad construction; in 1927, the Las Vegas chamber of commerce arranged with the telephone company for the installation of a pay phone at the Union Pacific station; in 1933, a small airplane was flying over Brooklyn when its engine stalled and pilot Jerry Longobardi made a hard landing atop a flat topped apartment building, coming to a stop with the nose and wheels over the edge of the roof; in 1933, Senator Albert Henderson of Clark County introduced legislation requiring businesses to pay of workers in money and not in scrip redeemable only at the company store, a measure to address abuses on the Hoover Dam project; in 1939, an Omaha resident wrote a letter to the editor to a Reno newspaper noting that Las Vegas merited a full page in the rotogravure section of the Omaha World Herald and demanding to know why the Reno Chamber of Commerce had not gotten such coverage of Reno; in 1957, Reese River Reveille publisher Jock Taylor was elected president of the Nevada Press Association, succeeding the Las Vegas Sun's Hank Greenspun; in 1965, District 1199 Health Care Workers in Wisconsin became the first known labor union to oppose the war in Vietnam (1199 came out against the proposed Iraq war on October 22d 2002); in 1969, twenty workers on the Nevada Test Site were stranded on Pahute Mesa (4071 feet low elevation to 7575 feet high elevation) in a blizzard; in 1982, John (posthumously) and Yoko received the album of the year Grammy for Double Fantasy; in 1983, the Reagan administration announced that it had classified three Canadian environmental documentaries (including the Oscar-winning If You Love This Planet) as "political propaganda" whose distribution in the United States would be "monitored" by the Justice Department; in 2003, John Darren Smith of an undisclosed Nevada community, died in Kuwait.
UPDATE: Feb. 23, 2007, 12:01 a.m. PST, 0:01 GMT/SUT — On this date in 1455, (traditional date) Johannes Gutenberg began work on the first printed book, the Bible; in 1836, 145 northern Mexicans rebelling against the abolition of slavery in Mexico barricaded themselves inside the Alamo where they were beseiged for 13 days by the forces of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna; in 1848, U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, an antiwar leader, died without seeing the Mexican war end; in 1865, Nevada Governor Henry Blasdel, an opponent of gambling, nevertheless signed a bill lowering the penalties for gambling; in 1869, Governor Blasdel signed legislation providing for the construction of a Nevada state capitol; in 1883, Naches harvested the wheat at his Lovelock ranch and had it milled at Kemler's mill, receiving forty sacks of flour which he distributed among the tribal members who assisted him, prompting Winnemucca's Silver State to observe that "he is more generous to the red men than the Great Father at Washington and the Piutes think a great deal more of him than of the Chiefs of the Indian Bureau, who keep the lion's share of the money appropriated for their support"; in 1883, the Nevada State Journal wrote "The Western Union Company is in trouble with the citizens of Elko by an attempt to appropriate the streets for a line of poles. The company was ordered to desist upon pain of summary proceedings by the outraged citizens."; in 1933, Las Vegans were mobilizing to try to rescue four people stranded in heavy snows in the Groom mining district (now Area 51); in 1940, Woody Guthrie wrote This Land Is Your Land; in 1946, in Seattle, Paul Robeson expressed optimism over racial relations, opposed the armed services‚ segregation policies, said African-Americans had begun losing some of the gains they made during the war, and said black workers were better able to advance because of labor unions; in 1966, the U.S. announced that 13 percent of the South Vietnamese army had deserted in the previous calender year; in 1969, Gary Judd of Las Vegas died in Quang Nam province, Vietnam; in 1981, Spaniards watched a coup attempt on television for 18 hours as right wing military officers seized parliament but were defeated when King Juan Carlos stood against the conspirators; in 1988, the Chicago Cubs won their fight for permitting to install lights for night games; in 1993, the African Burial Ground, a colonial era cemetery for slave and free blacks unearthed in 1991 during excavation for a planned federal building at 290 Broadway in New York City, was declared a historical landmark administered by the U.S. General Services Administration; in 2001, a federal appeals court upheld rulings that the U.S. government has mismanaged funds held in trust for Native American tribes.
UPDATE: Feb. 22, 2007, 3:53 a.m. PST, 11:53 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 22, 1980, in a stunning upset, the United States Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets at Lake Placid, N.Y., 4-to-3. (The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.) [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On Feb. 22, 1873, the SS Nevada, formerly the Paou Shan, arrived in San Francisco; in 1879, Frank Woolworth opened the Great 5 Cents Store in Utica, New York; in 1902, Indian Agent Fred Spriggs denied that there was smallpox on the Pyramid Lake reservation and also denied that there was a quarantine in force; in 1915, former Nevada lieutenant governor Gilbert Ross presided at the dedication of the Nevada pavilion at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, with 200 Nevadans in attendance; in 1918, as the Wilson administration's Palmer raids on political leftists were about to begin, Cronaca Sovversiva, an influential political newspaper published in Lynn, Massachusetts, was raided and shut down, its files seized, its supporters (including Sacco and Vanzetti) arrested and in some cases deported, its editors deported; in 1930, four-time Emmy winning singer Marni Nixon (the actual singing voice of Margaret O‚Brien in The Secret Garden, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady) was born in Altadena, California; in 1937, Nevada Assembly Speaker William Kennett returned to his duty of presiding over the assembly after several days convalescing in Washoe General Hospital from a heart attack; in 1949, federal judge Roger Foley sentenced Las Vegas casino owner Robert Kaltenborn (Jackpot Club) to serve six months in a road camp in Arizona and pay a $2,000 fine for income tax evasion; in 1949, plans were announced for three million dollars in construction in Gerlach, with a 44-unit housing project, a United States Gypsum Company factory, a sewer system, telephone facilities and an electric distribution system; in 1956, Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel entered the top ten; in 1963, Lennon and McCartney formed Northern Songs as the publisher of their own songs; in 1965, after Malcolm X's assassination, The New York Times published an editorial suggesting that he had brought it on himself; in 1965, actor Pernell Roberts worked his last day as "Adam Cartwright" on the Bonanza television program, set in Nevada; in 1964, "We even enjoyed the work," George Harrison said as the Beatles departed the United States, leaving the world of U.S. music changed forever; in 1964, Temple Sinai in Reno got its first rabbi, author Julius Leibert, who had worked in Nevada in the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938: "Nevada is the only state that has shed hypocrisy by allowing liberal attitudes"; in 1969, the AFL-CIO denounced black capitalism; in 1994, Papa John Creach of Jefferson Airplane died; in 1999, Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn appointed Valorie Vega to be a district court judge, the first Latina to serve in that capacity in Nevada history.
Interview with Eleanor Roosevelt/York Gazette and Daily/February 22d 1955: Q: President Roosevelt once said "If I worked in a factory, the first thing I would do would be to join a union." If you had to work in a department store, let us say, would you join a union? A: I certainly would. I do belong to a union in my own field — the American Newspaper Guild, CIO — and I would urge every woman who works to join the union of her industry.UPDATE: Feb. 21, 2007, 12:26 a.m. PST, 20:26 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 21, 2005, Nevada labor leader Tom Stoneburner died.
On Feb. 21, 1885, President Arthur dedicated the Washington Monument; in 1902, the Paiutes in Winnemucca began a five-day festival and dance; in 1903, Anais Nin was born in Neuilly, France; in 1925, The New Yorker magazine appeared for the first time, with the famed character Eustace Tilley on the cover; in 1934, Nicaraguan patriot leader Augusto Cesar Sandino was assassinated by Somoza's U.S. Marines-created guardia; in 1937, twenty-one University of Nevada engineering students returned to Reno from San Francisco where they had toured various bay bridges; in 1945, Reverend Eric Liddell, 400 meter gold medal olympian whose story was told in Chariots of Fire, died as a Christian missionary while in Japanese captivity, probably from a brain tumor; in 1950, Governor Vail Pittman held an extradition hearing to hear arguments from Las Vegas attorney (and Nevada Assembly judiciary committee chair) Harry Claiborne and Dallas assistant district attorney Louis Woosley on whether Las Vegas casino figure Benny Binion should be turned over to Texas authorities for trial on racketeering charges; in 1956, the Howard Hughes movie The Conqueror, filmed in Utah downwind of the Nevada atomic test site, was released into theatres, followed in succeeding years by the leukemia and cancer deaths of most of the cast and crew, including Susan Hayward, John Wayne and director Dick Powell (see below); in 1962, J. Edgar Hoover received an award from the Freedom Foundation for the "most outstanding individual contribution to American freedom in 1961"; in 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated at a meeting of his Afro-American Unity Organization in Harlem; in 1966, The Beatles' Nowhere Man was released; in 2002, U.S. servicemember Kerry Frith of Las Vegas was killed in the Philippines; in 2007, the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination (except Obama) will appear together at the community center in Carson City.
UPDATE: Feb. 20, 2007, 8:28 a.m. PST, 16:28 GMT/ SUT — Reno-Sparks NAACP: Rise above the Biden/Obama dustup
On Feb. 20, 1869, Tennessee Governor William Brownlow, who had taken a hard line against neo-Confederate activity, declared martial law in several Klan-ridden counties, forcing the Klan to disband, though some elements continued operating underground; in 1878, after G.H. Baldwin stabbed John Francis in the eye in Tuscarora, Baldwin was taken to jail in Elko "to save him from Judge Lynch"; in 1881, Matt Canavan, prominent citizen on the Comstock, said "Among these Indians no one has ever found a harlot, a coward or a thief"; in 1898, the Nevada State Journal reported that plans for the upcoming Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha included an "Afro-American village [that] will be illustrative of every phase of life among the negroes of the South"; in 1901, in New York, Robert Leroy Parker, Harry Longabaugh and Etta Place boarded the British ship Herminius bound for Argentina; in 1913, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted an amendment to assure that federal anti-trust law would not be used against farmers or labor unions; in 1931, the Nevada Senate passed three bills sponsored by Senator A.S. Henderson of Clark County on real estate law to deal with land swindles that had begun appearing in Las Vegas in anticipation of a boom after the Boulder dam project was announced; in 1931, Assemblymember Lindley Branson's bill providing for the purchase of the Lehman caverns by the White Pine county commission with a $15,000 bond issue was delayed because of objections to the purchase price; in 1933, the Clark County Commission discussed a plan to beautify the Clark County Court House, in part by removing trees around the building and replacing them with gardens; in 1944, Norwegian resistance fighters blew up and sank the ferry Hydro in Lake Tinnsjø, causing the loss of huge tanks of heavy water being transported to Germany and setting back the Nazi atom bomb program significantly (the Norwegian anti-heavy water operations were dramatized in the Richard Harris/Kirk Douglas movie The Heroes of Telemark and chronicled in the BBC documentary The Real Heroes of Telemark); in 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule [New York Times/AP e-headlines]; in 1964, Clark County commissioner James Ryan, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in 1954, said he was considering running against U.S. Senator Howard Cannon in the Democratic primary; in 1970, John Lennon's Instant Karma was released in the United States; in 2000, the Fox Network canceled the rebroadcast of its Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire? after the romance between the two winners imploded and reports surfaced that the groom had once been accused of hitting a former girlfriend (Fox promised to never, ever, ever engage in such tawdry programming again); in 2003, the Bush administration said it would send 1,700 U.S. troops to the Philippines to fight in an internal dispute.
UPDATE: Feb. 19, 2007, 12:29 p.m. PST, 20:29 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 19, 1945, during World War II, some 30,000 United States Marines landed on the Western Pacific island of Iwo Jima, where they encountered ferocious resistance from Japanese forces. The Americans took control of the strategically. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On Feb. 19, 1377, John Wycliffe appeared before London Bishop William Courtenay to explain himself, defending his opposition to the veneration of relics, the sale of indulgences, the worship of saints and his criticism of clerical idleness (the session was halted when one of Wycliffe's allies, John of Gaunt, got into a fist fight with Courtenay and his entourage); in 1401, the first English religious martyr, parish priest William Sawtree, was burned at the stake when he said he worshiped Jesus instead of a cross; in 1876, a meeting was scheduled for the state capital to consider Charles Stevenson's proposal for erecting a quartz mill as Nevada's exhibit at the U.S. centennial exposition in Philadelphia and the Nevada State Journal published an attack on the idea and Stevenson (later governor); in 1878, J.W. Rover was hanged in Washoe County, Nevada, for the murder of one of his business partners, I.N. Sharp, twenty-one years before a third partner, F.J. McWorthy, reportedly confessed to the crime on his deathbed in Arizona; in 1890, an order was issued to Pyramid Lake tribal members prohibiting them from fishing on their reservation between January 15th and March 15th; in 1913, prizes were added to Cracker Jack; in 1915, British troops executed Winston Churchill's amateurish plan for an invasion of Turkey on Gallipoli peninsula, a campaign that left Allied forces pinned down on the beaches for eight pointless months while officers kept feeding more soldiers into the futile battle as combat deaths and disease swept the force, resulting in 33,532 deaths, damage to the careers of Churchill and many military officers, and alienation of Australia from Britain (8,587 of the deaths were Aussies) [Click here for the lyrics of And The Band Played "Waltzing Matilda" and historical bytes]; in 1942, in executive order 9066, President Roosevelt ordered the forced internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent in camps in the west (camps were eventually also established in Montana and Texas where Germans, Italians, Romanians, Czechs ,Bulgarians and Hungarians were interned); in 1945, U.S. marines landed on Iwo Jima; in 1963, Nevada Attorney General Harvey Dickerson issued an opinion to the public employees retirement system advising that the widow of a school teacher be denied his pension because he died before he finished filling out the forms naming her as a beneficiary; in 1964, the Johnson administration announced that it was cutting some forms of aid to Britain, Yugoslavia and France in retaliation for their unwillingness to block their nations' firms from engaging in trade with Cuba; in 1964, Gray Reid's department store in Reno was selling a line of Nevada centennial jewelry; in 1964, U.S. Mint director Eva Adams said she would not run for the U.S. Senate against Howard Cannon ("As long as the men do a good job I'm not about to run."); in 1964, two days after Governor Grant Sawyer refused to appear on David Susskind's television program Open End to debate Ovid Demaris and Ed Reid, authors of The Green Felt Jungle, there was a news report that Clark County commissioner Ralph Denton, insurance dealer Paul McDermott, Dunes Hotel president Major Riddle, Bank of Nevada president Art Smith, and state district judge David Zenoff had all refused to debate the authors; in 1970, Nevada gambling regulator Frank Johnson said organized crime had "infiltrated" the Las Vegas casino junket business; in 1970, National Congress of American Indians director Bruce Wilkey testified before the Pyramid Lake Task Force (established by U.S. Interior Secretary Walter Hickel and governors Ronald Reagan and Paul Laxalt) in Reno, arguing that the U.S. Department of the Interior handling of Pyramid Lake was "a crime being perpetrated" on tribal members through "deceit" and "calculated misrepresentation", that water was seized and wasted by the creation of the Newlands desert irrigation project without compensation and that the Washoe Project (involving construction of Truckee River upstream dams and reservoirs) would further damage the Pyramid tribe; in 1970, state welfare board chair Keith McDonald claimed that Nevada anti-poverty director Willie Wynn was a believer in "harassing and agitating the establishment" and had used $500 in public funds to send "at least one Las Vegas welfare rights organizer to New Orleans on Nevada taxpayers dollars to train to confront the establishment" (state welfare director George Miller said caustically that he supported sending the organizer out of state because "if she is back there she can't harass me"); in 1971, with Clark County commissioners considering licensing a brothel (to be operated by Joe Conforte) about ten miles from the Las Vegas strip, the Nevada Assembly's agriculture committee approved an "emergency" measure to strip that authority from the commission and sent it to the full house; in 1972, the British Broadcasting Corporation banned airplay of Paul McCartney's Give Ireland Back to the Irish (in 1967 the BBC had also banned A Day in the Life by The Beatles); in 1977, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was released; in 1981, George Harrison was ordered to pay $587,000 for plagiarizing He's So Fine in his song My Sweet Lord, though the judge in the case (himself a songwriter) said that the evidence showed the plagiarism was unintentional; in 1996, former Nevada Governor Grant Sawyer died; in 2004, with conservative groups going to court to overturn 2,700 marriages performed in San Francisco for same sex couples over the previous week, City Attorney Dennis Herrera sued the State of California to protect the validity of the marriages.
[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2007 Dennis Myers.]]
UPDATE: Feb. 18, 2007, 2:39 p.m. PST, 22:39 GMT/SUT — On this date in 1850, San Francisco was incorporated; in 1869, construction began on the Virginia and Truckee Railroad; in 1871, the Arizona Territorial Legislature abolished Pah-Ute County after most of its land was transferred by Congress to Nevada; in 1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published; in 1894, Paul Revere Williams, a renowned African-American architect who did a lot of work in Reno, was born in Los Angeles; in 1913, Marcel DuChamp's monumental painting Nude Descending a Staircase was put on display at the Armory Show; in 1937, legislation for a sharply graduated tax on chain stores ($5 on the first store, $25 on the second, up to $500 for each store over five — $25 in 1937 being equivalent to about $317 in 2003) was being considered by the Nevada Legislature; in 1942, The Mills Brothers' Paper Doll was released by Decca; in 1959, Ray Charles recorded What'd I Say? (later sung by Elvis in Viva Las Vegas); in 1960, the winter olympic games began in Squaw Valley, with Reno as the host city (and the compiler of this almanac and his brother as sellers of program books at the ice hockey games); in 1964, a major earthquake hit Sao Jorge island in the Azores, creating so much devastation that 25,000 residents were made homeless (ships trying to evacuate the population were rocked by high waves); in 1964, it was discovered that the design for the U.S. Post Office stamp commemorating Nevada's centennial was based on a photograph in a Nevada Department of Economic Development tourist brochure that had been printed with the negative upside down, so the drawing of Virginia City was a mirror image of reality (a day later the post office said the problem would be fixed); in 1964, California Assemblymember Phillip Burton of San Franciso won a special U.S. House election, winning more than half the vote against seven opponents and avoiding a runoff; in 1970, the Chicago Seven were acquitted of conspiracy charges but two of the seven were convicted of having an intent to incite a riot while crossing state lines (the other two were found not guilty); in 1971, the flow of Owens Valley water to Los Angeles was resumed after being interrupted by a February 9 earthquake, though one of the two aqueducts was out of operation indefinitely; in 1982, at a news conference, President Reagan gave a history of the French and U.S. wars against Vietnam that said France "gave up" its colony, claimed Vietnam had been two nations before colonization, said that the northern government (instead of the southern government) had cancelled scheduled 1956 elections, and said that John Kennedy (instead of Lyndon Johnson) had landed the marines in Vietnam; in 1992, Pat Buchanan was transformed into a major political figure when the television networks on the basis of exit polls reported a remarkably strong second place showing for him in the New Hampshire primary of four to eight points behind President Bush, a showing which evaporated after actual votes were counted late that night (and after the networks ended their coverage) showing Bush finished sixteen points ahead of Buchanan, but the networks never corrected the record; in 1998, a team of Clinton administration officials (including Secretary of State Madeline Albright) sent to a "town meeting" in an Ohio State sports center to sell President Clinton's planned war against Iraq encountered hostility and anger, prompting the administration to screen out critics from crowds at succeeding stops but also forcing Clinton to retreat from his plans for war; in 2003, at a press conference Berkeley researchers accused several leading San Franciscans of the 1920s of a conspiracy that created the famous brass plaque of Francis Drake found in 1936 and declared a likely fraud in 1976.
Time magazine/April 19, 1937: NOVA ALBION In 1577, commanded by Queen Elizabeth to "annoy the King of Spain in his Indies," red-bearded little Francis Drake put out from Plymouth in the Golden Hind, entered Magellan Strait, went plundering up the west coast of the New World. Laden with Spanish treasure, he pushed north in search of an Arctic passage back to England. One day in the spring of 1579 [according to his ship's journal], he sailed into a "convenient and fit harborough" somewhere near the future site of San Francisco. There he received the homage of native Indians and, according to his chaplain's account, nailed to a "faire great poste" a brass plaque claiming "Nova Albion" in the name of Her Majesty. Then Francis Drake sailed on west round the world, and his plaque vanished into history.
Motoring near San Rafael, about 14 mi. north of San Francisco one day last summer, one Beryle Shinn had a puncture, decided to stop for picnic lunch on a nearby grassy bluff. Mr. Shinn squatted, found himself on a rock, lifted it, saw a dingy piece of metal. He rubbed off the dirt, managed to decipher the word "Drake," took his find to University of California's History Professor Herbert E. Bolton. Last week the historian announced himself satisfied that it was indeed the claim plate posted by Drake 357 years ago. [In fact, Bolton himself had doubts. — Dennis] Sold to the California Historical Society for a reputed $2,000, the plaque will be presented to University of California, hung where all who pass may read: Bee it knowne vnto all men by these presents, June 17, 1579, by the grace of God and in the name of Heir Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England and Herr successors forever I take possession of this kingdome whose king and people freely resigne their right and title in the whole land unto Herr Majesties keepeing now named by me an to bee knowne unto all men as Nova Albion. Francis Drake.UPDATE: Feb, 17, 2007, 8:50 a.m. PST, 16:50 GMT/SUT — On this date in 1972, China admitted Nixon but a brothel refused a black man.
On Feb. 17, 1972, President Nixon departed on his historic trip to China. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1495, Columbus' second expedition to the new world sent 550 Native Americans to Spain as slaves (only 350 survived the trip); in 1879, the Nevada State Journal wrote "If the provision in the new constitution of Georgia requiring the payment of all taxes as a preliminary to voting was intended to disfranchise the negroes it has utterly failed. At the late election all the colored men were on hand, but a large proportion of the small white property owners failed to put in an appearance at tax office or the polls."; in 1892, as part of the program at McKissick's Opera House in Reno, a dozen Washo tribe members performed "the celebrated snake dance"; in an unrecorded year in the early 1900s, Las Vegas community leader Dorothy Dorothy was born on her family's ranch in Yreka, California; in 1906, labor leaders Bill Haywood, George Pettibone and Charles Moyer were kidnapped in Colorado by Pinkerton detectives and Idaho officials and put on a train for Idaho to stand trial on charges of murdering a former Idaho governor, an arrangement tolerated by the federal courts (the men were found not guilty); in 1909, in Augusta, Georgia, a local judge fined seven African-Americans thirty million dollars for allowing trash to accumulate on their properties and the defendants "sank to the bench with groans and staring eyes" — and after the judge had gotten his laugh from the spectators, he suspended the sentence; in 1910, Lindley Branson retired as the long time and (in labor circles) notorious publisher of the Tonopah Sun; in 1931, the American Legion post in Reno hosted a discussion of the legal gambling legislation pending before the Nevada Legislature, with attorney H.R. Cooke supporting gambling and University of Nevada professor R.C. Thompson opposing it; in 1932, Carson Indian School superintendent Frederick Snyder said if the Swing/Johnson bill, allowing states to take over federal Native American health care and education facilities, was approved by Congress, Nevada would probably be unaffected because the state didn't have the resources to do the job and so would leave it in the hands of the feds; in 1932, Nevada bank examiner Edward Seaborn, who had been scrutinizing the activities of Yerington's two banks, said he would probably allow the Mason Valley Bank to reopen shortly but that the Lyon County Bank was in a more "precarious condition" making it difficult to say what the bank's future would be; in 1933, the Washos and the Piutes were at odds over a proposed Nevada legislative resolution asking Congress to abolish the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and allot Native American lands and trust fund, a resolution introduced at the request of the Pyramid Lake Piutes but opposed by the Washos (and defeated in the legislature); in 1933, Newsweek began publication; in 1933, the Nevada State Journal in Reno gave space on its editorial page to a Frank Williams, who argued that after two years of legal gambling in Nevada, it should be repealed; in 1933, the end of alcohol prohibition set off the most precipitous decline in the crime rate in recorded history, including a dramatic free fall in the homicide rate; in 1933, U.S. Senator Tasker Oddie of Nevada introduced legislation to name the lake that would be created behind Hoover Dam "Lake Nevada" and said he expected action on the measure by the end of the year's Congress; in 1937, wealthy New Yorker Fleming Holland denied use of her Virginia home for a charity home tour because labor leader John L. Lewis' home was on the same tour and she disapproved of the recent and successful General Motors strike; in 1942, the U.S.S. Nevada was prepared for dry dock after being refloated, so that its December 7 damage could be repaired; in 1944, U.S. Representative Charles MacKenzie of Louisiana denounced "with all the intensity of my soul" the CIO's wartime canteen in D.C. for U.S. servicepeople because it admitted both blacks and whites (Eleanor Roosevelt had appeared on opening night); in 1960, Elvis received his first gold album, for Elvis; in 1962, the Beach Boys' Surfin' was released; in 1966, Clark County sheriff's deputies were called to Las Vegas High School because of a cafeteria egg-throwing incident during a period of racial tension; in 1972, Beverly Harrell defended her decision not to admit an African-American man to her brothel at Lida Junction in Esmeralda County ("A bordello should have a choice of who they entertain.") but Nevada Equal Rights Commission director Tony McCormick said a formal complaint would be filed against her; in 1974, Bob Shaw, educated at the federal Indian school at Stewart, graduate of Sparks High School, resident of the Reno Indian Colony and editor of The Native Nevadan, was being mentioned as a candidate for the Nevada Assembly as a Republican; in 1975, John Lennon's album Rock 'n' Roll was released; in 1976, after receiving an award from Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club, Bette Midler said "This award characterizes what the American male wants in a woman — brains, talents and gorgeous tits."; in 1977, after Governor Mike O'Callaghan claimed that the Pyramid Lake fishery was wasting huge amounts of water and thus reducing power during the energy crisis, tribal attorney Robert Stitser said O'Callaghan was "full of hot air" and that O'Callaghan and Attorney General Robert List had declined to meet with the tribe and federal officials on the matter the previous year; in 1994, the distinguished journalist Randy Shilts, author of And The Band Played On and Conduct Unbecoming whose body of work appeared at number 44 on a list of the 100 greatest works of journalism of the 1900s, died in Sonoma County, California; in 1997, special prosecutor Ken Starr announced he would resign to become dean of Pepperdine Law School (he later withdrew his resignation under pressure from conservatives and journalists who wanted him to continue the investigation of President Clinton).MONDO CONDO: Chicago developer gets a lesson in treating local labor right
UPDATE: Feb. 18, 2007— Fernando, can you hear us now? (Story and photo by Debra Reid/Daily Sparks Tribune)
HIGH RISE FIRE (Feb. 6, 2007) — The under-construction Montage condominium project alight in the night. No sprinklers were in operation but Reno firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze. "The fire started when an area heater ignited plastic covering on a 13th-floor window. The fire broke through the ceiling and was doused by 10:30 p.m. by Reno firefighters," the Reno Gazette-Journal reported. (KTVN TV-2 still frame) UPDATE 2-17-2007 — Developer cries crocodile tears (Associated Press/Las Vegas Sun)
UPDATE: Feb. 16, 2007, 11:38 a.m. PST, 19:38 GMT/SUT — Workers demonstrate at Montage condo construction site in downtown Reno
RENO, Nev. – Local construction workers and their families will demonstrate at the Montage high-rise condominium project on Saturday, Feb. 17.
Marchers will gather at 11:00 a.m. at the municipal ice skating rink at S. Virginia and E. First streets across from Reno City Hall. They will proceed to the Montage construction site at W. Second and Sierra (formerly the Golden Phoenix/Flamingo Hilton).
"Local taxpayers have devoted more than half a billion dollars and many years of effort toward improving their downtown area," stated Todd Koch, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada.
"Our efforts and investments in this community create economic opportunity which makes these kinds of projects possible," Koch added.
"Chicago developer Fernando Leal is taking advantage of this favorable climate to improve his own bottom line through the unfair treatment of northern Nevada construction workers by undercutting area standards for wages, benefits and working conditions.
"We are understandably disappointed and outraged that Mr. Leal and his contractors are bringing in workers from out of state and paying them well below area standard wages and benefits," Koch stated.
"Reno's taxpayers receive a lower return on their investment when developers use underqualified workers who bring into question the quality and value of the project for the consumer. Quality projects raise property values.
Union members, including Scott Mathisen of Painters Union Local 567, marched Saturday against what they called unfair treatment and sub-standard wages for workers at the Montage condominium construction site in downtown Reno.
Story and Photo © Debra Reid/Sparks Tribune
"Use of underqualified workers also raises safety, accident and injury issues. Mr. Leal's attempt to erode area standards does a disservice to everyone involved except himself," Koch asserted.
"No one has been a bigger supporter of the revitalization of downtown Reno than the Building and Construction Trades Council," Koch said, "but we have also shown that we will not let workers – union or non-union – be abused by unscrupulous developers. Take the money and run is a business philosophy Reno can do without," he added.
The council, in operation for more than 100 years, is made up of 20 regional craft unions representing the majority of highly trained construction workers in the area.
Union members, retirees, their families and any concerned residents of the community are urged to join Saturday's demonstration.
Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits
and Ego Trips
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006"Our long national nightmare is over."
Did I say that a dozen years ago?
CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough
Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator
Time to bring back NAGPAC?
CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 8-1-2006
UPDATE: Feb. 16, 2007, 10:14 a.m. PST, 18:14 GMT/SUT —
On Feb. 16, 1865, the Nevada Legislature ratified the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution (outlawing slavery); in 1869, Assemblymember Curtis Hillyer, a Union Party member from Storey County, spoke in the Nevada Assembly in favor of votes for women; in 1878, the Nevada State Journal reported "Conamen, negroes and Caucasians can be seen all mixed in together in Carson's public schools."; in 1878, the Nevada State Journal reported "Mining men say that the Sutro tunnel could reach the Savage in fifteen days if so desired."; in 1911, Joaquin Miller, "poet of the Sierra" who had ridden with the Pony Express and lived for a year with a Native American tribe, was critically ill at Fabiola Hospital in Oakland and his physician said death might come in a matter of hours (he lived until February 13 or 17 1913); in 1913, President Taft agreed to halt incessant U.S. attacks on Mexico (it did little good — Woodrow Wilson alone invaded Mexico at least ten times); in 1918, in the historical capital of Vilnius, the First Lithuania Council declared the independence of Lithuania (independence was restated by a resolution passed by the Constituent Seimas on May 15, 1920); in 1931, a Reno divorce was granted in Francis Mahaffey vs. Marie Mahaffey after the husband testified that evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson's Four Square Angelus temple converted his wife and she became so obsessed that it broke up their marriage; in 1941, Reno's Bethel AME Church celebrated National Negro History Week because, said a church spokesperson, "Unfortunately no record is chronicled of the worthy and sacrificial contribution which the Negroes have made in developing our country."; in 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her newspaper column "It is important for all of us to know the story of the people of the United States as a whole, and every minority group has contributed toward the making of our nation. The Negroes have done much for our country. There are no wars in which they have not participated. Their poets, writers, artists, musicians, educators and scientists have contributed to the culture and development of the people."; in 1954, with the French trying to break out of the encirclement of their supposed fortress at Dien Bien Phu, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith and Joint Chiefs chairman Arthur Radford testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Vietnamese advances were "more apparent than real", were "nothing but real estate victories", and that things in Indochina were not "as bad as painted in the press" (the French were defeated three months later after a long siege); in 1959, attorney Fidel Castro was sworn into office as prime minister after Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic; in 1961, Las Vegan Howard Weisberger, who remained aboard the pirated ocean liner Santa Maria when the pirates released the 600 passengers, was greeted by a crowd of thousands when the recovered ship arrived in Lisbon (the pirates had evaded capture for eleven days); in 1968, Elvis received a gold record for his album How Great Thou Art, for which he would later also receive a Grammy; in 1972, Chuck Berry and John Lennon sang together on the Mike Douglas Show during John and Yoko's week as co-hosts of the program; in 1977, John Carrico, Jr., spokesperson for the slow growth group Citizens for Responsible Growth, said a ballot initiative to limit Reno growth to an annual 1.5 percent would be circulated for signatures; in 2001, cocktail waitresses in Reno held a rally to protest the Harrah's corporate policy making it an employment infraction to get older (the casino took photographs of workers when they began their employment and required them to remain unchanged from the photographs during their periods of employment).
UPDATE: Feb. 15, 2007, 12:16 a.m. PST, 00:16 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, killing 260 crew members and escalating tensions with Spain. [New York Times/AP e-headlines] William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, legendarily told one of his photographers "you provide the photos, I'll provide the war." (As Hearst did against Spain, Murdoch recently admitted to using his media empire to gin up support for the Iraq War.) [BARBWIRE]
George Bush/February 15, 2000: We ought to make the pie higher.
On Feb. 15, 399 BC, Socrates was condemned to death; in 1851, Boston hotel waiter Shadrach Minkins was seized in his workplace as a fugitive slave and when a judge refused to grant habeas corpus, a black and white mob broke into the local courthouse and freed him, hiding him in an attic before he made his way to Canada; in 1878, describing the local political situation in Elko County, the Elko Post observed "There are those who favor a new deck as well as a new deal."; in 1896, an effort was underway in Topeka to launch a national effort to obtain federal pensions for African-Americans who were enslaved before the Civil War; in 1904, drilling equipment arrived in Nevada for use in what was hoped would be Elko County oil fields; in 1913, responding to a request from the U.S. secretary of state for a study of whether the state legislatures properly ratified the 16th amendment to the United States Constitution, the solicitor general wrote a report that said the amendment was ratified legitimately but noted many problems: Nevada's lawmakers made "errors of punctuation and capitalization" and even copied the text of the amendment inaccurately by inserting extra words; in 1917, the main branch of the San Francisco Library was dedicated; in 1935, the Nevada Fish and Game Commission adopted a resolution allowing Native Americans to sell fish taken from the state's lakes in open season; in 1937 (or in this week) construction began on a swimming pool on Riverside Drive in Reno's Idlewild Park; in 1941, at Victor Studios, Duke Ellington and his orchestra made the first recording of his trademark Take The A Train; in 1954, Ronald Reagan began performing on stage at the Last Frontier Hotel Casino in Las Vegas; in 1966, Fred Friendly resigned as president of CBS News in protest against the network's decision to shut down live coverage of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the Vietnam War and return to reruns of I Love Lucy and The Real McCoys; in 1971, Pyramid Lake tribal council chair Teddy James told state legislative committees that the California/Nevada Interstate Compact, a water agreement between the two states, "hastens the death of our Indian society and hastens the death of the lake" and Nevada Intertribal Council director Robert Hunter said "the compact may be good for California and good for Nevada but it is in no way good for the Indians"; but Reno attorney Paul Richards, representing hunting and fishing groups, said "Our concern is a guarantee of water to Nevada. Let us fight among ourselves after we get it."; in 1973, the Nixon administration was forced to drop its effort to prosecute investigative reporter Les Whitten, an aide to columnist Jack Anderson, and Native American leaders Anita Collins and Hank Adams after a federal grand jury refused to indict them for possession of stolen government documents; in 1973, the House Foreign Affairs Committee found an electronic bug in its hearing room; in 1998, The Rolling Stones performed in Las Vegas' Hard Rock Casino with Sting, Eddie Murphy, Brad Pitt and other celebrities in the audience; in 2002, George Bush approved Nevada's selection for a dump at Yucca Mountain for high level nuclear wastes; in 2003, in what is believed to have been the largest protest in human history, millions of people in Barcelona, Madrid, Manila, Berlin, London, Glasgow, Andalusia, Paris, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Ontario, Buenos Aires, Stuttgart, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Bangkok, Berne, Helsinki, Jakarta, Athens, Nova Scotia, Hong Kong, Canary Islands, Malta, Cyprus, Belgium, Austria, New Zealand, Bosnia, South Africa, Honduras, New Zealand, Hungary, Netherlands, Antarctica, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Equador, Brazil, Ireland, South Korea, Lebanon, Russia, Japan, India, Ukraine, Croatia, Singapore, Slovenia, Norway, Portugal, Brazil, Basque Country, Iceland, Poland and 600 U.S. communities (including September 11 targets New York and Washington) protested Bush administration plans to invade Iraq.UPDATE: Feb. 14, 2007, 10:05 a.m. PST, 18:05 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 14, 1929, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place in a Chicago garage as seven rivals of Al Capone's gang were gunned down. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
Ground Hog day was warm
and fine;
But look what we get
for a Valentine!
— Nevada State Journal
February 14, 1954
On Feb. 14, 270, Christian leader Valentine was beheaded on the road between Gaul and Rome (the date is traditional); in 1193, Duke Leopold V of Austria sold his prisoner Richard Lionheart of England to Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI of Germany for sixty thousand pounds of silver; in 1349, in Strasbourg, 2,000 Jews were burned at the stake; in 1779, Captain Cook, was killed by Hawaiians after he kidnapped islanders; in 1859, George Washington Gale Ferris, inventor of the Ferris Wheel who grew up in Nevada, was born in Galesburg, Illinois; in 1880, the U.S. Senate confirmed James E. Spencer of New York as Indian agent for Nevada; in 1914, the Nevada State Journal wrote "Experiments have determined that there is nothing in the fruit, vegetable and cereal lines with the exception of lemons and oranges that cannot be grown advantageously and in commercial quantities in Las Vegas valley. Even cotton and almonds are raised, cotton being one of the principal products of the valley"; in 1916, twenty one miners died in a fire in the Pennsylvania Mine in Butte, Montana; in 1933, in Florida, Giuseppe Zangara fired shots at a car carrying President-elect Franklin Roosevelt and Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, killing Cermak; in 1945, Dr. Selic A. Shevin, a 17-year staff member of Chicago's Jackson Park Hospital who resigned in protest when the hospital refused to treat 19-year-old Toyoko Murayama in its emergency room, was photographed treating her while other hospitals were contacted to see if they would accept her; in 1957, Lionel Hampton's symphonic jazz suite King David premiered at Town Hall in New York City; in 1961, testimony began in the trial of physician Thomas Wyatt, owner of Carson Hot Springs, on charges of performing an abortion; in 1965, Nevada civil rights leaders said they opposed an alleged civil rights measure at the Nevada Legislature because it would preempt federal enforcement without providing for effective local enforcement; in 1965, churches in Sparks, Elko, Fallon, Las Vegas, Hawthorne and Reno swapped ministers on this Sunday in a sort of pastoral exchange program; in 1972, adding one more bit of colorful lore to the history of rock, John and Yoko began a week's stint as cohosts of The Mike Douglas Show; in 1973, the Las Vegas convention center was the site of a mutual admiration fight: Muhammad Ali faced Joe Bugner, who called Ali his idol, and after the fight was over (it went to Ali on a decision), Ali said Bugner could be champion one day; in 1989, a death sentence was imposed by Iran against author Salman Rushdie; in 1994, Jerry Garcia married Deborah Koons.UPDATE: Feb. 13, 2007, 9:07 a.m. PST, 17:07 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 13, 1935, a jury in Flemington, N.J., found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-death of the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. Hauptmann was later executed. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On Feb. 13, 1633, Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial by the Inquisition for supporting the Copernican theory [BARBWIRE EDITOR'S NOTE: By the grace of God, the Copernican theory was finally disproved in 2004 when the American Righteous of Right proved that the world actually revolves around George W. Bush]; in 1883, the Reese River Reveille wrote "Nevada Indians are said to be starving, and Congressman [George] Cassidy has applied for relief for them. Where are the reservations? Why are not the Indians on them? What tribes are starving? Are they the ones that are so prone to go on the war path with each returning Spring? It is well to know these things, if only for satisfaction."; in 1891, the Nevada State Journal wrote "[Lakota warrior] Rain-in-the-face, who is now at the head of the hostile tribes, is one of the bravest Indians in the west, as well as one of the worst. He is the reputed slayer of Custer, though that distinction has been claimed by Spotted Tail and several other braves. He is said to be absolutely devoid of fear." (it's unclear why this item was published, since at the time Rain in the Face had been inactive for a decade); in 1912, Nevada Attorney General Cleveland Baker was hospitalized in Oakland and "grave fears" about his recovery brought family members to his bedside; in 1917, the (Russian) revolution got underway with strikes and assemblies in Petrograd; in 1930, President Hoover's nomination of Charles Evans Hughes as chief justice of the United States was approved after a fight against confirmation by western Republican senators (Nevada's Senator Tasker Oddie, a Republican, voted for Hughes, and Senator Key Pittman, a Democrat, failed to vote); in 1930, an Iowa state legislator, a "dry" on the prohibition issue, was fined $300 plus court costs after pleading guilty to illegal possession of alcohol; in 1930, former first son John Coolidge, unhappy with his wife's pilot training, elicited a promise from her that she would quit (sign of the times: his wife's name was never given in The New York Times account); in 1937, when rumors circulated that Michigan union members, fresh from the victory of the General Motors strike, were traveling to Indiana to support fellow unionists, Indiana Governor Clifford Townsend declared martial law to keep them out (in Detroit, a union official denied the rumor); in 1937, Episcopal vicar William Stonson said that "paganism" was disappearing from the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation; in 1945, Allies began the fire bombing of Dresden using incendiary weapons, killing more civilians than the Hiroshima bomb, even though the city was not an industrial center or a military target (Winston Churchill, who helped plan the bombing, said it was done "simply for the sake of increasing the terror" and later enraged his military commanders by trying to create a written record to escape his responsibility for it); in 1946, homecoming African-American veteran Isaac Woodard was blinded while being mistreated by Atlanta police, an incident described in the Woody Guthrie song The Ballad of Isaac Woodard; in 1953, the U.S. Senate Internal Security Committee chaired by Nevada Senator Patrick McCarran claimed to have uncovered a "commie dude ranch" in New Mexico, about 90 miles from Los Alamos; in 1964, Elvis Presley donated Franklin Roosevelt's presidential yacht, the Potomac, to St. Jude's Hospital; in 1965, the Western Shoshone, recently organized into an official organization with more than a thousand enrolled members so far, held a tribal meeting in Austin; in 1967, The Beatles single Penny Lane b/w Strawberry Fields Forever was released in the U.S. (in Britain on the 17th), signaling the group's growing use of electronically produced music, one of those rare 45's that produced hits on both sides; in 1970, Nevada District Judge Grant Bowen overturned the conviction of Reno cab driver Donald Nash who was convicted of pandering for offering to drive his passengers to a brothel in Storey County; in 1973, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, there was a portrayal of a gay character that wasn't negative — Phyllis gets upset that her brother is spending time with Rhoda: Phyllis: "But he's handsome, he's witty, he's charming." Rhoda: "He's gay." Phyllis: "Oh, thank God it's just that."; in 1973, Nevada Supreme Court Justice David Zenoff called on state lawmakers to "enact now" a state law school, but higher education chancellor Neal Humphrey and UNLV and UNR presidents Roman Zorn and Edd Miller urged delay for feasibility study so the state would know what it was getting into; in 1981, Dark Side of the Moon achieved the longest tenure on the Billboard album chart — 402 weeks; in 1981, The New York Times published its longest sentence, 1,286 words, though because it was a quote from a teenager, the sentence was padded with gratuitous terms like "like" and "whatever"; in 2002, Jason Disney of Fallon died in Afghanistan; in 2007, at 9:02 a.m. PST, the cost of the Iraq war reached $366,069,655,984 (the cost to Nevada taxpayers was $3,279,315,520, to Las Vegas taxpayers $776,135,346, and to Reno taxpayers $269,269,997).
[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2007 Dennis Myers.]]
UPDATE: Feb. 12, 2007, 12:58 a.m. PST, 8:58 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 12, 1502, the Spanish government violated the treaty under which it took control of Granada from the Moors and ordered all Moslems to convert to Christianity or leave the country; in 1554, Lady Jane Grey, who was queen of England for nine days, was executed in the Tower of London; in 1895, the dime novel Deadwood Dick, Jr.'s, Double-Decker; or, Center-Fire, the Self-Cocker. by Edward L. Wheeler, a tale of hydraulic mining in Nevada (and number 82 in the Deadwood Dick series), was published by Beadle's Half Dime Library; in 1909, at a cornerstone ceremony for a memorial to Abraham Lincoln at his birthplace of Hodgenville, Kentucky, attended by President Theodore Roosevelt, press reports said there was "a notable lack of negroes" in attendance; in 1912, a news report suggested that with several Republicans missing or relocated to other states since the last regular session of the Nevada Legislature, the Democrats during the special session starting February 23d could reorganize the legislature with a plurality; various folks were calling for expansion of the call to special session to include changes in mortgage laws, repeal of quick divorce, and a prohibition on prize fights, and residents of Carson City were looking forward to the economic bump they expected to get from the session; in 1924, the beloved American Rhapsody (now called Rhapsody in Blue for Jazz Band and Piano) was performed for the first time in Aeolian Hall in New York City, conducted by Paul Whiteman, with piano by its composer George Gershwin, a performance that was broadcast on radio (disbelief that the 26-year-old Gershwin could have written the stunning symphony led to rumors that the great composer Ferde Grofe, who did the orchestrations for the Rhapsody's first performance, had actually written it); in 1937, the Nevada Assembly took up Churchill County Assemblymember Claude Smith's legislation to abolish the elected post of state surveyor general; in 1937, Native Americans, Civilian Conservation Corps workers and forest service workers were being credited with opening snowbound roads across western Nevada after unexpected winter storms hit the region like a sledgehammer; in 1944, K.L. Ogden's three month gambling license to operate one nickel slot machine and one dime slot machine on the main ground floor of the Corral Bar in Fallon expired (the date of issue on the license, which was signed by G. Etcheverry, was twelve days after the license expired); in 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt interviewed Albert Einstein on television and he spoke out against President Truman's new crash program to develop a hydrogen bomb, prompting the Immigration Service to try to deport him and the FBI to start trying to find derogatory information on him; in 1968, Jimi Hendrix performed for the students of Garfield High School in Seattle; in 1972, the U.S. negotiating team at the Paris peace talks refused to attend the negotiating session to protest a 75-nation assembly at Versailles held to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam; in 1973, the first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict took place [New York Times/AP e-headlines]; in 1997, The Washington Post reported on China funneling money to the Democratic National Committee in a probable effort to influence Clinton administration policies; in 2001, Earl Washington, a mentally disabled African-American, was sentenced to a halfway house instead of being freed after being exonerated by a DNA test of a murder for which he spent 19 years under sentence of death in a Virginia prison.
UPDATE: Feb. 11, 2007, 4:06 a.m. PST, 12:06 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 11, 1945, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement during World War II [New York Times/AP e-headlines] at which "Stalin took us to the cleaners," according to Fresno State history Prof. Jose C. Canales. [BARBWIRE]
On Feb. 11, 1805, assisted by Meriwether Lewis, Sacagawea gave birth to Jean Batiste Charbonneau, conceived with the French trapper who had purchased her for a slave from the Hidatsa tribe which had kidnapped her as a girl from her own Shoshone tribe; in 1858, fourteen year-old Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes said she experienced an apparition of a woman; in 1870, at the Carson City branch of the U.S. Mint, the first coin (a seated liberty dollar) was struck; in 1889, a special election was held to vote again on 14 amendments to the Nevada Constitution, most of which had already been approved by voters the previous fall but were all overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court; in 1890, the Nevada Appeal reported that snowbound Virginia City was being supplied with potatoes through the Sutro tunnel; in 1937, General Motors signed an epochal agreement recognizing the United Auto Workers and protecting striking workers from prosecution after plant workers seized the Fisher Body plant in Flint and held it for forty-four days — but AFL President William Green, who was not involved, condemned the settlement as a defeat for labor: "All the laboring men of the country have been injured by the General Motors settlement" (and in D.C., a U.S. Senate committee revealed that GM had paid nearly half a million dollars over two years — about $6,900,000 in 2005 dollars — to the union-busting Pinkerton Detective Agency); in 1937, on a 13 to four vote, the Nevada Senate approved Nye County Senator William Marsh's constitutional amendment making lotteries legal and on a 17 to 15 standing vote the Nevada Assembly tabled Nye County Assemblymember Cada Boak's bill to sterilize "mentally deficient persons" and habitual criminals (and Clark County Senator Frank Ryan introduced legislation to move the opening of the legislature to March, a reaction to the capital being snowbound during 1937); in 1942, Nevadan Karetaro Ishii of Sparks was fired from his job with the Southern Pacific Railroad after 22 years (he was rehired the day after the war ended); in 1950, two days after making his first charges that there were communists in government, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy spoke in Reno at a Republican fundraiser at the Mapes Hotel (Edward Connors of the Nevada State Journal reported that on his reading copy of his speech text where he named the number of communists, McCarthy had scratched out the number "205" and written in the number "57"); in 1961, (Las Vegas) Sands Hotel manager Jack Entratter ran a newspaper ad: "$100 REWARD for return of our French poodle (no pedigree). Answers to name of DOTS. Three years old, black and white. Contact Jack Entratter, DU 2-7100."; in 1962, several servicepeople died in the crash of a military plane in Vietnam on the kind of mission the U.S. denied was taking place; in 1963, in a rigorous and hugely productive ten-hour recording session at the Abbey Road studio, The Beatles recorded final versions of ten songs for their first album, released on March 22d to capitalize on their first hit single, Please Please Me (one number recorded that day, Hold Me Tight, was not used on the album and the tape of it is not known to still exist); in 1966, installation ceremonies were held for University of Nevada Chancellor N. Edd Miller at the campus gymnasium, with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark as speaker; in 1969, conscientious objector Thomas Bennett was killed while trying to rescue a fellow soldier, the end of two days of heroic actions for which he received the Medal of Honor (see citation below); in 1970, John and Yoko performed Instant Karma on the BBC's Top of the Pops; in 1977, in a motion asking U.S. District Judge Bruce Thompson to throw out Nevada Attorney General Robert List's lawsuit seeking title for the state of the beds of Pyramid Lake and the Truckee River within the Pyramid Lake Reservation, the U.S. Department of Justice described List's action as the latest chapter in a 113-year effort by the state to get the reservation away from the tribe; in 1979, followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power when Iranian Prime Minister Shapur Bakhtiar stepped down after serving for 37 days following dictator Reza Pahlavi's flight from the country (during those 37 days Bakhtiar dismantled the hated Savak secret police); in 1990, as people around the world watched on live television, Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison after 27 years of imprisonment; in 2005, Lynne Stewart, court-appointed attorney to Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, was convicted of defrauding the U.S. government, conspiracy and providing support for terrorism by her actions of (1) issuing a press release to Reuters News Service in Cairo in which her client announced withdrawal of his support for a cease fire by insurgents against the Egyptian government and (2) by being present when her co-defendants allegedly aided her client in writing a series of letters.
Thomas Bennett
Congressional Medal of Honor Citation
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Cpl. Bennett distinguished himself while serving as a platoon medical aidman with the 2d Platoon, Company B, during a reconnaissance-in-force mission. On 9 February the platoon was moving to assist the 1st Platoon of Company D, which had run into a North Vietnamese ambush, when it became heavily engaged by the intense small arms, automatic weapons, mortar and rocket fire from a well fortified and numerically superior enemy unit. In the initial barrage of fire, 3 of the point members of the platoon fell wounded. Cpl. Bennett, with complete disregard for his safety, ran through the heavy fire to his fallen comrades, administered life-saving first aid under fire and then made repeated trips carrying the wounded men to positions of relative safety from which they would be medically evacuated from the battle position. He valiantly exposed himself to the heavy fire in order to retrieve the bodies of several personnel. Throughout the night and following day, Cpl. Bennett moved from position to position treating and comforting the several personnel who had suffered shrapnel and gunshot wounds. On 11 February, Company B again moved in an assault on the well fortified enemy positions and became heavily engaged with the numerically superior enemy force. 5 members of the company fell wounded in the initial assault. Cpl. Bennett ran to their aid without regard to the heavy fire. He treated 1 wounded comrade and began running toward another seriously wounded man. Although the wounded man was located forward of the company position covered by heavy enemy grazing fire and Cpl. Bennett was warned that it was impossible to reach the position, he leaped forward with complete disregard for his safety to save his comrade's life. In attempting to save his fellow soldier, he was mortally wounded. Cpl. Bennett's undaunted concern for his comrades at the cost of his life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.
UPDATE: Feb. 10, 2007, 12:23 PST, 20:23 GMT/SUT — On Feb. 10, 1846, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints began their westward trek from Illinois; in 1879, after Independent Henry Dangberg served the first month of the legislative session, he was unseated and Republican James Haines was sworn in as senator from Douglas County (Haines lost to Dangberg by two votes in the November election); in 1900, in the Yukon, the Nome News reported that the office of Nome city attorney, occupied by Key Pittman (later U.S. senator from Nevada), was abolished as a cost saving measure; in 1902, the judge and both lawyers in a water rights suit in Winnemucca were members of the same family; in 1914, in New York a shipload of African-Americans from Oklahoma were prepared to sail for Africa, recruited by Chief Alfred Sam as colonists to his Gold Coast (Ghana) homeland; in 1914, with a special session of the Nevada Legislature two weeks off, one member of the senate (W.F. Heffernan of Esmeralda County) was known to be living in Canada, one assemblymember (Halbert Bulmer of Storey) was traveling in South America, another (J.H. Cocks of Storey) was living in Alameda County, a third (George Coze of Lincoln) was rumored to be living in Utah, and a fourth (W.D. Coppernoll of Lander) could not be located; in 1914, 67 yea- old Milton Lee, arrested in Salt Lake City for possession of counterfeiting dies, confessed that he had served three terms in San Quentin for stagecoach robberies in the Yosemite and one term for train robbery and was known as the "gentleman bandit of the Yosemite"; in 1937, commenting in a letter to a Nevada American Legion official on the Nevada Legislature's deeding of land to the federal government for construction of a veterans hospital in Reno, Attorney General Gray Mashburn said that because the legislators did not reserve the power of legal process on the land, the hospital could become a criminal haven for the lik
