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[[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 interest to labor in particular and seekers of justice in general. Copyright © 2008 Dennis Myers.]]

 

UPDATE: THURSDAY 1-31-2008 8:31 p.m. PST, 04:31 2-1-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1842, Elizabeth Tyler, the daughter of Acting President John Tyler, was married in the White House; in 1876, the deadline for Native Americans who were off their reservations to (by the order of U.S. Indian Affairs Commissioner Edward Smith) return or a "military force would be sent to compel them" passed at midnight; in 1879 in an evening session, the Nevada Senate listened to arguments in a dispute over whether to unseat Douglas County Sen. Henry Dangberg, elected by two votes as an independent, and seat defeated Republican James Haines; in 1891, the Nevada State Journal reported: "CARSON, January 31. — John P. Sweeney was acquitted to-day. He made a test case of the Twelve o'clock closing law of Nevada. Saloons throughout the State are in high glee as the law is a dead letter."; in 1900 in Reno, members of a medical group met and decided to circulate a petition among physicians to be sent to Nevada members of Congress asking them to vote against a pending measure abolishing vivisection in the District of Columbia; in 1920, speculation was circulating on whether Governor Emmet Boyle would agree to expand the call for the special session of the Nevada Legislature, which he originally issued only to ratify the federal women's suffrage amendment, to include an American Legion scheme to beef up state anti-labor legislation; in 1931, federal legislation was approved providing $20,000 for the purchase of a tribal village site, construction of homes, and installation of sewer and water systems for Native Americans in Elko, Nevada; in 1934, Etta Moten Barnett, singer/actor on Broadway (Zombie, Porgy and Bess, Lysistrata) and in movies (Flying Down to Rio, Gold Diggers of 1933) became the first African-American actress to perform at the White House; in 1961, the United States launched the Samos II, the first of a planned network of spy satellites; in 1961, California Episcopal Bishop James Pike reacted to heresy charges by Georgia clergymen by telling a church convention that he did not believe in a God of "cruelty and irrationality"; in 1965, the Van Nuys Valley News knitting column carried a pattern for a three piece spring outfit modeled in the photograph by former Miss Nevada 1959 Dawn Wells; in 1967, John Lennon purchased an 1843 poster announcing a circus-like show "For the benefit of Mr. Kite" at an antique store in Kent; in 1970, Donald Lloyd Swanson of Reno died in Thua Thien province, Vietnam (panel 14w, row 87); in 1971, George Harrison's My Sweet Lord hit number one; in 1974, CBS broadcast the film of Ernest Gaines' The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman with only a single commercial.

UPDATE: WEDNESDAY 1-30-2008 12:01 a.m. PST, 08:01 GMT/SUT/CUT —

Jawaharlal Nehru / broadcast to the nation over All India Radio / January 30, 1948: Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere. I do not know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that. Nevertheless, we will never see him again as we have seen him for these many years.

On this date in 1815, President Madison signed legislation appropriating $23,950 to purchase Thomas Jefferson's library of 6,487 volumes, which Jefferson had offered for sale to rebuild the Library of Congress destroyed by the burning of D.C. in 1814; in 1838, Seminole chief Osceola died in jail; in 1870, the new year celebration began in Carson City's Chinatown, where the Appeal reported that "feasting and destroying firecrackers will be on the programme..."; in 1889, the bodies of Rudolf, son of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and his lover Mary Vetsera were found at Rudolf's hunting lodge Mayerling, setting off a cover-up of the circumstances, leading to still-unsettled speculations (Rudolf, who had been next in line of succession to the throne, was succeeded as heir by his cousin Franz Ferdinand); in 1892, at a meeting at state school superintendent Orvis Ring's office, school principals from around western Nevada made plans for educational aspects of Nevada's exhibit at the World's Fair (presumably the Columbian Exposition in Chicago); in 1918, the Esmeralda County draft exemption board was trying to figure out what to do with several Serbians whose origins were apparently in the German "lost provinces" of Alsace and Lorraine and who wanted to volunteer for U.S. war service; in 1933, WXYX in Detroit and several other Michigan radio stations began broadcasting a new radio show, The Lone Ranger, starring Brace Beemer as the ranger and John Todd as Tonto; in 1945, Modoc novelist, husband of novelist Louise Erdrich, and founder of Dartmouth's Native American studies program Michael Dorris was born in Louisville; in 1948, Mohandas Gandhi, one of the towering figures of the twentieth century, was assassinated; in 1957, an explosion at the Titanium Metals plant in Henderson seriously injured two men and ten others were also hospitalized; in 1961, Roger Maris signed a reported $36,000 Yankee contract, representing a $15,000 raise; in 1972, as Irish member of Parliament Bernadette Devlin began speaking to a crowd in British occupied Londonderry, British soldiers for no known reason opened fire on the crowd, killing 13 unarmed residents, five of them shot in their backs; in 1973, state economic development director Robert Goodman told the Nevada senate finance committee that Reno had done well in attracting new industry but that Las Vegas needed help in accomplishing it; in 2000, the city government of Reno imploded the Mapes Hotel.

UPDATE: TUESDAY 1-29-2008 8:11 a.m. PST, 16:11 GMT/SUT/CUT —

George W. Bush / January 29, 2007: And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it.

On this date in 1834, setting an ominous precedent, President Jackson used federal troops to break labor unrest by workers on the C&O Canal construction who were protesting low pay and dangerous conditions; in 1903, the Nevada Legislature took up a constitutional amendment resolution vetoed by Governor Reinhold Sadler after the 1901 session had adjourned for the biennium and gone home, with Attorney General James Sweeney arguing that governors have no authority to veto constitutional changes and Governor Sadler personally appearing before the Assembly to defend his veto, and some legislative observers arguing that the legislature should simply ignore the veto and treat the resolution as enacted; in 1909, the Reno Evening Gazette published an article headlined "WHITE SUPREMACY IS GOING DOWN" on the search for a great white hope to defeat African-American heavyweight champion Jack Johnson (who would later win the fight against white hope Jim Jeffries in Reno on July 4, 1910); in 1918, actor John Forsythe was born (he starred in the 1952 movie Captive City, filmed in Carson City and Reno) in Penn Grove, New Jersey; in 1922 in D.C., the weight of snow from a recent blizzard caused the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre to collapse during a full house, killing more than a hundred people: "by GENE FOWLER./WASHINGTON, Jan. 29. — Tonight the capital, stunned by disaster, watched fearfully the ever-growing list of dead and dying from the entangled struts, supports and beams of the Knickerbocker motion picture theatre."; in 1927, Edward Abbey, interpreter of the west and the desert, was born in Home, Pennsylvania; in 1946, Reno Mayor Harry Stewart appointed a committee to study the possibility of a joint city/county jail and report back in a week; in 1958, Paul Newman married Oscar-winning (The Three Faces of Eve) actress Joanne Woodward; in 1961, in a sermon in New York City, Methodist minister Ralph Sockman said people should not test God to meet conditions they create: "God's ways are above our own ways as the heavens are above the earth."; in 1964, the brilliant black comedy Dr. Strangelove premiered, giving the world George C. Scott's inspired portrayal of Gen. Buck Turgidson — an image that has haunted Pentagon officials ever since; in 2001, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to call for an end to the Israeli policy of murdering its critics and opponents, set up a commission to investigate those who ordered or participated in assassinations, and make public "all cases of individuals killed or wounded to date as a result of the 'liquidation' policy".

UPDATE: MONDAY 1-28-2008 7:53 a.m. PST, 15:53 GMT/SUT/CUT —

George W. Bush / January 28, 2000: This is Preservation Week. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You got to preserve. [Comment on Perseverance Week]

On this date in 1867, President Johnson vetoed Colorado's admission to the union because the state's population was only about thirty thousand, because he had received a protest against statehood from the Colorado Territorial Legislature, and because the congressional measure to accomplish statehood enfranchised African-Americans, which conflicted with the territory's own laws; in 1878, the first college newspaper, the Yale News, began publication; in 1892, the managers of an ice rink in Carson City were preparing a three-mile ice skating race inside the Carson opera house; in 1902, Wyatt Earp arrived in Tonopah where he became a saloon keeper; in 1909, Esmeralda Assemblymember J.W. Brooks tried unsuccessfully to defeat Nevada's first state law exempting church property from taxation; in 1916, white supremacist Woodrow Wilson showed his liberalism by nominating Louis Brandeis to be the first Jew on the U.S. Supreme Court; in 1917, after U.S. forces ran around Mexico for 11 months on a dead-or-alive search for revolutionary leader Pancho Villa without being able to find the ground, the U.S. ended the search; in 1958, nineteen year old Charles Starkweather and his fourteen year old girl friend Carol Fugate began their vicious murder spree across the midwest that left 10 people dead (these events have been repeatedly dramatized in movies like The Sadist, Badlands, Starkweather, Murder in the Heartland, Natural Born Killers, and even the Woody Allen comedy Take the Money and Run); in 1968, responding to a complaint filed by the American Federation of Casino and Gaming Employees, the National Labor Relations Board upheld a hearing examiner's decision ordering some Las Vegas casinos to rehire 42 casino workers, halt anti-union activities, and post notices telling workers they would no longer be penalized for union activity; in 1968 in Bonanza episode 287, The Burning Sky, former Miss Nevada 1959 Dawn Wells made her second appearance on the program, this time playing Moon, a Native American woman married to a white ranch hand; in 1970, bids for printing the UNLV catalog were opened (the winning bid was $11,651 from Mayhew Ltd.); in 1975, with the Saigon regime slowly sinking without U.S. forces, President Ford asked Congress for $522 million to prop up Cambodia and Saigon, a request that was dead on arrival; in 1997, Hilton Hotels launched a $10.5 billion hostile takeover bid against ITT involving the Desert Inn and Caesars properties in Las Vegas (ITT stockholders went for a better bid from Starwood Lodging).

UPDATE: SUNDAY 1-27-2008 12:05 a.m. PST, 08:05 GMT/SUT/CUT —

From the trial of the Chicago Seven / January 27, 1970:

Prosecutor Richard Schultz: We ask that you only relate conversations pursuant to questions.

Judge Julius Hoffman: That is right.

Schultz: If you are asked about a telephone call you can tell about it but you can't mix them all up.

Witness Norman Mailer: You are quite right. I have been exposed to the world as a man possessed of a rambling mind.

On this date in 1781, after more than 200 colonials whose enlistments had ended prepared to leave for home and George Washington forced them back into military service, he then forced several members of the group to serve as a firing squad and kill their leaders ("This was a most painful task, and when ordered to load, some of them shed tears," reported a unit physician); in 1829, John Jones, later a U.S. senator from Nevada, was born at The Hay, Herefordshire, England; in 1862, President Lincoln, exasperated at the inability or unwillingness of his commanders (particularly George McClellan) to engage the enemy, issued an unusual war order telling all U.S. forces, land and water, east and west, to advance simultaneously; in 1863, Col. Patrick Connor, promising no prisoners, complied with a request from Utah officials and led his force in an attack on a Shoshone Village at the intersect of Beaver Creek and Bear River, his men killing 250 tribal members, including 90 women and children, raping women and mutilating survivors with axes and producing the highest number of deaths of the various tribal massacres in the west (Connor was promoted to general for the action); in 1920, Nevada Health Officer S.L. Lee reported that the state had a high rate of infant mortality; in 1953 at the Commodore Hotel in New York City, Ralph Ellison received the National Book Award for Invisible Man, which he called his "not quite fully achieved attempt at a major novel"; in 1961, President Kennedy appointed Edward R. Murrow to be the director of the United States Information Agency; in 1964, Lois Kurtz began work as a half-time computer programmer at the University of Nevada for a $364 monthly salary; in 1965, in testimony before a senate committee, Nevada Attorney General Harvey Dickerson labeled Governor Grant Sawyer's proposal for a one-person state criminal identification bureau a "useless thing"; in 1967, astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chafee died in the Apollo 1 module in a launch pad fire; in 1969, a racial disturbance started at Las Vegas High School when several white students threw a black student through a trophy case; in 1996, three years after she was attacked and stabbed during a Hamburg tennis match, Monica Seles completed a comeback grand slam with an Australian Open win; in 1998, President Clinton appointed assistant Clark County district attorney Johnnie Rawlinson to be a U.S. District Court judge.

UPDATE: SATURDAY 1-26-2008 12:12 a.m. PST, 08:12 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1564, Pope Pius IV issued a papal bull, Benedictus Deus, limiting theological interpretation to the pope and his appointees alone; in 1654, Portugal ordered Jewish and Dutch settlers in Brazil (some of whom had already been forced to leave Portugal) to leave the country within three months, and some of them ended up in New Amsterdam (New York); in 1848 in Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau gave a lecture which would be published the next year under the title Resistance to Civil Government and would later make history across the world, inspiring freedom fighters in India, Denmark, the U.S. and South Africa (it is known to us as Civil Disobedience); in 1892, Carson City's Appeal called for replacement of the vault in the county recorder's office, which the newspaper said was cracked in several places and sinking into the floor; in 1920, Bishop George Hunting, speaking at Trinity Episcopal Church in Reno, announced plans for an Episcopal cathedral in the city; in 1925, Paul Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio; in 1933, philosophy professor Angela Davis was born in a section of Birmingham known as Dynamite Hill because of the number of Klan bombings of African-American homes; in 1961, President Kennedy appointed Janet Travell as the first personal physician to the president; in 1963, President Kennedy released a statement on nuclear testing in Nevada; in 1963, Walk Like A Man by The Four Seasons was released on the Vee Jay label; in 1965, U.S. Rep. Walter Baring of Nevada was seeking office space in what would become the Rayburn House Office Building, a structure that became famous for waste, illegality and overruns in its construction; in 1967, journalist Jack Newfield profiled Bob Dylan in The Village Voice; in 1967, four Clark County senators introduced legislation to outlaw trading stamps in Nevada; in 1988, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany (Editor's note: He is now Pope Benedict XV), prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Inquisition), visited New York under the sponsorship of the conservative Rutherford Institute and was snubbed by rabbis because of his contention that "the faith of Abraham finds its fulfillment" in "the reality of Jesus Christ" and picketed by gays because of his anti-gay comments; in 2000, the New York Stock Exchange closed its doors but continued trading after Rage Against the Machine, performing on Wall Street for a Michael Moore video, drew a crowd of several hundred people and then were turned away at the doors of the exchange; in 2001, former Reno barber Loyd "Dutch" Myers died in the Philippines.

The Dean's List    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

UPDATE: FRIDAY 1-25-2008 9:45 a.m. PST, 17:45 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1787, former revolutionary war officer Daniel Shays led a group of debtors to stop the Massachusetts Supreme Court from meeting and confiscating land and property, attacking both the courthouse and federal arsenal, an uprising that the state militia suceeded in putting down, though the next state legislature granted some of the insurgents' demands and pardoned or arranged light sentences for the leaders; in 1890, New York World reporter Nellie Bly arrived in New York by train 72 days and some change after she had departed on a round the world trip to try to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg's 80 days; in 1892, at Big Creek in Lander County, a snow slide — one of seventeen in the mining area — swept away a blacksmith shop and trapped miners in a mining tunnel (they dug out safely); in 1926, the Central Casting Corporation in Los Angeles began operations, providing extras to all the movie studios; in 1938, Square Pegs, one of the first television programs, began airing on the British Broadcasting System; in 1942, Thailand, allied with Japan, declared war on the United States; in 1961, over the objections of White House reporters, President Kennedy began conducting presidential news conferences live and televised (transcript); in 1961, President Kennedy met with the joint chiefs on the prospects for removing Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro from power; in 1970, the film M*A*S*H premiered; in 2005, a video documentary called Elvis Presley/The last 24 hours was released but got the date of his death wrong on the cover; in 2007, officials of the Google search engine announced on their blog that they had retooled the engine so that typing "miserable failure" into the search field no longer led to the White House web site's biography of George Bush, prompting critics to accuse Google of manipulating searches for political reasons.

UPDATE: THURSDAY 1-24-2008 1:03 p.m. PST, 21:03 GMT/SUT/CUT —

John Ciardi / Saturday Review / February 24, 1959: A savage, after all, is simply a human organism that has not received enough news from the human race. Literature is one most fundamental parts of that news.

On this date in 1845, the Texas Senate ratified a peace treaty between the Republic and 11 Native American tribes; in 1879, the Nevada State Journal reported that "Secretary Evarts [U.S. Secretary of State William Evarts] having declared the influx of Chinese to this coast is 'an invasion, not an immigration,' it becomes the duty of every good citizen to expel the invaders."; in 1882, President Arthur sent to Congress a request for distribution of funds to the Eastern Shawnee in Indiana Territory, a request for an increase in salary for the commissioner of Indian affairs, and a request for creation of a new deputy Indian commissioner's post, and dealing with several other issues of Native American policy or activity; in 1884, Frederick Douglass married his former secretary Helen Pitts, the interracial union sparking controversy; in 1922, President Harding designated Lehman Caves in Nevada a national monument; in 1943, facing a hopeless situation after taking horrendous casualties in the battle of Stalingrad, German General Friedrich von Paulus requested permission to surrender and Hitler replied "Surrender is forbidden. 6 Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round and by their heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution towards the establishment of a defensive front and the salvation of the Western world." (By the time Von Paulus surrendered more than a week later, half his force had died); in 1956, Look magazine published interviews in which J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, acquitted four months earlier of the mutilation lynching of Emmett Till, confessed to the crime for a fee paid by the magazine of $4,000; in 1961, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were divorced in Juarez; in 1962, Reno Mayor Bud Baker, City Councilmember Joseph Mastroianni and City Manager Joe Latimore asked Governor Grant Sawyer to call the Nevada Legislature into special session to enact a city sales tax in Reno (since the voters repealed annual sessions in 1960, Sawyer was on record as opposing annual sessions except for extreme emergencies); in 1963, a week after a business group headed by Bill Stremmel was formed to try to end the long running discussion over a Reno convention center and get it built, the Sparks Tribune ran a front page editorial saying the Truckee Meadows had a kennel full of dogs in the manger when it came to the convention center; in 1965, Lincoln County Senator Floyd Lamb said that if the legislature were forced to reapportion in compliance with "one person/one vote", he wanted Lincoln attached to the same senate district as Clark County (Lamb later moved to Las Vegas and represented Clark in the senate); in 1967, President Johnson's recommended federal budget contained $22 million for construction of U.S. Public Health Service buildings, including $26,000 for a health center at Stewart Indian School and $120,000 for personnel quarters at Owyhee on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation; in 1967, Frank Sinatra failed to appear as scheduled before a U.S. grand jury investigation of skimming in Nevada casinos; in 1980, a Los Angeles billboard advertising Pink Floyd's The Wall was put up with one brick added each day until the full board was covered; in 1983, President Reagan issued a statement describing his policies on Native Americans; in 1996, ground was broken for the Las Vegas Hilton's Star Trek/The Experience; in 1998, the furnishings of Reno's recently closed Nevada Club were sold at auction.

[[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 interest to labor in particular and seekers of justice in general. Copyright © 2008 Dennis Myers.]]

UPDATE: WEDNESDAY 1-23-2008 8:12 a.m. PST, 16:12 GMT/SUT/CUT —

George W. Bush / January 23, 2004: The illiteracy level of our children are appalling.

On Jan. 23, 1556, the most lethal known earthquake in human history killed 830,000 people in China.; in 1775, London alderman, member of Parliament and especially London merchant George Hayley presented to Parliament a petition from London businesspeople being hurt by the interruptions in commerce with north American, asking that Parliament appease the colonies "to the happiness and advantage of both countries, and apply such healing remedies as can alone restore and establish the commerce..."; in 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell took a medical degree (from the Medical Institution of Geneva College, now Hobart College), the first woman in the United States to do so; in 1870, a band of U.S. cavalry sent out by Philip Sheridan under the command of Major Eugene Baker attacked the wrong village in Montana at a time when most men were out hunting and massacred 173 women, children and elderly; in 1901, the Reno Evening Gazette reported "much bitterness" at the Nevada Legislature over the January 22d defeat of a lottery by the Assembly, and that the Washoe County grand jury was told by Judge Benjamin Curler that it needed to investigate rumors "that there are many places in the county where lottery tickets are openly and publicly sold" in violation of law; in 1920, it was reported that the body of Nevada Haywood, wife of Industrial Workers of the World head William Haywood, who died at her home in Denver, would be brought by her daughter to Winnemucca for burial; in 1922, after British police opened fire on a crowd of 2,000 protestors in Chauri Chaura in India, the protestors charged the police who retreated to a police station which the protesters burned with 23 policemen inside (the incident prompted Mohandas Gandhi to call a halt to the rising civil disobedience campaign, delaying Indian independence for years).; in 1923, Thomas Dixon, racist author of the novel The Clansman (which was made by D.W. Griffith into the movie of the same name, later renamed The Birth of a Nation), whose scenes of burning crosses were adopted by the revived 1920s Ku Klux Klan, condemned the new Klan: "If the white race is superior — as I believe it is — it is our duty as citizens of a democracy to lift up and help the weaker race."; in 1923, United Press reported that at least fifteen states, often under pressure from the American Legion, had adopted anti-Klan laws, some of them patently unconstitutional abridgements of speech and association (the Legion's interest was less in opposing the Klan's program, some of which it shared, than in snuffing it as competiton); in 1967, U.S. Representative Walter Baring of Nevada said he had introduced legislation to strip the Food and Drug Administration of authority over vitamins and diet aids (at the time, most vitamins were controlled substances); in 1970, singer Judy Collins testified at the trial of the Chicago Seven; in 1970, the Student Affairs Committee of the University of Nevada Reno met on adoption of a student bill of rights; in 1975, Barney Miller debuted on ABC; in 1986, the charter inductees in the rock and roll hall of fame (for which there was yet no building) were Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, disc jockey Alan Freed, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, and Elvis Presley; in 1998, in the wake of disclosure of accusations against President Clinton involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky, columnist Ann Coulter said on Geraldo Rivera's CNBC television program that Clinton had also been "serviced" by "four other interns or staff members there", a claim Coulter has never substantiated; in 2004, veteran Nevada legislative researchers Bob Erickson and Fred Welden retired after distinguished careers serving the public, carrying away with them a significant share of the institutional memory of the Nevada Legislature.

UPDATE: TUESDAY 1-22-2008 12:29 a.m. PST, 08:29 GMT/SUT/CUT — On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its Roe vs. Wade decision, which legalized abortion. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On this date in 1877, James Sweeney, later to become a Nevada state legislator, attorney general, and supreme court justice on the Silver/Democrat ticket, was born in Carson City; in 1883, a train robbery near Montello was foiled when the messenger inside the express car refused to open it to the robbers, though he endured three wounds when they fired all their ammunition into the car; in 1879, the epic Cheyenne outbreak from Fort Robinson, Nebraska, led by Chief Dull Knife came to an end with remaining escaped Cheyenne captured or killed; in 1905, the first Russian revolution began when workers marching to the Winter Palace to deliver a petiton were gunned down by the imperial guard, estimates of the dead in the massacre running from hundreds to thousands; in 1920, health officials were tracing a smallpox outbreak in San Francisco from the bay area back to Tonopah, Nevada, and from there to Rio Vista, California; in 1920, Nevada Adjutant General (and Lieutenant Governor) Maurice Sullivan, as part of closing out war work in the state, had all the paperwork bound in two volumes for donation to the Nevada State Historical Society — from a May 1 1917 communication that draft plans were being made by federal officials for Nevada to an April 23d 1919 order that all war-related government property in the state be sold off (meanwhile, returning servicemembers were being helped with undelivered liberty bonds and retention of their insurance policies); in 1919, on the first day of the Nevada Legislature, Assemblymember Sadie Hurst introduced the first measure ever sponsored by a woman lawmaker (a resolution asking Congress to approve a federal women's suffrage constitutional amendment, which was referred to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee), which introduction the Silver State described as a "peculiar event", and the lawmakers had a group photograph taken; in 1920, in a speech to the Nevada Live Stock Association, Governor Emmet Boyle urged the formation of a state taxpayers association by businesspeople; in 1933, Molotov and Stalin issued an order barring travel from some parts of the Ukraine to prevent information about a government-engineered famine from spreading; in 1936, a U.S. senate committee approved $100,000 for construction of a veterans hospital in Reno; in 1939, Columbia University scientists split the atom; in 1947, KTLA in Los Angeles became the first commercially licensed television station in the western United States; in 1951, Sparks Tribune editor Bruce Shelly was inducted into the U.S. army (during his time in the service he continued writing his Trib column, Bruce on the Loose under the new title Bruce in the Noose); in 1965, Liz Carpenter, press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson, confirmed reports that first daughter Luci Johnson was taking instruction in the Catholic faith; in 1982, in an effort to avoid arms reductions, President Reagan linked arms talks with the Soviet Union to changes in Soviet policy toward Poland; in 2002, a ground-operated robot Predator reconnaissance plane based at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base crashed at a location the Air Force refused to disclose; in 2006, Juan Evo Morales Ayma was sworn in as the first indigenous chief of state of Bolivia.

UPDATE: MONDAY 1-21-2008 9:59 a.m. PST, 17:59 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1648, businessperson and attorney Margaret Brent appeared before the Maryland General Assembly and asked (in compliance with normal practice) to be given two votes as a Maryland resident — one as a landowner and one as a lawyer for Lord Baltimore (the offended assembly refused the request, Baltimore withdrew his patronage, the Brent family became social pariahs, and Margaret Brent ended up moving to Virginia); in 1901, the Nevada Legislature began with the discovery that Storey County had elected, and Secretary of State Eugene Howell had certified, six assemblyembers and one senator even though the county was entitled to only four assemblymembers and already had its senator; in 1901, the Reno Evening Gazette's legislative correspondent expressed surprise at the absence of longtime railroad lobbyist and political boss Charles "Black" Wallace from opening day of the Nevada Legislature (Wallace died ten days later); in 1903, Harry Houdini escaped from jail in Amsterdam; in 1908, the New York City council enacted an ordinance prohibiting women from smoking in public (it was vetoed by the mayor); in 1914, Mahlon Brown, later to serve from 1951 to 1976 as a senator from Nevada's Clark County , was born in Shreveport, Louisiana; in 1919, a westbound train derailed in a tunnel west of Truckee, with fourteen cars pitched off the rails; in 1924, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died at age 54 [New York Times/AP e-headlines]; in 1966, George Harrison and Patti Boyd married; in 1976, the first supersonic transport plane, the Concorde (described by U.S. Representative Morris Udall as a "filthy flying turkey") took off as a passenger craft for the first time, never to be commercially successful; in 1977, Italy made abortion legal; in 2008, DuSable Museum in Chicago will begin an exhibit titled Martinmas — A Celebration of the Life and Triumphs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

UPDATE: SUNDAY 1-20-2008 5:13 p.m. PST, 01:13 1-21-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1920, socialists deported from the United States, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were given a welcome in the Soviet Union; in 1920, the New York Legislature refused to hear a contingent from the New York City Bar Association headed by Charles Evans Hughes on behalf of five elected socialist legislators who were unseated by the Assembly; in 1936, Nevada superintendent of schools Chauncey Smith estimated that there were fifty to sixty mentally retarded children in the state in need of special needs assistance; in 1948, Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated; in 1955, Reno contractor Frank Capriotti submitted the low bid of $298,000 for construction of a new Reno YMCA building; in 1958, the cast album for the Broadway musical The Music Man was released, placing on the Billboard chart for 245 weeks, twelve of them at number one; in 1961, at the inauguration of John Kennedy, Robert Frost, unable because of the glare from the snow to read Dedication, the poem he composed for the occasion, recited The Gift Outright from memory; in 1981, Nevada Attorney General Richard Bryan's office said an investigation was underway to decide whether the Nevada board of regents violated the open meeting law by closing a meeting to discuss its own members' competence (the law said meetings could be closed to discuss the competence of a person); in 1981, Iran released 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan [New York Times/AP e-headlines]; in 1988, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the nonviolent Pathan leader and colleague of Gandhi who converted the fierce and warlike Pathans to nonviolence in their struggles against the British, died in Peshawar (now in Pakistan) while under house arrest and was mourned by tens of thousands who followed his body across the Khyber Pass to burial in Jalalabad, the Afghan civil war halted for the occasion; in 1998, Oprah Winfrey went on trial for defaming cattle under a Texas "livestock libel" law; in 1998, The Mamas and the Papas were enrolled in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

UPDATE: SATURDAY 1-19-2008 3:14 a.m. PST, 11:14 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1747, Johann Bode, author of Bode's Law on the empirical relationship of the mean distances between the planets and the sun, died; in 1920, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the state government of Rhode Island standing to challenge the legality of the federal alcohol prohibition constitutional amendment; in 1920, residents of Burke's addition and other parts of Reno, represented by Patrick McCarran, won an order from the Nevada Supreme Court to the Public Service Commission and Reno Traction Company halting abandonment and removal of city trolley lines pending a January 28 hearing; in 1920, the Reno Congregational Church elected Prince Hawkins as the president of its board of trustees and released an annual report saying its debt was down to $200 and that it spent twice as much for charity in 1919 as in 1918; in 1937, millionaire Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds [New York Times/AP e-headlines]; in 1944, during a séance in Portsmouth, British medium Helen Duncan "saw" a sailor from the HMS Barham, a ship that had been sunk in 1941, for which vision Duncan was charged and convicted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 for professing to "bring about the appearances of the spirits of deceased persons" and imprisoned for nine months, one of the last witchcraft convictions in England; in 1955, for the first time, a presidential news conference was filmed for television; in 1963, President Kennedy refused to participate in a cold war peace summit with Premier Khrushchev (Khrushchev had agreed) because Pope John XXIII was the go-between and Kennedy feared the public reaction to the first Catholic president working with a pope; in 1974, Notre Dame ended a UCLA 88-game basketball winning streak with a 71-70 victory; in 1978, Jimmy Carter, already considered the most conservative Democratic president since Wilson, reinforced that view with his state of the union speech: "Government cannot solve our problems. It can't set our goals. It cannot define our vision. Government cannot eliminate poverty or provide a bountiful economy or reduce inflation or save our cities."; in 1981, in court testimony, U.S. Justice Department prosecutor Edward Plaza criticized the FBI's "Abscam" sting (during which agents posed as Arab sheiks to elicit favors for cash from members of Congress) as "immoral...criminality tests"; in 1999, Generals Klaus Naumann and Wesley Clark met with Serb President Slobodan Milosevic and promised NATO bombing unless he honored a U.S-brokered cease fire; in 2000, the city council of Halfway, Oregon, changed the town's name to Half.com after a company by that name in exchange for a Web site for the town, money for existing and future business and economic development, 20 computers for the town elementary school, and other items; in 2008, Nevada Democrats and Republicans will hold presidential caucuses.

UPDATE: FRIDAY 1-18-2008 10:27 a.m. PST, 18:27 GMT/SUT/CUT — On Jan. 18, 1862, the Confederate Territory of Arizona, consisting of the lower halves of New Mexico and Arizona, was established; in 1865, half a dozen Nevada fraternal lodges combined into the Grand Lodge of Nevada; in 1898, former assemblymember John Mayhugh was appointed Indian agent for the Western Shoshone Agency in Nevada; in 1919, the disastrous post-world war peace conference of David Lloyd George of England, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Georges Clemenceau of France, began in Paris; in 1936, Nevada received $10,505,629.30 in federal funds for public relief; in 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began; in 1948, Gandhi broke a fast after ending Hindu/Muslim rioting; in 1955, in apparent reaction to U.S. Representative Douglas Stringfellow of Utah, who had demanded that the Atomic Energy Commission stop using the Nevada Test Site because it caused clouds of fallout to land in Utah, AEC scientists Alvin Graves and Jack Clark arrived in Las Vegas on their way to Mesquite, St. George and Cedar City (Utah cities that would develop high rates of cancers and leukemias) to assure residents of the safety of atomic tests; in 1958, a group of Lumbee tribe members in North Carolina, irritated by cross burnings and other white race problems, put participants in a Ku Klux Klan rally to flight; in 1962, two days of student protests began against African-American sit-in leaders‚ expulsions from Southern University in Baton Rouge, the nation's largest black school, ultimately shutting the institution down; in 1969, Vanessa Gower was born in St. Mary's Hospital in Reno; in 1971, almost 23 months before the '72 election, George McGovern announced his candidacy for the presidency, pledging to seek and speak the truth; in 1985, the United States, which had turned to the World Court to hear its case against Iran for the taking of the embassy hostages, walked out of the Court and refused to recognize its jurisdiction when a case was brought against the United States for its efforts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government (the court ruled against the United States and ordered it to pay financial reparations, which are still unpaid); in 2003, several hundred people filled Reno's Manzanita bowl hillside to protest George Bush's impending invasion of Iraq.

The Dean's List    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

UPDATE: THURSDAY 1-17-2008 1:22 a.m. PST, 09:22 GMT/SUT/CUT — On Jan. 17, 1893, Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On this date in 1819, Simon Bolivar declared Colombia a republic; in 1893, the Dayton Dredging Company, a New York company that reportedly had spent $100,000 mining the bed of the Carson River to get more gold and silver from the waste dumped by mine mills during the Comstock period, was planning to spend $40,000 on upgrading its equipment; in 1914, Clarence Darrow denounced eugenics and juvenile courts; in 1920, at 12:04 a.m., a Brooklyn café owner was arrested for selling a glass of brandy as alcohol prohibition began; in 1929, Popeye made his first appearance in the comic strip Thimble Theatre; in 1931, although Utah law contained no prohibition against mixed marriages, Louise Hobkirk and Filipino Frank Matarawan were refused a marriage license in Salt Lake City after being turned down in Nevada and California; in 1931, Union Pacific Railroad president Carl Gray, in Salt Lake City on his way to Las Vegas, said the UP branch line to the Hoover Dam project would be completed February 1 and the government would build a line the rest of the way from the terminal to the damsite; in 1931, President Hoover's public lands committee recommended that federally managed lands be turned over to the state governments, a proposal Hoover was expected to endorse and forward to Congress the next day; in 1936, the Hoover Dam payroll guard force was disbanded as the construction of the dam wound down; in 1939, the German Reich barred the practice of chemistry, dentistry and veterinary medicine to Jews; in 1942, after her plane refueled in Las Vegas, actress Carole Lombard and 21 others died in a crash on Mount Potosi; in 1949, The Goldbergs, television's first situation comedy, debuted on CBS and ran for two years when the network caved in to blacklisters and took it off the air (it was later revived on the NBC and Dumont networks, running under the name Molly from 1952 to 1955); in 1950, a large group of men committed the famous Brinks robbery in Boston, taking $1,218,211.29 in cash and $1,557,183.83 in checks, money orders, and other securities; in 1957, a joint nine-county commission proposed creation of what became the Bay Area Rapid Transit system; in 1963, at a ceremony in Reno's Powning Park, Governor Grant Sawyer lit an old fashioned gas lamp, marking the arrival of natural gas as a power source in the valley; in 1975, CBS's Baretta starring Robert Blake (formerly "Little Beaver" in Red Ryder) went on the air; in 1978, President Carter met with Senator Howard Cannon of Nevada and members of Cannon's rules committee staff on the new year's legislative agenda; in 1991, the long-sluggish Dow Jones average leaped by 114.60 points to 2623.51 on news that the U.S. had started a war against Iraq.

UPDATE: WEDNESDAY 1-16-2008 7:52 a.m. PST, 15:52 GMT/SUT/CUT — On Jan. 16, 1959, Debra Joyce Donlevy (Carson High School '77), and Donna Leslie Cline, were born. Ms. Cline went on to become a journalist and news anchor, Miss Wheelchair Nevada and Miss Wheelchair America. She was made a paraplegic in the March, 1978, single-car rollover accident near Gabbs, Nev., which took Debra Donlevy's life. Ms. Cline went on to become a revered humanitarian in Texas where she died in 1999.

Jane Austen / January 16, 1796: At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea.

On this date in 1826, mountain man Jedediah Smith was exploring the present site of Nevada, the first Euro-American known to enter the region; in 1847, shortly after the United States stole California from Mexico and suppressed an effort by its residents to form a republic, Commodore Robert Stockton appointed U.S. Army Colonel John Charles Fremont as governor, prompting General Stephen Watts Kearny to arrest Frémont, who was court-martialed and convicted of mutiny, disobedience and conduct prejudicial to military discipline (he was pardoned by President James Polk, who had started the Mexican war in order to steal much of Mexico's territory); in 1868, the Carson City Daily Appeal reported that water in the Carson and Humboldt sinks "rose above the land usually intervening and formed one immense lake"; in 1877, Eureka County Senator George Cassidy reintroduced legislation to transfer land from Elko to Eureka county that had been enacted in 1875 but overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court; Ormsby County Senator William Martin introduced legislation providing for forfeiture of judgeships by judges who leave the state for more than six months, and Senator Thomas Stone of Elko County introduced legislation to "suppress" traveling salesmen; in 1918, Lightnin', the play set in a Lake Tahoe hotel that had the Nevada/California state line running through it (allowing people to establish their residency for Nevada quickie divorces while getting their mail in California to fool the folks back home) had its first performance in Washington, D.C. (it later went to Broadway for a run that would break all records — 1,291 performances, playing for three years and one day); in 1920, national labor union officials traveling the nation to police the recent railroad shopmen's agreement said in Sparks that the town's railroad management was violating at least 133 articles in the agreement; in 1939, the comic strip version of Superman premiered; in 1942, Soviet Army Major Senitsa Vershovsky was executed by a Nazi unit for protecting Jews; in 1942, gold medal olympian and three time heavyweight champion Muhammed Ali was born in Louisville; in 1945, a "Dance for Democracy" was held in Reno at the El Patio Ballroom, with all enlisted men and women from the Reno Army Air Base and "registered hostesses", whatever they were, invited; in 1961, the Clark County Hotel Restaurant Employees and Bartenders Association met with its national union executive committee in Las Vegas and the nation body agreed to seek repeal of the 10 percent federal cabaret tax which had been lowered from 20 to 10 percent after the war; in 1964, Hello, Dolly!, a musical version of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (which in turn was a revision of Wilder's The Merchant of Yonkers) debuted on broadway, its title song (as Hello, Lyndon) becoming a theme song for Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign later that year; in 1970, St. Louis Cardinals center fielder Curt Flood sued the commissioner of baseball to overturn the player reserve clause (players could not choose their own teams) and become a free agent, a lawsuit that cost Flood his career when other players failed to support him and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him (free agency came later as a result of contract negotiations and arbitration); in 1973, Bonanza, the Sunday evening hour-long western series shot in color with many scenics of Nevada and the Sierra to encourage viewers to buy color television sets, was cancelled after fourteen seasons and after actor Dan Blocker died and NBC quixotically moved the program from Sundays; in 1978, six women, including Sally Ride and Judith Resnick, were selected as U.S. astronauts (Resnick died in the Challenger explosion), 22 years after NASA excluded thirteen successful female candidates by changing the rules for astronaut selection to permit only military jet pilots to be admitted to the program; in 2006, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in as president of Liberia, Africa's first female chief of state.

UPDATE: TUESDAY 1-15-2008 9:15 a.m. PST, 17:15 GMT/SUT/CUT —

Martin Luther King, Jr. Who are we? We are the descendants of slaves....We are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. From my background I gained my regulating Christian ideals. From Gandhi I learned my operational technique. A hundred times I have been asked why we have allowed children to march in demonstrations, to freeze and suffer in jails, to be exposed to bullets and dynamite. The answer is simple. Our children and our families are maimed a little every day of their lives. If we can end an incessant torture by a single climactic confrontation, the risks are acceptable. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the hopes of men the world over. Nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent.

On Jan. 15, 1838, the Treaty of Buffalo Creek was signed relocating the Senecas from New York to west of Missouri; in 1844, the University of Notre Dame du Lac in Indiana was chartered; in 1901, two boxcars of Porto Rican workers were sidelined in Wadsworth, Nevada (no one was allowed to approach them) until they could be sent out at night to eventually make connections with a Hawaiian steamer that would take them to the islands to be sugar plantation slaves; in 1929, Michael King was born in Atlanta (when he was five years old his father would change both their names to honor Martin Luther); in 1936, with many Hoover Dam project workers out of work, Clark County public relief funds were running low; in 1942, Lt. John Kennedy was transferred from the D.C. headquarters of the Office of Naval Intelligence to a desk job in Charleston, South Carolina, because of his affair with suspected German operative Inga Arvad; in 1943, former U.S. district judge William Hastie resigned as Secretary of War Stimson's civilian aide to protest the govemment's continuing racial policies of segregation and discrimination in the armed forces; in 1951, Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, was sentenced to life in prison for her sadistic treatment of camp inmates and for her collection of gloves, lampshades and other items made from inmates killed at her order for their tattoo-decorated skin; in 1953, the messianic U.S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles told a senate committee that he favored a policy of liberating "captive peoples", thereby providing a policy framework for U.S. interference and covert actions that followed around the world in subsequent years: "[W]e shall never have secure peace or a happy world so long as Soviet communism dominates one-third of all of the peoples that there are, and is in the process of trying at least to extend its rule to many others. These people who are enslaved are people who deserve to be free, and who, from our own selfish standpoint, ought to be free because if they are the servile instruments of aggressive despotism, they will eventually be welded into a force which will be highly dangerous to ourselves and to all of the free world. Therefore, we must always have in mind the liberation of these captive peoples." (Dulles did not offer to liberate Guam, Puerto Rico, Guantanamo or other U.S. "possessions"); in 1962, the North Las Vegas city council voted to ask U.S. Post Office officials to expand the city's service to the entire township so that outlying patrons would not have to drive into town to pick up packages; in 1971, George Harrison's My Sweet Lord was released; in 1978, U.S.-supported tyrant Reza Pahlavi fled Iran an hour ahead of the posse; in 1990, Luke Alan Olsen was born in Reno; in 1992, at an appearance while campaigning in the New Hampshire primary, President George Bush the Elder inadvertently read to an audience an unfiltered stage direction from one of his cue cards: "Message: I care".

UPDATE: MONDAY 1-14-2008 8:42 p.m. PST, 04:42 1-15-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Breaking News: Judge orders Dennis Kucinich included in Jan. 15 Las Vegas NBC presidential debate

UPDATE: MONDAY 1-14-2008 12:14 a.m. PST, 08:14 GMT/SUT/CUT

George W. Bush / January 14, 2001: The California crunch really is the result of not enough power generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.

George W. Bush / January 14, 2001: Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacemakers is going to be an assignment.

On this date in 1784, the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution and the colonial status of the states was ratified by a fairly disinterested Continental Congress (it took weeks to get a quorum); in 1868, a stagecoach that crashed at Westgate on January 13, shattering the leg of one stage company worker, finally arrived in Austin with its passengers at 1 a.m; in 1903, discussing the post-Civil War period while endorsing Booker T. Washington's approach to race, the Nevada State Journal reinforced developing myths by editorializing "The negroes at once sought to gain political control in the States in which they outnumbered the whites and by the end of the 'carpet bag' element, they even aimed at the domination of the States in which the whites were the most numerous. Every half educated negro became a political leader among his people and while deeply wounding the pride of the whites, it also resulted in the worst governments ever seen in the United States."; in 1903, elsewhere on the same page, the Journal commented on legislation to admit Native Americans to West Point military academy: "Negroes are admitted and why should not Indians be if they can win the competitive examination usually required?"; in 1920, boxer Jack Dempsey's manager denied that Dempsey had been a draft dodger and slacker in the world war; in 1936, in the nation's worst air crash, 17 people were killed when an American Airlines luxury airline went down in an Arkansas swamp; in 1936, Desiree Worder of Redwood City obtained a Reno divorce from William Worder so she could marry Roy Burnett, Jr., and Burnett's wife Gladys could marry Mr. Worder; in 1942, President Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation No. 2537, requiring aliens from Italy, Germany and Japan to register with the Department of Justice; in 1946, it was announced that the Las Vegas army air field would be deactivated on February 15; in 1957, Henderson health official Clyde Baker said untested and ungraded raw milk was being sold in the city, and purchasers could contract diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, scarlet fever, bacillary dysentery, undulant fever and bovine tuberculosis; in 1963, George Wallace was sworn into office as governor of Alabama, telling Alabamans in his inaugural speech: "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.... We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station as we will work with him to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We want jobs and a good future for both races.... But we warn those, of any group, who would follow the false doctrine of communistic amalgamation that we will not surrender our system of government, our freedom of race and religion."; in 2000, U.S. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson announced that he had arranged the return of more than 80,000 oil shale-rich acres to the Ute tribe of Utah from which it had been taken to provide fuel for ships during World War One, the largest return of land in a century (Richardson also pledged the federal government to clean up a nuclear waste dump it had emplaced on the land); in 2003, a panel of musicians convened by Britain's Q magazine named Arthur Crudup's That's All Right (Mama) by Elvis as the song that most changed the world.

Q magazine list of top ten songs that changed the world 1. Elvis Presley, That's All Right 2. The Beatles, I Want To Hold Your Hand 3. Sex Pistols, God Save The Queen 4. Sugarhill Gang, Rappers Delight 5. Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Sprit 6. Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit 7. Bob Dylan, Like A Rolling Stone 8. Run DMC, Walk This Way 9. New Order, Blue Monday 10. Band Aid, Do They Know It's Christmas

UPDATE: SUNDAY 1-13-2008 12:11 a.m. PST, 08:11 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1864, Nevada Territorial Governor James Nye delivered his annual report to the Territorial Legislature; in 1899, responding to a proposal by Carson City's Appeal that Native Americans be ejected from town each day at sunrise, the Nevada State Journal said Carson should first deal with "another element at the capital city more dangerous to the peace and reputation of the town, than the poor Washoe" but neglected to say what this greater threat was; in 1902, the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs sent out a letter to Indian schools saying that the hair of all Native American boys should be cut short, that no native costumes could be worn or native dances performed, and that their skin could not be painted; in 1913, there was a fire at the Thanhouser Studio in New Rochelle, New York, one of the notable silent-film era studios, and the studio immediately turned it into story material, releasing When the Studio Burned less than a month later, on February 4; in 1931, during trial of grand theft charges by actress Clara Bow against her aide Daisy De Boe, a telegram from Rex Bell [later Nevada lieutenant governor] to Bow was made a court exhibit: "Lake Tahoe, Sept. 8, 1930/Dear sweetheart darling baby I do miss you and this is only a beginning now to the New York trip (signed) Rex"; in 1940, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who had earlier condemned the seizure by Free French forces of the tiny island western hemisphere colony of Saint Pierre and Miquelon from Vichy, said at a news conference that he had meant no offense when he used the term "so called Free French"; in 1942, training began at the Las Vegas Air Gunnery School.

UPDATE: SATURDAY 1-12-2008 2:34 a.m. PST, 10:34 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1864, President Lincoln designated Arcade Creek as the western base of the Sierra Nevada range; in 1876, Jack London, who at age 15 would hop a freight in San Francisco over the Sierra to Reno and would return to Reno in 1910 to support "great white hope" Jim Jeffries against champion Jack Johnson (who London called a "Yankee nigger"), was born in San Francisco; in 1890, after the Reno newspapers reported that a thousand head of cattle in Elko County had frozen to death, Winnemucca's Silver State reported that no such thing had happened; in 1901, Phillippine "governor" William Howard Taft was considering whether to allow Filipinos to have freedom of religion, considered "unalienable" in the United States; in 1901, the Reno Evening Gazette carried an article entitled The New Century (apparently people were better at math a hundred years ago, since they didn't consider 1900 the start of the new century); in 1932, Ophelia Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas, an ally of Huey Long, became the first woman elected to the U.S. senate; in 1935, Louis Piquet, John Dillinger's attorney, got a break in his trial on charges of harboring the gangster when U.S. District Judge William Holly ruled "It is not required of a lawyer to surrender his client or to inform law agencies."; in 1940, a medal of honor awarded to Sgt. Fred Stockman in the world war (he saw the gas mask of a fellow soldier was shot away and put his own mask on the soldier, losing his life to the gas) was given to the Smithsonian Institution when no survivors of Stockman could be found (Stockman was the third member of the 2d battalion of the 6th Marines to receive the medal, and a navy cargo ship is named for him); in 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed executive order 9019 closing Nevada land to the public and reserving its use to the War Department for an aerial machine gun range and executive order 9020 transferring control of the Tonopah airport to the War Department; in 1945, Major Clarence Heckathorn of Las Vegas (former editor of the University of Nevada Sagebrush) was awarded the Bronze Star at First Army headquarters on the European front; in 1954, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced that the Eisenhower administration would follow a policy of "deterrent of massive retaliatory power" in working its will, a policy that, as the U.S. and the Soviet Union improved their nuclear delivery systems, led to "mutually assured destruction" (MAD); in 1954, Reno attorneys Alan Bible and Bob McDonald and university extension official Gene Empey obtained a ten year lease on the Zephyr Cove Lodge at Lake Tahoe and said they would reopen it on about April 1; in 1960, Utah Governor George Clyde and Nevada Governor Grant Sawyer met in Elko on farm and health problems in their states; in 1960, Reno Mayor Bud Baker said he would continue working to turn the downtown's casino district into a mall, proposing that the idea be tried on major holidays and then, if it worked, made permanent on Memorial Day; in 1965, amid the usual safety assurances from federal officials, a "dirty" nuclear rocket was launched from Jackass Flats, Nevada, releasing a radioactive cloud of debris that drifted over Los Angeles; in 1991, the U.S. Senate came within three votes of stopping the Kuwait war (Nevada's senators [Democrats Harry Reid and Richard Bryan] both voted for war); in 1998, in Escondido, California, the body of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe was discovered after which police put her 14-year-old brother Michael through a process later described as "psychological torture" over three days in order to coerce a confession, only to see Michael exonerated on the eve of trial when a DNA test incriminated a homeless man later convicted of the murder; in 1998, Gene Vincent, Lloyd Price, Allen Toussaint, Jelly Roll Morton, The Mamas and the Papas, Santana, The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

UPDATE: FRIDAY 1-11-2008 10:20 a.m. PST, 18:20 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River near Ravenna at the head of his army (bringing an armed force onto the homeland was a violation of Roman law), igniting Roman civil war; in 1877, Assemblymember Jerry Moore of Elko introduced legislation to abolish the post of Nevada state mineralogist and turn its duties over to the state superintendent of schools under a new title — curator of the state museum; in 1885, Alice Paul, chair of the National Women's Party and author of the Equal Rights Amendment, was born in Moorestown, New Jersey; in 1901, the Reno Evening Gazette denounced U.S. Senator Henry Teller of Colorado for what it called a "treasonous" act — presenting a petition signed by 2,000 Filipinos, whose nation the United States was in the process of conquering and colonizing; in 1917, the day after William Cody died, the Nevada State Journal editorialized: "Buffalo Bill is dead. Some day this will be seen as a landmark along the road of history traveled by these young United States. Every word is significant. The Buffalo died before Bill‚ did. The Indians died before the Buffalo. And now Bill‚ himself, before whom, both in point of history and location, red- and brown-skin, biped and quadruped, went into oblivion."; in 1919, Ormsby County was considering charging women a poll tax already imposed on men; in 1944, German Private Franz Kettner was killed by an ad hoc Nazi "court" at a prisoner of war camp in Texas, a practice tolerated by U.S. officials during the war; in 1949, United Press reported "Las Vegas, Nev., whose slogan is 'Fun in the Sun'‚ today was brushing off two inches of snow which fell during the night on top of three inches deposited yesterday."; in 1951, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission announced that it would test atomic weapons at a bombing and gunnery range near Las Vegas, the first atom bombs exploded within the United States since the July 16, 1945, first detonation of an a-bomb; that the explosions would be safe and no unauthorized persons including news people, would be permitted to witness them (the tests were not safe and the AEC loved having newspeople as witnesses at the tests); in 1953, newly elected U.S. Representative Cliff Young of Nevada appeared with his wife Jane on Edward R. Murrow's CBS program See It Now to talk about the theft of their car and all its contents when they arrived in Washington; in 1956, U.S.-backed Saigon dictator Ngo Dinh Diem issued Ordinance No. 6, providing for internment of his political enemies in concentration camps; in 1964, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued a landmark report on the link between tobacco and cancer; in 1965, Buddhists launched anti-war and anti-government protests in South Vietnam; in 1969, the album This Was Jethro Tull was released; in 1981, John and Yoko's Double Fantasy went platinum; in 2001, the Pentagon admitted U.S. massacre of civilians at No Gun Ri, Korea, in July 1950; in 2002, Bush energy secretary Spencer Abraham recommended Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the site for a dump for high level nuclear waste.

UPDATE: THURSDAY 1-10-2008 9:32 a.m. PST, 17:32 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1848, Nevada Governor Reinhold Sadler was born in Czarnikau, Posen, Prussia; in 1892, the (Carson VCity) Appeal reported "Frank P. Hill, an escaped crank from the Stockton Asylum, who has been wandering around Carson for the last two weeks with an ax aboard his shoulder, was taken into custody by W. H. Chestnutwood of Reno, and transferred to Nevada's Asylum on last night's train."; in 1905, in U.S. Senate debate on the joint statehood bill (a measure to provide statehood for Arizona and New Mexico), Nevada Sen. William Stewart advocated an amendment to protect the interests of Indians and Nevada Sen. Francis Newlands supported limits on the land that could be sold to individuals; in 1917, volunteers from the National Women's Party began silent protests in front of the White House against Woodrow Wilson's failure to support a suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a vigil that continued until June 1919 when the 19th amendment passed both houses of Congress (on June 22, 1917, arrests of the protesters began and they ended up in Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia where on November 15, 1917, the warden ordered guards to begin brutalizing the protesters, but the vigils and the arrests and imprisonments continued); in 1914, Victor Catrini was convicted in Reno police court of associating with Native Americans and ordered to leave the city; in 1918, the execution of Ben Kuhl for a murder committed during a Nevada mail robbery was postponed; in 1928, the USSR exiled Leon Trotsky; in 1943, Frank Sinatra, Jr. (who was kidnapped at Lake Tahoe in 1963) was born in New Jersey; in 1956, Elvis recorded Heartbreak Hotel; in 1957, a boy scout troop in Ely spent the day gathering discarded Christmas trees and hauling them to Gilford Canyon for use in building "brush dams" in a wash to prevent erosion; in 1958, Jerry Lee Lewis' Great Balls of Fire hit number one; in 1961, Riverside Hotel casino manager Gerald Layne disappeared and was never seen again; in 1972, Hubert Humphrey, who once said "a wonderful adventure it is!" about Vietnam, criticized President Nixon for taking longer to withdraw from the war than it took to defeat the Nazis; in 1976, with Native Americans divided on whether it was appropriate for them to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial, the Nevada State Journal urged tribes to take the opportunity to tell their story: "It is presumptuous of white Americans to expect Indians to dance for them without recognizing the injustices which are an essential part of American history. Instead of passively sitting out the American Bicentennial celebration, participating without enthusiasm or denouncing it, we suggest that Indians participate on constructive, realistic terms. They might organize public discussions, lectures and workshops on Indian civilization — a civilization which has endured despite the best efforts of many white men to submerge it. They might conduct discussions which can bring home to Americans, without hostility, the enormous injustices which the founding and expansion of the American nation imposed on Indians. And they might show Americans that the foundations of American freedom rest on the rubble of conquest. These are essential aspects of the American story. The Bicentennial is an opportunity for American Indians to tell it."; in 2003, a marker commemorating the pioneer settlement of Mormon Station was dedicated in Genoa, Nevada.

The Dean's List    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

UPDATE: WEDNESDAY 1-9-2008 1:05 p.m. PST, 21:05 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1776, Common Sense by Thomas Paine was published anonymously; in 1866, the Fisk School (now Fisk University), established in an army barracks in Nashville for freed African-Americans, began classes; in 1885, former Nevada mining executive John Mackay gained control of the New York, Texas, and Mexico Rail Road, a proposed coast-to-coast line that finally reached the ambitious length of 91 miles; in 1889, Reno's Nevada State Journal pointed out that the Elko Free Press had reached a benchmark —volume 15— "with bright prospects ahead, all of which the Journal is glad to note"; in 1905, Russian troops fired on demonstrators in an action that became known as Bloody Sunday; in 1914, in New York, eugenicists were offering a $500 prize to the woman selected to be the wife in a eugenics marriage they were trying to arrange so they could "study the issue of such a marriage"; in 1923, Colorado Governor-elect William Sweet had himself secretly sworn into office at midnight in order to prevent last minute appointments by his predecessor Oliver Shoup, then was sworn in again at the public inaugural at noon (the secret oath taking was disclosed by the Denver Post in April); in 1924, Virginia and Leonard Woolf and her husband purchased a home at 52 Tavistock Square in London's Bloomsbury district; in 1941, Joan Baez was born in Staten Island; in 1951, At a meeting of the Nevada chapter of the American Institute of Architects at the Trocadero in Reno, Glidden Paint Company representative Jack Robinson advised the architects not to confuse paint with mayonnaise (I'm not making this up); in 1960, a groundbreaking was held for the new University of Nevada library in Reno; in 1961, eleven days before taking office as president, John Kennedy gave a "farewell to Massachusetts" address to the Massachusetts Legislature (see below); in 1984, John Lennon's Nobody Told Me was released; in 1986, a U.S. District Court ordered Kodak to stop selling its instant cameras because of its infringement of Polaroid patents; in 1990, in the latest evidence of the failure of airline deregulation, the Air Transport Association reported that the airlines had lost $2 billion in the previous year; in 1991, two teenagers were sentenced for the "wilding" rape of the Central Park jogger (their innocence was shown by DNA tests a decade later); in 1997, the Union Bank of Switzerland was caught by its security guard Christoph Meili destroying archival records on the lost assets of Holocaust victims (Meili secured the records and turned them over to the Israeli Cultural Association but had to flee the country); in 1998, Wag the Dog opened in U.S. theatres.

President-elect John Kennedy Massachusetts Legislature January 9, 1961 I have welcomed this opportunity to address this historic body, and, through you, the people of Massachusetts to whom I am so deeply indebted for a lifetime of friendship and trust. For fourteen years I have placed my confidence in the citizens of Massachusetts and they have generously responded by placing their confidence in me. Now, on the Friday after next, I am to assume new and broader responsibilities. But I am not here to bid farewell to Massachusetts. For forty-three years — whether I was in London, Washington, the South Pacific, or elsewhere — this has been my home; and, God willing, wherever I serve this shall remain my home. It was here my grandparents were born — it is here I hope my grandchildren will be born. I speak neither from false provincial pride nor artful political flattery. For no man about to enter high office in this country can ever be unmindful of the contribution this state has made to our national greatness. Its leaders have shaped our destiny long before the great republic was born. Its principles have guided our footsteps in times of crisis as well as in times of calm. Its democratic institutions — including this historic body — have served as beacon lights for other nations as well as our sister states. For what Pericles said to the Athenians has long been true of this commonwealth: "We do not imitate, for we are a model to others." And so it is that I carry with me from this state to that high and lonely office to which I now succeed more than fond memories of firm friendships. The enduring qualities of Massachusetts — the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant — will not be and could not be forgotten in this nation's executive mansion. They are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future. Allow me to illustrate: During the last sixty days, I have been at the task of constructing an administration. It has been a long and deliberate process. Some have counseled greater speed. Others have counseled more expedient tests. But I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider," he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us." Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arbella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavor — and a government cannot be selected — merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us — recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state — our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly men of courage — with the courage to stand up to one's enemies — and the courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates — the courage to resist public pressure, as well as private greed? Secondly, were we truly men of judgment — with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past — of our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others — with enough wisdom to know that we did not know, and enough candor to admit it? Third, were we truly men of integrity — men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them — men who believed in us — men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust? Finally, were we truly men of dedication — with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest. Courage, judgment, integrity, dedication: these are the historic qualities of the Bay Colony and the Bay State, the qualities which this state has consistently sent to this chamber on Beacon Hill here in Boston and to Capitol Hill back in Washington. And these are the qualities which, with God's help, this son of Massachusetts hopes will characterize our government's conduct in the four stormy years that lie ahead. Humbly I ask His help in that undertaking--but aware that on earth His will is worked by men. I ask for your help and your prayers, as I embark on this new and solemn journey.

UPDATED: 1-19-2008

Clinton and Romney projected to win their party presidential caucuses in Nevada

The Nevada Supreme Court reversed Judge J. Charles Thompson and barred Rep. Kucinich from the NBC debate. More in the Sunday 20 Jan. 2008 Barbwire. A federal judge tossed out the Nevada State Education Association lawsuit seeking to abolish presidential caucus voting at nine Las Vegas Strip hotel-casinos.

Full Frontal Hillary
Sen. Clinton was absolutely correct that it took a president to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The attacks against her are based on historical revisionism. MORE

Full Frontal Hillary.com Dennis Myers' NevadaCaucuses.com

UPDATE: WEDNESDAY 1-9-2008 10:57 a.m. PST, 18:57 GMT/SUT/CUT –
Culinary Union endorses Obama

Teachers union sues Democrats to help Hillary
Special "at large precincts" for on-duty hotel workers challenged
New York Times 1-13-2008 (Free registration may be required)

NEW BARBWIRE: The crying game
Daily Sparks Tribune 1-13-2008
     Breaking News 1-14-2008 : Judge orders Dennis Kucinich included in Jan. 15 Las Vegas NBC presidential debate

Statewide Communications Workers Union endorses Edwards

For Immediate Release January 9, 2008 Contact: Amanda Cooper, UNITE HERE, 212-332-9376 Pilar Weiss, Culinary Workers Union Local 226, 702-386-5130 UNITE HERE Endorses Senator Barack Obama (New York, NY) — The Executive Committee of UNITE HERE has voted to endorse Senator Barack Obama for President. On behalf of nearly one million members and retirees, the union announced that it will be supporting the campaign in primaries and caucuses throughout the nation. "Barack Obama began his career organizing working families who were trying to pick up their lives as their industries were leaving them behind. As he entered politics, we knew that he would understand our members and we supported him from the start," explained General President Bruce Raynor. "Our organization and our members will do everything in our power to see that he reaches the White House this fall, because we know he will bring working Americans with him." Since the day he took a job in Chicago fighting for families who had been devastated by steel plant closings over two decades ago, Senator Obama has been a champion of working Americans. He marched with striking workers at Chicago's Congress Plaza Hotel picket line as a state senator and U.S. Senator. He spoke at the founding convention of UNITE HERE in 2004, and he has worked extensively with the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada supporting their latest contract campaign. As President, he will fight for and sign into law the Employee Free Choice Act, an increase in the minimum wage, and affordable health care for every American. "Barack Obama is not a fair weather friend to working Americans, he has been there when the going gets rough, on the picket line with hotel workers again and again and there when we need him," says President/Hospitality Industries John Wilhelm. "Even among this impressive field of candidates, we are proud to offer him our support in this election, and eager to help him win." "Barack Obama has shown us that he understands our members' struggles and dreams," explained D. Taylor, the Secretary-Treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226. "He stood with our Union in every step of our recent contract negotiations and showed us that he too understands that organizing and bringing people together is how we move forward. We want to make the American dream we have established in Las Vegas a reality for the entire country and we think that Senator Obama will take us there." "What we have to make real is the idea that in this country, we value the labor of every American," said Senator Obama. "We must respect that labor and reward it with a few basic guarantees - wages that can raise a family, health care if we get sick, a retirement that's dignified, working conditions that are safe. That vision is what I've been fighting for two decades, as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, state senator and U.S. Senator, and it's what I'll fight for as President. I'm honored to receive UNITE HERE's endorsement, and to carry on this fight in the White House." UNITE HERE is a labor union representing 460,000 workers in the hotel, food service, gaming, laundry, apparel, and textile industries. The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 represents 60,000 members in Nevada. EDITOR'S NOTE: This endorsement also includes that of Bartenders and Beverage Dispensers Local 165 in Las Vegas/Clark County.

UPDATE: Teachers union sues Democrats to help Hillary
Special "at large precincts" for on-duty hotel workers challenged
New York Times 1-13-2008 (Free registration may be required)

NEW BARBWIRE: The crying game
Daily Sparks Tribune 1-13-2008

UPDATE: TUESDAY 1-8-2008 8:59 p.m. PST, 04:59 1-9-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT –

Tim Russert: Culinary Local 226 being pressured to back off from Wednesday endorsement announcement

At 8:56 p.m. PST, Meet the Press host Tim Russert reported on MSNBC that Culinary Local 226 is being pressured by its national union, UNITE HERE, to step back from announcing a presidential endorsement on Wednesday morning. (Rumor has it that they are planning to announce support of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois.) The union sent out an announcement on Tuesday afternoon that "D. Taylor, Secretary Treasurer, Culinary Workers Union Local 226, Geoconda Arguello-Kline, President, Culinary Workers Union Local 226, and members of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 165" would announce the 60,000-member union's presidential caucus endorsement at 11:00 am at "Culinary Workers Union Local 226 — Big Hall, 1630 S. Commerce St., Las Vegas, NV."

Local 226 is Nevada's largest union representing mostly workers in Clark County plus Circus Circus and the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno. The union has been criticized in labor circles for waiting this long to support a candidate in the Jan. 19 Nevada presidential caucus. Labor spent a lot of money to win the presidential caucus for the Silver State in order to demonstrate a union resurgence, that labor could once again play kingmaker.

Instead, most national unions have told their locals to remain on the sidelines or endorse whomever they want. Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO endorsed former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in December. Firefighters endorsed Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd. The surprising result in New Hampshire this evening has split the Democratic Party between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Obama with Sen. Edwards and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson still major players. Should Culinary Local 226 waffle when Nevada now has a renewed chance to play a decisive role, it will sound the death knell of Nevada's attempt to become a player on the national political stage. Stay tuned. Be well. Raise hell.

UPDATE: 1-8-2008 4:16 p.m. PST, 00:16 1-9-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT – On this date in 1830, a pack train led by scout Rafael Rivera passed through the area now known as the Las Vegas valley; in 1867, U.S. peace activist Emily Green Balch, probably the least known Nobel peace laureate, was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts (see below); in 1868, stagecoaches traveling west across Nevada were being stopped because of heavy snows and several were assumed stuck in the mud between Winnemucca and Virginia City; in 1890, temperatures in Reno fell to minus-16 degrees; in 1894, the site of the recently closed World Columbian Exposition in Chicago was swept by fire, destroying several of the buildings; in 1901, just before 1 a.m. a fire was discovered in a three story orphan asylum housing 165 to 195 occupants in Rochester, New York — 28 children and three workers were killed; in 1924, Nevada Governor James Scrugham and former governor Emmet Boyle were partners in a mine in Round Mountain, with Boyle adding supervision of the mine to his duties of managing the Nevada State Journal and the Reno Chamber of Commerce; in 1935, Jesse Garon and Elvis Aron Presley were born in Tupelo, Mississippi, only Elvis surviving alive; in 1937, temperatures in Reno dropped to 16 degrees and minus-50 degrees at San Jacinto rail stop in Elko County; in 1940, the Newspaper Enterprise Association ran a story announcing the latest "new woman" — "a real individual with definite stands as well as standards, without being the slightest bit unfeminine"; in 1953, the Nevada State Journal reported that Nevada Republicans planning to travel to Washington for Dwight Eisenhower's presidential inauguration encountered difficulties with their formal wear for the occasion: "Most of them found that under 20 years of Democratic administration they had grown fat."; in 1958, 14-year-old Bobby Fischer won the United States chess championship; in 1960, state legislators meeting with Governor Grant Sawyer agreed to try for a 45- day legislative session under the new voter-approved constitutional amendment providing for annual sessions of the Nevada Legislature, with Sawyer agreeing to limit his legislative proposals to budget matters rather than a full fledged legislative program (the session lasted 55 days, five short of the paid limit); in 1960, the City of Reno asked Nevada District Judge Clel Georgetta to lift a temporary restraining order against construction of a chamber of commerce hospitality center in Powning Park, the land for which had been donated to the city on condition that it be used only as park space; in 1963, with French Culture Minister André Malraux and his wife Marie-Madeleine Lioux, Jacqueline Kennedy, President Kennedy, and Vice President Johnson in attendance, the Mona Lisa — on loan to the United States for four months — was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. (paradoxically, Malraux had tried to steal a bas-relief from the Banteay Srei temple in Cambodia in the 1920s); in 1966, Rubber Soul hit number one on the album charts; in 1967, three Vietnamese villages between the Thi-Tinh and Saigon rivers that governed themselves as a socialist enclave presented such a challenge to the U.S. that a major action ("Operation Cedar Falls") was mounted, with residents cleared out of the villages and into internment camps, the villages razed, vegetation and agriculture destroyed, and the site leveled with 720 Vietnamese and 72 U.S. killed; in 1999, The New York Times reported falsely that Iraq had expelled weapons inspectors, the first of seven times during the year it repeated the lie, only one of which was corrected by the newspaper (the weapons inspectors actually fled Iraq because of a spy scandal — the U.S. planted an agent among the inspectors — and because of an impending bombing attack by the Clinton administration); in 2001, UNLV's Lied Library opened.

Emily Balch Dies; Won Nobel Prize Leader in Pacifist Groups Was Cited in '46 Founded Peace and Freedom League Had Been A Professor Lost Post at Wellesley After Opposing World War I, but Got College's Aid for Award Special to The New York Times January 11, 1961 Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 10 — Emily Greene Balch, a leader of the pacifist movement throughout the world and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, died here yesterday at the age of 94. Miss Balch had been living in the Vernon Nursing Home here since December, 1956. Before that she made her home in Wellesley for many years. Surviving are three sisters, Miss Elizabeth B. Balch of Cambridge and Miss Marion C. Balch and Mrs. Robert Bowditch Stone, both of Jamaica Plain. Lost Teaching Job Miss Balch lost her college teaching job because she was an outspoken pacifist. Some years later she won the Nobel Peace Prize for the same reason. All who knew this forthright, earnest New England woman knew that this recognition was the result of a change in the times, not a change in Miss Balch. Social worker, economist as well as a college professor, she began her new career in 1918 at the age of 52, having firmly and forever declared herself against war. Miss Balch, who described herself as "only the plainest of New England spinsters and ex- teachers," was a founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. One of her closest associates was Jane Addams, who served the league as president while Miss Balch was its secretary-treasurer. Born in Jamaica Plain on Jan. 8, 1867, Miss Balch studied social work at Bryn Mawr College, receiving an A.B. degree with its first graduating class, in 1889. Her teaching career was prefaced by field work in social service under Jacob Riis in New York, the study of political economy in Paris, a job as a settlement-house worker in Boston and more study at the University of Chicago and the University of Berlin. In 1896, when she returned from Germany, she became an assistant in economics at Wellesley College. By 1913 she was Professor of Economics and Political and Social Science there. Served In Military Hospitals Miss Balch was a delegate to the International Congress of Women at The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1915, after her interest in world peace had already taken firm hold. It was enhanced during World War I, when, on leave from the college, she served overseas in military hospitals. She was among the authors of the peace proposals that came out of the 1915 meeting and the formation of a Women's International Committee for Permanent Peace, which later became the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1916, Miss Balch served in Stockholm, Sweden, on the Neutral Conference for Continuous Meditation established by Henry Ford and she drew up a study of "International Colonial Administration." When she returned to the United States she worked actively against United States entry into the war. During her anti-war activity Miss Balch tried to relieve Wellesley of embarrassment by remaining on leave of absence. When the war ended in 1918 the trustees refused to renew her appointment. Miss Balch then moved full time into the peace movement. She became secretary-treasurer of the league and established its headquarters at Geneva. She left the post in 1922 because of ill health, but in 1934, when it became involved in financial troubles, took up the job again for eighteen months without pay. Studied Haitian Conditions In 1930, Miss Balch accompanied a commission appointed by President Herbert Hoover to study conditions in occupied Haiti. She wrote much of the final report, and her subsequent writings, lectures and other persuasions were said to have greatly influenced the withdrawal of the United States Marine Corps from that country. Wellesley made its peace with Miss Balch on Armistice Day in 1935, when she was invited to be the college's official speaker. In 1946, when she was nominated for the peace prize, which she shared with the late Dr. John R. Mott, she was recommended for the honor by Mildred McAfee Horton, Wellesley's president. Miss Balch donated her $17,000 share of the prize to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. When World War II broke out Miss Balch reported she "went through a long and painful mental struggle". Her pacifism did not prevent her from opposing Adolf Hitler, but her opposition took the form of help to sufferers from Nazi cruelty. Although in failing health in recent years, Miss Balch was still able to serve as honorary chairman of the Women's International League and, in 1959, as co-chairman of a committee of sixty notables to mark the 100th anniversary of Jane Addams' birth. Miss Balch, who was born into a Unitarian family, joined the Society of Friends in 1921 and remained a Quaker the rest of her life.

UPDATE: 1-8-2008 2:17 a.m. PST, 10:17 GMT/SUT/CUT –

Harrah's threats of major litigation force Caesars' new dealers' union to move website

The following was sent to union activists on January 7, 2008: The website we have all become accustomed to, caesarspalacedealers.com is going "off the air". From this point on we will be temporarily located at TWULocal721.org (Caesars Palace Dealers WILL have their own domain name again in the very near future).

Here is the reason why: Two weeks prior to our election we received a notice of "infringement of trademark rights" from Harrah's concerning the domain name caesarspalacedealers.com. They demanded we turn over the domain name and website to them within 72 hours. We know it is not an infringement. We can fight it, but it will cost probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. We know we would prevail, but the money can be better used elsewhere.

We believe that their plan was to gain control of the website so they could have uploaded their anti-TWU website up to caesarspalacedealers.com prior to our election and to silence our voice on the internet. Well, their plan failed. We won the war by organizing the Dealers of Caesars Palace, so why toss money away?

There are plans for other casino dealers to bring their websites online soon. We will use better chosen domain names for them, so we will not have to go through this BS again. All of the other casino dealer websites/domains will be linked directly to the TWULocal721.org website as well.

Dealers at LV Flamingo and other Harrah's-owned resorts report aggressive new management campaign of fear and intimidation / Las Vegas Review-Journal 1-8-2008

UPDATE: 1-7-2008 6:41 a.m. PST, 14:41 GMT/SUT/CUT –

George W. Bush / January 7, 2000: If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow.

On this date in 1781, Mission San Pedro Y San Pablo De Bicuner was established on Native American land in present day Imperial County, California, without asking the tribe's permission; in 1879, Nevada Assemblymember Robert Wash of Lincoln County was sworn into office on his deathbed and died January 8; in 1891, Zora Neale Hurston, novelist, anthropologist and archivist of African-American life and folklore, was born in Eatonville, Florida; in 1892, Carson City's Appeal endorsed U.S. Secretary of State James G. Blaine for the presidency; in 1901, General Arthur MacArthur had several Phillippine patriot generals, who were leading the fight against U.S. conquest, deported from their own nation, a technique for quashing Filipino patriotism previously used by the Spanish occupiers; in 1911, movie star Mary Pickford married Owen Moore (their 1920 divorce led to a significant court case charging fraud and collusion under Nevada's quickie divorce law); in 1918, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Oliverius of Winnemucca received a letter from her brother Joe Kubicek, a member of the U.S. ambulance corps, the letter written on "a piece of cloth from the wings of a Belgian aeroplane brought down in Flanders by a Boche [German] avion"; in 1932, excavations for Boulder Dam tunnels were completed; in 1953, a 33-year-old Reno man was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge pending a sanity hearing after he was overheard in a downtown gas station phone booth trying to call President Truman to warn him about "some bombs that are going to be dropped"; in 1960 at Gray Reid's department store in Reno, Bell Telephone Company of Nevada began three days of demonstrations of direct dialing on long distance calls, which would begin in BTCN territory on January 17; in 1969, California Governor Ronald Reagan called on the legislature to "drive criminal anarchists and latter-day Fascists" (his description of free speech advocates) off college campuses; in 1979, Vietnamese troops, who invaded Cambodia while other nations dithered over the mass murder taking place there, took control of the capital of Phnom Penh, ending the vicious regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge — over the objections of the United States, which had helped bring the Khmer Rouge to power with its secret bombing of Cambodia; in 1980 at the White House, President Carter spoke on the telephone for four minutes with former Nevada governor Mike O'Callaghan, according to White House records; in 1999, President Clinton's impeachment trial in the senate began, with much of the first-day comment focusing on Chief Justice William Rehnquist's new sergeant stripes on his judicial robes; in 2005, Daniel F. Guastaferro of Las Vegas died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq.

The Dean's List    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

UPDATE: 1-6-2008 12:11 a.m. PST, 08:11 GMT/SUT/CUT – On this date in 1798, mountain man Jedediah Strong Smith, believed to be the first white man to explore Nevada, was born in Bainbridge, New York; in 1912, in an editorial, Reno's Nevada State Journal argued that Las Vegas had a great future as a farming community; in 1919, Nye County Senator Wesley Stewart died of influenza in San Francisco (but his seat was not filled for the 1919 Nevada Legislature); in 1936, the character of Porky Pig was introduced in the Warner cartoon Gold Diggers of '49; in 1940, George Walters, hired by Las Vegas Mayor John Russell to deal with problems of interference with radio signals in the valley and given a police badge to help him in his work, had his badge lifted by the police commissioner after the city commission vetoed Walters' hiring; in 1941, in his "four freedoms" message to Congress, President Roosevelt gave an unusual presidential admission that the U.S. had frequently gone to war even though it was not threatened: "It is true that prior to 1914 the United States often had been disturbed by events in other continents. We had even engaged in two wars with European nations and in a number of undeclared wars in the West Indies, in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific for the maintenance of American rights and for the principles of peaceful commerce. But in no case had a serious threat been raised against our national safety or our continued independence."; in 1950, England extended diplomatic recognition to China; in 1957, United Airlines again cut service to Elko, eliminating east- and west-bound evening flights, reducing air mail service; in 1960, Reno citizens were organizing against a plan to build the new convention center in Wingfield Park, a large park on Bell Isle in the Truckee River; in 1960, Reno citizens went to court to try to stop construction of a hospitality center in Powning Park, which had been donated to the city on condition that it always be used for a park (eventually the convention center was moved to Powning Park, which was destroyed except for a sliver where the hospitality center was built); in 1968, Buckminster Fuller visited Reno for the dedication of the Pioneer Theatre Auditorium (on the former site of Powning Park), which featured a geodesic dome of the kind Fuller designed; in 1983, President Reagan signed one of the highest priority measures in his legislative program — a five-cent-a-gallon gas tax hike that produced billions in new revenue; in 2001, for only the second time in history, a U.S. vice-president (Al Gore) as presiding officer of the senate, presided over his own defeat in the counting of the presidential electors' ballots.

UPDATE: 1-5-2008 11:12 a.m. PST, 19:12 GMT/SUT/CUT –

George W. Bush / January 5, 2002: "Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes."

On this date in 1839, renowned equestrian Tom Bass was born a slave in Boone County, Missouri; in 1880, just after Washington Territorial Governor Elisha Ferry issued a report that said "ice and snow are of rare occurrence and almost unknown in Western Washington", snow began falling on Puget Sound and continued for more than a week, leaving 64 inches; in 1882, President Arthur reserved territory in Utah for the Uncompahgre tribe; in 1914, Henry Ford shocked other auto manufacturers by raising the pay of auto workers to $5 a day and limiting the work day to 8 hours — but he also expected workers to work harder and increase productivity, which they did, taking a terrific physical and mental toll on them; in 1914, a University of Nevada professor named Frandsen gave a speech to the Reno Civic Health League on "The Law of Heredity and Eugenics"; in 1914, a road show company doing Tik-Tok of Oz was in Reno; in 1932, Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major (Concerto pour la main gauche en ré majeur), which he wrote for concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein — who lost his right arm in combat in the world war — debuted at the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (Ravel's left hand pieces for Wittgenstein were a plot point in an episode of MASH); in 1933, construction began on a big orange eyesore, the Golden Gate Bridge; in 1933, George Thatcher, lawyer for former Nevada political boss George Wingfield, returned from a money-seeking trip to California saying he had the money to reopen the twelve closed Wingfield banks; in 1940, actor William Powell, star of Life With Father and the Thin Man movies, was married to "recent find at the MGM studios" Diane Lewis on the Hidden Well Ranch in Clark County; in 1949, President Truman, fresh off his victory in the 1948 election, proposed in his state of the union message an ambitious program of social welfare legislation, including a higher minimum wage, civil rights, national health insurance, repeal of Taft/Hartley, housing legislation, federal aid to education (see below); in 1959, Coral Records released It Doesn't Matter Anymore by Paul Anka, Buddy Holly's last record during his lifetime; in 1960, Jack Tenney (former California state senator, assemblymember, chair of the California Joint Committee on Unamerican Activities, and songwriter [Mexicali Rose]) surprised Justice Court in Carson City when he appeared as lawyer for Nick Goodman, accused of killing Senator Club owner William Duffin; in 1961, on the NBC program Bat Masterson, the episode Tempest at Tioga Pass dealt with road building between Nevada and California; in 1968, Slovakian Alexander Dubcek became Communist Party leader in Czechoslovakia, triggering the movement known as Prague Spring; in 1973, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. by Bruce Springsteen was released; in 1973, Washoe County senator and former Reno mayor Len Harris was convicted of price fixing and bid rigging and sentenced to a $5,000 fine and thirty days in jail, part of a federal antitrust action that involved several Reno wholesale meat firms; in 1981, mountain man wannabe Claude Dallas killed two Idaho game wardens, execution style; in 1993, Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Illinois, was sworn in as the first female African-American U.S. senator; in 1998, U.S. Representative Sonny Bono, R-California, was killed in a skiing accident at Lake Tahoe.

President Truman's message on the state of the union / January 5, 1949 In this society, we are conservative about the values and principles which we cherish; but we are forward-looking in protecting those values and principles and in extending their benefits. We have rejected the discredited theory that the fortunes of the Nation should be in the hands of a privileged few. We have abandoned the "trickledown" concept of national prosperity. Instead, we believe that our economic system should rest on a democratic foundation and that wealth should be created for the benefit of all. The recent election shows that the people of the United States are in favor of this kind of society and want to go on improving it. The American people have decided that poverty is just as wasteful and just as unnecessary as preventable disease. We have pledged our common resources to help one another in the hazards and struggles of individual life. We believe that no unfair prejudice or artificial distinction should bar any citizen of the United States of America from an education, or from good health, or from a job that he is capable of performing.... Reinforced by these policies, our private enterprise system has reached new heights of production. Since the boom year of 1929, while our population has increased by only 20 percent, our agricultural production has increased by 45 percent, and our industrial production has increased by 75 percent. We are turning out far more goods and more wealth per worker than we have ever done before. This progress has confounded the gloomy prophets — at home and abroad who predicted the downfall of American capitalism. The people of the United States, going their own way, confident in their own powers, have achieved the greatest prosperity the world has even seen. But, great as our progress has been, we still have a long way to go. As we look around the country, many of our shortcomings stand out in bold relief. We are suffering from excessively high prices. Our production is still not large enough to satisfy our demands. Our minimum wages are far too low. Small business is losing ground to growing monopoly. Our farmers still face an uncertain future. And too many of them lack the benefits of our modern civilization. Some of our natural resources are still being wasted. We are acutely short of electric power, although the means for developing such power are abundant. Five million families are still living in slums and firetraps. Three million families share their homes with others. Our health is far behind the progress of medical science. Proper medical care is so expensive that it is out of the reach of the great majority of our citizens. Our schools, in many localities, are utterly inadequate. Our democratic ideals are often thwarted by prejudice and intolerance. Each of these shortcomings is also an opportunity-an opportunity for the Congress and the President to work for the good of the people.... We must spare no effort to raise the general level of health in this country. In a nation as rich as ours, it is a shocking fact that tens of millions lack adequate medical care. We are short of doctors, hospitals, nurses. We must remedy these shortages. Moreover, we need--and we must have without further delay — a system of prepaid medical insurance which will enable every American to afford good medical care. It is equally shocking that millions of our children are not receiving a good education. Millions of them are in overcrowded, obsolete buildings. We are short of teachers, because teachers' salaries are too low to attract new teachers, or to hold the ones we have. All these school problems will become much more acute as a result of the tremendous increase in the enrollment in our elementary schools in the next few years. I cannot repeat too strongly my desire for prompt Federal financial aid to the States to help them operate and maintain their school systems. The governmental agency which now administers the programs of health, education, and social security should be given full departmental status. The housing shortage continues to be acute. As an immediate step, the Congress should enact the provisions for low-rent public housing, slum clearance, farm housing, and housing research which I have repeatedly recommended. The number of lowrent public housing units provided for in the legislation should be increased to 1 million units in the next 7 years. Even this number of units will not begin to meet our need for new housing. Most of the houses we need will have to be built by private enterprise, without public subsidy. By producing too few rental units and too large a proportion of high-priced houses, the building industry is rapidly pricing itself out of the market. Building costs must be lowered. The Government is now engaged in a campaign to induce all segments of the building industry to concentrate on the production of lower priced housing. Additional legislation to encourage such housing will be submitted.... The strength of our Nation must continue to be used in the interest of all our people rather than a privileged few. It must continue to be used unselfishly in the struggle for world peace and the betterment of mankind the world over. This is the task before us. It is not an easy one. It has many complications, and there will be strong opposition from selfish interests. I hope for cooperation from farmers, from labor, and from business. Every segment of our population and every individual has a right to expect from our Government a fair deal.... [emphasis added] [EDITOR'S NOTE: Truman's administration became known as The Fair Deal. The late, great historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., noted that John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society represented an updating of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry Truman's Fair Deal. Starting with the election of Bonzo in 1980, the corporate GOP and the Bush pygmies have been trying, with substantial success, to destroy the work of the giants. The jury will decide this year whether the tradition of economic fairness will be renewed or buried by corporate greed.]

UPDATE: 1-4-2008 12:01 a.m. PST, 08:21 GMT/SUT/CUT – On this date in 1642 at the head of a group of military men at arms, Charles I personally entered the British Parliament uninvited to arrest for treason five members of the House of Commons (who had been forewarned) and, failing to see his targets, he said "I see the birds have flown" — and then turned to Speaker William Lenthall and asked where the five were, and Lenthall knelt and courageously replied "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here." (The English civil war was triggered by the incident.); in 1808, Harman Blennerhassett was freed from prison after being acquitted of treason in the alleged Aaron Burr plot; in 1896, after the Mormon Church revoked some of its most controversial policies, Utah was admitted to the union; in 1903, an elephant used in constructing Luna Park at Coney Island was killed by electrocution while a crowd of 1,500 watched and the whole thing was filmed by Thomas Edison and released as Electrocuting An Elephant; in 1923, a white mob began destroying the African-American community of Rosewood, Florida, completing its work in a couple of days; in 1935, Billboard magazine published its first weekly hits list of top selling recordings; in 1935, the Reno city council approved a resolution supporting U.S. Senator Key Pittman's bill to transfer title of the old post office building and site on Virginia Street in Reno to the city; in 1935, Everett Cobb of Reno received a money order for one cent from George Ashby of Hawthorne; in 1940, incoming Nevada Governor Ted Carville reappointed William Smith as state prison warden and state police chief; in 1940, the El Portal Theatre in Las Vegas showed a newsreel of the Tournament of Roses parade that included footage of the Las Vegas float; in 1950, The God That Failed by Richard Wright, Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, Arthur Koestler, Stephen Spender and Ignazio Silone was published, a collection of essays describing their sympathy with and then disenchantment from communism; in 1957, Fats Domino recorded I'm Walkin'; in 1968, Nevada Governor Paul Laxalt said he had a telephone conversation with reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes; in 1975, President Ford signed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which became Public law 93-638; in 1987, renowned Spanish classical guitarist Andres Segovia began his last tour of the U.S. (his eyesight was so poor that in Reno he walked off the edge of the stage); in 2005, Barack Obama was sworn in as a United States senator.

UPDATE: 1-3-2008 9:38 a.m. PST, 17:38 GMT/SUT/CUT – On this date in 1848, Congress, believing on the basis of emerging evidence that it had been misled by James Polk on whether there was cause for war, adopted a resolution even as combat continued declaring that the invasion of Mexico had been "a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States"; in 1868, John Harker, president of the First National Bank in Austin, Nevada, returned to Austin from the 1867 Exposition Universelle de Paris; in 1890, the Elko Free Press editorialized that the newly organized State Board of Trade needed to pay attention to the needs of all areas of the state and "not one section only"; in 1908, William Miller, Twain scholar who located and edited two volumes of Nevada Twainiana (Letters From Nevada Territory 1861-1862 and Reports of the 1863 Constitutional Convention of the Territory of Nevada) was born in Detroit; in 1914, Nevada Attorney General George Thatcher, in response to a request from Lander County District Attorney Antonio Maestretti, issued an opinion that a druggist's license to fill prescriptions could not also double as a liquor license; in 1927, Hester Mayotte, first known woman lawyer in Nevada to become a member of a law firm (Hawkins, Mayotte & Hawkins), was admitted to the bar; in 1932, construction on an expansion of the two-year-old Pair o' Dice casino in Clark County began; in 1949, Bonanza Air Lines president Edmund Converse said that work on disassembling a hanger at Reno Army Air Base and moving it to McCarran Field in Las Vegas would begin in a few days; in 1957, after serving two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1949-1953), followed by two defeats for the seat (1952 and 1954), followed by election to the House again (1956), Nevada's Walter Baring was welcomed back to Washington by Speaker Sam Rayburn, who called Baring "our very good friend"; in 1961, three people were killed in a nuclear power plant accident in Idaho Falls, Idaho; in 1987, Aretha Franklin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; in 1989, Nevada Governor Richard Bryan resigned to take his seat in the U.S. Senate and Lieutenant Governor Robert Miller became acting governor; in 2000, New York Times reporter David Sanger claimed in a news story that the Clinton war in Serbia "largely halted ethnic bloodshed" (actually, ethnic bloodletting rose sharply during and after the Clinton bombing campaign); in 2000, two weeks after cartoonist Charles Schulz announced his retirement and five weeks before Schulz's death, Doonesbury columnist Garry Trudeau wrote in a Washington Post essay that Peanuts, for cartoonists, is "an irreplaceable source of purpose and pride, our gold standard for work that is both illuminating and aesthetically sublime. We can hardly imagine its absence."

Las Vegas Age / January 3, 1914 / Overton items: A horse thief was captured here Monday evening by Deputy Sheriff Jos. F. Perkins. The horse he had stolen from Samuel Leavitt of Mesquite was returned to the owner who had followed the thief. He was handcuffed and chained to a buggy wheel for the night and given a bed nearby, but in the night he dragged the buggy to a work bench and with a vice and hammer, broke the chain and escaped still wearing the handcuffs. He has not been recaptured.

UPDATE 1-2-2008 4:15 p.m. PST, 00:15 1-3-2007 GMT/SUT/CUT – IMPORTANT, dammit!

A pre-Iowa Caucus message from Michael Moore

UPDATE: 1-2-2008 8:11 a.m. PST, 16:11 GMT/SUT/CUT –

William "Big Bill" Haywood at the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW, the legendary union nicknamed "The Wobblies"): "This is the Continental Congress of the working class." (Jan 2, 1905)

On this date in 1800, U.S. Representative Robert Waln introduced in Congress a petition he received from free African-Americans ("People of Colour, Freemen within the City and Suburbs of Philadelphia") asking for abolition of slavery, protection from kidnapping of free blacks, and an end to fugitive slave laws ("from the oppression and violence which so great a number of like colour and National Descent are subjected"), all of which prompted a substantial debate in the House before it was killed in committee; in 1911, Nevada Orphans Home superintendent Joseph Josephs reported that it cost the state less than 72 cents a day to care for the children in the home; in 1928, an early instance of the movie industry tampering with the writer's story was released by MGM: Love, starring Greta Garbo as Anna Karenina and John Garfield as Vronsky, which was made available with two different endings for use by theatre owners depending on whether they thought their audiences would prefer a happy ending or not; in 1940, United Press reported what it described as "startling information, which rocked the capitals of the entire world" from its Paris bureau: "Reichfuehrer Adolf Hitler is preparing to step down as German chancellor and eliminate the more radical nazis from the regime"; in 1963, the carefully plotted plan for an attack on a Vietnamese village near Ap Bac in the south turned into a fiasco (intelligence underestimated the number of guerrillas, armored personnel carriers bogged down in canals, guerrillas showed a new ability to bring down helicopters with small arms fire, a Saigon officer shelled his own forces), which officials in Saigon and Washington blamed on the press (they called the action a victory) but U.S. officers at the scene blamed on incompetence among Saigon forces; in 1964, a plan for a covert land, sea, and air war of provocations by the U.S. against Vietnam, called "Oplan 34a", was delivered by General Victor Krulak to President Johnson (the plan's coastal attacks provoked alleged counterattacks against a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August, leading to passage of a congressional resolution effectively authorizing Johnson to launch a war in Vietnam); in 1966, U.S. forces undertook action in the Mekong Delta for the first time; in 1969, rehearsals began for a proposed Beatles album and movie, Get Back, which became Let It Be; in 1983, the Broadway play Annie closed after 2,377 performances and seven Tony Awards, the third longest-running musical of the 1970's; in 2007, in an essay in The New York Times, former joint chiefs chairman John Shalikashvili, who helped keep gays out of the armed services during his career, endorsed allowing gays to serve.

UPDATE: 1-1-2008 10:32 a.m. PST, 18:32 GMT/SUT/CUT –

William Lloyd Garrison / first issue of The Liberator / January 1, 1831: I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there no cause for severity? I will be harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject [slavery] I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.

On this date in 1781, eleven regiments of colonial soldiers on the Pennsylvania line, illegally held in service after their three-year enlistments expired, rebelled against their bondage, killing three officers and marching out of their winter encampment; in 1804, Haiti, having defeated the French army, declared its independence (in the U.S., President Jefferson, dismayed by the successful slave rebellion, refused to recognized the native government and imposed a trade embargo that annihilated the island's economy and led U.S. racists to say that blacks cannot govern themselves); in 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves (in the rebel states only) to be free without actually freeing them while some members of Congress — knowing the proclamation had no legal standing or effect — continued their efforts to actually outlaw slavery; in 1881, the White Pine News moved from the declining Nevada mining camp of Hamilton to the booming camp of Cherry Creek; in 1912, the Reno band gave a free new year's concert from noon to 2 p.m; in 1917, the Adamson Act, enacted in September 1916 to avert a national railroad strike by limiting workdays to eight hours, took effect; in 1937, in a major lobbying triumph for the lumber and liquor industries and a setback for the medical lobby, marijuana was made illegal in the United States; in 1946, twenty Japanese soldiers who had been living in tunnels on Corregidor and only learned of the Japanese surrender from an old newspaper surrendered to a single U.S. soldier; in 1953, on an uncertain date (New Year's Eve or New Year's Day) in a car on the road between Knoxville and Oak Hill, Virginia, Hank Williams died of a heart attack; in 1957, The Amazing Colossal Man, a movie set in southern Nevada, was released; in 1962, along with the Tremeloes, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Pete Best had a lengthy audition (fifteen songs) at Decca Records, which signed the Tremeloes (Do You Love Me, Silence Is Golden) but not The Beatles; in 1968, a U.S. C-123 dumped an entire tank of defoliants on just two Vietnamese hamlets, which thereafter experienced a high frequency of birth defects; in 1973, Hunter College student and teacher of the deaf Roseann Quinn was murdered in her upper west side apartment in New York City, a murder that was dramatized in Looking for Mr. Goodbar; in 2001, forty eight minutes into the new year, the new century, and the new millennium, three arsonists — one of them wearing a shirt bearing a cross — torched Temple Emanu-El in Reno; in 2007 on CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, a tease of a story on the search for Osama bin Laden used a graphic with the question „Where‚s Obama?‰

UPDATE: 1-1-2008 4:33 a.m. PST, 12:33 GMT/SUT/CUT – On this date in 1959, Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

New York Times / January 1, 1892

GAVE ANNIE TEN DOLLARS

NEW YORK, Jan. 1. — Without any ceremony or formal opening the immigration officials of this city to-day settled down on Ellis Island, in the harbor, and the barge office is known to them no more. The steamship Nevada was the first to arrive at the new landing place. Her immigrants were put aboard the barge J. E. Moore, and amid the blowing of foghorn and whistles approached the pier.

Charles M. Hanley, private secretary to the late Secretary Windom, who had asked to be allowed to register the first immigrant, was at the registry desk when there came tripping up a fifteen-year-old-girl, Annie Moore, and her little brother. They had come from Cork to meet their mother, who lives here.

Col. Webber greeted Annie, and then presented her with a crisp new $10 bill. [PDA]

The Dean's List    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

UPDATE: 12-31-2007 7:51 a.m. PST, 15:51 GMT/SUT/CUT – On this date in 1829, a group of scouts from Antonio Armijo's western expedition returned to his encampment, minus scout Rafael Rivera, who returned January 7 (during his absence, Rivera probably became the first non-Native American to set foot in the Las Vegas Valley; in 1864, the Richmond Whig, quoting the New York Herald's assertion that the "emancipation proclamation" was without legal authority, said that it agreed with the Herald that "The slaves taken from our citizens during the war will have to be accounted for at its end, either by restoration or indemnity."; in 1887, Francis Farquhar, Sierra Club leader and author of History of the Sierra Nevada (1946) and Place Names of the Sierra Nevada (1925) for whom Mt. Francis Farquhar in Kings Canyon National Park is named, was born in Newton, Massachusetts; in 1869, Henri Matisse was born at Le Cateau in Picardy; in 1891, after an eleven-day voyage, Annie Moore of Ireland, the first immigrant to enter the United States through New Jersey's Ellis Island (on January 1, the day she turned 15), arrived in the U.S. with her family on board the S.S. Nevada, see above (a statue of Annie Moore now stands on the island, another at Cobh, formerly Queenstown, her point of departure in County Cork); in 1903, W. L. Butler purchased the Sunset Telephone Company in Winnemucca; in 1945, Bonanza Air Lines of Las Vegas was incorporated; in 1956, University of Nevada regent Silas Ross retired from the board of regents after twenty years of service; in 1969, at the order of United Mine Workers President William Boyle, three hitmen shot and killed UMW reform leader Jock Yablonski, his wife, Margaret, and his 25-year-old daughter, Charlotte, at the Yablonski home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania; in 1993, in a particularly vicious hate crime in a farmhouse near Humboldt, Nebraska, two white men killed an African-American man, a white mother, and transexual Brandon Teena (portrayed by Hilary Swank in the film Boys Don't Cry) who had also been raped by the men several days earlier (an infant in the house was spared by the killers); in 1996, the Hacienda casino in Clark County was imploded; in 1999 at noon, the United States ended its occupation of the Panama Canal Zone and returned management and control of the zone and the canal to Panama; in 1999 on CNN, host Larry King began an interview with the Dalai Lama by identifying his guest as a Muslim.

[[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 interest to labor in particular and seekers of justice in general. Copyright © 2008 Dennis Myers.]] Journalist Myers recovering from serious illness.

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