explore | Grilled Cheese

Racial #segregation is far from a uniquely American evil, and on #ThisDayInHistory in 1953, #communist boxer #LenJohnson faced it in the #OldAbbeyTaphouse in #Manchester, England. Refused service for being #Black, he organized a 200-strong picket of the pub that desegregated it.

🎓 Enforcing the Law: Meredith stood his ground, registered the next morning, and integrated the university.

👇 Read the full story on The Bard's Desk:

theoffkeybard.com/bards-desk/h...

#CivilRightsHistory #ThisDayInHistory #AmericanHistory #JamesMeredith #TheOffKeyBard #BardsDesk

The #MunichAgreement between #NaziGermany, Italy, the UK, and France was signed on #ThisDayInHistory in 1938. It sold out #Czechoslovakia, passing their #Sudentenland region to Germany... who then exceeded this by seizing the rest of #Czechia six months later with no consequence.

#BarbaraCastle, the Labour MP for Blackburn, wrote in #Tribune on #ThisDayInHistory in 1955 about British atrocities in colonial #Kenya, where over 50,000 Kenyans were tortured and killed for resisting the #BritishEmpire in the #MauMauRebellion. Only about 100 whites were killed.

The first of the great #FreeSpeechFights of the #IWW was on #ThisDayInHistory in 1909, in #Missoula, #Montana, to combat ordinances against public #FreeSpeech by #union members. They lined up, spoke, got arrested, filled the gaols, and got the laws changed. #PeoplePower works.

TRIGGER WARNING: SA
Having refused the advances of three young #fascists from wealthy families, #RosariaLopez (age 19) and #DonatellaColasanti (age 17) were kidnapped, tortured, & raped on #ThisDayInHistory in 1975. Their attackers were released early and did it to others. #KYLR

#VirginiaTonelli, a #communist nurse and #partisan, was burnt alive by #fascists on #ThisDayInHistory in 1944. An #antifa activist since 1930, she was seized whilst transporting documents and tortured for days but revealed nothing, earning a posthumous medal for military valour.

Join me in some Schadenfreude for the death, on #ThisDayInHistory in 2024, of German #Neonazi #AndreasMünzhuber. The treasurer for #TheThirdWay tripped on an exposed root on #Untersberg mountain in Hitler's beloved #BerchtesgadenAlps, falling 60 metres to a richly deserved death.

The #LeagueOfNations #MandateSystem was a thinly-disguised form of #colonialism in which a Mandatory power got to refashion a place into a permanent subordinate. The #FrenchMandate for #Syria & #Lebanon, and the #BritishMandate for #Palestine, began on #ThisDayInHistory in 1923.

At #Istaliff, #Afghanistan, on #ThisDayInHistory in 1842, a British force decided, as revenge for anti-imperialist insurgency, to butcher a whole town. They set out to kill every male in a population of 15,000, then burnt the houses & orchards, leaving women & children to starve.

On #ThisDayInHistory in 1980 the first episode of #CarlSagan's #Cosmos aired, to my delight. It helped inspire in me a lifelong interest in science, and is why I've been talking about #GlobalWarming, #Evolution, #Environmentalism, and #SpaceExploration for more than forty years.

#StarTrek: The Next Generation was first seen on #ThisDayInHistory in 1987. It successfully revived & expanded Roddenberry's optimistic future, inspiring a new generation of fans and showcasing the power of empathy. Every Star Trek series is worth seeing but #TNG remains special.

The #OmahaCourthouseLynching was on #ThisDayInHistory in 1919. A lynch mob ~10,000 strong in #Omaha shot at police who tried to protect a #Black suspect, then brutally killed poor #WillBrown, who died protesting his innocence. The Army put down the riot but no-one was prosecuted.

The #OpelousasMassacre was on #ThisDayInHistory in 1868. The #KnightsOfTheWhiteCamelia, a #KKK-like group in #Louisiana, assaulted teacher #EmersonBentley for promoting voter registration, and when #Black people tried to help him, the #racists went on a rampage, killing over 150.

On #ThisDayInHistory in 1917, the US government used the #EspionageAct disingenuously to arrest 166 #IWW members, charging them with disloyalty and refusal of duty to the country. 101 were convicted and sent to prison in an act meant to break #socialist organization of #workers.

Demanding food during a famine and trying to prevent the rich from exporting it at a profit are moral acts. But on #ThisDayInHistory in 1846, British Royal Dragoons opened fire on starving people who tried to seize grain from the docks and from bakeries in #Dungarvan, #Ireland.

On #ThisDayInHistory in 1955, the #Catalan #anarchist #ElQuico used a homemade mortar through a taxi cab sunroof to distribute #antifascist literature during a visit to Barcelona of the dictator #FranciscoFranco. Take heart from the courage of such folks to stand against tyranny.

On September 28, 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation changed sci-fi television forever.

#brianwagner #shorts #startrek #thisdayinhistory