[The holiest of the gurdwaras in Sikhism, the Harmandir Sahib was no stranger to unrest when, on this day in 1984, Indian troops fired upon it, causing extensive structural damage as well as killing 83 soldiers and 492 civilians in the process; it was nearby in April 1919 that Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered British troops to open fire on a peaceful protest during what came to be known as the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, at which official estimates claim 379 were killed with 1100 wounded, although some unofficial reports had 1,526 fatalities in that earlier clash.]
350 CE - Usurper
Nepotianus, of the
Constantinian Dynasty, proclaimed himself Emperor and entered Rome at the head of a group of gladiators. His reign lasted just 28 days, whereupon he was killed by
Marcellinus, a general in the service of rival usurper
Magnentius.
1326 - The
Treaty of Novgorod delineated the border between Russia and Norway in
Finnmark, which is today the northernmost county in Norway.
1621 - The
Dutch West India Company received a charter for
New Netherlands from the
Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.
1770 -
Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo was founded by
Junípero Serra in
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
1888 - The
San Francisco Examiner first published the
poem Casey at the Bat, which was written by
Ernest Lawrence Thayer.
1935 - A thousand unemployed workers boarded freight cars in
Vancouver, beginning an historic protest trek to
Parliament Hill in Ottawa; the so-called
On-To-Ottawa Trek was met with harsh reprisals along the way by local authorities - most notably at the
Regina Riot on that year's
Dominion Day - but did succeed in discrediting the do-nothing* government of Prime Minister
R. B. Bennett's Conservatives at the polls on
October 23rd. While most of those involved found little relief for their downtrodden state under his successor - the redoubtable Liberal
Mackenzie King - the defeated Bennett (
shown, looking typically smug, at left) decamped to the United Kingdom, where in June 1941 he became the first and only Canadian Prime Minister elevated to the
House of Lords by King
George VI on the advice of Prime Minister
Winston Churchill; while there he served as Viscount Bennett of
Mickleham (in the
County of Surrey) and of
Calgary and
Hopewell in the
Dominion of Canada.
*Which in French is called laissez-faire, and best pronounced 'lazy... feh!'
1962 - A chartered
Air France Boeing 707,
Chateau de Sully, crashed after an aborted takeoff from Paris, killing 130; at the time it was the largest single airplane accident to date.
1963 - Pope
John XXIII died; he was succeeded by
Paul VI on June 21st.
1965 -
Gemini 4 - the first multi-day space mission by a
NASA crew - was launched.
1968 -
Valerie Solanas,
misandric author of
The SCUM Manifesto*, attempted to assassinate
Andy Warhol by shooting him three times at his New York City studio,
The Factory; she also shot and slightly injured art critic
Mario Amaya and would have shot Warhol's manager Fred Hughes as well only her gun jammed. Warhol's injuries were serious enough that they would plague him throughout the rest of his life - he was forced to wear a girdle, for instance, and after any exertion his wounds would bleed - although he refused to testify against her in court; she received a three-year sentence for the attack. The incident is dramatized in the
1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol, in which Solanas is played by
Lili Taylor and Warhol by
Jared Harris; the film was directed by Canadian
Mary Harron.
*SCUM was an acronym; it stood for 'Society for Cutting Up Men.'
1969 - During the so-called
Melbourne-Evans Collision off the coast of South Vietnam, the Australian aircraft carrier
HMAS Melbourne cut the
US Navy destroyer
USS Frank E. Evans in half, killing 74 American sailors.
1979 - A blowout at the
Ixtoc I oil well in the southern Gulf of Mexico caused at least 600,000 tons (176,400,000 gallons) of oil to be spilled, making it the worst oil spill to date - although it will likely be surpassed (and then some) by the spill caused by the explosion that sank the oil rig
Deepwater Horizon in April 2010.
1982 - The
Israeli ambassador to the
Court of St. James's,
Shlomo Argov, was shot on a London street; although he survived the attack he was permanently paralyzed.
1984 - During an ill-considered attempt to arrest Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Indian Army stormed the Harmandir Sahib - the Golden Temple near Amritsar which is the most sacred shrine of Sikhism - during Operation Blue Star, which was personally organized by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
1989 - Iranian spiritual leader and theocratic dictator
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died; he was succeeded the next day by
Ali Khamenehei.
1990 - American punk rock legend
Stiv Bators died in Paris after being hit by taxi while drunkenly crossing the street; although his friends took him to the hospital, he left voluntarily after several hours without being seen by a doctor, and later died in his sleep of a concussion. He was 40.
1991 -
Mount Unzen erupted on Japan's southernmost island of
Kyūshū killing 43 people, all of them either researchers or journalists.
1998 - During the
Eschede train disaster an
ICE high speed train derailed in the German state of
Lower Saxony, causing 101 deaths - surpassing the death toll of the May 1971
Dahlerau train disaster to become the world's deadliest train crash.
2007 -
USS Carter Hall (LSD-50) engaged pirates after they boarded the Danish ship
Danica White off the coast of Somalia.
*
share on:
facebook
Federico Garcia Lorca may have been the quintessential artist - fluent in words, pictures, and sounds - but his sensitivity came, as these things so often do, at the price of his peace of mind.
