Category: mādhyayak

1945

Following two weeks of insurgency against French colonial forces, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh seize control of the country and declare Vietnam independent. “Poor Indochina! You will die, if your old-fashioned youth do not resuscitate themselves.”

1989

Violence breaks out between protesters and the People’s Liberation Army at Tiananmen Square. As the tanks move in the following morning, protesters sing “Heirs of the Dragon” by singer Hou Dejian, who had joined them in the square.

“Enemies on all sides, the sword of the dictator.
For how many years did those gunshots resound?”

1952

Playwright Lillian Hellman refuses her subpoena to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to today’s fashions.”

 

1947

House Un-American Activities Committee votes to hold the “Hollywood Ten,”
a group of writers and directors blacklisted for their communist affiliations, in contempt of Congress.
“We are men of peace, we are men who work and we want no quarrel.
But if you destroy our peace, if you take away our work,
if you try to range us one against the other, we will know what to do.”

1819

The English cavalry charges into a crowd of over 60,000 rallying in Manchester for parliamentary reform in what becomes known as the Peterloo Massacre.

“Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many – they are few!”

1905

The Maji Maji rebellion begins in what is now Tanzania, led by several tribes in Tanganyika against German colonizers.
“Hongo or the European, which is stronger?”
“Hongo!”

1789

An organized mob breaks into a royal armory in Paris and, newly armed, storms the Bastille, a fortress that held the monarchy's political prisoners. "This very night all the Swiss and German battalions will leave the Champ de Mars to massacre us all. One resource is left: to take arms!"

1943

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began in German-occupied Poland to resist the last deportation of Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp, ends in failure. “We decided to gamble for our lives.”

1992

Los Angeles residents begin rioting after the four police
officers accused of beating Rodney King are acquitted.

“Give us the hammer and the nails, we will rebuild the city.”

1949

Albert Einstein publishes “Why Socialism?” in the inaugural issue of Monthly Review.
“The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.”

1970

Lesbian activists deliver their manifesto at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City, to protest the exclusion of lesbian speakers. “Lesbian is a label invented by the man to throw at any woman who dares to be his equal.”