#today in history

[cartermagazine]

Today In History

Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was born in Columbus, GA on this date April 26, 1886. Rainey was an influential blues singer and early blues recording artist.

Dubbed the “Mother of the Blues”, ‘Ma’ Rainey bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers.

‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ is a 1982 play by Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson-which chronicles Ma Rainey and the 20th-century African-American experience. The play is set in a recording studio in 1920s Chicago, and deals with issues of race, art, religion, sexuality and the historic exploitation of Black recording artists by white producers.

The play has been converted into a film, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” directed by George C. Wolfe and written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. The film stars Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts. Streaming now on Netflix.

CARTER™️ Magazine

[humanoidhistory]

Voyager 1 looks back at Saturn, November 16, 1980.

[elvispresley]

August 15, 1965 — The Beatles perform at Shea Stadium for the first time

[vixen-academia]

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Military Coup that occurred here in Brazil (with a little help from USA, may I remind you)

The military killed and tortured thousands of people. They killed mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, friends… they tortured children. They faked suicides. They targeted trans people, specially trans woman. They massacred indigenous.

Always good to remember the face of those who were assassinated by the dictatorship fighting for our freedom. Remember their names. Remember their faces. Don’t let their death be in vain.

Telma Regina Cordeiro Correa: a geography student from my university. Now the academic directory (it’s like the college version of a student council in Brazil) of Geography has her name.

Stuart and Zuzu Angel: Stuart was an activist fighting for the end of the dictatorship. He went missing and his mother. The stylist Zuzu Angel started to talk about the dictatorship with foreign media. She was killed by a car “accident”.

Edson Luís: a highschooler killed by the militaries during a protest against the high prices of the school’s restaurant.

Alfeu de Alcântara Monteiro: A military from the Aeronautical He was killed by their own colleagues for standing up for democracy, being considered the first victim of the dictatorship.

And there are many, MANY more. Some of them were actively fighting against the militaries (sometimes literally, with guns and etc). Others were just mistaken. Some were just “wrong place, wrong time” situations. Others helped someone who was fighting. But their lives ended unfairly. Some families couldn’t even bury their loved ones. And that’s why we need to remember.

“Ódio e nojo à Ditadura! Para que não se esqueça, para que nunca mais aconteça: DITADURA NUNCA MAIS!” (EN, loosely translated: Spite and pish towards dictatorship! So we never forget, so it never happens again: DICTATORSHIP NEVER MORE!)

[peaceloveandhistory]

Fun fact: The pronunciation of American English is closer to the pronunciation in William Shakespeare's time (1564-1616) than in British English. Today's American accent is more closely related to what Shakespeare heard while he wrote. People generally assume that Shakespeare's English is related to British English, but in Early Modern English the letter "r" is still pronounced. During the 18th century the "r" was dropped from pronunciation when it was the last syllable of a word in southern British English. American English froze in how we pronounce letters, which is why we sound more like Shakespeare than British English.

[geminijade]

On this day in Top Gun History 💞💕

[everydayesterday]

23 march 2021. never forget.

[aerial from the international space station] [map]

[selkiesstories]

Military History Now

[brookbee]

On November 17th of 1973 David Bowie met William S. Burroughs. A few months later their conversation would be published in Rolling Stone. photographer: Terry O'Neill

[cesareeborgia]

↳ 29 April 1536 — The quarrel between Queen Anne and Sir Henry Norris

[marthajefferson]

On today's date, 21 February, the Resistance fighters of the RED POSTER (l'Affiche Rouge), were shot in 1944.

This poster is one of the most important, and most notorious propaganda posters of the entire World War II. In late 1943, the French police arrested 23 members of the Manouchian-Boczov group of immigrant communist resistance fighters. They were tortured, tried, and executed. To defuse public anger over the executions, the German propaganda officials published this poster, detailing the nationalities, etchnicities, and 'crimes' of 20 members of the group, including the leader, Manouchian, credited with 150 deaths, 56 assassination attempts and 600 wounded. The captions read, at the top, "Liberators?" and below, "Liberation! By the Army of Crime".

However the poster had the opposite effect: instead of being condemned as "terrorists", the public admired them as freedom fighters ; posters were frequently graffiti'd "DIED FOR LIBERTY & FRANCE", and flowers appeared beneath them. After the war, a poem, set to song and known as "L'Affiche Rouge", became very popular in France.

[cartermagazine]

She Gave Us King

Coretta Scott King, civil rights activist and wife of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Marion, AL, on this date April 27, 1927.

Before the world knew Martin Luther King Jr., there was Coretta Scott. We have always heard the saying “In order to know where you’re going, you must know where you came from.” Well this still is revelant today.

Coretta’s father was an entrepreneur and knew injustice all to well, when his business was burned down. Despite challenging odds, her mother risked her safety by busing her children and the children of others, to the only Black school in their vicinity. Her older sister was a pioneer, becoming the first African American to attend college on integrated terms.

Corettta graduated valedictorian of her high school and studied music and education in college. For these experiences, along with her family’s quest for justice, became the building blocks for her activism. She was active on her local school board, NAACP and college’s Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. Because Scott used music as a way to create change, it only made sense to bring life to it in her civil rights work as well.

The tools that her family instilled in her such as perseverance, ambition and hope, prepared her for one of her greatest roles. Being the foundation of a people, lead by one man. by Syreeta Gates for CARTER™️ Magazine

CARTER Magazine

[humanoidhistory]

Saturn and its amazing rings, observed by the Cassini probe on this day in 2004.

[ziskeyt]

Christie Pits

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Christie Pits Riot. The largest race riot in Canada. Christie Pits is a park in Toronto, Ontario. It's pretty large, and these days is a very active park in the summer and a place for sledding and ice skating in the winter. On this day in 1933 the tensions between the Jews who lived in the neighbourhood around the Christie Pits park and the white Canadians who wished to ally with the nazis, who made up what they called Swasitka Clubs, came to a head during a baseball game. The Jews were joined in the fight by their immigrant neighbours, primarily Italians, who also had come head to head with the white nazis before. These hate-filled Canadians wished to restrict Jews from jobs, education, going to the beaches, owning property, and really, given their alignment with the nazis and proudly waving the swastika flag, we can be pretty sure they wanted us dead as well.

The Toronto Star paper noted that there were ten thousand people who ended up joining the fight.

This is the only photo that exists:

(ID in alt) Christie Pits resulted in one of the first prohibitions against hate speech with the Mayor of the time saying that he would prosecute any future displays of the swastika. If you'd like to read more, Jamie Michaels, who wrote the graphic novel Christie Pits published an article today about the riots:

There was an event today in the park to commemorate the anniversary. As well as a few in May and June, Jewish and Italian heritage months respectively. While I don't know the best way to commemorate a fight like this, remembering that it happened, and why it happened is incredibly important. We're in a time that is very reminiscent to what people were dealing with then; from money seemingly meaning less while everything costs more, to the wealthy flaunting their great discrepancy from the majority, to people walking off work to strike for better conditions. Times of turmoil are times when people will often turn to trying to find a reason for their uncertainty, and as history has taught us, this often leads people to explaining their misfortune by finding a scapegoat -- and that scapegoat is usually Jews. In today's world, there are those who are virulently antisemitic with their whole chests, and those people are easy to point to and say they are what they are. But, we're also in a time where there is a lot of coded antisemitism around, from age-old conspiracy theories, to various racist tropes finding rebirths in memes and "jokes", to character types and appropriation of Jewish culture to make something seem exotic and mystical. You as an individual have the responsibility to educate yourself about racist dogwhistles and coding so you don't go around parroting things you don't believe, and eventually find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of white supremacist rhetoric. They say those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, but doom makes it sound like something that people aren't able to do anything about it. Learn history. Learn what hatred has looked like in the past and morphed into today. Learn history. You are not doomed and you are not helpless. You too can take part in stopping rising fascism by learning what it looks and sounds like. You have a responsibility to yourself and to the future to learn about where we came from to get to where we are today.

[romegreeceart]

March 20, 44 BCE - Funeral of Julius Caesar

* "Brutus is an honourable man"

[peaceloveandhistory]

Today in 1882, Thomas Edison, and his partner Edward H. Johnson created the very first string of electric lights intended for a Christmas Tree. People originally illuminated their trees with candles, which as you can guess was a dangerous practice leading to many house fires. Edison and Johnson hand-wired 80 red, white, and blue bulbs, and hung them around the Christmas tree. During this time many people mistrusted electricity, it wasn't until 1895, when President Grover Cleveland had the White House family Christmas tree illuminated by hundreds of multicolored bulbs, people started to change their minds. It is important to remember for the time being, families would have to hire a wire man which would have cost $2,000 in today's dollars. It wouldn't be until 1903 when General Electric began to sell preassembled kits of stringed Christmas lights, as a more affordable option.