The death on this day in 1916 of Gregory Rasputin left a legacy as full of myth and misinformation – along with some bizarre truths – as his life had been. Poisoned with five times the usual lethal dose of … Continue reading →

Sixty-four years ago today, Mikhail Kalashnikov completed his development of the AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle – an invention so reliable, so easy and inexpensive to manufacture and so serviceable that the way was opened up for post-war freedom fighters finally … Continue reading →

The British Isles has a long history of invaders: Angles, Danes, Saxons, Vikings. But on 28th September 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy, landed at Pevensey in Sussex, an invasion force on this scale had not occurred since the Romans … Continue reading →

“One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess … Continue reading →

Today in 1945 the British people awoke to the headlines that they had a socialist government.  When parliament later reconvened, the newly elected Labour MPs stood to sing the ‘Red Flag’. To generations of us who have since come to … Continue reading →

Forty-two years ago today – and just sixty-seven years after the very first piloted aircraft flight – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to walk on the moon. Or so it is claimed.

There are events in history that are unremarkable in isolation but, with hindsight, can be traced back to reveal earth-shattering roots. Today we recall such an event. The murder of Lt. José Castillo seventy-five years ago today was to the … Continue reading →

On 11th July 1954, the U.S. Congress enacted Public Law 84-140, which decreed that “In God We Trust” would henceforth appear on all American currency. This pious new motto was a direct violation of the First Amendment. The separation of … Continue reading →

Four hundred and seventy years ago, on 26th June 1541, Francisco Pizarro – Spanish conquistador and murderous subjugator of the entire Inca Empire – got his just desserts when he was assassinated by his own people. The old ruffian, near 70, … Continue reading →

Today we meditate long and hard upon the legendary and heroic but ultimately Pyrrhic victory of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull’s Indian Alliance at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Could General George Custer have avoided defeat had this hothead … Continue reading →

On the morning of June 23rd 1937, George Orwell boarded a train at Barcelona station with his wife, Eileen, and two companions, John McNair and Stafford Cottman. The train was bound for the French border and Orwell (or Eric Blair … Continue reading →

On a balmy Saturday evening in Washington DC, Frank Wills was doing his rounds. It was June 17th 1972 and he was working as a security guard in the Watergate complex. During the course of his routine patrol he noticed … Continue reading →

On the morning of May 22nd 2000, Israeli armed forces began to pull out of Southern Lebanon, signalling the end of a military occupation that had lasted more than two decades. Within three days the withdrawal was complete and by … Continue reading →

“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,” states the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Except when it suits Congress. And ninety-three years ago today, President Woodrow Wilson pushed through the Sedition Act of 1918 – a blatant … Continue reading →

  On 11th May 1846, the 11th president of the United States, James Polk, asked Congress to recognise the existence of a war with Mexico triggered by America’s annexation of Texas. Two days later, war was officially declared and thus … Continue reading →

  Today, May Day, marks the international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labour movement. Except in the United States. Yet it is from the New World that May Day received its inspiration. One hundred and twenty-five … Continue reading →

Sixty-six years ago today, Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was summarily executed by communist partisans and his body brutalised, violated and hung up for public display in Milan’s Piazzo Loreto – as ignominious a death as any of those Caesars … Continue reading →

Earth Day was first observed 41 years ago. Across America thousands of local events were organised, and the decentralised method was as inspiring as the new awakening to environmental issues. Initiator Gaylord Nelson said, ‘all we need to do to … Continue reading →

One hundred and forty-six years ago today, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to the Union’s Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. In the parlour of the home of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in the town … Continue reading →

Seventy-two years ago on this day, Generalissimo Francisco Franco broadcast his final radio communiqué of the Spanish Civil War: “Today, after having disarmed and captured the Red Army, the Nationalist troops have secured their final military objective. The war is … Continue reading →

  Today we commemorate the 159th anniversary of the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 masterpiece, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly – one of the few works of fiction that can lay genuine claim to changing history. No … Continue reading →

On March 19th 2003 US President George W. Bush announced that US and UK armed forces had launched strikes against “targets of military opportunity” in Iraq. It marked the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom; a disastrous conflict that would drag … Continue reading →

  On this day in 1921 after two weeks of siege, a rebellion at the Kronstadt naval base fell to Soviet government forces. Anarchist and sometime Bolshevik-ally Victor Serge described the events as, ‘Seventeen dreadful days, more dreadful than anything … Continue reading →

  Today we put our hands together and give a round of applause to the Libertores, those forty Roman senators who off’d that despicable cad, Julius Caesar – his death foretold (“Beware the Ides of March”) by a soothsayer earlier … Continue reading →

  Today marks the 70th anniversary of the commencement of Lend-Lease, the controversial programme through which America gave aid to Great Britain’s war effort as she struggled alone against Hitler’s Nazi Germany in those dark days after the fall of … Continue reading →

  One hundred and fifty-four year ago today, African-Americans were delivered a conclusive and seemingly fatal blow to their prospects for freedom. It was official. The United States Supreme Court – the highest bastion of law and morality – ruled that … Continue reading →

Twenty-six years ago today, the UK Miners’ Strike of 1984-85 finally ended in defeat for Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers when miners reluctantly and bitterly voted to return to work. The strike had lasted just two days … Continue reading →

There have been plenty of novels written about revolutions, but not many that have been genuinely revolutionary…. works that not only captured the collective imagination but also triggered a seismic social shift. Today we’re remembering one of a mere handful … Continue reading →

Fifty-five years ago today, before a closed session at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev lit the fuse of an almighty powder keg when he delivered his sensational speech, On the Personality Cult … Continue reading →

Sixty-nine years ago on this day, the first indications that all was not tickety-boo with Hitler’s Holocaust came to light when Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large but carefully selected audience … Continue reading →

Although the concept of human-induced climate change was a century old by the latter part of the 20th century, it was only then gaining wide attention among the relevant scientists. The impact of relentlessly adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere … Continue reading →

Empires fall. It’s what they do. It’s inevitable. Sometimes the collapse is due to the depletion of essential resources. Sometimes it’s a result of being overwhelmed by external aggressors. Sometimes it’s plague or a natural disaster that does it. And … Continue reading →

Today we celebrate the release, nay, escape of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut LP, forty-two years ago, with which the initial re-paganising of late-50s Whitey – with its fuse lit by Afro-American rock’n’rollers – was crystallised forever by four psychedelicized Anglo-Saxon … Continue reading →

On 12th February 1909, the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, a group of sixty black and white intellectuals, reformers and socialists dedicated to securing the civil and political rights of African Americans as guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth … Continue reading →

Today we dance in celebration on this the twenty-second anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in South Africa. Incarcerated for almost three decades, subjected to inhuman conditions breaking rocks in a lime quarry, restricted to two visitors per year, … Continue reading →

Today we look back to 1992 and the signing of a treaty that would cause delight, despair and scepticism. A treaty that announced a radical evolution of the European Project from an economic trade pact to a political union. But … Continue reading →

In the early hours of 31st January 1968, thirteen years into the Vietnam War, 70,000 North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces launched a wave of simultaneous attacks on more than 100 towns and cities in South Vietnam. This audacious operation took … Continue reading →

Today we pay tribute to the three American astronauts of Apollo 1, who died forty-five years ago when their command module cabin caught fire during a pre-launch test at Cape Kennedy. The flight had already caused controversy when, just days … Continue reading →

It was forty-one years ago on this day that Charles Manson and three of his female accomplices were finally convicted of those horrendously violent murders which have come to many to represent the symbolic termination of the Swinging Sixties. Undoubtedly, … Continue reading →

Today we are duty bound to remember that dreadful old scoundrel, Winston Churchill, who died exactly forty-seven years ago. Racist, royalist, aristocrat, misogynist, opposer of women’s rights, deployer of army weapons against striking miners even; who knows the scores of ways … Continue reading →

  Today marks the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin who, as leader of the Bolshevik Party and architect of the first successful workers’ revolution, unleashed upon the world a new kind of tyranny that substituted dynastical despots … Continue reading →

  At the beginning of 1776 the American Revolution was well underway and growing in intensity with each passing week. The Battle of Bunker Hill in June ’75 had shaken the British army so badly they’d been on the back … Continue reading →

Today, we must celebrate John Aubrey’s dramatic rediscovery of Avebury – the world’s largest prehistoric stone circle – whilst out hunting with fellow royalists during the English Civil War, exactly three hundred and sixty-two years ago. For Aubrey’s heroic retrieval … Continue reading →

  At one minute before midnight on December 28th 1937 the Irish constitution passed into law and the Republic of Ireland (or Éire) was born. Although it has been described as a revolutionary act itself, the passing of the constitution … Continue reading →

Post-Nazism, post-Holocaust, it’s easy to forget that it was not Berlin, but Paris – the very symbol of Enlightenment and cultural capital of Europe – that played shameful host to the first outpouring of modern political anti-Semitism. For it was one … Continue reading →

Today we commemorate the anniversary of the UK release of Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins – the first artistic collaboration between John and Yoko – for whom, as the Romeo and Juliet of their time, no surnames are required. Eighteen … Continue reading →

The collapse of US energy and trading conglomerate, Enron, played out over several months in 2001 but we choose to note its passing today. For it was on November 28th, 2001 that the scale of the deceit and fraud perpetrated … Continue reading →