NevadaLabor.com News Bulletins Jan. 1-April 10, 2006

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Update: Monday, April 10, 2006, 2:42 p.m. PDT — Friends of Nevada labor are invited to a fundraising luncheon with 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards. Proceeds will go to the Nevada State AFL-CIO's initiative to raise the state minimum wage and index it for inflation. The Painters Union Hall will host the event from 12 noon to 1:00 p.m. at 1701 Whitney Mesa Drive in Henderson. Contributions of $100 per person should be made out to "Give Nevada A Raise." If you plan to attend or need more information, contact Misti Pena at (702) 459-1414. UPDATE: Las Vegas Review-Journal — Coverage of Edwards speech. Las Vegas Sun — Edwards addresses United Mine Workers convention in LV, decries $5.15 per hour.

Update: Monday, April 10, 2006, 3:10 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals. (New York Times e-headlines)

ON APRIL 10, 1729, the American Weekly Mercury advertised for sale "An Indian woman and her child . . . She washes, irons and starches very well, and is a good cook"; in 1886, Lieutenant Governor Charles Laughton said he had received an 1883 Gatling gun from the U.S. Army's Watervliet Arsenal in New York (Nevada's lieutenant governor then served as state adjutant general); in 1896, Nevada Governor John Jones died and Lieutenant Governor Reinhold Sadler became acting governor; in 1905, there were press reports that the Union Pacific Railroad was planning to use the $100,000,000 raised by a new stock issue to drive a tunnel through the Sierra; in 1905, Carrie Nation, serving out a jail sentence for smashing saloons, was selling off her Kansas land for $7,000 to go to Oklahoma and campaign for a prohibition clause in the constitution when Oklahoma entered the union (which came in 1907); in 1907, members of the new Nevada Railroad Commission were sworn into office by Justice James Sweeney; in 1912, the Titanic put to sea; in 1919, Emiliano Zapata was assassinated; in 1923, Reno carpenters went on strike after construction companies refused a demand to raise pay from $8 to $9 a day, prompting local construction employers to begin talks about going to an "open" shops system; in 1930, Chicana farm workers leader Delores Huerta was born in Dawson, New Mexico; in 1933, the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps was created; in 1940, J.C. Penney president Earl Sams testified against legislation sponsored by populist U.S. Representative Wright Patman to curb chain stores; in 1942, the notorious forced march of Filipino and U.S. soldiers now known as the Bataan death march began; in 1944, in Oradour, France, SS troops herded all the women and children of the village into a church, burned it to the ground, and shot all the men (the empty town is now preserved as a memorial); in 1945, at a time when Nazi "scientists" were conducting vicious experiments on human subjects, in the United States, unknowing African American traffic accident victim Ebb Cade (a cement worker) was injected with plutonium by the medical staff of the U.S. Army Manhattan Engineer District Hospital in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the first of at least 18 such experiments on unwitting human subjects by U.S. government "scientists"; in 1947, the color barrier in baseball was finally broken by Branch Rickey and his Brooklyn Dodgers when Jackie Robinson became the first African American player in the major leagues since 1898 (Robinson, whose brother ran second to Jesse Owens in the 1938 Berlin Olympics, quickly became baseball's biggest attraction and also the subject of a file compiled by the ever-vigilant FBI); in 1959, members of the Clark County liquor licensing board heard testimony that the situation of women serving as bartenders was "getting worse" and they voted to oppose women as bartenders and instructed attorney George Foley to come up with a recommendation for controlling the "problem"; in 1962, Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe died in Hamburg at age 22; in 1965, U.S. Representative Craig Hosmer of California proposed coins made of uranium; in 1965, Nevada gambling lobbyist Gabriel Vogliotti said that a circulating initiative petition to increase gambling taxes "would end the industry — not hurt it, wreck it"; in 1971, Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry in both world wars, led a protest march on the Pentagon by 8,000 women against the war in Vietnam; in 1975, workers had begun tearing down the Humboldt Hotel in Winnemucca, built by George Wingfield in 1923; in 1981, Irish soldier Bobby Sands, held by the British in Maze Prison, was elected to the British Parliament.

[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor.]]

Update: Sunday, April 9, 2006, 1:22 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. (New York Times e-headlines)

ON APRIL 9, 1884, according to Shoshone tradition, Sacajawea died at age 100 on the Wind River Reservation; in 1898, the great athlete, actor, singer, and political leader Paul Robeson was born; in 1898, Douglas County Sheriff John Breckliss was found not guilty of allowing the lynching of Adam Uber, after which it was discovered that three of the jurors had posted bail for the sheriff, prompting the judge to say nothing could be done because once acquitted Breckliss could not be tried again; in 1907, Reno train engineer H.C. Hampton, making his last run after promising his wife and family that he would leave the railroad, was killed in a train wreck at Lovelock in which freight and passenger trains collided head on; in 1907, Charles Grock of Reno, who in 1921 would try to assassinate U.S. Senator Charles Henderson of Nevada in Washington, was committed to the Nevada state asylum for an attack on a local attorney after an examining panel found him insane and after one panel member compared Grock to Harry Thaw (closing arguments were going on that day in New York in the sensational trial of Thaw for the murder of architect Stanford White); in 1914, after the Mexican government issued a written apology for a minor incident involving U.S. sailors, a U.S. ship demanded that Mexican officials also salute the U.S. flag on Mexican soil and when Mexico refused, President Woodrow Wilson launched an invasion of the country at Vera Cruz; in 1919, the U.S. internal revenue bureau announced its plans for enforcing alcohol prohibition (which would go into effect July 1), including a force of 800 inspectors and 2,283 agents throughout the nation; in 1919, as 50 people arrived daily (a 100 percent increase in normal traffic) on the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad at the new Divide gold rush camp, Tonopah businesspeople started to inventory all public and private sleeping accommodations and plan three shifts for sleeping in the limited number of beds. (Divide was seven miles south of Tonopah); in 1943, a two-day massacre of a thousand Jews was completed at Ternopol in the Ukraine, where another 5,000 Jews had been massacred in 1941; in 1945, the U.S. Army arrived at Nordhausen to liberate the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, but found nearly everyone dead; in 1949, the Stern Gang and Menachem Begin's terrorist Irgun attacked the Palestinian village of Dier Yassin (which had reached a coexistence agreement with adjoining Jewish villages) and over a period of several hours systematically massacred 254 residents, one third of the population; in 1956, Nat King Cole was beaten by a group of white men in Birmingham, Alabama; in 1959, three years after the rules were changed to prevent women from becoming astronauts, the first seven U.S. astronauts were named — all white males (in 1963 aeronautical engineer and air force test pilot Ed Dwight became the first African American astronaut candidate, but he was harrassed and threatened into quitting two years later); in 1959, four bar operators in Virginia City petitioned the Storey County Commission to protect their investments by reducing and limiting the number of saloons in town to twelve; in 1964, Vee Jay Records and Capitol Records reached an out of court settlement in their legal battle over release of Beatles recordings in the United States; in 1965, in remarks in Las Vegas, right wing commentator Paul Harvey advocated obliterating north Vietnam as a way of winning the U.S. war — "there'd be no north Vietnam left"; in 1974, President Nixon agreed to pay $465,000 in evaded back taxes (he was never prosecuted for tax evasion); in 1995, 100,000 marched in Washington D.C. to oppose violence against women; in 2002, George Hawes, former Nevada Assemblymember (1951-1955) from White Pine County and Carson City hospital board member during which he may have been the oldest elected official in the state), died in Carson City; in 2004, bassoonist Jody Marie Olsen performed for the first time at Carnegie Hall in her Duncanville High School Band; in 2005, former New Republic politics editor, NBC and CNN correspondent, Washington Week In Review moderator, Northwestern University journalism dean, and DePauw communications professor Ken Bode was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.

Update: Saturday, April 8, 2006, 1:44 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1973, artist Pablo Picasso died at his home near Mougins, France, at age 91. (New York Times e-headlines)

ON APRIL 8, 463 BC, Buddha was born in Nepal; in 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Poncé de Léon claimed Florida (like Al Gore's, his claim did not stick); in 1829, fur trapper Peter Ogden returned to the Humboldt River in Nevada (it wasn't called that yet) from Utah's Wasatch Mountains where he had wintered; in 1907, Southern Pacific Railroad's shutdown of its Ogden shops meant the Sparks shops would have an influx of new workers, who however would lose their seniority rights in the transfer; in 1912, Illinois held its first presidential primary election (previously, only general elections could be stolen in the state); in 1912, as seventeen Washoe residents were sworn in as county grand jurors, expected to investigate illicit liquor trafficking, the Reno Evening Gazette reported on what it claimed was the sale by saloons of "beer and other intoxicants to women in the [tenderloin] district who serve this liquor to young boys and teach them to be drunkards — which may hereafter result in their ruin."; in 1944, Ernest Childers, a Creek Tribe member from Oklahoma, received the medal of honor (see below); in 1952, President Truman ordered the seizure by the federal government of commercial U.S. steel mills in an effort to prevent management/labor problems from halting steel output (Truman's action was declared illegal on June 2d by the United States Supreme Court); in 1959, Nevada District Judge David Zenoff sentenced a 17 year-old boy to four years probation after taking a plea of guilty to statutory rape, and also sentenced the 16 year old girl who admitted encouraging and consenting to two years probation; in 1959, the Elko County Commission approved Jackpot as the name for a town on the Nevada/Utah border; in 1963, Julian Lennon, who as a four year old would provide the title for Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds, was born (in a 1970 Las Vegas campaign speech for Nevada U.S. Senate candidate William Raggio, Vice-President Spiro Agnew — taken in by the urban myth that the song was a drug song — attacked "Lucy" as a part of what Agnew called a drug culture); in 1965, President Johnson tried a new tack at winning the Vietnam war — bribery, by offering the Vietnamese billions of dollars to begin negotiations (but he conditioned the offer on the exclusion from negotiations of the National Liberation Front, thus assuring no acceptance of the offer); in 1970, the U. S. Senate rejected President Nixon's nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to be a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; in 1973, former special counsel to the president John Dean began talking to federal prosecutors, a step that accelerated the unraveling of the Watergate coverup; in 1990, teen-aged AIDS victim Ryan White died.

Update: Friday, April 7, 2006, 2:43 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1862, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee. (New York Times e-headlines)

ON APRIL 7, 1199, crusader Richard Couer de Lion (the Lionheart) died; in 1869, a fire started in the Yellow Jacket mine in Virginia City, Nevada, spreading to the Kentuck and Crown Point, trapping all those below the 800 foot level and killing — mostly through asphyxiation — about three dozen (historical accounts vary*) miners and galvanizing worker anger over corporate indifference to mine safety (the miners union responded by providing $50,000 for the Sutro tunnel project to provide drainage, ventilation-- and escape); in 1901, street protests by Swiss citizens trying to protect an anarchist from extradition to Italy for trial in an assassination attempt on King Umberto turned violent; in 1907, Abe and Amy Cohn returned to Carson City from a selling trip along the Pacific coast for the basketry of renowned weaver Dat-so-la-lee of the Washoe tribe; in 1907, the Nevada Northern Railroad was forced to lower its freight and passenger rates as a result of legislation sponsored by Lincoln County Assemblymember Levi Syphus; in 1917, a Political Prisoners Ball was held in San Francisco to benefit the defense fund of labor leaders Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, convicted on perjured testimony of a Preparedness Day Parade bombing that killed ten people; in 1934, a Chicago architect was in Owyhee to prepare for a $75,000 hospital on the Duck Valley tribal reservation; in 1940, University of Nevada football star Marion Motley (later inducted into the football hall of fame) was turned loose after being convicted of negligent homicide for crashing his car into a family, killing one, because boosters, university students, and grammar school students pitched in and paid his $1,000 fine — half of which was given to the family of the victim; in 1949, South Pacific opened on Broadway; in 1954, at a news conference where Indochina was discussed, President Eisenhower gave a name to a concept that had already been used by President Truman and that would haunt and damage U.S. policy for years: "You have a row of dominoes set up, and you knock over the first one and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly" (in 1967, U.S. secretary of defense nominee Clark Clifford toured the nations of south Asia and discovered that they knew nothing of the domino theory and did not believe the collapse of the Saigon regime would threaten their nations); in 1958, Twilight Time by the Platters was released; in 1959, Teamsters officials announced to the Clark County Fair and Recreation Board that the operating engineers at the Las Vegas convention center had unionized and asked for a union contract; in 1965, Clark County Assemblymember Geraldine Tyson, who cast a deciding vote against a legislative redistricting plan required by court decisions — thus costing her home county a huge gain in political influence — said she did so because she did not agree with the court and because she believed that one house of the legislative should not be apportioned on the basis of population; in 1965, Las Vegas casino figures Ruby Kolod, Willie Alderman, and Felix Alderisio were convicted in Denver of extortion; in 1965, after he requested 44 new positions and the Nevada Legislature gave him none, highway patrol chief Robert Stenovich resigned to become director of the Nevada Safety Council; in 1966, the Beatles recorded Got To Get You Into My Life at the Abbey Road studio; in 1990, John Poindexter was convicted on five counts of lying to Congress, destruction of evidence, and obstructing a congressional investigation (the convictions were overturned on grounds that he had been immunized, and after September 11, 2001, he was appointed by George Bush to head a domestic intelligence office); in 2004, in Salt Lake City, a delegation of Illinois officials delivered a formal apology to Mormon Church officials for the 1846 expulsion of church members from Illinois and the 1844 assassination of church founder Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois.

Update: Thursday, April 6, 2006, 1:21 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1909, explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole. The claim, disputed by skeptics, was upheld in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation. (New York Times e-headlines)

Update: Wednesday, April 5, 2006,12:34 p.m. PDT — Lockout at Las Vegas Medco pharmacy

UPDATE: 5-13-2007
Lawmakers consider benefits for locked-out workers
"The bill stems from a six-week-long lockout early last year involving about 650 workers at a Merck drug distribution facility in Henderson, said Danny Thompson, head of the Nevada (State) AFL-CIO."
[Editor's note: Either AP got the name wrong, or MEDCO is part of Merck. Stay tuned.]

Update: Wednesday, April 5, 2006, 2:38 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union. (New York Times e-headlines)

ON April 5, 1208, Quetzalcoatl died [EDITOR'S NOTE: The name literally means "hummingbird wizard," the top gun god of the ancient Aztecs. One of the reasons they rolled over for Cortez and his crusaders lay in the Aztec superstition that Quetzalcoatl would someday return, and eight limbed critters in shining armor — mounted conquistadores — sure looked godly to the natives.]; in 1890, the Silver State reported on northern Nevada flooding: "Several dams up the river have been washed out. In some instances the water has cut a new channel, leaving the dam high and dry"; in 1907, the ferry across the Carson River at Brunswick was completed and put into use; in 1911, U.S. Rep. Victor Berger of Wisconsin demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Mexico, where they were interfering in the revolution; in 1923, a Michigan jury in the prosecution of communist and labor leader William Z. Foster for criminal syndicalism was declared hung after it took eighteen ballots in 31 hours and they all came out six to six; in 1923, Arthur Conan Doyle, author of The Lost World and the Sherlock Holmes stories who was in the U.S. to lecture on spiritualism, opined that archeologist Howard Carter had died on March 2 because of "an evil elemental" loosed by Egyptian occultism or the spirit of Tutankhamen; in 1927, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce's committee on expositions held a meeting to plan for business exhibits at the Transcontinental Highways Exposition in Reno; in 1934, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Russia renewed their non-aggression treaties for another ten years; in 1934, federal agents were investigating whether the congressional frank had been used by U.S Representative Louis McFadden of Pennsylvania to send out his tract attacking Jewish bankers (it is still circulated today, now on the internet); in 1934, California regulators received a petition from J.P. Thomas asking that he be allowed to abandon the telephone exchange at Kenny in Humboldt County because (1) a fire 13 years earlier had destroyed all the line leading to the exchange, (2) all the equipment was stolen after the fire, (3) no one lived in Kenny anymore; in 1934, Reno's beautiful Overland Hotel, recently repossessed by Reno National Bank, was purchased by Washoe County rancher Nick Sorge for $70,000; in 1956, after he wrote columns critical of mob influence in labor unions, columnist Victor Riesel was blinded by acid thrown in his face by an unknown attacker [EDITOR'S NOTE: The hardassed Mr. Riesel continued to write tough, uncompromising stuff. His column appeared in the Las Vegas Sun for many years afterward until his death.]; in 1963, Olympic skier Sonja McCaskie was raped, strangled, and dismembered in her Reno home (her reputation was dismembered in succeeding days by Reno journalists); in 1965, former Las Vegan Robert Johnson was arrested for allegedly selling defense secrets to the Soviet Union; in 1965, Gov. Grant Sawyer said he would commission state district judge David Zenoff to fill in for disabled Nevada Supreme Court Justice Frank McNamee; in 1976, billionaire recluse Howard Hughes died, quickly setting off a Nevada court battle over the Melvin Dummar will; in 1988, Arizona Secretary of State Rose Mofford became governor after Gov. Evan Mecham was impeached, tried, convicted and removed from office. [EDITOR'S NOTE: No journalist will ever forget Mecham's angry screed to what he considered an untrustworthy reporter: "Don't ever ask me for a true statement again."]

Update: Tuesday, April 4, 2006, 3:12 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1507, Martin Luther was ordained a Catholic priest in Erfurt, Germany; in 1687, King James II of England issued a "declaration of indulgence" that ended requirements for religious oaths for public or military office, allowed worship in faiths other than the Church of England, and allowed worship in private homes or chapels, a significant step toward freedom of worship and separation of church from state; in 1840, Comanches and residents of San Antonio exchanged prisoners; in 1841, John Tyler became the first vice president to succeed a dead president, and asserted the right to become president instead of acting president (no one could lay their hands on the constitutional debates at the time, but years later the debates surfaced and proved Tyler wrong); in 1860, U.S. Representative Daniel Gooch of Massachusetts gave a speech on Utah polygamy in the House of Representatives; in 1887, the voters of Argonia, Kansas, elected Susannah Salter to be mayor, the first known woman mayor of a U.S. community; in 1907, a document was circulating among Carson City businesspeople in which signers pledged not to hire members of the Industrial Workers of the World; in 1907, a public meeting was held at the county court house in Carson City on selection of a site for the proposed governor's mansion; in 1915, McKinley Morganfield aka Muddy Waters was born in Rolling Fork in the Mississippi Delta; in 1918, Robert Praeger, a U.S. citizen of German descent who tried to enlist in the navy was wrapped and bound in a U.S. flag and lynched by a St. Louis mob (the leaders of the mob were acquitted by a jury); in 1923, in Washington the Interstate Commerce Commission set a valuation of the Nevada Northern Railroad at $3,404,900 compared to the company's own self-valuation of $3,403,479; in 1934, the seven members of Congress who voted against the declaration of war in World War One and were still in office said the results and aftermath of the war reinforced their belief that entry into the war was a mistake (Nevada's congressmember, Edwin Roberts, who voted against war, was no longer in Congress); and also on this day in 1934 former U.S. Representative Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who also voted against war in 1918, testified in Washington for a proposed constitutional amendment requiring a popular vote before U.S. troops could be sent outside the nation to wage a war; in 1934, a year after churches in Germany were (mostly willingly) brought under state control, a group of Christian leaders led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer openly formed a Pastor's Emergency League to oppose the Nazis and the state church, prompting many ministers to resign from the state church (Bonhoffer was hanged in 1945 at Flossenburg concentration camp) and on that same day in 1934, the Reichbishop of the state church issued an order forbidding ministers from discussing the religious dispute in their sermons; in 1934, in Los Angeles, Annie Barnett filed notice of an appeal that she and her husband Jackson Barnett, a Creek tribe member, were proceeding against a federal court ruling invalidating their marriage; in 1934, Naomi Schenck, who as three year old Naomi Pike survived the Donner Party disaster, died in The Dalles, Oregon; in 1934, U.S. Senator Key Pittman of Nevada angrily denied what he called a "malicious rumor" that he would testify on behalf of Reno political/crime bosses William Graham and James McKay in their federal mail fraud trial in New York. Pittman further said "I am shocked beyond words at the disappearance of my friend Roy J. Frisch" (Frisch, former Reno city councilmember who was the chief witness against Graham and McKay vanished on March 23d and was never seen again); in 1934, all the candidates for student president at the University of Nevada dropped out of the race in protest against a fraternity-dominated "combine"; in 1934, at a senate hearing, an FDR nominee for collector of internal revenue in Louisiana responded to a question from U.S. Senator Huey Long by saying "You know you can't prove that, you rotten son of a bitch," and Long ordered that the comment be entered into the record of the hearing; in 1944, the Allies succeeded in taking an aerial photograph of Auschwitz, providing additional data for an Allied bombing run that would have put the death camp out of business, an effort the Allies chose not to undertake; in 1955, the Hotel New Frontier opened in Las Vegas; in 1959, what appeared to be a looming prison riot was prevented when Gov. Grant Sawyer went to the prison and told the inmates he was replacing the warden he fired, A.E. Bernard, with former county sheriff, justice of the peace, and assemblymember Jack Fogliani; in 1960, RCA released Elvis' Stuck On You b/w Fame and Fortune, the first single released in mono and stereo versions; in 1963, a Pony Express sculpture was installed at Harrah's Casino at Stateline, Lake Tahoe; in 1964, My Guy by Mary Wells went onto Billboard's Hot 100 where it stayed for 15 weeks; in 1965, Las Vegas Review Journal columnist Forrest Duke dissed the dramatization of The Green Felt Jungle on NBC's Kraft Suspense Theatre as "laughable" and "almost as big a dud as" the best selling book on which it was based (the network wimped out on naming Las Vegas, calling it "Los Ramos"); in 1965, the Nevada Assembly voted 17 to 13 to lower the voting age to 18, falling seven votes short of the required two thirds for a state constitutional amendment; in 1967, the Rev. Martin Luther King., Jr., spoke against the Vietnam war at Riverside Church in New York City; in 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King., Jr., was assassinated at age 39 while campaigning in support of striking trash collectors; in 1969, CBS cancelled the Smothers Comedy Brothers Hour, known for iconoclastic, antiwar programming; in 1985, Congress refused to grant support to Nicaraguan contras, but President Reagan provided it secretly and illegally anyway; in 1988, Senate terrorism and narcotics subcommittee chair John Kerry presided over a hearing on 50 to 100 contra flights that carried illegal drugs into the United States in the 1980s; in 1979, former Pakistan prime minister Ali Bhutto, who made Islam the state religion and accomplished socialist reforms while repressing competing political parties, was executed for allegedly ordering the murder of a political opponent; in 1996, Jerry Garcia's ashes were scattered in the Ganges; in 2002, George Bush demanded that Israel halt invasions of Palestinian territory, in response to which Israel increased the incursions.

Update: Monday, April 3, 2006, 1:05 a.m. PDT — ON THIS DATE in 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King., Jr., foreshadowed his own death: Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

ON THIS DATE in 1860, the short-lived Pony Express began operation between Sacramento and St. Joseph, Missouri; in 1861, an article entitled The Las Vegas Silver Mines in the Desert News reported that more than 100 miners were working in Las Vegas; in 1862, Jesse James was murdered in St. Joseph; in 1906, John Alexander Dowie, founder of the Christian Catholic Church of Zion, Illinois, was deposed as head of the church; in 1906, the Reno Evening Gazette reported that a copper strike which "will rival Butte and Ely" had been made near Pyramid Lake; in 1923, in Augusta, President Harding's staff said he would undertake a western tour during which he would talk about the World Court, a tour from which he would not return alive; in 1923, the lumber town of Loyalton was seeking to take the county seat of California's Sierra County from the gold camp of Downieville; in 1934, in Indiana, a deputy sheriff and a jail worker were indicted and a judge was criticized by the Lake County grand jury as a result of John Dillinger's wooden gun escape from the Crown Point jail (the judge then held the grand jurors in contempt of court); in 1941, the El Rancho Hotel Casino opened on Highway 91 south of Las Vegas, the start of the "Strip"; in 1948, President Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which allocated more than $5 billion in aid for 16 European countries (New York Times e-headlines); in 1954, eight Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, summoned to the Pentagon, were briefed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Arthur Radford on a plan for a massive conventional and nuclear U.S. intervention into the Indochina war on the side of the French, but after two hours of sharp and skeptical questioning by the congressmembers that failed to answer questions about preparations and implications of military action, Dulles was told by all eight congressmembers that he would have no support unless he could line up other nations to back the action (after three weeks, the Eisenhower administration was unable to find allied support, and so war was, for the time being, averted); in 1959, the U.S. House UnAmerican Activities Committee claimed that it had evidence that the communists were planning a major push in southern California among labor groups, Mexicans, Jews, and blacks; in 1960, at a dusk to dawn Nashville recording session a month after his army discharge, Elvis recorded some of his best songs (Reconsider Baby, Such a Night) and his worst (It's Now Or Never). [ITALIAN EDITOR'S NOTE: It's Now Or Never was much better than some versions of O Sole Mio inflicted upon unsuspecting little Italian kids.]; in 1962, six people died in the fire that destroyed Reno's Golden Hotel; in 1965, the Nevada Senate defeated a casino entertainment tax on a 10 to 7 vote and later in the day reversed itself and voted for the tax on a 9 to 8 vote; in 1965, Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs was released; in 1965, Governor Grant Sawyer said legislators who refused to reapportion the Nevada Legislature in hopes that a U.S. constitutional amendment would overturn federal one person/one vote court decisions had made a "very bad gamble" since the local federal district court had continued a redistricting lawsuit in order to give state legislators time to do the job; in 1965, Governor Sawyer signed legislation outlawing adult publications; in 1968, at Mason Temple in Memphis on the eve of his death, Martin Luther King spoke powerfully of his willingness to die (http://www.afscme.org/about/kingspch.htm), foreshadowing his assassination the next day; in 1969, after repeatedly censoring the antiwar content of the Smothers Comedy Brothers Hour, CBS canceled it altogether in violation of contract (the network claimed the brothers had failed to deliver a show by deadline, but there was no deadline and the brothers won the ensuing lawsuit), and replaced it with Hee Haw; in 1974, California Lt. Gov. Ed Reinecke was indicted for lying to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in the Nixon/ITT scandal (he was convicted but the conviction was overturned when a court ruled there was not a quorum of the committee present for Reinecke to lie to); in 1980, the U.S. government reinstated federal recognition of the Utah Paiutes that had been dropped 26 years earlier (no word on whether the Paiutes returned the favor); in 1990, Sarah Vaughn died; in 2000, the North Las Vegas Airport broke ground for a new control tower, runway, and taxiway extension; in 2000, Microsoft was found guilty of violating antitrust law; in 2002, former U.S. Senator Richard Bryan, representing the group Preserve Nevada and speaking on the steps of the old Las Vegas High School building, announced a list of the 11 most endangered historic sites in Nevada; in 2002, NBC's West Wing aired an episode about a transportation accident involving nuclear waste which displeased nuclear power industry lobbyists and pleased Nevada officials trying to fight the establishment of a dump for nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain in Nye County (U.S. Senator John Ensign of Nevada: "This could be very helpful.")

Update: Sunday, April 2, 2006, 12:16 a.m. PST — ON THIS DATE in 1513, according to anglocentric history, Ponce de Leon "discovered" Florida (it was right where its inhabitants thought it was all along); in 1870, Victoria Woodhull became the first women nominated for the presidency of the United States ; in 1886, a ball was held in Reno to honor the anti-Chinese movement and to celebrate the opening of the Reno Steam Laundry Association building; in 1896, the New York Sun reported that the District of Columbia Typographical Union was investigating whether U.S. Senator William Stewart of Nevada headquartered his Silver Knight newspaper (which had editorial offices in New York and carried a Washington dateline) in Virginia to avoid union rules; in 1902, the first exclusively movie theatre opened in Los Angeles; in 1917, Jeannette Rankin of Montana was sworn into office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives [EDITOR'S NOTE; She became the only member of Congress to vote against both world wars]; in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, stating that "The world must be made safe for democracy." [EDITOR'S NOTE: Apparently, we failed and continue to do so.] (Congress debated for four days before voting); in 1934, Max Baer, training for the fight against Primo Carnera in which he would win the heavyweight championship, decided to leave his training camp at Globin's at Lake Tahoe and find a warmer location; in 1947, Emmylou Harris was born in Birmingham, Alabama; in 1951, University of Nevada President Malcolm Love was in Las Vegas for a round of public appearances during which he was expected to talk about plans to start college classes in Las Vegas during the fall semester; in 1959, after lawmakers carved $1.5 million out of Governor Sawyer's budget but still faced pleas from cities and counties, Clark County Senator Mahlon Brown, D, said that because of casino opposition to any increase in gambling taxes he was looking at tax increases on beer and cigarettes to aid the municipalities; in 1959, furniture store owner Oran Gragson was rumored to be considering a run for mayor of Las Vegas; in 1965, the Nevada State Archives was created; in 1965, author Ken Kesey was arrested for marijuana use; in 1968, presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy won his first presidential primary, in Wisconsin; in 1971, Ringo Starr's It Don't Come Easy was released; in 1971, on his fifth nomination, Jack Lemmon won his second Oscar for Save the Tiger; in 1982, Argentina reclaimed the Malvinas [Falkland] Islands; in 2002, Israeli tanks invaded Bethlehem and Palestinians sought refuge in the Church of the Nativity, barricading themselves inside and holding the church during a long siege.

Update: Saturday, April 1, 2006, 3:23 a.m. PST — ON THIS DATE in 1869, White Pine County was created with Hamilton as its county seat; in 1881, Ed Vesey gave up his lease on Reno's Lake House, possibly to move to Sierra Valley, and Myron Lake took over operation of the property again; in 1886, the Nevada State Journal reported "The Carson Appeal says a private letter from Washington states that Nevada will have some trouble getting the appropriate for her Indian School from the face that the appropriation has been exhausted for this year. The Department stated that the money for this purpose lay there for years, but none of the Nevada Representatives asked for it and of course it was not tendered. It could at any time have been had for the asking but nobody cared enough about it to ask, so of course we wait another year."; in 1895, the Nevada Assembly amended a bill prohibiting the use of "ardent spirits" in the capitol building to make it take effect after the legislature went home for the year; in 1896, the Nevada State Journal reported that Mrs. M.C. Lake would move into the Lake house; in 1904, Truckee Carson Project (Newlands Project) engineer L.H. Taylor said the project would reclaim (irrigate and farm) 235,000 acres (it never reached 100,000); in 1907, mining labor leaders Joseph Smith and Morris Preston, being held on charges of killing a restaurant owner in Goldfield, arrived in Carson City after being removed from the Hawthorne jail to be taken to the state prison to await trial; in 1913, Washoe County District Attorney William Woodburn was asked for a legal opinion on whether the new state glove contests law required the $100 be paid for a day's fights or for each individual fight, and whether the law limited the number of rounds; in 1945, American forces invaded Okinawa during World War II (New York Times e-headlines); in 1952, officials of the Calaveras County Fair came up with a grisly publicity stunt — to prove or disprove stories that frogs had emerged alive from stonemasonry after being inside for years, the fair would entomb a frog in a wall for a year; in 1952, there was growing criticism of a Reno Chamber of Commerce plan to change the name of Slide Mountain to Mount Reno, with snow surveyor James Church and members of the Nevada Historical Society opposing the change; in 1957, Bye Bye Love by the Everly Brothers was released on Cadence; in 1964, Nevada casinos changed the rules of blackjack to defeat a successful system for beating the house that was then in use; in 1965, on a 17-18 vote, the Nevada Assembly voted down a required redistricting plan, hoping that a federal constitutional amendment overturning U.S. Supreme Court one-person/one-vote decisions would be approved so the reapportionment would never have to be done; in 1970, U.S. Army Sp. 4 Peter Lemon was involved in an action in which he stood off Vietnamese troops with three machine guns and some hand grenades while being wounded three times and rescuing a fellow soldier, actions for which he received the Medal of Honor (he later credited his alertness in the action to the fact that he was stoned on marijuana at the time); in 1971, U.S. Representative Walter Baring, D-Nev., sent a letter to President Nixon seeking a pardon for mass murderer William Calley: "I make this request in behalf of my constituents, myself, and every former, current and future American soldier. This miscarriage of justice has hurt the cause of American patriotism and troop morale and surely will not assist you in developing a professional army, volunteer or draft." [EDITOR'S NOTE: Baring was ousted in the Democratic primary the following year.]; in 1971, the Nevada Senate voted to kill a public vote on whether to make abortion legal; in 1971, the Riverside Hotel in Reno reopened under the ownership of Jessie Beck; in 1975, NLF and Hanoi forces were sweeping through Vietnam toward Saigon and Cam Ranh, with two province capitals falling without a shot being fired; in 2003, U.S. forces invaded an Iraqi hospital at Nasiriyah to seize Private Jessica Lynch (earlier the Iraqis, who saved Lynch's life, had tried to turn her over to U.S. forces who refused to accept her).

Update: Friday, March 31, 2006, 2:26 a.m. PST — ON THIS DATE in 1968, President Johnson stunned the country by announcing he would not run for another term of office. (New York Times e-headlines)

ON MARCH 31, 1492, in Granada's Alhambra Palace, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain signed an "edict of expulsion" ordering all Spanish Jews to leave the nation and giving them three months to dispose of their homes, property and assets (usually at a fraction of their value (Isabella said it was not their decision, it was God's); on this date in 1845, the autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published; in 1870, Thomas Peterson Mundy of Perth Amboy became the first African American to vote under the 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which had been ratified the previous day; in 1877, Virginia City's magnificent International Hotel opened; in 1878, future world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson was born in Galveston; in 1879 ,a Carson Reform Club was formed in Carson City to open a club room for local boys in order to keep them out of saloons;