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NEWS BULLETIN ARCHIVES
Also see NevadaLabor.com's Statewide U-News Roundup[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2006 Dennis Myers.]]
Update: Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2006, 3:35 p.m. PST — On Oct. 31, 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated near her residence by two Sikh security guards. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg; in 1864, Nevada became the 36th state (see below); in 1882, the Nevada State Journal observed "Last evening was Hollow Eve, and yet the people were so absorbed in political and other matters that few were aware of the fact."; in 1903, a Reno constable arrested Señor Enrique Robles, "toreador from Madrid", apparently for bullfighting — "For unlawfully having a living creature, to-wit a bull, in an enclosure and by tormenting and arousing his savage instincts by waving a red flag in his face."; in 1922, in admission day remarks to Sparks high school students, former governor Emmet Boyle said that turning the Spanish Springs Valley into an irrigation reservoir and building the Boulder dam project would build up the state; in 1931, when Governor Fred Balzar returned to Nevada from a hunting trip he found a letter that Acting Governor Morley Griswold had neglected to answer "a request from Assemblymember Lindley Branson of White Pine County for a special session of the legislature, apparently to abolish the senate; in 1937, Groucho and Chico Marx were convicted of violating copyright laws by allegedly using a script submitted to them by two writers without paying for it (Harpo was not included in the action because he never spoke during skits and so could not be said to have performed the script); in 1938, after many in the United States were panicked by the Mercury Theatre's radio play of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds that was dramatized in the form of news reports, H.G. Wells said in London that in his agreement selling the rights to the story, he gave no permission for alterations such as the news reports; in 1949, a collection of musical and jewelry memorabilia that once belonged to Carson City jeweler and amateur weatherman Charles Friend was put on display for an admission day exhibit in the state capital (the collection had been purchased at auction by Republican Party figure and Home Means Nevada composer Bertha Raffetto); in 1953, the Nevada Day Committee sponsored as part of the admission day entertainment in Carson City Dat So La Lee/An Indian Legend with a cast of 200 Native Americans, plus the mysterious and beautiful Puberty Dance and Battle of the River of the Washoe-Paiute War; in 1953, some Reno folks found a way to make children hate admission day — the usual Saturday morning programs at movie theatres and the county library were cancelled; in 1956, two days after Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Egypt, Britain and France — over the objection of the U.S. — joined the attack (the Eisenhower administration said it stood by its 1950 declaration pledging assistance to any Middle East victim of aggression, but it failed to come to Egypt's aid); in 1959, Idaho Representative Joseph Garry, a Native American and president of the National Congress of American Indians, announced his candidacy for the United States Senate; in 1959, former Nevada District Judge Clark Guild was the grand marshal of the Nevada Day parade in Carson City; in 1964, Baby Love by the Supremes, their biggest hit and the second of five straight hits, went to number one on the Billboard magazine chart (the song was used as a protest against police brutality in Purple Haze aka More American Graffiti) and this was the first week's top 100 chart not to feature a Beatles song since January; in 1965, the New York Times published a story on a peculiar slice of the dark underside of life — a profile of Daniel Burros, a Jewish Nazi and Klansman who killed himself the day the story appeared; in 1965, the only Sunday Nevada Day parade was held, never repeated because of objections from Christians; in 1970, Richard Nixon campaigned in Las Vegas for Republican U.S. Senate candidate William Raggio; in 1970, Nevada Appeal editor Zane Miles resigned in protest against newspaper chain owner Donald Reynolds' enforcing an editorial endorsement of U.S. Senator Howard Cannon's reelection onto the newspaper; in 1992, after thirteen years of study, and 359 years after the event itself, a Vatican panel recommended that the heresy conviction of scientist Galileo Galilei (for arguing that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around) be lifted, a recommendation John Paul II accepts, saying "One day we may find ourselves in a similar situation..." — but the church failed to apologize; in 2000, Russia offered intercontinental ballistic missiles for sale.
From the Davenport [Iowa] Daily Gazette/October 31, 1864
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS, The Congress of the United States passed an Act, which was approved on the 21st day of March last, entitled "An Act to enable the people of Nevada to form a Constitution and State Government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States;
And whereas, the said Constitution and State Government have been formed, pursuant to the conditions prescribed by the fifth section of the Act of Congress aforesaid, and the certificate required by the said Act, and also a copy of the Constitution and ordinances, have been submitted to the President of the United States;
Now, therefore, be it known, that I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, in accordance with the duty imposed on me by the Act of Congress aforesaid, do hereby declare and proclaim that the said State of Nevada is admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this thirty-first day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.
(signed) ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
Update: Monday, Oct. 30, 2006, 2:24 a.m. PST — On Oct. 30, 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]On this date in 1872, the New York Herald carried a report from Salt Lake City that the George Wheeler expedition had split into several parties, with Wheeler leading one of them to the Colorado River and northern Arizona, and one of the other parties traveling into southeastern Nevada; in 1874, the Pacific Coast Pioneers held third anniversary balls and celebrations of Nevada statehood in the Odd Fellows' Building in Virginia City and the Gold Hill Miners' Union Hall; in 1878, the Nevada State Journal reported that "Very few Indians now make the Pyramid Lake Reservation their home. There are not over fifty there. Generally the reservation is the home for nearly three hundred; but nearly all are now away pinenutting, so as to lay in their Winter's supply."; in 1938, the Mercury Theatre's radio dramatization on CBS of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds created a panic among listeners who tuned in late and thought they were hearing a news broadcast; in 1950, columnist Earl Wilson reported that the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee would soon turn its attention to the assassination of Leon Trotsky; in 1952, the Las Vegas Sun, which had earlier endorsed Dwight Eisenhower for the presidency, switched its endorsement to Adlai Stevenson in reaction to Eisenhower's willingness to accommodate McCarthyites, with publisher Hank Greenspun writing that "Right thinking people cannot condone the embracement of McCarthy in Wisconsin and Jenner in Indiana, no matter what the end result may be."; in 1953, the Nevada sagebrush chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution gave U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran an award for his "fight against communist subversive infiltration" and his sponsorship of an immigration law designed to exclude non-Aryan races from the U.S.; in 1953, columnist Erskine Johnson reported that Martin and Lewis rejected an offer to appear in Las Vegas for $50,000 a week; in 1956, the McGill Civic Organization, the new town board, voted unanimously to support a proposal by TV Pix Inc. to provide three television channels in town; in 1959, French colonial occupation troops captured 76 Algerian patriot rebels in a cave east of Algiers; in 1959, Washoe County commissioners were snarling about the commission's appointment of Ray Crosby to a Democratic seat in the Nevada Assembly, with Democratic commissioner J.S. McKenzie saying that the two Republican commissioners had appointed Crosby because he was really a Republican who had only recently switched parties [EDITOR'S NOTE: The appointment cost Crosby his livelihood. KOLO Radio, then owned by Donald W. Reynolds' Donrey Media Group, served Crosby notice to show up for work as an ad salesman, which he could not do after the 1960 legislative session had begun. The ultimatum appeared shortly after Crosby introduced a bill calling for an investigation into all aspects of the operation of Sierra Pacific Power Company, in effect a utility consumer advocate bill two decades ahead of its time. Nevada ratepayers finally got a consumer advocate in 1981]; in 1961, Elvis' version of the 1911 song Come Back to Sorrento, with new lyrics and a different title, Surrender, hit number one on the Billboard chart; in 1974, Muhammad Ali became the second fighter in boxing history to regain the heavyweight championship, seven years after it was stripped from him; in 1975, a day after President Ford's secretary of the treasury, William Simon, told a congressional committee "I would urge that the financial terms of assistance be made so punitive, the overall experience so painful, that no city, no political subdivision would ever be tempted to go down the same road" and Ford himself promised a veto of assistance to New York City, the New York Daily News ran one of the most famous headlines of the century: "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD"; in 1978, an unforgettable episode of WKRP in Cincinatti, Turkeys Away, was first broadcast, implanting a memorable sentence in the minds of a generation of viewers — "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."; in 2000, Steve Allen died; in 2004, John Lukac of Las Vegas died near Fallujah, Iraq.
Update: Sunday, Oct. 29, 2006, 9:54 a.m. PST — On Oct. 29, 1929, stock prices collapsed on the New York Stock Exchange amid panic selling. Thousands of investors were wiped out. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1861, the New York Times reported that Creek tribe Chief Opothleyaholo (properly Hupuehelth Yahólo) was leading a force of 1,700 warriors against the Confederacy (most of his tribe had entered into a treaty with the Confederacy and he withdrew from the Creek nation with about a third of the population to support the Union); in 1873, a convicted murderer named Matheny in Eureka County was planning to ask Governor Lewis Bradley for a commutation and the Nevada State Journal called it "an excellent opportunity to his Excellency to show his moral courage‚" (however, Nevada governors did not have the power of commutation); in 1892, the Nevada State Journal questioned why former U.S. representative William Woodburn supported Francis Newlands for the Silver Party nomination but was now running against him as the candidate of the Republican Party; in 1898, the Nevada State Journal called the editors of the Territorial Enterprise and the Carson City News coprophagists; in 1895, the Nevada Equal Suffrage Association began its first state convention in Reno; in 1901, Leon Czolgosz [chawl-gosh], alleged assassin of President McKinley, was put to death, just 54 days after the assassination; in 1904, Democratic-Silver candidate for state senator Patrick McCarran spoke at Wadsworth — Wadsworth and Olinghouse precincts were reported to be strongly in favor of Democratic candidates; in 1923, Returning from Washington where governors met with President Coolidge, Nevada Governor James Scrugham announced in Elko that he was calling a November 12 law enforcement conference at which a strategy would be mapped to make alcohol prohibition work; in 1923, Scrugham also said he met with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace and that Nevada was going to have to become more aggressive in its efforts to get Congress to support plans to turn the Spanish Springs Valley into an irrigation reservoir; in 1929, after several days of stock market crashes, the biggest one of all hit (see below); in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed executive order 8927, withdrawing Nevada public lands from public use for National Defense Purposes; in 1947, in New Hampshire, General Electric produced rain by cloud seeding; in 1953, a day after Frank Sinatra left a Sands Hotel engagement in Las Vegas to make a final reconciliation attempt with his wife Ava Gardner in California, her studio released a statement from them announcing a divorce; in 1953, a lecturer named John Morley told a civic meeting in Los Angeles that the Kinsey report was more demoralizing to U.S. troops in Korea than communist propaganda because it reported that one out of every four U.S. wives had been unfaithful; in 1955, U.S. bankruptcy referee John Mowbray recommended that creditors of Las Vegas' bankrupt Moulin Rouge hold a creditors meeting to select a receiver; in 1956, without provocation and using Egypt's regaining of the Suez canal as a pretext, Israel launched an invasion of the Sinai, heading toward Egypt; in 1959, the Nevada board of examiners asked state agencies to start unloading "outdated and worthless" records, but not to dispose of those with historic or legal value (no hints were offered on how to tell the difference); in 1967, Hair opened in Greenwich Village; in 1993, the Dunes casino/hotel in Las Vegas was imploded.
From the New York Times/October 30, 1929:
STOCKS COLLAPSE IN 16,410,030-SHARE DAY, BUT RALLY AT CLOSE CHEERS BROKERS;
BANKERS OPTIMISTIC, TO CONTINUE AID
CLOSING RALLY VIGOROUS
Leading Issues Regain From 4 to 14 Points in 15 Minutes
INVESTMENT TRUSTS BUY
Large Blocks Thrown on Market at Opening Start Third Break of Week.
BIG TRADERS HARDEST HIT
Bankers Believe Liquidation Now Has Run Its Course and Advise PurchasesTwo Extra Dividends Declared
Change Is Expected Today
Third Day of Collapse
Three Factors in Market
Update: Saturday, Oct. 28, 2006, 1:30 a.m. PDT — On Oct. 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1646, John Eliot provided the first Christian religious service in the English colonies for Native Americans in their own language; in 1862, at the battle of Island Mound a detachment of African-Americans in Kansas, drawn from the ranks of fugitives who fled slave states, became the first black soldiers to see combat in the U.S. Civil War; in 1870, the first child was admitted to the Nevada Orphans‚ Home in Carson City; in 1897, eight-time Academy Award winning designer Edith Head, who spent part of her girlhood in Searchlight, Nevada, was born in San Bernardino; in 1908, after eliciting a health warning from the city health board during a period of anti-Chinese sentiment, city leaders burned Reno's Chinatown to the ground with no warning to residents (to prevent them from getting a court order stopping the action), who were left homeless in the snow and with a labor group promising to drive the refugees out of town; in 1912, with just a few days before election, Vice-President James Sherman, President Taft's re-election running mate and the first vice-presidential candidate to be nominated twice in a row, was believed to be on his deathbed, prompting speculation on whether he would be replaced on the ticket (Sherman did die before the election and his name remained on the ballot but he was replaced after the election for electoral vote purposes by the anti-Semitic president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, not that it mattered — Republicans Taft and Sherman came in third behind the Democratic and Progressive tickets); in 1912, negotiations between the Western Federation of Miners and Samuel Belford resulted in a strike by the Lane miners union and the Steptoe mill and smeltermen's union in White Pine county being declared off [See below] (Meanwhile, PT&T announced it would construct a $100,000 building in Reno); in 1912, the application of Sierra Telephone and Telegraph to open telephone systems in Sparks and Reno to compete with Pacific States T&T was postponed by the city councils, whereupon Sierra withdrew the applications; in 1912, President Taft reserved an additional 89.70 acres for the Moapa River Indian Reservation; in 1933, there were news reports that brown shirts had replaced the normal costumes in the famed "passion play" at Oberammergau and that Nazi salutes greeted visitors attending the famous performance in Bavaria; in 1933, the University of Nevada football team lost to St. Mary's College in Moraga, 60 to 0; in 1942, Nevada council of defense director Hugh Shamberger spoke to a public meeting of civil defense workers on "the block plan of organization for civilian war services"; in 1953, in Las Vegas there was a court hearing on a stockholders lawsuit against RKO Pictures managing director Howard Hughes; in 1953, Felix Manley was installed as the new pastor of Reno's Federated Church, a church that was merged from a Presbyterian and a Congregational Church; in 1958, Cardinal Angelo Roncalli of Venice was elected pope, supposedly as a caretaker-- but he became the greatest pope of the century (he startled the college of cardinals by selecting the name John XXIII, which had been the name of the last Pope John, an antipope); in 1959, with a court action by motel owners to seize the receipts of a new room tax pending, the Washoe County Fair and Recreation Board — in what appeared to be a carefully orchestrated action — spent all the money from the first quarter before the court acted; in 1959, in an effort to keep Nevada's first annual session of the legislature short, Governor Grant Sawyer sent a message to all state agencies asking them to restrict their legislative requests to one year instead of planning for a biennium as in the past; in 1959, the Interfraternity Council of the University of Nevada claimed it had abolished hazing and hell week; in 1963, the Reno City Council voted to replace the Reno arch with a new arch; in 1965, the phased shut down of Stead Air Force Base north of Reno began; in 1971, John and Yoko began two days of work during which they recorded Happy Xmas (War Is Over); in 2000, Nevada's admission day was celebrated on the 28th instead of the 31st for the first time under a new state law moving the holiday to the weekend.
DENNIS MYERS CLARIFIES: "a strike by" modifies both unions. It was a joint action by the two unions. I had to write it carefully because the newspaper report on which I was relying — in the Nevada State Journal — was really poorly written (nothing changes). It did not make clear whether the strike had already started or not, so I was uncertain if the agreement halted a strike in progress or averted one that was impending.
Update: Friday, Oct. 27, 2006, 12:01 a.m. PDT — October 27, 1949: In a speech to the United Nations general assembly, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky scoffed at U.S. criticism of Soviet human rights policies, pointing to the convictions of 11 U.S. communists and the Peekskill riots (in which people attending a civil rights concert in upstate New York were attacked with baseball bats and rocks); in 1949, Hawaii Territory Governor Ingram Stainback gave his approval to legislation creating a state un-American activities commission; in 1949, Republican plans to make statism an issue in the 1950 election hit a snag when a Gallup survey indicated that 68 percent of those surveyed didn't know what the word meant; in 1949, President Truman, who unsuccessfully vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, said he was prepared to use it to deal with steel and coal strikes; in 1949, a hearing at the State Building in Reno on whether the city should end rent control drew 1,500 people, most of them opposed; in 1954, shots were fired at Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser at a nighttime rally in Alexandria, coming so close that a floodlight above him was shot out and leaving the hysterical crowd in doubt about whether he was still dead or alive, until his voice called out "I am still alive...Let them kill Nasser! He is one among many. You are all Gamal Abdul Nassers."; in 1956, U.S. Senator William Knowland of California, the GOP floor leader, campaigned for Republican candidates in his wife's home town of Ely, Nevada, where Democratic floor leader Lyndon Johnson had visited on October 13; in 1975, the Washoe County grand jury, after hearing several witnesses on the hazing death of University of Nevada-Reno student John Davies, adjourned its investigation until November 5; in 2002, the New York Times report on an antiwar march in Washington said that "thousands of protesters marched through Washington's streets — Fewer people attended than organizers had said they hoped for," followed three days later by a second Times report on the very same march that said it "drew 100,000 by police estimates and 200,000 by organizers," forming a two-mile wall of marchers around the White House. The turnout startled even organizers, who had taken out permits for 20,000 marchers.
On this date in 625, Honorius succeeded Boniface V as pope, eventually espousing the Monothelite heresy and thus raising questions about the later doctrine of papal infallibility; in 1553, anti-trinitarian Christian reformer Michael Servetus was burned at the stake after being convicted of heresy charges brought against him by John Calvin, with death taking three hours because Servetus was burned over green wood; in 1787, the first of the Federalist papers appeared in New York's Independent Journal under the name "Publius", written by Alexander Hamilton: "Vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty."; in 1879, Ulysses S. Grant visited Virginia City and spoke to the public from the second floor balcony of the Savage building [EDITOR'S NOTE: The building was owned by Leonard Coates Savage, whose son, Frank Charles Savage, established Genesy and Savage Plumbers and Tinners, eventually moving the business to Reno where it survives and thrives today as Savage and Son Heating and Plumbing, sporting Nevada Contractor's License No. 10 and union signatory, of course]; in 1914, in San Francisco, Ella Sterling Mighels wrote to Nevada Historical Society official Jeanne Weir acknowledging an invitation to the half century celebration in Reno of Nevada's admission to the union; in 1914, Nevada Governor Tasker Oddie signed a proclamation declaring a holiday on the half century of Nevada's admission to statehood; in 1925, a contract was awarded to Varney Air Lines to carry mail between Elko, Nevada, and Pasco, Washington, with a stop in Boise, Idaho (the storied route was featured in the Christopher Reeve/Rosanna Arquette movie The Aviator); in 1928, Perry Smith, one of the alleged killers profiled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, was born in Elko County, Nevada; in 1930, North Las Vegas deputy city attorney, Las Vegas city councilman, Clark County commissioner, Nevada lieutenant governor, state district court judge and Nevada supreme court justice Myron Leavitt was born in Las Vegas; in 1935, a consultant to state governments on how to implement alcohol prohibition repeal said the number of alcohol-related deaths had declined since people started drinking again from 3.44 to 2.75 per 100,000; in 1942, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones announced last night that Anaconda Copper had gained control of Basic Magnesium, Inc., operators and builders of what was expected to be the be the world's largest magnesium plant near Las Vegas, Nevada; in 1947, You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx, debuted on radio.
Sebastian Castellio, criticizing Calvin for the burning of Servetus: "To burn a man is not to prove a doctrine. It is to burn a man."
Update: Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006, 2:24 a.m. PDT — On this date, the Great Fire of 1875 destroyed most of Virginia City's business district (including the original Washoe Typographical Union charter).
CWA LOCAL 9413 OFFICERS WITH THE WASHOE TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION'S 1876 CHARTER. It replaced the 1863 original which was lost in the Great Virginia City Fire of 1875. See Nevada Labor History.From left to right, Vice-President Rose Wolcott, President Craig B. Hansen and Immediate Past-President John Doran. (2001 photo)
On Oct. 26, 1529, Thomas More, who defended religious freedom in the abstract (in his book Utopia) but was critical of the Reformation and Martin Luther (in Henry VIII's Defence of the Seven Sacraments, which More helped write), became lord chancellor of England; in 1825, the Erie Canal opened; in 1861, the first news dispatch was sent from the east to San Francisco by telegraph; in 1861, the San Francisco office of Wells Fargo received instructions to shut down the short-lived Pony Express (though it kept running until November 20); in 1881, after Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp pistol whipped Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury in separate incidents, the gunfight near the O.K. Corral (which U.S. Senator William Stewart of Nevada claimed to have witnessed) occurred, shifting power in the town's political battle from the cowboy faction to the law and order faction (Tombstone Epitaph headline: "Three Men Hurled into Eternity in the Duration of a Moment"); in 1909, with university varsity games at an end for the rest of the year (possibly because of the shortage of men during wartime), Reno high school and university first year students were planning a rugby game; in 1919, Persian despot Reza Pahlavi was born; in 1920, electronics, math, and information theory pioneer Ralph Hartley (birthplace Spruce, Nevada) received a patent for the Hartley oscillator; in 1925, Reno Mayor Edwin Roberts received a wire informing him that Governor George Dern of Utah had appointed a committee to plan that state's participation in the Transcontinental Highway Exposition in Nevada and that the committee had recommended a $25,000 expenditure for a Utah building and exhibits; in 1927, Jewish anarchist Samuel Schwartzbard, who assassinated vicious anti-Semite Ukrainian cossack commander Simon Petliura (Petliura had conducted 998 major and 349 minor pogroms in 372 cities and towns resulting in about 70,000 murdered), was found innocent by a sympathetic French jury; in 1936, electric generation began at Boulder Dam; in 1950, the Confederated Indian Tribes of Nevada sent a letter to U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran — who kept trying to strip land from the Pyramid reservation — asking him to publicly state his position on acquisition of additional lands by Nevada tribes, return of land on the Pyramid reservation held for decades by white squatters, and water rights for tribes (McCarran's Republican opponent in the '50 election, George Marshall, had already said he opposed white settlers on tribal land); in 1965, at Buckingham Palace, the government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson made John, Paul, George, and Ringo MBE's — "Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire" (which they received after getting high in a palace restroom) for their "services to the export industry", causing several earlier recipients to return their MBE's (Lennon later returned his MBE as a protest against British policies on Vietnam and Biafra); in 1966, Sparrowhawk, the episode of I Spy that debuted on this date, was set in Las Vegas (it was directed by Walter Koenig, aka Chekov); in 1972, twelve days before the election, Nixon national security advisor Henry Kissinger launched the last dirty trick of the campaign, declaring of the Vietnam war "Peace is at hand" (the supposed agreement evaporated after the election); in 1996, Richard Jewell was belatedly cleared as a suspect in the Atlanta olympic bombing; in 2002, Gabbs and McDermitt high schools played a six-man game of football in Gabbs, believed to be the first six-man prep game played in 40 years.
October 27, 1875
Territorial Enterprise
Virginia City Rocked by Fire.
NIL DESPERANDUM.
The Enterprise is not quite full size this morning. Only by the courtesy of some kind friends are we permitted to put in any appearance at all to day. There was a convulsion in Virginia City yesterday. A breath of hell melted the main portion of the town to ruins. Our eyes are still dazed by the lurid glare; our ears are still ringing with the chaos of sounds of a great city passing away on the whirlwind of a storm of fire. As the sun arose yesterday morning it turned to purple and gold the smiling features of the most prosperous city on earth. Before the sun set, last night, the greater portion of that city had disappeared; and men and women and little children, by hundreds and thousands, knew not where to get a morsel of food, or where to lay their heads. The catastrophe is appalling. Men give and receive cheerful salutations as they meet, and brave women smile out of countenance the hard fate that has overtaken them; but the heartaches are sore, nevertheless. We know our people will rally from this blow; that, though houses have disappeared and vaults have been rent open by the fire, away down under the ruins there is a treasure safe which will rebuild our city more staunch and fair than it was before. But that promise of the future does not make lighter the suffering of the awful present, and we beseech from this generous coast a full measure of their sympathy for our poor. Those who yesterday would have gladly helped them are poor themselves to-day. An inclement winter is close upon us; there are many hundreds here who have neither houses nor food. They are a strong, brave race, and if California can furnish work for them, they will give a better return for their wages than any other people on earth. Meanwhile, for our people generally there is nothing to do but to go to work. The calamity looks at its worst to-day. Millions of dollars above ground will back the millions below. The shafts to the great mines are uninjured; many of the wrecked engines can be wakened, and in a few weeks the old harmonious clamor will again be heard, and prosperity will come back to us. The whole coast will be more or less affected by this catastrophe. Our mine owners understand this, and will strain every nerve to as swiftly as possible bridge this chasm which has opened at our feet. There is nothing to despair about, and we have not been in this desert for years without learning something of the virtue which suffers without complaining. The winds and the flame conspired against our city yesterday, but neither tempests nor fire can prevail against steadfast souls, and all the scars of yesterday can be erased.
Update: Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006, 1:21 a.m. PDT — On Oct. 25, 1971, the United Nations General Assembly voted to admit mainland China and expel Taiwan. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]On this date in 1846, after five days of rest in the Truckee Meadows, the Donner party resumed its trek toward the Sierra and history; in 1877, Garfield and Arthur supporters from Carson City traveled to Reno for a torchlight parade with supporters there, with torchlights, transparencies projected, oratory and singing; in 1881, Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain; in 1887, "The Austin Reveille thinks if the railroad company would put on two trains daily, one might accidentally get in on time."; in 1909, the City of Reno, which owned a single share in the Orr Ditch Company, owed an assessment of fifteen cents on its share; in 1909, the Reno city council upheld Mayor Richard Kirman's veto of a saloon ordinance (Kirman vetoed because the council had not given the measure both required readings); in 1917, Nevada had collected $2,647,000 for the second wartime liberty loan campaign with some collections not yet counted; in 1925, the Reno Evening Gazette reported that "KLAN FIERY CROSS BURNS ABOUT TOWN Four fiery crosses of the Ku Klux Klan burned in four sections about Reno last night, one near the big N northeast of the university, one at Sparks, one on the Virginia road and the principal one on a raft in the Truckee river near Wingfield Park. According to several connected with the organization, there was no significance in the demonstration other than a desire to remind everyone that the klan was 'very much alive and active.'"; in 1937, in a letter to a conference on state labor laws, President Roosevelt said he called Congress into special session to enact wage and hour laws; in 1937, maritime union organizer Joseph Curran called for the ouster of Joseph Kennedy as chair of the National Maritime Commission because of the jailing of 14 sailors aboard the government owned SS Algic who struck for union recognition (the ship was docked, not at sea); in 1937, former first lady Lou Hoover was the guest at a tea at the home of Mrs. Tasker Oddie and several other social functions in Reno; in 1950, in Boulder City, Republican candidate for governor Charles Russell declared he was opposed to any additional taxes, a pledge that bound him when he took office and caused the state to lose four years in dealing with the impact of the baby boom on schools; in 1950, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in D.C., concerned about tribal attorneys, including the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe's lawyer James Curry, was considering adopting a policy restricting the use of lawyers by tribes; in 1952, Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun published an article claiming that U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was gay; in 1958, fifty one cardinals, their number reduced by the death of a U.S. cardinal 70 minutes before the conclave was to begin, entered the Sistine Chapel to select a successor to Pius XII and were bricked up inside; in 1958, Henry Fonda, filming Warlock near Moab, denied a news report that he had nearly been hit by a rifle bullet while on location, calling it the product of a publicity man; in 1961, Las Vegas Hacienda Hotel president Warren Baxley purchased 25 Constellation airliners from Trans World Airlines, the largest known purchase of airliners by a private citizen; in 1962, John Steinbeck received the Nobel prize in literature; in 1965, after sitting on it for a while to make Nevada's U.S. Representative Walter Baring crazy, President Johnson signed legislation enacting the Southern Nevada Water Project; in 1968, John and Yoko announced they were expecting a baby (Yoko miscarried); in 1971, the Congress of African People announced that a political convention of African-Americans would be held in Las Vegas in November, the first state convention leading to a national meeting; in 1983, the United States of America (population 230,000,000) invaded Grenada (population less than 100,000); in 1986, the Mets won game six of the world series when a ground ball rolled between the legs of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner; in 2002, U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was killed in a plane crash.
THE NEVADA DAY COMMITTEE
WISHES TO ADVISE ALL PERSONS THAT THE COMMITTEE
IS NOT SOLICITING OR ENDORSING ANY
ADVERTISING PROGRAM OR ANY SPECIAL EDITION
OF ANY NEWSPAPER OR PERIODICAL FOR NEVADA
DAY, OCTOBER 31st, 1950.
ROY M. WHITACRE, ChairmanUpdate: Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006, 12:15 a.m. PDT — On Oct. 24, 1945, the United Nations charter took effect. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1648, peace negotiations begun in 1640 were concluded with the Peace of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years War, bringing the Holy Roman Empire to an effective end, extending political rights to both Catholics and Protestants, and starting secularization in society; in 1868, U.S. Minister (ambassador) to Uruguay and Argentina Henry Worthington of Nevada presented his credentials to the Uruguay government; in 1881, an editorial in the Tombstone Nugget two days before the gunfight near the O.K. Corral: "The arming of oneself in a peaceful community, as every well organized community is supposed to be, and walking about like a moving arsenal, is highly ridiculous and, as events demonstrate, exceedingly dangerous."; in 1902, William Jennings Bryan campaigned for Democratic candidates in Carson City, Virginia City and Reno; in 1940, U.S. workers got a forty hour work week under a new federal law; in 1950, the Mills family, final owners of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad (which was being dismantled), donated Foley's Forest — 51 acres of forest on the east side of Carson City — to the city and Engine 27 and a coach to the State of Nevada; in 1956, news reports said Nevada's first application for power from the Glen Canyon Dam was filed by U.S. Senator Alan Bible for the Pahrump/Ash Meadows Improvement Association; in 1973, former Nevada Assemblymember Flora Dungan, who transformed Nevada politics with her lawsuit to restore Nevada's original population-based legislative apportionment system and overturn the "little federal" plan that gave each county one senator, died; in 1975, American Indian Movement leader John Trudell, in federal district court in Reno on a weapons charge, objected to his case being handled by the federal court instead of a tribal court.
On Oct. 24, 2006, on The Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev, was named "worst person in the world" over Fox News blowhaha Bill O'Reilly. [BARBWIRE]
Update: Monday, Oct. 23, 2006, 2:21 a.m. PDT — On Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide truck-bombing at Beirut International Airport in Lebanon killed 241 U.S. Marines and sailors; a near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
George Bush/Des Moines/October 23, 2000: I want to have a ballistic defense system so that we can make the world more peaceful and at the same time I want to reduce our own nuclear capacities to the level commiserate with keeping the peace.
On this date in 1880, the Nevada Central Railway sold its locomotive "Battle Mountain" to the Utah Eastern Railroad; in 1901, as part of the U.S. conquest of the Phillippines, Brigadier General Jacob Smith ordered that all males over the age of ten on Samar be killed; in 1902, the annual convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Nevada began in Reno; in 1909, Mackay Stadium was dedicated during the game between Nevada and the Barbarians with Clarence Mackay in attendance; in 1915, twenty five thousand women marched in New York City demanding women's suffrage, including 12 marchers wearing banners with the names of 12 states (Nevada among them) that had already given women their right to vote; in 1930, Clarence Mackay arrived in Reno for ceremonies the next day dedicating the Mackay School of Mines at the University of Nevada; in 1931, while law enforcement officers across the southwest and in California searched for "trunk murderer" Winnie Ruth Judd (she was accused of shipping trunks containing her two roommates from Phoenix to Los Angeles' Union Station), the sheriff of White Pine County, Nevada, received a report that Judd rented a cabin at a tourist camp on Emigrant Pass on October 22; in 1944, Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie was hit by an egg thrown by a crowd member at the LaSalle Street station in Chicago and a photograph of the incident appeared in the Chicago Times with the headline "It Shouldn‚t Happen Here" (photographer Borrie Kanter later wrote "You set your shutter at 1/50th and your lens opening right — and be there!"); in 1948, longshoremen's union leader Harry Bridges responded to a request by the Alaska Chamber of Commerce for an investigation by a congressional subcommittee of whether Bridges was a communist by saying that "since three trials and a U. S. Supreme Court decision has held me not a Communist," chamber members should resume negotiating with striking longshoremen; in 1948, a U.S. Senate elections subcommittee asked Texas election officials to preserve and safeguard ballots in the narrow Coke Stevenson/Lyndon Johnson Democratic senate primary election that Johnson won by 37 votes; in 1948, a day after California Governor Earl Warren said he would retain daylight savings time in his state, Nevada Governor Vail Pittman said he had no such power and would do nothing to influence local communities on whether to (keep) daylight saving to deal with postwar power shortages, but did call it "heartening" that PG&E was construction additional power generating facilities; in 1956, after Nevada Democratic chair C.D. Baker claimed the state Republican Party had hired as many as 30 people at $150 a week to spread streetcorner gossip smearing Democratic U.S. senate candidate Alan Bible in his race against Republican Cliff Young, GOP chair Emery Graunke denied the charge on the grounds that "We don't have the money anyway. We're broke."; in 1965, Pete Seeger's Turn! Turn! Turn! by the Byrds was released on Columbia; in 1966, two days after one of the strangest bouts in boxing history, in which referee Billy Conn stopped a fight in Mexico City between Carlos Ortiz of Puerto Rico and Sugar Ramos of Cuba and Mexico because of Ramos' injuries and a World Boxing Association official awarded the bout to Ramos, four thousand Puerto Ricans besieged a New York City theatre where Mexican singers were performing and the World Boxing Association changed its mind; in 1968, Ice Station Zebra was released, later gaining a peculiar niche in Nevada history — recluse billionaire Howard Hughes watched it obsessively atop a Las Vegas hotel; in 1998, Dr. Barnet Slepian, brother of a Reno high school principal, was assassinated in his kitchen in Buffalo, New York, by a sniper firing from ambush.
Update: Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006, 10:58 a.m. PDT — On Oct. 22, 1685, Louis XIV issued the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, causing the destruction of Huguenot churches and shutdown of Protestant schools and provoking the emigration from France of hundreds of thousands of Protestants and a subsequent economic decline because of the loss of craft workers; in 1836, Texas, having escaped a ban on slavery under new Mexican law by fighting a war of independence to become a republic, inaugurated Sam Houston as its president; in 1887, journalist John Reed, who would marry fellow journalist Louise Bryant of Nevada, was born in Portland (Reed and Bryant were portrayed by Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in Reds); in 1915, a five ton electric locomotive for use by the quarrying company at the Nevada marble boom camp of Carrara arrived on the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad; in 1922, Vladivostok, reportedly the last outpost held by the White Guards, fell to Soviet troops, effectively ending resistance to the Russian revolution; in 1922, AFL President Samuel Gompers called U.S. Attorney General Harry Daugherty an "irresponsible agitator"; in 1922, United Comstock Mines held an open house on American Flats to show off their new town of Comstock and 2,000 people were in attendance; in 1933, the Nevada State Journal carried a front page story on the "comeback of the Comstock", a story that ran regularly in Nevada newspapers in the years after the Comstock Lode's decline without ever actually being true until the onset of major tourism; in 1934, Charles "Choc" Floyd (called "Pretty Boy" by reporters) was killed by FBI officers near Wellsville, Oklahoma; in 1934, the Nevada office of the Emergency Relief Administration (one of the New Deal "alphabet agencies" created to deal with the Depression) reported that of 712 drought relief projects (well drilling, spring development, etc.) launched in the state, 596 had been completed; in 1935, cowboy actor Tom Mix brought his wild west show to Las Vegas; in 1947, actor Robert Taylor protected his own career by naming names at a hearing of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, providing damaging testimony that did not actually incriminate his targets: "Well, the one chap I am thinking of currently is Mr. Howard DeSilva — that always has something to say at the wrong time. Karen Morley also usually appears at the guild meetings."; in 1956, U.S. Senator Alan Bible, introducing Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts at Reno's Twentieth Century Club, said he thought Kennedy might one day be president or vice president; in 1962, President Kennedy announced that nuclear missiles were being installed in Cuba and that he had ordered a blockade of the island nation (he called it a "quarantine" in order to try to get around the fact that under international law, it was an act of war-- and illegal); in 1963, President Kennedy called New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger to the White House for lunch and pressured him to call Times reporter David Halberstam home from Saigon, which instead prompted the Times to keep Halberstam (who had been on thin ice with his editors) in place and even cancel his scheduled vacation to avoid letting Kennedy think his pressure had worked; in 1972, Nixon advisor Henry Kissinger met twice with Saigon dictator Nguyen Van Thieu to plead that Thieu not block a cease fire that would allow Nixon to claim a peace agreement before the election; in 1972, Lake Tahoe realtors gave first prize in a "dirty photo" contest to a shot of the shuttered and ramshackle Bal Tabarin Casino in Crystal Bay; in 1979, the Carter administration admitted Reza Pahlavi to the United States for medical treatment easily available in several other nations that did not have a history of interference with Iranian affairs, precipitating the hostage crisis; in 1990, President Bush the Elder vetoed Senate Bill 2104, the Civil Rights Act of 1990.
Update: Saturday, Oct. 21, 2006, 1:41 p.m. PDT — On this date in 1864, with only ten days to go until his great achievement (signing Nevada's statehood papers) and two weeks from his reelection, President Lincoln and his son Tad watched a torchlight parade (see below); in 1873, John Muir visited Mount Whitney; in 1874, in an essay on "Quack journalism", the Nevada State Journal editorialized that "no name has yet been invented to express the utter degradation the miserable slimy foulness into which a certain class of fellows who have attached themselves to the newspapers of this country, have fallen."; in 1882, Chief Winnemucca died; in 1887, when the Western Union telegraph line in Esmeralda County was sold on a tax judgment, the county bought it; in 1913, reformer William Sulzer, impeached and convicted as New York's governor by supporters of Tammany Hall, arrived in New York City from the state capital to welcoming crowds who lined the streets (he was elected to the legislature in November and later refused a third party presidential nomination); in 1913, Chicago postal officials were dealing with cases of germ-laden letters; in 1918, Charles Ellis Beuhanon, a U.S. soldier of Wells, Nevada, died at base hospital no. 55 in France; in 1922, during the half-time show of a USC/Nevada game, what was reportedly the first card stunt was staged with the letters T-R-O-J-A-N-S; in 1931, acting on a suggestion by President Hoover, electric utilities across the nation, including the Elko Lamoille Power Company, shut off all city lights in their communities for one minute at 7 in the evening; in 1933, the U.S. Public Works Administration, a depression relief agency, separated Nevada and Utah and made them distinct administrative units (the Nevada State Journal reported that the change had been sought for three years, though the PWA was not created until June 16, 1933); in 1947, in testimony before the U.S. House Unamerican Activities Committee, Adolphe Menjou named names, including AFL union leader Herbert Sorrell (who had been beaten earlier in the year by mobsters) and actors Edward G. Robinson, Paul Henried, Hume Cronyn and Alexander Knox and "anyone who attended any meetings to hear Paul Robeson and applauded" (he said a jurisdictional strike by set directors, painters, and carpenters was an example of communist influence in Hollywood); in 1950, in a nicely loaded story lead, the Nevada State Journal claimed "While the Indians around Pyramid Lake continue to battle to retain their tribal lands against infringement by white settlers, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is preparing to sell a large amount of Indian land in California and nobody is objecting" (U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran, D-Nev., was trying to get Congress to give title to Pyramid tribal land to white squatters); in 1957, Jailhouse Rock was released into theatres, the same day the song of the same name hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1967. the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe), a coalition of 150 groups, held its first Washington protest and the largest protest of the Johnson administration, chronicled in Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night: History As a Novel/the Novel As History (Abbie Hoffman tried to levitate the Pentagon but was not entirely successful); in 1970, the U.S. House Armed Services Committee disclosed that six soldiers in Vietnam had charged that they were ordered to invent fictitious heroism for Brigadier General E.P. Forrester so he could receive the Silver Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross; in 1985, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Roseanne Cash, and members of the Stray Cats participated in the taping of a television program about Carl Perkins at Limehouse studio in London; in 1988, former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife Imelda were indicted by a U.S. grand jury for racketeering and fraud; in 2004, Jesse M. Samek of Rogers, Arkansas, based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, was killed in a helicopter accident in western Afghanistan.
Washington Daily Morning Chronicle/October 22, 1864: [A torchlight parade] passed through the grounds in front of the Presidential Mansion, where a large crowd had gathered, and kept up a continual blaze of light with rockets, bluelights, Roman-candles, &c., lighting up the upper windows under the portico, at which stood the President and "little Thad,"...After the procession had left the grounds, the crowd called loudly for the President, and he responded as follows: FELLOW-CITIZENS: I was promised not to be called upon for a speech to-night, nor do I propose to make one. But, as we have been hearing some very good news for a day or two, I propose that you give three hearty cheers for Sheridan. While we are at it we may as well consider how fortunate it was for the Secesh* that Sheridan was a very little man. If he had been a large man, there is no knowing what he would have done with them. I propose three cheers for General Grant, who knew to what use to put Sheridan; three cheers for all our noble commanders and the soldiers and sailors; three cheers for all people everywhere who cheer the soldiers and sailors of the Union-- and now, good night.
* Dennis Myers elaborates: The word meant secessionists. I was taken by surprise to see it, because the term was a really nasty one and Lincoln has this great reputation for gentility. See this entry in the Random House Dictionary.
Update: Friday, Oct. 20, 2006, 12:23 a.m. PDT — <
