Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism,
writing, and speeches. She was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel
woman" by admirers, and derided as an advocate of
politically-motivated murder and violent revolution by her critics.
Born in the province of Kaunas, Lithuania she moved with her sister
Helena to Rochester, New York in the United States at the age of
sixteen. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket Riot, Goldman was
trained by Johann Most in public speaking and became a renowned
lecturer, attracting crowds of thousands. The writer and anarchist
Alexander Berkman became her lover, lifelong intimate friend and
comrade. Together they planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an
act of propaganda of the deed. Though Frick survived, Berkman was
sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. In 1917 Goldman and Berkman
were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons
not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release
from prison, they were arrested - with hundreds of others - and
deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik
revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of
violence and the repression of independent voices. Eventually she
traveled to Spain to participate in that nation's civil war. She died
in Toronto on 14 May 1940.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1713:
With no living male heirs, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the
Pragmatic Sanction to ensure one of his daughters would inherit the
Habsburg monarchy.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_VI%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor)
1775:
The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington
and Concord in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Concord)
1943:
Nazi German troops entered the Warsaw Ghetto to round up the
remaining Jews, sparking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first mass
uprising in Poland against the Nazi occupation during the Holocaust.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising)
1971:
The first space station, Salyut 1, was launched from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR, USSR.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_1)
1984:
Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick's "Advance Australia
Fair", a patriotic song that was first performed in 1878, officially
replaced "God Save the Queen" as Australia's national anthem.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Australia_Fair)
1995:
A car bomb was detonated in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, killing 168 people and
injuring over 800 others.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing)
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Wiktionary's Word of the day:
espalier: A horticultural technique using pruning and shaping to train
the branches of a tree or shrub into a two-dimensional ornamental
design, as along a wall or fence.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/espalier)
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Wikiquote of the day:
When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you
don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.
-- Albert Hofmann
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann)