Benjamin Tillman (1847–1918) was the Democratic Governor of South
Carolina from 1890 to 1894 and a United States Senator from 1895 until
his death in 1918. A white supremacist who opposed civil rights for
blacks, Tillman led a paramilitary group of Red Shirts during South
Carolina's violent 1876 election. One of his legacies was South
Carolina's 1895 constitution, which disenfranchised most of the black
majority and ensured white rule for more than half a century. On the
floor of the U.S. Senate, he frequently ridiculed blacks, and boasted of
having helped to kill them during the 1876 campaign. He was known as
"Pitchfork Ben" after he threatened to use a pitchfork to prod that "bag
of beef", President Grover Cleveland. He was the primary sponsor of the
Tillman Act (1907), the first federal campaign finance reform law, which
banned corporate contributions in federal political campaigns.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tillman>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1899:
Second Boer War: In the Battle of Magersfontein, Boers defeated
the forces of the British Empire trying to relieve the Siege of
Kimberley.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Magersfontein>
1972:
Apollo 17 (Lunar Roving Vehicle pictured), the last Apollo
mission, landed on the Moon.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17>
1981:
Salvadoran Civil War: About 900 civilians were killed by the
Salvadoran armed forces in an anti-guerrilla campaign.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacre>
2008:
American stockbroker Bernard Madoff was arrested and charged
with securities fraud in a $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest in
history.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
elevenses:
(Britain, informal) A short mid-morning break taken around eleven
o'clock for a drink or light snack.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/elevenses>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
In different places over the years I have had to prove that
socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of
justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and
corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism
cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda
would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the
commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the
Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-
limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point.
Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both
capitalism and socialism are repulsive.
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn>
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