Today in history

January 1
World Peace Day
New Years Day

1808
A law making slave importation into the U.S. illegal becomes effective.

1831
William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator, the leading abolitionist paper in the United States.

1847
Michigan becomes the first state to abolish capital punishment.

1863
President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation

1959
Cuban revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro, forced the President and dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, to flee the country. Fidel Castro’s forces enter Havana the next day.

Castro

Batista

1983
Women break into cruise missile base and dance on silos, Greenham Common, Britain. The Greenham Peace Camp had been established in 1981 to protest the arrival of U.S. Cruise missiles. It quickly became a focus and a symbol of women’s resistance to the male-dominated world of nuclear weapons. In spite of press hostility and physical abuse, including repeated and often brutal evictions, they stayed at the base, sometimes in the thousands, sometimes a few dozen only, but never giving up. The United States Air Force left the base in 1992 and were soon followed by their British counterparts. The Peace Camp, however, remained as a continuing protest against nuclear weapons. The last of the Greenham peace women left the base in September 2000, 19 years after they first arrived. A statue has since been installed to honor these heroic women.

Up and Over Greenham Common

Greenham action

On July 20th 2003 the life size Greenham march statue and plaque were unveiled. The statue of the mother and baby will keep alive the memory of this womens action for peace which started from Cardiff in 1981 and went around the world.

1986
Ten anti-nuclear activists were arrested for trespassing at Nevada Test Site at the end of a 54-day encampment at the main Test Site gate. Four teams of Greenpeace activists had infiltrated the Nevada Test Site and succeeded in delaying the “MIGHTY OAK” nuclear tests for two days. The camp established momentum for what became a movement resulting in the arrests of over 10,000 in numerous Test Site protests during the following years.

1993
Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.