Today in history

May 18

1652
Rhode Island becomes the first colony to abolish slavery.

1872
Birthday of Sir Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, essayist, and social critic, a leading figure in his country’s anti-nuclear movement. In 1954 he delivered his famous “Man’s Peril” broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb tests, and warning of the threat to humanity from the development of nuclear weapons. A year later, together with Albert Einstein, he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons.
He became the founding president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 resigning, however, in 1960 to form the more militant Committee of 100 with the overt aim of inciting mass civil disobedience. He, along with Lady Russell led mass sit-ins in 1961 that brought them a two-month prison sentence.

Bertrand Russell

1925
First celebration of International Goodwill Day
1965
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Head Start Bill into law
1969
The Klamath tribe wins $4.1 million for loss of Oregon lands during fraudulent government surveys in 1880s.

1972
Margaret (Maggie) Kuhn founded the Gray Panthers (originally called the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change) to consider the common problems faced by retirees — loss of income, loss of contact with associates and loss of one of our society’s most distinguishing social roles, one’s job. They also discovered a new kind of freedom in their retirement — the freedom to speak personally and passionately about what they believed in, such as their collective opposition to the Vietnam War.

Maggie Kuhn

1974
In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received the message “Buddha has smiled” from the exuberant test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made India the world’s sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security Council–the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France.

1979
The Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee decision established that corporations are responsible for the people they irradiate. Karen Silkwood worked for the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation at their Cimmaron, Texas, plant that manufactured plutonium. She became the first female member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers bargaining committee, focusing on worker safety issues, and suffered radiation exposure in a series of unexplained incidents.

Karen Silkwood