Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven,” beginning “Once upon a midnight dreary,” is published on this day in the New York Evening Mirror. Poe’s dark and macabre work reflected his own tumultuous and difficult life. Born in Boston in 1809, Poe was orphaned at age three and went …read more

Emily Lyons, the victim of an ‘Army of God’ bombing at a Birmingham, Ala., women’s clinic, describes her horrific experience in this interview.

On Jan. 29, a nail-packed bomb exploded outside the New Woman All Women Health Care Center in Birmingham, Ala., killing off-duty police officer Robert “Sande” Sanderson and maiming nurse Emily Lyons.

Lyons, the 42-year-old mother of two daughters, had her shins blasted away, her left eye destroyed and her right eye severely damaged. Her entire body was riddled with nails and shrapnel.

for more … splcenter.org

Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American terrorist convicted for a series of anti-abortion and anti-gay -motivated bombings across the southern United States between 1996 and 1998, which killed three people and injured 150 others.

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1728 – John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera was first performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London.

1802 – John Beckley became the first Librarian of Congress.

1820 – Britain’s King George III died insane at Windsor Castle.

1845 – Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” was published for the first time in the “New York Evening Mirror.”

1848 – Greenwich Mean Time was adopted by Scotland.

1850 – Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union as a free state.

1856 – Britain’s highest military decoration, the Victoria Cross, was founded by Queen Victoria.

1861 – In America, Kansas became the 34th state of the Union.

1886 – The first successful petrol-driven motorcar, built by Karl Benz, was patented.

1916 – In World War I, Paris was bombed by German zeppelins for the first time.

1924 – R. Taylor patented the ice cream cone rolling machine.

1936 – The first members of major league baseball‘s Hall of Fame were named in Cooperstown, NY.

1940 – The W. Atlee Burpee Seed Company displayed the first tetraploid flowers at the New York City Flower Show.

1949 – “The Newport News” was commissioned as the first air-conditioned naval ship in Virginia.

1956 – “Indictment” debuted on CBS radio and stayed on the air for three years.

1958 – Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married.

1958 – Charles Starkweather was captured by police in Wyoming.

1963 – The first members to the NFL‘s Hall of Fame were named in Canton, OH.

1963 – Britain was refused entry into the EEC.

1966 – “Sweet Charity” opened at the Palace Theatre in New York City. It ran for 608 performances.

1979 – U.S. President Carter formally welcomed Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping to the White House. The visit followed the establishment of diplomatic relations.

1985 – The Dow Jones industrial average peaked at 1,292.62.

1987 – “Physician’s Weekly” announced that the smile on the face of Leonardo DeVinci’s Mona Lisa was caused by a “…facial paralysis resulting from a swollen nerve behind the ear.”

1990 – Joseph Hazelwood, the former skipper of the Exxon Valdez, went on trial in Anchorage, AK, on charges that stemmed from America’s worst oil spill. Hazelwood was later acquitted of all the major charges and was convicted of a misdemeanor.

1995 – The San Francisco 49ers became the first team in National Football League (NFL) history to win five Super Bowl titles. The 49ers defeated the San Diego Chargers 49-26.

1996 – French President Jacques Chirac announced the “definitive end” to nuclear testing.

1996 – La Fenice, the 204 year old opera house in Venice, was destroyed by fire. Arson was suspected.

1997 – America Online agreed to give refunds to frustrated customers under threat of lawsuits across the country. Customers were unable to log on after AOL offered a flat $19.95-a-month rate.

1998 – A bomb exploded at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, AL, killing an off-duty policeman and severely wounding a nurse. Eric Rudolph was charged with this bombing and three other attacks in Atlanta.

1999 – Paris prosecutors announced the end of the investigation into the accident that killed Britain’s Princess Diana.

2001 – In Indonesia, thousands of student protesters stormed the parliament property and demanded that President Abdurrahman Wahid quit due to his alleged involvement in two corruption scandals. Wahid announced that he would not resign.

2014 – Archaeologists announced that they had uncovered what they believed to be the oldest temple in Roman antiquity. The temple was found at the Sant’Omobono site in central Rome.

On the morning of January 28, 1917, a Mexican maid named Carmelita Torres refuses to put up with the indignity she has been made to suffer every morning since she started working across the border in the United States. Torres’ objection to the noxious chemical delousing visited upon Mexicans upon crossing the Northern border sparked what became known as the Bath Riots, an oft-overlooked moment in Chicano history.

Scared that a recent outbreak of typhus in Mexico could find its way to the United States, the Public Health Service instituted mandatory disinfecting for all Mexicans entering the country. The process was both humiliating and dangerous—men and women were directed to separate facilities, where they were made to strip off their clothes, which would be steamed. Officials examined the nude border-crossers and frequently doused them in harmful chemicals such as kerosene, a method which had resulted in the deaths of 27 prisoners in an El Paso prison in 1916.

Having heard that workers at the facility would regularly photograph women in the nude as they underwent this process, 17-year-old Torres refused to leave the trolley as it stopped at the Santa Fe Bridge border facility. Torres and her fellow passengers, most of whom were also young, female domestic workers, quickly seized four trolleys, hurling whatever they could find at the American authorities. A number of other Juárez residents joined them, and the ensuing riots lasted through the next day, although no one seems to have been seriously injured and there were only a few arrests.

Source: history.com for the complete article

This was a horrendous, seemingly misogynistic, and dangerous thing to have happened!