Early in the morning of August 29, 1911, two butchers hear dogs barking in the corral of their slaughterhouse outside Oroville, California. When they go out to check, they encounter Ishi, believed to be the last surviving member of the Native American Yahi tribe.

By the first decade of the 20th century, Euro-Americans had so overwhelmed the North American continent that scarcely any Native Americans remained who had not been assimilated into Anglo society to some degree. Ishi appears to have been something of an exception. Found lost and starving, Ishi was unfamiliar with white American ways and spoke no English.

Authorities took the Native American man into custody for his own protection. News of the so-called “Stone Age Indian” attracted the attention of a young Berkeley anthropologist named Thomas Waterman. Gathering what partial vocabularies existed of northern California Native dialects, the speakers of which had mostly vanished, Waterman went to Oroville to meet Ishi. After unsuccessfully hazarding words from several dialects, Waterman tried a few words from the language of the Yana Indians.

Source: history.com for the complete article

#Katrina,

The Gulf Coast is still battling, what looks like, white privilege. If read the news, it appears as if whites are wealthier, and in several locations … it is more unequal; the Po Poorer,  the Indigenous, Latino and Black People have still been left behind, and absolutely no fix is in place yet?

August 29th, 1786: Protesting high taxes and political corruption, American farmers begin a military standoff that closes the federal court in Springfield. It was called Shays’ Rebellion and was eventually defeated by a private militia, but it sufficiently rattled national leaders to call for a stronger national government to suppress future uprisings.

Source: Britannica History

Around dusk, on the evening on August 29, 1970, a group of 23 Native American activists climbed to the top of Mount Rushmore. Renaming the landmark Crazy Horse Mountain, in honor of the Lakota Sioux leader who famously resisted white Americans’ incursions into the area, the protesters are there to reclaim land they believe to be rightfully theirs under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which guaranteed Indigenous people the right to all of Western South Dakota. The occupation will last for two months, beginning a new chapter in Native American activism.

Signed at Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory, the 1868 treaty was meant to end hostilities between the United States and the Lakota people, Yanktonai Dakota and Arapaho Nation. The treaty allocated the Black Hills and adjacent lands west of the Missouri River—roughly half of what is now South Dakota—to Indigenous peoples. But it tried to incentivize Native Americans to give up their traditional way of life in favor of farming. And it was designed to assimilate Native Americans into white American culture, with U.S. courts, not tribal ones, given jurisdiction over the reservation.

For the complete article, history.com

August 28

1609 – Delaware Bay was discovered by Henry Hudson.
1619 – Ferdinand II was elected Holy Roman Emperor. His policy of “One church, one king” was his way of trying to outlaw Protestantism.

1774 – The first American-born saint was born in New York City. Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton was canonized in 1975.

1811 – Percy Bysshe Shelley and Harriet Westbrook eloped.

1830 – “The Tom Thumb” was demonstrated in Baltimore, MD. It was the first passenger-carrying train of its kind to be built in America.

1833 – Slavery was banned by the British Parliament throughout the British Empire.

1907 – “American Messenger Company” was started by two teenagers, Jim Casey and Claude Ryan. The company’s name was later changedto “United Parcel Service.”

1916 – Italy’s declaration of war against Germany took effect duringWorld War I.

1917 – Ten suffragists were arrested as they picketed the White House.

1922 – The first radio commercial aired on WEAF in New York City. The Queensboro Realty Company bought 10 minutes of time for$100.

1922 – The Walker Cup was held for the first time at Southampton, NY. It is the oldest international team golf match in America.

1939 – The first successful flight of a jet-propelled airplane took place. The plane was a German Heinkel He 178.

1941 – The Football Writers Association of America was organized.

1955 The death of Emmett Till

1963 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at a civil rights rally in Washington, DC. More than 200,000 people attended.

1972 – Mark Spitz captured the first of his seven gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. He set a world record when he completed the 200-meter butterfly in 2 minutes and 7/10ths of a second.

1981 – “The New York Daily News” published its final afternoon edition.

1990 – Iraq declared Kuwait to be its 19th province and renamed Kuwait City al-Kadhima.

1995 – The biggest bank in the U.S. was created when Chase Manhattan and Chemical Bank announced their $10 billion deal.

1996 – A divorce decree was issued for Britain’s Charles and Princess Diana. This was the official end to the 15-year marriage.

1998 – The Pakistani prime minister created new Islamic order and legal system based on the Koran.

2004 – George Brunstad, at age 70, became the oldest person to swim the English Channel. The swim from Dover, England, to Sangatte, France, took 15 hours and 59 minutes.

2008 – In China, the Shanghai World Financial Center officially opened. The observation decks opened on August 30.

2014 – Google announced its Project Wing. The project was aimed at delivering products across a city using unmanned flying vehicles.