This Day in History
from Working for Change:

1776: Continental Congress approves General George Washington's order to enlist free Negroes.

1919: Police smash peaceful IWW demonstration in Seattle; 43 are arrested and later sentenced to prison.

1919: Prohibition ratified by 3/4 of the states; Nebraska is 36th. (starts 1920)

1920: 18th Amendment, prohibition, goes into effect; repealed in 1933.

1920: First meeting of League of Nations Council, Paris, France.

1933: Birth of Susan Sontag, American "new intellectual" essayist and novelist; opposed Vietnam War, her post-Sept. 11 essay in the New Yorker, mildly questioning U.S. government characterizations of the attack, raised a firestorm of criticism and gave the first clear indication of how little tolerance there would be for mainstream dissent against Bush's policy choices in response to the attack.

1986: U.S. Energy Department announces 12 potential nuclear waste sites in eastern U.S., including a Penobscot (Native American) site in Maine only re-granted to the tribe six years before, along with four other tribal sites.

1991: U.S. invades Kuwait and Iraq. Several dozen U.S. troops (many victims of friendly fire) and up to 400,000 Iraqi citizens die in the following weeks. At least 1,000,000 Iraqis have died due to the effects of the following decade plus of U.S.-led global economic embargo.