On this day 1969, in his hometown of Miami, Florida, controversial Doors singer Jim Morrison finally abandoned all notions of changing society through his role as a pop singer and entertainer. Instead, profoundly inspired by three successive viewings of the … Continue reading
A tribute to the eco-revolutionary Judi Bari – who died on this day in 1997 – will appear here shortly.
On this day, the UK Miners’ Strike of 1984-85 ended in defeat for Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers when miners reluctantly and bitterly voted to return to work. The strike, lasting just two days short of a … Continue reading
When a man is one hundred years ahead of his time, only the esteemed company that he keeps give his general contemporaries any inkling that his curious methods and zany lifestyle might be anything more than a splendid eccentricity. Throughout … Continue reading
On this day in 1953, the people of the Soviet Union were finally shown cosmic mercy for their long sufferance, freedom at last from their quarter-century endurance test at the hands of a peripheral mad man. Peripheral? J. Stalin hailed … Continue reading
On this day in 1857, African-Americans were delivered a conclusive and seemingly fatal blow to their prospects for freedom. It was official. The United States Supreme Court – the highest bastion of law and morality – ruled that ‘Negroes’ were not … Continue reading
Today we pay tribute to one of the great figures in the battle for working class rights – a woman whose impact was so powerful that the Chicago Police Department branded her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” As a … Continue reading
“Violence against women is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation, and it is perhaps the most pervasive. It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth. As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development, and peace.” – UN Secretary General Kofi Annan” Continue reading
When Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton first drafted the 19th Amendment in 1878, never could they have imagined it would be another forty-two gruelling years before American women would win the right to vote. Why, even black men … Continue reading
“Excepting John Brown – of sacred memory – I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people,” wrote Frederick Douglass of the abolitionist and freedom fighter, Harriet Tubman – who we honour … Continue reading
Today marks the anniversary of the commencement of Lend-Lease, the controversial programme through which America gave aid to Great Britain’s war effort as she struggled alone against Hitler’s Nazi Germany in those dark days after the fall of France. Cajoled, … Continue reading
Today is the date attributed to the death of Anne Frank. But the exact date is of course unknown, for the 15-year-old Jewish diarist was just one of some 18,000 to die from the typhus epidemic that spread like wildfire … Continue reading
Today we pay tribute to a woman whose very name is synonymous with women’s suffrage – the legendary Susan B. Anthony. Although there are several other luminaries whose pioneering efforts heralded that extraordinary first wave of female emancipation, it is Susan … Continue reading
“On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think.” Those were the words of Friedrich Engels at the funeral of his close friend and creative collaborator, Karl Marx. The … Continue reading
Today we put our hands together and give a round of applause to the Liberatores, those forty Roman senators who off’d that despicable cad, Julius Caesar – his death foretold (“Beware the Ides of March”) by a soothsayer earlier that … Continue reading
On March 16th 1968, the American combat soldiers of Charlie Company, First Battalion, 20th Infantry Division swept into the South Vietnamese village of My Lai and massacred 504 unarmed, unresisting women, children and elderly men. Babies were shot at point-blank … Continue reading
On this day in 1921 after two weeks of siege, a rebellion at the Kronstadt naval base fell to Soviet government forces. Anarchist and sometime Bolshevik-ally Victor Serge described the events as, ‘Seventeen dreadful days, more dreadful than anything I … Continue reading
Today marks the anniversary of the formation of the Paris Commune – the first successful seizure of power by the working class. Facing Prussian invasion forces on one side and French troops mobilised against its own citizens on the other, … Continue reading
On March 19th 2003 US President George W. Bush announced that US and UK armed forces had launched strikes against “targets of military opportunity” in Iraq. It marked the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom; a disastrous conflict that would drag … Continue reading
Today we commemorate the anniversary of the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly – one of the few works of fiction that can lay genuine claim to changing history. A literary incendiary, Beecher … Continue reading
Today we pay tribute to the sustained visionary genius of Leo Fender, whose extraordinary deployment of Edisonian technology catapulted the previously minstrels-only 6-string guitar to the forefront of the post-war rock ‘n’ roll revolution. Yes, it must be understood that … Continue reading
On this day in 1638, Anne Hutchinson – religious radical and “first feminist of the New World” – was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A recollection of this momentous event will appear here shortly.
We in the West tend to recall only the great Mahatma Gandhi when we think of India’s long and gruelling fight for freedom from the British Raj. But today we pay tribute to another extraordinary Indian Independence revolutionary – Bhagat … Continue reading
At four minutes past midnight on March 24th 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Despite not even being in the top 50 global oil spills by volume, the Exxon Valdez disaster … Continue reading
On this day in 1976, power was seized in a coup d’etat by a military junta that would rule Argentina between 1976 and 1983. Throughout those seven grueling years, Argentines endured a repressive regime of indiscriminate violence, persecution, torture, kidnappings, … Continue reading
On 25th March 1969 Yoko Ono and John Lennon staged their first ‘bed-in’ for peace. Married five days earlier in Gibraltar, the Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton – inviting the world’s press to come and interview them about … Continue reading
In the middle of the 19th century, the barely-united states of America was in grave trouble. Stymied by its inability to reconcile a mandate for economic growth that depended largely on that “peculiar institution” of slavery, the so-called “Land of … Continue reading
Today we acknowledge the anniversary of the death of Russia’s Yuri Gagarin, the first hero in space, the first human in space. How ironic then it was that such a hero could be dispatched not on a space flight but … Continue reading
On 28th March 1941, 59-year-old visionary feminist writer Virginia Woolf walked into the river Ouse with stones in her pockets and drowned herself. A note to her husband Leonard said: “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. … Continue reading
Today we celebrate the extraordinary scholar, philosopher, mystic and prophet, Emanuel Swedenborg, who left this world – just as he had predicted – two hundred and forty-four years ago today. Prophecy it was that brought greatest fame to Swedenborg, probably his … Continue reading
In the 1960s space was the final frontier. But just half a century earlier, the final frontier was the South Pole. And 104 years ago today – his two companions lying frozen to death next to him – 43-year-old Captain … Continue reading
Nothing revolutionary to report today. So I thought I’d sling this through your window… “In all times and in all places, whatever may be the name that the government takes, whatever has been its origin, or its organization, its essential … Continue reading
On this day in 1970 occurred the all-time single-most revolutionary political act in rock’n’roll, when Moriaki Wakabayashi – bass player of Tokyo’s notorious underground legends Les Rallizes Denudés – accompanied several other members of the Japanese Red Army Faction in the armed … Continue reading
An alternative "On This Day", On This Deity aims to bring light to and celebrate Culture Heroes, Outsider Icons, Beloved Immortals and Revolutionary Events in history.
Disclaimer: These are spirited and informed opinion pieces. Photos have been credited wherever possible, which hasn’t often been the case. Please contact me (via Comments) if you are the photographer of any pictures used by On This Deity and would like your photo to be credited or removed.
