César Chávez is perhaps the most famous Latino or Mexican-American civil rights activist in history. He was a very astute user of the media, and made the union cause very sympathetic to the American public.
One of the major steps in this process was the formation of the he National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in 1962. Later called the United Farm Workers, which was created by the merger Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by Chávez.
Up until 1966, the National Coal Board had allowed the excavations from the Aberfan mine to be piled up on the hill above the village. The total volume of this debris is unknown, but the estimated volume of just the portion that broke away on October 21, 1966 is in the vicinity of 150,000 cubic metres. Safety inspectors were typically more concerned with safety issues inside the mine than outside, but even so the NCB had been warned repeatedly over the years leading up to this disaster.
The warnings went unheard until that deadly Friday, when heavy rains contributed to the slide of the debris onto the town. The debris covered a farm, twenty houses along Moy St, Aberfan, and a large portion of Pantglas Junior School. The total death toll was 144 people, including 5 teachers at the school, and 115 students aged between 7 and 10 years old. It remains one of the worst mining disasters of the modern era.
Referenced in:
Aberfan – David Ackles
Aberfan – Rhys Morgan
Palaces of Gold – Leon Rosselson
The Aberfan Coal Tip Tragedy – Thom Parrott
When it was first created, the Neutron Bomb was hailed as a triumph of efficiency and progress. In theory, it would kill the population of its affected area, while leaving the buildings standing. The bomb would have a lesser degree of heat and concussive force than an ordinary nuclear bomb, but a greatly increased amount of radiation.
The bomb was never used in a combat situation, and its production has been largely discontinued. The United States, the Soviet Union, China and France all had developed neutron bombs, but no country is currently known to deploy them.
The 1983 Australian Federal election was a smashing victory for the Australian Labor Party under Bob Hawke – which, as displaced ALP leader Bill Hayden commented, could have been led by a drover’s dog and still won. Sour grapes aside, the election was significant in that it ended 8 years of Liberal-National Coalition government, and also in that Hawke would go on to become the longest-serving ALP Prime Minister in Australian history.
His right hand man, a tall fella named Paul Keating – a ten year veteran of Federal Parliament and a notorious smart-arse – would become Treasurer of Australia in Hawke’s new Cabinet, and preside over a tumultuous but overall successful period of dramatic economic reform.
Referenced in:
My Right Hand Man — Keating! The Musical original cast
Live Aid was, on the face of it, impossible. The technology for the sort of hook ups that were needed was unreliable. And the idea that so many musicians could put aside their egos, for any cause no matter how good, seemed more than mildly implausible.
But it did come together. At two major concerts in London and Philadelphia, and several smaller ones in Sydney, Moscow, Cologne and The Hague, almost every musician currently working – and several who weren’t – played. Several bands reunited especially for the effort.
The concerts were broadcast around the world to an estimated audience of 400 million people, in addition to the more than 200,000 who attended the various concerts. A total of 150 million British pounds were raised directly by the concerts.
Intel’s first Pentium microprocessor was the Pentium P5. Released on March 22, 1993, it was an x86 compatible chip that was an instant hit. Intel promoted it – and subsequent releases in the Pentium series – heavily. For a while there, it seemed like you couldn’t turn around without seeing one those damned “CyberdyneIntel Inside” logos.
The Pentium remains, to this day, the single most well known brand of CPU on the planet – today’s song is certainly proof of that.
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository is exactly what it sounds like: a facility located inside Yucca Mountain, Nevada. It was exhaustively researched as a potential facility throughout the eighties and nineties, and finally given the go ahead in 2002. It is intended that it be a safe place to store radioactive materials for up to a million years (the longest anticipated time for the materials in question to remain radioactive).
Although construction has commenced, there have been numerous delays, and the Obama administration has repeatedly cut the funds available for the project, which is now unlikely to be ready for use before 2020.
Bunny Greenhouse was a rising star in the United States Army Corps of Engineers until the year 2000. Suddenly, under a new CO, her previously spotless performance appraisals were less so, something Greenhouse attributes to racism and sexism (claims which the US Army is yet to investigate).
In 2005, she testified before a public committee hearing of the Democratic Party regarding the Army’s deals with Halliburton, in particular with regard to waste, inefficiency, fraud, abuse of power and general corruption. Naturally, this led to the end of her military career, as the Bush White House apparently believed that free speech was something whistleblowers should be made to pay for.
Her actual words that day were an indictment of Halliburton, and by extension, the political, military and economic climate in which that company thrives: she described Halliburton’s dealings as “the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.”
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