Portside

Deadly Fallout Heralds the Nuclear Age (1945)

JULY 16 IS THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY of the world’s first atomic explosion, the top-secret test of the Manhattan Project’s brainchild in the New Mexico desert. Before the end of the day, highly radioactive fallout “snowed down” on thousands of residents of eastern New Mexico and southern Colorado, who had no way of knowing either what it was or that it was extremely dangerous.   

The bomb’s designers knew that the bomb would produce radioactive fallout but they could only guess how much, how far it would spread, and how radioactive it would be. They were concerned enough about fallout to attempt to minimize it by placing the bomb on top of a 100-foot tower to reduce the amount of radiation absorbed by the sand and rock holding the tower up. Nevertheless, the explosion lofted many pounds of unexploded plutonium and hundreds of tons of radioactive dust tens of thousands of feet into the air.  

Before the test the Army deployed teams of technicians, wearing civilian clothes and equipped with Geiger counters, to collect radiation-related data in communities downwind from the test site. The bomb’s designers thought it unlikely the explosion would expose civilians to deadly amounts of radiation, but the data-collecting technicians had instructions to contact headquarters immediately if the radiation was strong enough to necessitate evacuation. In the event, no one was evacuated.

As concerned as the Army was about fallout, it was much more concerned about keeping the test as secret as possible. It was impossible to conceal the enormously bright pre-dawn explosion that lit the sky for hundreds of miles around the test site; ditto the shock wave that was felt throughout New Mexico and southern Colorado. But the Army told the media that both were the result of a huge, accidental ammunition-dump explosion that had caused no injuries, with the result that the very existence of an atomic bomb remained a secret until the bombing of Hiroshima three weeks later. 

Immediately after Hiroshima, the people who had experienced the fallout from the earlier test began to understand what it had been, but no government agency offered them information or advice concerning potential health effects. Nor was there any effort to study the health of those exposed to fallout. It is undeniable that there was an unusually high incidence of cancer among the downwinders, but it was never studied in detail. Similarly, right after the test there was a months-long spike in infant mortality in the communities that were impacted by the fallout, also never subjected to a close examination. https://thebulletin.org/2019/07/trinity-the-most-significant-hazard-of-the-entire-manhattan-project/

Bob Marley’s Breakthrough at the Lyceum (1975)

JULY 17 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the concert by Bob Marley and the Wailers at the Lyceum Theater in London that provided the tracks for the album, LIVE! 

In particular, the performance of No Woman, No Cry, a glorious celebration of life in the face of hardship, was the international breakthrough for Marley and the Wailers, which you can listen to here: https://youtu.be/r8RoUOW8ma0?si=hQRHd64H0JUvM3hK

Hitler’s Publishing Debut (1925)

JULY 18 IS THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY of the publication of volume 1 of Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

If it had not been that Mein Kampf’s author turned out to lead one of the most deadly and genocidal crime waves in history, his book would have long been forgotten.

Mein Kampf explains the ideological program for the Holocaust, identifying Jews and Bolsheviks as racially and ideologically inferior to "Aryans" and Nazis. Despite being poorly written, it sold more than five million copies. https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601h.html

Struggle Pays (2000)

JULY 19 IS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY of an important, but little-known victory by 153 striking workers in Givet, France, the result of a successful workers’ struggle that ought to be more widely known than it is.  

Very briefly (the link at the bottom provides the missing details) the owners of Cellatex, the largest employer in Givet, having unscrupulously looted their corporation, declared bankruptcy. Under the circumstances, the 153 employees were eligible for only specific and grossly inadequate severance pay and unemployment benefits.

The plant, which was in the middle of town, was full of highly toxic and flammable raw materials. The workers occupied it and made clear they were prepared to set it on fire and cause a huge environmental catastrophe if they didn’t receive a government guarantee they would receive a much bigger severance package and much more unemployment pay than required by law. 

While the workers repeatedly made clear their ability to make good on their threats, they negotiated – not with the plant’s owners, but with representatives of the local government, the French department of labor, and the French parliament. After two weeks the government negotiators offered severance pay equal to about $10,000, two years of weekly unemployment compensation equal to what the workers had been earning when the plant closed, plus official, iron-clad guarantees that the government would keep its end of the bargain.

The workers voted unanimously to accept the government's offer.  https://libcom.org/article/153-french-workers-find-way-make-themselves-heard-henri-simon-trans-loren-goldner

The Origin of Ignorance (1925)

JULY 21 IS THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY of a Tennessee jury convicting John Scopes of the crime of teaching about the theory of evolution in a public school. Visit the Zinn Education Project’s This Day in History item for more information: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/scopes-trial-ruling/

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same (1665)

JULY 22 IS THE 360TH ANNIVERSARY of Londoner Samuel Pepys recording this description of the deserted streets of London during the Great Plague of 1665: "I by [private carriage] home, not meeting with but two coaches, and but two carts from White Hall to my own house [a distance of two-and-a-half miles], that I could observe; and the streets mighty thin of people."

When I was a student I read Pepys’ famous diary, which he kept from 1660 to 1669; during 1665 he often wrote about the bubonic plague’s affect on London, but I paid very little attention to those entries because they seemed to me irrelevant to anything I ever had, and ever would, experience. 

But in 2020, during the days when my daily sights in Brooklyn reminded me of Pepys, I went back and took a second look. I was amazed to discover how many ways Covid threw Brooklyn back three and a half centuries. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4200

For more People's History, visit
https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.bennett.7771/