5 février

1826 -- US: New Harmony Community of Equality founded in Indiana.

1833 -- Canada: Montreal Mechanics Mutual Protective Society founded. Beginning of Canadian movement for the 10-hour work day.

1846 -- Bavarian-born American anarchist Johann Most lives. Advocate of "propaganda by the deed"

1875 -- Manuel Devaldes (aka Ernest-Edmond Lohy) lives, Evreux, France. Libertarian, pacifist & néo-Malthusian.

1894 -- France: Auguste Vaillant is executed for having tossed a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies. Primarily a symbolic gesture, it put terror in the hearts of a middle class which was not about to forgive him this fright, & set off repression against anarchists throughout the country.

1894 -- England: Peter Kropotkin speaks today, Monday, at Co-operative Hall at 8pm, on "What Anarchism Is". Admission free.

1898 -- Italy: Pietro Gori, long-time lawyer for anarchists & workers, today defends the workers & peasants being tried for their involvement in popular agitations

1911 -- Mexico: Guadalupe is captured by the revolutionary anarchist forces of Ricardo Flores Magon's Liberal Party.

1914 -- William Burroughs ("Naked Lunch") starts cuttin-up, St. Louis, Missouri. Author, anarchist, gun nut & Kansas gardener. One of the more fascinating of the "Beat"-identified writers.

1923 -- Italy: Mass arrests of socialists, anarchists & communists.

1927 -- France: The Dielo Trouda, a publishing group founded by Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov & other exiled Russian & Ukrainian anarchists in Paris, issues an invitation to an 'international conference', based on their 'Organisational Platform'.

1933 -- Marinus van der Lubbe crosses the Dutch/German border. Marinus van der Lubbe, born in Leiden 1909, a half blind militant of the Dutch communist party & an ultraleft partisan of workers' councils, confessed to setting fire to the Reichstag in Berlin. He was beheaded in Leipzig on 10 January 1934. Most believe van der Lubbe was framed or set up by the Nazis so they could seize full power in Germany. Some French anarchists, mostly individualists, took his defence, glorifying his action.

1937 -- Spain: Plenary assembly of the confederal & anarchist militias meeting in Valencia, February 5-8, to consider the militarization issue.

1958 -- US: A B-47 bomber collides with another jet &, as a result, drops a hydrogen bomb into the ocean off Savannah, Ga. The bomb was never found.

1991 -- Germany: 49 German troops conscientiously object to going to Turkey for Gulf War.

1993 -- Mexico: 170 Chihuahua police are arrested for insulting the governor.