JEWDAYO: A Daily Blast of Pride

May 7: The Pulitzer Prize

May 6, 2012

Columbia University approved plans to award the first Pulitzer Prizes on this date in 1912, one year after the death of Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-born Jewish journalist and newspaper publisher who left a $2 million bequest to establish the Prize and the Columbia School of Journalism. Pulitzer had arrived penniless in the U.S. in 1864 [...]

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May 6: The First American Children’s Clinic

May 5, 2012

Dr. Abraham Jacobi, who established the first children’s health clinic in the United States and pioneered the field of pediatrics, was born in Westphalia on this date in 1830. Jacobi was jailed for three years for his participation in the 1848 revolutionary movement in Germany before coming to the U.S. in 1853. His career here [...]

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May 5: Reagan at Bitburg

May 4, 2012

President Ronald Reagan placed a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery in West Germany on this date in 1985, as part of the observance of the 40th anniversary of V-E Day. Forty-nine members of the Nazi SS were among the 2,000 German soldiers buried there, the mass of whom Reagan described, in defending his visit, as [...]

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May 4: Prison Break

May 3, 2012

The Irgun used trucks, British uniforms, and a large bomb to break out 28 Jewish prisoners from the British prison in Acre (Acco) on this date in 1947. Four captured Irgun “terrorists” had been hanged there by the British on April 19th. The assault on the highly secure fortress involved 34 guerrilla fighters, of whom [...]

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May 3: The Longest-Serving Federal Worker

May 2, 2012

Lillie Steinhorn of Baltimore retired from the Social Security Administration on this date in 2000 after working there for 65 years — making her the longest-serving federal government worker in history. She began in 1935 as a card-puncher in the Bureau of Federal Old Age Benefits, and resisted demotion in the face of the wave [...]

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May 2: Simon Radowitzky

May 1, 2012

Ukrainian-born anarchist Simon Radowitzky, a refugee in Argentina from the repressed Russian revolution of 1905, assassinated Ramon Falcon, the Argentine chief of police, on this date in 1909. Falcon had led a deadly cavalry charge against workers in a May Day demonstration, killing twelve and seriously wounding a hundred, before inaugurating a week of deadly [...]

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May 1: May Day Lovers

April 30, 2012

Labor movement comrades Bessie Abramowitz and Sidney Hillman announced their engagement while leading, arm-in-arm, the contingent of clothing workers in the Chicago May Day parade on this date in 1916. Abramowitz, six years earlier, had at age 20 sparked a major walk-out of workers at Hart, Shaffner and Marx, which won her a job with [...]

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April 30: Mothers of the Disappeared

April 29, 2012

Argentina’s Mothers of the Disappeared held their first rally at Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires on this date in 1977. They would continue to rally there every Thursday for three decades, wearing white headscarves and demanding information about their “disappeared” sons, daughters, and grandchildren. Of the 20,000 to 30,000 people murdered or disappeared by the [...]

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April 29: The Guggenheims’ Mining Disaster

April 28, 2012

One of the worst mining disasters in U.S. history, at a coal mine owned by the Guggenheim family in Eccles, West Virginia, was reported by the New York Times on this date in 1914. Between 183 and 186 workers were killed in an explosion the day before in Mine Nos. 5 and 6. These deaths [...]

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April 28: Safe Motherhood, Worldwide

April 27, 2012

Dr. Allan Rosenfield, an international family planning expert who helped abate the epidemic of mother-to-baby transmission of AIDS over the course of forty years of work, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on this date in 1933. A graduate of the medical school of Columbia University (where he spent much of his career as dean of [...]

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