On this day in ...... 1914 (95 years ago today), a shot was fired at a Rockefeller-owned mine in Southern Colorado where labor activists and management had long been at odds. (One of IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers, Mother Jones, had rallied striking miners there the previous autumn; her consequent imprisonment gave rise to the demonstration at right.) (credit) "The face-off raged for fourteen hours, during which the miners' tent colony was pelted with machine gun fire and ultimately torched by the state militia," according to a PBS site. A New York Times reporter recounted the scene left after this Ludlow Massacre:
The Ludlow camp is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath it is a story of horror imparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes which had been dug for their protection against the rifles' fire the women and children died like trapped rats when the flames swept over them. One pit, uncovered [the day after the massacre] disclosed the bodies of ten children and two women.
A list of the victims, 19 in total, who ranged from a 3-month-old girl to a 56-year-old man, is here.
... 1974 (35 years ago today), with the discovery of the body of a gas station owner "found dumped on a roadside" in County Fermanagh, the death toll in the political violence known as Northern Ireland's "Troubles" reached 1,000 persons. "The milestone has been reached," the BBC reported, "amid a spate of killings and shootings over the past two days." By the time the it ended in 1998, the conflict had claimed more than 3,000 victims.
