October 25: Day In History

Day in History1899 – What many believe to be the first formal training on first aid in American history took place at the Windsor Hotel in Jermyn, Penn., when Dr. Matthew J. Shields instructed 25 coal miners on ways to help their fellow miners.  Upon completion of the course each of the miners was prepared and able to render first aid.  The training led to marked decreases in serious mining injuries and fatalities1917 – Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. The date refers to the Julian Calendar date, and corresponds with November 7 in the Gregorian calendar.1920 – After 74 days on Hunger Strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney died.

1934 – Some 25,000 silk dye workers strike in Paterson, N.J.

1940 – Committee on the Participation of Negroes in the National Defense Program met with President Roosevelt. National Newspaper Publishers Association founded. Spingarn Medal presented to Dr. Louis T. Wright for his civil rights leadership and his contributions as a surgeon.

1940 – Benjamin O Davis becomes the first Black general in US Army

1944 – Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.

1949 – In what becomes known as the Great Hawaiian Dock Strike, a 6-month struggle to win wage parity with mainland dock workers, ends in victory

1958 – Ten thousand students, led by Jackie Robinson, Harry Belfonte and A. Phillip Randolph, participated in the Youth March for Integrated Schools in Washington. Daisy Bates, head of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP, and the nine students who integrated Little Rocks’s Central High School were awarded the Spingarn Medal for their courage and leadership in the civil rights struggle.

1962 – Nelson Mandela is sentenced to five years in prison.

1971 – The United Nations seated the People’s Republic of China and expelled the Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan and China and the United Nations)

1976 – Gov. George Wallace granted a full pardon to Clarence (“Willie”) Norris, the last known survivor of the nine Scottsboro Boys who were convicted in 1931 of the alleged rape of two white women on a freight train.

1988 – Two units of the Ku Klux Klan and eleven individuals are ordered to pay $ 1 million to African Americans who were attacked during a brotherhood rally in Forsythe County, GA

1990 – Evander Holyfield knocks out James “Buster” Douglas in the third round to become the undisputed world heavyweight champion.

1990 – The Tribune Co. begins a brutal 5-month-long lockout at the New York Daily News, part of an effort to bust the newspaper’s unions

1995 – John Sweeney, president of the Service Employees Int’l Union, elected president of AFL-CIO

1997 – After a brief civil war which has driven President Pascal Lissouba out of Brazzaville, Denis Sassou-Nguesso proclaims himself the President of the Republic of the Congo.

2004 – Fidel Castro, Cuba’s President, announces that transactions using the American Dollar will be banned.

2009 – The 25 October 2009 Baghdad bombings kills 155 and wounds at least 721.

2011 – After a two-year fight, workers at the Bonus Car Wash in Santa Monica, Calif., win a union contract calling for pay increases, better breaks and other gains.  “They didn’t treat us like people,” nine-year employee Oliverio Gomez told the Los Angeles Times