May 25. 1981: With three suction cups and a Spiderman cartoon costume, Dan Goodwin scales the world's tallest building--the Sears Tower--in Chicago. Climbs for six hours, while police try to stop him. At the 50th floor, he assures them of his safety. An hour later he crests the tower and is arrested for trespassing. 1992: 500 march on Leavenworth (Kansas) federal prison to demand freedom for imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier.

May 26. 1232: The Pope sends the first Inquisition team to Aragon, Spain. Nobody expected it. 1938: House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convenes for first time. 1969: Seattle police arrest 34 during clashes at Garfield High School and Seattle Central Community College. 1991: 20,000 in Arab-Jewish peace rally, Tel Aviv, Israel.

May 27. 1525: Thomas Munzer, millinerian leader, Anabaptist communist, rebel against the authority of the church and all official representatives of God on earth, executed. 1907: Birth of author Rachel Carson, whose books in the 1950s and '60s spurred the beginnings of the mass environmental movement. Springdale, Penn. 1978: About 20,000 rally in New York City to protest nuclear weapons, marking the beginning of a resurgence in anti-nuclear weapon activism that would culminate in the Freeze campaign of the early '80s.

May 28. 1830: Pres. Andrew Jackson's recommendation to move all Indians west of Mississippi River--a relocation plan later used as a model by South Africa's apartheid leaders--becomes law. 1871: Paris Commune crushed by French soldiers; 25,000 massacred. 1982: Seven women fast for ten days in Springfield, Illinois in support of the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the Illinois state legislature.

May 29. 1736: Patrick Henry, American revolutionary patriot, is born. Henry's incendiary prose caused quite a bit of discomfort among the other, generally wealthy American revolutionaries. 1854: Lydia Flood Jackson, civil rights activist, starts first school for black children in Sacramento, Calif. 1967: Poor Peoples' Campaign begins in Washington D.C.

May 30. 1741: Thirteen black men are burned at the stake, and 17 black men, two white men, and two white women are hanged for their roles in planning a slave revolt in New York City. 1901: Russian writer Maxim Gorky, arrested on charges of printing revolutionary literature, is released from prison after Count Leo Tolstoy intercedes on his behalf. Gorky will serve a similar role by interceding on the behalf of many writers victimized by Stalin's regime. 1990: Midnight Oil closes down 6th Avenue in New York City as they play a protest concert in front of Exxon's offices in reaction to the Exxon Valdez disaster.

May 31. 1678: Tax protester Lady Godiva rides naked through Coventry. 1819: Birth of Walt Whitman, famous queer. 1921: Sacco & Vanzetti trial begins. 1937: Police open fire on striking steelworkers at Republic Steel in South Chicago, killing 10 and wounding over 160.