Aug. 2. 1832: Sauk-Fox tribe, under a flag of truce, massacred at Bad Axe River by Illinois militia. 1931: Albert Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work.

Aug. 3. 1971: 200 march in Seattle to demand release of federal surplus food supplies to feed the hungry. 1981: 11,500 air traffic controllers (PATCO) go on strike.

Aug. 4. 1977: Dept. of Energy established. 1985: Peace Ribbon made by thousands of women wrapped around Pentagon.

Aug. 5. 1981: Pres. Reagan orders the FAA to fire 12,700 striking air traffic controllers, setting the tone for a decade of government complicity in corporate union-busting.

Aug. 6. 1945: U.S. drops atomic bomb on civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan. 1957: Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) are arrested at atomic test proving grounds in Nevada, the first of what eventually becomes many thousands of arrests at the Nevada Test Site.

Aug. 7. 1960: Fidel Castro announces plans to nationalize all U.S. holdings in Cuba. 1973: Four thousand march in solidarity with striking teachers, sparking widespread union organizing in Guatemala City.

Aug. 8. 1947: Over objections of Tlingit Indians, the U.S. government agrees to timber sale from Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska. The Tongass, once a pristine wilderness, is now one of the most denuded regions on the north Pacific coast.

Aug. 9. 1851: Cathlamet tribe cedes lands at mouth of Columbia where Fort Astoria and Fort George had stood, in exchange for food. 1945: U.S. drops atomic bomb on civilian population of Nagasaki, Japan. 1989: Twenty-two anti-nuclear activists arrested for trespassing at Nevada Test Site in 110+ degree heat.

Aug. 10. 1948: Gay rights activist Harry Hay organizes what later becomes the Mattachine Society, a groundbreaking 1950s gay rights organization. 1997: Nine activists detained but not charged after throwing red paint on the Trident nuclear submarine U.S.S. Ohio at Seattle's waterfront.

Aug. 11. 1978: American Indian Religious Freedom Act passed. Significant portions of the bill have since been eroded by conservative court rulings.

Aug. 12. 1881: United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners of America formed. 1959: Black students admitted to Little Rock High School, Arkansas. 1982: Twelve arrested in sea blockade of first Trident submarine at Hood Canal, Washington.

Aug. 13. 1521: Cuauhtemoc, last monarch of the Aztec, "fights rooftop to rooftop" before surrendering his starved and besieged city of Tenochtitlan; Cortes receives him with honors, then later has him hanged.

Aug. 14. 1935: Pres. Roosevelt signs Social Security Act.

Aug. 15. 1947: After two decades of nonviolent activism, India becomes the first major Third World country in the 20th century to win independence from colonial rule. Dozens more countries follow in the next twenty years.