Dec. 5. 1784: Phillis Wheatley dies, aged about 31 years, Boston. First black woman poet and, after Anne Bradstreet, the second woman poet of note in the US. 1955: The Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott begins, lasting over a year until buses are integrated. About 30,000-40,000 (out of 50,000) Montgomery Negroes participate.

Dec. 6. 1984: Children picket to demand release of their political prisoner parents by the US-backed Marcos dictatorship, Mendiola Bridge, Philippines. 1990: Police in Oakland, CA spend two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discover that the man is standing beside them, shouting "please come out and give yourself up!"

Dec. 7. 1995: Up to 1.75 million striking French workers demonstrate in marches shutting down the country as part of an escalating series of general strikes protesting government cutbacks and global exploitation of workers.

Dec. 8. 1987: Protestor Hatem Abu Sisseh, 16, killed by Israeli soldiers, ignites the Intifadah for self-rule. In the seven years to follow, 1,306 Palestinians are slain by Israelis, 192 Israelis killed by Palestinians.

Dec. 9. 1640: Settler Hugh Bewitt is banished from colony of Massachusetts when he declares himself to be free of original sin. 1994: Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders resigns after her masturbation comments are criticized by jerk offs.

Dec. 10. 1931: Jane Addams, founder of Hull House and leader of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, wins Nobel Peace Prize.

Dec. 11. 1986: UN agency UNICEF, promoting child education, established. The program becomes a center of US refusal to pay its UN dues, with the US claiming that UNICEF programs were socialist and anti-American.

Dec. 12. 1098: First Crusaders capture and plunder for God, Mara, Syria. 1982: Thirty thousand women encircle US cruise missile base, Greenham Common, Britain.

Dec. 13. 1994: European Parliament votes 202-24 for a resolution urging Pres. Clinton to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

Dec. 14. 1917: US peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O'Hare jailed five years for speech denouncing World War I. 1985: Mobilization for Animals declares "World Week for Companion Animals" to highlight the plight of homeless, non-wild animals.

Dec. 15. 1970: Pres. Nixon signs the Taos Land Bill. Forty-eight thousand acres of land are returned to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, the first US legislation ever to return a sizable amount of federal land to the Native Americans from whom it was stolen.

Dec. 16. 1991: Activists in Brussels, Belgium, protesting Vatican funding for an observatory desecrating sacred Apache site at Mount Graham, Arizona, pull a bulldozer up to a prominent local cathedral.

Dec. 17. 1919: Birth of South African author/teacher Ezekiel Mphahlele. His autobiography ("Down Second Avenue" [1959]), a South African classic, combines a young man's coming of age with penetrating social criticism of apartheid.

Dec. 18. 1922: In Turin, Italy, fascists attack the "Chambre du Travail." 22 workmen, socialists, communists, and anarchists are assassinated. Pietro Ferrero, organizer of the Councilist movement in the factories, is attached to a truck and dragged to his death in the street.