July 31. 1969: A Moscow police chief reports that thousands of telephone booths have been made inoperable by thieves who have stolen phone parts in order to convert their acoustic guitars to electric.

Aug. 1. 1968: Court acquits sanctuary activist and reporter Demetria Martinez of conspiracy to smuggle aliens for her part in helping bring two Salvadoran women to the US to give birth. 1983: U.S. resumes making chemical weapons after 14 year's suspension.

Aug. 2. 1861: National income tax, the first of its kind, passed to aid the Union war effort. 1931: Albert Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work.

Aug. 3. 1931: Chicago eviction riots leave three dead; 60,000 march for anti-eviction laws.

Aug. 4. 1541: DeSoto's army arrives at Quigate, a town of sun-worshippers, west of the Mississippi in present-day Louisiana. 1988: Congress votes $20,000 to each Japanese-American interned in WW II.

Aug. 5. 1842: England: "Plug Plot" riots. In response to economic crisis, high unemployment, high food prices and decreased wages; spontaneous strike wave of weavers and spinners, starting at Ashton under Lynn. Got its name when the plugs were pulled out of factory boilers.

Aug. 6. 1945: U.S. drops atomic bomb on civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan. An estimated 140,000 die from the immediate effects of the bombing; tens of thousands more in subsequent decades from radiation-induced illnesses. 1997: Hundreds turn out at Seattle's Pier 90 to protest the first-ever arrival in Elliot Bay, for Seafair, of the Trident nuclear submarine USS Ohio.

Aug. 7. 1960: Students stage kneel-in demonstrations against segregation in Atlanta churches.

Aug. 8. 1865: Birth of Matthew A. Henson, Charles City, MD. African American explorer, first man to reach the North Pole. 1997: Eight arrested at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, during protest of the scheduled launch of the nuclear-payload space probe Cassini.

Aug. 9. 1945: U.S. drops atomic bomb on civilian population of Nagasaki, Japan. An estimated 70,000 die from the immediate effects of the bombing. 1989: Twenty-two anti-nuclear activists arrested for trespassing at Nevada Test Site in 110+ degree heat.

Aug. 10. 1792: People of Paris march en masse to Tuilleries. 1997: Nine activists detained but not charged after throwing red paint on the Trident nuclear submarine USS Ohio at Seattle's waterfront.

Aug. 11. 1861: The New York Daily News has its postal privileges revoked, and was suspended for 18 months, as a consequence of its hostility to the Civil War--an action taken by the US president with by far the worst record on trampling civil liberties and ignoring the Bill of Rights (until now): Abraham Lincoln. 1984: During a radio voice test for which the speakers were inadvertently left on, Pres. and Idiot-in-Chief Ronald Reagan jokes, "I have signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

Aug. 12. 1812: Lady Ludd "leads" women in Knottingly, England, in riots over high bread prices.

Aug. 13. 1818: Birth of Lucy Stone, feminist theorist, suffragist who supported African-American women's rights. 1945: H.G. Wells dies. Author, socialist, alien lover.