May 1. 1830: Birth of Irish-American antiwar activist and labor organizer Mary Harris, better known as Mother Jones. Cork, Ireland. 1849: Chief Patkanim and the Snoqualmie tribe attack Hudson's Bay Co.'s Fort Nisqually, Wash. 1886: International Workers' Day (May Day) begins in Chicago. 340,000 US workers in Chicago, Milwaukee and other cities strike for the eight-hour workday. US later sets another day as Labor Day to undercut world solidarity.

May 2. 1919: General strike in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. 1919: Beginning of general strike, which eventually includes 50,000 of all trades, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 1968: Protest at University of Nanterre escalates into French student strike. By May 13, over ten million French are out on a sympathy strike.

May 3. 1968: Students take over Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), demanding African-oriented curriculum.

May 4. 1886: Haymarket Massacre, Chicago. 1887: Puget Sound Cooperative Colony, the first modern communitarian experiment in Washington state, founded at Port Angeles. 1969: Several thousand march in the Lake Washington Arboretum to protest construction of a freeway that would have followed the Lake Washington shoreline throughout Seattle. Partially built ramps which would have connected the freeway to the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (Route 520) are still visible.

May 5. 1818: Karl Marx born. Guy Debord still a collective twinkle in the respective eyes of The Cause and/or The Struggle.

May 6. 1970: Congressional hearings begin on ratification of Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution.

May 7. 1877: Sioux leader Crazy Horse arrested, taken to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, where he would be assassinated by US soldiers four months later.

May 8. 1792: British Captain George Vancouver sights and renames Mount Rainier.

May 9. 1432: Charges of witchcraft dismissed against Margery Jourdemain, John Virley, and John Ashwell in England. They're executed for littering instead.

1974: Congress begins impeachment hearings of President Richard M. Nixon.

May 10. 105: Tsai Lun invents paper, China. 1933: Germany: Book Burning Day established. 1969: As many as 3,000 youth stage a "Zap-In" in Zap, North Dakota (pop. 300); local police are not amused, and call out the National Guard.

May 11. 1792: Capt. R. Gray locates the mouth of the Columbia River, naming it for his favorite mass murderer. 1898: The Discontent: Mother of Progress, anarchist paper of Home Colony, an early Washington state intentional community, first issued. 1968: The three biggest French labor federations call a general strike to support students. 1989: Puget Sound Grocery Workers strike and lockout.

May 13. 1960: San Francisco police attack students (including a young Abbie Hoffman) protesting a local hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). 1961: Police watch passively while counter-protesters beat pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba" demonstrators in downtown Seattle. 1968: Strike by French students and workers, including occupation of the Sorbonne, leads to general strike by ten million, Paris.

May 14. 1984: US returns Waadah and Tatoosh Islands, off the Olympic Peninsula, to the Makah Nation.