September 22, 2007

• This Week in Shades of Gray

  September 16, 1923 – The Amakasu Incident

  Japanese Anarchist Osugi Sakae, his common law wife feminist writer and editor Ito Noe, and Osugi’s six-year-old nephew were beaten to death by military police and their bodies dumped in a well.

  September 17, 1859 – Joshua Abraham Norton proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States.  Born in London, England in 1819, in infancy he emigrated with his parents to South Africa, arriving in San Francisco with the California gold rush in 1849.  Following financial ruin and a three week disappearance, he showed up again and began his career as a prominent eccentric.

  September 18, 1970 – Left-handed psychedelic blues rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, who played his Fender Stratocaster upside down, died in London of a barbiturate overdose.  Big fame came fast for Jimi after he set his guitar on fire at the 1969 Monterrey Pop Festival.  He was a headliner at Woodstock later that year.

  September 19, 1833 – Dehgewanus died.  Called “white squaw” and “race traitor,” Mary Jemison was captured by French soldiers and Shawnee warriors at the age of 15.  Sold to the Seneca and adopted into the tribe, like Cynthia Ann Parker with the Comanches and a number of other captives, she chose not to return to white civilization.

  September 20, 1885 (or October 20, 1890) – Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe (or Lemotte or La Mothe), AKA Jelly Roll Morton, was born.  If you don’t know Jelly Roll, you don’t know jazz.

  September 21, 1827 – Mormon history says that on this date the Angel Moroni visited Joseph Smith and dropped off a pair of golden tablets.

  September 22, 1692 –  Eight “witches”, Mary Esty, Martha Cory, Ann Pudeator, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Alice Parker, Wilmot Redd, and Margaret Scott, were hanged in Salem, Massachusetts.

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