This Day in History--December 30th

I've always thought these kinds of things were kind of fun. It's good to remember the past so we don't doom ourselves to a future of repitition.

December 30th in History
1916: In Russia, Rasputin 'the mad monk' is murdered
1922: Russia becomes the Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics
1947: King Michael of Romania abdicates, allowing a communist republic to be formed
1965: Ferdinand Marcos becomes president of the Philippines
1988: The Yugoslavian government resigns over problems in Serbia


December 30th birthdays
1865: Rudyard Kipling, British writer
1959: Tracey Ullman, British comedienne

James Gadsden, U.S. Minister to Mexico, and General Antonio López de Santa Anna, President of Mexico, signed the Gadsden Purchase in Mexico City on December 30, 1853. The treaty settled the dispute over the exact location of the Mexican border west of El Paso, Texas, giving the U.S. claim to approximately 29,000 square miles of land in what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona, for the price of $10,000,000.

Fun Facts For Chicagoans:

George M. Pullman, founder of the profitable Pullman Palace Car Company, believed individuals worked best when given a decent salary and fine surroundings. Thus, in the early 1880s he had built a model town and workshops, 14 miles south of Chicago. In the words of Jane Addams, "The president of the Pullman company…had power with which to build this town, but he did not appeal to nor obtain the consent of the men who were living in it." Saddled with regulations, salary cuts, and a recession, employees brought their grievances to Pullman who, believing himself more than generous, turned a deaf ear. What followed was the first national strike in U.S. history, a prototypical confrontation of labor vs. management—the antithesis of Pullman's original vision. Again in the words of Addams the situation paralleled that of Shakespeare's King Lear "…unique…in the magnitude of…indulgence, and in the magnitude of the disaster which followed it."