The month in history

December 7, 1918: 100,000 textile workers strike in Lancashire, England.

December 17, 1918: Hundreds of trade unionists take over Darwin and chase the corrupt administrator John Anderson Gilruth out to sea.

December 21, 2003: Sydney high-school student James Giugini nearly fails his English exam for writing a story in which Australian PM John Howard is assassinated by a refugee.

December 30, 1922: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is formally established by the First Soviet Congress. The USSR existed until December 26, 1991, when it was formally dissolved by the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

January 8, 1959: The leader of the victorious Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, enters Havana.

January 12, 1876: Jack London, who authored socialist classics such as The Iron Heel and People of the Abyss, is born in San Francisco.

From Green Left Weekly, December 7, 2005.

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From GLW issue 652