In 1869, on December 30, Stephen Leacock was born in southern England. His family moved to South Africa, but their farm failed, and they wound up in Canada when Stephen was six. At about eighteen he became a teacher, a job he detested, but it enabled him to attend the University of Toronto part-time. He eventually received a PhD in political science and economics from the University of Chicago. But neither political science nor economics turned out to be his forte any more than teaching had been. He published academic articles in both economics and political theory, but didn’t rise to any particular note in either field. Finally in about 1894 Leacock found his groove: humor. He published in popular magazines in both Canada and the US, and compiled his articles into books published in North American and England. Leacock took the place of Mark Twain as the best-known humorist of his time. Many of Leacock’s quotations sound like Twain, and also like Will Rogers, who came along a bit later:

“Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.”

“In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.”

“It’s called political economy because it has nothing to do with either politics or economy.”

Leacock influenced humorists from Groucho Marx to Jack Benny, although nowadays he’s mostly forgotten in the United States for some reason. But a few of his quotes are still around — but most of them end up being misattributed. Nevertheless, December 30 could use a bit of levity from people like Stephen Leacock, because except for him, and it also being Rudyard Kipling’s birthday, December 30 has been a relatively unhappy date. Maybe the problem goes all the way back to the year 534, when the Code of Justinian took effect as the law of the land by Justinian I, the Byzantine Emperor. It was meant to simplify the legal system of the empire, which had apparently gotten pretty confusing.

Maybe it’s not fair to blame the Romans for December 30, but I’m sticking with it, because as Stephen Leacock said, “A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.” And December 30 definitely needs a bit of levity from people like Leacock. Other than a precious few bright spots, like it also being Rudyard Kipling’s birthday, the day’s legacy looks as bleak as an icy, overcast, late December day in New England. Which is what I’d be facing if I went outside instead of staying here at my keyboard — so I’m staying in. And it should be okay, because “Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy — it’s the occurring that’s hard.” Yes, that was another Leacock quotation.

Another writer who’s remembered on December 30 is José Rizal. He’s particularly remembered in his native Philippines, where it’s Rizal Day today. Unfortunately, he’s memorialized on December 30 not because of a birthday, but because that was the day he was executed by firing squad in 1896. He was executed by the Spanish government because the Philippine Revolution had broken out, and Rizal’s writings were one of its inspirations. Ironically, he was never involved in the revolution itself, although he supported independence for the Philippines. Rizal wrote in multiple genres; essays, novels, poetry, and drama, and also sculpted and painted. His best-known novels are Noli Me Tángere (“Touch Me Not”) and El Flilbusterismo (“The Subversive”). Both novels depicted both the colonial Spanish government of the Philippines and the Catholic Church unfavorably, and both were banned by Spanish authorities. But they emphasized positive aspects of Filipinos oppressed by those institutions, and helped create a sense of national identity among the inhabitants. For that, Rizal was arrested and executed at the age of 35.

Rasputin is often described as a monk, but he wasn’t one.

Another historical figure you’ve heard of is connected to December 30, for a similar reason. It was December 30, 1916 that Grigori Rasputin was assassinated in Saint Petersburg. Rasputin is still often described as a monk, but his only religious connections were self-proclaimed. He claimed to have been converted after visiting a monastery in 1897, but he was never part of the monastery. He was a mystic, though, and evidently talked his way into the imperial court of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II by claiming to be able to heal the tsar’s son Alexei of hemophilia.

Imperial courts are reported to be pits of backstabbing, sneaky nobles, though, and the more influence Rasputin gained over the royal couple, the more he was opposed in the court. It all ended badly; a prince and a grand-duke lured him to the prince’s palace, shot him, and dropped his body in the Malaya Nevka River. According to one story, though, the evening did at least feature some events worthy of a mystic: the cabal initially intended to poison Rasputin with tea, cake, and wine, all of which had been laced with cyanide. Rasputin ate the cakes and drank three glasses of wine but was completely unaffected. Thus they had to put Plan B into action.

On December 30, 1936, another Plan B went into effect when the Flint Sit-Down Strike was instituted against General Motors by autoworkers. The strike was the first major action by the then-new United Auto Workers union, and established the union as a significant player in the US labor movement. The strike itself was a departure from the more typical process in which workers establish a picket line outside a factory to urge other employees to stay away. In a sit-down strike the workers stay inside the plant and force its closure. Besides, by staying inside, the workers were able to avoid the Michigan winter weather (a tactic I support; what was I saying about an icy, overcast, late December day).

The Flint sit-down strike lasted 44 days and forced GM to recognize and negotiate with the UAW. The company negotiators, in a bit of a huff, refused to occupy the same room as the UAW representatives, so the governor of Michigan, Frank Murphy, became the intermediary, carrying messages between the separate teams. Murphy also mobilized the Michigan National Guard, but not against the workers — they were there to protect the strikers from the police (GM controlled nearly all of the local government in Flint) and from the violent strikebreakers that have been a profit-making arm of US anti-union efforts for the whole history of the labor movement.

The word “soviet” is Russian for “council.”

The outcome of the strike was that the UAW became a legitimate and formidable organization, workers received a pay increase, and rules against talking about unionization at lunch were rescinded. The strike’s results still have reverberations today, and one notable participant was Walter Reuther, who went on to become president of the UAW and uncle to Michael Moore, who made the documentary Roger & Me about Flint, General Motors, and American labor.

A completely different approach to labor was begun on December 30, 1922 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed. It all began in the October Revolution in 1917 when the Provisional Government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks. The tsar Nicholas II had abdicated earlier that year and passed the throne to his bother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. When the Grand Duke refused it and demanded that the country be governed by democratic action, that’s when the Provisional Government was formed. Its intent was to exist long enough to organize elections to populate the Russian Constituent Assembly, which was meant to establish a lasting government. Instead of the elections marking the end of the Provisional Government, though, the revolution achieved the same result and the Provisional Government was dissolved, eventually leading to the USSR. By the way, the word “soviet” is simply Russian for “council”; a workers’ council, a town or village council, or a national congress are all “soviets.” The word doesn’t by itself imply any particular political philosophy.

“Treaty of St. Louis” refers to fourteen different treaties.

Looking things over so far, regardless of your opinions about the USSR, organized labor, or Philippine independence, I’ve clearly been avoiding some of the worst that past December thirtieths have to offer. A lot of it is connected to wars; there was the 999 Battle of Glenmama in Ireland that resulted in a slaughter. And the 1460 Battle of Wakefield in England, part of the War of the Roses, when the Duke of York and his army were all killed. Then in 1813, during the US-British War of 1812, Buffalo, New York was burned.

Some December 30 events have to do with treaties that were signed, but never honored. The Treaty of St. Louis was signed by the United States and three Native American nations on December 30, 1816. Actually “Treaty of St. Louis” refers to fourteen different treaties signed by the US with different Native Americans. They weren’t all signed on December 30, but they do have one thing in common: the US generally failed to honor the terms they had themselves negotiated and agreed to.

Another Native American event followed directly after yesterday’s Wounded Knee massacre: the Drexel Mission Fight (which should probably just be termed another massacre). Same Lakota nation, same US cavalry. Then in 1997 in Algeria, the Wilaya of Relizane massacres took place on December 30. Nobody recorded the total number of casualties, but four farming villages were attacked and some number of hundreds of men, women, and children were killed. The attacks were part of a civil war in Algeria that started in 1992 when the military cancelled that year’s elections.

The sad list of December 30 events goes on much further, including fatal fires, crashes, natural disasters, bombings, and assassinations. Enough already. It’s time to end on as much of a bright note as I can muster: in 1910 Paul Bowles was born. He was a gifted author and composer who wrote his first stories at the age of 4. He befriended Gertrude Stein in Paris in the 1930s, and visited Tangier on her recommendation in 1931. In 1947 he moved there permanently, and much of his work is grounded in the environment and people of North Africa. He was a prolific composer and author, writing novels, short stories, collections, poems, and he was also a translator. If you read one thing by Paul Bowles, his novel The Sheltering Sky would be a good choice. It’s a wonderful piece of writing, but it’s a December 30 piece through and through; its theme is existential despair. Oh, and I wouldn’t bother with the 1990 film adaptation, even though Bowles himself has a cameo in it.