On this day in history: First Cuban world boxing champion, 1931

On July 15th 1931, Eligio Sardiñas Montalvo - better known as Kid Chocolate or the Cuban Bon Bon - knocked out Benny Bass in the seventh round of their Junior Lightweight title bout at the Baker Bowl, Philadelphia to become the first Cuban world champion boxer. The victory gave him celebrity status and he became a regular guest at society parties.

Born in Havana on 6th January 1910, the young Eligio watched films of boxing matches from which he learned the art. Having fought as an amateur and sparred with many great boxers of the day, in 1927 he went professional. The next year he relocated to New York City to fight the quality of opponent necessary for his shot at the championship.

In November 1931, Eligio went up a weight division to face Lightweight champion Tony Canzoneri, at Madison Square Garden, New York. He failed in this second title bid, and in 1933 he lost his Junior Lightweight belt to Frankie Klick. Following his unsuccessful attempts to regain the title he retired, revealing that he was suffering from syphilis.

The very next year, Kid Chocolate returned to the ring winning 47 out of 50 fights, but not against the sort of opposition that would provide another championship bid. In 1938 he retired again, never to return to the ring. Instead he returned to a quiet life in Cuba and increasing obscurity, particularly after the 1959 revolution. Nevertheless, his boxing career was recognised by the Cuban authorities in the 1970s; he was provided with a state-funded house, in which he died in 1988.

Related posts
Last bare-knuckle championship bout: 8th July 1889

On this day in history: Caribbean immigrants arrive on the Empire Windrush, 1948

The Second World War had left the United Kingdom with a labour shortage, just when it needed as many workers as possible for the task of reconstruction. To alleviate this shortage the Royal Mail Lines placed an advertisement in the Jamaica's Daily Gleaner newspaper in April 1948. The advertisement offered a ticket Kingston, Jamaica to England for only £28 and 10 shillings on the ex-German troopship Empire Windrush, which was due to dock in the Caribbean on its journey from Australia back to the Britain.

Many of the 492 people that took up this offer were ex-servicemen - mostly from the Royal Air Force - who either hoped to rejoin the RAF or wanted to take up the promise of work and a better life in their "mother country". Many Britons were not pleased at the thought of immigrant workers, and Parliament debated the matter while the ship was crossing the ocean. Nevertheless, many of the passengers had served during the war for "King and Country" and all carried British passports, so there was no legal cause to turn them away.

On 24th May 1948, the Empire Windrush set sail on her month long journey across the Atlantic, which ended on 22nd June when she docked at Tilbury in Essex. On arrival, just under half of the West Indians received temporary accommodation at the Clapham South deep shelter in London - built as an air-raid shelter during the war beneath the underground railway station.
Over two hundred of them found work straight away, mostly in the newly instituted National Health Service and with London Transport. The nearest labour exchange (office where they could find work) was in nearby Brixton, an area where many of them found homes, bestowing upon that area its multi-racial heritage.

During the Parliamentary debates on immigration, the politicians who promoted imported labour suggested that the workers that the foreign workers would only stay for a short while, and indeed many of the West Indians thought the same. Nevertheless, many chose to stay and raise families in their new home. The journey of the Empire Windrush marked the beginning of a new - and as is often the case, troubled - era of multiculturalism in Britain.

The BBC History website has a number of pages devoted to the Empire Windrush generation, including the memories of some of the ship's passengers.

Related posts

Foundation of first permanent British colony in the Caribbean: 28th January 1624 Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica: 21st April 1966

On this day in history: Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica, 1966

Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, had been the central figure in the Rastafarian faith since the foundation of the movement in the early 1930s. The indigent population in Jamaica saw him as God incarnate. He was the only independent black monarch in Africa; by tradition, a descendent of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. To Rastafarians he is still a Messiah figure fulfilling certain biblical prophesies: he was the 'King of Kings' and the 'Conquering Lion of Judah'.

It is no surprise that when the Emperor visited Jamaica on 21st April 1966, a rapturous crowd of thousands of Rastafarians received him. Taken aback by the fervour of their welcome, the Emperor returned to the plane until he was given assurances that he would be protected from the throng. The visit continued with the Emperor meeting the ageing Prime Minister, Sir Alexander Bustamante, and receiving an honourary degree at the University of the West Indies.

April 21st has become a sacred date to Rastafarians, celebrated every year as 'Groundation Day' when they hold a Nyahbinghi meeting, during which they celebrate His Imperial Majesty with music, chanting and prayer.

>To find out more about the Emperor's visit and Rastafarianism in general, visit the Rastafari section of the Jamaicans.com web-site.

Related posts
Foundation of first permanent British colony in the Caribbean: 28th January 1624
Caribbean immigrants arrive on the Empire Windrush: 22nd June 1948
Rodney Riots: 16th October 1968

On this day in history: Bay of Pigs, 1961

On the morning of 17th April, 1961, a force of Cuban counter-revolutionary exiles, known as Brigade 2506, landed at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime. The attack was carried out with the support of the United States of America: the plan having been drafted by the C.I.A. while Dwight D. Eisenhower was still President, but was carried out during John F. Kennedy's presidency. Kennedy required the original plan to be scaled back, so that it the attack would look less like a U.S. military operation and more like an operation that the exiles could plausibly carry out.

Following an attack by light bombers of the exile air force, launched from Nicaragua on Cuban airfields, the main assault on the Bay of Pigs began. The failure of the air attack to destroy the Cuban air force resulted in the surviving planes wreaking havoc on the counter-revolutionary invasion force and their air support. Fighting continued, as a 20,000 strong Cuban force repulsed the invading troops, leading to the collapse of the attack on 19th April.

The failed invasion caused a rapid deterioration of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuban governments, which worsened during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year, and have improved little in successive decades.

To find out more about the Bay of Pigs Invasion, read the original New York Times report on the attack, and the article about the invasion on the JFK Library and Museum web site.

Related posts
First Cuban world boxing champion: 15th July 1931
John F. Kennedy inaugurated as President: 20th January 1961
Bobby Kennedy assassinated: 5th June 1968
Stanislav Petrov averted a nuclear war: 26th September 1983

On this day in history: Juan Fangio kidnapped in Cuba, 1958

On 23rd February 1958, the Argentinian racing car driver Juan Fangio, was approached by a man brandishing a revolver in the lobby of the Hotel Lincoln in Havana, Cuba. The man was Manuel Uziel, a member of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement then struggling to overthrow the regime of President Batista. Uziel asked Fangio to identify himself, but the five time Formula One Champion thought it was some sort of joke, until Uziel was joined by several other rebels carrying sub-machine guns. They explained that they intended to keep him captive until after the Cuban Grand Prix, in which Fangio was going to defend his title the following day.

They took him to an apartment where he received a visit from Faustino Pérez, one of the leaders of the 26th of July Movement, who apologised for the inconvenience. The rebels treated Fangio well, feeding him and giving him a radio so that he could listen to the race, but he chose not to. The race itself ended in disaster after only six laps when the Cuban driver, Armando Garcia, ran into the crowd killing several people and injuring many more.

Good to their word, the rebels released Fangio the following day. He told police that he had been "treated very well - as though I was a friend of the rebels." When asked about the kidnapping he said, "If what the rebels did was in a good cause, then I, as an Argentine, accept it" He declined to identify his captors, with whom he remained good friends.

Related posts
First Formula One Championship race: 13th May 1950
Bay of Pigs: 17th April 1961

On this day in history: Foundation of first permanent British colony in the Caribbean, 1624

In 1493, Christopher Columbus led the first European exploration of the islands located where the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. He named each of the islands of the Lesser Antilles including one which he dubbed San Jorge ("Saint George"). Later explorers misinterpreted Columbus' charts and the island became known as San Cristobal ("Saint Christopher") or, more commonly, Saint Kitts.

In the sixteenth century, French Huguenots refugees founded a colony on the island, naming it after their home-town: Dieppe. Only months after its establishment, the Spanish raided the settlement and deported all its inhabitants. The next attempt to colonise the island did not occur until the next century with the arrival of the English under Thomas Warner.

Warner was the son of a Suffolk landowner and former captain in the bodyguard of King James I and lieutenant of the Tower of London. In 1620 he set off with Captain Roger North to help found a colony in Guiana, but James revoked their charter and recalled North, to placate the Spanish, leaving the colonists to fend for themselves. In the meantime, Warner had met Thomas Painton who suggested that he found a colony on St Kitts or another of the smaller Caribbean islands.

Warner returned to England to find support for this venture. In 1623 he set off with his family and fourteen other colonists for Virginia, from where they sailed for the Lesser Antilles. The group arrived on St Kitts on 28th January 1624. Undaunted by initial setbacks - a hurricane destroyed their first tobacco crop and many of their houses - the settlement grew and in September 1625, Warner transported their first tobacco crop back to England. While in England, Warner received letter patent from James' recognising the colony and giving it Royal protection. Warner also received the title of lieutenant of St Kitts (or 'Merwar's Hope' as it was called in the document, referring to himself and one of the major investors, the London merchant Ralph Merifield), Nevis, Barbados, and Montserrat.

He secured more investment and returned to the colony with around one-hundred more settlers and sixty slaves. When he arrived he found that the French had also established a colony on the island. The colonists had welcomed the French probably because they offered mutual protection against the local Carib population should they attack.

As it was, the Europeans made a pre-emptive strike against the Caribs, killing their King, taking a number of the women as slaves, and driving the rest of the survivors from the island. In 1627, the English and French then concluded a treaty formalising their mutual protection pact against both the Caribs and the Spanish. The terms of the treaty also divided the island between the two groups, with the English taking the territory middle and the French occupying either end.

Related posts
The Great Hurricane: 10th October 1780
Caribbean immigrants arrive on the Empire Windrush: 22nd June 1948
Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica: 21st April 1966

On this day in history: Rodney Riots, 1968

On 16th October 1968, the students of the University of West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica became the latest to join the worldwide student protests of that year. The spark that lit the flame, in this case, was the Jamaican government's decision to bar Dr. Walter Rodney, a Guyanese national, from returning to the country to continue his job as a lecturer at the university. Rodney, an influential left-wing historian of Africa and vocal participant in the Black Power movement, had been attending a conference in Montreal, Canada, but when he returned to Jamaica the authorities would not let him disembark from the plane. They claimed that he had been identified as a prohibited immigrant as a result of his visits to the USSR and Cuba.

When the students of UWI heard of Dr. Rodney's plight they caused such disruption on the campus that the university was forced to close. They then took their demonstrations onto the streets, marching first to Prime Minister Hugh Shearer's residence and then on to the parliament in Kingston. As the students marched other demonstrators joined in and the protests became increasingly violent and spread throughout the city leaving several dead and millions of dollars worth of damage to property.

After a short visit to Cuba, Dr. Rodney became a lecturer in Tanzania gaining a reputation as a leading Pan-Africanist. He returned to his native land in 1974, having been offered the job of Professor of History at the University of Guyana, but the government blocked his appointment. He became a fervent opponent of the ruling People's National Congress party until his assassination in 1980.

Related posts
Night of the Barricades: 10th May 1968
Belgrade student revolt: 2nd June 1968
Buffalo Nine arrested: 19th August 1968
Tlatelolco Massacre: 2nd October 1968

On this day in history: The Great Hurricane, 1780

On 10th October 1780, the deadliest recorded Atlantic hurricane reached the island of Barbados, pounding the island with two-hundred mile per hour winds. Over the next week it left a swathe of destruction on the Windward Isles, the Leeward Isles, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola before turning north-east and heading back into the Atlantic. The direct effects of the hurricane killed an estimated twenty-two thousand people: 9,000 in Martinique; 4,500 in Barbados; and, 4,500 in St. Eustatius.

The British naval officer Lord Rodney wrote to his wife describing the destruction on Barbados:

The strongest buildings and the whole of the houses, most of which were stone, and remarkable for their solidity, gave way to the fury of the wind, and were torn up to their foundations; all the forts destroyed, and many of the heavy cannon carried upwards of a hundred feet from the forts. Had I not been an eyewitness, nothing could have induced me to have believed it. More than six thousand persons perished, and all the inhabitants are entirely ruined.

Rodney was commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands, commanding the British fleet in naval engagements against the French and Spanish as part of the American War of Independence. The hurricane destroyed eight of his twelve ships while they were moored off the island of St. Lucia, killing hundreds of sailors. One of these ships destroyed the hospital at Port Castries when the weather hurled the ship on top of it.

The French suffered even greater losses. A fleet of forty ships transporting men to fight in the war sank with the loss of around 4,000 lives. The hurricane also destroyed nineteen Dutch ships at Grenada.

Related posts
Catastrophic volcanic eruption in Iceland: 8th June 1783
Miramichi Fire: 7th October 1825
Cold Sunday: 17th January 1982

On this day in history: Haitian Revolution, 1791

At the time of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris, the French territories on the island of Hispaniola, known as Saint-Domingue, produced forty per cent of the world's sugar utilising slave labour. As well as slaves, there were many free men of mixed European and African descent in Saint-Domingue, collectively known as the gens de coleur, who called for an end to the rigidly stratified society and for equal rights in the years before the French Revolution. Following the events of 1789, particularly the Declaration of the Rights of Man, these calls became louder.

Julian Raimond, a rich indigo planter of mixed-race, travelled to France to make an appeal to the National Constituent Assembly for full civil equality. Meanwhile, a colleague of Raimond's, Vincent Ogé, returned to Saint-Domingue, to demand the right to vote. Ogé responded to to the Colonial Governor refusal by leading a revolt against the colonial authorities.

The revolt failed and Ogé along with other insurgents were publicly tortured and executed in February 1791. A few month's later, the Assembly passed legislation granting the right to vote to non-whites in the colonies. Yet, the colonial authorities on Saint-Domingue continued to resist, alienating the gens de coleur.

On 22nd August 1791, thousands of slaves in Plaine du Nord at the north of the colony rose in revolt. While the efforts of Raimond and Ogé were not directed at liberating slaves - in fact, Raimond himself owned slaves - the leaders of the slave revolt cited the treatment of Ogé as a key factor in their decision to revolt. Within two weeks the slaves took control of the northern province. As the revolt spread across the island, the slaves killed thousands of Europeans and burnt their plantations.

It took the invasion of British troops and the promise of the end of slavery to end the revolt. The former slave and leader of the revolt, Toussaint Louverture, defected to the side of the French Republic bringing many of the slaves with him. After defeating the English and local rivals, he ended the revolt and restored the colony to titular French control. Nevertheless, Toussaint effectively ruled the former colony as an independent state, paving the way for the full independence of Haiti in 1804.

See the excellent Louverture Project wiki for more information.

Related posts
Foundation of first permanent British colony in the Caribbean: 28th January 1624
Venezuelan Declaration of Independence: 5th July 1811
French Abolished Slavery for Second Time: 28th April 1848
Peruvian independence declared: 28th July 1821

On this day in history: First Cuban world boxing champion, 1931

On July 15th 1931, Eligio Sardiñas Montalvo - better known as Kid Chocolate or the Cuban Bon Bon - knocked out Benny Bass in the seventh round of their Junior Lightweight title bout at the Baker Bowl, Philadelphia to become the first Cuban world champion boxer. The victory gave him celebrity status and he became a regular guest at society parties.

Born in Havana on 6th January 1910, the young Eligio watched films of boxing matches from which he learned the art. Having fought as an amateur and sparred with many great boxers of the day, in 1927 he went professional. The next year he relocated to New York City to fight the quality of opponent necessary for his shot at the championship.

In November 1931, Eligio went up a weight division to face Lightweight champion Tony Canzoneri, at Madison Square Garden, New York. He failed in this second title bid, and in 1933 he lost his Junior Lightweight belt to Frankie Klick. Following his unsuccessful attempts to regain the title he retired, revealing that he was suffering from syphilis.

The very next year, Kid Chocolate returned to the ring winning 47 out of 50 fights, but not against the sort of opposition that would provide another championship bid. In 1938 he retired again, never to return to the ring. Instead he returned to a quiet life in Cuba and increasing obscurity, particularly after the 1959 revolution. Nevertheless, his boxing career was recognised by the Cuban authorities in the 1970s; he was provided with a state-funded house, in which he died in 1988.

Related posts
Last bare-knuckle championship bout: 8th July 1889

On this day in history: Caribbean immigrants arrive on the Empire Windrush, 1948

The Second World War had left the United Kingdom with a labour shortage, just when it needed as many workers as possible for the task of reconstruction. To alleviate this shortage the Royal Mail Lines placed an advertisement in the Jamaica's Daily Gleaner newspaper in April 1948. The advertisement offered a ticket Kingston, Jamaica to England for only £28 and 10 shillings on the ex-German troopship Empire Windrush, which was due to dock in the Caribbean on its journey from Australia back to the Britain.

Many of the 492 people that took up this offer were ex-servicemen - mostly from the Royal Air Force - who either hoped to rejoin the RAF or wanted to take up the promise of work and a better life in their "mother country". Many Britons were not pleased at the thought of immigrant workers, and Parliament debated the matter while the ship was crossing the ocean. Nevertheless, many of the passengers had served during the war for "King and Country" and all carried British passports, so there was no legal cause to turn them away.

On 24th May 1948, the Empire Windrush set sail on her month long journey across the Atlantic, which ended on 22nd June when she docked at Tilbury in Essex. On arrival, just under half of the West Indians received temporary accommodation at the Clapham South deep shelter in London - built as an air-raid shelter during the war beneath the underground railway station.
Over two hundred of them found work straight away, mostly in the newly instituted National Health Service and with London Transport. The nearest labour exchange (office where they could find work) was in nearby Brixton, an area where many of them found homes, bestowing upon that area its multi-racial heritage.

During the Parliamentary debates on immigration, the politicians who promoted imported labour suggested that the workers that the foreign workers would only stay for a short while, and indeed many of the West Indians thought the same. Nevertheless, many chose to stay and raise families in their new home. The journey of the Empire Windrush marked the beginning of a new - and as is often the case, troubled - era of multiculturalism in Britain.

The BBC History website has a number of pages devoted to the Empire Windrush generation, including the memories of some of the ship's passengers.

On this day in history: Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica, 1966

Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, had been the central figure in the Rastafarian faith since the foundation of the movement in the early 1930s. The indigent population in Jamaica saw him as God incarnate. He was the only independent black monarch in Africa; by tradition, a descendent of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. To Rastafarians he is still a Messiah figure fulfilling certain biblical prophesies: he was the 'King of Kings' and the 'Conquering Lion of Judah'.

It is no surprise that when the Emperor visited Jamaica on 21st April 1966, a rapturous crowd of thousands of Rastafarians received him. Taken aback by the fervour of their welcome, the Emperor returned to the plane until he was given assurances that he would be protected from the throng. The visit continued with the Emperor meeting the ageing Prime Minister, Sir Alexander Bustamante, and receiving an honourary degree at the University of the West Indies.

April 21st has become a sacred date to Rastafarians, celebrated every year as 'Groundation Day' when they hold a Nyahbinghi meeting, during which they celebrate His Imperial Majesty with music, chanting and prayer.

>To find out more about the Emperor's visit and Rastafarianism in general, visit the Rastafari section of the Jamaicans.com web-site.

Related posts
Foundation of first permanent British colony in the Caribbean: 28th January 1624
Caribbean immigrants arrive on the Empire Windrush: 22nd June 1948
Rodney Riots: 16th October 1968

On this day in history: Bay of Pigs, 1961

On the morning of 17th April, 1961, a force of Cuban counter-revolutionary exiles, known as Brigade 2506, landed at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime. The attack was carried out with the support of the United States of America: the plan having been drafted by the C.I.A. while Dwight D. Eisenhower was still President, but was carried out during John F. Kennedy's presidency. Kennedy required the original plan to be scaled back, so that it the attack would look less like a U.S. military operation and more like an operation that the exiles could plausibly carry out.

Following an attack by light bombers of the exile air force, launched from Nicaragua on Cuban airfields, the main assault on the Bay of Pigs began. The failure of the air attack to destroy the Cuban air force resulted in the surviving planes wreaking havoc on the counter-revolutionary invasion force and their air support. Fighting continued, as a 20,000 strong Cuban force repulsed the invading troops, leading to the collapse of the attack on 19th April.

The failed invasion caused a rapid deterioration of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuban governments, which worsened during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year, and have improved little in successive decades.

To find out more about the Bay of Pigs Invasion, read the original New York Times report on the attack, and the article about the invasion on the JFK Library and Museum web site.

Related posts
First Cuban world boxing champion: 15th July 1931
John F. Kennedy inaugurated as President: 20th January 1961
Bobby Kennedy assassinated: 5th June 1968
Stanislav Petrov averted a nuclear war: 26th September 1983

On this day in history: Juan Fangio kidnapped in Cuba, 1958

On 23rd February 1958, the Argentinian racing car driver Juan Fangio, was approached by a man brandishing a revolver in the lobby of the Hotel Lincoln in Havana, Cuba. The man was Manuel Uziel, a member of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement then struggling to overthrow the regime of President Batista. Uziel asked Fangio to identify himself, but the five time Formula One Champion thought it was some sort of joke, until Uziel was joined by several other rebels carrying sub-machine guns. They explained that they intended to keep him captive until after the Cuban Grand Prix, in which Fangio was going to defend his title the following day.

They took him to an apartment where he received a visit from Faustino Pérez, one of the leaders of the 26th of July Movement, who apologised for the inconvenience. The rebels treated Fangio well, feeding him and giving him a radio so that he could listen to the race, but he chose not to. The race itself ended in disaster after only six laps when the Cuban driver, Armando Garcia, ran into the crowd killing several people and injuring many more.

Good to their word, the rebels released Fangio the following day. He told police that he had been "treated very well - as though I was a friend of the rebels." When asked about the kidnapping he said, "If what the rebels did was in a good cause, then I, as an Argentine, accept it" He declined to identify his captors, with whom he remained good friends.

Related posts
First Formula One Championship race: 13th May 1950
Bay of Pigs: 17th April 1961

On this day in history: Foundation of first permanent British colony in the Caribbean, 1624

In 1493, Christopher Columbus led the first European exploration of the islands located where the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. He named each of the islands of the Lesser Antilles including one which he dubbed San Jorge ("Saint George"). Later explorers misinterpreted Columbus' charts and the island became known as San Cristobal ("Saint Christopher") or, more commonly, Saint Kitts.

In the sixteenth century, French Huguenots refugees founded a colony on the island, naming it after their home-town: Dieppe. Only months after its establishment, the Spanish raided the settlement and deported all its inhabitants. The next attempt to colonise the island did not occur until the next century with the arrival of the English under Thomas Warner.

Warner was the son of a Suffolk landowner and former captain in the bodyguard of King James I and lieutenant of the Tower of London. In 1620 he set off with Captain Roger North to help found a colony in Guiana, but James revoked their charter and recalled North, to placate the Spanish, leaving the colonists to fend for themselves. In the meantime, Warner had met Thomas Painton who suggested that he found a colony on St Kitts or another of the smaller Caribbean islands.

Warner returned to England to find support for this venture. In 1623 he set off with his family and fourteen other colonists for Virginia, from where they sailed for the Lesser Antilles. The group arrived on St Kitts on 28th January 1624. Undaunted by initial setbacks - a hurricane destroyed their first tobacco crop and many of their houses - the settlement grew and in September 1625, Warner transported their first tobacco crop back to England. While in England, Warner received letter patent from James' recognising the colony and giving it Royal protection. Warner also received the title of lieutenant of St Kitts (or 'Merwar's Hope' as it was called in the document, referring to himself and one of the major investors, the London merchant Ralph Merifield), Nevis, Barbados, and Montserrat.

He secured more investment and returned to the colony with around one-hundred more settlers and sixty slaves. When he arrived he found that the French had also established a colony on the island. The colonists had welcomed the French probably because they offered mutual protection against the local Carib population should they attack.

As it was, the Europeans made a pre-emptive strike against the Caribs, killing their King, taking a number of the women as slaves, and driving the rest of the survivors from the island. In 1627, the English and French then concluded a treaty formalising their mutual protection pact against both the Caribs and the Spanish. The terms of the treaty also divided the island between the two groups, with the English taking the territory middle and the French occupying either end.

Related posts
The Great Hurricane: 10th October 1780
Caribbean immigrants arrive on the Empire Windrush: 22nd June 1948
Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica: 21st April 1966

On this day in history: Rodney Riots, 1968

On 16th October 1968, the students of the University of West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica became the latest to join the worldwide student protests of that year. The spark that lit the flame, in this case, was the Jamaican government's decision to bar Dr. Walter Rodney, a Guyanese national, from returning to the country to continue his job as a lecturer at the university. Rodney, an influential left-wing historian of Africa and vocal participant in the Black Power movement, had been attending a conference in Montreal, Canada, but when he returned to Jamaica the authorities would not let him disembark from the plane. They claimed that he had been identified as a prohibited immigrant as a result of his visits to the USSR and Cuba.

When the students of UWI heard of Dr. Rodney's plight they caused such disruption on the campus that the university was forced to close. They then took their demonstrations onto the streets, marching first to Prime Minister Hugh Shearer's residence and then on to the parliament in Kingston. As the students marched other demonstrators joined in and the protests became increasingly violent and spread throughout the city leaving several dead and millions of dollars worth of damage to property.

After a short visit to Cuba, Dr. Rodney became a lecturer in Tanzania gaining a reputation as a leading Pan-Africanist. He returned to his native land in 1974, having been offfered the job of Professor of History at the University of Guyana, but the government blocked his appointment. He became a fervent opponent of the ruling People's National Congress party until his assassination in 1980.

Related posts
Night of the Barricades: 10th May 1968
Belgrade student revolt: 2nd June 1968
Buffalo Nine arrested: 19th August 1968
Tlatelolco Massacre: 2nd October 1968

On this day in history: The Great Hurricane, 1780

On 10th October 1780, the deadliest recorded Atlantic hurricane reached the island of Barbados, pounding the island with two-hundred mile per hour winds. Over the next week it left a swathe of destruction on the Windward Isles, the Leeward Isles, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola before turning north-east and heading back into the Atlantic. The direct effects of the hurricane killed an estimated twenty-two thousand people: 9,000 in Martinique; 4,500 in Barbados; and, 4,500 in St. Eustatius.

The British naval officer Lord Rodney wrote to his wife describing the destruction on Barbados:

The strongest buildings and the whole of the houses, most of which were stone, and remarkable for their solidity, gave way to the fury of the wind, and were torn up to their foundations; all the forts destroyed, and many of the heavy cannon carried upwards of a hundred feet from the forts. Had I not been an eyewitness, nothing could have induced me to have believed it. More than six thousand persons perished, and all the inhabitants are entirely ruined.

Rodney was commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands, commanding the British fleet in naval engagements against the French and Spanish as part of the American War of Independence. The hurricane destroyed eight of his twelve ships while they were moored off the island of St. Lucia, killing hundreds of sailors. One of these ships destroyed the hospital at Port Castries when the weather hurled the ship on top of it.

The French suffered even greater losses. A fleet of forty ships transporting men to fight in the war sank with the loss of around 4,000 lives. The hurricane also destroyed nineteen Dutch ships at Grenada.

Related posts
Catastrophic volcanic eruption in Iceland: 8th June 1783
Miramichi Fire: 7th October 1825
Cold Sunday: 17th January 1982

On this day in history: Haitian Revolution, 1791

At the time of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris, the French territories on the island of Hispaniola, known as Saint-Domingue, produced forty per cent of the world's sugar utilising slave labour. As well as slaves, there were many free men of mixed European and African descent in Saint-Domingue, collectively known as the gens de coleur, who called for an end to the rigidly stratified society and for equal rights in the years before the French Revolution. Following the events of 1789, particularly the Declaration of the Rights of Man, these calls became louder.

Julian Raimond, a rich indigo planter of mixed-race, travelled to France to make an appeal to the National Constituent Assembly for full civil equality. Meanwhile, a colleague of Raimond's, Vincent Ogé, returned to Saint-Domingue, to demand the right to vote. Ogé responded to to the Colonial Governor refusal by leading a revolt against the colonial authorities.

The revolt failed and Ogé along with other insurgents were publicly tortured and executed in February 1791. A few month's later, the Assembly passed legislation granting the right to vote to non-whites in the colonies. Yet, the colonial authorities on Saint-Domingue continued to resist, alienating the gens de coleur.

On 22nd August 1791, thousands of slaves in Plaine du Nord at the north of the colony rose in revolt. While the efforts of Raimond and Ogé were not directed at liberating slaves - in fact, Raimond himself owned slaves - the leaders of the slave revolt cited the treatment of Ogé as a key factor in their decision to revolt. Within two weeks the slaves took control of the northern province. As the revolt spread across the island, the slaves killed thousands of Europeans and burnt their plantations.

It took the invasion of British troops and the promise of the end of slavery to end the revolt. The former slave and leader of the revolt, Toussaint Louverture, defected to the side of the French Republic bringing many of the slaves with him. After defeating the English and local rivals, he ended the revolt and restored the colony to titular French control. Nevertheless, Toussaint effectively ruled the former colony as an independent state, paving the way for the full independence of Haiti in 1804.

See the excellent Louverture Project wiki for more information.

Related posts
Foundation of first permanent British colony in the Caribbean: 28th January 1624
Venezuelan Declaration of Independence: 5th July 1811
French Abolished Slavery for Second Time: 28th April 1848
Peruvian independence declared: 28th July 1821

On this day in history: First Cuban world boxing champion, 1931

On July 15th 1931, Eligio Sardiñas Montalvo - better known as Kid Chocolate or the Cuban Bon Bon - knocked out Benny Bass in the seventh round of their Junior Lightweight title bout at the Baker Bowl, Philadelphia to become the first Cuban world champion boxer. The victory gave him celebrity status and he became a regular guest at society parties.

Born in Havana on 6th January 1910, the young Eligio watched films of boxing matches from which he learned the art. Having fought as an amateur and sparred with many great boxers of the day, in 1927 he went professional. The next year he relocated to New York City to fight the quality of opponent necessary for his shot at the championship.

In November 1931, Eligio went up a weight division to face Lightweight champion Tony Canzoneri, at Madison Square Garden, New York. He failed in this second title bid, and in 1933 he lost his Junior Lightweight belt to Frankie Klick. Following his unsuccessful attempts to regain the title he retired, revealing that he was suffering from syphilis.

The very next year, Kid Chocolate returned to the ring winning 47 out of 50 fights, but not against the sort of opposition that would provide another championship bid. In 1938 he retired again, never to return to the ring. Instead he returned to a quiet life in Cuba and increasing obscurity, particularly after the 1959 revolution. Nevertheless, his boxing career was recognised by the Cuban authorities in the 1970s; he was provided with a state-funded house, in which he died in 1988.

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On this day in history: Caribbean immigrants arrive on the Empire Windrush, 1948

The Second World War had left the United Kingdom with a labour shortage, just when it needed as many workers as possible for the task of reconstruction. To alleviate this shortage the Royal Mail Lines placed an advertisement in the Jamaica's Daily Gleaner newspaper in April 1948. The advertisement offered a ticket Kingston, Jamaica to England for only £28 and 10 shillings on the ex-German troopship Empire Windrush, which was due to dock in the Caribbean on its journey from Australia back to the Britain.

Many of the 492 people that took up this offer were ex-servicemen - mostly from the Royal Air Force - who either hoped to rejoin the RAF or wanted to take up the promise of work and a better life in their "mother country". Many Britons were not pleased at the thought of immigrant workers, and Parliament debated the matter while the ship was crossing the ocean. Nevertheless, many of the passengers had served during the war for "King and Country" and all carried British passports, so there was no legal cause to turn them away.

On 24th May 1948, the Empire Windrush set sail on her month long journey across the Atlantic, which ended on 22nd June when she docked at Tilbury in Essex. On arrival, just under half of the West Indians received temporary accommodation at the Clapham South deep shelter in London - built as an air-raid shelter during the war beneath the underground railway station.
Over two hundred of them found work straight away, mostly in the newly instituted National Health Service and with London Transport. The nearest labour exchange (office where they could find work) was in nearby Brixton, an area where many of them found homes, bestowing upon that area its multi-racial heritage.

During the Parliamentary debates on immigration, the politicians who promoted imported labour suggested that the workers that the foreign workers would only stay for a short while, and indeed many of the West Indians thought the same. Nevertheless, many chose to stay and raise families in their new home. The journey of the Empire Windrush marked the beginning of a new - and as is often the case, troubled - era of multiculturalism in Britain.

The BBC History website has a number of pages devoted to the Empire Windrush generation, including the memories of some of the ship's passengers.