28th September

The First International met today in London in 1864. Its leader was the indefatigable Karl Marx (whose brother, Harpo, by coincidence died on this day in 1964). Among Marx's best known lines -

• Religion is the opium of the people.
• You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win.
• Friedrich, can you lend me ten bob 'til week Thursday.

In other news ...
Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick died today in 1891. The story, about a man's obsession to get revenge on a great, white whale, is an allegory on any number of levels and is quite brilliant. It would be unpublishable today because:

1. Greenpeace would object to whaling.
2. Captain Ahab has only one leg - health and safety implications.
3. The book has too many silly names for modern readers - Queequeg, Nantucket, Pequod.
4. The title is obscene and would have to be changed to Moby Male Member - mind you, the alliteration works!

14th March

Karl Marx died on this day in London in 1883. His friend and co-writer Friedrich Engels described him as the 'best-hated man of his time' and that was before the Americans had ever heard of him. His book, The Communist Manifesto. written in German in London in 1848 is very short, very repetitive and has one good line - 'You have nothing to lose but your chains'. As a blueprint for revolution (as tried out by Lenin, Trotsky etc) it doesn't work. As an appeal to human nature it fails too. As for Marx himself, he spent most of his later life scrounging off Engels and has a truly awful tombstone in London's otherwise fantastic Highgate Cemetery.

Marx out of 10? 1.5

In other news ...

On this day 48 years ago dodgy nightclub owner Jack Ruby was found guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumed assassin of JFK in Dealey Plaza, Dallas five months earlier. If Ruby wasn't part of a conspiracy himself then his removal of Oswald goes beyond the criminal. Had Oswald stood trial we might all know what happened that day in Dallas and a whole JFK industry would never have been born.

Ruby's motive in shooting Oswald at point blank range in front of TV cameras when Oswald was in police custody was 'I did it for Jackie Kennedy'. 

Yeah, right.