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Today In History April 29th
It is rather astounding how much has happened on April 29. Luckily, we have a way to describe that, owing to the April 29, 1852 publication of the first edition of British lexicographer Peter Mark Roget’s thesaurus. April 29 is a huge, great, gigantic, enormous, massive, colossal, mammoth, immense, stupendous, tremendous date in history.
(image via @diana)
The Banana Massacre (Spanish: Matanza/Masacre de las bananeras) was a massacre of United Fruit Company workers that occurred between December 5 and 6, 1928 in the town of Ciénaga near Santa Marta, #Colombia. A strike began on November 12, 1928, when the workers ceased to work until the company would reach an agreement with them to grant them dignified working conditions.[2] After several weeks with no agreement, in which the United Fruit Company refused to negotiate with the workers, the conservative government of Miguel Abadía Méndez sent the Colombian Army in against the strikers, resulting in the massacre of upto 2,000 people.
U.S. officials in Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the workers' strike as "communist" with a "subversive tendency" in telegrams to Frank B. Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State. The Colombian government was also compelled to work for the interests of the company, considering they could cut off trade of Colombian bananas with significant markets such as the United States and Europe.
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