On this day, 20 December 1973, Spanish fascist prime minister who was hand-picked as dictator Francisco Franco’s successor, Luis Carrero Blanco, was assassinated in Madrid.
Basque separatists ETA had spent five months digging a tunnel under a road he went down to attend mass. They then detonated a bomb as he drove over, shooting his car 20 metres into the air and over a five-storey building, earning Carrero Blanco the nickname of “Spain’s first astronaut”.
His successor was unable to hold together different factions of the government, and so this action was credited by some for helping accelerate the restoration of democracy after Franco’s death.
Learn more about the civil war which resulted in Franco’s seizure of power in our podcast episodes 39-40: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/
Pictured: a recreation of the incident from the 1979 film, Ogro https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1880079575510517/?type=3
… Wortley Montagu had learned about the practice of
inoculation in Turkey, where her husband had worked as the British
ambassador. “When she got there, she went to Turkish baths and saw women
without any smallpox marks on their skin. That was a wake-up call.
”In
18th-century Turkey, inoculation was a common “folk practice”,
typically carried out by “illiterate old Greek and Armenian women”,
Willett said. “She asked them about it and analysed it, and decided it
was worth the risk.
”She managed to
successfully inoculate her son while she was there, but her daughter was
too young. The family then returned to England, where Wortley Montagu’s
enthusiasm for inoculation was met with suspicion and strong resistance
from the medical establishment. “When Lady Mary first came back, she
didn’t dare do anything [to her daughter]. But there was such a severe
outbreak in 1721, she thought she had to take action.
”She
then invited highly respected physicians and “ladies of distinction”
round to witness young Mary’s speedy recovery from the infection. One of
the physicians who visited was so convinced, he decided to inoculate
his own son, which also went well. Young Mary soon became famous. “News
reached Princess Caroline, who was the Princess of Wales at the time.
She took up the cause and eventually the royal children were inoculated.
Word spread that it was a good thing to do.
”However,
not everyone was convinced. “The Whigs were pro-inoculation but the
Tory party was really against it – a lot of Tories wrote about how it
was interfering with nature and it was dangerous. It became very
politicised.” …
…
When Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine in 1796, by taking
fluid from a cowpox vaccine and scratching it on to the skin of a young
boy, he was building on Wortley Montagu’s discovery, Willett said. “She
brought a cure to the west. And that cure was developed into what we now
think of as vaccination.” …
On this day, 19 December 1925, Lepa Svetozara Radic was born in Bosanska Gradiska, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lepa became a communist and joined the anti-Nazi partisans aged 15 in 1941. She was captured in 1943 while organising a rescue of around 150 women and children attempting to escape the fascists. The Germans offered to spare her life if she gave up the names of her comrades, but she responded that she was not a traitor and her comrades would reveal themselves when they avenged her death. The executioner subsequently reported that the “bandit” had “shown unprecedented defiance”. The Yugoslav partisans eventually successfully defeated the Nazis the fascist Ustashe regime.
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