On this day, 24 August 1943, French philosopher and anti-fascist Simone Weil died in Ashford, Kent. Previously she had opposed French colonialism in Asia and North Africa, taken part in the factory occupations during the popular front government in 1936, then travelled to Spain to fight against the right-wing military rising of general Francisco Franco. Weil fought in the Durruti column until she was injured in an accident and left the country. In collaborationist Vichy France, she got a job as an agricultural labourer and worked with the resistance, until she travelled to London with her Jewish parents to keep them safe. There she continued writing on behalf of the resistance, sleeping only around three hours per night. Her cause of death was officially designated a suicide from self-starvation and tuberculosis, but biographers state that while people in occupied France lived on minimal food rations, Weil did the same, which severely worsened her illness.
Learn more about the Spanish civil war in our podcast episodes 39-40: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/06/17/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2064973087021164/?type=3
Etruscan boy from Vipsul 330 BCE. Museo Archeologico Etrusco, Florence.
“Fiesole (Etruscan Viesul, Viśl, Vipsul) was probably founded in the 9th–8th century BC, as it was an important member of the Etruscan confederacy, as may be seen from the remains of its ancient walls.
The first recorded mention of the town dates to 283 BC, when the town, then known as Faesulae, was conquered by the Romans. In antiquity it was the seat of a famous school of augurs, and every year twelve young men were sent thither from Rome to study the art of divination. Sulla colonized it with veterans, who afterwards, under the leadership of Gaius Mallius, supported the cause of Catilina.”
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