March 29

John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; (July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-American magnate, merchant and investor who was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States. He was the creator of the first trust in America.

He went to the United States following the American Revolutionary War and built a fur-trading empire that extended to the Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. He also got involved in smuggling opium. In the early 19th century he diversified into New York City real estate and later became a famed patron of the arts.

Astor took advantage of the Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States in 1794, which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region. Then in London, Astor at once made a contract with the Northwest Company of Montreal and Quebec He imported furs from Montreal to New York, and shipped them to all parts of Europe.

In his will, he left $400,000 to build the Astor Library for the New York public (later consolidated with other libraries to form New York Public Library), and $50,000 for a poorhouse and orphanage in his German hometown, Walldorf.

Anna Louise Strong (November 24, 1885 – March 29, 1970) was a 20th-century American journalist and activist, best known for her reporting on and support for communist movements in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

When Strong ran for the Seattle School Board in 1916, she won easily, thanks to support from women's groups and organized labor and to her reputation as an expert on child welfare. She was the only female board member. She argued that the public schools should offer social service  programs for underprivileged children and that they should serve as community centers. But there was little she could do: Other members chose to devote meetings to mundane matters like plumbing fixtures. Her attentions began to go elsewhere.

Strong became openly associated with the city's labor-owned daily newspaper, The Union Record, writing forceful pro-labor articles and promoting the new Soviet government. On February 6, 1919, two days before the beginning of the Seattle General Strike of 1919, she proclaimed in her famous editorial: "We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by labor in this country, a move which will lead — NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!" The strike shut down the city for four days and then ended as it had begun — peacefully and with its goals still undefined, unattained.