31 DECEMBER

1943 - Future Filipino revolutionary, labor leader and writer Hermenegildo Cruz is born  to a poor family in Binondo, Manila during the Spanish colonial times; he would serve as second lieutenant to Gen. Antonio Luna during the Philippine Revolution, and later as pressman at the general's printing  shop that would publish the fledgling Philippine Republic's official organ, the "La Independencia"; Cruz would lose his job after organizing a labor union at Luna's printing press, but later in Manila, he would organize the Southeast Asian country's first labor union, the Union Obrera Democratica de Filipinas; Cruz  would also head a committee to draft labor bills for the colonial Philippine Assembly in 1907, midway into the protracted Filipino-American  War (1899-1914), before eventually becoming the director of the Bureau of Labor in 1924; Cruz would also be known for his authorship of  "Kartilyang Makabayan," the first biographical work on Katipunan Supremo  Andres Bonifacio, and of "Kung Sino ang Kumatha ng Florante."

Henry Otley Beyer

1966 - Henry Otley Beyer, dubbed the "Father" or "Dean" or "Pioneer" of  Philippine Anthropology," dies at the  old age of 73; born of Bavarian  ancestry, Beyer was an American holder of a  master's degree in chemistry who volunteered to teach in the then-colony of the imperialist United States, the Philippines, in 1905; owing to his interest in the field of ethnology, he eventually became an anthropologist and anthropologist who lived most of his life in the Cordilleras and ultimately marrying an Ifugao, Lingngayo na'Gambu';  professor emeritus at  the University of the Philippines, Beyer authored "Population of the Philippine Islands," "Philippine Ethnographic Series," "The Philippines before Magellan," the multi-volume "Philippine Folklore, Customs, and Beliefs" before eventually becoming synonymous with anthropology beginning the mid-1920s when he co-authored "A History of the Orient" (1926), "Philippine Customary Law" (1930) and the "Chinese, Siamese and other Oriental Ceramic Ware in the Philippine Islands" (1930).


Photo credit: http://books.google.com/books?id=KXmIq_BGr8wC&dq=Henry+Otley+Beyer&source=gbs_navlinks_s