General strikes, which call for workers across the board to stop work in protest, are not common in the U.S. But Seattle made history over a century ago Thursday with a strike that is widely credited as one of the first city-wide labor actions in the country.

In fact, it was headline news around the world: Tens of thousands of workers in all occupations stopped working. And the situation would drag on for five more days.

It was the climax of the shipyard strike that had been brewing in Seattle and Tacoma. On Jan. 21, 1919, 35,000 Seattle union members, along with 14,000 in Tacoma, walked off the job. According to HistoryLink, "the strike was aimed as much at the federal government's Emergency Fleet Corporation, which coordinated wartime shipbuilding, as at the private shipyard owners themselves," who were still enjoying a post-war boom.

The shipyard strike triggered the reaction of Seattle's Central Labor Council of the American Federation of Labor, who began polling other local labor groups about the possibility of a general strike. One after another voted in favor, and though some opposition began to mount, the stage was set.

At 10 a.m. on Feb. 6, 1919, the city came to an eerily quiet halt. Or, as the Post-Intelligencer front page put it at the time: "Today is raised the issue between American democracy and the organized forces of revolt, insurrection and rebellion."

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That mood of uncertainty about whether the city was falling to some sort of revolution spread, if haphazardly thanks to the relatively unclear motives of the strike beyond supporting the shipyard workers: Rumors flew that strikers had bombed the city's dam or that the mayor had been assassinated; HistoryLink notes that some 40,000 non-union workers "idled either because their employer saw no use in opening or because they depended on streetcars to get to work. Some Seattleites barricaded themselves at home in fright, and a few of the wealthy departed the city on extended vacations."

In reality, the strike was orderly; key services would stay in place, like schools and lights (thanks to volunteers), and unions set up food stations to serve members and the general public alike.

Though the mayor added 600 police to the force and 2,400 "special deputies" from the University of Washington fraternities, for trouble, and army troops came in from Fort Lewis, no one rioted, and Hanson's deadline of imposing martial law (something he didn't have the power to do) came and went with no problem.

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And so, slowly the strikers returned to work given that there was no easy resolution in sight. First a few of the streetcars returned to operation on February 8, and slowly the city began returning to work.

Soon only the shipyard workers were still striking, and -- though they'd only been looking for fair wages -- were painted as some sort of "Bolshevik rule" that had been thwarted.

You can read more day by day coverage of the strike here.