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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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April 10th. When the next Dawn
shall have looked on victorious Rome, and the stars shall have been
put to flight and given place to the sun, the Circus will be thronged
with a procession and an array of the deities, and the horses, fleet
as the wind, will contend for the first palm. The love of liberty is the love of
others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. The Tory is one who is governed by sense and habit alone. He considers not what is possible, but what is real; he gives might the preference over right. He cries long life to the conqueror, and is ever strong upon the stronger side – the side of corruption and prerogative. Beauty is altogether in the eye of
the beholder. It is true that liberty is precious
– so precious that it must be rationed. A lie told often enough becomes the truth. Why
should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a
government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be
criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are
much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a
printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass
the government? |
Scroll right: Chartist demonstration of April 10, 1848, as ridiculed by a Punch cartoonist |
All
our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation
of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business
of a hero ...
Lenin
Call me madame.
Frances Perkins, American
politician, born on April 10, 1882; deciding the term of address she
wanted when she became America's first female cabinet member
Brisk and
articulate, with vivid dark eyes, a broad forehead and a pointed chin,
usually wearing a felt tricorn hart, she remained a Brahmin reformer,
proud of her New England background . . . and intent on beating sense into
the heads of those foolish people who resisted progress. She had pungency
of character, a dry wit, an inner gaiety, an instinct for practicality, a
profound vein of religious feeling, and a compulsion to instruct ..."
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr describes Frances
Perkins
It was four bells in the
morning watch. We had just finished breakfast when the order came forward
for the watch on deck to stand by to heave her to and all hands stand by
the boats.
"Port! hard a port!"
cried our sailing-master. "Clew up the topsails! Let the flying jib run
down! Back the jib over to windward and run down the foresail!" And so
was our schooner Sophie Sutherland hove to off the Japan coast, near Cape
Jerimo, on April 10, 1893.
Jack London,
American author, aged 17; opening lines of his first work
written for publication, Typhoon off the Coast of
Japan
A strong
people needs no leader.
Emiliano
Zapata, Mexican anarchist revolutionist,
ambushed and assassinated at the age of
29 by Mexican troops, on April 10, 1919
Little star in the night
that rides the sky like a witch
where is our chief Zapata
who was the scourge of the rich?
Little flower of the fields
and valleys of Morelos,
if they ask for Zapata,
say he's gone to try on halos.
Little bubbling brook,
what did that carnation say to you?
It says our chief didn't die.
that Zapata's on his way to you.
corrido mexicano
That Zapata appeared here in the mountains. He wasn't born, they say. He just appeared just like that. They say he is Ik'al and Votan who came all the way over here in their long journey, and so as not to frighten good people, they became one. Because after being together for so long Ik'al and Votan learned they were the same and could become Zapata. And Zapata said he had finally learned where the long road went and that at times it would be light and and times darkness but that it was the same, Votan Zapata, and Ik'al Zapata, the black Zapata and the white Zapata. They were both the same road for the true men and women …
… He is and is not all in us … He is underway …Vota'n Zapata, guardian and heart of the mountain … Us … Vota'n, guardian and heart of the people. He is one and many. None and all. Living, he comes. Vota'n Zapata, guardian and heart of the people …
Zapata will continue to live as long as people believe that they have a right to their land and a right to govern themselves according to their deeply held beliefs and cultural values.
Source
His abiding complex and the source of
much of his misery was that he was not a six-foot tall, extremely handsome
and rich duke.
Cecil Beaton, on British writer Evelyn Waugh (The Loved One),
who died on April 10, 1966
It was
April the tenth
I remember it well
It was so cold that year
It was colder than hell
Things haven't been good
For you, for a while
Because I'd been on tour
I hadn't heard
'April
Tenth' by Garbage Full
lyrics
April
10 is
the 100th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (101st
in leap years), with 265
days remaining.
Calendar converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc
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Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Easter Saturday, or Holy Saturday (2004)
A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac
Celebration in Corfu, Greece
At 11 am, the breaking of earthenware pots. That evening, thousands congregate in the Spianada Square to celebrate the service of the Resurrection at midnight, holding white candles.
Easter Saturday in Greece
Many families go to the cemetery where a service is held beside graves of relatives. Children who come are rewarded with eggs and buns.
Holy Saturday in Rome
When a particular passage is read in the Sistine Chapel, about 11.30, the bells of St Peter's are rung, the guns of St Angelo are fired, and all the bells in Rome ring out.
At St Peter's it is now time for the blessing of the fire and the Paschal Candle. For this, 'new fire' is used. At the beginning of mass, a light is stuck from a flint in the sacristy (this fire will later kindle the candles and the charcoal for the incense). The chief sacristan blesses the water, fire and five grains of incense which go into the paschal candle. Formerly, all of Rome's fires were lit from this fire, but by 1881, no longer. Priests are ordained on this day, and tonsures were given when tonsures, monks' haircuts, were still the done thing.
Folklore, customs, pre-Christian origins of:
Epiphany Candlemas/Imbolc Hall Sunday Collop Monday Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day
Ash Wednesday & Lent Mid-Lent Care Sunday Painful Friday Lazarus Saturday
Palm Sunday Spy Wednesday Maundy Thursday Good Friday Easter Saturday Easter
Easter Monday Easter Tuesday Hocktide Ascension Rogation Days Whitsunday/Whitsuntide
Corpus Christi May Day/Beltaine Lammas/Lughnasadh Michaelmas Halloween/Samhain
Martinmas Advent Christmas Eve Christmas More at Articles Index
Hundreds of feast days of saints, gods and goddesses at Wilson's Almanac Book of Days
The Tyrol, Austria
Bands of Tyrolese musicians used to go around all the valleys, playing Easter hymns on their guitars. They wore wide-brimmed Spanish hats, decorated with bouquets. Crowds of children accompanied them, and at night the children carried torches. Easter eggs, painted and with mottoes written on them, were brought out by the housewives to the children who brought baskets. Richer wives brought out wine for the singers.
Ireland, 19th
Century
In some parts the day before Easter Day is called Holy Saturday. In Ireland's middle districts, a cotter's wife at about 9pm would cook up a chicken and bacon, but no one was supposed to eat it before the cock crowed on Easter Sunday's dawn. At midnight, according to Chambers*, there was clapping of hands and joyous laughter, and the words "Shidth or mogh or corries", or, "out with the Lent". There was merriment for a few hours, then sleep; people rose at about 4 am, to see the sun dance in honour of the resurrection. More of the dancing sun custom tomorrow.
*Robert
Chambers, (Ed.), The
Book of Days:
A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc,
W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879
Edition is online and 1869
edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The
English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)
The Judas Fire, Czechoslovakia
On the afternoon of Easter Saturday, boys
traditionally collect wood, and make a bonfire around a large wooden cross
in a cornfield. After evening service they light lanterns at the
consecrated Paschal Candle in the church. The first to take the fire to
the bonfire lights it; women are not allowed anywhere near this. When the fire
flares up, the boys cry "We are burning the Judas!". They watch all
night to prevent theft of the ashes and in the morning throw ashes into a
stream. The boy who lit the fire is given coloured eggs by women at the
church. This is all done to protect crops from hail damage, and is an old
pagan survival.
Venetia Newall, An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London, 1971, p. 249
Neumühle, Germany custom
At Neumühle is a tradition, still going as a curiosity: a virgin draws water at midnight on Saturday at midnight in silence. It is shared by everyone on Easter morning.
Burning wheel, near Bad Pyrmont, at Lügde, Germany
Lügde is a town in the Lippe district of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Here, on Easter Saturday, wheels are prepared from oak wood and decorated with straw and green branches. On the night of Holy Saturday they are taken to top of a local mountain, set on fire and rolled down.
Egg rolling, north of England,
17th Century
Boys begged for eggs on Easter Saturday, boiled them hard, dyed them with herbs and rolled them in the fields.
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