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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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All women together ought to let flowers fall
upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather
appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them
the right to speak their minds. It is she--shady and amorous as she
was--who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight:
Earn five hundred a year by your wits. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own; English writer and spy Aphra Behn died on April 16, 1689 The
law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to
sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. [St
Bernadette's] coffin was opened in the presence of the Bishop of Nevers, the mayor of the town, his principal deputy, several canons and ourselves. We noticed no smell. The body was clothed in the habit of Bernadette's order. The habit was damp. Only the face, hands and forearms were
uncovered. |
Chaplin in Modern
Times |
Like the hands, the feet were wizened and the toenails were still intact (one of them was torn off when the corpse was washed). When the habits had been removed and the veil lifted from the head, the whole of the
shrivelled body could be seen, rigid and taut in every limb. It was found that the hair, which had been cut short, was stuck to the head and still attached to the skull, that the ears were in a state of perfect preservation, that the left side of the body was slightly higher than the right from the hip up. The stomach had caved in and was taut like the rest of the body. It sounded like cardboard when struck. The left knee was not as large as the right. The ribs protruded as did the muscles in the
limbs.
So rigid was the body that it could be rolled over and back for washing. The lower parts of the body had turned slightly black. This seems to have been the result of the carbon of which quite large quantities were found in the
coffin.
In witness of which we have duly drawn up this present statement in which all is truthfully recorded.
Nevers, September 22, 1909.
Drs Ch. David, A Jourdan (statement made under oath)
Source
What struck me during this examination, of course, was the state of perfect preservation of the skeleton, the fibrous tissues of the muscles (still supple and firm), of the ligaments, and of the skin, and above all the totally unexpected state of the liver after 46 years. One would have thought that this organ, which is basically soft and inclined to crumble, would have decomposed very rapidly or would have hardened to a chalky consistency. Yet, when it was cut it was soft and almost normal in consistency. I pointed this out to those present, remarking that this did not seem to be a natural phenomenon.
Doctor Comte, report on the exhumation of the Blessed Bernadette
(d. April 16, 1879) in the second issue of the Bulletin de
L'Association medicale de Notre-Dame de Lourdes, 1928 Source
In the end, everything is a gag.
Charlie Chaplin, English
comedian, born on April 16, 1889
I
may show actors too much by mimicry but
I'm a damn fine director.
Charlie Chaplin
A day without laughter is a day
wasted.
Charlie Chaplin
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a
dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.
Charlie Chaplin
Actors search for rejection. If
they don't get it they reject themselves.
Charlie Chaplin
All I need to make a comedy is a
park, a policeman and a pretty girl.
Charlie Chaplin
All my pictures are built around the
idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately
serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.
Charlie Chaplin
I don't believe that the public knows
what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.
Charlie Chaplin
I had no idea of the character. But the
moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person
he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he
was fully born.
Charlie Chaplin
I have no further use for America. I
wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ was President.
Charlie Chaplin
I remain just one thing, and one thing
only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any
politician.
Charlie Chaplin
I
thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat.
Everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small
and the shoes large.
Charlie
Chaplin
I went into the business for the money,
and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I
can't help it. It's the truth.
Charlie Chaplin
Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the
surcease for pain.
Charlie Chaplin
Life is a tragedy when seen in
close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
Charlie Chaplin
That is why, no matter how desperate
the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my
cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have
just landed on my head.
Charlie Chaplin
The saddest thing I can imagine is to
get used to luxury.
Charlie Chaplin
The basic essential of a great
actor is that he loves himself in acting.
Charlie
Chaplin
Failure is unimportant. It takes
courage to make a fool of yourself.
Charlie
Chaplin
We all had this sort of lunatic sense of
humour. We turned everything into imbecility, doing things like climbing
Mount Everest from the inside.
Spike Milligan, Indian-born British comedian; on The Goon Show
I'm an ongoing failure, but the most
successful one you'll meet. I thought I had the same comic ability as
Peter Sellers but the cards fell right for him when he went into films and
never came right for me.
Spike Milligan
[When depression would come on] I find that I
can write serious poetry. Strangely they attract others with the same
illness. I'm the manic depressives' poet, just like Byron was for the
romantics.
Spike Milligan
When I look back, the fondest memory I have is
not really of the Goons. It is of a girl called Julia with enormous
breasts.
Spike Milligan; on his 75th
birthday
Yes, but it's your mother isn't it? You don't
get board and lodging at Buckingham Palace if you don't swear an oath.
Spike Milligan; to Prince Charles who pointed out that
even he had to swear the oath of allegiance to the Queen, and urged him to
think again as Milligan was not allowed a British passport
I'd like to go there. But if Jeffrey Archer is there I want to go to
Lewisham.
Spike Milligan; on heaven
I don't mind dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Spike Milligan; also attributed to Woody Allen
Then came the war. North Africa, promoted in
the field (they wouldn't let me indoors). Mentioned in dispatches: nothing
positive. Just mentioned.
Spike Milligan
I can't see the sense in it really. It makes
me a commander of the British empire. They might as well make me a
commander of Milton Keynes – at least that exists.
Spike Milligan; on receiving the CBE
I watch American comedies and they are as
funny as a baby with cancer.
Spike Milligan
I hope you go before me because I don't want
you singing at my funeral.
Spike Milligan; to Sir Harry Secombe
I support all the causes that are trying to
increase the sensitivity of the human race to the odious things that they
do. We're a pretty horrendous crowd.
Spike Milligan
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
US President Dwight D Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
Deadbeat government
Compare the pointless invasion and occupation figure above, with this: the US government says it can't afford the almost $2 billion in arrears it owes to the United Nations. It cost the UN just $300 million to eradicate smallpox from the world by 1979.
April
16 is
the 106th
day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (107th in leap
years), with 259 days remaining.
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Feast day of St Bernadette of
Lourdes
Marie-Bernard Soubirous (b. 1844), the French shepherdess and visionary who claimed to have experienced some of the most famous apparitions in Christian history, is honoured on this, the day of her death from asthma, aged 35, in 1879.
It is believed by many in the Roman Catholic Church that her body, which is still on view, has not decomposed.
On February 11, 1858, at Lourdes in southern France, the 13-year-old farm girl saw the first of 18 visions of a lady who was later accepted by the Roman Catholic Church as being the Virgin Mary. During the 17th and second-last of these visions, on March 25, 1858, Mary announced her presence with the words, "I am the Immaculate Conception" (not "I am the Immaculately Conceived" as perhaps one might expect).
The grotto had been a shrine to the goddess Persephone in pre-Christian times. Or, so it is said.
Since the 18 appearances of Mary to young Bernadette, beginning on February 11, 1858, more than 200 million people have visited the shrine of Lourdes.
Her body is said to be incorruptible; that is, it does not decompose. It was first exhumed on September 2, 1909, in the presence of representatives appointed by the postulators of the cause, two doctors, and a sister of the community. Although the crucifix in her hand and the rosary had both oxidized, her body was found to be "incorrupt" — preserved from decomposition, perhaps by supernatural means. This was one of the miracles cited for support of her canonization. Her body was washed and reclothed before burial in a new double casket.
Her corpse was exhumed a second time on April 3, 1919. The body was found to be still preserved. There was slight discolouration of the face which has been explained as being due to the washing process of the first exhumation. A wax mask was applied to the face and the remains were then placed in a gold and glass reliquary in the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at the motherhouse in Nevers.
Bernadette was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1933; she is also honoured on February 18 in France.
Her patronage includes bodily ills, illness, Lourdes France, people ridiculed for their piety, poverty, shepherdesses, shepherds, sick people, and sickness.
Sources: Wikipedia et al
Lourdes Grotto webcams
A selection of the words of Pope John-Paul II at Lourdes in 2004
Pilgrimage of His Holiness John Paul II to Lourdes Bernadette as she is today The Miracle Joint at LourdesLourdes and Bernadette The Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction
The Body of St Bernadette Life and Background to Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes
Feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11 in the Book of Days
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