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Told Us About Iraq
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Lucifer Ascending: The
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What
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By Thom
Hartmann
The Price of Loyalty
The
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The
Culture of the New Capitalism
Pagan
Christianity
By Robert Fisk
The God Who Wasn't There
A
Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy
When Corporations Rule the World
Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on
Journalism
The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD
Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate
Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
By Robert F Kennedy, Jr
The Skeptic's Dictionary
A Dictionary of Saints Days, Fasts, Feasts and
Festivals
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
365 Goddess
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Michael
Moore
Drawing Down the Moon
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|
 Feast day of St Ivo
(Ives) of Huntingdonshire,
England
The city of Saint Ives (formerly Slepe,
an old Saxon word meaning 'muddy'), Huntingdonshire, England was named for this saint who,
according to medieval legend, was a
wealthy Persian bishop who yearned for a more disciplined and
arduous life. So he went to England with three companions, where
they settled as
hermits
in the remote, wild fenlands in Huntingdonshire. There they died, in
the 7th
Century, according to the legend.
His gravesite was lost for years,
but in 1001 four bodies were uncovered in an
unmarked grave near or in Slepe. Because one of the
skeletons bore a bishop's insignia, following a peasant's dream
these episcopal bones were immediately 'identified' as those of
Ivo.
The four skeletons were translated to
Ramsey Abbey, where a holy well sprang up, at which many miracles
were performed. Or, so it is said.
The St Ives in west Cornwall is named for Saint Ia.
As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with seven
wives.
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits;
Kits, cats, sacks and wives –
How many were going to St Ives?
Traditional
Answer
Pictured above: 'As I Was Going to St. Ives',
Arthur
Rackham, Frontispiece, June 1913, (Volume 40, No. 8, p. 673)
Sacred
springs and wells at the Scriptorium
Lyrid meteor
showers (Apr 15 - Apr 28,
peaking Apr
22)
Vinalia priora, ancient
Rome (Apr 23
- Apr 28)
Feast day of St Alexander (friend and companion of Saint
Epipodius)
Feast day of St Benedetto
Menni
Feast day of Ss Beuve (Bova; Bona)
and Doda, of Rheims
Feast day of St Deodatus
Feast day of St Diarmaid
Feast day of St Dyfnan
Feast day of St Egbert of
Northumbria
St Egbert (d. 729;
not to be confused with the later Egbert, Archbishop of York) was a
novice in the Benedictine
monastery
of Lindisfarne
in Northumbria in Anglo-Saxon England.
Many other high-born notables were associated with his work: St Adalbert,
St Swithbert,
and St Chad.
Egbert arranged the mission of St Willibrord,
St Wigbert
and others to the pagans.
More
Feast day of
St Fidelis
of Sigmaringen, martyr
(Blackthorn; Prunus spinosa
is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Fidelis (1577
- 1622)
was a Roman
Catholic saint
and martyr
to the counter-Reformation
in Switzerland.
A Catholic missionary among the Calvinists in Switzerland, Fidelis
was killed by their soldiers in 1622. He and his relics worked 305
miracles.
More
And
More
Feast day of St Gregory of
Elvira
Feast day of St Honorius of
Brescia
Feast day of St Mary
Euphrasia Pelletier
Feast day of St Mellitus, third
Archbishop of Canterbury
More
Feast day of St Robert, of Chase-dieu,
Auvergne
Feast day of St Sabas
Feast day of St William
Firmatus
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Singing in May,
Swinton, Lancashire, UK
Children's
Day, Iceland
Nagasaki
Takoage, or Kite-Flying Event,
Nagasaki,
Japan (Apr 3 - 29)
Yasukuni Matsuri,
Japan (Apr
21 - 25)
Mibu Dainembutsu Kyogen, Japan (Apr 21 - 29)
Senteisai
Matsuri, or Courtesan Festival, Japan (Apr 23 - 25)
Genocide
Remembrance Day, Armenia
The term
Armenian Genocide (also
known as the Armenian Holocaust
or Armenian Massacre) refers to the deportations and related deaths
of hundreds of thousands of Armenians
during the government of the Young Turks in 1915 - '17. The
date commemorates the arrest, on April 24,
1915,
of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, most of
whom would be executed, which was a precursor to the ensuing events.
In
Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, crowds of
people walk to the
Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial to lay
flowers at the
eternal flame.
From
Wikipedia:
While there is no clear consensus on how many Armenians lost their
lives during what is called the Armenian genocide, there is general
agreement among Western scholars that over a million Armenians may
have perished between 1914 and 1918. Estimates vary between 300,000
(the Turkish claim) and 1.5 million (the Armenian claim), while
Encyclopædia Britannica makes special
reference to the research conducted by
Arnold J Toynbee who was appointed by the
British Foreign Office to investigate the
forced deportation of the Armenians and the related casualties, who
estimated a death toll of around 600,000 to 800,000; which formed
the basis of the
Allies' charges against the Ottoman
government at the
Paris Peace Conference in
1919
that up to 800,000 Armenians were killed during the war.
Republic
Day, The
Gambia (1970)
Newman's
Day
Newman's Day is a USA college tradition involving drinking 24 beers within a 24-hour period on April 24.
24-hour comics
day
A 24-hour comic is a 24 page comic book written, drawn, and completed in 24 hours.
TV Turnoff Week (Apr
23 - 27)
(2007 date; varies annually)
1533 William I of
Orange (d. 1584), Dutch national 'father'1576
Vincent de
Paul (d. September
27, 1660)
Catholic saint born at Pouy,
Landes,
Gascony,
France
to a peasant family. His feast
was formerly kept on July
19 (qv), but is now observed on September
27 (qv) – the day of his death.
1743 Edmund
Cartwright, English inventor of the power loom that revolutionized
industry but led to increasing
immiseration of workers. Cartwright's
elder brother, John, was a reformer who advocated annual parliaments
and manhood suffrage.
"1743–1823, English inventor and clergyman. He was the inventor of
an imperfect power loom that, when finally patented (1785),
became the parent of the modern loom. It was the first machine
to make practical the weaving of wide cotton cloth. A few of
Cartwright's many other inventions were a wool-combing machine
(1789), a machine for ropemaking (1792), and an engine (1797)
that used alcohol as fuel. He cooperated with Fulton on his
experiments with steam navigation." Source
Cartwright's
invention helped liberate workers from one kind of slavery and
condemn them to another (wage
slavery). His poem below shows his awareness of the
terrible significance of his labours.
'To ------'
Chained to the oar and hopeless of
reprieve,
From year to year to one dull task confined –
A task that needs no effort of the mind,
A task mere honest dullness might achieve –
Tell me, sincerely, though too proud to grieve
Or murmur at thy destinies unkind,
Dost thou not feel at least the chains that bind
Thy spirit down to toils it must not leave?
To have decked the shrine of Ceres with the flowers
That science gave to thy collecting hand;
To have served, by useful arts, thy native land:
These were thy hopes; on these were bent thy powers.
These hopes foregone, repress thy vain desires;
Curb thy aspiring soul and quench her useless fires.
1718 Nathaniel Hone
(d. 1784),
Irish-born
painter
1815 Anthony
Trollope (d. 1882), English
novelist
who also introduced the famed red pillar box to the
UK. His mother,
Frances Trollope
(1780 -
1863), was the author of
controversial The Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832) and many novels.
He visited Australasia in 1871 and wrote Australia and New
Zealand (Chapman and Hall, London, 1873).
 1846 Marcus Clarke
(d. August 2,
1881), Australian novelist
(For the Term of
His Natural Life; Australian Tales,
1896), bon vivant, and librarian at the State
Library of Victoria.
In 1868 he became the first secretary of
the Yorick Club, other members being Adam Lindsay
Gordon, Henry
Kendall and George Gordon
McCrae. The first instalment of his well-known novel His
Natural Life appeared in the Australian Journal in March
1870.
"He introduced the paradoxes of
la vie de boheme – luxury cheek by jowl with poverty, islands of productivity amid a sea of laziness. Clarke
'lived like a Prince of the blood one day, and subsisted on a pipe and a pint of beer the
next', he later recalled. Clarke acted out the contradictory bohemian fascination with the low life and the high life, cultivating
'an atmosphere of wit, poverty, luxury, champagne, tripe, tobacco, billiards, pawn tickets, the drama, the gutter, beef and cabbage, oysters and chablis, lavender gloves and coats at
elbows.'
"In the French style Clarke presided over a bohemian HQ at the Cafe de Paris in Melbourne's Theatre Royal. Here he grandly blurred the Victorian distinction between work and play :
'We absorbed wine and women, and hate and love into us, that we might be able to write those magnificent
articles.' And write Clarke did: plays, journalism, opinion and serialised fiction for popular periodicals such as the Melbourne
Argus, the Australian and his own Colonial Monthly
Magazine, which became Melbourne's literary hub.
"Clarke enjoyed offending respectable society. He drank and ate to excess, gambled, smoked opium and hashish and even introduced a character into his
Argus column called Dr Cannabis."
Source:
Romancing the City: Australia's bohemian tradition
"He was
steadily writing the instalments of His Natural Life, though
later on he found it very difficult to be up to time with them. In
the issue for December 1871 the proprietors of the Australian
Journal, in apologizing for the absence of the usual monthly
instalment, stated that although they had delayed publication they
had been unable to obtain 'either copy or explanation'. The story
was published in book form in 1874 differing in some particulars
from the serial issue. On the advice of Sir
Charles Gavin Duffy (q.v.) some portions had been omitted and a
new prologue was written. In later editions the book is sometimes
called For the Term of his Natural Life. This title is given
to the edition of the story issued by Angus and Robertson in 1929
which is stated to be the 'first complete edition in book
form'.
"A short novel 'Twixt Shadow and
Shine was published in Melbourne in 1875, but did not go into
a second edition until many years after the author's death. Much
of this work was done under great anxiety. He had early fallen
into the hands of the money lenders, and in 1874 had been
compelled to become insolvent. His industry was unfailing but he
had no sense of business. Among his activities of this period were
a play called Plot, which had a fairly successful run in
1873, much local journalism, and two or three pantomimes. He was
also the Melbourne correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph.
He had a fair salary and one way and another must at times have
had a good income. Probably, as one of his biographers suggested,
he had no conception of what was meant by 60 per cent interest. In
1877 he did a piece of hack work, a History of Australia,
for the use of schools. He had been appointed sub librarian at the
public library in 1873, but his work there must always have been
subordinated to his literary work. In 1880 he became involved in
controversy with Bishop
Moorhouse (q.v.); he had a facile pen but it is doubtful
whether he had the knowledge to fit himself for controversy of
this kind. His private affairs were again involved about this
period, and to add to his worries he had been appointed agent for
his cousin Sir
Andrew Clarke (q.v.), with a comprehensive power of attorney.
Clarke was as little fitted to look after the affairs of another
man as his own. In July his estate was again sequestrated and,
worn out by anxiety and disappointment, he died on 2 August 1881,
leaving a widow and six young children. Shortly before his death
he was a candidate for the office of public librarian, but the
position was given to Dr T. F. Bride.
"Marcus Clarke was short and slight
with a face remarkable for its beauty. His wit was polished, his
humour refined, he had great powers of description, and a slight
stutter did not detract from his charm as a conversationalist. He
was an excellent though unequal journalist, and he wrote some good
light verse. His sketches of the early days in Old Tales of a
Young Country (1871) still retain their interest, and of his
novels Long Odds (1869) is good in its way. 'Twixt
Shadow and Shine (1875), and Chidiock Tichbourne,
published posthumously in 1893, might, however, have been written
by any fairly competent writer of the period. His Natural Life
is his title to fame. A powerful story of a grim period, it
triumphs over its minor improbabilities, and its reader is carried
on by its pure human interest to the last word." Source
"Besides these novels Clarke also published a range of short fiction throughout his life, the best of which uses Gothic themes and conventions to construct strangely derivative stories about second sight, drug-use and phantasmagoric hallucination. These are collected in the posthumous publications Sensational Tales (1886) and
The Mystery of Major Molineux and Human Repetends. At the end of his life he was working on a novel entitled
Felix and Felicitas, a philosophical examination of the kind of imaginative idealism that had seemed to inform so many of Clarke's early aspirations as a writer. He died in 1881 at the age of 35, leaving a wife (the actress Marian Dunn) and six children under the age of eleven.
"Without doubt Clarke has a privileged place in the history of Australian literature. His
Natural Life is justly considered the best novel written in Australia during the nineteenth century, while Clarke's career as a whole is central to any attempt to understand the development of colonial literary culture in nineteenth-century Melbourne."
Source
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
Sensational
Tales March
23, 1880 Age editorial by Clarke
More More (with some
poems)
1856 Henri Philippe Pétain (d. 1951),
French soldier
and statesman, who led the right-wing
French government (Vichy regime) that collaborated with the Axis
Powers in World War II
1876 Erich Raeder
(d. 1960),
commander in chief of the German navy 1878 Jean
Crotti (d.
1958), Swiss artist 1882 Hugh Dowding
(d. 1970), Scottish
fighter pilot 1889 Sir Stafford Cripps
(d. 1952),
British politician 1896 Benjamin Whorf
(d. 1941),
American linguist 1897 Manuel Ávila
Camacho
(d. 1955), President
of Mexico 1889 Sir Stafford Cripps (d. 1952), British
Labour Party politician,
Chancellor of the Exchequer in post-WW II Britain
1899 Oscar Zariski
(d. 1986),
mathematician1904 Willem de
Kooning (d. 1997), Dutch painter 1905 Robert Penn
Warren
(d. 1989), writer, Pulitzer Prize
winner, first American Poet Laureate 1906 William Joyce ('Lord Haw-Haw'; d. 1946),
American-born Irish-British
fascist
propagandist, writer
and traitor
during World War II. Joyce was executed
by famed hangman Albert Pierrepoint on January 3, 1946, at Wandsworth Prison.
1914 Justin Wilson
(d. 2001),
Cajun
humourist, celebrity chef,
writer1914 William Castle
(d. 1977),
director, producer 1924 Sir Clement Freud,
British writer,
radio
personality and politician 1926 Thorbjörn Fälldin,
Prime
Minister of Sweden 1930 Jerome Callet,
musician 1930 Richard Donner,
director, producer 1934 Shirley
MacLaine, actress and author 1940 Sue
Grafton, author 1941 John
Williams, Australian guitarist 1942 Richard M Daley,
politician
1942 Barbra
Streisand, singer, actress, director, the first person ever to receive a Grammy, an Emmy, an Oscar,
and a Tony
"When she and
Neil Diamond had a smash hit in 1978 with You Don't Bring Me
Flowers, it was not the first time that the Brooklyn-born
superstars had sung together. While students at New York City's
Erasmus High School they both sang in the school choir." Source:
IMDB
1952 Jean-Paul
Gaultier, fashion
designer1953 Eric Bogosian,
actor, writer 1954 Mumia Abu-Jamal
(b. Wesley Cook),
journalist
and political
activist. He is a
political prisoner and death row activist. An award-winning
journalist/author, his insightful commentaries and essays have
earned him international recognition – and also the ire of many
officials, who have vowed to silence him at all costs [Including NPR
which cancelled and censored planned shows].
More on and by Abu-Jamal Mumia
is still the issue (ZNet, August 29, 2005)
Source: The
Daily Bleed Mumia
Awareness Week, September 19 - 25 in the Book of Days
1962 Jeff
Minter, computer games
programmer1964 Cedric
the Entertainer, comedian, actor 1964 Djimon Hounsou,
actor 1968 Stacy Haiduk,
actress 1982 Kelly Clarkson,
singer, winner of the first American Idol
competition
Phew!!
Have a rest before the big This
day in history section
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Full
Moon Day
Varies
Friday
the 13th
Varies
Mawlid
al-Nabi
Varies Hindu
holidays
Varies Passover
Varies
Orthodox
Holy Friday
Varies Good
Friday
Varies
Orthodox
Easter
Varies Easter
Varies Baisakhi
Varies Mahavir
Jayanti
Varies Hanuman
Jayanti
Varies
Arbor
Day
Varies
Child
Care Professionals Day
![Mother's Day [ May 14 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_mothers_day_1.gif)
April
22 Earth
Day
23 St
George's Day
23 Shakespeare's
Birthday
24 Ambivalence
Day
25 Cuckoo
Day
25 Anzac
Day (Australia)
25 Anzac
Day (New Zealand)
25 Holocaust
Remembrance Day
25 Zucchini
Bread Day
26 Pretzel
Day
26 Bird
Day
26 International
Guide Dog Day
27
Morse
Code Day
28 Kiss
Day
29 Zipper
Day
29 Spring
Festival (California, USA)
29 International
Dance Day
30 Oatmeal
Cookie Day
30 Hairstylist
Day
May
1 May
Day
1 Chocolate
Parfait Day
1 New
Homeowner's Day
1 Plant
A Flower Day
1 Beltane
1 Lei
Day (Hawaii, USA)
1 Bird
Day (Oklahoma, USA)
1 School
Principals' Day
1 Global
Love Day
2 Teacher
Day
2 Brothers
And Sisters Day
2 Baby
Day
3 Raspberry
Popover Day
3 Polish-American
Day( Connecticut, USA)
4 Naked
Day
4 Orange
Juice Day
4 National
Day Of Prayer
4 International
Firefighters' Day
5 Cinco
De Mayo
... More
Events
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application. Further details
1184 BCE Greeks entered Troy using the Trojan
Horse (traditional).
387 CE St Augustine of
Hippo, was baptised. He was born on November 13, 354, at
Tagaste; died August 28, 430, Hippo Regius – modern Bone, now Annaba, Algeria. Feast
day August 28.
624 Death of Mellitus, first Bishop
of London of the present diocese (established in 604) and the third Archbishop
of Canterbury.
The Bayeux Tapestry shows Halley's Comet
in 1066
1066 The first
appearance of Halley's
Comet to the English and the soon-to-invade (October 14,
Battle of Hastings) Normans. The Saxons
saw this as a dark portent of things to come. The Bayeux Tapestry shows
what looks like a comet that is presumed to be Halley's.
Comets as portents
Comets have a long history of association with
prognostications of doom. At the Battle of Hastings,
the Normans were victorious and from that time on the comet was said to have
been a sign that favoured William the
Conqueror.
In 1665 a comet was held responsible for the Black
Plague that killed 90,000 people in London.
In 1997,
the Heaven's Gate
cult believed that Comet
Hale-Bopp was similarly associated with apocalyptic prophecies. Wacky leader
Marshall Applewhite
convinced 39
followers to commit suicide on March 26, so that their
souls could take a ride on a spaceship that they thought was hiding behind the comet.
Australian doomsday cult leader William Kamm
('The Little Pebble') as recently as
July 15, 2000, had Comet Kohoutek in his apocalyptic
pronouncements.
1185
At Danoura (Dan-no-ura), Japan, Yoshitsune
Minamoto's fleet defeated the imperial fleet.
1288 Jews of Yroyes, France were
accused of ritual murder.
1311 General Malik Kafur
returned to Delhi after campaigns in South India.
1342 Death of Pope Benedict XII (b. 1285).
1617 Assassination of Concino Concini, the
Marechal d'Ancre, killed at the bridge of the Louvre,
Paris. Concini was a Florentine adventurer, minister of Louis XIII of France. He became a favourite of Marie de'
Medici, queen of France, and exerted great influence after the assassination
of Marie's husband, Henry
IV in 1610, and succeeded the Duke of Sully as minister.
1704
The first regular newspaper in the United
States, the Boston, Massachusetts
New-Letter, was published.
 1731 Daniel Defoe (born c. 1660), English pamphleteer, journalist and novelist (Robinson Crusoe;
Moll
Flanders), died of a seizure in Ropemaker Street,
Moorfields, in the City of
London.
His family name was actually Foe, but
he added the aristocratic 'De'. As we still know today from his writings, he
attacked privilege and prestige and on July 31, 1703, was sentenced to the pillory for his literary
treatment of the upper classes. The practice of the day was to throw garbage at
a pilloried person, but Defoe's friends came and tossed flowers at him.
In 1706, he wrote both one of the first examples of science fiction,
A Letter from the Man in the Moon, and the earliest English ghost story,
A True Relation of the Apparition of Mrs Veal. He
died in poverty, hiding from his creditors and was buried in the Dissenters' cemetery, Bunhill
Fields, on the New City Road, across the street from John Wesley's first
London chapel. William
Blake and John
Bunyan are buried in the same cemetery; the headstones were scattered by a
bomb in The Blitz.
Sources vary as to the date of his
death. I
believe that the date of his birth is not known.
Source: Dr Mac's Cultural
Calendar, et al More
And more
The Life
and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson CrusoeThe Consolidator
Dickory Croncke
An Essay Upon Projects Everybody's Business Is Nobody's
Business A Journal Of The Plague Year The Fortunes
And Misfortunes Of The Famous Moll Flanders From London To Land's End
The Further Adventures Of Robinson
Crusoe Alexander Selkirk, the real
Robinson Crusoe, in the Book of Days
1736 Death of Eugene
of Savoy (b. 1663), French-Austrian general.
 1792
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
(1760 - 1836) wrote the words
to 'La
Marseillaise', now the French national
anthem, in a fit of patriotic excitement after a public dinner.
Its original name was 'Chant de guerre de l'Armée du Rhin'
('Marching Song of the Rhine Army') and it was dedicated to Marshall Nicolas
Luckner, a Bavarian-born
French officer from Cham.
Music was derived from 'Variazioni sulla Marsigliese per violino
e orchestra', written by the Italian composer
Giovanni
Battista Viotti (1755
- 1824) eight years
earlier. De Lisle's song became the rallying call of the French
Revolution and got its name because it was first sung on the streets by
troops (fédérés)
from Marseille
upon their arrival in Paris.
The French Convention accepted it as the national anthem (decree passed on July 14, 1795), but 'La Marseillaise' was banned by
Napoleon during the Empire,
and by Louis XVIII on the
Second Restoration (1815), because of its
revolutionary associations.
In the 19th Century, 'La Marseillaise' was widely
used in many countries as the anthem of all kinds of radical groups –
socialist,
anarchist,
communist, and
democratic – but during
the early 20th Century was generally replaced in this role by 'The
Internationale' which itself was originally intended to be sung to the tune
of the French revolutionary song. The French anthem is still sung, although today it shocks with its delight in
murder: "Let us march, Let us march! That their impure blood should water our fields".
Ironically, de Lisle was himself a royalist and refused
to take the oath of allegiance to the new republican constitution.
|
Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
Contre nous, de la tyrannie,
L'étandard sanglant est levé,
l'étandard sanglant est levé,
Entendez-vous, dans la compagnes.
Mugir ces farouches soldats
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger vos fils,
vos compagnes.
|
Let us go, children of the
fatherland
Our day of Glory has arrived.
Against us stands tyranny,
The bloody flag is raised,
The bloody flag is raised.
Do you hear in the countryside
The roar of these savage soldiers
They come right into our arms
To cut the throats of your sons,
your country.
|
|
Aux armes citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.
|
To arms, citizens!
Form up your battalions
Let us march, Let us march!
That their impure blood
Should water our fields
|
1800
The United
States Library of Congress
was established when President John Adams signed
legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be
necessary for the use of Congress".
1804 St David's
Cemetery, the first in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania, Australia), was established.
1846
The beginning of the Mexican-American War.
1862 American Civil War: A
flotilla commanded by Union Admiral David
Farragut passed two Confederate
forts on the Mississippi River on
its way to capture New Orleans,
Louisiana.
1863 The Keyesville
Massacre: a massacre
of 53 Native American men from
the Tehachapi
tribe in Keyesville, California. 1866
USA: White
extremists formed the Ku Klux Klan.
Cross burning
"The practice dates back to Medieval Europe, an era the Klan idealizes as morally pure and racially homogenous. In the days before floodlights, Scottish clans set hillside crosses ablaze as symbols of defiance against military rivals or to rally troops when a battle was imminent. Though the original Klan, founded in 1866, patterned many of its rituals after those of Scottish fraternal orders, cross-burning was not part of its initial repertoire of terror."
Source
 1895 Many of Oscar Wilde's personal
possessions were auctioned in London to pay his solicitor's bills because of the
infamous trial
in which he was convicted.
Imagine, if you will,
what might have happened to one of Oscar Wilde's books that was auctioned. See 'Walt Whitman Shall Not Sleep',
in the Poetry section.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde
1895 Captain
Joshua Slocum set out from Bristol, England, in his sloop Spray, to circumnavigate the world single-handedly.
1898
Spanish-American War:
Spain declared
war on the United States.
1913 Woolworth Building
opening ceremony.
1915 The
Ottoman Government
began its genocidal campaign to
annihilate the Armenians of
Anatolia. See
Teşkilat-i
Mahsusa 1916 Easter
Uprising began: The Irish
Republican Brotherhood led by nationalist Patrick Pearse started a
rebellion in Ireland.
1922 In an early case
using then new methods of forensic science in Australia,
Colin Ross was hanged for the
rape and murder of 13-year-old Alma
Tirtsche.
1925
John
Scopes taught Darwin's theory of evolution,
leading to the Scopes monkey trial.
1939 Robert Menzies, leading the United Australia Party, became
Prime Minister of Australia, an office he held longer than any other person.
1940
World
War II: Operation Demon – The United Kingdom began
evacuating Greece.
1942 Irish writer Brendan Behan was
sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for shooting at police during an IRA march.
1949 With the free availability of sweets, rationing of foodstuffs
ended in Britain.
1953
Winston Churchill was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United
Kingdom.
1953 Muslim women voted for the first time anywhere, at Karachi,
Pakistan.
1955
The Bandung Conference
ended: Twenty-nine 'non-aligned' nations finished a meeting that condemned colonialism,
racism, and the
Cold War
between the United States and the Soviet
Union.
1961 The salvage of the famous Swedish ship HMS Wasa.
1963 Marriage of Her Royal
Highness Princess Alexandra
of Kent to Angus James Bruce Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey in London.
1967 Cosmonaut Vladimir
Komarov died in Soyuz 1 (launched April 23).
1967 Vietnam War: American
General William Westmoreland
said in a news conference that the enemy had gained support in the United States
that gave him hope that he could win politically that which he could not win
militarily.
1968 Mauritius became a member
state of the United Nations.
1968 Yip-Out held in
NYC's Central Park on Easter Sunday. The festival was calm and unmarred by
police brutality. After this festival, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies turned
their attention to planning their nationally oriented Festival of Life.
Wilson's Almanac Book
of Days hip list CounterCulture
Wiki
1970
The first Chinese satellite
was launched.
1970 The Gambia became a republic.
1970 Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane was (apparently inadvertently)
invited to a White House party by
Tricia Nixon, daughter of US President Richard Nixon. Slick
showed up with 'escort', the Yippie
activist, Abbie Hoffman. He was then on trial for conspiring to riot at the
1968
Democratic National Convention and was turned away at the gate. Slick left as
well without having met Ms Nixon or introducing her to tea laced with LSD – as
Slick suggested she would.
Source:
The Daily Bleed
1975
The Baader-Meinhof Gang
blew up the West German embassy in Stockholm.
1976
Saturday Night
Live (American comedy TV show) producer Lorne Michaels appeared on the show and
offered the Beatles "a certified check for $3,000" to reunite and sing three
songs. "You
divide it up any way you want," he said, "If you want to give
Ringo less, it's up to you."
1980
An unsuccessful bid by US President Jimmy Carter to have his
forces rescue American hostages held in the US Embassy in
Tehran. Eight
Americans died and five were wounded in an ill-fated attempt to rescue the
hostages who were subsequently split up to deter another similar attempt.
1981
Introduction of the first IBM PC.
1984 Apple
Computer unveiled its Apple IIc portable
computer. 1989 Herbert von Karajan resigned as chief conductor of the Berlin
Philharmonic, citing poor health as the reason.
1989 Tens of
thousands of students went on strike in Beijing, protesting for democracy and
against abuses of human rights.
Current Hubble location (NASA)
1990
The Hubble Space
Telescope was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery.
The telescope was named after Edwin
Hubble, who made one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th
Century when he discovered that the universe
was expanding. Hubble completes one full orbit every 97 minutes, so if you
refresh this page a few minutes after opening it, you should see the telescope
in a new location.
Nasa
Hubble pages ESA's
public Hubble pages Hubblesite
Hubble telescope discoveries
1990
Gruinard
Island was
officially declared free of anthrax after 48 years
of quarantine.
In 1942, it was the site of a
biological warfare
test by British
military scientists. More
And more
1993
An IRA
bomb devastated the Bishopsgate area of City
of London.1994 The world's largest lollipop
weighing 1,366 kg (3,011 lb) was made in Denmark. 1995 The last
Chevrolet
Corvette ZR-1 rolled off the assembly line. 1996 In the United
States, the Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was introduced. 2001
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the British
Flying Saucer Bureau, which had been studying
UFOs for nearly 50 years, had just
shut up shop due to a claimed lack of sightings. The organization at one time
boasted 1,500 members but by this date could not even get a quorum at its
monthly meetings.
2004 The USA
lifted economic sanctions
imposed on Libya
18 years previously, as a 'reward' for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass
destruction.
2004 Referenda
on a United
Nations plan, which proposed to reunite the island of Cyprus,
took place in both the Republic
of Cyprus controlled and Turkish
controlled parts. Although the Turkish
Cypriots voted in favour, the Greek
Cypriots rejected the proposal.2005
Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger was inaugurated
as the 265th Pope of the Roman
Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Benedict
XVI.
Tomorrow: Anzac Day
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Answer: Only one person, the narrator, was going to St Ives. The women
might have been returning from St Ives.
"Because the poem begins, 'As I was going to St. Ives,' we can see that only one person was headed for St. Ives, so
'one' would be the correct answer. However, if we look at the whole question that is being asked,
'Kits, cats, sacks and wives, How many are going to St. Ives?' then the correct answer could be interpreted as
'zero' or 'none.' Early versions of the poem that show the answer as
'none' support this interpretation.
"Since the person in the poem is not identified as being either male
or female, however, the possibility exists that the traveler could
be a woman, and therefore a wife, putting the answer back to 'one.'
The correct answer, therefore, may be either zero or one, depending
on the textual variation or interpretation. The list of characters
at the beginning of the question serves as an extension of the trick
of the riddle by keeping the listener focused on every character
except the traveler. The answer to the question is definitely not
2800! (Seven wives, forty-nine sacks, three hundred and forty three
cats and two thousand, four hundred and one kittens.)"
Source:
A Tricky Riddle
More on the St
Ives poem/puzzle
Wikipedia
and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed
are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft'
and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright
policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.
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