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reetings from Australia.
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That,
Captain Bligh, that is the thing; I am in hell -
I am in hell. Fletcher Christian, leader
of the mutiny on the Bounty,
April 28, 1789
The women of Otaheite [Tahiti] are not only constitutionally votaries of venus but join to the charms of person such a happy cheerfulness of temper, and such an engaging manner; that their allurements are perfectly
irristible. In a very short time, every man aboard was provided with his mistress and I cordially ackowledge that I had my favourite as well as the rest. Indeed it is but justice to confess, that our subsequent conspiracy in a great measure owed its rise to these connections. Fletcher Christian; letter
...
master's mate, aged twenty-four years, five feet nine inches high,
blackish, or very dark brown complexion, dark brown hair, strong made,
a star tattooed on his left breast, tattooed on his backside; his
knees stand a little out, and he may be called rather bow-legged.He is subject to violent
perspirations, and particularly in his hands, so that he soils
anything he handles. William Bligh's description of Fletcher Christian
Mutiny on the Bounty
Fair
Flora! Now attend thy sportful feast,
Of which some days I with design have past;
A part in April and a part in May
Thou claim'st, and both command my tuneful lay;
And as the confines of two months are thine
To sing of both the double task be mine. Latin poet Ovid, Fasti,
v, 185, for Flora (Floralia) Apr 28 - May 3Roman calendar
Cicero was a serious-minded
man and by way of being a philosopher. When he was entering on the
aedileship he shouted out, in the hearing of the whole citizen body,
that among the other duties of his office it fell to him to propitiate
Mother Flora by the holding of games. St Augustine, De Civ. Dei, 11, 27
Flora, the Goddess of
flowers, but indede (as saith Tacitus) a famous harlot, which …
having gotten great riches, made the people of Rome her heyre: who, in
remembraunce of so great beneficence, appointed a yearly feste for the
memoriall of her, calling her, not as she was, nor as some doe think,
Andronica, but Flora; making her the Goddesse of floures. Edmund Spenser(c. 1552 -
1599), Englishpoet; The
Shepheardes Calender(1579)
Men of sense are really but of one religion ..."Pray, my lord, what
religion is that which men of sense agree in?" "Madam," says the earl immediately,
"men of sense never tell it." Lord Shaftesbury, born on April
28, 1801; Onslow's note to
Burnet's 'History'
Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. Harper Lee, American author, born on April 28, 1926; To Kill a Mockingbird
Well,
we fooled 'em for a long time! Last words of Zip the Pinhead, American sideshow 'freak', who
died on April 28, 1926; to his sister, Mrs Van Duyne
No Viet Cong ever
called me "nigger".
Boxing champ Mohammed
Ali, after refusing to go in the army on April 28,
1967
[T]here will never be uniform gun laws in Australia until we see a massacre in Tasmania.
Barry Unsworth, Premier of New South Wales; stated in December 1987 at Hobart after a Special Premier's Conference in relation to gun control;
reported by the Sun Herald, May 5, 1996. The world's worst gun spree massacre occurred in Tasmania on April 28,
1996, following which federal gun reform laws were instituted.
Source
Before people crow about the
absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a little bit.
I remain confident that they will be found. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair telling porkies, April 28, 2003
In the
Northern Hemisphere,
spring is well underway, the days are getting warmer,
the flowers are blooming, and the birds and bees are active. The ancient
Romans knew how to celebrate it.
The Floralia, or
Florales Ludi, was a six-day
festival for the goddess Flora, deity (originally
Sabine) of
flowers and youthful pleasures, whose cult was said to have been
introduced by Numa.
Flora was also the goddess of
spring, especially associated with vines, olives, fruit trees and
honey-bearing plants. A temple
was built for her at the
Circus Maximus between the
Aventine and the
Palatine hills, and a shrine
was built at the Quirinal at which corn stalks were
offered.
When Augustus became
Pontifex Maximus, he built a chapel to Vesta in his own house on the Palatine, and dedicated it on this day, which was made a public holiday.
It was a festival of sexual fun and
liberty and marked by the consumption of oceans of grog. Beans and other
seeds were planted, representing fecundity. Originally a movable feast
controlled by the condition of the crops and flowers, it's believed to
have been instituted in 238 BCE under the command of an oracle in the
Sibylline Books, with the purpose of gaining from the goddess the protection of the blossoms. Games were instituted in honour of
Flora at that time, but were soon discontinued before being restored in
173 BCE in the consulship of
Lucius Postumius Albinus and
Marcus Popillius Laenas
as a six-day festival, after storms had destroyed crops and vines.
Day and night there were games,
pantomimes, theatre and stripteases with people of all classes in their
brightest clothes, all decked out in flowers – even their animals were
garlanded and Rome must have looked particularly beautiful at this time.
Goats and hares were let loose as they represented fertility. Gift-giving
for the season included small vegetables as tokens of sex and fertility.
Use your imagination ...
"In many parts of the Caribbean, flying the 'Jolly Roger'
flag was the equivalent of a happy face: it meant the pirate ship
was willing to take prisoners. The appearance of a red flag,
however, signified no prisoners, and the pirates would slaughter
crew and passengers to a man. Bear in mind that the flags had
different meanings [or none] at different time periods and in
different regions."Source
The head was kicked into a well, but the water gushed out and the
decapitated Aphrodisius
picked up his
own head, and carried it through the city. Townspeople spilled
snails on the road and Aphrodisius stepped on them without breaking
one. Several
stonemasons began to mock him, calling him a madman. They were
miraculously punished by being turned into stones (visitors still
point out their seven stone heads on the Rue des Têtes, 'the street
of the heads').
Aphrodisius left his head at the cave that he had previously
occupied. His martyrdom is supposed to have occurred on April 28,
65, during the reign of
Nero. In
art he is often depicted carrying his head. Aphrodisias was
accompanied by his camel in the
hagiographic
accounts.
There is a custom of
a costumed figure named Papari
leading a
wooden mechanical camel in
the procession at
Béziers on the feast of the saint. This machine, which did not
really resemble a camel, concealed in its sides a few operators who
made its head and jaws and teeth move.
Papari
was escorted by other men disguised as wild men of the woods, whose
heads were decorated with leaves. The current camel head dates from
the eighteenth century. In the 1970s, it was proposed that the camel
be remade to give it a real camel's appearance. However, the
townspeople protested and the camel retained its traditional
appearance.
The roots of this particular tradition are possibly to be found in
the pre-Christian festivities dedicated to
Bacchus, imported by the
Phocaeans to
southern France; Bacchus was sometimes depicted riding a camel.
"Like those of so many other Irish
saints the Acts of St. Cronan abound in miracles.
The most surprising, perhaps, is the legend as to the transcribing
of the Four Gospels by one of his monks, named Dimma. It appears
that Dimma could only undertake one day's task, from sunrise to
sunset. St. Cronan, however, bade him write, and then Dimma set to
work, never ceasing till he had finished the Four Gospels, the sun
continuing to shine for the space of forty days and forty nights -
the scribe himself being unconscious that the work occupied more
than one day. Whatever may be thought of this legend, it is certain
that a magnificent Evangelistarium, known as the 'Book of Dimma',
was for centuries preserved in St. Cronan's Abbey at Roscrea, and is
now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin." Source
Minato Matsuri, or Port Festival, Nagasaki,
Japan(Apr
27 - 29) Commemorates the 16th-Century
opening of Nagasaki as Japan's sole foreign trade port. Features a
folk song contest, fireworks, and a costume parade. On April 27,
the fish market has a memorial service for the catch. The famous Peiron (boat race) takes place on April 29.
Exaltation of Wine, Ribeiro Region, Spain (Apr 28
-May 1) This wine festival is held at Ribadavia
in the province of Orense. Wines are offered with local fruits to
visitors, and ceremonies are accompanied by music and dances of the
region.
La
Folia Festival, at San Vicente de la Barquera, Santander province,
Spain (Apr 28 -May 1)
In honour of the Virgin Mary
who is patroness of the town, La Folia dates from the Middle Ages.
Celebrations begin in early morning with the happy alboradas,
or dawn songs, then a folk procession to the church, culminating in
the procession of the Virgin, a statue carried on the shoulders of
the seamen to the docks of the port, where local dances are
performed. It is then returned by boat to the church.
End of April,
King Tides, Derby, Australia "The king of all
Australian tides occurs near the town of Derby in King Sound, in
north-west Australia, at the end of March and again at the end of
April each year. Derby's tides can reach up to 11.8 m, and are the
second biggest tides in the world (the largest, clocked at 15 m,
occur in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia). At the other end of the
scale, the tides of the Mediterranean – the smallest in the world –
peak at a weeny 2-3cm."
Workers' Memorial
Day, USA
This
is the day the USA Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was
enacted in 1971 and the day of a similar remembrance in Canada.
Honouring this day started as
National Day of Mourning (Workers Day of Mourning) in
Canada.
Work kills double those who
die from wars – double those who die from all other violence.
Email received with thanks from Chas, May 17,
2005: "after i finished reading april 28, i realized that you have left out a very important holiday in america. shortly after the
implementation of "workers memorial day"
by the unions in america, the govt came up with a way to side-track the whole idea. this is "bring your daughter to work day", which was shortly changed to "bring your son or daughter to work day" so as to appear non discriminatory. 10 or more years later, almost no one even heard of workers memorial day. of course it fits in with labor day in america as the first monday in september as opposed to world wide labor day on may first. since only around 10% of american workers are organized, that is easily done. maybe globalization will standardize all this. chas"
Dr Michael Jones says Queen Elizabeth II's claim to the
throne is disputable because her distant ancestor, Edward IV, was
illegitimate. A document found in France reveals that Lady Cecily Neville conceived Edward not by
his royal father, Richard,
but by a commoner, a French archer
called Blaybourne.
Perhaps because Edward was nothing like his father
in looks or height, questions about the paternity of Edward IV had
been raised even during his reign, for example by Richard Neville, Earl of
Warwick in 1469 and repeated by George, Duke of Clarence
shortly before his death in 1478, but
with no evidence.
Shaftesbury
and 'Eros'
From Wikipedia:
The Shaftesbury
Memorial in Piccadilly
Circus, London,
erected in 1893,
was designed to commemorate his philanthropic works. The Memorial is
crowned by Alfred
Gilbert's aluminium
statue of a nude, winged archer. This is officially titled The
Angel of Christian Charity, but has become popularly known as 'Eros'.
The use of a nude
figure on a public monument was controversial at the time, but the
statue has become a London icon and appears on the masthead of the Evening
Standard.
1923Carolyn
Cassady, American writer associated with the
Beat Generation by her marriage to
Neal Cassady, and friendship with other
writers. She was consequently a frequent character in the works of
Jack Kerouac, who wrote extensively about
her husband.
1926Harper Lee, American
author, born in Monroeville, Alabama, USA. She is famous for
her novel involving race-relations, To
Kill A Mockingbird, an international bestseller for which
she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in
1961 (adapted
as a movie
in 1962). Lee was 34 when the work was published, and it has
remained her only novel.
She modelled the boy character, Dill, after
her childhood next-door neighbour, someone who also gained fame in
later life – author Truman Capote(1924 - '84).
In the mid-'60s she
travelled and worked with Capote as a research assistant for his
novel, In Cold Blood, which he dedicated to
her.
After the success of her one and only novel, Lee felt that if she wrote
another it would be anticlimatic, and she apparently retired from
writing.
"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make
music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't
nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts
out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
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1772At Mile End, England, a goat died that had
twice circumnavigated the globe; first, in the discovery ship Dolphin, under Captain Wallis; and
secondly, in Captain Cook's
HM Bark Endeavour
(pictured). The animal passed on
two days after having been granted a State pension by Parliament.
During her life, the goat had worn a silver collar, inscribed
with the following words composed for her by Dr Johnson: Perpetui ambita bis terra praemia lactis/Hac
habet, altrici capra secunda Jovis. (And if any reader can tell us what that
means, please let us know! – PW)
I have never
studied Latin but I encounter many Latin expressions and terminology with my
research, consequently, I need a Latin dictionary.
From my
trusty Collins Latin-English dictionary:
Perpetui ambita bis terra praemia lactis/Hac
habet, altrici capra secunda Jovis. Could be directly translated, word by
word, to read:
'Uninterrupted
circuit twice earth send milk This way nourisher she-goat following
Jupiter', so freely interpretted could mean: 'This female goat twice
circumnavigated the Earth to supply milk, following the Sun.'
or something
like that.
The goat, in
fact, did supply fresh milk to the officers on board the Dolphin and
Endeavour.
Cheers and
beers,
Colin
Tonks
Queensland,
Australia
Reader
Paul Farmer, of Asheville, NC, USA, gives the following translation:
In fame scarce second to the
nurse of Jove,
This Goat, who twice the world had traversed round,
Deserving both her master's care and love,
Ease and perpetual pasture now has found.
1780 The first
advertisement for an abortion clinic appeared in London's Morning Post.
Captain Bligh, a consummate seaman who learned much of his
nautical skill from the perhaps history's greatest navigator, Captain
James Cook (Bligh
was Cook's Sailing Master on Cook's
third and fateful voyage to the South Seas), was set adrift in a lifeboat with 18
loyal
seamen, and remarkably navigated a course to
Timorafter drifting 5,600
km (3,480
mi) with very little in the way of navigational aids.
He and his crew arrived in Timor on June
14, 1789.
While Bligh has been portrayed in popular
culture as a vicious man, and history records that he had an unkind tongue, the
Bounty's log shows that Bligh resorted to punishments very sparingly
compared with other captains in the British Navy at that time.
On January 15, 1790,the Bounty mutineers
arrived at Pitcairn Island which
had been misplaced on the Royal Navy's charts. On January
23, 1790, they burned the ship in what is now
Bounty Bay.
When the American sailing ship Topaz,
commanded by Mayhew Folger, discovered the island in 1808, only John Adams, ten women and some children were
still alive. Murder accounted for most of the deaths, though suicide, accident,
and disease played parts.
Fletcher Christian
(1764 - '93), the chief mutineer, was one of the
murder victims.
1926Am I having fun yet?
Death of Zip
the Pinhead, born William Henry Johnson, of natural causes.
Johnson was not a true microcephalic; he merely had an oddly-shaped head. He therefore
did not suffer the mental retardation that a microcephalic suffers.
1945Italian
dictatorBenito
Mussolini and his mistress Clara
Petacciwere shot and strung up in Piazzale Loreto on
meathooks, while trying to flee Italy, by
their vengeful countrymen.
The London Times correspondent in Milan reported that the corpses of Mussolini, Petacci and 12 Fascists
were on display "with ghastly promiscuity in the open square under the same fence against which one year ago 15 partisans had been shot by their own countrymen".
Milan Radio reported that one woman fired five shots into Mussolini's body and shouted: "Five shots for my five assassinated sons!"
1953 Japan was
allowed by the victorious
Allies to return to self-government.
1953 Iran:
After engineering the overthrow of the democratically elected government, the CIA
installed the Shah of Iran, beginning a 25-year terrorist dictatorship in
that country.
1961 "April 28 near
the Korb lake east of Leningrad. A UFO crashed in this area leaving behind
traces on the ground."Source
1987 The 27-year old American engineer Ben Linder
was killed in an ambush by USA-funded Contras in
northern Nicaragua.
His death set off a fierce debate in the United States.
1988
Near Maui,
Hawaii a flight attendant was sucked out of an Aloha
AirlinesBoeing 737 and fell to her death when an upper part of
the plane's cabin area ripped off during a flight from Hilo to Honolulu,
and a gaping hole about 6 metres long opened in
the fuselage. Metal fatigue was later found
to be the cause of the failure. The aircraft landed safely, but the escaping air swept a stewardess to
her death and resulted in 95 injuries suffered by passengers.
1988 Darci
Pierce, who kidnapped a pregnant woman and killed her by performing a
caesarean section with a car key to steal her baby (which she tried to pass off
as her own) was sentenced to 30 years for murder, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
1988
Sian Edwards, at the age of 28, became the first woman to conduct at the Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden, London.
1989First Workers Memorial
Day, an international day of remembrance for those who have been injured or died
on the job, and to renew the fight for safe workplaces, drawing attention to the
plight of the 335,000 workers worldwide who die and millions who are injured
every year as a result of their work.
The only good
thing that came out of it was that the Australian government decided to bring in
strict laws against long-arm automatic weapons, and since then there has been a dramatic decline in
gun deaths in Australia, although there is still a problem with still-legal
firearms, including handguns.
Wendy
Scurr
was at the Broad Arrow Café that day and treated the wounded – she was almost
shot herself; yet she raises many serious questions about the official version.
Her name shows up in a lot of gun nut websites, but it's still an interesting
angle (my own view is that the conspiracy theories are baseless). The question remains: how could an intellectually impaired, non-shooter
have killed 35 people, wound another 22 and stop two cars with only 64 bullets?
"Martin Bryant, an intellectually impaired registered invalid with no training in the use of high powered assault weapons, could not under any circumstances have achieved or maintained the incredibly high and consistent killed-to-injured ratio and kill-rate which were bench marks of the
Port Arthur massacre." This site questions the whole official version and suggests a
conspiracy
"In less than thirty
minutes at six separate crime scenes, 35 people were shot dead, another 22
wounded, and two cars stopped with a total of only 64 bullets. A moving Daihatsu
4WD driven by Linda White was crippled by a 'Beirut Triple', normally
reserved for dead-blocking Islamic terrorists driving primed car bombs around
the Lebanon.
"One sighting shot, a
second to disable the driver, and a third to stop the engine before the primed
car bomb can hit its target and explode. Very few people know of this technique,
and only a handful of experts can master it with only three bullets.
"This awesome display of combat marksmanship was blamed on an
intellectually impaired young man called Martin Bryant, who had no shooting or
military experience at all."Source
"These alternative theories have generally been
discredited by the mainstream media and the authorities as utterly ridiculous
and without foundation. The Government
of Tasmania, the Tasmania
Police, the prosecutorDamian
Bugg and Bryant's own defence lawyer John Avery have all dismissed theories
which suggest Bryant was not acting alone, saying that the evidence simply does
not support any of the conclusions reached by the theorists.
The Sporting
Shooters' Association of Australia has also refuted all conspiracy theories
surrounding the massacre, stating that like most mainstream Australians, they
regarded the claims as 'ludicrous'."
Source
Port Arthur Massacre - Deceit Or Terrorism? (Google Video)"This video
has a first hand witness to the massacre and she tells of her ordeal and the
events that happened that day as she recalls them. Also a former Police Member
goes through the detail and proposes some questions that challenge the official
story."
2005
USA: "The US Army Inspector General, on the one year anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal, announces that no senior US military officer will be held accountable; only Brigadier General Janis Karpinski is relieved of her command and reprimanded. The transparent and utterly shameful whitewash provokes an eloquent denunciation by commentator Joe
Conason: 'In this disgraceful story, accountability diminishes with every ascending link in the chain of command. Miller and Sanchez at least were criticized in official reports, but Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and Gonzales haven't endured even that degree of discomfort. They haven't even been investigated. Instead, all three have been rewarded and lavishly praised by the president. Tenet got the Medal of Freedom. Gonzales got a promotion from White House counsel to attorney general. And Rumsfeld, despite widespread bipartisan demands for his resignation, got to keep his job. The failure of our
"system" in this scandal has not been confined to the White House or the Pentagon, awful as their failures are. Although traditional news organizations such as CBS News, the
New Yorker magazine and a few newspapers deserve tremendous credit for their reporting on Abu Ghraib and its sequels, most of the American media has conspicuously hesitated to emphasize this story or to confront the responsible officials. It was remarkable to read the transcript of Rumsfeld's press briefing this week, which reveals the extent of journalistic timidity on this topic. No doubt emboldened by this weakness, Rumsfeld recently placed unprecedented restrictions on the First Amendment freedoms of reporters covering the court-martial of a sergeant at Fort Bragg. On the anniversary of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the only appropriately outraged editorial in any major publication appeared in the
Washington Post, a paper whose editorial support for the Iraq war hasn't diminished its desire to see national honor restored. And then there is Congress, which might once have been expected to enforce accountability on rogue officialdom. Not any more. The House of Representatives is entirely useless under its current leadership, except to echo the excuses of the executive branch and perform whatever favors its corporate sponsors have
bought.'" A
Chronology of US War Crimes & Torture, 1975-2005
Professor Tom O'Hare, University of Texas at
Austin
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4
feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that
gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and
the US railroads were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the
first rail lines were built by the same people who built the
pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who
built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for
building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if
they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some
of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the
old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance
roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their
legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match
for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war
chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they
were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United
States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from
the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.
Specs and Bureaucracies live forever.
... and it gets better
(unknown)
So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what
horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the
Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to
accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story. . . .
There's an interesting extension of the story about railroad
gauge and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on
the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the
sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or
SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The
engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a
bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory
to the launch site. The railroad line to the factory runs through a
tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.
The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad
track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most
advanced transportation system was determined by the width of a
horse's ass!
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Festival
of Floralia
(Florifertum; Floral Games), Roman Empire (Apr 28 - May 3)
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