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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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That,
Captain Bligh, that is the thing; I am in hell -
I am in hell. 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. ...
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. |
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 3 Roman 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), English
poet; 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. Well,
we fooled 'em for a long time!
Harper Lee, American author, born on April 28, 1926; To Kill a Mockingbird
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.
April
28 is
the 118th
day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (119th in leap years),
with 247 days remaining.
Calendar converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc
Almanac screensavers
On this day
Dictionary
I
recommend
IMDB
days
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Timelines
Conversions
Calendrica
Lunabar
Birthday calculator
When 'Source'
links on this page move address or die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Festival
of Floralia
(Florifertum; Floral Games), Roman Empire (Apr 28 - May 3)
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.
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 ...
Read on at the Floralia page at the Scriptorium
Roman festivals and notable days in the Book of Days Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days
Find an error or dead link?
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
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Highly recommended:
 To Kill a Mockingbird  Spellcraft
To support this project
By Thom Hartmann
By Robert Fisk
 Mutiny on the Bounty
Photo of the day
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A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac Contraband Days Pirate
Festival, honours the pirate Lafitte. (Unfortunately, dedicated to
the US Armed Forces.) More "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 origins
of the Jolly Roger See also International Talk Like a Pirate Day, in the Book of Days Feast day of St Adalbero
From
Wikipedia: A
Christian
tradition states that he was a prefect or high priest of
Heliopolis who sheltered the
Holy Family
at Hermopolis
during their
flight into Egypt. Local traditions at
Béziers,
France, have
Aphrodisius as having moved to that town, assigning him as the
first
Bishop of Béziers and that he was
decapitated
by a group of pagans, along with his companions, on the street now
known as Place Saint-Cyr, the site of a Roman circus used for
gladiators'
fights. There is a custom of
Feast day of St Artemius Feast day of St Cronan, abbot of Roscrea, Ireland
Feast day of St Cyril of Turov Feast day of Ss Didymus and
Theodora,
martyrs Feast day of St Gerard Feast day of St Gerard of Bourgogne Feast day of St Gianna Beretta Molla Feast day of St John Baptist Thanh Feast day of St
Louis-Marie
de Monfort Feast day of St Luchesius Feast day of St Mark of Galilee Feast day of St Pamphilus of Sulmona Feast day of St Patricius (Patrick) of bishop of Prusa (Pruse), in Bithynia, martyr Feast day of St Paul of the Cross (Traditionalist Catholics; also October 19, qv) Feast day of St Peter
Chanel Feast day of St Peter Hieu Feast day of St Pollio and others, martyrs in Pannonia Feast day of St Valeria of Milan Feast day of St Vitalis of Milan, martyr Mibu Dainembutsu Kyogen, Japan (Apr 21 - 29) Minato Matsuri, or Port Festival, Nagasaki,
Japan 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) First day of the third month of the Bahá'í calendar. End of April,
King Tides, Derby, Australia
World Day for Safety and Health at Work Global Estimates of Fatal Work Related Diseases and Occupational Accidents, World Bank Regions 2005
Workers' Memorial
Day
Arbor
Day
Edward IV pretender to throne? And Queen Lizzy? Michael Abney-Hastings, a forklift driver and former livestock manager, from the remote Australian town of Jerilderie, New South Wales (made famous in the 1879 Jerilderie Letter of bushranger Ned Kelly), is the rightful King of England, according to an historian. 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.
1630 Charles Cotton (d. 1687), English poet 1686 Michael Brokoff (d. 1721), Czech sculptor 1715 Franz Sparry (d. 1767), composer 1758 James Monroe (d. 1831) 1795 Charles Sturt (d. June 16, 1869), English-born explorer of the Australian interior, proving that all the western-flowing rivers eventually flow into the Murray River Works
by Charles Sturt at Project
Gutenberg 1801 Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1885). English politician and philanthropist, one of the best-known of the Victorian era. A factory reformer, he introduced laws in parliament to regulate conditions in coalmines, leading to the outlawing of child labour among other appalling practices previously common in Britain. He was largely responsible for the Factory Acts of 1847 and 1853, as well as the Coal Mines Act of 1842 and the Lunacy Act of 1845.
1819 Ezra Abbot (d. 1884) American Bible scholar 1874 Karl Kraus (d. 1936) journalist and author 1878 Lionel Barrymore (d. 1954), actor
1889 António de Oliveira Salazar (d. July 27, 1970), dictator of Portugal from 1932 - '68 1906 Kurt Gödel (d. 1978), mathematician 1908 Oskar Schindler (d. 1974), businessman 1922 Alistair MacLean (d. 1987), Scottish novelist, writer of successful thrillers or adventures, the best known of which is perhaps The Guns of Navarone 1923 Carolyn 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. Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list 1924 Kenneth Kaunda, the first President of Zambia (1964 - '91) 1926 Harper 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.
1930 James Baker, American politician 1937 Saddam Hussein (executed December 30, 2006), former dictator of Iraq whose period of rule came to an end when Iraq was illegally invaded by the USA and George W Bush's ridiculously named 'coalition of the willing' Saddam Hussein at History '4' '2' Day
1941 Ann-Margret (Olsson), Swedish-born Hollywood actress 1948 Terry Pratchett, OBE, bestselling English fantasy author, most renowned for his Discworld series. As of March, 2005 he had sold approximately 40 million books worldwide. 1950 Jay Leno, American comedian 1956 Jimmy Barnes (b. James Dixon Swan, in Glasgow, Scotland), Australian rock singer, formerly with the band Cold Chisel 1974 Penélope Cruz, American actress
Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section
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