Carpe diem!

5

Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

Open links in a New Window

Today is

April 5th. When the next Dawn shall have shone in the sky, and the stars have vanished, and the Moon shall have unyoked her snow white steeds, he who shall say, "On this day of old the temple of Public Fortune was dedicated on the hill of Quirinus", will tell the truth.
Ovid, Fasti, IV. 373   Roman calendar

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

A Guide to the Passion

The Pagan Prosperity

Spellcraft

The Encyclopedia of Saints

Daily Everything

To support this project
Search by keywords for books, music, computers, software, home and family products and much more.

 

 

Search for posters

An Inconvenient Truth
By Al Gore; DVD & book

The Permaculture Home Garden
By Linda Woodrow

Ghost Plane

A Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy

Remotely Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives and What We Can Do About It

What Would Jefferson Do?
By Thom Hartmann

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

Pagan Christianity

For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
By James Yee

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 Price of Loyalty

The Torture Debate in America

Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them
Philippe Legrain

Hello Laziness!
By Corrine Maier

The Great War for Civilisation
By Robert Fisk

A Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy

When Corporations Rule the World

Alternatives to Economic Globalization

Feminism Without Borders

The Skeptic's Dictionary

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Adventures in a TV Nation
Michael Moore

Drawing Down the Moon

Globalization/Anti-Globalization


More books, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, music, posters, etc at  
Cafe Diem!

Celtic Daily Prayer

Dude, Where's My Country?

Photo of the day

Mother Earth Spirituality

Rich Media, Poor Democracy
Robert McChesney

Shamanism

10 Reasons to Abolish the IMF & World Bank

Allen Ginsberg in America

Howl and Other Poems

Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958-1960

Click to promote 
your blog or website 
another excellent 
way we do

First Monday in April is unlucky

Although today was a day of good fortune in ancient Rome, not so in Elizabethan England, when the first Monday in April was considered particularly unlucky – the day that Cain slew Abel, as depicted at right in this painting by Titian.

We note too, that on Qing Ming Day in China (see below), it's considered unlucky to conduct important business, or to have an operation. Unhappy spirits, especially those with unfinished business, wander the earth at this time. Or, so it is said.

Cain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In stories common to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions, Cain (Hebrew קין Kayin or Qayin) is the eldest son of Adam and Eve, and the first man born in creation according to the Genesis. In the Hebrew language, Cain means "acquisition."

He was a tiller of the land while his younger brother Abel was a shepherd. God's rejection of Cain's sacrifice of fruit and grain in preference to Abel's blood sacrifice of a lamb drove Cain to murder his brother in a jealous rage. When God later questioned Cain as to his brother's whereabouts, Cain answered, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

In punishment, God condemned Cain to wander the earth forever, giving him the mark of Cain that turned the earth and all its living creatures against him. Cain protested that his punishment was too harsh, and God relented, allowing Cain to settle at last in the Land of Nod, where he founded the city of Enoch.

In popular mythology, although it is unspecified in the Bible, Cain's mark is red hair. He is also thought to have fathered the Biblical races of giants and monsters – the so-called children of Cain.

Cain and Abel: Scriptures and Folktales

Medieval Unlucky Days ('dies Ægyptiacus; Egyptian Days')

"That peculiar phase of superstition which has regard to lucky or unlucky, good or evil days, is to be found in all ages and climes, wherever the mystery-man of a tribe, or the sacerdotal caste of a nation, has acquired rule or authority over the minds of the people.

"All over the East, among the populations of antiquity, are to be found traces of this almost universal worship of luck. It is one form of that culture of the beneficent and the maleficent principles, which marks the belief in good and evil, as an antagonistic duality of gods. From ancient Egypt the evil or unlucky days have received the name of 'Egyptian days.' Nor is it only in pagan, but in Christian times, that this superstition has held its potent sway. No season of year, no month, no week, is free from those untoward days on which it is dangerous, if not fatal, to begin any enterprise, work, or travel. They begin with New-Year's Day, and they only end with the last day of December. Passing over the heathen augurs, who predicted fortunate days for sacrifice or trade, wedding or war, let us see what our Anglo-Saxon forefathers believed in this matter of days. A Saxon MS. (Cott. MS. Vitell, C. viii. fo. 20) gives the following account of these Dies Mali - "Three days there are in the year, which we call Egyptian days; that is, in our language, dangerous days, on any occasion whatever, to the blood of man or beast. In the month which we call April, the last Monday; and then is the second, at the coming in of the month we call August; then is the third, which is the first Monday of the going out of the month of December. He who on these three days reduces blood, be it of man, be it of beast, this we have heard say, that speedily on the first or seventh day, his life he will end. Or if his life be longer, so that he come not to the seventh day, or if he drink some time in these three days, he will end his life; and he that tastes of goose-flesh, within forty days' space his life he will end.'

"In the ancient Exeter Kalendar, a MS. [manuscript] said to be of the age of Henry II, the first or Kalends of January is set down as 'Dies Mala.'

"These Saxon Kalendars give us a total of about 24 evil days in the 365; or about one such in every fifteen. But the superstition 'lengthened its cords and strengthened its stakes'; it seems to have been felt or feared that the black days had but too small a hold on their regarders; so they were multiplied.

"'Astronomers say that six days of the year are perilous of death; and therefore they forbid men to let blood on them, or take any drink; that is to say, January 3^rd, July 1^st, October 2^nd, the last of April, August 1^st, the last day going out of December. These six days with great diligence ought to be kept, but namely [mainly?] the latter three, for all the veins are then full. For then, whether man or beast be knit in them within 7 days, or certainly within 14 days, he shall die. And if they take any drinks within 15 days, they shall die; and if they eat any goose in these 3 days, within 40 days they shall die; and if any child be born in these 3 latter days, they shall die a wicked death. Astronomers and astrologers say that in the beginning of March, the seventh night, or the fourteenth day, let the blood of the right arm; and in the beginning of April, the 11^th day, of the left arm; and in the end of May, 3^rd or 5^th (lay, on whether arm thou wilt; and thus, of all the year, thou shalt orderly be kept from the fever, the falling gout, the sister gout, and loss of thy sight.'
Book of Knowledge, b. 1. p. 19.

"Those who may be inclined to pursue this subject more fully, will find an essay on 'Day-Fatality,' in John Aubrey's Miscellanies, in which he notes the days lucky and unlucky, of the Jews, Greeks, Romans, and of various distinguished individuals of later times.

"In a comparatively modern MS. Kalendar, of the time of Henry VI, in the writer's possession, one page of vellum is filled with the following, of which we modernise the spelling:

"These underwritten be the perilous day's, for to take any sickness in, or to be hurt in, or to be wedded in, or to take any journey upon, or to begin any work on, that he would well speed. The number of these days be in the year 32; they be these:

• In January there be 7: 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 5^th, 7^th, 10^th, and 15^th.
• In February be 3: 6^th, 7^th, and 18^th.
• In March be 3: 1^st, 6^th, and 8^th.
• In April be 2: 6^th and 11^th.
• In May be 3: 5^th, 6th, and 7^th.
• In June be 2: 7^th and 15^th.
• In July be 2: 5^th and 19^th.
• In August be 2: 15^th and 19^th.
• In September be 2: 6^th and 7^th.
• In October is 1: 6^th.
• In November be 2: 15^th and 16^th.
• in December be 3: 15^th, 16^th, and 17^th

"The copyist of this dread list of evil days, while apparently giving the superstition a qualified credence, manifests a higher and nobler faith, lifting his aspiration above days and seasons; for he has appended to the catalogue, in a bold firm hand of the time 'Sed tamen in Domino confide.' (But, notwithstanding, I will trust in the Lord.) Neither in this Kalendar, nor in another of the same owner, prefixed to a small MS. volume containing a copy of Magna Charta, &c., is there inserted in the body of the Kalendar anything to denote a 'Dies Mala.' After the Reformation, the old evil days appear to have abated much of the ancient malevolent influences, and to have left behind them only a general superstition against fishermen setting out to fish, or seamen to take a voyage, or landsmen a journey, or domestic servants to enter on a new place--on a Friday. In many country districts, especially in the north of England, no weddings take place on Friday, from this cause. According to a rhyming proverb, 'Friday's moon, come when it will, comes too soon.' Sir Thomas Overbury, in his charming sketch of a milkmaid, says. 'Her dreams are so chaste, that she dare tell them; only a Friday's dream is all her superstition; and she consents for fear of anger.' Erasmus dwells on the 'extraordinary inconsistency' of the English of his day, in eating flesh in Lent, yet holding it a heinous offence to eat any on a Friday out of Lent.

"The Friday superstitions cannot be wholly explained by the fact that it was ordained to be held as a fast by the Christians of Rome. Some portion of its maleficent character is probably due to the character of the Scandinavian Venus Freya, the wife of Odin, and goddess of fecundity. But we are met on the other hand by the fact that amongst the Brahmins of India a like superstitious aversion to Friday prevails. They say that 'on this day no business must be commenced.' And herein is the fate foreshadowed of any antiquary who seeks to trace one of our still lingering superstitions to its source. Like the bewildered traveller at the cross roads, he knows not which to take. One leads him into the ancient Teuton forests; a second amongst the wilds of Scandinavia; a third to papal, and thence to pagan Rome; and a fourth carries him to the far east, and there he is left with the conviction that much of what is old and quaint and strange among us, of the superstitious relics of our fore-elders, has its root deep in the soil of one of the ancient homes of the race."

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 belief in lucky and unlucky days appears to have been first taught by the magicians of ancient Chaldea, and we learn from history that similar notions affected every detail of primitive Babylonian life, thousands of years before Christ. Reference to an 'unlucky month' is to be found in a list of deprecatory incantations contained in a document from the library of the royal palace at Nineveh. This document is written in the Accadian dialect of the Turanian language, which was akin to that spoken in the region of the lower Euphrates; a language already obsolete and unintelligible to the Assyrians of the seventh century B. C. Certain days were called Dies Egyptiaci, because they were thought to have been pronounced unlucky by the astrologers of ancient Egypt.

"In that country the unlucky days were, however, fewer in number than the fortunate ones, and they also differed in the degree of their ill-luck. Thus, while some were markedly ominous, others merely threatened misfortune, and still others were of mixed augury, partly good and partly evil. There were certain days upon which absolute idleness was enjoined upon the people, when they were expected to sit quietly at home, indulging in dolce far niente.

"The poet Hesiod, who is believed to have flourished about one thousand years B. C., in the third book of his poem, 'Works and Days,' which is indeed a kind of metrical almanac, distinguishes lucky days from others, and gives advice to farmers regarding the most favorable days for the various operations of agriculture. Thus he recommends the eleventh of the month as excellent for reaping corn, and the twelfth for shearing sheep. But the thirteenth was an unlucky day for sowing, though favorable for planting. The fifth of each month was an especially unfortunate day, while the thirtieth was the most propitious of all.

"Some of the most intelligent and learned Greeks were very punctilious in their observance of Egyptian days. The philosopher Proclus (A.D. 412-480) was said to be even more scrupulous in this regard than the Egyptians themselves. And Plotinus (A. D. 204-270), another eminent Grecian philosopher, believed with the astrologers of a later day, that the positions of the planets in the heavens exerted an influence over human affairs.

"In an ancient calendar of the year 334, in the reign of Constantine the Great, twenty-six Egyptian days were designated. At an early period, however, the church authorities forbade the superstitious observance of these days.

"Some of the most eminent early writers of the Christian Church, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Chrysostom, were earnest in their denunciation of the prevalent custom of regulating the affairs of life by reference to the supposed omens of the calendar. The fourth council of Carthage, in 398, censured such practices; and the synod of Rouen, in the reign of Clovis, anathematized those who placed faith in such relics of paganism.

"We learn on the authority of Marco Polo that the Brahmins of the province of Laristan, in southern Persia, in the thirteenth century, were extremely punctilious in their choice of suitable days for the performance of any business matters. This famous traveler wrote that a Brahmin who contemplated making a purchase, for example, would measure the length of his own shadow in the early morning sunlight, and if the shadow were of the proper length, as officially prescribed for that day, he would proceed to make the purchase; otherwise he would wait until the shadow conformed in length to a predetermined standard for that day of the week.

"The Latin historian, Rolandino (1200-76), in the third book of his 'Chronicle,' describes an undertaking which resulted disastrously because, as was alleged, it was rashly begun on an 'Egyptian day.' There is frequent mention of these days in many ancient manuscripts in the Ambrosian Library at Milan.

"In a so-called 'Book of Precedents,' printed in 1616, fifty-three days are specified as being 'such as the Egyptians noted to be dangerous to begin or take anything in hand, or to take a journey or any such thing.' An ancient manuscript mentions twenty-eight days in the year 'which were revealed by the Angel Gabriel to good Joseph, which ever have been remarked to be very fortunayte dayes either to let blood, cure wounds, use marchandizes, sow seed, build houses, or take journees.'

"Astrologers formerly specified particular days when it was dangerous for physicians to bleed patients; and especially to be avoided were the first Monday in April, on which day Cain was born and his brother Abel slain; the first Monday in August, the alleged anniversary of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; and the last Monday in December, which was the reputed birthday of Judas Iscariot.

"In Mason's 'Anatomic of Sorcerie' (1612), the prevailing notions on this subject were characterized as vain speculations of the astrologers, having neither foundation in God's word nor yet natural reason to support them, but being grounded only upon the superstitious imagination of men. A work of 1620, entitled 'Melton's Astrologaster,' says that the Christian faith is violated when, like a pagan and apostate, any man 'doth observe those days which are called Egyptiaci, or the calends of January, or any month, day, time, or year, either to travel, marry or do anything in.' And the learned Sir Thomas Browne, in his 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica,' published in 1658, declaimed in quaint but forcible language against the frivolity of such doctrines."
Robert Means Lawrence, The Magic of the Horse-Shoe, With Other Folk-Lore Notes, 1898; 'Days Of Good And Evil Omen: 1. Egyptian Days'

Folklore of Friday the 13^th at the Scriptorium

Festival of Megalesia (Magna Mater) of Cybele (Apr 4 - 10), ancient Rome

Die nefasti, ancient Rome
"This is one of the dies nefasti ... a day on which no legal action or public voting could take place. The rex sacrorum would appear on the steps of the Capitol on this day and announce to the people what days of the months would be holidays."   Source

Orthodox : Earliest possible Orthodox Easter (3/23 OS)

Feast of St Albert of Montecorvino

Feast day of St Becan, of Ireland, abbot

Feast of St Derferl-Gadarn

Feast of St Ethelburga of Lyminge (Æthelburg of Kent; Æthelburh, Ædilburh)
She was the daughter of St Ethelbert of Kent and the Merovingian Bertha and the sister of Eadbald. Ethelburga’s marriage to Edwin of Northumbria in 625 triggered the conversion of the north of England to Christianity. Lyminge is a village in southeast Kent. Not to be confused with another St Ethelburga of Kent, nor Ethelburga of Barking.

Feast day of St Gerald of Sauve-Majeure, near Lyon

Feast of St Irene

Feast of St Maria Crescentia Hoss

Feast of the Martyrs of Lesbos

Feast of the Martyrs of London

Feast of St Pausilippus

Feast of St Theodore

Feast day of St Tigernach, of Ireland

Feast of St Vincent Ferrer, of Spain, confessor
(Yellow crown imperial, Fritillaria imperialis lutea, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Living around 1350 - April 5, 1419, this Vincent had prominence at the court of Aragon. On one occasion, the wife of King Juan of Aragon, Queen Yolande, was curious to see inside his cell. Vincent refused as he had never had a woman there before, so she had the door forced and went in, but she could not see him although the other monks could. Or, so it is said.  See below, On This Day in History, 1419.

Feast of St Zeno

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints 

First weekend of April, Katori-Jingu-Otauesai (Katori-Jingu) Rice-planting Festival, Katori-Jingu Shrine, Sawara-shi, Chiba, Japan

"Festivals held to pray for a bountiful harvest of rice can be seen everywhere in Japan. A group of womem clad in traditional farmer's costume (called Taue-onnna) plant rice seedlings in a rice paddy to the accompaniment of drums and flutes(called Ohayashi), and rice-planting songs."   Source

Six Ringings Festival, Zürich, Switzerland
Boog (Old Man Winter), a giant snowman stuffed with explosives, is jeered, taunted, and then blown up. There is much feasting and revelry.

Sunning of the Buddha, Tibet
Lamas bring Buddha statues out of temples of abstract tranquillity to enjoy the sun.

Feast day of the goddess Kwan Yin, China

"Chinese: KWAN-YIN. (Perp. Fest. Cal.) "April 5th. KwanShi-Yin, Goddess of Mercy". (Fell. of Isis Dir.) "April 5th: Kwan Yin (Chinese), Kwannon (Japanese). Mercy. Toleration, Understanding".

Source

"Each year on this day, the Chinese Goddess of healing, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, Kwan Yin, is invoked during the Festival of Kwan Yin for protection, love, mercy, and wisdom. Incense and violet-colored candles are placed as offerings on her alter, along side rolled pieces of rice paper upon which the wishes of worshipers have been written."   Source

Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days

Qingming Festival in the Chinese calendar

Qing Ming Jie (English name used in Hong Kong: Ching Ming Festival; pinyin: qīng míng jié), literally Pure Brightness Festival, is a traditional Chinese festival on the 106^th day after the winter solstice, occurring on April 4 (leap years) or April 5 (other years) of the Gregorian calendar (see Chinese calendar). It marks the middle of spring and above all, a sacred day of the dead. It is not a public holiday in Communist China but is in Taiwan, as well as in the Chinese SARs, Hong Kong and Macau.

Tomb-Sweeping Day is the most common English translation and is used in several English language newspapers published in the Republic of China.

For the Chinese, it is a day to remember and honour one's ancestors. Young and old pray before the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer food and libation to the ancestors. The rites are very important to most Chinese and especially farmers.

The April Fifth Movement and the Tiananmen Incident were major events involving Qing Ming Jie that took place in the history of the People's Republic of China. When Premier Zhou Enlai passed away in 1976, thousands visited him during the festival to pay respect. In the Republic of China, April 5th coincides with the passing of Chiang Kai-shek and the date is designated as a national holiday.

On a note, the Chinese communities in South-East Asian nations such as Singapore and Malaysia also practice this custom. However the practice is in decline in these regions.

Source: Wikipedia

Death of Chiang Kai-shek/Qing Ming, Tomb-Sweeping Day, Taiwan

"In ancient times, people celebrated Qing Ming Jie with dancing, singing, picnics, and kite flying. Colored boiled eggs would be broken to symbolize the opening of life. In the capital, the Emperor would plant trees on the palace grounds to celebrate the renewing nature of spring. In the villages, young men and women would court each other. With the passing of time, this celebration of life became a day to the honor past ancestors. Following folk religion, the Chinese believed that the spirits of deceased ancestors looked after the family."   Source

"The Chinese respect for filial piety and careful attention to funeral rites is visibly manifested in the custom of ancestor worship. Since ancient times, a day has been designated for sweeping the tomb and honoring one's ancestors. Though different in each family, these rites are usually performed on the first few days prior to or following Ching Ming, one of the traditional solar divisions falling in early April, when the frost retreats and spring returns bringing renewal to all living things. In 1935, the government of the ROC designated Ching Ming as Tomb Sweeping Day to further heighten the significance of this occasion.

"After Taiwan transformed from an agrarian- to industrial-based economy, many of the older customs were gradually neglected. Tomb Sweeping Day, however, has retained its deep meaning in modern Chinese society, as the numerous families carrying out cleaning and worship rites at cemeteries during this time will testify. The Central Government Prayer Service is also held on this day, amply evidencing the deep respect with which the Chinese view their roots.

"Since most cemeteries are located on hillsides in the countryside or outskirts of town, upon completing the Tomb Sweeping Day rites, many families will take advantage of the fine spring weather by going on a family outing. These trips have become an important part of Tomb Sweeping Day as a time for families to enjoy time together.

"The foods offered on Tomb Sweeping Day vary by region. In Taiwan, the most common dishes are the distinctive 'grave cakes' and jun ping.

"Tomb Sweeping Day combines the people's reverence for their ancestors and for nature and is a reaffirmation of the Chinese ethic of filial piety. Today, Tomb Sweeping Day is a time not only for worship and maintaining the tombs of ancestors, but also a tangible expression of filial respect for the teachings and virtues of forebears."   Source  

Image above: Detail from Qingming Festival on the River, by Zhang Zeduan probably c. late-11th century. It depicts the festival of Qing Ming in the city of Bianliang (modern day Keifeng).

Hell money is used at certain Chinese fests such as Ching Ming (Qingming). Here's some background (click thumbnail to enlarge).

"Hell Money 'the Chinese believed Hell was the English term for the Afterlife. The word was incorporated and printed on the traditional Chinese Afterlife Monetary Offerings, otherwise known as Hell Bank Notes.'"

Posted by dhruva at Metafilter

Related: Double Nine Day (Double Ninth Festival), another tomb-sweeping occasion in Asia, September 9 in the Book of Days

Chinese holidays    More

Nagasaki Takoage, or Kite-Flying Event, Nagasaki, Japan (Apr 3 - 29)

First Day of Summer, Iceland

The last day of the tax year, United Kingdom

1479 Guru Amar Das (d. 1574), third Sikh Guru

1588 Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), English mathematician, philosopher and author (Leviathan).

Hobbes was born on Good Friday, 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. It was said his birth was hastened by his mother's terror of the enemy's fleet. He was a timid person, and said that he and Fear were born together.

A precocious child, he translated the Medea of Euripides from the Greek into Latin while still a boy, and at 15 went to Oxford. In 1628, he and Ben Jonson published their translation of Thucydides.

He took up maths in middle age, and imagined he had discovered the quadrature of the circle – squaring the circle – an impossible concept. The Professor of Geometry at Oxford, Dr John Wallis, told him he was mistaken, but Hobbes published Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics in Oxford, to which Wallis replied in Due Correction for Mr Hobbes for not Saying his Lessons Right. Hobbes carried on his cerebral war for a quarter of a century with Wallis, the mathematician who not only devised the symbols for 'infinity' and 'less than or equal to', but also laid some of the groundwork for calculus.

Hobbes died at the age of 92.

"Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civill. London: Andrew Crooke, 1651.  

"Leviathan provoked an immediate storm of controversy – one that was to long outlive its provocateur by its refutation of Aristotle's doctrine of the essential 'sociability' of man and by its contradiction of the individualist tendencies of both the Renaissance and the Reformation. The philosophies espoused in Leviathan have never been wholly embraced by either the political left or right, yet the powerful influence they exerted on the philosophies of Spinoza, Leibniz, Bentham, and Mill is undeniable."    Source

Squaring the Circle: The War between Hobbes and Wallis

 

1607 Honoré Fabri (d. March 8, 1688), French Jesuit priest, astronomer, physicist and mathematician who was briefly imprisoned in Rome for being a Cartesian

1622 Vincenzo Viviani (d. September 22, 1703), Florentine engineer, mathematician, physicist, author of Discorso intorno al difendersi degli riempimenti e dalle corrosione degli fiumi (1687)

1692 Adrienne Lecouvreur (d. 1730), French actress

1816 Samuel Freeman Miller (d. 1890), US Supreme Court justice

1827 Lord Joseph Lister (d. 1912), English surgeon and pioneer of antiseptic use in hospitals. Invented Listerine and Tic-Tacs.

1837 Algernon Swinburne (d. April 10, 1909), Victorian era English poet and author (Atalanta in Calydon; Poems and Ballads; Songs Before Sunrise; Lesbia Brandon; 'Hymn to Proserpine'; 'The Triumph of Time')

Algernon Charles Swinburne: Works

1856 Booker T Washington (d. 1915), African-American educator and author. He was born into slavery at the community of Hale's Ford in Franklin County, Virginia. After he and his mother were freed, as a young man he made his way east from West Virginia (where she had obtained work) to obtain schooling at Hampton in eastern Virginia at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (founded in 1868), where he was a fellow student of Orpheus Myron McAdoo. In his later years, Dr Washington became a leading educator and was a prominent and popular spokesperson for African-American citizens of the United States in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. Although labelled by some activists as an "accommodator", his work cooperating with white people and enlisting the support of wealthy philanthropists helped raise funds to establish and operate dozens of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of black persons throughout the South.

Scandal of the Tuskegee syphilis study, carried out by Booker T Washington's Tuskegee Institute

1871 Mirko Seljan, Croatian explorer

1875 Mistinguett (d. 1956), French vaudeville performer

1877 Georg Faber, German mathematician

1900 Spencer Tracy (d. 1967), American actor

 

Hipsters, flipsters and finger-poppin' daddies: knock me your lobes.

 

1906 Lord Buckley (Richard Myrle Buckley; d. November 12, 1960), eccentric, joyous American monologist of the 'Beat' era. His death, probably from a stroke aggravated by malnutrition and a kidney ailment, has been often reported to relate to the seizure of his New York City Cabaret Card. He was harassed by police, as Lord Buckley's Police Station Interview, October 1960 reveals.

From Wikipedia: Occasionally performing to music and singing, he frequently punctuated his monologues with nonlinguistic vocal sounds. Most Buckley recordings are solo tours de force on themes of real gravity. His most enduring tracks are his retellings of historical or legendary events, most fictionalized to a certain degree, imbued with his scandalous and high-brow humor. Notable among these are the stories of Jesus (The Nazz), Gandhi (The Hip Gan), the Marquis de Sade (The Bad-Rapping of the Marquis de Sade, the King of Bad Cats), among others. He also retold several classic documents such as a (relatively sober) 'Gettysburg Address' and an (appropriately psychedelic) 'The Raven'. In Marc Antony's Funeral Oration, he recast Shakespeare's "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" as "Hipsters, flipsters and finger-poppin' daddies: knock me your lobes".

As a bon vivant of the jazz subculture, Buckley very much enjoyed smoking marijuana. He was given to drink to excess, then subsequently repent and abstain for a time. He wrote reports of his first experiences with LSD, under the supervision of Dr Oscar Janiger; and his trip in an Air Force jet. Throughout his life he maintained an almost unnerving dignity, even while receiving visitors in the nude, as he was wont to do. He was a notoriously bad manager of money, constantly in debt, and died owing $300,000 to Ed Sullivan (who reflected "... he was impractical as many of his profession are, but the vivid Buckley will long be remembered by all of us.").

"In addition to 'The Nazz,' Buckley employed his distinctive and compelling brogue to salute Gandhi ('The Hip Gahn' [sic]), Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca ('The Gasser'), The Old Testament ('Jonah and the Whale'), ancient Rome ('Nero'), Edgar Allen Poe ('Po' Eddie and the Bugbird'), Albert Einstein ('The Hip Einie'), William 'Willie The Shake' Shakespeare ('Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger-Poppin Daddies'), Charles Dickens ('Scrooge'), Abraham 'Lanky Linc' Lincoln ('Gettysburg Address'), and the Marquis de Sade ('The Bad-Rapping of ...'). Alternately, Lord Buckley crafted other forms of expression which drew on Americana ('The Train'), pathology ('Murder'), psychology ('Subconscious Mind'), politics ('Governor Slugwell'), racial inequity ('Black Cross'), sexuality ('Chastity Belt'), and transcendence ('God's Own Drunk')."   Source

• "October 19, 1960  His 'Cabaret Card' revoked by New York City Police, purportedly because of his 1941 arrest but more likely because of failure to pay required bribe, Buckley is barred from performing. Buckley later attempts to convince the desk sergeant at the local precinct to reinstate his Card. His 'agent,' Harold Humes, records the interview and makes a transcript of the recording.
• November 3, 1960   Hearing on Buckley's Cabaret Card suspension is attended by over thirty witnesses and journalists. It is adjourned and rescheduled for November 14.
• Saturday, November 12, 1960   Lord Buckley dies in New York City after suffering a stroke aggravated by malnutrition and a kidney ailment.
• Sunday, November 13, 1960   Enraged by the treatment of Lord Buckley a 'Citizens' Emergency Committee' meets in the apartment of George Plimpton to fight the Police Department Cabaret Card system.
• Monday, November 14, 1960   Hearing for posthumous reinstatement of Buckley's cabaret card results in a raucous confrontation between Police Commissioner Kennedy and a large crowd of writers, musicians and others enraged at the Police Department's treatment of Buckley. The publicity leads to the reform of the licensing system, the abolition of the "Cabaret Card," and the removal of Kennedy.
• December 1960   Memorial for Lord Buckley at The Village Gate in New York City is attended by many cultural luminaries. Dizzy Gillespie and Ornette Coleman perform."
  Source: A Lord Buckley chronology

LordBuckley.com    Lord Buckley rides again!    Lord Buckley's Mind Bubbles

Lord Buckley, A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat (ed. Frank Zappa)    Knock Me Your Lobes: Discography

Lord Buckley spot on NPR's Morning Edition (audio)

Buckley raps    Lord Buckley: A Chronology    More

1908 Bette Davis (Ruth Elizabeth Davis; d. 1989), American actress (Now, Voyager; All About Eve; The Virgin Queen; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?)

 "While Bette Davis was the star pupil at John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School in New York, another of her classmates was sent home because she was 'too shy.' It was pronounced that this girl would never make it as an actress. It was Lucille Ball."   Source

1908 Herbert von Karajan (d. 1989), Austrian conductor

1911 Jussi Björling (d. 1960), Swedish tenor

1912 John Le Mesurier (d. 1983), British actor

1916 Gregory Peck (d. 2003), American actor

1917 Robert Bloch (d. 1994), American author of the macabre (Psycho – loosely based on the serial murderer, Ed Gein; Strait Jacket; The Skull; The House That Dripped Blood)

"Bloch's first professional sale ('Lilies' for Marvel Tales) came in 1934, and his first sale to Weird Tales ('The Secret in the Tomb') came a few months later. He was seventeen …

"In 1959, he published a novel that proved the old adage that a boy's best friend was his mother. The title of that novel would be forever appended to his name in every interview with, or article about, him. Bloch would become 'The Man Who Wrote Psycho.'"    Source

"Many of his early stories show the influence of Edgar Allan Poe or especially of H.P. Lovecraft, with whom Bloch had correspondence since 1932. Most of the fiction Bloch published between 1935 and 1938 have much connections [sic] with the Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos."   Source

"Altogether, Bloch wrote over 220 stories collected in over 2 dozen collections, 2 dozen novels, screenplays for a dozen movies and three Star Trek episodes, a volume of essays, and the award-winning Once Around The Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography (1993).

"His many awards included one Nebula Award, two Hugos, three World Fantasy Awards (including Lifetime Achievement), and five Bram Stoker Awards. He also the [sic] received a special award at the first NecronomiCon in 1993; after his death it was renamed in his honor. He died on September 23, 1994 in Los Angeles after a long battle with cancer."   Source

Hitchcock's Psycho home page    Poe and Lovecraft, by Bloch    More

 

1920 Arthur Hailey (d. 2004), American writer

1922 Gale Storm, American singer and actress

1923 Nguyen Van Thieu (d. 2001), South Vietnamese president

1929 Nigel Hawthorne (d. 2001), British actor

1931 Boris Strugatsky (d. 1991), Russian author

1934 Frank Gorshin, American actor who played The Riddler in 1960s TV series, Batman

1937 Colin Powell, USA Secretary of State under George W Bush

Colin Powell's Mea Culpa    Colin Powell Says He Feels "Terrible" About Pro-War UN Speech

1942 Peter Greenaway, Welsh film director

1946 Jane Asher, English actress (Alfie) and one-time girlfriend of Paul McCartney

1947 Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, 14^th President of the Philippines

1949 Judith Resnik (d. 1986), astronaut

1950 Agnetha Fältskog, Swedish singer (ABBA)

1973 Pharrell Williams, American musician and producer (The Neptunes)

 

Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section

Send a free e-card greeting for today's celebrations to a loved one

Do you forget birthdays and anniversaries? Schedule your cards to be sent during the coming year.

Easter [ Varies ] Spring Birthdays Tamil New Year [ Varies ] Lady Luck Day [ Apr 5 ]

Varies Full Moon Day
Varies Friday the 13^th
Varies Holi
Varies Purim
Varies Mothers' Day (UK)
Varies Ugadi
Varies Gudi Padwa
Varies Daylight Saving Time Begins / Ends
Varies Ram Navami
Varies Palm Sunday
Varies Mawlid al-Nabi
Varies Passover
Varies Orthodox Holy Friday
Varies Good Friday
Varies Easter
Varies Baisakhi
Varies Mahavir Jayanti
Varies Hanuman Jayanti
Varies Tamil New Year
Varies Bengali New Year
Varies Malayalam New Year

April

1 April Fools' Day
5 Lady Luck Day
5 Thank Your School Librarian Day
5 Bell Bottoms Day
5 Tomb Sweeping Day
6 Animated Cartoon Day
6 California Poppy Day
6 Caramel Popcorn Day
6 International Fun At Work Day
6 Tartan Day
6 International Special Librarians' Day
7 Coffee Cake Day
7 Lets Someone Else Clean Day
7 Ham Radio Day
7 World Health Day
8 Buddha Day (Japan)
8 Hana Matsuri
9 Astronauts Day
10 Siblings Day
10 Salvation Army Founder's Day
11 Cheese Fondue Day
11 Civil Rights Day
12 Look Up At The Sky Day
12 Big Wind Day
13 Thomas Jefferson Day
14 Pecan Day
15 Tax Day (USA)
15 Fast Food Day
16 Rubber Eraser Day
16 Freak-out Day
16 Leonardo da Vinci's Birthday
17 Stress Awareness Day
17 Eggs Benedict Day
17 Birthday Of The Queen (Denmark)
18 Cheeseball Day

  ... More Events

Visit the Blogmanac, where today's Almanac is 'live'
And I hope you will sign my GuestMap

 

 

 

If you are enjoying this page, click to receive similar items daily with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine

Webmaster, webmasters free content, or else articles at very reasonable rates
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your website or publication, on application. Further details

 

2348 BCE Traditional date of the landing of Noah's Ark on Mt Ararat. (One of a number of dates: see November 25.)

1168 Death of Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester (b. 1104).

1242 During a battle on the ice of Chudskoye Lake, Russian forces rebuffed an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights.

1419 Death of St Vincent Ferrer (b. c. 1350).

1531 Richard Roose was boiled to death for trying to poison an archbishop.

1603 King James I released from prison the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's erstwhile patron.

1607 The first foreign performance of a Shakespeare play: Hamlet was performed aboard the British Ship Dragon off the coast of Sierra Leone.

1614 The Marriage of Pocahontas

Pocahontas is known throughout the world, especially to Americans and Britishers, as an example of friendly relations between the races as well as an epitome of the Rousseauvian 'noble savage'. Her images adorn Washington's Capitol building in portraits and friezes, and she has been a character in numerous dramas, beginning in the 17^th Century with Ben Jonson.

In 1995, Walt Disney’s studios made an animated movie of the famous Smith-Pocahontas tale, in which the native princess is portrayed as a rather voluptuous and beautiful woman. Her body is scarcely contained within a buckskin outfit that is not only split on both sides of its skirt, but is several inches shorter than the dresses of the other women in Disney’s unhistorical Indian tribe. We know that when Captain John Smith, 42, met her, Pocahontas was only 11 years old, and we also know that she did not resemble Disney’s ridiculous heroine. (There are numerous assertions on the Internet that Smith raped her and left her with a child, but I have found no verification of these.)

The only portrait known to have been made while she was alive was an etching made in England by Dutch engraver, Simon Van de Passe (used on an American stamp in 1907), prints of which were sold at the time to the curious. Over time, images of her (as in the case of Cleopatra) were beautified to suit contemporary tastes, but John Chamberlaine, a member of the English nobility, commented that she was "no fayre [beautiful] Lady".

On April 5, 1614, at Jamestown, Virginia, one of England's earliest New World colonies, 18-year-old native Algonquin 'princess' Pocahontas married wealthy English tobacco planter, John Rolfe. Pocahontas was a nickname meaning 'naughty one' or 'spoiled child', her real name being Amonte (as she was known to her parents), or Matoaka, her clan name. She had already married an Indian warrior named Kocoum in 1610. Her aging father, the Mamanatowick (great chief) Powhatan, did not attend the wedding, although some relatives were there.

According to some, the religious 28-year-old widower, John Rolfe, had found it difficult to decide whether to marry a "strange wife", a heathen Indian, who had proclaimed her love for him. What is more likely is that after Matoaka had been treacherously captured and held hostage for more than a year, she was released, with marriage to Rolfe a condition of her freedom. Women were always in short supply in the colonies.

However that may be, the princess married one of the leading men in the early history of commercialised tobacco, after she had been converted to Christianity, "for the good of the plantation, the honor of our country, for the glory of God, for mine own salvation ..." Matoaka took, or was given, the baptismal name of Rebecca.

Some years before, in December 1607 when she was aged 11, Pocahontas/Mataoka might have been a participant in one of history's romantic moments. According to a story whose veracity is doubted by many historians but staunchly defended by others, she saved the life of 42-year-old Captain John Smith by interceding on his behalf when he was stretched out on the ground and about to be executed according to Powhatan's command. However, Indian activists claim that this incident is highly unlikely and Smith invented it as "justification to wage war on Powhatan's Nation", and that he only did so "after her death and her fame in London society" – which was at least eight years after the alleged incident ...

Read on at the Pocahontas page at the Wilson's Almanac Scriptorium

Romance of Pocahontas by John Smith    Disney's Pocahontas reviewed

Pocahontas: History vs. Disney    Distortions of native wisdom in Disney's Pocahontas

Typecast: Representations of the Indian Princess and Easy Squaw

Turtle Island Native Network    Four faces of Pocahontas    John Rolfe

 

1617 Death of Alonso Lobo, Spanish composer.

1621 The Mayflower set sail from Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts on a return trip to England, arriving back on May 6, 1621.

1654 The signing of the Treaty of Westminster, ending the First Anglo-Dutch War.

1697 Death of King Charles XI of Sweden (b. 1655).

1751 Adolf Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp crowned himself king of Sweden.

1753 The British Museum was formed (opened in 1759).

1762 The British took Grenada, West Indies, from the French.

1792 US President George Washington vetoed a bill designed to apportion representatives among US states. This was the first time the presidential veto was used in the United States.

1794 Georges Jacques Danton, French revolutionist, was guillotined as a traitor.

 

1795 The Prince of Wales, later to become King George IV (1762 - 1830), met his first cousin and future bride, Caroline of Brunswick (pictured; 1768 - 1821), at St James Palace. He was unimpressed with her, saying to the courtier who introduced them, "Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy." George and Caroline were married three days later.

The Prince married his cousin only to convince Parliament to pay off his debts of £650,000. Their marriage was a disaster, both parties being disgusted with one another at their first meeting. After doing their official duty for a period of a few days, they lived apart for the rest of Caroline's life. Caroline was not attractive, but her main shortcomings in the eyes of her new husband were her lack of personal hygiene and the fact that she was apparently not a virgin. For her part, she found him fat, ugly and rude. Recently discovered correspondence of the prince's reveals that the couple only had sexual intercourse three times in the whole of their married life. The consequence of one of these meetings was Princess Charlotte Augusta, George's only legitimate child, who was born on January 7, 1796.

It was not the first marriage for this gambling and heavy drinking prince. In 1784, he had fallen in love with a widow, Maria Anne Fitzherbert (1756 - 1837), a Roman Catholic. Fitzherbert refused to become his mistress and eventually George agreed to marry her, in December 1785. However, the marriage was kept secret because, under the terms of the 1772 Royal Marriages Act, it was illegal for a member of the royal family to marry a Catholic.

 

1799 USA: The first record of a meteorite falling in the New World, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

1800 A luminous flying ship was spotted over Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. Maybe related to 1799?

1804 The first recorded meteorite fell in High Possil, Scotland (High Possil Meteorite).

1811 Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, England, the originator of Sunday schools, died, aged 76.

1815 Java, Indonesia: The Mount Tambora volcano violently erupted on the island of Sumbawa. The area within a 200-mile radius was plunged into darkness for three days by dust and ash, which fell as far as 900 miles away a week later. Approximately 10-12,000 people were killed in the initial explosion, and another 70-80,000 may have died as a result of a famine caused by extensive ash-fall on farming and grazing lands on the islands of Sumbawa and Lombok.

Source: The Daily Bleed

1859 Naturalist Charles Darwin sent to his publishers the first three chapters of On the Origin of Species.

1862 American Civil War: Battle of Yorktown – The battle began when Union forces under General George McClellan closed in on the Confederate capital Richmond, Virginia.

1869 "Johnson County, Texas – outlaw Benjamin Bickerstaff and his men roared into the town of Alvarado on this night and 'hurrahed' the town by firing weapons into the air and some into the store windows. Irate citizens spilled into the street heavily armed, warned in advance of the arrival of the gang, and gunned down several members, including Bickerstaff who was shot dead from his horse by a load of buckshot from a shotgun fired almost point blank into his face."   Source

1874 Die Fledermaus, by Johann Strauss, the Younger, premiered in Vienna.

1877 Italy: Debut of the anarchist 'Gang of Matese'. Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta, and Pietro Cesaré Ceccarelli were among the 26 dubbed the 'Gang of Matese' by the government after the town of Letino declared a social revolution and libertarian communism three days hence.

Source: Crimini e Misfatti via The Daily Bleed

1895 Oscar Wilde began his law suit for libel against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.

 

1915 During this month, writing from exile in Europe, Margaret Sanger criticized Emma Goldman for failing to provide adequate support and coverage of Sanger's legal battles. Emma called her charge "very unfair" and assured her that her magazine, Mother Earth, would stand by her.

Margaret Sanger participated in the Patterson Textile Strike of 1913, which she wrote about in Hippolyte Havel's Revolutionary Almanac. She also contributed articles to Havel's Revolt, Emma Goldman's Mother Earth, Alexander Berkman's The Blast and The Modern School magazine.

Also during this month the Organizing Junta of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, including the Magón brothers (see Ricardo Flores Magón), appealed to the readers of Mother Earth for solidarity with the Mexican revolutionary movement.

Emma also posed for a portrait by the artist Robert Henri.

Source: The Daily Bleed

 

1920 Ireland: One hundred and twenty police stations and 22 tax offices were torched to commemorate the insurrectionists of the Easter Rising.

Source: Calendar Riots

 

1923 George Herbert, 5^th Earl of Carnarvon, died of a mosquito bite.

The death of Lord Carnarvon. Was it 'the curse of King Tut'?

Lord Carnarvon was the first of more than twenty people associated with the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb to die in mysterious or tragic circumstances. Earlier, a mystic named Count Hamon had sent Carnarvon a message, which Hamon had received on November 30, 1922, by the process of automatic writing. The message read:

LORD CARNARVON NOT TO ENTER TOMB DISOBEY AT PERIL. IF IGNORED WOULD SUFFER SICKNESS; NOT RECOVER; DEATH WOULD CLAIM HIM IN EGYPT.

By 1930, only Howard Carter remained alive among those who had invaded the sanctity of King Tut's tomb.

King Tut curse debunked
"The Curse of Tutankhamen, which is supposed to have started when King Tut's tomb was discovered, and is supposed by some to have resulted in the mysterious deaths of many who participated in the discovery, has been shown to have originated in early works of science fiction that predated the discovery of the tomb by 100 years ..."  Source 

 

1923 The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company started production of balloon-tyres.

1924 F Scott Fitzgerald published 'How We Live on $36,000 a Year' in the Saturday Evening Post to help defray the expenses of high living. In the mid-1920s, Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald were spending huge amounts on entertaining.

1930 In an act of civil disobedience, Mohandas Gandhi broke British law after marching to the sea and making salt.

1932 Phar Lap, considered by many to be Australia's and New Zealand's greatest racehorse, haemorrhaged to death in California. Conjecture that the much-loved champion was deliberately poisoned continues to this day, apparently without any evidence.

In the Blood-Horse magazine ranking of the top 100 US thoroughbred champions of the 20^th Century, Phar Lap was ranked number 22. After preparations of the hide by a New York City taxidermist, the giant chestnut thoroughbred gelding's stuffed body was placed in the Australia Gallery at Melbourne Museum, his skeleton at Te Papa Tongarewa – New Zealand's National Museum – and his heart at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.

On April 23, 2008, a diary kept by Phar Lap's trainer came to public notice when it sold at auction to the Melbourne Museum for AU$37,000. Harry Telford's tonic recipe book documents the treatments given to the horse, including arsenic-laced tonic. Auctioneer Charles Leski said the potions included other ingredients like strychnine, cocaine and caffeine. In 2006, Australian Synchrotron Research scientists had said that, based on analysis of the racehore's hair, it was almost certain Phar Lap was poisoned with a large single dose of arsenic 35 hours before 'Big Red' died an agonized death. However, it has been pointed out that arsenic was quite likely used in the course of taxidermy.

More    More    And more

1936 Tupelo-Gainesville Outbreak: An F5 tornado slammed into the north side of Tupelo, Mississippi, USA, killing 233. It was the 4^th-deadliest tornado in US history.

1939 Australian prime minister, Joseph Lyons, was admitted to hospital with a 'chill'.

1944 Germans began deportation of Jews from Hungary.

1945 Cold War: Yugoslav leader Josip Broz ('Tito') signed an agreement with the USSR allowing "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory".

1949 USA: Fireside Theater debuted on television.

1949 USA: A fire in a hospital in Effingham, Illinois killed 77 people.

1951 USA: The Rosenbergs, Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death for performing espionage for the Soviet Union.

1955 Sir Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom amid indications of failing health. He refused a dukedom so that he might stay in the House of Commons.

1957 In India, Communists won the first elections in united Kerala and EMS Namboodiripad was sworn in as the first chief minister.

1960 The film Ben-Hur, starring Charlton Heston, won ten Oscars.

1964 Douglas MacArthur, US general (Pacific theatre, WWII), died, aged 84.

1969 Vietnam War: Massive antiwar demonstrations were held in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and other cities around the United States.

1971 Sicily: Mount Etna erupted.

1972 Vietnam War: North Vietnamese forces invaded Binh Long Province, launching a second front of the Nguyen Hue Offensive.

1973 Pierre Messmer became Prime Minister of France.

1976 In the People's Republic of China, the April Fifth Movement led to the Tiananmen incident.

1976 Howard Hughes, reclusive billionaire, died.

The Howard Hughes autobiography hoax
" Charles Hamilton felt that Clifford Irving was 'the most audacious forger of this or any century.' Hamilton related that Irving forged a 230,000-word 'autobiography' of Howard Hughes while Hughes was still alive and sold it to 'a top publisher (McGraw-Hill) for a vast sum of money ($750,000).' Irving also forged handwritten letters of Hughes to help promote the scheme. Hamilton commented concerning one of those letters: 'The imitation is almost flawless, capturing not only Hughes's handwriting but his atrabilious disposition.' ... When Hughes Tool Company denied the authenticity of the Irving material, McGraw-Hill 'consulted a handwriting expert who declared that the scribbling of Hughes in the letters and in the margins of the typed manuscript was authentic.

"'Then the one thing, the only thing, that Irving feared happened. Howard Hughes broke his silence for the first time in fourteen years and telephoned a reporter: "The book is a phony and Clifford Irving is a phony," said the billionaire....

"'Life magazine had bought first magazine rights, and it now demanded that McGraw-Hill consult the world-famous handwriting experts Osborn, Osborn and Osborn ... Paul Osborn and his brother Russell gave the handwriting a very careful scrutiny. ... Then they delivered their report.'"    Source

1982 A British task force set out to fight Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

1989 Vietnam announced that it would withdraw its troops from Cambodia by September.

1989 In an historic pact between the trade union Solidarity and the Polish Communist government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the unionists won the right to contest partially free elections.  

1990 Paul Newman won a court victory which allowed him to keep giving all profits from Newman foods to charity.

1992 Several hundred-thousand abortion rights demonstrators marched in Washington, DC.

1993 The Child Support Act 1991, administered by the Child Support Agency, came into effect in the United Kingdom.

 

1994 Nirvana lead singer and de facto head of the grunge generation, 27-year-old Kurt Cobain (b. 1967) committed suicide by putting a shotgun to his head and pulling the trigger, at his Seattle home.

Though the suicide verdict was accepted as the official version, it soon became apparent that his reported suicide was not an open and shut case.

Kurt and Courtney, a documentary by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield (Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer; Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam), explored allegations that Courtney Love, Cobain's widow, arranged her husband's death. Courtney Love blocked permission for Broomfield to use any of Cobain's music and ultimately had the film pulled from the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

In the words of Tom Grant, "The events surrounding the death of Kurt Cobain are filled with lies, contradictions in logic, and countless inconsistencies." Grant is a California state licensed private investigator and former detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who, on April 3, 1994,  was hired by Courtney Love, (who was in Los Angeles at the time), to locate her husband after he left a drug rehab centre in Marina Del Rey, California. Grant believes Love hired him to make it look as though she was concerned about her missing husband. Grant's website explores the case.

"Kurt Cobain left a drug rehab center in Marina Del Rey California on April 1, 1994 and was later reported missing. As you probably know, he was found dead just seven days later.

"My name is Tom Grant. I'm a California state licensed private investigator and former detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. On April 3, 1994, I was hired by Courtney Love, (who was in Los Angeles at the time), to locate her husband after he left a drug rehab center in Marina Del Rey, California. Ms. Love stayed in Los Angeles while I flew to Seattle to search for Cobain with his best friend Dylan Carlson. In fact, Carlson and I had been in the Cobain residence the night before Kurt's body was discovered in the room above the garage.

"The police immediately concluded 'suicide.' I wasn't so sure. Neither was Rosemary Carroll, Courtney Love's own entertainment attorney. Ms. Carroll was also a close friend to both Courtney and Kurt.

"Something was wrong here ... terribly wrong ..."
Source: Kurt Cobain Murder Investigation Website by Tom Grant

Cobain's body is found: 704K QuickTime Movie (160x120) 1.5M QuickTime Movie (320x240) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kcobainwasmurdered/

Justice for Kurt Cobain  More   And more

1997 American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (b 1926) ('Howl') died.

"Louis Ginsberg was a published poet, a high school teacher and a moderate Jewish Socialist. His wife, Naomi, was a radical Communist and irrepressible nudist who went tragically insane in early adulthood. Somewhere between the two in temperament was the Ginsberg's second son, Irwin Allen, born on June 3, 1926 …

"He discovered the poetry of Walt Whitman (the original Beatnik) in high school, but despite his interest in poetry he followed his father's advice and began planning a career as a labor lawyer. This was what he had in mind when he began his freshman year at Columbia University, but he fell in with a crowd of wild souls there, including fellow students Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac and non-student friends William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady. These delinquent young philosophers were equally obsessed with drugs, crime, sex and literature. Ginsberg, the youngest and most innocent member of the circle, helped them develop their literary smarts, while they helped him in turn by utterly shattering his bookish naivete."   Source

"I really would just love to get an apartment, stop working and live with Peter and write poems," was Ginsberg's reply.

"So why don't you do that?" asked the doctor.

"What happens if I get old or something?"

"You're a nice person. There's always people who will like you."

Ginsberg clearinghouse Ginsberg's FBI file AllenGinsberg.org Erowid Allen Ginsberg Vault

A Who's Who of Acid Dreams LSD Timeline 1938 - 1973 Shop Allen Ginsberg   Shop Beat Poetry More on Ginsberg  And more   Moreover

 

1998 In Japan, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge linking Shikoku with Honshu and costing about US$3.8 billion, opened to traffic, becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world.

1999 Two Libyans suspected of bringing down Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 were handed over for eventual trial in the Netherlands.

1999 In Laramie, Wyoming, USA, Russell Henderson pleaded guilty to kidnapping and felony murder in order to avoid a possible death penalty conviction for the hate crime killing of Matthew Shepard.

2003 "American troops smash Republican Guard defenders and drive through part of Baghdad, largely to show their ability to travel anywhere in Baghdad, while warplanes strike the villa of Saddam's notorious lieutenant, Ali Hassan al-Majid (aka 'Chemical Ali,' he is later believed to have been killed in the attack)."  Source

 

 

Tomorrow: Death of Richard the Lionheart

 

 Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

 

 

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.

Read more about today at Wilson's Blogmanac