 Zaraday (Discordianism)
(Discordian date: Bureaucracy 5.) Apostle Holyday of Apostle
Zarathud.
Zarathud's Enlightenment
"Before he became a hermit, Zarathud
was a young Priest, and took great delight in making fools of his
opponents in front of his followers.
"One day Zarathud took his students to a
pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She
was contentedly grazing.
"'Tell me, you dump beast,' demanded
the Priest in his commanding voice, 'Why don't you do
something worthwhile. What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?'
"Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao
replied 'MU*'.
"Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was
enlightened. Primarily because nobody could understand Chinese.
"* 'MU' is the Chinese Ideogram for
NO-THING." Source
Find today in the Discordian
Calendar in the Scriptorium
Goddess Eris/Discordia
Discordian Holydays Calendar
converter Discordian
date Perl file
 The Lychnapsia
(Lignapsia; Aset Webenut; Isis the Luminous One), ancient
Egypt
The Egyptian
Lychnapsia, or Festival of Lights, was over the centuries
transformed into the Christian day of St Clare of
Assisi (whose feast day was formerly August 12, but moved by the Catholic Church to August 11, qv).
It is a day for the lighting of candles, like Candlemas (February 2),
or Imbolc
as it is known in the Celtic tradition.
In the case of the Lychnapsia (the Graeco-Roman
term for what the Egyptions called Aset Webenut, or Aset the
Luminous One), the candles were to help Isis find her husband, Osiris,
as the Greeks called Wesir. In a festival that commenced at moonrise
the previous night, devotees also carried torches, and Aset's
temples as well as the people's homes were lit up with many bright
lamps and candles.
 Isis (the Greek name for the Egyptian
goddess Aset)
is the goddess of motherhood and fertility in ancient
Egypt. She is a life-death-rebirth deity (see Legend of Osiris and Isis).
The Kemetic Orthodox faith
celebrates this festival on the second day of the fourth month of
the season of Shomu, according to the ancient Egyptian calendar, in honour of Isis. The faithful
light candles inside small paper boats and set their candle-boats
adrift on water. The Roman Catholic Ave Maria festival
echoes the use of candle boats.
RE Witt writes, (Isis in
the Graeco-Roman World,
p. 92) "The 'Lights of Isis' were well-known. In the so-called
Calendar of Philocalus, a Latin compilation of the fourth century
(of this era), the Lychnapsia or Festival of Lights, is put on 12th
August."
On the
dating of Egyptian festivals and rites
Panathenaea,
ancient Athens, in
honour of goddess Athena
(c. Aug 8
- 17)
Today was the fifth day of this
ancient festival, and set aside for gymnastic contests. Sacrifices
of bulls were also a feature of the Panathenaea, as were horse and
chariot races, footraces, musical contests and recitations from
Homer. The prizes for the games were jars filled with oil from
Athena's sacred olive tree. Athenians also, in commemorating their
great goddess Athena, talked philosophy on this day and engaged in
cockfighting.
Hercules battles
the Lernaean
Hydra
Heraclia (Heraklia) in the
Kynosarges, ancient
Greece (Aug
12 - 19)
This was a festival honouring the god Herakles (Heracles).
In Athens there were three great public gymnasia:
Academy,
Lyceum
and Cynosarges, each of
which was consecrated to a special deity with whose statue it was
adorned. Each gymnasium became famous by association with a
celebrated school of philosophy. Plato's
teaching in the Academy has given immortality to that gymnasium; Aristotle
made the Lyceum famous down the millennia.
The Kynosarges (Cynosarges)
gymnasium was dedicated to Herakles – it was the resort of the Cynics, and situated
in the demos Diomeia
outside the walls of Athens.
It was the school for those Athenian boys who did not enjoy full
citizenship.
Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
Festival of Hercules, Roman Empire
Hercules was the name in Roman mythology of the hero Heracles
from Greek mythology, the son of Jupiter (or
Jove, the Roman name for the Greek god Zeus) and the mortal Alcmene.
He was made to perform twelve great tasks, called the Twelve Labours of Hercules and become a
god; the Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works
essentially unchanged.
Today, the
faithful sacrificed oxen to him, followed by a public feast;
however, women were excluded from sharing the sacrificial meat.
Hercules is in some ways cognate with Mithras,
the Persian god adopted by Roman soldiers, who was also honoured by
the sacrifice of bulls.
The main area of
the sky constituting the sign of Aries,
containing part of Pisces,
the Pleiades,
and the constellation of Andromeda,
may be the origin of the myth of the girdle of Hippolyte,
which forms part of The
Twelve Labours of Hercules.
"Historian and archeologist John Romer
argues convincingly that the face of Hercules still exists in the
familiar face of Jesus portrayed as a white European with straight
hair, having replaced the original image of Jesus as a
dark-skinned Palestinian with an afro, who had "a swarthy
complexion and hair like wool" common to 1st century Jews. The
Gospel John (18:3-9) explains that he could not be distinguished
from his apostles. There is, in fact, one surviving image of an
apostle, Thomas, and it remains on an inner wall of an ancient
church of the St. Thomas Christians in India. He is distinctively
portrayed as a 1st century Jew with dark skin and black curly
hair.
"On this day the Romans sacrificed oxen to
Hercules and held a public feast. Women were excluded from
sharing the sacrificial meat. On this day were consecrated
temples to Venus Victrix (Venus of Victory), Hermes Invictrix
(Mercury Invincible), Honos (Honor), Virtus (Virtue), and
Felicitas (Felicity or Happiness)."
Source
Feast day of Felicitas, Roman
Empire
Today was also a feast
day (feria)
for Felicitas, the goddess of good luck.
Feast day of St
Euplius
Martyr
(c.
304
during the
Diocletian persecution),
beheaded with St
Emidius.
Feast day of St Felicissima
Feast day of St Gracilian
Feast day of St Herculanus
of Brescia
Feast day of St Hilaria
Feast day of
Blessed Innocent XI
Feast day of St Jambert
Feast day of St James Nam
Feast day of St Karl
Leisner
Feast day of St Macarius
Feast day of St Merewenna
Feast day of St Muredach (Murtagh), first
bishop of Killala, Ireland
Feast day of St Porcarius
and companions
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
The
Glorious Twelfth
It is an old (and, one might say, outmoded) custom in the United
Kingdom for grouse-shooting to begin today. This blood sport's season ends
on December
10. Many Scots, even those who have never shot one of these
birds, honour the day worldwide. Today is
commemorated also on the Yorkshire Dales. In recent years, the
event has hit by hunt
saboteurs. The phrase Glorious Twelfth is sometimes also
used to refer to the annual Orange
Order celebrations of July
12, more commonly referred to as simply The
Twelfth.
Ponce
de Leon Day, Puerto Rico
A festival in Puerto Rico commemorates the arrival of Ponce de
Leon in 1508, a day of mixed blessings and disadvantages.
Kochi
Yosaki Matsuri, at Oji, Japan (Aug 9 - 12)
The
name of this festival is derived from a famous local folksong.
It's a time for dancing in the streets.
Old Lammas Day, Scotland (OS); handfasting
In
old Scotland, today was the day for handfast (or hand-in-fist) marriages, in which men and women could choose the person with whom
they would live for a year. If the year worked out well, they could
stay together; if it didn't, they were free to make another
choice. Handfasting is a common ceremony among Neopagan adherents
today, not necessarily with the same connotations, as it might
sometimes refer to an intended lifetime marriage.
Celtic
handfast ritual
Bride and Groom repeat the following together:
You cannot possess me for I belong to myself. But while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give. You cannot command me for I am a free person. But I shall serve you in those ways you require and the honeycomb will taste sweeter coming from my hand. I pledge to you that yours will be the name I cry aloud in the night, and the eyes into which I smile in the morning. I pledge to you the first bite from my meat and the first drink from my cup. I pledge to you my living and my dying, each equally in your care. I shall be a shield for your back, and you for mine. I shall not slander you, nor you me. I shall honor you above all others, and when we quarrel, we shall do so in private and tell no strangers our grievances. This is my wedding vow to you. This is the marriage of equals.
The Priest or Priestess says: These promises you make by the sun and the moon, by fire and water, by day and night, by land and sea. With these vows you swear, by the God and Goddess, to be full partners, each to the other. If one drops the load, the other will pick it up. If one is a discredit to the other, his own honor will be forfeit, generation upon generation, until he repairs that which was damaged and finds that which was lost. Should you fail to keep the oath you pledge today, the elements themselves will reach out and destroy you.
Source: Finn MacCool, by Morgan Llywelyn
Another handfast
ritual
Second day of Fiesta at Karies, Greece
The Queen's Birthday (Mothers'
Day), Thailand (Queen
Sirikit: national holiday)
The Glorious Twelfth (UK) -
grouse shooting season opens in Britain
Puck
Fair,
Killorglin, on the Ring of Kerry, in County Kerry, Ireland
(Aug 10
- 12)
Final
day, known as 'Scattering Day'.
International Ponce de Leon
day
Kochi Yosaki Matsuri, at Oji, Japan (Aug 9 - 12)
Defence Force Day, Zimbabwe
International Youth Day
The General Assembly of the United Nations
on December
17, 1999 in its resolution 54/120, endorsed the recommendation
made by the World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth (Lisbon,
August 8
- 12, 1998) that August 12 be declared International Youth Day. The
UN defines 'youth' as people aged between 15 and 24.
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
1503 Christian III of Denmark
and Norway (d. 1559)
1629 Tsar Alexei I of Russia (d. 1676)
1762
King George IV of England was born today but he ordered April 23,
St George's Day, to be the day of commemoration of his birthday.
The person who brought his father, King George
III, the news of the
birth of George IV was given by the delighted king a five hundred
pound bank note.
1774 Robert Southey (d.
1843), Poet Laureate of
Britain, biographer
1831
Madame
HP Blavatsky, Ukrainian-born mystic (born July 31,
OS)
"Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born on
August 12, 1831, at Dnepropetrovsk (Ekaterinoslav), Ukraine,
daughter of Colonel Peter Alexeyevich von Hahn and novelist Helena
Andreyevna (née de Fadeyev). In 1849 she married N. V. Blavatsky,
and shortly thereafter began more than 20 years of extensive
travel, bringing her into contact with mystic traditions the world
over.
"In 1873 Blavatsky arrived in New York
from Paris where, impelled by her teachers, she began her work. At
first she attempted to interest the Spiritualists in the
philosophy behind phenomena but they resented her refusal to
accept their standard explanations. In July 1875 she was urged
'to establish a philosophico-religious society,' and in the
Fall of the same year she became the principal founder, along with
H. S.
Olcott and W. Q. Judge,
of The
Theosophical Society. She devoted the rest of her life to its
humanitarian and educational objectives." Source
The Blavatsky
Archives
A skeptical
view of Blavatsky and Theosophy
Refutation
of charges against HP Blavatsky
Annie Besant:
Social visionary who lit a match
Theosophist, human rights activist, India-lover, more
1859 Katherine Lee Bates (d. 1929),
American educator and writer of lyrics of America the Beautiful. This professor of English received the
inspiration for her best known work, America the Beautiful, while
in the Rocky Mountains. She later attested that as she looked out
across the Great Plains the opening lines of the hymn floated into
her mind.
1876 Mary Roberts Rinehart (d. 1958), author
1880
Radclyffe Hall
(d.
October 7,
1943) (born Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall),
British poet and author of eight novels,
including the
lesbian novel
The Well of Loneliness.
1881 Cecil B DeMille
(d. January
21, 1959),
Hollywood film director and producer (The Ten Commandments; The War of the Worlds),
one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences (AMPAS).
His success with The Ten Commandments
(1923) showed him a good formula and he turned out epics of the
ancient Mediterranean with monotonous regularity: The Crusades,
The Sign of the Cross, King of Kings, Cleopatra and a long
list of other De Mille spectaculars.
Although married to his wife Constance for
sixty years, DeMille had long-term affairs with two other women: Jeanie Macpherson
and Julia Faye,
occasionally entertaining both women simultaneously on his yacht or
his ranch. His wife knew of the affairs, but preferred to live with
their children in the main house.
"On his first day as head of the
Lasky-Goldwyn-De Mille combine, Mr. De Mille signed three unknowns –
a $5 cowpoke named Hal Roach, an oil-field hand named Bill (Hopalong
Cassidy) Boyd and a thin-nosed teenager who called herself Gloria
Swanson. This was the nucleus around which he built his galaxy of
screen stars." NY
Times obituary
1883
Pauline Frederick (d.
September
19, 1938),
actress
best known for her Hollywood
films
1886
Keith
Murdoch (d. October
4, 1952), Australian newspaper
owner, father of Rupert
Murdoch
1887 Erwin Schrödinger (d. 1961), physicist
1892 Alfred
Lunt (d. 1977), actor
1904 Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov (d. 1918), Tsarevich,
heir to the throne of Russia
1907 Joe Besser (d.
March
1, 1988),
comic actor. When Shemp
Howard died of a sudden heart
attack in November 1955,
his brother Moe
Howard recruited Besser to join the Three Stooges, which he did briefly.
1911 Jane
Wyatt, actress
1911 Cantinflas
(Mario Moreno Reyes) (d. 1993), actor
1924 Muhammad Zia ul-Haq
(d. 1988), dictator of Pakistan
1925
Norris and Ross McWhirter, twin editors and compilers of the Guinness Book of Records
1926 John Derek (d. 1998), American
actor,
director
and photographer
1927 Mstislav Rostropovich, cellist
1927 Porter Wagoner, country and western singer
1928 Charles
Blackman, Australian painter
1928 Dan
Curtis, movie and television
producer and director
1929 Buck
Owens, American country and western singer
1930 George Soros American businessman
1931 William Goldman, screenwriter
1936
John
Poindexter, American naval officer and
Department of Defense official;
Deputy National Security Advisor and
National Security Advisor for the
Ronald Reagan
administration
1939 George Hamilton, American actor (Love at First Bite)
1949 Mark Knopfler, British rock
musician (Dire Straits)
Midi
files
1954 Pat
Metheny, guitarist
1972 Rebecca Gayheart, actress
1973 Richard Reid, alleged Al-Qaida
operative; 'the shoe bomber'
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.
Varies
Full
Moon Day
Varies
Friday
the 13th
Varies
Hindu
holidays
Varies Graduation
Varies Raksha
Bandhan
Early
August Friendship
Day
Varies
Janmashtami
Varies
Ganesh
Chaturthi
![Summer [ Jun 21 Sep 22 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_summer_1.gif) ![Independence Day (India) [ Aug 15 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_indday_india.gif) ![Raksha Bandhan [ Aug 9 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_rak.gif) ![Friendship Day [ Aug 6 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_frndshipday_1.gif) ![Janmasthami [ Aug 16 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_janmastami.jpg)
August
10
Grab
Some Nuts Day
11 Sons
And Daughters Day
11 Chinese
Valentine's Day
11 Alcatraz
Day
12 Thank
You Day
12 Aloha
Day
13 Left-Handers
Day
14 Independence
Day (Pakistan)
15 Sit
Back And Relax Day
15 Independence
Day (India)
16 True
Love Forever Day
16 Joke
Day
16 Roller
Coaster Day
17 #2
Pencil Day
19 Daffodil
Day
19 Soft
Ice Cream Day
19 Spicy
Food Day
20 Lemonade
Day
20 Zoroastrian
New Year
22 Be
An Angel Day
23 Hug
Your Sweetheart Day
23 Ride
The Wind Day
25 Kiss
And Make Up Day
26 Women's
Equality Day
26 Cherry
Popsicle Day
26 Toilet
Paper Day
27 Just
Because Day
27 Banana
Lovers Day
29
Lemon
Juice Day
29 Chop
Suey Day
30 Toasted
Marshmallow Day
31 Eat
Outside Day
... More
Events
Visit
the Blogmanac, where today's Almanac is 'live'
And
I hope you will sign my GuestMap
Your family and friends will get a
kick when they hear their own name being sung in 'Happy Birthday'!!
You can schedule your singing cards in advance, and even add your
own face to funny animations. (Pay cards)
 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
Cleopatra, from an ancient coin, and
modern poster
30 BCE Cleopatra
(Cleopatra VII of Egypt; b. December,
70 BCE / January,
69 BCE),
Egyptian queen, committed suicide.
The ancient sources generally agree that she was bitten by an asp, as were two
of her servants.
Painting: 'Death of Cleopatra', Guido
Cagnacci, 1658
875 Death of Louis II Holy Roman Emperor.
1099 First
Crusade: Battle of Ascalon – The Crusaders
defeated the Saracens
and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was established under Godfrey of Bouillon.
1121 Forces
led by David
the Builder decisively won the Battle
of Didgori, driving Ilghazi
and the Seljuk
Turks out of Georgia.
1133 Japan:
"Farmers, planting seedlings in their rice patties, watched as a saucer shaped
craft wavered in the sky. It descended rapidly, almost crashing into the ground.
As quickly as it had appeared, the craft regained stability and climbed out of
sight." Source
1323 Treaty of Nöteborg: Sweden and Novgorod (Russia) regulated
the border for the first time.
1332 Battle of Dupplin Moor: Scots under the Earl of Mar were routed by Edward
Balliol.
1484 Death
of Pope
Sixtus IV, who launched
the Spanish Inquisition in 1483.
1508 Ponce
de Leon (c. 1460 - July
1521) entered Puerto Rico.
1581 The end
of the Battle for Tlaxcala in which the Aztecs fought Cortes and lost
11,000 men in 85 days.
1612 Death
of Giovanni Gabrieli, Italian composer.
1633 Death
of Jacopo
Peri, composer.
1658 The
'Rattle Watch' -
the first police force in America was established, in New Rotterdam.
1676 King
Philip's War: In the American
colonies, Wampanoag tribe leader Metacom, known as 'King Philip' to
the English, was shot to death by white settlers, and his wife and child sold to
West Indian slave traders.
1689 Death of Pope
Innocent XI.
1768
Cook's First
Voyage: His Majesty's Bark
Endeavour
departed England, under the command of Lietenant
James Cook,
bound for Tahiti on a scientific expedition to observe and
record the
transit of Venus across the
Sun. Endeavour reached Tahiti on
April 13,
1769 and the
observations were made on
June 3. Cook
later mapped the complete New Zealand coastline, then sailed west,
reaching the southeastern coast of the
Australian continent on
April 19,
1770, and in doing so his expedition became the first recorded
Europeans to have encountered its eastern coastline.
History of Venus transits Venus Transit: Cycles of
the Heart
Viewing Venus in broad
daylight
James
Cook and the transit of Venus
transitofvenus.org More
More
1769
"Kumeyaay Indians fight with the Spaniards who have established the Mission San
Diego de Alcala in what becomes San Diego, California." Source
1770 Captain James Cook named
Lizard Island off the coast of what is now north Queensland, Australia, for the
large number of reptiles on it.
1791 African
slaves in Santo Domingo rebelled against plantation owners.
 1812 A
woman calling herself 'Lady Ludd' 'led' women in Knottingly, England in riots over high bread prices.
"No one should ever work.
"Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the
world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living
in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop
working.
"That doesn't mean we have to stop doing things.
It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic
revolution …
"The ludic life is totally incompatible with
existing reality. So much the worse for 'reality,' the gravity hole that
sucks the vitality from the little in life that still distinguishes it from
mere survival. Curiously – or maybe not – all the old ideologies are
conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most
brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they
believe in so little else.
"No one can say what would result from unleashing the
creative power stultified by work. Anything can happen."
Bob Black, The abolition
of work
(in the Scriptorium)
Source: The Daily Bleed
Luddite links
The
Luddites
RealAudio
3.0 recording of:The Ballad of Ned Ludd; stereo 16kHz, 729 kb
1822 For reasons unknown, or not made public, the British Foreign
Secretary, Lord
Castlereagh (Robert Stewart, 2nd
Marquess of Londonderry; b.
1769),
committed suicide by slitting his throat with a letter opener.
Just before, Castlereagh had told King
George IV he was
being blackmailed for the same reason for which
Percy Jocelyn, the
Bishop of Clogher was prosecuted, namely homosexual acts. Whether this was true
or a result of the paranoia he had apparently been suffering for some time, is
still unclear.
An inquest concluded that the act had been committed whilst insane,
avoiding the harsh strictures of the
felo de se verdict that would have seen the suicide victim buried with a
stake in his heart at a crossroads – an action that last occurred in 1823 before
the law was amended in the same year.
Sometime after Castlereagh's death, Lord
Byron
wrote a sarcastic quip about his grave:
- Posterity will ne'er survey
- A nobler grave than this:
- Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
- Stop, traveller, and piss.
Castlereagh is immortalised next to others in Lord Liverpool's
Cabinet in
Shelley's poem 'The
Masque of Anarchy', a poem heavily critical of, and inspired by
the Peterloo
massacre:
- I met Murder on the way –
- He had a face like Castlereagh –
- Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
- Seven bloodhounds followed him
- All were fat; and well they might
- Be in admirable plight,
- For one by one, and two by two,
- He tossed them human hearts to chew
- Which from his wide cloak he drew.
1827 Death
of William Blake (b.
1757),
visionary English poet and printmaker.
Some Blake on the WWW More
1829 Sir
James Stirling chose the site of Perth on the Swan River, Western Australia.
1831
"George Gaines, a white man the Choctaws trust, is appointed Special Agent to
supervise the 'collection and removal' of the Choctaws to the west bank of the
Mississippi River. Here they are turned over to the army. The Choctaws want
Gaines to handle the entire process. They feel he will not exploit them. George
is the younger brother of General Edmund Gaines." Source
1843 USA: The
first North American phalanx was
founded -
a commune based on ideas of French utopian socialist Charles Fourier.
1843
The Illustrated London News reported
on the famine in Ireland (An
Gorta Mor).
More
reports on An Gorta Mor, from The Illustrated London News
More
reports on An Gorta Mor, from The Times of London
1848 Death of George
Stephenson, locomotive designer.
 1851 Before the invention of
the sewing machine, clothes making and mending consumed the lives and eyesight
of countless millions of women worldwide. (Of course, sewing machines have
reared another monster, as adults and children in sweatshops
in the majority poor countries now make most of the clothes worn in the West.)
Before the sewing machine, a single shirt required many thousands of stitches to
be made. Something had to be done about it, and it was pretty clear that there
was a buck to be made.
On this day Isaac Merritt Singer (1811 -
'75), former actor
and founder of the Merritt Players, polygamist, patented his sewing
machine. Many almanacs refer to this date as the patenting or
invention of the first sewing machine, but this does not in fact seem to be the case. The
first American patent had been issued to Elias Howe (1819 - '67) some five years earlier, and Singer's machine was so similar to Howe's that
the earlier inventor sued Singer for patent infringement, and won. Howe
eventually became a multi-millionaire just as Singer had.
 The story of this great labour-saving device, one which
helped free women from some of the drudgery of the time, began long before Howe
and Singer's rivalry, however, and numerous machines had been invented over
the preceding century in various parts of the world. In 1834, American Walter Hunt
built one but would not patent it because he believed his invention would cause
unemployment.
However, although Singer was not the first man to make
a sewing machine, nor even the first in America, it was the first to be
commercially successful. Money talks, and writes history, too, as we know.
Singer had numerous wives – five or six that we know
of, depending one one's interpretation of the law – many of them
concurrently, and they bore him 18 children (that he recognized). In 1860, the
disgrace following an arrest for his violence upon one Mrs Singer caused him to
him flee to London with another. In 1875, Singer died and left an estate worth
$14,000,000.
Singer the polygamist
" The financial success gave Singer the
ability to by a mansion on Fifth Avenue, into which he moved his second
family. In 1860, he divorced his first wife, on the basis of her adultery with
Stephen Kent. He continued to live with Mary Ann, until she spotted him
driving down Fifth Avenue seated beside one Mary McGonigal, an employee, about
whom Mary Ann had well-founded suspicions, for by this time Mary McGonigal had
borne Isaac Singer five children. The surname Matthews was used for this
family. Mary Ann (still calling herself Mrs. I. M. Singer) had her husband
arrested for domestic violence. Singer was let out on bond and, disgraced,
fled for London,
taking Mary McGonigal with him. In the aftermath, another of Isaac's
families was discovered: he had a 'wife' Mary Eastwood Walters and
daughter Alice Eastwood in Lower Manhattan, who both adopted the surname 'Merritt'. By 1860, Isaac had fathered and recognized eighteen children
(sixteen of them remaining alive), by four women …
"Singer
then began seeing Mrs. Isabella Eugenie Boyer Summerville, said to have been a
model for Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty, who left her husband and
married Isaac on June 13, 1863, while she was pregnant. Mary Ann, unaccountably, did
not sue Isaac for bigamy." Source
From the Blogmanac
Olympic slave labour connection
Olympic bosses were branded hypocrites today over sports firms using
the famous five ring logo on clothes made in sweatshops.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was criticised in Athens for talking
of the 'Olympic spirit' of fairness and human values while thousands of
workers are slaving away in Far East factories.
"Campaigners say the IOC and the Olympic movement should be true to their
principles to stop the famous five rings being used on sportswear made by
firms who abuse workers ..."
Campaign
Against Slave Labour Lobbies Olympic Bosses
Play Fair
at the Olympics homepage
* Ř * Ř * Ř *
 "Athens, August 10, 2004: The Play
Fair at the Olympics campaign staged an action in Athens on the eve of the
opening of the Olympic games in solidarity with sportswear workers worldwide.
"Twenty women gathered on an Athens rooftop to mark a silent protest
staged by the Play Fair at the Olympics campaign. Play Fair held a 'sew-in',
featuring 'faceless' activists, operating sewing machines against the backdrop
of the Acropolis.
"The action was staged in order to highlight the appalling working
conditions experienced by hundreds of thousands of workers in the sportswear
industry. They face punishing work schedules, poverty wages, harassment and
discrimination on a daily basis.
"Spokespersons from the campaign commented that improvements had been
seen in the sportswear sector, but serious problems still exist, and much more
needs to be done to ensure workers' right are respected in this global
industry. They also announced that the IOC had declined to accept over half a
million signatures from campaign supporters in Athens."
Source: Indymedia Sydney
Google up some sweatshop campaign info
Permalink
of this post
1854 Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon was executed
by shooting, in regard to the Battle of Guaymas.
1856
Anthony
Faas took out a US patent on the piano accordion.
1865 British surgeon Joseph Lister demonstrated the use of carbolic
acid as an antiseptic to prevent infection of operation wounds.
1869 In a decree,
Norton I, Emperor
of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico abolished both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party
strife now existing within our realm, I do hereby dissolve and abolish the
Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby decree the
disfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than 10, nor less than five,
years, to all persons leading to any violation of this our imperial decree.
(Some sources such as this say August 4.)
 1877 Thomas Alva Edison
demonstrated his new 'phonograph'
to a group of people at his Menlo Park, New Jersey "invention factory".
They
heard the 30-year-old inventor's voice on the record cylinder recite "Mary
had a little lamb" (listen). This was the invention of Edison's that first gained him
fame.
" Edison's experiments with the telephone also got him thinking about ways to record telephone messages so they could be copied later; this was a similar idea to the devices used with the telegraph to write down the dots and dashes of Morse code. But then Edison turned the problem in a new direction and started to think about recording sound
–
any sound – as something separate. He sketched and tested and modified ways to capture sound on the surfaces of cylinders or disks.
"In 1877, one of these designs worked! He wrapped a thick sheet of tinfoil around a metal cylinder. Then, turning a crank that moved the cylinder along a screw and shouting into a cone attached to a thin diaphragm and needle (or stylus), Edison tested the new machine. When the sound waves of his speech vibrated the diaphragm, it moved the needle up and down, making dents in the tinfoil. Cranking the cylinder back to its original position and putting the needle back into the grooves it had made, Edison and his workers listened in amazement to the first recording of a human voice – Edison reciting
'Mary Had a Little Lamb!'"
Source
Picture
More
(includes audio) Play 'Edison Invents'
1877 Asaph
Hall discovered Deimos.
1883 The
last quagga
died at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
The Quagga is an extinct subspecies of the plains
zebra, which was once found in great numbers in South
Africa's Cape Province and the southern part of the Orange
Free State. It was distinguished from other zebras by having the usual vivid
stripes on the front part of the body only. In the mid-section, the stripes
faded and the dark, inter-stripe spaces became wider, and the hindquarters were
a plain brown. The name comes from a Khoikhoi word
for zebra and is onomatopoeic, being said to resemble the Quagga's
call. It is said to have mass-mated with 20 other Quaggas.
1898 Armistice
ended the Spanish-American War.
1898 The Hawaiian flag was lowered from Iolani
Palace in an elaborate annexation ceremony and replaced with the American
flag to signify the transfer of sovereignty from the Republic of Hawaii to the United
States of America.
1907 Italian
Prince Borghese won the Paris to Peking motor race, having travelled nearly
13,000 km in 62 days.
1908 The
first Model
T Ford car rolled off the assembly line. Its
roadster model sold at just $US825, extremely cheap for a family car at the
time, which fulfilled Henry Ford's dream of bringing motoring to the masses.
1909 The
proposed utopian community of Cosme in Paraguay, part of William Lane's utopian
'New
Australia' project, was sold, bringing an end to the dream.
1914 Great War:
Britain declared war on Austria-Hungary; British Empire countries were
automatically included.
1914 Alhaji
Gunchi fired what some called the first shot of World War I, when Britain
invaded Togoland.
1917
Sydney, Australia's 'Queen of the Night', Tilly
Devine, née Matilda Twiss, married Sapper James Devine, a former Queensland shearer, in London.
"Settling in Sydney, the Devines were soon enmeshed in the criminal underworld. They were involved in
'sly grog', drugs, and attacks on other gangs. Before she had turned 25, Tilly Devine had almost 70 convictions for prostitution, offensive behaviour and indecent language. In 1925 she was jailed for two years for a razor attack on a man. She became a notorious madam and was called Sydney's
'Queen of the night'. When she no longer needed her brutal husband's protection, and having tired of his violence towards her, she divorced him in 1943."
Source
More
1920 Louisa Lawson (b. 1848), Australian feminist, 'the
Mother of Australian Women's Suffrage', founder and editor of The
Dawn and mother of poet Henry Lawson, died at
Callan Park Lunatic Asylum for the Mentally and Criminally Insane, Sydney.
She was buried in a pauper's grave.
Louisa
and Henry Lawson: The drove each other crazy! World
chronology of women's electoral rights
1944 Operation
Pluto,
'Pipe-Lines Under The Ocean', supplying petrol to allied forces from England
to France in World War II, went into operation from the Isle of Wight.
1953 Nuclear
testing: It was reported that the Soviet Union had exploded its first hydrogen
bomb, in the Pacific.
1958 The US
nuclear submarine Skate, commanded by
James Calvert, became the second ship to make an underwater crossing of the
North Pole.
1959 In
Arkansas, USA, riots broke out over the issue of racial segregation in schools.
1960 Lift-off
for the US communications satellite, Echo I, Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA.
1964 Charlie
Wilson, one of the Great
Train Robbers, escaped from prison.
1970
Janis
Joplin played her last concert.
1971 Liberal
Prime Minister of Australia, Sir William McMahon sacked
his Minister of Defence, John
Gorton, over a series of articles in The
Australian newspaper, called "I Did It My Way".
1974 Australian rock band Skyhooks released their album, Living in the 70s, produced by Ross
Wilson of Daddy
Cool.
Music of Australia
1980 In a
Mexican zoo, the first giant panda born in captivity was delivered.
1981 The
IBM PC, an early personal
computer, was introduced.
1983
Seventeen were killed in anti-Augusto
Pinochet riots in Santiago, Chile.
1985 A Japan
Airlines Boeing 747 jumbo jet crashed into Mount Ogura, Japan killing 520,
in world's worst single-plane air disaster.
1990 It was
revealed that Beijing's crackdown on dissent in Tibet's capital Lhasa the
previous March involved the loss of 450 lives and the detention of more than
3,000 dissidents.
1992 Canada,
Mexico and the United States announce completion of negotiations for NAFTA.
1994 Woodstock
'94 rock concert.
2000
The Oscar
class submarine K-141
Kursk of the Russian
Navy exploded
and sank in the Barents
Sea during a military
exercise.
2004
Sweden's nine
millionth inhabitant was born.
2004 Lee
Hsien Loong was sworn in as Singapore's
third Prime
Minister.
2004 World
Youth Festival in Barcelona.
2005
Sri Lanka's
foreign minister, Lakshman
Kadirgamar, was fatally shot by a sniper in his home.
2005 An F2 tornado struck the USA coal mining
town of Wright,
Wyoming, destroying nearly 100 homes and killing two people.
2005 Civil
unrest erupted in the Maldives.
2005 An F1 tornado
struck Glen
Cove, New York, USA, a rare event on Long
Island.
Tomorrow: Alfred Hitchcock
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
|
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Solar alignment at Teotihuacan, City of
the Gods 
Understanding
Aztec/Mexican calendar systems
