|
 Feast day of St
Ilia the Prophet, Ukraine and other Slavic cultures
Feast day of
Ilya the Prophet in the Russian
Orthodox Church
Also Ilinden
(St Ilya Day), a day of remembrance of the Ilinden
Uprising, Bulgaria/Republic
of Macedonia.
Pictured:
"Elisha then
beheld Elijah in a fiery chariot taken up by a whirlwind into
heaven." (Elijah's chosen successor was the prophet Elisha.)
Ilia/Ilya is a
Slavic version of the name Elias, which in turn is a version of Elijah,
a prophet
of the Hebrew
Bible or Old
Testament. His name has been variously translated as 'the
Lord is God', 'whose God is the
Lord', 'God the Lord', 'the strong Lord', 'God of the Lord', 'my
God is the Lord', 'the Lord is my God', and 'my God is Jehovah'.
Elijah is first introduced in 1
Kings 17:1.
The name Elias
may also have links and be derived from the pagan
Greek name Helios/Elios, spelt Ηλιος
in Greek, and which literally means 'sun'. (Note that the Biblical
Elijah ascended
into Heaven in a fiery chariot.) It is known
that the name existed for males in ancient Greece. At this time, the
cult worshipping the sun God Helios
was well established by all Greeks, despite being eventually
replaced by Apollo.
This implies the ancient name was derived from the god.
Interestingly, there is evidence suggesting Helios, was also
worshipped by the ancient Jews (source).
Like many
characters of myth and legend, Elijah was at one time fed by ravens
(1 Kings, 17:6: "And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the
brook").
None of the old
prophets is so frequently referred to in the New
Testament as is Elijah. According
to Matthew
11, John the
Baptist was the Elijah that "was to come". Elijah
appears in the Synoptic
Gospels at the Transfiguration
of Jesus
Christ. Jesus became vividly bright, and was accompanied by both
Moses
and Elijah.
As Elijah was
described as ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot, the Christian
missionaries who converted Slavic tribes likely found him an ideal
analogy for Perun,
the supreme Slavic god of storms, thunder and lightning bolts. In
many Slavic countries Elijah is known as Elijah the Thunderer (Ilija
Gromovik), who drives the heavens in chariot and administers rain
and snow, thus actually taking the place of Perun
in popular beliefs.
"In the Ukraine, this day marked the beginning of
autumn. It was said 'Until dinner, it's summer. After dinner,
it's autumn.' Ilia is closely related to Perun and this was
most probably one of Perun's holy days. After this day, no
swimming was allowed as Ilia will curse anyone he finds swimming
after his feast day."
Source:
Earth, Moon and Sky
"In the Ukraine, this day marked the beginning of autumn. It was
said 'Until dinner, it's summer. After dinner, it's
autumn.' Ilia is closely related to Perun [Perun's Day,
July 20] and this was most probably one of Perun's holy
days. After this day, no swimming was allowed as Ilia will curse
anyone he finds swimming after his feast day." Source
"Archaeologist Zeev Weiss describes a mosaic recently uncovered in an ancient Jewish synagogue in Sepphoris in which a zodiac surrounds a striking portrayal of the Greek sun god Helios. Evidently similar artwork has been discovered in synagogues at Tiberias, Khirbet Susiya, Na'aran, Husifa, Yafia, Beit Alpha and
Sephoris." Source
Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
Feast of Anahita, ancient
Persia
Goddess of Love and the Moon.
Source: The Phoenix and
Arabeth 1992 Calendar
Feast day of Aphrodite and Eros, ancient Greece
"Feast of the Goddess
Aphrodite and the God Eros, honoring love and passion. Also, the 2nd
day of each month is sacred to the Agathos Daimon, the "Good
Spirit" (roughly equivalent to a combination of the Will and the
guardian angel of each person)."
Source: Earth,
Moon and Sky
Festivals in ancient Greece
Dog Days,
ancient Rome (Jul 3 - Aug 11)
Feast Day of St Basil the Blessed
"… a
shoe-maker's apprentice who went about Moscow naked, taking goods
from the shops to give to the destitute. It was said he rebuked the
Czar, Ivan the Terrible. He died in Moscow in 1552." Source
Feast day of St Betharius
Feast day of St Boetharius
Feast day of St Etheldritha (Alfrida; Alfreda),
virgin
(Tiger lily, Lilium tigrinum, is
today's plant,
dedicated to this saint.)
Feast day of
St Eusebius
(Eusebius of Vercelli), Bishop of
Vercelli, martyr
Born
c.
283
in Vercelli, Piemonte, d.
August 1,
371,
Eusebius was a champion of St
Athanasius and Catholic orthodoxy in the
4th-Century
controversy over
Arianism, a controversy that cost him his
friendship with St
Lucifer of
Cagliari. His feast day was formerly
December 16,
which marks the anniversary of his consecration as bishop. In Italy
in 363 he worked with St
Hilary of
Poitiers to oppose the Arianizing Auxentius of Milan. Although
sometimes referred to as a martyr, this is due to his sufferings and
not having died a violent death, though some say he was killed by
Arians.
More
More
Feast day of St Gundechar
Feast day of St Maximus of Padua
Feast day of St Our Lady of
the Angels
Celebrated widely in Costa
Rica.
Feast day of St Peter
Julian Eymard (Peter Julian Eymund; Pierre-Julien Eymard)
Peter Julian Eymard (February
4, 1811 - August
1, 1868) was a French
Catholic
priest,
founder of two religious
orders. He was declared venerable
in 1908, beatified
in 1925, and canonized
by Pope John
XXIII on December
9, 1962.
More
Feast day of St Peter of Osma
Feast day of St Stephen I,
pope
Pope
from May
12, 254
to August 2, 257.
On August 2, 257, Stephen was sitting on the pontifical throne in
the catacombs when Emperor Valerian's
men came and beheaded him.
More
Feast day of St Theodota
Feast day of St Thomas of Dover
Feast day of the Virgin of Angels
"The Virgin of the Angels is the patroness of Costa Rica. Pilgrims travel to her basilica in Cartago, where is she represented by a black stone called La Negrita (the dark one)."
Source
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
National Tree Planting Day, Lesotho
Independence
Day, Jamaica
Freedom
Day,
Guyana
Days of the Water Nymphs, Macedonia
No clothes may be washed, and you may only swim or bathe if you are
holding a piece of iron.
Source:
The Daily Bleed
First Monday in August (?), Akwambo
(Path
Clearing Festival), Agona, Central
Region of Ghana
"The Asafo companies weed footpaths leading to
the streams or rivers, farms and other communal places, as well as
paths, which lead to shrines. The following day, the whole
community assembles at the ancestral shrines and the chief pours
libation to the ancestral spirits to thank them for their
protection during the previous year and then request for more
blessing, abundant rainfall and good harvest for the ensuing year.
At the stream or riverside where some of the sacrifices are
offered, alligators and other species of fish come out to enjoy
the mashed yams sprinkled on the water.
"With their bodies smeared with clay, the people
then parade with twigs and tree branches through the town in
groups amidst drumming, dancing and firing of musketry.
"In a procession, they go through the principal
routes and then to the durbar ground to meet the chief and his
elders.
"There is a vigil kept at night and patronized
mainly by the youth. It is a time when people come together to
renew family and social ties. Performing groups, which are
dormant are revitalized and new groups initiated." Source
Day of airborne
forces in Russia
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
1533 Theodor Zwinger (d. 1588), medical scholar
1672 Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (d.
June
23, 1733),
Swiss
scholar
1754 Pierre Charles L'Enfant (d. 1825),
architect, city planner
1788 Leopold
Gmelin (d. 1853), chemist
1815 Adolf Friedrich von Schack
(d. April
14, 1894),
German
poet
and historian
of literature
1832
Colonel Henry
Steel Olcott (d. February 17, 1907),
founder and first president of the Theosophical
Society, well-known as the first prominent person of Western
descent to make a formal conversion to Buddhism. After his
death, the leadership of the society devolved onto the shoulders of HP Blavatsky's
protegé, Annie Besant.
Olcott chose Sydney as headquarters of the newly chartered Australasian Section in 1891. Even though the section failed, it was effectively reorganised by Besant
in a triumphal lecture tour of the antipodes in 1894, with Sydney again headquarters.
The American who revived Buddhism in Sri Lanka
William Q. Judge and Henry S. Olcott
See also Charles Webster
Leadbeater
1835 Elisha Gray (d. January
21, 1901),
American electrician who invented the telephone in his laboratory in
Highland Park,
Illinois, independently of and at around the same time as Alexander Graham Bell.
Gray
was a charter member of the Highland Park
Presbyterian Church and gave the
first public demonstration of his invention in its sanctuary in 1874. On February 14, 1876, he submitted an
announcement to the patent office, but it turned out to be just two hours after
Bell did.
Although Bell did not have a
working prototype, and the device described in his patent did not work, after
two years of litigation he was awarded rights to the invention, and thus is usually credited as the inventor. In
1876, Gray was the creator of one of the first electronic musical instruments,
the 'musical
telegraph' and in 1880 he became professor of dynamic electricity at
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. He died a few days after the birth of the new
century that came to be profoundly influenced by his invention, the telephone.
Sources: Wikipedia et al
1854 Milan I, king of Serbia
1868 Constantine I of Greece
(d. 1923), king of Greece
1871 John
Sloan (d. 1951), artist
1891 Sir Arthur Bliss,
British composer (A Colour
Symphony; Checkmate).
Master of the Queen's Music (1952).
1892 Jack L Warner
(Jack Eichelbaum; (d. 1978), Hollywood producer
"With his brothers Harry,
Albert and Sam, he founded Warner Brothers Pictures Inc. in 1923.
They would release the first motion picture with synchronized
sound, The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson. In the
1930's they would give employment to a parade of stars,
including Bette
Davis, 'Errol Flynn' and Paul Muni, as well
as James Cagney,
'Edward G. Robinson' and a man whose star would eventually
rise in the 1940s, Humphrey Bogart.
Decades later, the firm's successor, Warner Communications Inc.,
would merge with Time Inc. to become Time Warner Inc., the
world's largest media and entertainment company …
"At the 16th Academy Awards ceremony,
when Casablanca (1942)
was named Best Picture, Hal B Wallis,
the film's producer, was on his way to the stage to accept the
Oscar when Jack cut him off and accepted on behalf of the studio.
At the time, the Oscar for Best Picture customarily went to the
studio. But, Jack's public rudeness had two consequences: first,
Wallis resigned from Warner Brothers in protest; second, producers
began exerting more power with the Academy. Within eight years,
starting with American
in Paris, An (1951), the Oscar for Best Picture would go to
the film's producer(s) instead of the studio." Source
1897 Max Weber (d. 1974), Swiss Federal Councilor
1900
Helen Morgan, actress (d. 1941)
1905 Karl Amadeus Hartmann
(d. 1963), composer
1905 Myrna Loy (Myrna
Williams; d. 1993), American
Academy Award-winning motion
picture actress
(The Jazz Singer; Too Hot to Handle)
1905 Rudolf Prack (d. 1981), actor
1912 Vladimir Zerjavic (d. 2001), Croatian
UN
statistician
1914 Beatrice Straight (d. 2001), Academy Award-winning actress
1915 Gary Merrill (d.
March 5, 1990), actor
1922 Gwen Plumb (d. June 5, 2002),
Australian actress and broadcaster
1924 James
Baldwin (d. 1987), American writer
and civil rights activist (Another
Country; Nobody Knows My
Name)
"The eldest of nine children, Baldwin
grew up in poverty-stricken Harlem, where his father was a
preacher. Between the ages of 14 and 16 Baldwin himself preached
at a small revivalist church, the Fireside Pentecostal. His first
and most critically acclaimed novel, Go Tell It on the
Mountain (1953), was inspired by his experiences there.
"Baldwin was heavily influenced by his
Harlem middle school French teacher, famed poet Countee Cullen.
Cullen, who obtained his master's degree from Harvard
University, was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, a
flourishing of artistic expression that emerged from the community
of Harlem in New York City in the 1920s, also known as the New
Negro Movement. Cullen devoted himself to the education of
children in the last period of his life, and concentrated on
teaching and writing children's books. He opened up a new world
of literary and artistic possibilities for black youth in Harlem,
including James Baldwin.
"Baldwin moved to Paris in 1948, where
he remained for the next eight years. During this time he created
some of his most famous work, including the essay collection Notes
of a Native Son (1955) and the novel Giovanni's
Room (1956), where Baldwin explores the broad issues of
race, sexuality, and identity. His work Nobody Knows My Name
(1961) deals more explicitly with the subject of race relations in
the United States.
"An active participant in the civil rights
movement in the 1950s, Baldwin lived in later years in both the
U.S. and France, where he died in 1987." Source
1924 Carroll O'Connor (d. 2001), American actor
(TV series: All in the Family)
1932
Peter O'Toole,
Irish-born British actor (Lawrence of Arabia; The Lion in Winter; Lord Jim)
"Irish leading man of prodigious
talents. Born in Ireland, but raised in Leeds, England, the son of
a bookie. As a boy, he decided to become a journalist, beginning
as a newspaper copy boy. Although he succeeded in becoming a
reporter, he discovered the theatre and made his stage debut at 17. He
served as a radioman in the Royal Navy for two years, then
attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates
included 'Albert Finney', Alan Bates, and Richard Harris.
He spent several years onstage at the Bristol Old Vic, then made
an inconspicuous film debut in 1960. In
1962, O'Toole was chosen by David Lean to play
T.E. Lawrence in Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia.
The part made O'Toole an international superstar. He continued
successfully in artistically rich films as well as less artistic
but commercially rewarding projects. He received Academy Award nominations
(but no Oscar) for seven different films. However, medical
problems brought on by his drinking threatened to destroy his
career and life in the 1970s. He survived by giving up alcohol and
after serious medical treatment, returned to films with triumphant
performances in The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favorite
Year (1982). His youthful beauty lost to time and drink,
O'Toole has found meaningful roles increasingly difficult to
come by, though he remains one of the greatest actors of his
generation. He has two daughters, Patricia and Catherine, from his
marriage to actress Siân Phillips.
He also has a son by model 'Karen Brown'. He is partnered with
'Jules Buck' in Keep Productions." Source
1934 Valery Bykovsky, cosmonaut
1939 Wes
Craven, horror film director
1942
Chet Helms (d.
June 25,
2005), often called
the father of San Francisco's '1967 Summer of Love', music promoter
and a cultural figure in San Francisco during its hippie period in
the late Sixties
Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list
1942 Isabel
Allende, author
1948 Dennis
Prager, radio talk show host and author
1951 Lance Ito,
judge
in the OJ Simpson case
1953 Butch Patrick, actor
1957 Mojo
Nixon, rockabilly musician, actor
1964 Mary-Louise Parker, actress
1972 Kevin
Smith, actor, director, screenwriter
1977 Edward
Furlong, actor
1992 Hallie Kate Eisenberg, actress, Pepsi-Cola
spokesperson
Phew!!
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day in history section
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