Carpe diem!

4

Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

Open links in a New Window

Today is

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
  And did he stop and speak to you?
And did you speak to him again?
  How strange it seems, and new!
Robert Browning ('Memorabilia'), on Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born on this day in 1792

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number –
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.
Percy Bysshe Shelley; 'The Call to Freedom'

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

No living poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it must be impannelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations.
Percy Bysshe Shelley; 'Defence of Poetry'

Bitter, bitter oh to behoulde,
  The grasse to growe,
Where the walles of Walsingham
  So stately did shewe.
From 'Lament for Walsingham', a 16^th-Century poem on the dissolution of Walsingham Priory by Henry VIII, 1538

Who in their right mind would name anything after DeSoto? 

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

The History of Sexuality

Pattern Recognition
By William Gibson

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Internet Sacred Text Archive CD-ROM

The Elements of Ritual

The Spiral Dance
By Starhawk
20th Anniversary Edition

Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations

Life in a Medieval Village

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

Medieval Celebrations

Women's Activism and Globalization

The Atlas of Holy Places and Sacred Sites

Secrets and Lies

The Clash of Civilizations

Imperial Crusades

The Medieval Cookbook

The Spiritual Traveler

The Murray Bookchin Reader

Environmental Activism

Astro pic of the day

American Folklore

Permaculture

Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilisation: Backstage With Barry Humphries

Sun Goddess

African Folklore

Daily Everything

A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend, and Folklore

The Edible Asian Garden

The Secret Language of Birthdays

Live with Passion!
Anthony Robbins


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

Celtic Daily Prayer

Hidden Agendas

Poor Richard's Almanack
By Benjamin Franklin

Photo of the day

Wheel of the Year

The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

The Survival of the Pagan Gods

Zuni Corn Dance (Aug 4 - 7)
A festival in thanksgiving for the maize harvest to Mother Earth, the Kokos (Nature Spirits), and the Corn Maidens. Following the harvest, the Zuni (a Native American tribe, one of the Pueblo peoples) bid farewell to the Corn Maidens and the Kokos.
Source: Earth, Moon and Sky

Jubilation of the Heart of Re, ancient Egypt (source of date, Wikipedia)

Dog Days, ancient Rome (Jul 3 - Aug 11)

Feast day of St Aristarchus of Thessalonica

Feast day of St Ia

Feast day of St Isidore

Feast day of St Luanus (Lua; Lugid; Molua), of Ireland

Feast day of St John Baptist Mary Vianney
St Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney (English: St John Baptist Mary Vianney) (May 8, 1786 - August 4, 1859) is the Roman Catholic patron saint of parish priests.

Feast day of St Moluag (Lughaidh; Luanus; Lugid)
He beat St Columba in a race to the large island of the Lyn of Lorn in Argyll. Now called the Isle of Lismore it was the sacred island of the Western Picts and the burial place of their kings.

Feast day of Our Lady of Snows, Rome and Spain
Dedicated to a cognate of the Goddesses of Love, Fertility and Childbearing.

Feast day of St Sithney

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Anniversary of the Revolution, Burkina Faso

Constitution Day, Cook Islands (celebrations begin on the last Friday in July and last up to two weeks)

Fiesta of Santo Domingo, Lima, Peru

Vigil of St Oswald
"Commemorates the Anglo-Saxon king of Northumbria, Oswald, who died in battle in 642 CE. In the tradition of sacred kingship, his body was dismembered and its dispersed parts became the foci for miracles of healing."
Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992, 95

First Wednesday in August, Isle of Skye Highland Games, Portree, Scotland

On which day of the week were you born? Find out here

1521 Pope Urban VII, (d. 1590)

1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley ('Mad Shelley'; d. 1822), English poet.

Percy Shelley started life in a favoured position in British society, as his father was a baronet. At Sion House Academy the lad was a hell raiser, and he was expelled from Oxford for a booklet he wrote urging "the necessity of atheism", whereupon his father cut off his money. Shelley then lived on secret remittances from his sisters.

The young poet had such an active imagination that, although he detested falsehood, he could not give the same account of an event to two people.

After eloping to Scotland with Harriet Westbrook he became interested in the ideas of the radical/anarchist philosopher William Godwin. He began to visit Godwin's house and fell in love with Mary Godwin (later called Mary Shelley), the sixteen year-old daughter of Godwin by his first wife, the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who had written A Vindication of the Rights of Women and had died eight days after Mary's birth in 1797. (Mary wrote Frankenstein while with her husband, Lord Byron and others in Switzerland.)

Shelley drowned in a squall (July 8, 1822) while on a boat with his friend Captain Williams on the Bay of Spezzia, Italy. Byron, Leigh Hunt and Trelawny burned his body as required by quarantine law.

Complete Works    Shelley: poet, predator and prey

1840 Richard von Krafft-Ebing (d. December 22, 1902), German psychiatrist, wrote Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a famous study of sexual perversity, and remains well-known for his coinage of the term sadism. Today his work is considered controversial for its construction of sexual preferences outside the bourgeois European norm as 'deviance'.

"This was in fact a science made up of evasions," wrote French philosopher Michel Foucault in his book The History of Sexuality, "given its inability or refusal to speak of sex itself, it concerned itself primarily with aberrations, perversions, exceptional oddities, pathological abatements, and morbid aggravations. Claiming to speak the truth, it stirred up people's fears ... Involuntarily naïve in the best of cases, more often intentionally mendacious, in complicity with what it denounced, haughty and coquettish, it established an entire pornography of the morbid, which was characteristic of the fin de siecle society."

"Krafft-Ebing elaborated an evolutionist theory considering homosexuality as an anomalous process developed during the gestation of the embryo and fetus, evolving into a sexual inversion of the brain. Some years later, in 1901, he corrected himself in an article published in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, changing the term anomaly to differentiation. He thus revealed himself as, if not as the first, at least one of the first professionals seeing homosexuals as normal people with a different sexuality."   Source: Wikipedia

1859 Knut Hamsun (d. 1952), writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1920

1870 Sir Harry Lauder, British music hall comedian and entertainer

Harry Lauder in Australia, 1914

1871 William Holman (William Arthur Holman; d. June 5, 1934), Australian Labor Party Premier of New South Wales, Australia, who sided with Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes and split with the party on the conscription issue in 1916 during World War I, and immediately became Premier of a conservative Nationalist Party Government.

As a young cabinet-maker in Sydney he had become interested in the ideas of John Stuart Mill, William Morris, Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin, and became very active in the Australian labour movement. Holman was also a friend of Henry Lawson and helped the poet when he was down and out due to alcoholism – in 1916 at the request of Bertram Stevens and a delegation of Lawson's friends, he organised for the poet a government sinecure at Leeton, NSW. His father was an actor and he was an excellent public speaker (the Australian Workman of July 21, 1894 said that he had no equal in Australia) and the most talented Leigh House lecturer. He and his family had immigrated from London in 1888 and lived at Balmain.

As a 21-year-old, at the end of 1892 did an Australian Socialist League (ASL, which he had joined the previous year) lecture tour of Newcastle, New South Wales, and some new branches were formed. He became a King's Counsel in 1920.

From Wikipedia: In 1916 the conscription issue divided the Labor Party and wider Australian community. While much of the Australian labour movement and general community were opposed to conscription, Australian Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes and Premier Holman strongly supported conscription, and both crossed the floor to join the conservative parties. Holman formed a coalition on November 15, 1916 with the leader of the opposition, Charles Wade, with himself as Premier. At the general election in March 1917 he was elected as a Nationalist Party of Australia candidate, and continued in the Premier's role.

"However, his manual occupation notwithstanding, Holman was perhaps a little remote from the class he was most earnestly seeking to influence. One Sunday evening at Leigh House, in the course of his lecture on Spencer, he digressed to illustrate a point: 'take a brick, ladies and gentlemen, weighing, let us say, about 4 lbs ...' Before he could continue his calculations, the secretary of the Builders labourers union sat bolt upright and exclaimed in an agitated stage whisper: 'Cripes, that's the blooming brick I've been looking for all me life'."
Burgmann, Verity, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885 - 1905, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985, p. 55

"Lawyer (barrister) and cabinet-maker. Educated in London. At fifteen apprenticed as cabinet-maker. Arrived in Melbourne with parents 1888, shortly afterwards journeyed to Sydney; worked at his trade but increasingly involved in lecturing and organising for Labor Leagues and briefly as organiser for Australia Workers' Union; part-owner and subeditor New Order 1894; part-owner and director of Daily Post 1895, the financial management of which led to charge of conspiracy to defraud and two months in gaol before conviction quashed. Contributor Grenfell Vedette 1895-1898, proprietor 1898-1904; read for Bar, admitted 1903, considerable practice mainly industrial; constitutional and common law; director of Sunday Times 1924-1926; in youth active Sydney. School of Arts Debating Society; Member Single Tax League 1890, Australia Socialist League 1891; delegate to the Trades and Labour Council (TLC) in 1892 for furnishing trades union; Executive Member Australia National Defence League 1905; Joint President of French-Australia League of Help 1914; Executive Member of Universal Service League 1915-1916; President of Food for Babies. Author with P.A. Jacobs of Australian Mercantile Law 1909, with D.R. Hall (q.v.) Cost of Living 1915, A National Stocktaking 1930, Three Lectures on the Australian Constitution 1938."   Source: NSW Parliament

Parliamentary Service

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1900 Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother of the United Kingdom until her death in 2002. Hitler called her "The most dangerous woman in Europe" because of her ability to rally the British people, most of whom were devoted to her.

She was born the Honourable Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, one of ten children of Lord Glamis, later 14^th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and spent her early childhood at her parents' country home, St Paul's Waldenbury in Hertfordshire, north of London.

The Bowes-Lyon family is descended from the Royal House of Scotland. One of The Queen Mother's 14^th-century ancestors became Thane of Glamis, home of Macbeth 300 years before, and Glamis Castle is the family seat.

"… she is most certainly the longest-living British Royal in memory, and bears testament to some of the most significant developments and historical moments of our century. When she was born, the British Army was fighting its last great imperial war in South Africa, aeroplanes had not flown and gas lamps were yet to be replaced by electricity."   Source

1901 Louis Armstrong (d. 1971), American jazz musician; he celebrated his birthday as July 4, 1900

From Wikipedia: Armstrong said he was not sure exactly when he was born, but celebrated his birthday on July 4. He usually gave the year as 1900 when speaking in public (although he used 1901 on his Social Security and other papers filed with the government). Using Roman Catholic Church documents from when his grandmother took him to be baptized, New Orleans music researcher Tad Jones established Armstrong's actual date of birth as August 4, 1901. With various other collaborative evidence, this date is now accepted by Armstrong scholars.

1906 Marie-José Van Sachsen Coburg-Gotha (d. 2001), last Queen of Italy

1906 Eugen Schuhmacher (d. 1973), German zoologist and pioneer of animal documentaries

1908 Kurt Eichhorn, conductor

1910 William Schuman (d. 1992), composer

1912 Raoul Wallenberg (d. 1947 presumed), Swedish diplomat

1924 Reg Grundy, the Australian radio announcer who went on to TV quiz shows and in 1995 sold his media business for $380 million. Colloquially, in Australia, 'Reg Grundies', or 'Grundies' is rhyming slang slang for 'undies' (underpants).

1925 Maurie Fields, Australian actor and comedian

1929 Yasser Arafat (d. November 11, 2004), born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (محمد عبد الرؤوف القدوة الحسيني) and also known by the kunya Abu `Ammar (أبو عمّار), Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (1969 - 2004); President¹ of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) (1993- 2004); and a co-recipient of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize

Arafat claimed to have been born in Jerusalem on August 4, 1929; some of his legal personal documentation states the same. A birth certificate registered in Cairo, Egypt shows August 24, 1929 as his date of birth and Cairo as the place (Wikipedia); he appears at both dates in the Book of Days.

1929 Kishore Kuma (d. 1987)r, Indian singer and actor

1930 Götz Friedrich (d. 2000), opera director

1932 Guillermo Mordillo, Argentinian graphic artist and cartoonist who published his first cartoons in France in 1966. His titles include Le Galion, Crazy Cowboy, Crazy Crazy, Les Girafes and Mordillo Cartoons.

"... even today, after a fifty-year long career, Mordillo still keeps changing the houses he lives in, the countries he travels to and the languages in which he expresses himself. (but his drawings remain perpetually and decidedly silent, understandable all over in the same manner and entrusted only to the universal language of images). Over the years Mordillo has lived and worked in Peru, in the United States, in France and in Spain."   Source

Guillermo Mordillo site    Official Mordillo site    More

Comix, comics and cartoons in the Book of Days

1932 Hans Jürgen Fröhlich, writer

1937 David Bedford, musician

1940 Timi Yuro, American singer who had numerous minor Top 100 hits in the early 1960s ('Hurt'; 'Gotta Travel On')

1942 Graeme Dunstan, prominent Australian organizer of festivals and celebrations, and activist for environmental, political and peace issues. He is an an alumnus of Duntroon Military College and a graduate of the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where he was President of the Students' Union and co-editor of its newspaper, Tharunka.

In 1966, while President of the UNSW Labor Club, he was active in organizing anti-Vietnam War protests. As organizer of the LBJ Welcome Committee he stopped US President Lyndon Johnson's motorcade in Liverpool Street, Sydney, by lying in front of the president's car, upon which NSW Premier Robert Askin famously said "run over the bastards".

In 1973 with Johnny Allen as director of the Aquarius Foundation of the Australian Union of Students and Dunstan, as director of the Foundation's biennial Aquarius Festival, together they produced the Aquarius Festival which took place in Nimbin, New South Wales.

Dunstan was the first community arts officer (1981 - '85) employed by the City of Campbelltown and in that role set up the Friends of the Campbelltown Art Gallery which lobbied successfully to found the Campbelltown Regional Art Gallery.

In 1985-89 he was a Festivals Consultant to the Victorian Tourism Commission and in that role he was one of the initiators the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Ltd serving as its founding Secretary In 1987.

As a freelance event organizer, Dunstan founded the Lismore Lantern Festival in 1992-3 and produced other innovative celebrations including the Byron Bay NYE (1995), Bondi Beach Christmas and NYE celebration 1996, Nimbin 'Let It Grow' Mardi Grass (1998 - '99), the Sunshine Coast Schoolies Week (1997), the annual Eureka Dawn Walk (1998-) and the annual Independence from America Day Parade in Byron Bay (1998-).

He is presently captain of Peacebus.com which is both a website and a campaign vehicle from which he organizes Cyanide Watch and other actions of witness for peace, justice and a sustaining Earth.

Graeme Dunstan Curriculum Vitae    Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list    CounterCulture Wiki

1942 David Lange (d. August 13, 2005), Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989

1944 Richard Belzer, actor, comedian (Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit)

1947 Klaus Schulze, composer, performer

1955 Billy Bob Thornton, actor, writer

1961 Barack Hussein Obama II, 44^th President of the United States

The Obama Deception    Barack O'Bilderberg   Search Obama at AlterNet

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.

Zodiac birthday Free astrology e-cards National Parks Month [ August ] Birthdays Friendship Day [ Early August, varies ] Endangered Species

Varies Full Moon Day
Varies Friday the 13^th
Varies Hindu holidays
Varies Graduation
Varies Raksha Bandhan
Early August Friendship Day
Varies Janmashtami
Varies Ganesh Chaturthi

August

1 Respect For Parents Day
1 Girlfriends Day
2 Ice Cream Sandwich Day
3 Watermelon Day
3 Grab Some Nuts Day
4 Champagne Day
4 Coast Guard Day
4 Pie Day (Minnesota, USA)
5 Blackmail Day
5 Mustard Day
6 Halfway Point Of Summer
6 Cards For Sister
6 International Forgiveness Day
7 Lighthouse Day
8 Cheesecake Day
9 Send An Email Greeting Day
10 Lazy Day
10 Grab Some Nuts Day
11 Sons And Daughters Day
11 Chinese Valentine's 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

  ... 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

 

1060 After 29 years on the throne, King Henry I of France died and was succeeded by Philip I.

 

1265 Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, was killed in battle at Evesham.

The Oliver Cromwell of the 13^th Century, English baron de Montfort was born a French noble, possessed of English property and rank through his mother. He went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land; he returned to England in 1241 and the next year distinguished himself in war against France.

A political reformer and champion of popular liberties, de Montfort protested papal extortion and the excess spending of King Henry III of England, with whom he quarrelled.

He was made a commander in Gascony  and had to handle rebellious subjects, whom the king told not to obey Simon, but to follow his son Edward. This annoyed Simon, so he left for Paris where he was offered the regency. However, he stayed loyal to his adopted country of England, and there he returned.

At the Battle of Lewes, May 12, 1264, Simon defeated and captured the king and his son Edward (later Edward I) and the king's brother Richard. Simon instituted reforms and promoted the philosophy that the monarch derives power from the people and must exercise it for their good. If not, the magnates of the kingdom are bound to step in (cf John Locke and revolution). He laid the foundation of the House of Commons. Feudal society, however was unready for his vision, and the royalists defeated him in 1265.

 

1526 Death of Juan Sebastian Cano, Spanish explorer.

 

1538 England's King Henry VIII ordered the famed priory of Walsingham, one of the most celebrated places of pilgrimage in medieval England, to be desecrated as part of his program of dissolving the estates of the Catholic church. It is said that he felt the shame of this so keenly on his deathbed that he entrusted his soul to Our Lady of Walsingham.

Legend has it that the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared in Walsingham in 1051 (some sources say 1061) to Richeldis de Faverches, a Saxon noblewoman, widow of the Lord of the Manor of Walsingham Parva. Richeldis was known for her deep faith in God, her kindness to others and her devotion to Mary.

In her vision she was taken by Mary and shown the house in Nazareth where the Archangel Gabriel had announced the news of the birth of Jesus. Mary asked Richeldis to build an exact replica of that house in Walsingham, explaining why Walsingham became known as 'England's Nazareth'.

The Feast Day of Our Lady of Walsingham is September 24 (qv).

 

 

1541 Hernando DeSoto's army arrived at Quigate, a town of sun-worshippers, west of the Mississippi near present-day Eldorado, Illinois, USA.

One of the advance party horsemen reported,

On the fourth of August, he [DeSoto] reached the town [El Dorado, well ahead of the army] where the chief was living. On the way [while camped at Carmi, the provincial boundary, with the advanced horsemen], the latter sent him blankets and skins, but not daring to remain in the town, went away. The town was the largest that had been seen in Florida. The governor and his men [in the advanced party] were lodged [by the Indians] in half of it; and a few days afterward [when the army arrived, having camped at Omaha the night before] seeing that the Indians were going about deceitfully [on the Full Moon], he ordered the other half [today's Harrisburg, the largest half of the town] burned, so that it might not afford them protection if they came to attack at night …

The governor [DeSoto] returned to the camp [less than ten miles away]; and soon after on that night a spy of the Indians was captured by those who were on watch. The governor asked him whether he would take them to the place where the [real) chief was [or be fed to the dogs]. He said yes, and the governor went immediately to look for the chief with 20 men of horse and 50 of foot. After a march of a day and a half [20 miles over swamps and broken hills] he found the chief in a dense wood [near Millstone Ridge], and a soldier, not knowing the chief, gave him a cutlass stroke on the head. The chief cried out not to kill him saying that he was the chief. He was taken captive and with him 140 of his people. The governor went back to Quigate [El Dorado] and told him that he should make his Indians come to serve the Christians; and after waiting for several days (while the army gathered what it could from that enormous plain] hoping for them to come, but they were not coming [as many Indian cultures, 'Mississippian Cultures', had done elsewhere for their godlike chiefs], he sent two Captains, each one on his side of the river [the Saline River, southeast toward the Ohio River], with horse and foot. They captured many Indians, both men and women [from the large villages along the downstream banks]. Upon seeing the hurt they received, because of the rebellion, they came to see what the governor might order them. Thus they came and went frequently and brought gifts of clothing and fish. The chief and two of his wives were left unshackled in the governor's house, being guarded by the halberdiers of the governor's guard. The governor asked them in what direction the land was more densely populated. They said that on the lower part of the river toward the south were large settlements and chiefs who were lords of wide lands and of many people ['Mississippian Cultures' in Arkansas], and that there was a province called Coligoa [today's Kaskaskia] toward the northwest, situated near some mountain ridges. It seemed advisable to the governor and to all the rest to go first to Coligoa, saying that perhaps the mountains would make a difference in the land and that gold or silver might exist on the other side of them. Both Quaguate [sic; ElDorado] and Casqui and Pacaha [Vincennes and Terre Haute, Indiana] were flat and fertile lands, with excellent meadow lands along the rivers where the Indians made large fields.   Source

DeSoto had obtained from Emperor Charles V, king of Spain, an appointment as governor of the vast unexplored interior of southe-astern North America, called 'Florida', following its 'discovery' by Ponce de Leon some 20 years before, with orders to subdue and to rule it.

Searching for gold and jewels and the fabled El Dorado – the 'man of gold' – DeSoto paid for his conquest of Florida out of his own pocket. Accompanied by 600 Spanish and Portuguese cavaliers, plus some shackled Indian captives, on May 30, 1539, they began a four-year journey of wandering in southeast America searching for treasures, and in particular, El Dorado, 'the gilded one', a king whose lands were so rich in gold that he himself was covered with the precious metal. The Native Americans misled DeSoto and his men deeper into the wilderness for promises of treasures.

The native Americans exposed the gold ceremonial pieces to the sun, then gave them to a priest who would place them in lagoons (representing the womb of the earth) and other sacred places, usually close to large rocks representing the spirit of their ancestors who turned into stone since the coming of the sun and the creation of light. there, the gifts were fertilized and spread through the rivers that were born from them.

This is how the famous legend of El Dorado started, as described by Juan Rodríguez Freyle:

In that pond of Guatavita they made a rattan palm raft and decorated it as much as possible. They undressed the cacique (chief) and covered him and sprinkle him with gold powder, in such a way that all his body was completely covered with the metal; they put him in the raft, standing and carrying on his feet a bunch of gold and emeralds to offer to his God. The raft left with the sound of trumpets and horns, and half way of the lagoon, one could hear the signal for silence… The golden Indian with his gifts of gold and emeralds carrying them to the middle of the lagoon… and once the ceremony was over, the party started with dances and songs. The name El Dorado was taken from this ceremony.

El Dorado kitsch

Scientist: Legendary City of El Dorado Exists

Greed, gold and God Part 1: The Aztecs and Cortés
In 1519 the empire of Moctezuma fell to the conquistadors

Greed, gold and God Part 2: The Battle of Cajamarca
Was there ever a more remarkable battle in world history

 

 

1577 According to an ancient account by Abraham Fleming, a storm came over the East Anglia, UK town of Bungay, and a huge black dog entered the church, killing people and ferociously biting and clawing the stones and timbers. The dog visited nearby Blythburgh the same day.

Parish records mention the storm but not the dog. Fleming, a Puritan propagandist and pamphleteer, might have described a lightning fireball in such terms to exhort his readers to repentance.

 

1578 King Sebastian of Portugal went missing in battle.

 

When will King Sebastian return?

Don (or Dom) Sebastian (King Sebastião I of Portugal; Sebastian I, b. 1554), aged 24, was fighting (invading) the Moors in Morocco, at the Battle of Ksar el Kebir (Alcazarquivir; Alcacer Quibir, 'Field of the Three Kings'). His army was so badly defeated that scarcely 50 of his men made it out alive. A reckless youth, he had convinced himself that he was to be Jesus Christ's captain in a crusade against the Muslims of Africa.

Don Sebastian invaded Morocco in support of a pretender to the Moroccan throne. Abu Marwan Abdalmalik I, ruler of Morocco, King Sebastian, and the Moroccan pretender, Muhammad, all died in the fighting. Sebastian's death led to a dynastic crisis in Portugal.

The Moors said that they had his body and buried it at Belem, but Sebastian's countrymen believed he had escaped and would return to lead them, a notion that developed into a long-lived cult named 'Sebastianism'.

Don Sebastian, a fanatic

Don Sebastian had grown up under the guidance of the Jesuits, in particular, D. Luiz Concalves da Camara and to D Aleixo de Menezes, a veteran who had served under Albuquerque and who imbued the young prince with religious fanaticism. Sebastian grew up resolved to emulate the medieval knights who bad reconquered Portugal from the Moors, and became a mystic who spent long periods either hunting or fasting. His sole ambition was to lead a crusade against Islam in north-west Africa, like the kings of the Middle Ages.

He was under the regency first of his grandmother Queen Catherine of Habsburg (until 1562) and then of his uncle, Cardinal Henry of Evora (a cardinal and later king) until he came of age in 1568. He never enjoyed good health, as a result of family inbreeding for many generations – he only had four great-grandparents (instead of the usual eight), four of whom were descendents of King John I of Portugal. His family had instances of mental illness (his great-grandmother was Queen Joanna the Mad).

The rise of Sebastianism

It was a time of Portugal's swift economic decline (between 1499 - 1580 Portugal had acquired an empire stretching from Brazil eastward to the Moluccas) as well as political upheaval, and when Portugal was politically absorbed by Spain (1581 - 1640 Spanish kings ruled over Portugal), the Portuguese lower classes responded to the loss of independence (and their king) in a way that seems odd to us today. The response to the circumstances of the times spread into the lower-middle classes as well, spurred by the fear that the counter-reformationist, King Philip II of Spain (1527 - 1598), would intensify the already rigorous Inquisition in Portugal, although this didn't eventuate. 

Despite the passage of many years, the conviction that Sebastian was still alive grew into a kind of messianic cult that persisted into the early 20^th century, or at least the late 19^th, passing on from one Portuguese generation to another. Its devotees believed that the rei encuberto, or 'hidden king', was either absent on a pilgrimage, or, like King Arthur in Avalon, was waiting on some enchanted island until the hour of his second advent.

"Sebastianism" writes Payne (Payne, Stanley G, A History of Spain and Portugal, Volume 1, Ch. 12, 'Sixteenth-Century Portugal', University of Wisconsin Press, USA, 1973) "may also have been a reflection of the level of popular culture. The Portuguese peasantry were among the most ignorant of the peninsula, and indeed of western Europe. Little benefited by the wealth of empire, which was drained off by the upper classes, they remained extremely superstitious well into the twentieth century. Mythic fixation on the symbol of an intemperate prince was an expression of the saudade (sadness, longing, nostalgia) of a depressed people who had once accomplished great deeds but whose culture, social structure, and natural resources frustrated their transition to a more modern way of life."

So confident were people that he would return, sales of horses and other items were sometimes made, payable upon the second coming of King Sebastian. It was this fact that induced Jean-Andoche Junot (October 23, 1771 - July 29, 1813), a French general under Napoleon Bonaparte, when asked what he would be able to do with the Portuguese, to answer: "What can I do with a people who were still waiting for the coming of the Messiah and King Sebastian?" ...

Read on at the Don Sebastian page in the Scriptorium

The Calabrian Charlatan, 1598-1603: Messianic Nationalism in Early Modern Europe, by H Eric R Olsen

 

1621 'Black Saturday', which earned its name because a violent storm came upon the Scottish parliament just as it sat to force episcopacy upon the people.

1621 While on a fox hunt, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, accidentally shot the arm of Peter Hawkins with an arrow, severing an artery. Hawkins died within half an hour. Abbot gave Hawkins's widow and orphans an annuity, and fasted one day every month thereafter in shame for the accident. Coincidentally, he died on this day in 1633.

1642 "On this day in 1642, a Fearful and Terrible Noise was heard at five o'clock in the afternoon in the seaside town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk, and many local worhties heard the beating of Drums, the discharging of muskets and great Ordnance for the space of an houre or more ...  a stone of great weight fell from the sky during the uproar. That same year, another phantom battle was witnessed on four successive Saturday and Sunday nights in Edgehill in Warwichshire. It seemed to be a re-run of the recent Civil War contest on the site."   Source

1693 According to The Daily Bleed, champagne was invented by the Benedictine monk, Dom Perignon (c. 1638 - 1715) (source). The quote attributed to him – "Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!" – is supposedly what he said when tasting the first sparkling champagne. However, the first appearance of that quote appears to have been in a print advertisement in the late 1800s by the producer of Dom Perignon Champagne.

1735 Freedom of the press: New York Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, on the basis that what he published was true.

1789 The feudal system was abolished in France.

1790 A newly passed tariff act created the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).

1821 Atkinson & Alexander published the Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper.

1844 The YMCA was founded.

1870 In Britain, the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War was set up in response to the suffering in the Franco-Prussian War, just three weeks old.

1873 Indian Wars: While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7^th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, clashed for the first time with the Sioux (near the Tongue River; only one man on each side was killed).

1875 Death of Hans Christian Andersen (b. 1805), Danish writer.

1892 USA: The family of Lizzie Borden was found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts, USA home.

1902 The Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opened.

1914 World War I: The United Kingdom declared war on Germany and the United States proclaimed neutrality. Britain gave Germany until 11 pm to show its preparedness to withdraw from Belgium.

1914 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience, reached London. He raised the Indian Ambulance Corps. In October, he offered Satyagraha over administrative interference in the corps.

1923 Australia: James Cavell opened the Surfers Paradise Hotel in former swampy wasteland, beginning the creation Queensland's modern tourist mecca.

1933 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was released and rearrested for breaking a restraint order and sentenced to one year's imprisonment.

Gandhi Timeline

1940 British Somaliland was invaded by the Italians.

1944 Holocaust: A tip-off from a Dutch informer led the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they found Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.

1954 The maiden flight of Britain's first supersonic fighter plane, the P-1 English Electric Lightning.

1955 Samuel Beckett's avant-garde play, Waiting for Godot, opened in London to a very mixed reception, two years after its premiere performance in Paris.

1964 American civil rights movement: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.

1964 Vietnam War, Gulf of Tonkin Incident: United States destroyers USS Maddox and USS C Turner Joy were allegedly attacked by North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin in an incident that became a pretext for introducing American troops into the Vietnam War. United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara expressed doubts to President Lyndon Johnson that the attack had even occurred.

Air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga sank two, possibly three North Vietnamese gunboats. Later research, including a report released in 2005 by the National Security Agency, indicates that the second attack did not occur, but also attempts to dispel the long-standing rumor that U.S. President Lyndon Johnson had knowingly lied about the existence of the incident.

Gulf of Tonkin and the rush to war
We look at the Gulf of Tonkin incident and resolution of US Congress in a little more detail on August 7.

LBJ's speech to Congress, August 5, 1964    Read The Tonkin Gulf Resolution

Tonkin Incident Might Not Have Occurred    Daniel Ellsberg on the Gulf of Tonkin incident

How LBJ Manipulated Events to Bring on War, by Daniel Ellsberg    More

NSA declassified documents released on 11/30/05    Vietnam Study, Casting Doubts, Remains Secret

 

1966 China's Cultural Revolution: "Beijing Fourth Middle School, more than thirty teachers and administrator were attacked on the playground. Students poured ink on them, beat them with fists, kicked them, and tore their cloths [sic]. After this incident, two teachers who were insulted committed suicide ...

"In Shanghai ... students of Huadong Teachers University arrested more than 150 professors and administrators at their homes, put 'high hats' on their heads, hung boards with words such as 'member of the black gang,' 'reactionary academic authority' and so on around their necks, paraded them through the campus, and then forced all of them to kneel on the 'Communist Youth Square' for a 'struggle meeting.' Afterward, the 'Shanghai Writing Small Group,' which played a leading role in Shanghai during the Revolution, encouraged students in other colleges to take similar actions. At the Middle School attached to Huadong Teachers University, eighteen teachers were forced to crawl several laps around the sports ground. The female teachers among them were given 'yin-yang heads." Students of Fuxing Middle School hit some teachers on the head with hammers, and one teacher's skull was broken. Xue Zheng, the principal of Shanghai Third Girls Middle School, was forced to eat excrement while cleaning toilets, and some students used thumbtacks to fix a "big character poster" on her back.

"In Tianjin, students of Nancang Middle School put garbage baskets on the heads of teachers, drew black X's on their shirts and shaved the female dean's head raggedly. A custodian named Yao Fugui at Tianjin Hongqiao District Jinzhongqiao Elementary School committed suicide by jumping into a river near school after he was badly beaten." 

Source: Student Attacks Against Teachers: The Revolution of 1966    Mao holocaust

From Wikipedia: Millions in China had their human rights casually discarded during the Cultural Revolution. Forced displacement of millions of people occurred. During the Cultural Revolution, young people from the cities were moved to the countryside. Once there, they were forced to abandon all forms of normal education for the propaganda teachings of the Chinese Communist Party. Nearly a generation of China's youth, scientists and other useful intellectuals were brainwashed ...Estimates of the death toll, civilians and Red Guards, from various Western and Eastern sources are about 500,000 in the true chaos years of 1966–1969. However, these figures are increasingly being challenged, since many deaths went unreported or were actively covered up by the police or local authorities. The true death toll may be in the low millions, but the state of Chinese demographics at the time, combined with the reluctance of the PRC to allow serious research into the period, means that the real figures are unlikely ever to be known.

A Film and Website about Cultural Revolution    Another website about the Cultural Revolution

Attempts to document using eyewitness accounts events during the Cultural Revolution

Chinese propaganda posters, Cultural Revolution statuettes, maoist stuff and revolutionary songs

 

1969 Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, US representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy began secret peace negotiations which eventually failed.

1970 Jim Morrison of The Doors was arrested for public drunkenness.

1975 Led Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant and his family were involved in a serious car crash on the Isle of Wight.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1976 Legionnaires' Disease first struck, at the American Legion Convention in Philadelphia, after which the disease was named. Twenty-nine people died.

1977 US President Jimmy Carter signed legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.

1983 Thomas Sankara became President in Upper Volta.

1984 The African republic Upper Volta changed its name to Burkina Faso.

1987 The Federal Communications Commission rescinded the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".

1990 British aviatrix Naomi Christie celebrated her 79^th birthday with a flight standing up on the roof of a Tiger Moth.

1991 The Greek cruise ship Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa.

1992 Australia: The live show Jesus Christ Superstar opened in Sydney, starring John Farnham, Kate Ceberano, Jon Stevens and Angry Anderson.

1993 A US federal judge sentenced LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.

1997 Jeanne Calment of France (b. 1875), died at age 122 years and 164 days – the longest confirmed lifespan in history.

1997 USA: About 185,000 Teamsters union United Parcel Service drivers walked off the job.

2005 Prime Minister Paul Martin announced that Michaëlle Jean would be Canada's 27^th – and first black – Governor General.

 

Tomorrow: Murasaki Shikibu, Japanese author, and her diary

 

 Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

 

 

 

 

breathe

 

 

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