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fnordreetings from Australia. 

Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.

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If cold December gave you birth,
The month of ice and snow and mirth,
Place on your hand a Turquoise blue,
Success will bless whatever you do.
Traditional

The sun that brief December day,
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
John Greenleaf Whittier

The Australian landscapes show best by the red light of the hot-weather sunsets, when the dark feathery foliage of the gum-trees come out in exquisite relief upon the fiery fogs that form the sky...
Sir Charles Dilke (1843 - 1911)

December
Rude Boreas comes in dread array,
And all his boisterous powers display;
The mountain top his pinions sweep,
And wakes with rage the briny deep.
Nathan Wilde's Almanac, 1831

In drear nighted December
Too happy, happy tree
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity.
John Keats (1795 - 1821), English poet, ; 'In drear nighted December'

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everwhere!
Shakespeare, Sonnet 97

And after him came next the chill December;
And he through merry feasting which he made,
And great bonfires, did not the cold remember;
His Saviour's birth his mind so much did glad.
Upon a shaggy bearded goat he rode,
The same wherewith Dan Jove in tender years,
They ay was nourisht by the Idaean mayd;
And in his hand a broad deepe bowle he beares,
Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peers.
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 - January 13, 1599), English poet; Faerie Queen, The Cantos of Mutabilitie

 
Advent calendar

Advent calendar
(Click for e-cards)

Riding upon the Goat, with snow-white hair,
I come, the last of all. This crown of mine
Is of the holly; in my hand I bear
The thyrsus, tipped with fragrant cones of pine.
I celebrate the birth of the Divine,
And the return of the Saturnian reign;--
My songs are carols sung at every shrine.
Proclaiming "Peace on earth, good will to men."
 HW Longfellow (1807 - '82); The Poet's Calendar for December

Round and sound!
Twopence a pound,
Cherries! Rare ripe cherries!

And

Cherries a ha'penny a stick!
Come and pick! come and pick
Cherries! big as plums!
Who comes? who comes?
[Cherry season in Australia]: the cherry vendors' cry, old London

The first of December had arrived! the fatal day! for, if the projectile were not discharged that very night at 10h. 48m. 40s. P.M., more than eighteen years must roll by before the moon would again present herself under the same conditions of zenith and perigee.
Jules Verne; From the Earth to the Moon, Ch. 26 opening paragraph

Human beings are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun.
Woody Allen, American director and comedian, born on December 1, 1935

 

More Woody Allen quotes

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying.

I'm not afraid of dying ... I just don't want to be there when it happens.

This year I'm a star, but what will I be next year? A black hole?

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily as lying down.

[When asked if he liked the idea of living on the silver screen ...] I´d rather live on in my apartment.

(On films) I can't imagine that the business should be run any other way than that the director has complete control of his films. My situation may be unique, but that doesn't speak well for the business -- it shouldn't be unique, because the director is the one who has the vision and he's the one who should put that vision onto film.

Basically I am a low-culture person. I prefer watching baseball with a beer and some meatballs.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

I do the movies just for myself like an institutionalized person who basket-weaves. Busy fingers are happy fingers. I don't care about the films. I don't care if they're flushed down the toilet after I die.

Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.

[At the Academy Awards in 2002, explaining why he was the one introducing a montage of New York movies] And I said, "You know, God, you can do much better than me. You know, you might want to get Martin Scorsese, or, or Mike Nichols, or Spike Lee, or Sidney Lumet ..." I kept naming names, you know, and, um, I said, "Look, I've given you 15 names of guys who are more talented than I am, and, and smarter and classier..." And they said, "Yes, but they were not available".

If my film makes one more person miserable, I'll feel I've done my job.

For some reason I'm more appreciated in France than I am back home. The subtitles must be incredibly good.

My relationship with Hollywood isn't love-hate, it's love-contempt. I've never had to suffer any of the indignities that one associates with the studio system. I've always been independent in New York by sheer good luck. But I have an affection for Hollywood because I've had so much pleasure from films that have come out of there. Not a whole lot of them, but a certain amount of them have been very meaningful to me.

Eighty per cent of success is showing up.

The two biggest myths about me are that I'm an intellectual, because I wear these glasses, and that I'm an artist because my films lose money. Those two myths have been prevalent for many years.

Join the army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill 'em.

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.

If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

There are only two things that you can control in life: art and masturbation.

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
American hitman, Muhammed Ali, who saw a UFO in New York, December 1, 1971

… (it) is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the unrestrained observation that I certainly would not consider living it again.
American writer James Baldwin, who died on December 1, 1987, on his early life

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
 James Baldwin; 'Autobiographical Notes' from Notes of a Native Son, 1955

On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan (who is from Canada), I'd like to thank the Academy for this award.   I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us. They're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like non-fiction, yet we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape, or the fiction of orange alerts. We are against this war, Mr Bush. Shame on you, Mr Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much.
Michael Moore, American film maker, upon accepting the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, March 23, 2003, the Kodak Theater, Hollywood, California. It was on December 1, 2001 that librarian Ann Sparanese commenced an email campaign that helped end censorship of Moore's book, Stupid White Men.

The media, the corporations, the politicians...have all done such a good job of scaring the American public, it's come to the point where they don't need to give any reason at all.
Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine

I like America to some extent. Take the Japanese for instance. They are complicated and tend to be reserved in expressing themselves. Sometimes, it is difficult for me to understand them. Americans are simple and clear. They are charming people. You will understand how good an individual American is. What I am not satisfied with America is that the nation cannot control the government and economy. Only a handful of people have the power to control the country.
Michael Moore

I don't compromise my values and I don't compromise my work. That's why I've been kicked from one network to the next: I won't give in.
Michael Moore

For many years the people of South Africa suffered under the yoke of oppression and apartheid. Many people continue to suffer brutal oppression, where their fundamental dignity as human beings is denied. One such people is the people of West Papua.
  The people of West Papua have been denied their basic human rights, including their right to self-determination. Their cry for justice and freedom has fallen largely on deaf ears.
  An estimated 100,000 people have died in West Papua since Indonesia took control of the territory in 1963.
It is with deep concern I have learned about the United Nations' role in the take-over of West Papua by Indonesia, and in the now-discredited "Act of 'Free' Choice" of 1969. Instead of a proper referendum, where every adult male and female had the opportunity to vote by secret ballot on whether or not they wished to be part of Indonesia, just over 1,000 people were hand-picked and coerced into declaring for Indonesia in public in a climate of fear and repression.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu; today is Independence Day, West Papua   Source

 

 

 

December 1 is the 335th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (336th in leap years), with 30 days remaining.
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Read about Christmas in the Book of Days

 

December  

December birthstone: Turquoise, signifying prosperity; blue zircon; blue topaz; tanzanite.

Birth flowers: Holly, narcissus and poinsettia

DecemberThe name for December comes from the Latin, 'the tenth month', and also the middle goddess of the Moirae (the Greek name for the Three Fates; the Roman equivalent is the Parcae), Decima, she who personifies the present. It was, in fact, the tenth month when the year began in March with the Spring Equinox; but, since January and February have been intercalated, the name is a bit confusing.

Vesta (Roman goddess), patroness of fire, an archetypal symbol of the eternal present, also rules this month.

To the Saxons it was winter-monat, meaning 'winter cometh'. Then after Christianity came to Britain and Ireland, it became in England heilig-monat, 'holy cometh'. It was also called midwinter-monath, and guil erra (Aerra Geola), meaning the former or first giul (or 'the month before yule').  The Frankish term was Heilagmanoth, 'holy month', because of large number of religious festivals.

The feast of Thor, which was celebrated at the winter solstice, was called giul from iol, or ol, which signifies ale, and is now corrupted into yule. The Yule festival continued into January.

The Roman writer Martial called the month fumosus or smoky, from the practice of lighting fires for warmth. He also calls it canus or hoary. Germans still call it Christmonat.

In the Asatru spiritual tradition, this is Wolfmoon. Irish: Mi na Nollag, or Mí na Nollaig, 'Christmas month'. In the Backwoods tradition, it's the Cold or Hunting Moon.

Nigel Pennick (The Pagan Book of Days, 1992) writes: "The elder month signifies the paradox of a time of timelessness, youth in old age and old age in youthfulness ..."

 

December

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

December is the twelfth and last month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 31 days. From the Latin decem for 'ten' (it was originally the tenth month of the year, before January and February were inserted).


 

Goddess Vesta, ancient Rome's guardian of December  

Vesta also rules this month. In Roman mythology, Vesta was the Roman hearth goddess, patroness of fire, an archetypal symbol of the eternal present. She is the Roman version of Hestia. The Romans considered Vesta to be chief among the deities they called the Lares and Penates.
Vesta, goddess of ancient Rome  

Vesta was worshipped by Roman families as a household deity with sacred fires kept burning by virgins whose lives were devoted to tending the flame, which was said to have been brought from Troy to Rome by the hero Aeneus. The flame was relit every March 1 and had to be kept alight all year. If this flame ever went out, disaster would fall on Rome. The flame was kept alive by the vestales, or Vestal Virgins, Vesta's priestesses who were chosen from as young as six years old. Their tenure as priestesses was for thirty years, were not allowed to marry and were executed if found to have had sex. In Roman homes, every day, at meal time, a small cake was thrown on the fire for Vesta. It was good luck if it burnt with a crackle. 

Vesta was introduced in Rome by King Numa Pompilius. She was a native Roman deity (some authors suggest received from the Sabin cults), presumably the daughter of Saturn and Opi (or Rea). However, the similarity with the cult of the Greek goddess Hestia is notable. Vesta too protected the familiar harmony and, extensively, the State. The Vestalia was celebrated from June 7 to 15.

Another name of this Goddess was Nemesis, from the Greek nemos, or 'grove', which in the original signifies divine vengeance. She carries a wheel in her other hand, indicating that she is the goddess of the turning year, like Egyptian Isis and Latin Fortuna, except that the wheel will one day come full circle to exact vengeance.

Her feast of August 13 was converted in the middle Ages into that of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (which was placed at August 15). To astronomers there is also the asteroid, 4 Vesta.

Vestalia festival    House of the Vestals    December poetry and folklore

Roman festivals and notable days in the Book of Days    Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days

Festival of Poseidon, ancient Greece
Greek god of the sea and rebirth.
Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992

Festivals in ancient Greece

Kalends of December, Feast of Neptune/ Pietas, ancient Rome
To the Romans, Poseidon was Neptune. After the advent of Christianity, the office of protector of sailors was transferred from Neptune to St Nicholas.

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Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald


Yule


Decking the Halls

Folklore & traditions of Christmas plants


The Winter Solstice


The Fires of Yule

A Keltelven Guide for Celebrating the Winter Solstice


Sabbat Entertaining


Celebrate the Earth
A Year of Holidays in the Pagan Tradition


Wheel of the Year
 


Be A Goddess


The Wiggles - Yule Be Wiggling

Lots of things to waste time each day
Daily Everything


Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

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Lord of the Rings

 

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The God Who Wasn't There


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When Corporations Rule the World


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Free West Papua, Morning Star flagIndependence Day, West Papua

 "An estimated 100,000 people have died in West Papua since Indonesia took control ..."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu   Source

From Wikipedia: Papua is a province of Indonesia located in the western half of the island of New Guinea and nearby islands.

The name West Papua is also in common use, as Papua may also refer to either the entire island of New Guinea or to the southern half of the neighbouring country of Papua New Guinea. West Papua is the preferred name among nationalists who hope to separate from Indonesia and form their own country.

"West Papuan Independence Day, was commemorated by solidarity activists across the world. Indonesia has banned the display of West Papua's "Morning Star" flag in West Papua, and the province's governor, Jaap Salossa, banned all celebration of the day. A protest was held despite the ban, at which protesters successfully fought off police to allow the flag to fly for nearly an hour, before police reinforcements arrived. In the ensuing fight, police shot seven West Papuans with rubber bullets, and removed the flag. Activists in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands held flag raisings to support the West Papuan struggle for independence from Indonesia."
Source: Green Left Weekly, December 8, 2004

"The Indonesian authority keeps the Papuan peoples under control through shocking human rights violations while foreign companies exploit their sacred lands causing massive environmental destruction."   Free West Papua

Free West Papua. Friends of People Close to Nature (click)

Australia West Papua Association Site    West Papua Net : Online News

International Action for West Papua    West Papua Information Kit    Action in Solidarity Asia Pacific    West Papua Action

West Papua Topica E-List    Australia West Papua Association - Brisbane    Friends of People Close to Nature

Human Rights Abuse in West Papua - links     Papua Web    Gallery of beautiful Birds of Paradise

"On December 1, 1961, the New Guinea Council (Niew Guinea Raad / the first elected Papuan Parliament) together with the Dutch colonial administration, officially inaugurated the national Papuan symbols which emphasised their sovereignty as a people."
The Morning Star flag

"Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide ..."

How Indonesia uses transmigration to colonize West Papua

 

 

Day of Pallas Athena or Minerva, ancient Greece/Rome

Maiden Goddess of Knowledge and Truth. 
(Source: The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Calendar)

The city of Pallas Athena

The goddess Pallas Athena was fond of building towns. One day she said to the people of a fishing village, "Raise me a temple on the hill and I will be your protector forever". This they did, until the god of the sea, Poseidon, called out that as he was the only one who had watched the town being built, he should have the honour of naming rights (Poseidon had a savvy public relations consultant), or else he would unleash such tempests that the whole Earth would be swallowed up (PR was even more evil and destructive in those days, if that can be possible). 

But Pallas Athena answered him: "If this place is destroyed, it will not belong to either of us. Let each of us give a gift to the citizens, and let them decide on the naming honour." 

Poseidon struck the sea with his trident (the pitchfork, not the missile), and a fine horse galloped out from the waves, at which sight the people marvelled. In response, Pallas touched a blade of grass, whereupon an olive tree grew up suddenly.

The people cried out blessings on the olive tree, because it would provide food and oil for their lamps. "More precious than the horse is the olive!" they cried. Thus the new town was named Athens, in honour of the wise goddess. And to this day, Athens produces far better oil from the olive than the horse.

"Festival of Challynteria 'sweeping out.' The temple of Athena was swept out by women, who then used a fennel stalk to hold embers from the eternal flame. It was then put out and its sconce cleaned and refilled. Finally, it was relit from the embers in the fennel stalk."   Source

 

Barbes Diena, ancient Latvia

 

Celebrating the fertility of lambs and ewes. Working with needles or other sharp objects was forbidden. Dumplings were eaten and various rituals were performed to guarantee the health and fertility of the sheep.

Iyomante Matsuri, Kutcharo, Japan (Dec 1- Dec 15)  

At Kutcharo, Hokkaido Prefecture
A bear cub is trapped and cared for and well fed; this remembers when the mountain god, Kimunkamui, was captured by the devil and put on earth as a bear. Only the bear's death could set his spirit free. When the bear is two-three years old, a festival is held. People dance around the cage, and the bear is elaborately dressed on Day One. 

He is led through the village and killed, and offerings are made to its body. After several days the bear meat is distributed to the villagers; the spirit of the bear is freed. (The date of this festival is variable and, thankfully, it is not always observed.) 
Bauer, Helen, and Carlquist, Sherwin, Japanese Festivals, Doubleday and Co, Garden City, New York, 1965

 

Second day of Advent

(Lat. adventus, arrival). The four weeks before Christmas, beginning on St Andrew's Day (November 30), or the Sunday nearest to it, commemorating the first and second coming of Christ; the first to redeem, and the second to judge the world.

Advent Sunday: The first Sunday in Advent, the beginning of the Church Year, except in the Greek Church where it begins on St Martin's Day (November 11).

The Christian ecclesiastical year begins on Advent Sunday. It is always the nearest Sunday to St Andrew's day, whether before or after.

Advent (Nov 30 - Dec 25), season of the coming of Jesus Christ

Celebrating Advent: School of the Seasons

 

Wishing You Peace And Joy !  

Wishing You Peace And Joy !
Reach out with this warm e-wish.
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Feast day of St Agericus

Feast day of St Agnofleta

Feast day of St Alexander Briant

Feast day of St Ananias of Arbela

Feast day of St Ansanus the Baptizer

Feast day of St Antony Bonfadini

Feast day of St Botulph

Feast day of St Candida

Feast day of St Candres of Maestricht

Feast day of St Cassian

Feast day of St Castritian of Milan

Feast day of St Christian of Perugia

Feast day of St Constantine

Feast day of St Declan

Feast day of St Didorus

Feast day of St Edmund Campion

 

Feast day of St Eligius (Eloy; Eloi), Bishop of Noyon

(Dark stapelia, Stapelia pulla, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

An extremely skilful metalsmith, Eligius of Noyon was master of the mint under King Clotaire II of Paris, and a close friend of Clotaire. He was born in 588 at Catelat, near Limoges, France; died: December 1, 660 at Noyon.

Eligius is invoked on behalf of sick horses and, in some places, they are blessed on his feast day. So, by extension, Eligius is also patron of petrol stations and garages, which may be considered modern versions of stables. Appropriately, the first such station for automobiles opened on this day in 1913 in Pittsburgh, USA.

Eligius is also the patron of agricultural workers, auto mechanics, blacksmiths, boilermakers, cab drivers, carriage makers, cart makers, cartwrights, clock makers, coin collectors, craftsmen, cutlers, farm workers, farmers, farriers, garage workers, gas station workers, gilders, gold workers, goldsmiths, harness makers, horses, horseshoe makers, jewelers, jockeys, knife makers, laborers, locksmiths, metal collectors, metal workers, metalsmiths, miners, minters, minting, numismatics, numismatists, petrol station attendants, precious metal collectors, saddle makers, saddlers, sick horses, taxi drivers, tool makers, veterinarians, watch makers and wheelwrights.   Source

In art, he might be represented as a bishop, or else as a courtier: with a hammer, anvil, and horseshoe; shoeing a horse; holding a horse's leg, which he detached to shoe it more easily; beside a horse; with hammer and crown, smithy in the background; with hammer, anvil, and Saint Anthony; holding a chalice and goldsmith's hammer; working as a goldsmith; or with Saint Godeberta, to whom he is giving a ring.  

 

Feast day of St Evasius of Asti

Feast day of St Florentius

Feast day of St Grwst

Feast day of St John Beche

Feast day of St John of Vercelli

Feast day of St John van Ruysbroeck

Feast day of St Leontius of Fréjus

Feast day of St Lucius

Feast day of St Marianus

Feast day of St Martinus

Feast day of St Nahum

Feast day of St Natalia of Nicomedia
On September 8, 304 when Natalia watched her husband Adrian being tortured and executed, she had to be restrained from throwing herself on the funeral pyre. When a storm put out the fire, she managed to recover Adrian's hand, which she kept as a relic. She has her own feast day on today and shares one with Adrian on September 8.

More on relics

Feast day of St Nicholas Owen

Feast day of St Olympiades

Feast day of St Proculus of Narni

Feast day of St Ralph Ashley

Feast day of St Richard Langley

Feast day of St Rogatus

Feast day of St Thomas Garnet

Feast day of St Tudwal

Feast day of St Ursicinus of Brescia

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

 

Click for War Resisters InternationalInternational Prisoners for Peace Day
 In recognition of war resisters in all countries imprisoned for opposition to war and conscription.  

"December 1st, 1956, was the first time War Resistor's International (WRI) 'celebrated' Prisoners for Peace Day. This was done by publishing a Prisoners for Peace Honour Roll and calling on all members of WRI sections to send postcards and letters to the prisoners.

"In fact, this focus has remained the same over the years. The only difference with todays' list is that at that time, the list consisted of conscientious objectors to military service who were imprisoned and those who were performing substitute service. During the years, the list has been altered several times. Nowadays it includes anyone who is imprisoned for non-violent actions against war and war preparation ...

"For more information visit the War Resisters' International website."   Source

 

More Andrew-tide marriage prognostications

We saw yesterday how many marriage prognostications are associated with Saint Andrew's feast. On the day after, namely today, German young people traditionally floated cups in a tub; if a boy's and a girl's cup drifted together and were intercepted by a cup inscribed "priest", it indicated marriage.

Hari Kugo; Daitosai, or Good-Luck Market, Omiya, Japan (Nov 30 - Dec 11)

Iyomante Matsuri, Kutcharo, Japan (Dec 1 - 15)

World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day is dedicated to raising awareness of the global AIDS epidemic caused by the spread of HIV infection.

The concept originated at the 1988 World Summit of Ministers of Health on Programmes for AIDS Prevention. Since then, it has been taken up by governments, international organizations and charities around the world.  

Pioneers' Day, Angola

Union Day, Romania (the national holiday)

Independence Day (Fullveldisdagur Islendinga; Self-Ruling Day) (1918), Iceland

Matilda Newport Day (1822), Liberia

Mocidale Day/Youth Day, Portuguese Guiana

Bank Holiday, Barbados

Bank Holiday, Belize

Restoration of Independence Day, Portugal
On December 1, 1640, Portugal regained its independence from Spain and João IV of Portugal became king.

Restoration of Independence, Macau

Independence Day (1640), Azores

Restoration Day (1968) Cape Verde

Proclamation of the Republic (1958), Central African Republic

Military Abolition Day, Costa Rica
On December 1, 1948, president José Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica abolished the country's army after victory in the civil war in that year. In a ceremony in the Cuartel Bellavista, Figueres broke a wall with a mallet symbolizing the end of Costa Rica's military spirit. In 1949 the abolition of the military was introduced in the Article 12 of the 1949 Constitution. In 1986, president Oscar Arias Sánchez declared December 1 as the Día de la Abolición del Ejército (Military abolition day) with law No. 8115.

Prisoners for Peace Day

 

 

 

1081 Louis VI of France (d. 1137)

1083 Anna Comnena (d. 1153), Byzantine historian

1709 Franz Xaver Richter (d. 1789), composer

1716 Etienne-Maurice Falconet (d. 1791), French sculptor

1743 Martin Heinrich Klaproth (d. 1817), chemist

1761 Marie Grosholtz (sometimes spelled Grossholtz or Grossholz; Madame Tussaud; d. 1850), French waxworks museum founder; born in Strasbourg

Madame Tussauds International Home Page

1844 Alexandra of Denmark (d. 1925), consort of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom

1884 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (d. 1976), painter, graphic artist

1886 Rex Stout (d. 1975), author

1893 Ernst Troller (d. 1939), dramatist

1895 Henry Williamson (d. 1977), author

1897 Helen Simpson (d. October 14, 1940), Australian author and founder in Britain of the Oxford Women's Dramatic Society. Her novel, Under Capricorn, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1949.

1899 Robert W Welch Jr (Robert Welch; d. January 6, 1985), American confectioner and author, best known as a far right-wing activist and founder of the John Birch Society. Welch was inspired one day while making a batch of caramel to pour out a flat piece and put a stick in the candy so it could be eaten like a lollipop. He named this confection a Papa Sucker.

1910 Dame Alicia Markova, British ballerina

1912 Minoru Yamasaki (d. 1986), American architect

1913 Mary Martin (d. 1990), actress, singer

1923 Stansfield Turner, American admiral, director of the Central Intelligence Agency

1932 Matt Monro, singer

1933 Lou Rawls, American singer, composer and actor

 

Zelig1935 Woody Allen (b. Allan Konigsberg), American film director and comedian. Allen's film persona is a modern and very verbal one, self-absorbed, full of neuroses, psychobabble, and insecurity.

All of his movies feature at least one character who is a writer; this is often Woody himself. He starts each of his films with white-on-black credits set to jazz music. He has more Academy Award nominations (thirteen) for writing than anyone else. All of them are in the 'Written Directly for the Screen' category.

Years ago, Allen wrote the concept for the film Hollywood Ending on the back of a matchbook. Years later, he found the matchbook and made the film.

More showbiz info for December 1

 

1940 Richard Pryor (d. December 10, 2005), actor, comedian (Lady Sings the Blues; Stir Crazy)

1942 John Crowley, author

1945 Bette Midler, American singer and actress

1946 Gilbert O'Sullivan, singer

1950 Keith Thibodeaux, drummer and actor ('Little Ricky' on I Love Lucy)

1951 Jaco Pastorius (d. 1987), bassist

1961 Jeremy Northam, actor

1976 Matthew Shepard (d. 1998), murder victim

1977 Brad Delson, lead guitar musician of Linkin Park

 

 

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772 Pope Adrian I was elected.

1135 King Henry I of England died at St Denis le Fermont in Normandy, after being sick for a week following a meal of lampreys. William of Malmesbury describes Henry thus: "He was of middle stature, greater than the small, but exceeded by the very tall; his hair was black and set back upon the forehead; his eyes mildly bright; his chest brawny; his body fleshy".

1145 After a period of relative peace, in which Christians and Muslims coexisted in the Holy Land, Pope Eugene III (pope from 1145 - 1153) sent a papal bull to France's King Louis VII, proclaiming the Second Crusade, upon hearing of the fall of Edessa to the Turks. Supported by St Bernard of Clairvaux, and led by Louis and Emperor Conrad III of Germany from 1147 - 49, the crusade failed to accomplish its goal.

1167 Northern Italian towns formed the Lombardi League.

c. 1325 (Approximation to the unknown year and date – very late autumn or early winter) The deaths of some 487 victims of the Crow Creek Massacre, Village Farmer people attempting to colonize land to the north in what is now South Dakota, USA.

The Central Plains people at Crow Creek were attacked by the Middle Missouri tradition people who apparently were able to breach the fortification ditch that the Central Plains people had built or were in the process of completing. Earth lodges were burned; the victims were buried in a mass grave on the northern edge of the site.

More

1523 Death of Pope Leo X (b. 1475).

1566 Spanish king Philip II named Fernando Alvarez, duke of Alva.

1581 Edmund Campion, the English Jesuit, was hanged for treason after pamphleteering against Anglicanism in Oxford.

1590 Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene was "entered" –  registered for publication with the Stationers' Company, a pre-publication step necessary in the days of English government censorship.

1602 Death of Kobayakawa Hideaki (b. 1582), Japanese samurai and warlord.

1626 Pasha Muhammad ibn Farukh, the Governor of Jerusalem, was expelled from the city.

1640 Portugal regained its independence from Spain and John IV of Portugal (João IV of Portugal) became king.

1641 Massachusetts became the first American colony to give statutory recognition to slavery.

1653 UK: An athlete from Croydon is reported to have run 20 miles from St Albans to London in less than 90 minutes.

1663 English poet John Dryden, 32, married Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire.

1742 Empress Elisabeth (Yelizaveta Petrovna; Yelisavet Petrovna) ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Russia.

1755 Death of Maurice Greene, composer.

1804 The first London stage appearance of the child acting prodigy, William Betty (William Henry West Betty; 1791 - 1874), known as the Young Roscius, whose acting brilliance caused a sensation in England. His performances brought in £17,210 in 28 nights, a huge fortune. Like so many child actors, the public did not like him as an adult and his career was washed up early. His attempt in 1812 to perform again bombed, so he retired completely in 1824 and lived off his fortune. His nickname came from the great comic actor of ancient Rome, Quintus Roscius.

"English actor, known as the young Roscius, was born on the 13th of September 1791 at Shrewsbury. He first appeared on the stage at Belfast before he was twelve years old, as Osman in Aaron Hill's Zara, an English version of Voltaire's Zaire. His success was immediate, and he shortly afterwards appeared in Dublin, where it is said that in three hours of study he committed the part of Hamlet to memory. His precocious talents aroused great enthusiasm in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and he was favorably compared with some of the greatest tragedians. In 1804 he first appeared at Covent Garden, when the troops had to be called out to preserve order, so great was the crush to obtain admittance. At Drury Lane the house was similarly packed, and he played for the then unprecedented salary of over 75 guineas a night. He was a great success socially, George III himself presenting him to the queen, and Pitt upon one occasion adjourning the House of Commons that members might be in time for his performance. But this enthusiasm gradually subsided, and in 1808 he made his final appearance as a boy actor, and entered Christs College, Cambridge. He re-appeared four years later, but the public would have none of him, and he retired to the enjoyment of the large fortune which he had amassed as a prodigy. He died on the 24th of August 1874. His son Henry Betty (1819 - 1897) was also an actor."   Source

"A child prodigy, William Betty's early stage success inspired such a multitude of juvenile imitators that the actress Dorothea Jordan (mistress of the Duke of Clarence, later William IV) once exclaimed, 'Oh, for the days of King Herod!'"   Source: Anecdotage (a reference to King Herod and the Slaughter of the Innocents)

Former child stars    William Betty medal    Grave of William Henry West Betty    More

 

1821 Australia: Major-General Sir Thomas Brisbane took over as sixth governor of the New South Wales colony.

1822 Peter I was crowned Emperor of Brazil.

1824 US presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate had received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives was given the task to decide the winner (as stipulated by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution).

1831 Australia: Governor Sir Richard Bourke arrived in New South Wales. His tenure was marked by relatively progressive policies for his times.

1834 The slaves of the British Cape Colony were emancipated.

1835 Hans Christian Andersen published first book of fairy tales

1860 The first instalment of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations was published in All the Year Round.

The Miss Havisham of Sydney

1884 American Old West – Near Frisco, New Mexico (now Reserve, New Mexico), deputy sheriff Elfego Baca held off a gang of 80 Texan cowboys who wanted to kill him for arresting cowboy Charles McCarthy (the cowboys were terrorizing the area's Hispanos and Baca was working against them).

1885 Although the exact date is unknown, the US Patent Office acknowledges December 1, 1885 as the first day of the American soft drink, Dr Pepper.

1887 Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle first appeared in print: A Study In Scarlet.

Shop Sherlock Holmes


1891 The International Peace Bureau was launched, Berne, Switzerland.

 

1899 Anderson Dawson (1863 - 1910), Australian politician, became the Premier of Queensland, Australia for just seven days in 1899. His was the first elected labor party or parliamentary socialist government in the world.

When the James Dickson government resigned on this day, Dawson formed a ministry, which was, however, defeated as soon as the house met.

At the first federal election for the senate he was returned at the head of the Queensland poll. In April, 1904, when Chris Watson formed the first federal Labor government, Dawson was given the portfolio of Minister for Defence.

He lost his seat at the federal election of December 1906. The Federal electoral division of Dawson is named after him.

(Details from Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1949)   Australian Labor Party

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

 

1903 Edwin S Porter's The Great Train Robbery, the first western film, was released.

1905 A plot to kill Russia's Tsar Nicholas II was discovered in St Petersburg and twenty army officers and 230 guards were arrested.

1908 Italy demanded that Austria pay compensation for the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1913 Ford Motor Company introduced the first moving assembly line, reducing chassis assembly time from 12½ hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes (although Henry Ford was not the first to use an assembly line, his successful adoption of one did spark an era of mass production).

1913 USA: The first drive-up gasoline station opened, Pittsburgh.

1914 The internationally famed labour song Solidarity Forever was written by IWW (International Workers of the World, or 'Wobblies') songwriter Ralph Chaplin for a hunger march to be led by anarchist Lucy Parsons in Chicago (on January 17, 1915). The song is still performed by musicians such as Utah Phillips.

When the union's inspiration through worker's blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong
[Chorus]
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold;
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,
For the union makes us strong.
[Chorus]: Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong

Early progressives in the Book of Days

 

1918 Iceland became a self-governing kingdom, yet remained united with Denmark.

1918 Transylvania united with Romania, following the March 27 incorporation of Bessarabia and Bucovina.

1918 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was proclaimed.

1919 Lady Astor became first female member of the British Parliament to take her seat (she had been elected to that position on November 28).

1919 US: Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman and other anarchists and radicals were forced to leave the Land of the Free and deported to Russia.

1921 Under the pretext of representing the Kropotkin Museum at an anarchist conference in Berlin, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Alexander Schapiro were authorized to leave Russia.

"Early this month Goldman and Berkman settle in Riga, Latvia. Write to Harry Weinberger about chances of getting back into the US. Allowed only a temporary visa in Latvia, they seek entry to either Germany or Sweden. They are granted Swedish visas on the 14th and enroute to Germany on a train on the 22nd, they are arrested by the Latvian secret service; accused of being Bolshevik agents."

Source: The Daily Bleed

Early progressives in the Book of Days

1921 Henri Landru (Henri Désiré Landru; 1869 - 1922) was convicted in France of the murders of ten women he had met through lonely hearts advertisements. He was executed by decapitation on the guillotine.

1922 The first skywriting over the US – "Hello USA" – by Captain Turner of the RAF.

1925 World War I aftermath: Locarno Treaties – The final Locarno Pact was signed in London, establishing post-war territorial settlements in return for normalizing relations with defeated Germany.

1929 The game of bingo was invented by Edwin S Lowe. Bingo can be traced back to a game called Lotto, played in Italy as early as 1530. The bingo name comes from a corruption of the name Beano, the name of a form of bingo played in the United States in the 1920s. Beano was so called because beans were used to cover the numbers.

Buzzword bingo
Buzzword bingo is a game with rules resemble those of bingo and housie, but instead of a matrix of numbers, each player's card is a matrix of buzzwords. When players hear any of their buzzwords spoken in the meeting, they cross it off their cards. The first documented buzzword bingo occurred when the then Vice President of the United States Al Gore, known for his liberal use of buzzwords hyping technology, spoke at MIT's 1996 graduation. The graduation class had distributed bingo cards containing buzzwords to the audience.

1934 In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergei Kirov was shot dead at the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad by Leonid Nikolaev (it is widely thought that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered this murder).

1938 Crystal Bird Fauset of Philadelphia took her seat in the Pennsylvania State House, the first African-American woman to serve in an American state legislature.

1939 In New York, the film Gone with the Wind received its premiere.

1941 World War II: Former mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, and the director of the Office of Civilian Defense, signed an order creating the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) as the civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force (in April 1943 the CAP was placed under the jurisdiction of the Army Air Force).

1942 UK: The publication of the Beveridge Report. It was a charter for social security which envisaged bringing the whole population into an insurance scheme.

1944 Edward Stettinius, Jr became becomes the last United States Secretary of State of the Roosevelt administration, by filling the seat left by the Cordell Hull.

1947 English occultist Aleister Crowley (b.1875) died, aged 74.

1948 The army was officially disbanded by the people of Costa Rica, the only citizenry ever to take the necessary first step towards the abolition of the horrors of modern warfare. December 1 became Military Abolition Day.

1952 The New York Daily News carried a front-page story announcing that Christine Jorgensen, a transsexual woman in Denmark had become the recipient of the first successful sexual reassignment operation.

1955 American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man and was arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws (Baptist minister Dr Martin Luther King, Jr later led the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott as a result.)

1958 Central African Republic became independent from France.

1959 Cold War: The Antarctic Treaty was signed. Twelve countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, signed a landmark treaty, which set aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and banned military activity on that continent (this was the first arms control agreement established during the Cold War).

1963 Nagaland became the 16th state of India.

1964 Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B Johnson and his top-ranking advisers met to discuss plans to bomb North Vietnam (after some debate, they agreed to enact a two-phase bombing plan).

1964 Dr Martin Luther King, Jr spoke to FBI Director J Edgar Hoover about his slander campaign.

1965 The Border Security Force was formed in India as a special force to guard the borders.

1966 Prisoners for Peace Day was first observed.

1966 US: Comedian Dick Gregory was convicted in Olympia, Washington, for his participation in Native American fishing rights protests.

1968 An American C-123 military aircraft, having developed engine trouble, lightened its load by spraying a full tank of defoliants over two South Vietnamese towns, causing deaths and widespread birth defects.

Source: The Daily Bleed

1968 Janis Joplin made her final appearance with Big Brother and the Holding Company.

1969 Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States since World War II was held (on January 4, 1970, the New York Times ran a long article, 'Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random').

1970 Independent People's Republic of South Yemen became the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. "In honour of this auspicious occasion, twice the number of the usual suspects have been rounded up we suspect."   Source: The Daily Bleed


1970 Five thousand protested South Vietnamese Vice President Ky's visit to San Francisco.

1970 Pope Paul VI arrived in Sydney, the first pope to visit Australia.

1971 Cambodian Civil War: Khmer Rouge rebels intensified assaults on Cambodian government positions, forcing their retreat from Kompong Thmar and nearby Ba Ray, 10 kilometres northeast of Phnom Penh.

1971 According to American boxer Muhammad Ali (b. 1942), he saw a UFO while jogging in New York's Central Park.

1973 Papua New Guinea gained self government from Australia.

1975 USA: The long-running soap opera The Edge of Night switched networks, and started airing new instalments on the American ABC network after 19 years on CBS.

1976 The Sex Pistols, following their first single, Anarchy in the UK, appeared on British TV's Today Show, a replacement for Queen. Interviewer Bill Grundy taunted them for their "nasty" reputation, provoking bass player Glenn Matlock to say "fuck" on the air. In the resulting uproar, the Pistols were banned from all but five cities of their first UK tour. By next month, no club or concert hall in Great Britain would book them, after he fucked up.   Source: The Daily Bleed

1987 NASA announced the names of four companies that had been awarded contracts to help build the International Space Station: Boeing Aerospace, General Electric's Astro-Space Division, McDonnell Douglas, and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell.

1987 In Saint-Paul de Vence, France, American essayist, novelist, and playwright James Baldwin died.

1987 England: The Department of Trade inspectors were ordered into the giant Guinness company to investigate allegations of misconduct. These investigations resulted in four arrests, including that of the chairman, Ernest Saunders.

1988 World AIDS Day was founded by the World Health Organization, Geneva.

1988 Benazir Bhutto became the first woman elected to govern a Muslim nation when acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan nominated her as prime minister of Pakistan.

1988 The United States launched the Atlantis spy satellite.

1989 Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolished the constitutional provision granting the communist party the leading role in the state, effectively voting itself out of monopoly power (Egon Krenz, the Politburo and the Central Committee resigned on December 4).

1989 In Rome, Pope John Paul II met Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

1990 Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France met 40 metres beneath the English Channel seabed, establishing the first ground connection between the island of Great Britain and the mainland of Europe since the last ice age.

1990 Food rationing was imposed in Leningrad.  

1991 Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.

1994 While recovering from gunshot wounds suffered the day before, American rap singer Tupac Shakur was convicted on charges of sexually abusing a woman in a hotel room. He died on September 13, 1996 after having been shot four times in a 'drive-by shooting'.

1997 Stephane Grapelli, jazz violinist, died, age 89

1997 Khartoum, Sudan: A silent march of women, protesting conscription, was met by a police attack and the arrest of 37 women.

1998 Exxon announced a US$73.7 billion deal to buy Mobil, thus creating Exxon-Mobil, the largest company on the planet.

1999 WTO Day Two: World Trade Organization delegates in Seattle, Washington, USA, after a 'warm' welcome the previous day, when they were unable to meet because of protestors, attempted to meet again.

 

One woman beats Wall St

Michael Moore, 'Stupid White Men', available in the Cafe Diem! Store2001 USA: Progressive American author, Michael Moore (b. 1954), couldn't get his book, Stupid White Men, onto the shelves of booksellers, until New Jersey librarian Ann Sparanese decided to do something about the fact.

Sparanese heard Moore speaking at Englewood Public Library, after he'd attended a New Jersey Citizens Action private event in which he'd told how his publisher (owned by HarperCollins, which in turn is owned by right-wing Australian squillionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp) was refusing to release the book to the public because "At ReganBooks, we're now known as the '9-11 publishers' – we've got a couple of quickie books on the Twin Towers in the works".

Sparanese was appalled that HarperCollins wouldn't release Moore's book for what amounted to reasons of political censorship, so she sprang into action with emails, urging her network of friends and colleagues to protest the publisher's actions, and was responsible for the book rapidly hitting the stands – thus becoming an international best seller that exposed many aspects of the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

Read how she did it

"Within hours of those 50,000 copies hitting bookstores, they sold out. By the next day Stupid White Men went to number one on the Amazon.com best-seller list. By the fifth day it was on its ninth printing. It shot to number one on the New York Times bestseller list and every other list in the country. It was months before people could be assured of going into a bookstore and buying a copy."   Source  

cover
Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

Murdoch: Bigger than Kane    Who is Rupert Murdoch? - Center for American Progress

More on Sparanese    And more    Shop Michael Moore    Shop Bowling for Columbine    More

 

 

2002 Popular Mechanics magazine (December 2002) revealed the (maybe) face of Jesus on its cover.

"The Jesus pictured on the cover of this month's Popular Mechanics has a broad peasant's face, dark olive skin, short curly hair and a prominent nose. He would have stood 5-foot-1-inch tall and weighed 110 pounds, if the magazine is to be believed.

"This representation is quite different from the typical lithe, long-haired, light-skinned and delicate-featured depiction of the man Christians consider the son of God.

"Israeli and British forensic anthropologists and computer programmers got together to create the face featured in the 1.2-million circulation magazine, which occasionally veers from its usual coverage of motors and tools to cover the merger of science and religion."   Source

 

2005 South Africa's Constitutional Court extended marriage equality to homosexual couples.

 

Tomorrow: John Brown's body

 

 Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

 

Not the Almanac

Mar. 7 Julio Cohen runs a pet school that teaches mockingbirds not to mock their owners. 
July 13 Betty Biscayne invented the dash for the Morse code. 
Sept. 29 Melvin Jose Alonso designed Monica Lewinski's blue dress. 
Jan. 14 Wendy A Petparts originated the National Masturbation Hotline. 
Aug. 5 Peter B Schmuck won his court case to have his name changed to Peter Q Schmuck. 
May 23 Jakarta L Wellington filed for bankruptcy when his mentholated Kosher hot dog business failed.
Oct. 18 Jessica Mo Deng sued Sony for using the name 'Playstation', claiming that her Manhattan call girl operation registered the name in 1978.
Dec. 15 Bolivar Napster has been elected Treasurer of the 'Committee to Encourage Cost Control Freaks'.
Jun. 30 Buttons V Wildstrum, driving his SUV, hit an embankment in Dusseldorf, Germany and ended his roll-over in Athens. Greece.
Apr. 1 Maya Lin Goldstein launched a new division of Tyson Foods called 'Robert E Lee's Gefilte Chicken and Grits'.
Feb. 10 Fujitsu Corning, inventor of 'Beano' , just patented 'Barno' for people who live like pigs. 
Nov. 12 Zo Za Amazon markets 'Fiasco', selling look-alike stock certificates of Fortune 500 corporations.

Sent in by Kayla Bentley, long-term Almaniac from California

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.

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