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For all my Yule needs
Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret
Read MacDonald
Yule
Decking the Halls
Folklore &
traditions of Christmas plants
Biography - Nostradamus
Nostradamus
Conversations with Nostradamus
Nostradamus-Music of His Renai
The Mask of Nostradamus
James Randi
Why People Believe Weird Things
The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro
The Alchemist's Handbook
By John Randolph Price
Lucifer Ascending:
The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture
The Winter Solstice
The Fires of Yule
A Keltelven Guide for
Celebrating the Winter Solstice
Sabbat Entertaining
Eight Sabbats for Witches
Celebrate the Earth
A Year of Holidays in the Pagan
Tradition
Wheel of the Year
Be A Goddess
The Wiggles - Yule Be Wiggling
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints
The Book of Saints
The Encyclopedia of Saints
Daily Everything
Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Lord of the Rings
365 Goddess
Adventures in a TV Nation
Michael
Moore
Drawing Down the Moon
Globalization/Anti-Globalization
Body Wisdom
More books, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, music, posters, etc at
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Celtic Daily Prayer
Dude, Where's My Country?
Photo of the day
Mother Earth Spirituality
Bushwhacked
Shamanism
Oroonoko, the Rover
and Other Works
Aphra
Behn
Agatha Christie's
Poirot - The Movie...
Poirot Investigates
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Feast day of St Spyridon,
bishop and confessor
(Swamp pine, Pinus palustri,
is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Spyridion
was a native of Cyprus, and a shepherd. It was his virtue, rather
than any learning or noble manners, that led him to be elected
Bishop of Tremithus, and he continued to care for his flock of sheep
as well as his human flock. He is said to have been present at the
famed Council of
Nicaea, but this is uncertain. He died about 348.
The people of the Greek island of Corfu celebrate
today with a procession in which they carry the relic of the saint
dressed in expensive garments.
Feast day
of St Nicasius, 9th Archbishop of Rheims, and his companions
Feast day
of St John
of the Cross
Feast day of St Arsenius
Feast day of St Fingar
Feast day of St Heron
Feast day of St John
Bread-and-Water
Feast day of St Matronianus
of Milan
Feast day of St Pompeius of
Pavia
Feast day of St Theodore
Feast
day of St Venantius
Fortunatus (Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus), Bishop
of Poitiers, France
A Christian poet of the
Sixth Century, born between 530 and 540 in Upper Italy, between Ceneda
and Treviso; thought to have died c. 605. In his student days nearly
lost his sight, but recovered it by anointing
his eyes with oil from a lamp that burned before the altar of Saint Martin
of Tours. (See St Cecilia.)
More
Feast day of St Zosimus
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Soyal,
Zuni and
Hopi (approximate
date)
This celebration of creation and
return of life to the world is the
Winter Solstice ceremony of the Zuni and the Hopi (Hopitu
Shinumu), 'The Peaceful Ones', also known as the Hopi Indians.
Pahos, prayer sticks, are made prior to the Soyal ceremony,
to bless all the community, including their homes, animals, and
plants. The sacred underground ritual chambers, called
kivas, are
ritually opened to mark the beginning of the
Kachina season,
and the kachina dances begin.
Diane
Stein (The Goddess Book of Days,
Llewellyn Publications, St Paul Minnesota, 1989) says that the Soyal begins
about now on the New Moon and lasts for a month over the
Winter Solstice period, and the major ceremonies are usually about eight days before the Solstice. It is dedicated to Spider Woman, the Hawk Maiden
signifier of rebirth.
Kasuga
Wakamira (Shrine) Matsuri, continues (Dec 13 - Dec 18), at
Nara Prefecture
Mid-December, Festival of Folk Dances;
Maceió, Alagoas,
Brazil
Iyomante
Matsuri, Kutcharo, Japan (Dec 1 - 15)
Agoueh R
Oyo (Agoué-Arroyo) (Mangé la mer; Feeding
of the sea), Voodoo (Voudon) (Dec 12, 13, 14)
Source
More on Voodoo
Alabama Admission Day
Alabama entered the Union on December 14, 1819, becoming the
22nd
state of the USA.
Akō Gishi Sai,
Akō,
Hyōgo
Prefecture, Japan
This Japanese festival has traditional dances and warrior parades, as an
annual memorial to the epic story,
Chūshingura,
about the legendary
Forty-seven
Ronin, who committed themselves to avenging their master.Forty-seven
ronin
Precalentines Day, unofficial Mathematics Holiday
National Energy Conservation Day,
India
 1503 Michel
de Nostradamus (d. July
1, 1566), French astrologer, physician and supposed
predictor of the future.
Nostradamus was a physician of Provence (France) who
published a series of little books, each containing a hundred
predictions ('centuries'), collected later into a single volume.
He studied
mathematics, philosophy, and physic (medicine), and was twice
married and had several children. He lived at Salon, near
Marseilles, where he studied astrology and, as many do, took up
almanac making. Such were those erudite times that his almanacs
became popular, inspiring imitators, but, as some of the imitations
in his name were poorly produced, he gained a bad reputation from
them.
In 1555,
Henry II of
France sent for him to Paris, and Nostradamus became respected by the French
court. Once, at the castle of Faime, in Lorraine, the Lord of
Florinville asked him, half jokingly, what would become of two
little pigs in the yard. "We shall eat the black, and the wolf
shall eat the white", Nostradamus said.
Hoping to make a
liar of his guest, the lord had the cook prepare the white pig for
dinner. But while her back was turned, a wolf stole the white pig
meat, and the cook secretly cooked the black pig, which everyone
ate. The lord said, "Well, now we are eating the white pig, and
the wolf shan't touch it". Nostradamus replied that he was sure
they were eating the black pig; when the cook was called in she
admitted all, which pleased all the guests.
A prophecy that
greatly enhanced his reputation went:
The young
lion shall overcome the old one,
In martial field by a single duel,
In a golden cage he shall put out his eye,
Two wounds from one; then he shall die a cruel death.
This prophecy
was uttered in 1555. In 1559, Henry II received a wound from a
jousting lance, and died of the wound, in great pain, ten days
later. It was taken at court to be a true prophecy, but as with most
of Nostradamus's predictions, one has to stretch one's imagination
somewhat, and, like the
Provençal mystic, divine that Henry's gilt helmet was a 'cage',
and note that he had two wounds, and that an old lion was overcome
by a young one.
Nostradamus
predicted that the apocalypse would occur when Easter fell on April
25, a rare event that has happened four times since he died in 1566,
most recently in 1943, and will next occur in 2038.
Once, while
walking in Italy, Nostradamus saw a monk and fell at his feet,
calling him "Your holiness". About 45 years afterwards, the monk
was enthroned as Pope Sixtus V.
The famous Maginot Line was built before World War I
because a senior French official believed the prophecy of
Nostradamus that France would be invaded from Switzerland.
In the
City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
while the fortress endures,
the great leader will succumb,
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.
Read all about the phoney
'Nostradamus prophecies'
of the attacks on September
11 in the USA
Nostradamus as seen by The Skeptic's Dictionary
Shop
Nostradamus More
More
More
February 13, 1820
in the Book of Days: Nostradamus got at least one
right
1546
Tycho Brahe
(d. October
24, 1601),
Danish
astronomer and
almanackist.
 King Frederick
II of Denmark and Norway, impressed with Tycho's 1572
observations, financed the construction of two observatories for
Tycho on Ven –
Uraniborg and Stjerneborg. Brahe's data
provided the basis for the work of Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630). The appearance in 1572 of a
"new star" (in fact a supernova) prompted Tycho's first
publication,
De nova stella. He appears to have accepted
astrological prognostications on the principle that the heavenly
bodies influenced (yet did not determine) terrestrial events. He was
interested in alchemy, particularly the medical
alchemy associated with Paracelsus (1493 - 1541). Brahe was also something of
a poet.
"While
a student, Tycho lost part of his nose in a duel. This occurred in 1566 while
the 20-year-old Tycho was studying at the University of Rostock in Germany. Attending a dance at a
professor's house, he quarrelled with one Manderup Parsbjerg, a
fellow member of the Danish gentry. A subsequent duel (in the dark)
resulted in Tycho losing the bridge of his nose. For the rest of his
life, he wore a silver
replacement (although, Tycho's tomb was reopened in 1901 and his remains were examined
by medical experts. The nasal opening of the skull was rimmed with green, a sign
of exposure to copper, not
silver) …
"Brahe
died in 1601, several days after his bladder burst during a banquet.
It has been said that to leave the banquet, before it concluded,
would be 'the height' of bad manners.
"Recent investigations suppose that Tycho did not die directly of
his urinary problems, but may have poisoned himself unintentionally
by administering some medicine containing mercury (he pursued
alchemical studies as well throughout his life, however he seems
either not to have kept records or to have destroyed them)." Source: Wikipedia
More
And more
Alchemists
in the Almanac: Cornelius
Agrippa Roger
Bacon Count
Cagliostro John
Dee
Edward Kelley Robert
Fludd Isaac
Newton Paracelsus
James
Price
 1640 The baptism, at St Michael's Church in
Harbledown, near
Canterbury,
Kent,
England, of
Aphra Behn (d. April 16, 1689), novelist, spy, playwright.
The author of
Oroonoko became the first Englishwoman to live by her pen. When she became a spy for
Charles II's government, payment was so slow that she was put in debtor's prison, where she wrote many of her earthy social comedies. Behn was one of the very few women to be honoured by being buried in
Westminster Abbey, where she is interred with many of Britain's greatest writers.
"Aphra Behn, celebrated as a writer and a
wit, was born in the city of Canterbury, in the reign of Charles I. Her
father, whose name was Johnson, being of a good family and well connected,
obtained, through the interest of his relative, Lord Willoughby, the
appointment of Lieutenant-General of Surinam, and set out with his wife and
children to the West Indies. Mr Johnson died on the voyage, but his family
reached Surinam, and settled there for some years. While here, Aprha became
acquainted with the American prince Oroonoka, and his beloved wife Imoinda,
and the adventures of this pair became the materials of her first novel. On
returning to London, she became the wife of Mr Behn, a Dutch merchant resident
in that city. How long Mr Behn lived after his marriage is not known, but,
probably, not long; for when we next hear of Mrs Behn, her wit and abilities
had brought her into high repute at the Court of Charles II.; so much so, that
Charles thought her a fit and proper person to be entrusted with the
transaction of some affairs of importance abroad during the Dutch war. Our
respect for official English is by no means increased when we learn that these
high-sounding terms merely mean that she was to be sent over to Antwerp as a spy!
However, by her skill and intrigues, but more by the influence she possessed
over Vander Albert, she succeeded so well as to obtain information of the
design of the Dutch to sail up the Thames and burn the English ships in their
harbours, and at once communicated her information to the English Court.
Although subsequent events proved her intelligence to be well founded, it was
only laughed at at the time, which probably determined her to drop all further
thoughts of political affairs, and during the remainder of her stay at Antwerp
to give herself up to the gallantries and gaieties of the place. On her voyage
back to England, she was very near being lost. The vessel foundered in a
storm, but fortunately in sight of land, so that the passengers were saved by
boats from the shore. The rest of her life was devoted to pleasure and the
muses.
"Her writings, which are numerous, are
nearly forgotten now, and from the opinion of several writers, it is well they
should be. The following are the principal: three vols. of Miscellany Poems;
seventeen Plays; two volumes of History and Novels; and a
translation of M Fontenelle's History of Oracles, and Plurality of
Worlds.
"A plain black marble slab covers her
grave in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, bearing the following
inscription:
"MRS APHARRA BEHN DIED APRILL THE 16TH, 1689.
Here lies a proof that wit can never be
Defence enough against immortality.
Great poetess, O thy stupendous lays
The world admires, and the Muses praise."
Source
Robert Chambers, (Ed.),
The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the
calendar, etc,
W & R Chambers,
London, 1881 (1879
Edition is online and
1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also
The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers's Book of Days)
More
Shop Aphra Behn
1812
Charles
John Canning, 1st Earl Canning KG
GCB
KSI
PC
(d. June
17, 1862),
known as Viscount Canning from 1837
to 1859, English
statesman and Governor-General
of India during the Mutiny
of 1857 1824 Pierre Puvis de
Chavannes (d. 1898), painter
1853 Errico Malatesta (d. July 22, 1932), Italian anarchist,
colleague and friend of Peter
Kropotkin
1866 Roger Fry (d. 1934), artist, art
critic
1870 Karl
Renner (d. 1950), politician and President of Austria 1945 - 1950
1884
Jane
Cowl (d. 1950),
Broadway actress and playwright; she played Juliet more than 2,000 times
1895
Paul Éluard, French writer/surrealist/poet (Capital of Pain)
More
1896
King George VI
of the United Kingdom (d. 1952)
1896 Jimmy Doolittle (d. 1993),
American World War II General
1897 Margaret Chase Smith
(d. 1995), American
politician, the first woman elected to both houses of Congress;
first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party
(Republican)
More
1902
Frances
Bavier (d. December
6, 1989),
Emmy Award-winning
American
character actress1908 Morey
Amsterdam (d. October
27, 1996),
American comic actor, best known for his role in the 1960s TV series, The
Dick Van Dyke Show (1961 - 1966).
It is popularly believed that Amsterdam wrote the big Andrews Sisters hit song,
'Rum and Coca-Cola', but it was actually composed by Caribbean musical artists Lord
Invader and Lionel
Belasco, who
sued for copyright
infringement of the song's music and lyrics, respectively. After years of
litigation, both plaintiffs
won their cases, with Lord Invader receiving an award of $150,000 in owed
royalties. However, Amsterdam was allowed to retain copyright of the song.
From Wikipedia:
The song became a local hit and was at the peak of its popularity when
Amsterdam visited the island in September 1943
as part of a U.S.O.
tour. Although he subsequently claimed never to have heard the song during the
month he spent on the island, the lyrics to his version are clearly based on
the Lord Invader version, with the music and chorus being virtually identical.
However, Amsterdam's version strips the song of its social commentary. The
Lord Invader version laments that U.S. soldiers are debauching local women,
who "saw that the Yankees treat them nice / and they give them a better
price." Its final stanza describes a newlywed couple whose marriage is
ruined when "the bride run away with a soldier lad / and the stupid
husband went staring mad." By contrast, the Amsterdam version obscures
the implication that women are prostituting themselves, and actually celebrates
the Yankee presence:
- Since the Yankee come to Trinidad
They got the young girls all goin' mad
Young girls say they treat 'em nice
Make Trinidad like paradise
1909 Edward
Tatum (d. 1975), geneticist
1911 Spike
Jones (d. 1965),
American comedian and band leader famous for his parodies of classical music
1913
Dan Dailey (d. 1978), actor
1914 Karl
Carstens (d. 1992), politician and President of Germany 1979 -
84 1918 BKS
Iyengar, yoga exponent
1918 James T Aubrey (d. 1994),
American television executive
1919 Shirley
Jackson (d. 1965), writer
1923 Gerard
Reve, Dutch writer
1924
Clifton Pugh, Australian painter
1932
Charlie
Rich (d. 1995),
country
music performer, ('Behind Closed Doors')
1935 Lee Remick (d. 1991), US actress (Days of Wine and
Roses; Anatomy of a Murder)
1938 Stewart
Brand, author,
editor, and
creator of the bestselling huge book, Whole
Earth Catalog and the journal, CoEvolution
Quarterly.
His intention with the Whole Earth Catalog was to
enable people to find virtually any sort of information useful to themselves,
in the belief that humans would then develop a new, positive and sustainable
culture and technology for themselves; in this way, his ideas were forerunners
of some aspects of the Internet.
Hence, Brand later pioneered the online community
The WELL.
Brand is noted as an editor who published writings by many of the
now-acknowledged innovative thinkers of today, early in their careers. He is
one of the co-founders of the
Global Business Network. Brand was also one of a
group of futurists consulted in the planning stage of the feature
film, Minority
Report. The motto of the Whole Earth
Catalog was "You can't put it together. It is together".
The Whole Earth Catalog
was a sizeable catalog published twice a year from 1968
to 1972, and
occasionally thereafter, until 1998.
Its purposes were to provide education
and "access to tools" in order that the reader could "find his
own inspiration, shape his own environment,
and share his adventure with whoever is interested." According to Apple
Computer entrepreneur Steve
Jobs, the Catalog was a conceptual forerunner of a Web
search
engine.
The Catalog's development and marketing were
driven by an energetic group of founders, primarily Stewart Brand (whose
family was also involved with the project). Its outsize pages measured 11x14
inches (28x36 cm). Later editions were more than an inch thick. It was
published by the Portola Institute, headed by Richard Raymond. In 1972, the
catalog won the USA National
Book Award.
Brand's publishing efforts were suffused with an
awareness of the importance of ecology
(as a field of study and an influence) to the emerging human awareness and to
the future of humankind.
The Catalogs disseminated many of the ideas now
associated with the 1960s
and 1970s,
particularly those of the counterculture
and environmental
movements. Later editions, plus descendant publications edited by Brand,
circulated many innovative ideas during the 1970s
- 1990s.
After 1972 the catalog was published more
sporadically. Updated editions of The Last Whole Earth Catalog appeared
periodically in the '70s, but only a few more fully new catalogs appeared: a
1974 edition called the Whole Earth Epilog, editions in 1980 and 1981
called The Next Whole Earth Catalog, several editions in the '80s of
the Whole Earth Software Catalog, a compressed 1986 edition entitled The
Essential Whole Earth Catalog (ISBN
0385236417), and a major 1994 edition titled The Millennium Whole Earth
Catalog (ISBN
0062510592).
Source:
Wikipedia
1938
Leonardo
Boff, theologian
1946 Sanjay
Gandhi (d. June
23,
1980), Indian
politician of Kashmiri
and Parsi
heritage; he was the younger son of Feroze
Gandhi and his wife Indira
Gandhi; he and his co-pilot died when low level
aerobatics in Sanjay's Pitts
aircraft went tragically wrong
1946
Patty
Duke, Academy Award-winning
American actress of the stage and screen 1946 Jane Birkin, actress
1946 Michael Ovitz, film
producer
1947 Christopher
Parkening, American guitarist
1948 Marianne
Fritz, Austrian writer 1962
Ginger
Lynn Allen, American pornographic film
actress
1964
Rebecca Gibney, New
Zealand actress
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12
Poinsettia Day
12
Our Lady Of Guadalupe Day
13
Cocoa Day
13
Take Your Ass For A Walk Day
13
Santa Lucia Day
14
Deck The Halls Day
14
Opposites Attract Day
14
DNA Day
14
Buy A Tree Day
15
Lemon Cupcake Day
15
Firefighters Day
15
Sleep Comfort Day
16
Beethoven's Birthday
16
Underdog Day
17
Cookie Cutter Day
18
Flake Appreciation Day
18
Bake Cookies Day
19
A Christmas Carol Day
19
Build A Snowman Day
19
Chocolate Pizza Day
20
Dot Your I's With Smileys Day
20
Go Caroling Day
21
Winter Solstice
21
Yule
21
World Peace Day
21
Yalda
21
Look At The Bright Side Day
21
Crossword Puzzle Day
22
Christmas Tree Light Day
23
Popcorn Popping Day
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Eggnog Day
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644 Osman
ibn Affan was appointed 3rd Kalif of Islam.
867 Adrian
II began his reign as Roman Catholic
pope.
872 John
VIII began his reign as Roman Catholic
pope. 1124 Theobald Buccapecus was elected Pope
Coelestinus II (he refused).
1136
Harald IV 'Gylle Krist',
King of Norway,
was murdered.
1287
The
Netherlands: In the
St Lucia's
Flood (Sint-Luciavloed), the Zuider Zee
sea wall collapsed, killing approximately 50,000 to 80,000 people in the fifth
largest flood in recorded history. 1490
Anna of
Brittany (Anna van Bretagne;
1477 -
1514) married
Maximilian of Austria
(1459 -
1519) by proxy.
1542 Death
of James V of Scotland
(b. 1512).
Princess Mary Stuart became Queen Mary I of Scotland.1575 Polish Parliament selected
Báthory István (Stefan
Bathory)
as King of Poland.
1582 Zealand/Brabant Netherlands adopted
the Gregorian calendar, tomorrow
becoming December 25.
1591 The death of St
John of the Cross
He was the
16th-Century founder of the
Discalced (reformed) Carmelites, a great mystic, whose spiritual writings are classics. He was a
'Doctor of the Church', a title given to significant early Christian church fathers, and called the
'doctor of mystical theology'.
St John of the Cross was born John de Yepes, a Spaniard from a good family that had fallen on hard times. He became a Carmelite friar and joined the reformed monastery at Duruelo in 1568. He worked hard at spreading the reform, but the Carmelite prior-general had him imprisoned at Toledo in 1577. Here he was brutally treated, and here he began writing poetry. He escaped after nine months, and took up various positions among the reformed friars. Factionalism in this group of friars forced him to be removed to the remote La Peńuela friary, thence to Ubeda where he was again ill-treated, dying soon after, on this day in 1591.
St John wrote, among other works,
The Dark Night of the Soul, The Spiritual Canticle, and The Living Flame of
Love. His mystical works have been very influential even among non-Christians, and
'the dark night of the soul' has become a common expression for a person's time of spiritual wilderness, or depression, in much the same way as
John Bunyan's 'Slough of Despond' in
Pilgrim's Progress. The feast day of St John of the Cross is November 24.
More
1656 Artificial pearls were first manufactured by Monsieur Jacquin in
Paris; they were made of gypsum pellets covered with a concoction made from fish scales.
1788
Death of Charles III of Spain
(b. 1716).
1790
Alexander Hamilton
proposed the creation of a Bank of the
United States.
1799
Death of George Washington (b. 1732),
first President of
the United States.
1807 "… a meteorite to be recorded in the U.S. fell at
Weston (now called Easton), Conn., at 6:30 a.m., making a hole 5-ft long and
4.5-ft wide. This was the New World's first witnessed fall of a meteorite,
with subsequent recovery of specimens, since the arrival of the European
settlers. Yale Professor Benjamin Silliman's description
of the fall and his chemical analysis of the stone meteorite, the first
performed in the U.S., received much attention in the national and international
press. A thirty-pound fragment of this Chondrite H4 became the nucleus of Yale
University's Peabody Museum. This meteorite collection, the oldest
in the country, was begun by Silliman."
Source
1819 Alabama became
the 22nd US
state. 1825 The Decembrist conspiracy in Russia.
1837 A
rebellion in Canada was crushed by British troops.
1861
Death (of typhoid) of Prince Albert (b. 1819),
consort of Queen
Victoria, launching his widow
into four decades of mourning.
1873
Death of Louis Agassiz
(b. 1807),
zoologist, geologist.
1878 The
first horse-drawn trams appeared in
Adelaide,
South Australia.
1896 The Glasgow
Underground Railway, third in the world, opened (an accident closed it the
same day and it didn't reopen until 1897). 1900
Max
Planck, the German physicist, announced his new theory of energy, the quantum theory.
1902 The
first telegraph
cable was laid across the Pacific Ocean. 1906
The U1, the first German submarine, was launched.
1907
Thirty-eight Russian soldiers were sentenced to life imprisonment for
surrendering to the Japanese at
Port Arthur.
1911
Norwegian explorer Roald
Amundsen became the first man to reach the
South Pole, just 35 days ahead of his rival, Englishman Captain
Robert Falcon Scott
(1868 -
1912).
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This photo is of the
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station taken every 15 minutes (if a relay satellite
is available for transmission) from the roof of the Atmospheric Research
Observatory which houses NOAA/CMDL's Clean Air Facility. In order to preserve
the life of the camera, it is tilted down onto the snow when the sun is in the
field of view, which occurs for several weeks around sunset (March) and
sunrise (September) when the sun marches in a circle above the horizon. From
mid-April until mid-August the moon and the aurora australis provide the only
natural lighting.
The new station,
presently under construction, can be seen to the right in the photo; the old
(circa 1973) domed station is to the left.
More
1911 The
first woman was admitted to the
Royal College of Surgeons, Britain.
1917 USA: Peace activist/suffragist/socialist,
Kate Richards O'Hare, was
jailed for five years for a speech denouncing World War I, and occupied a
neighbouring jail cell to famed anarcho-feminist Emma
Goldman.
Early
progressives in the Book of Days
1918 Friedrich Karl von
Hessen, a German
prince elected by the Parliament of Finland
to become King Väinö I,
renounced the Finnish
throne.
1918 Women
first voted in a British General Election.
A world chronology of women's suffrage
US chronology
Louisa Lawson, Australian suffragette
1919 "14 December. In
1919 an inquest in Shoreditch, London, established that a needle had been found
in the heart of Rosina Newton, aged 13 months. 'There was no skin wound to show
where it had entered the body.' The parents had no recollection of any injury to
her. In December 1988, Major Richard Bingley, 68, of Newton Abbot in Devon, went
to hospital complaining of pain behind his left eye. Surgeons recovered a
bullet. The Major had been shot in the leg in Korea in 1952, and the bullet
travelled up to his head in the following 36 years." Source
1926 UK: English queen of whodunnits, Agatha Christie, was
found staying in a hotel in Harrogate,
North Yorkshire, under an assumed name. She had
been missing since December
3. She told detectives she had no recollection of how she came to be in
Yorkshire. This mysterious disappearance became the basis of the fictional
movie,
Agatha.
1927 Iraq gained
independence from the United Kingdom (Tony Blair wanted it
back, even if he had to share it with the Dubya).
1927
Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist forces stopped an attempted Communist coup
in Canton.
1939 The USSR
was expelled from the League of Nations.
1944
National Velvet, starring Elizabeth
Taylor and Mickey
Rooney, premiered in the US.
1946
The UN General Assembly
voted to establish its headquarters in New York City.
1959
Motown, a
famed record
label whose stable included The Supremes, The
Jackson Five, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross,
Lionel
Richie, Stevie Wonder, Boyz II Men
and many other musicians, was founded in Detroit, Michigan, USA.
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1962
Mariner 2
became the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.
The first close-up photographs of the planet were sent back to Earth.
1962 The Mona Lisa was assessed at
US$100 million, the
highest
insurance valuance for a painting in history.
1964
USA: The landmark segregation case, Heart
of Atlanta Motel v. United States 379 US 241 1964 was decided by the US
Supreme Court.
1968 Australia: A Tasmanian referendum approved the establishment of a gambling
casino.
1973
John Paul Getty III was freed by his Italian kidnappers after his grandfather,
oil magnate John Paul Getty, paid a ransom of $750,000 after the teenager's ear
was received through the post.
1975
In Australia's most controversial election, following the dismissal of
Gough Whitlam's Labor Government by
the representative of Queen Elizabeth
II of the United Kingdom (Sir John
Kerr, the Governor-General), the Liberal
Party led by Malcolm Fraser won a landslide victory over Labor.
More
on Whitlam
1979
Punk rock
band The
Clash released the influential double album, London Calling.
1981
Israel annexed the
Golan
Heights.
Everyone
there should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand the territory.
Everything that's grabbed, will be in our hands. Everything we don't grab
will be in their hands.
Ariel Sharon;
comments (as Israeli Foreign Minister) broadcast on Israeli radio, November 15, 1998 Source: CNN
1988
Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader, announced the renunciation of violence and his
acceptance of Israel's right to exist.
1988
Eight million Spanish workers went on strike to protest the government's
economic policies.
1989
Chile held its
first free election in 16 years. Patricio Aylwin was
elected president.
1990
ANC president Oliver Tambo returned to South Africa after a 30-year exile.
1991 A rock
slide removed 10 metres of Mount Cook's elevation in New Zealand.
1995 The Dayton
Agreement was signed in Paris to end the Yugoslav
wars.
1999
Charles M Schulz (1922 - 2000), creator of the comic strip Peanuts,
announced his retirement.
2000 The Texas 7 robbed a Radio Shack
in Pearland, Texas,
stealing police scanners that would be used in their following infamous heist.
2003 The news
of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's capture
was finally announced.
2003 Celebration of the reopening of the Fenice Theater in
Venice,
Italy.
2004
The Special
Extended DVD Edition
of The Lord of
the Rings: The Return of the King was released.
Tomorrow: Was Walt Disney really frozen at
death?
Main calendar
| Yesterday |
Tomorrow |
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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
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reetings from Australia. 
*Subaru and the Pleiades
