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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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It is by my own folly that I have been taken. I could easily have saved myself from it had I exercised my own better judgment rather than yield to my feelings. I should have
gone away, but I had thirty-odd prisoners, whose wives and daughters were in tears for their safety, and I felt for them. Besides, I wanted to allay the fears of those who believed we came here to burn and kill. For this reason I allowed the train to cross the bridge and gave them full liberty to pass on. I did it only to spare the feelings of these passengers and their families and to allay the apprehensions that you had got here in your vicinity a band of men who had no regard for life and property, nor any feeling of humanity …
 
I think, my friend, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity. I say it without wishing to be offensive – and it would be perfectly right for anyone to interfere with you so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I do not say this insultingly. I think I did right and that others will do right who interfere with you at any time and all times. I hold that the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you," applies to all who would help others to gain their liberty.
John Brown, replying to Sen. Mason; New York Herald, October 21, 1859

As I write, they are leading old John Brown to execution ... This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will soon come.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet, writing on December 2, 1859

Thomas Hovdenden, The Last Moments of John Brown
Thomas Hovdenden, The Last Moments of John Brown (detail), 1884

The slaveholder with his hands dripping in blood – will I make a compact with him? The man who plunders cradles – will I say to him, "Brother, let us walk together in unity?" The man who, to gratify his lust or his anger, scourges woman with the lash till the soil is red with her blood – will I say to him: "Give me your hand; let us form a glorious Union?" No, never – never! There can be no union between us: "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" What union has freedom with slavery?
William Lloyd Garrison, American slavery abolitionist, December 2, 1859   Source

I could argue all day about the significance of facing east in religious rituals, but a clean table is a clean table.
Emperor Norton I, who dismissed Governor Wise of Virginia on December 2, 1859  

If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.
The Marquis de Sade, who died near Paris on December 2, 1814  

With music filling the air, the president wheeled the car into the company garage. Townsend turned to me and said, I must have it for the Chrysler. Everybody else agreed and chanted, Yes, we must have it.
Peter Goldmark, Hungarian-American inventor and engineer, born on December 2, 1906;
Maverick Inventor  

 

 

December 2 is the 336th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (337th in leap years), with 29 days remaining.
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Feast day of St Bibiana (Viviana; Vivian; Vibiana)

(Lemon geodorum, Geodorum citrinum, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

Long after her life, a legend sprang up concerning this Roman Catholic saint, connected with the Acts of the martyrdom of Saints John and Paul, but it has no historicity. According to this legend, Bibiana was a 4th-Century woman from Rome.

Her parents, Flavian and Dafrosa, were martyred in the persecution of Julian the Apostate, and Bibiana and her sister, Demetria, were turned over to a woman, Rufina, who tried to force her into prostitution and who in vain tried to seduce Bibiana. Because of her continued refusal, Bibiana was imprisoned in a mental asylum, then scourged to death c. 363, rejoicing until she expired.

Bibiana's body was left to the dogs, but none would touch her. Two days later, a priest named John buried Bibiana near her mother and sister in her home, the house being later turned into a church. A church was built over her grave; in its garden grew a herb that cured headache and epilepsy. This and her time spent with the mentally ill led to her areas of patronage, which include: epilepsy, epileptics, hangovers, headaches, insanity, mental illness, mentally ill people, single laywomen, torture victims and, appropriately, Los Angeles, California.

More    Santa Bibiana, the church where the body of the saint rests

 

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

Broken Needle Festival, honouring women's crafts and tools. At Hikawa Shrine, Omiya, Saitama Prefecture, a large market is held selling good luck charms and many products. 

Source: The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Calendar

 

Oshiroi Matsuri, Fukuoka, Japan
"In this 400-year-old festival, oshiroi, a white paste made from rice flour and water, is smeared on villagers' faces as a prayer for good harvests in the coming year."   Source

Chichibu Yomatsuri, Chichibu shrine, Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture, Japan (Dec 2 - 3)
This is a popular evening festival in which lantern-lit floats weighing more than 10 tonnes each are pulled through the town.
Source

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

Celebrating Advent: School of the Seasons

Feast day of St Aurelia

Feast day of St Chromatius
St Chromatius (d. c. 406/407) was a bishop of Aquileia, an historical state and episcopal see in north-eastern Italy.

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Feast day of St Hippolytus

Feast day of St John Amero

Feast day of St Liduina Meneguzzi

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Lovers' Fair, Belgium

National Day, Laos

National Day (independence from Britain, 1971), United Arab Emirates

International Day for the Abolition of Slavery

 

 

 

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1578 Agostino Agazzari (d. 1640), composer and music theorist

1694 William Shirley (d. 1771), Colonial Governor of Massachusetts

1703 Ferdinand Konscak (d. 1759), Croat explorer

1738 Richard Montgomery (d. 1775), Irish-American soldier

1760 John Breckinridge, (d. 1806) American politician

1817 Heinrich von Sybel (d. 1895), historian

1846 Pierre Marie René Ernest Waldeck-Rousseau (d. 1904), French statesman

1859 Georges Seurat (d. 1891), French pointillist painter, founder of Neoimpressionism

"In the 1880s, Pissarro joined a younger generation of artists, including Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and his own son Lucien, in adopting the Neo-Impressionist technique, which used the claims of science to support a new style of painting. In common with many artists and writers of his day, he became a fervent anarchist. He produced a powerful attack on French bourgeois society in his album of anarchist drawings, Turpitudes Sociales, 1889.

"The complicated relationship between anarchism and art is the subject of several new works. Paul Smith's Seurat and the Avant-garde (Yale University, 1997) studies the post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat and offers a critical view of his relationship to anarchism. Readers of German may enjoy Raimund Schäffner's Anarchismus and Literatur in England (1997, Carl Winter), as Spanish readers may enjoy Sonya Torres Planells's Ramón Acín (1888-1936): una Estética Anarquista y de Vanguardia (Editorial Virus, 1998). Acín was a Spanish sculptor, painter, and cartoonist as well as an active member of the CNT. He was murdered by fascists in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish social revolution."

Source: The Daily Bleed

 

1863 Charles Ringling (d. 1926), American circus showman

1884 Ruth Draper (d. 1956), American character actress

1885 George Richards Minot (d. 1950), American physician, winner of 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

1891 Otto Dix (d. 1969), painter and graphic artist

1892 Leo Ornstein (d. 2002), composer and pianist

1895 Harriet Cohen, (d. 1967) pianist

1899 John Barbirolli (d. 1970), conductor

1906 Peter Goldmark, Hungarian-American inventor and engineer (died 1977). As an engineer at Columbia Broadcasting Systems Laboratory, he devised a colour television system and later was head of a team that developed the LP (long playing) record album, which transformed the recording industry. On August 29, 1940 he announced his invention of colour television. Later, as vice president of CBS, Goldmark developed a system that allowed the US Lunar Orbiter to transmit photographs from the Moon to the Earth. He also developed the Highway Hi-Fi, a small audio disk that was fitted in Chrysler automobiles from 1956 to 1959.

1914 Ray Walston (d. 2001), actor

1914 Adolph Green (d. 2002), composer

1923 Maria Callas (d. 1977), Greek operatic soprano

1924 General Alexander Haig, American soldier and politician

1925 Julie Harris, American actress

1930 Gary Becker, economist

1931 Edwin Meese, American politician

1944 Botho Strauss, author

1945 Penelope Spheeris, director

1946 Gianni Versace, designer (d. 1997)

1946 John Banks, sometime New Zealand Cabinet Minister, then Mayor of Auckland from 2001 - '04

1952 Michael McDonald, musician

1954 Dan Butler, actor

1957 Dagfinn Hřybrĺten, Norwegian politician

1960 Rick Savage (Sav Savage), Def Leppard bass player

1968 Lucy Liu, actress

1978 Nelly Furtado, singer, songwriter

1979 Yvonne Catterfield, German singer and actress

1981 Britney Spears, singer

1987 Mariana Torres, Mexican actress

1989 Cassie Steele, Canadian actress

 

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1001 Danish settlers in England were massacred.

Related: St Brice's Day massacre

1409 The University of Leipzig opened.

1431 King Henry VI of England was crowned King of France at Paris  

1547 Death of Hernán Cortés, Spanish explorer and conqueror.

Cortés, Moctezuma (Montezuma) and the fall of Tenochtitlán, in the Scriptorium

1552 Death of St Francis Xavier, Catholic missionary.

1581 Alchemists Dr John Dee and Edward Kelley consulted with spirits.

1594 Death of Gerardus Mercator, Flemish cartographer, friend of British alchemist, Dr John Dee.

1620 The first English-language newspaper was published, England.

1697 St Paul's Cathedral, designed by Christopher Wren, opened on Ludgate Hill, in the City of London, England and the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral is today one of London's most visited sites. The cathedral was actually completed on October 20, 1708, Wren's 76th birthday, although the first service was held on this day.

St Paul's Cathedral website

1755 The second Eddystone Lighthouse was destroyed by fire. The first was destroyed in Britain's Great Storm of November 27, 1703.