Cafe Diem!

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

Folklore & traditions of Christmas plants

The Winter Solstice

A Keltelven Guide for Celebrating the Winter Solstice

Be A Goddess

The Oxford Dictionary of Saints

Philosophy of Popular Superstitions 1853

Spellcraft

The Encyclopedia of Saints

Daily Everything

Lord of the Rings

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An Inconvenient Truth
By Al Gore; DVD & book

The Permaculture Home Garden
By Linda Woodrow

The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD

A Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy

Remotely Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives and What We Can Do About It

What Would Jefferson Do?
By Thom Hartmann

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

Pagan Christianity

For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
By James Yee

Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
By Robert F Kennedy, Jr

The Price of Loyalty

The Torture Debate in America

The Culture of the New Capitalism

 

Lawless World

 

The Great War for Civilisation
By Robert Fisk

The God Who Wasn't There

A Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy

When Corporations Rule the World

Alternatives to Economic Globalization

Feminism Without Borders

Commercialization of Intimate Life
By Arlie Russell Hochschild

The Skeptic's Dictionary

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

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?

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Mother Earth Spirituality

Bushwhacked

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10 Reasons to Abolish the IMF & World Bank

Women's Activism and Globalization

We Are Everywhere

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The Twelve Days of Christmas

Day 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12

On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Three French hens, two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

Basilindia, ancient Greece (Dec 22 - 28)

Last of the Halcyon Days, ancient Greece and Rome (Dec 14 - 28)

Runic half-month of Eoh commences
Represents the dead, and the yew tree, sacred to Winter shamanism. 
Nigel Pennick, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992

Feast day of St Anthony of Lérins

Feast day of St Caesarius of Armenia

Feast day of St Domna

Feast day of St Gowan of Wales

Feast day of St Otto of Heidelberg

Feast day of St Romulus

Feast day of St Theophila

Feast day of St Troadius of Pontus

Feast day of St Victor

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Bairns' Day, Scotland

Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ægypticus or dies mala), unlucky day in Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord" was the associated saying.)

El Día de los Santos Inocentes, All Fools' Day, Mexico

Quito Festival, Quito, Ecuador, till January 6

Day of the Weavers, Grandmothers' Day of Wareo Tribe of South America 
(Source: The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Calendar)

Kwanzaa, African-American holiday (Dec 26 - Jan 1); Day 3: Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)

Flour fight, Ibi, València, Spain
"Durant les celebracions del Dia dels enfarinats a Ibi (València), el dia dels Sants Innocents, 28 de desembre es produeix una batalla de farina combinada amb una carnavalesca sàtira al poder establert."   Source

Proclamation Day (South Australian public holiday), for the foundation of the Australian state of South Australia

1861 Walter Head (alias Walter Woods; d. February 28, 1939), Australian poet, journalist, editor, parliamentarian and organizer for the New Australia communal settlement in Paraguay established in 1893.

The son of the first white man born in the Melbourne district, he became involved in the trade union movement and worked as an organizer for the Shearer's Union. He co-founded (with Arthur Rae) The Hummer, a labor newspaper originally published in Wagga Wagga, NSW, for which Mary Cameron was a freelance journalist from Sydney. Head moved to Sydney in 1893 and renamed his newspaper Worker.

Mary Cameron (later known as Dame Mary Gilmore) introduced him to William Lane's movement and he not only became active in it, his office at 111 Elizabeth St, Sydney became the headquarters and from 1892-3 he edited New Australia. Just before Head and his family were due to leave for Paraguay, his infant son Rowland was lost and never found in the bush at Gippsland, Victoria where his wife was visiting relatives. (Henry Lawson wrote a fictional story about lost children, 'The Babies in the Bush', and used the name of his associate Walter Head as that of the main character, a drover. "His name was Head – Walter Head. He was a boss drover on the overland routes.") This tragedy, and controversy surrounding New Australia finances (following the split at New Australia – it is unlikely he did anything unethical), disrupted Head's life immeasurably, leading to the end of his marriage. He found it necessary to ‘disappear' and he fled first to New Zealand under the alias Walter Ashe Woods, and soon after to Tasmania under the alias of Walter Alan Woods. 'Walter Woods' became one of the founders of the Tasmanian Labor Party, holding a seat in the Tasmanian House of Assembly from 1906 until 1931, becoming known as the Father of the Tasmanian Parliament (Speaker of the House 1914 - '16, and 1926 - '28). His also edited the influential Labor newspaper The Clipper. He remarried in 1910 and had two further children. His son, Wally, emigrated to New Australia, never returning to Australia and eventually settling in North America.

Surname: WOODS
Given Names: Walter Alan
Title and Honours: Mr
Qualifications:
Date and Place of Birth: 28 December 1861 - Oakleigh, Victoria
Date of Death: 28 February 1939 - Hobart, Tasmania

House of Assembly: (1) 29 March 1906 (2) 30 April 1909 (3) 3 June 1925
Electorate: (1) North Hobart (2) Denison (3) Denison
Party: ALP
Positions Held: Chair Committees 1925-26; Speaker 1914-16, 1926-28
Date of Departure: (1) 30 April 1909 (2) 21 March 1917 (3) 9 May 1931
Reason for Departure: (1) Seat abolished. Stood for Denison. Successful. (2) Resigned to contest Senate election. Unsuccessful. (3) Defeated.

Comments: Born Walter William Head; used various names in course of sometimes mysterious life.

House of Assembly Long Room Picture: 299/365   Source: Tasmanian Parliament

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson    More

1879 Billy Mitchell (d. 1936), military aviation pioneer

1882 Arthur Eddington (d. 1944), astronomer and physicist

1888 Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (d. 1931), film director

1899 Eugeniusz Bodo (killed in 1943), Polish actor

1902 Mortimer Adler (d. 1902), philosopher

Von Neumann's death is described in these terms:-

"... his mind, the amulet on which he had always been able to rely, was becoming less dependable. Then came complete psychological breakdown; panic, screams of uncontrollable terror every night. His friend Edward Teller said, 'I think that von Neumann suffered more when his mind would no longer function, than I have ever seen any human being suffer.'

"Von Neumann's sense of invulnerability, or simply the desire to live, was struggling with unalterable facts. He seemed to have a great fear of death until the last ... No achievements and no amount of influence could save him now, as they always had in the past. Johnny von Neumann, who knew how to live so fully, did not know how to die."

Source

1905 Cliff Arquette (d. 1974), actor, comedian (Charley Weaver)

1908 Lew Ayres (d. 1996), actor (All Quiet on the Western Front; The Carpetbaggers) 

1922 Stan Lee, superhero comic book creator/writer (Fantastic Four; Spiderman; The Incredible Hulk; Iron Man; The Mighty Thor; X-Men; Stripperella)

1924 Apollo Milton Obote (d. October 10, 2005), Prime Minister of Uganda 1962 - 66 and President of Uganda 1966 - '71 and 1980 - '85, Ugandan political leader who led Uganda to independence from the British colonial administration in 1962. He was overthrown by Idi Amin on January 25, 1971, but regained power in 1980. His second rule was marred by repression, and the death of many civilians during a civil war.

1925 Hildegard Knef (d. 2002), actress, singer and writer

1929 Owen Bieber, labor leader

1929 Brian Redhead (d. 1994), journalist and broadcaster

1931 Guy Debord (d. November 30, 1994), member of the Lettrist International, Socialisme ou Barbarie and the founder and chief theorist of the Situationist International (SI).

The SI is often attributed as being one of the key ideological catalysts for the May 1968 revolution centred around Paris.

His best known works are The Society of the Spectacle and Comments on the Society of the Spectacle.

Situationist International Online    The Situationist International Text Library

Bureau of Public Secrets    Texts     Situationism/Dada    More    More    And more    Yet more

1932 Roy Hattersley, British politician

1932 Manuel Puig (d. 1990), writer

1933 Nichelle Nichols, actress and singer

1934 Maggie Smith, actress (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; California Suite)

1945 Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev (d. June 1, 2001), King of Nepal from 1972 until his highly publicized assassination in a family massacre

1945 Clive Robertson, Australian broadcaster

1950 Alex Chilton, singer with the Box Tops

1954 Denzel Washington, actor

1969 Linus Torvalds, programmer and initiator of Linux

Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section

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December

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
23 Two Days To Go
23 Feast Of The Radishes
24 Eggnog Day
25 Christmas
25 Christmas Around The World
26 Boxing Day
26 Candy Cane Day
26 Coffee Percolator Day
27 Fruitcake Day
28 Chocolate Day
28 Return A Gift For Cold Hard Cash Day
28 Call-A-Friend Day
29 Ice Skating Day
29 Bowling Day
29 Enjoying ESP Day
30 Day Before New Year's Eve Day
31 New Year's Eve

January

1 New Year
1 Bad Hangover Day
1 Universal Hour Of Peace
1 Daydreamers' Day
1 Solemnity Of Mary
1 Bloody Mary Day
1 New Year's Day Parade (Wisconsin, USA)
2 Science Fiction Day
2 Get Over It Day
3 Drinking Straw Day
3 Start Your New Year's Resolution Day
3 Festival Of Sleep Day

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418 St Boniface I became Pope.

1065 Westminster Abbey was consecrated.

1170 On the night before the murder of St Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, visions of his impending doom were had by people as far away as Normandy, or, so it is said.

1308 The reign of Emperor Hanazono, the 95^th imperial ruler of Japan, began.

1367 Death of Ashikaga Yoshiakira (b. 1330), Ashikaga shogun.

1694 Queen Mary II of England (b. 1662) died of smallpox.

 

1732 Benjamin Franklin, aged 26, first published Poor Richard: An Almanack, Philadelphia, USA.

Poor Richard's Almanac, as it is commonly called, was a yearly almanac published by Franklin, who adopted the pseudonym of 'Poor Richard' for the purpose of this work in the title. It appeared continuously from 1732 to 1757. The almanac was a best seller for a pamphlet published in the American colonies; print runs typically ran to 10,000 per year. Thus young Franklin soon became a wealthy man, able to give up work and concentrate on his interests.

It contained the typical calendar, weather, and astronomical and astrological information that an almanac of the period contained. It is chiefly remembered, however, for being a repository of Franklin's aphorisms and proverbs, many of which live on in American English. These maxims typically counsel thrift and courtesy, with just a dash of cynicism.

 

Some sample maxims from Poor Richard's Almanac include:

Let thy discontents be thy secrets; if the world knows them 't will despise thee and increase them.

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

Drive thy Business, or it will drive thee.

He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. 

Where there's Marriage without Love, there will be Love without Marriage.

Write with the learned, pronounce with the vulgar.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

Let thy Child's first Lesson be Obedience, and the second will be what thou wilt.

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

If you'd have it done, Go: if not, Send.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of.

If your Riches are yours, why don't you take them with you to t'other World?

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

There is no little enemy.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

More aphorisms

Franklin (1706 - '90) was an American journalist, publisher, author, philanthropist, public servant, scientist, diplomat, and inventor who was also one of the leaders of the American Revolution, known also for his many quotations and his experiments with electricity.

More on Benjamin Franklin    The calendar and primitive almanacs in the Scriptorium

 

1734 The death of Rob Roy (Robert Roy Macgregor), the Scottish brigand whose fame was assured by Sir Walter Scott's novel, Rob Roy.

1792 The British politician, Edmund Burke, to draw parliament's and the nation's attention to the possibility that Britain, like France, might suffer a bloody revolution, drew a dagger from his cloak and threw it to the floor of the House. The dagger was one that an agent for a revolutionary party had left with a Birmingham manufacturer with an order to make thousands. The manufacturer had taken the pattern to the authorities.

1822 Stendhal (1782 - 1843) had his "day of genius", conceiving the idea of writing his philosophical treatise on love: De l'Amour.

1832 John C Calhoun resigned the Vice Presidency of the United States in order to lead the South's fight for slavery, a cause he called "a perfect good".

1835 Osceola led his Seminole warriors in Florida into the Second Seminole War against the US Army.

1836 South Australia and Adelaide were founded.

1836 Spain recognized the independence of Mexico.

1836 South Australia became a British colony in its own right with the arrival of SA's first governor, John Hindmarsh, in HMS Buffalo.

1846 Iowa was admitted as the 29^th US State.

1850 Australian 'Father of Federation', Henry Parkes, founded the Empire newspaper.

1857 Fall of lizards, Montreal, Canada.

1859 The death of Thomas, Lord Macaulay, English Liberal MP and a member of the Supreme Council of India from 1834 - '38, who lobbied for British parliamentary reform and the abolition of slavery.

1860 Italy: A fall of reddish rain occurred for two hours, beginning at 7 am; a second shower fell at 11 am, in the north-western part of Siena [Year Book of Facts, 1861/273]. This occurred again in the exact same spot on the 31^st.

1869 William E Semple of Mt Vernon, Ohio, USA, patented "the combination of rubber with other articles adapted to the formation of an acceptable chewing gum".

1877 Edmund Barton, later first prime minister of Australia, married Jane Ross.

 

1879 The Tay Rail Bridge disaster, Dundee, Scotland during a fierce gale. A section of the bridge collapsed, wrecking a train which was running over its single track. Seventy-five passengers on the 7:15 Edinburgh to Dundee train were killed, including the son-in-law of the bridge's designer, Thomas Bouch.

Engineers quickly determined that the metal used in the bridge's design was of poor quality, and modern structural analysis of the bridge also shows its design was not sufficient to resist the strong winds commonplace in the Tay estuary.

The Victorian poet 'Sir' William Topaz McGonagall (1825 - 1902), Knight of the White Elephant, Burmah  – whose work has been distinguished as, "The worst poetry ever written, in any language, at any time" – commemorated this event in his poem 'The Tay Bridge Disaster'. A self-educated Scottish weaver, McGonagall discovered his bathetic muse in 1877 and embarked upon a 25-year career as a working poet, delighting and appalling audiences across his native land and beyond. He was 52 years of age when he first received direction from his Muse, to "WRITE! WRITE!". Spike Milligan repopularised the Dundee poet.

Although the bridge was poorly constructed and had already been weakened in earlier gales, the collapse is believed to have been caused by two or three waterspouts that appeared close to the bridge immediately before the accident.

Tom Martin's engineering analysis of the bridge disaster

The Tay! The Tay!
The Silv'ry Tay
It goes up to Perth,
And back twice a day!
William Topaz McGonagall

Poetic Gems by William Topaz McGonagall

William Topaz McGonagall Appreciation Society

McGonagall on the Internet

More on McGonagall

Last Poetic Gems   World's Worst Poet: Selections from "Poetic Gems"

The railway bridge of the silvery Tay, and other disasters   More Poetic Gems

No Poets' Corner in the Abbey: the dramatic story of William McGonagall

Milligan, Spike, The great McGonagall scrap book

Milligan, Spike, William McGonagall, the truth at last : shock horror-a fantasia

Milligan, Spike, Hobbs, Jack, William McGonagall Meets George Gershwin

 

1879 French dye-works owner, Jean Baptiste Jolly, invented dry-cleaning, when he accidentally upset a lamp containing turpentine and oil on his clothing and noticed the cleaning effect. This source says 1855.

1895 Louis and Auguste, the Lumière brothers, had their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines – this date is commonly considered the debut of the cinema, but at least one source challenges that, stating that a similar event took place in Sydney, Australia in November, 1894:

"Sydney staged the world's first 'movie' projection in November 1894, a good 12-months before the Lumiere Brothers in Paris. Screened in a converted shop on Pitt Street, the 35 millimetre film ran at 40 images per second and was projected through a machine known as a kinetoscope. In the first five weeks of showing, there were 22,000 moviegoers – each paying a shilling each."   Source

See also Young Griffo in the Book of Days (movie starring him made on May 4, 1895 and shown to a paying audience in NYC)

 

1897 The play, Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, premiered in Paris.

1904 Londoners received the world's first weather reports issued through wireless telegraphy.

1908 More than 75,000 citizens of Messina, Sicily, were killed in a massive earthquake, the most violent ever recorded in Europe.

1912 Street car operation began in San Francisco, USA.

 

1917 USA: In a hoax article, 'A Neglected Anniversary', American journalist HL Mencken celebrated the 75^th anniversary of the advent of the bathtub in America and lamented that the notable event had passed without notice. The New York Evening Mail published his facetious essay on the history of bathtubs in America.

"To Mencken's amazement and delight, this history of the triumphant American tub was swallowed and spread by newspapers and radio stations across the country. The 'facts' were duly incorporated into reference books; the health and hygiene industry, not to mention the plumbers, touted the happy day; the White House calendar-makers, noting Mencken's claim that Millard Fillmore (chosen surely for his name) was the first President to install one, paid tribute to his tub."   Source

Hoaxes and Frauds, in the Scriptorium

 

1918 The Coalition Party under David Lloyd George won a landslide victory in the British general election. It was the first British election in which women (although only those aged over 30) were allowed to vote.

1931 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience, arrived in India; he was authorized by Congress to renew Satyagraha.

1931 Harold C Urey announced the discovery of heavy water (deuterium), one of the major developments in the atomic bomb.

1937 The Irish Free State became the Republic of Ireland.

1943 All inhabitants of Kalmukia were deported by the Soviet Union Communist regime, and about 70,000 killed.

1945 United States Congress officially recognised the 'Pledge of Allegiance', a chauvinistic text still recited in many American schools.

On October 21, 1892, the 'Pledge' was first spoken publicly. It was written by the Baptist socialist Francis Bellamy (cousin of utopian socialist Edward Bellamy), but the reference to 'under God' was not added until later, following a lobbying campaign by the Knights of Columbus – a Catholic fraternal organization – and others. Congress approved the addition of the words ‘under God' within the phrase 'one nation indivisible', and on June 14, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed an order adding the words 'under God' to the 'Pledge'. This is despite the fact that the US Founding fathers made it clear that the nation was not founded on Christianity nor any other religion.

On February 28, 2003 a US appeals court upheld its controversial ruling that the 'Pledge of Allegiance' recited by generations of American school children is unconstitutional because it invokes the name of God. One small step for humankind.

US pledge declared unconstitutional 
Posted Sat, 01 Mar 2003 
"A US appeals court on Friday upheld its controversial ruling that a patriotic oath recited by generations of American school children is unconstitutional because it invokes the name of God. 

"The Ninth Circuit court of appeals rejected a bid by the government of President George W. Bush to overturn its decision on the oath, known as 'the pledge of allegiance,' setting the scene for a high-profile Supreme Court showdown.

"The court said that reciting the pledge in schools placed 'students in the untenable position of choosing between participating in an exercise with religious content or protesting.'"
Source

1949 Ahmed Sukarno took up residence in the magnificent palace of the deposed Dutch governor general of Indonesia.

1950 The Peak District became the United Kingdom's first National Park.

1963 The BBC axed David Frost's hugely popular satirical program, That Was The Week That Was, because of its progressive treatment of controversial issues.

1968 The Beatles' White Album reached #1 on US charts and stayed there for nine weeks. The title of the LP record was actually The Beatles, but it was, and is, almost universally referred to by the other name.

1973 Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) published Gulag Archipelago.

More

1981 The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, was born (Norfolk, Virginia).

1983 The death by drowning of rock musician Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys.

1984 Proof, if proof were needed, of the safety of modern armaments: A missile was accidentally launched from the USSR and headed towards Germany but it was destroyed in flight.

1989 Australia: The Newcastle Earthquake: At 10:27 am Australia's first recorded deadly earthquake occurred in Newcastle, New South Wales. Thirteen people were killed (nine in the Newcastle Workers Club) and more than 100 injured in the 5.6 Richter quake. Fifty thousand buildings were damaged, approximately 40,000 of which were homes.

Your almanackist felt the earth move at Randwick, a suburb of Sydney about 290 km (180 mi) from Newcastle, at the very same moment he was writing a letter to a mate in San Francisco referring to the October 17 Loma Prieta earthquake in that friend's neck of the woods.

List of earthquakes

1989 Alexander Dubcek (Dubček) was elected chairman of the Czech parliament. He had been in political obscurity since 1968 when the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia followed his attempts to bring about liberal reforms in the Communist nation.

1991 Nine people were crushed while a crowd pushed their way into a basketball game at City College of New York.

1991 Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear version was released in Japan.

1995 CompuServe set a precedent by blocking access to sex-oriented newsgroups after being pressured by German prosecutors.

1998 Claudia Benton of West University Place, Texas was murdered in her home by Angel Maturino Resendiz. This was Resendiz's third victim in his third incident.

1999 Saparmurat Niyazov was proclaimed President for Life in Turkmenistan.

2000 Adrian Năstase became the Prime Minister of Romania.

2000 US retail giant Montgomery Ward announced it was going out of business after 128 years of trade.

2001 The USA Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion argued that US courts lack jurisdiction to review the treatment of foreign prisoners at Guantanamo.

A Chronology of US War Crimes & Torture, 1975-2005

 

 

Tomorrow: Murder in the cathedral

 

 Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

 

'The Moon'
By William Topaz McGonagall (see 1879 above), 
often claimed to be the world's ‘best bad poet'

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou seemest most charming to my sight;
As I gaze upon thee in the sky so high,
A tear of joy does moisten mine eye. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the Esquimau in the night;
For thou lettest him see to harpoon the fish,
And with them he makes a dainty dish. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the fox in the night,
And lettest him see to steal the grey goose away
Out of the farm-yard from a stack of hay. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the farmer in the night,
and makes his heart beat high with delight
As he views his crops by the light in the night. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the eagle in the night,
And lettest him see to devour his prey
And carry it to his nest away. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the mariner in the night
As he paces the deck alone,
Thinking of his dear friends at home. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the weary traveller in the night;
For thou lightest up the wayside around
To him when he is homeward bound. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the lovers in the night
As they walk through the shady groves alone,
Making love to each other before they go home. 

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the poacher in the night;
For thou lettest him see to set his snares
To catch the rabbit and the hares.

 

*[About the dates: In his autobiography, McGonagall writes that he was born in 1830: “I was born in the year of 1830 in the city of Edinburgh, the garden of bonnie Scotland”. However, in another memoir, ‘A Summary History of Poet McGonagall', he gives his approximate date of birth as March, 1825. It seems most online sources accept the earlier year as authentic.

As to when he died, the photo of the memorial plaque to the poet in Dundee (also to be seen here) shows September 2 as his date of death. However, the Today in Literature biographical article and the Wikipedia article on McGonagall both have September 29.]

 

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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