Santa Claus St Nicholas boy bishops Christmas folklore traditions
origins who was Santa Edison Mary lamb Conqueror cancer NASA Joshua Greenbelt
earth stood still
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reetings from Australia.
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Mistletoe
is, however, seldom found on a hard-oak,
and when it is discovered it is gathered with great ceremony, and
particularly on the sixth day of the moon (which for those tribes
[Druids] constitutes the beginning of the months and the years) and
after every thirty years of a generation, because it is then rising in
strength and not one half its full size. Pliny the
Elder (Plinius maior or Gaius
Plinius Secundus;
23 CE - 79),
Natural
History XVI xcv. 250 (see Coligny
Calendar)
St Nicholas was
supposedly so devout he did not even suck on the fast days of
Wednesday and Friday. Lee, Kay and Marshall (eds), The Illuminated Book of Days,
Longman, Canada, 1979, p. 169
Saint Nicholas,
holy man and good,
Put on your cloak, put on your hood;
Hasten to Amsterdam, and again
From Amsterdam go into Spain,
There the apples big and sweet
Grown in Orange, roll the street;
Grown in Orange and Granada
Under sun and under shadow.
Oh, Saint Nicholas, my good friend,
I have served thee without end,
If my wish thou'lt now give me,
I'll devote my life to thee.
Old Flemish hymn sung by children at Christmastime
I believe that women are the
more spiritually advanced sex.
Erica Jong, American feminist and misandrist, Washington Post,
December 6, 1992
Every civil building connected with Mahommedan tradition should be
levelled to the ground without regard to antiquarian veneration or
artistic predilection. British Prime Minister Palmerston in a letter to Lord Canning, Viceroy
of India, October
9, 1857, Canning Papers
It's a small world, but I
wouldn't want to paint it ...
Just think how much deeper the ocean would be if sponges didn't live there.
Last night I fell asleep in a satellite dish. My dreams were broadcast all over
the world.
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts.
Last week the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood around and sang
Happy Birthday.
Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He
caught every other fish.
Last year me and my friend George drove across the country. We switched every
half mile. We only had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip...I
can't remember what it was.
Lots of comedians have people they try to mimic. I mimic my shadow.
Many people quit looking for work when they find a job.
I like my dental hygienist. I think she's very pretty. So when I'm waiting in
her office I eat an entire bag of Oreo cookies. Sometimes she has to cancel all
her other appointments.
My friend has a baby. I'm writing down all the noises he makes so later I can
ask him what he meant.
My girlfriend does her nails with white-out. When she's asleep, I go over there
and write misspelled words on them.
My grandfather gave me a watch. It doesn't have any hands or numbers. He says
it's very accurate. I asked him what time it was. You can guess what he told me.
My house is made out of balsa wood. When no one is home across the street,
except the little kids, I go out and lift my house up over my head. I tell them
to stay out of my yard or I'll throw it at them.
My house is on the median strip of a highway. You don't really notice, except I
have to leave the driveway doing 60 MPH.
My neighbor has a circular driveway... he can't get out.
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
My VCR flashes 01:35, 01:35, 01:35, ...
OK, so what's the speed of dark?
On the other hand, you have different fingers.
One day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went back in time.
One time a cop pulled me over for running a stop sign. He said, "Didn't you see
the stop sign?" I said, "Yeah, but I don't believe everything I read."
One time I woke up in the middle of the night and I was hungry. I went to the
convenience store and noticed it was closed. The sign said "Open 24 hours" and
there was a guy locking the door. I said "Hey, your sign says you're open 24
hours." He said, "Not in a row!"
One time the power went out in my house and I had to use the flash on my camera
to see my way around. I made a sandwich and took fifty pictures of my face. My
neighbors called the police. They thought there was lightning in my house. All quotations by Steven Wright, American comedian, born on December 6,
1955 More at
Wikiquote
(Nestflowered heath, Erica nidiflora, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Nicholas (Nikolaus) (c. 270 - 345/352) became a Bishop of Myrain Lycia, Asia Minorwhen
quite young. From this fact arose the old European tradition of Boy
Bishops, who reigned from December 6 to 28, in a parody of church
officials. More of that later.
Among
Christians,
he is also known as the 'Wonderworker'. Several acts of
kindness and miracles are attributed to him. Historical accounts
often confuse him with the later Nicholas of
Sion. He has always been a very popular saint:
in England at least 372 churches are named in
his honour.
He is
said to have been born to relatively affluent
Christian parents in
Patara, Lycia,
Asia Minor,
Roman Empire,
where he also received his early schooling.
Nicholas's
early activities as a priest are said to have occurred during the
reign of co-ruling Roman EmperorsDiocletian (reigned 284 - 305) and Maximian (reigned 286 - 305) from which comes the
estimation of his age. Diocletian issued an edict in 303 authorizing the systematic
persecution of Christians across the Empire. Following the
abdication of the two Emperors on May 1, 305, the policies
of their successors towards Christians were different. In the
Western part of the Empire, Constantius
Chlorus
(reigned 305 - 306) put an end to the systematic
persecution upon receiving the throne. In the Eastern part, Galerius (reigned 305 - 311) continued the persecution
until 311 when, from his deathbed, he
issued a general edict of toleration. The persecution of 303 - 311 is considered to be the longest
in the history of the Empire. Nicholas survived this period, although
his activities at the time are uncertain. He was present at the Council of
Nicaea (325)
and it is said that he punched Arius on the jaw.
Enemy of the old religion
The
destruction of several
pagan temples is also attributed to
him, among them one temple of
Artemis (also known as
Diana).
Arguing that the celebration of
Diana's birth is on
December 6, some authors have
speculated that this date was deliberately chosen for Nicholas's
feast day to overshadow or replace the pagan celebrations.
Nicholas
is also known for coming to the defence of the falsely accused,
often preventing them from being executed, and for his prayers on
behalf of sailors and other travellers. The popular worshipping of
Nicholas as a saint seems to have started relatively early
considering that
Justinian I,
Emperor of the
Eastern
Roman Empire (reigned
527
-
565) is reported to have built a
temple in Nicholas's honour in
Constantinople,
the Roman capital of the time.
But
early in the reign of Alexius I
Comnenus (reigned 1081 - 1118), Myra was overtaken by Islamic invaders. Taking advantage
of the confusion, sailors from Bari, Italy, seized the remains of the
saint over the objections of the Orthodox monks then caring for them.
Returning to Bari they brought the remains with them on May 9, 1087. Some
observers reported seeing myrrh exude from these relics, and 30 people were cured of diseases; ever
since, the tomb of Nicholas has been a favourite of pilgrims.
He compelled thieves to restore some
stolen goods to their owners, so became patron of thieves. Saint Nikolaus
or St Nicholas is celebrated in several Western European countries. His reputation for gift giving comes
partly from a story of three young women who were too poor to afford
a dowry for their marriages:
Legend of the 3 dowries
A nobleman of Patara had three daughters; he was so poor he couldn't
provide their dowries and they were going to have to go into
prostitution. St Nick had inherited a large fortune, and he resolved
to help, but secretly. As he went to their house at night, wondering
how to do this, the moon came out from behind a cloud and lit up a
window through which he threw a bag of gold, which fell at the
girls' father's feet. This enable him to provide a dowry for his
first daughter. The next night, St Nicholas threw another in, and
thus procured a dowry for the second daughter. The father wanted to
see the benefactor, so on the third night he saw St Nick coming and
grabbed his cloak, saying "O Nicholas! servant of God! why seek
to hide thyself?" The saint made him promise not to tell any
one. From this came the custom on St Nicholas's eve of putting out
presents for children. For his helping the poor, St Nicholas is the
patron saint of pawnbrokers; the three gold balls traditionally hung outside a
pawnshop are symbolic of the three sacks of gold.
People
then began to suspect that he was behind a large number of other
anonymous gifts to the poor, using the inheritance from his wealthy
parents. After he died, people in the region continued to give to
the poor anonymously, and such gifts were still often attributed to
St Nicholas. It should be noted, perhaps, that a nearly identical
story is attributed by Greek folklore to Basil of
Caesarea.
St Basil's feast day is also considered a time
of exchanging gifts.
Legend of the evil innkeeper
A gentleman of Asia sent his
two sons to Athens for education, and had them stop to see the holy
Archbishop of Myra, St Nick. They stayed in an inn where the keeper
chopped them up and salted them down like bacon. St Nick was warned
of this in a terrible vision and went and charged the landlord with
the crime. He confessed with contrition and asked the forgiveness of
Heaven. Nick did this and also restored the boys. In art, St Nick is
often shown next to a tub with naked children in it.
Santa bits
The Gnostic followers of St Nicholas,
the Nicolaites, taught that the true way to salvation lay through
frequent copulation.
In Northern Europe, St Nicholas gained pagan
attributes from Woden (Odin),
chief of the wild hunt, who rides through the sky with reindeer and
42 supernatural huntsmen.
Today's Santa Claus also has elements of
Thor, traditionally depicted riding a goat and carrying a wassail
bowl.
The
German-American, Thomas Nast,
and other immigrants popularized their 'Saint Nicholas' and
other Christmas traditions in the
USA. The tall, thin European St
Nicholas gradually became a fat, jolly, red cheeked old man, with a
contracted version of 'Saint Nicholas' as his name: Santa Claus. One theory for this
unaccountable transition in appearance of St Nicholas imagery may
be the influence of Hotei, the
Laughing Buddha;
strikingly similar in nature and benevolence.
The Coca-Cola
Company featured in its advertising a Santa Claus designed by artist
Haddon Sundblom, which helped to popularise the design of Santa that
Clement Moore and Nast originated. To this day, Santa Claus still appears on
Coca-Cola products each year around Christmastime.
Santa Claus was not
dressed in red and white until Coke gave him that apparel, in its
own corporate livery. In fact, St Nick was a fur-clad elf, and quite
sooty:
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack ...
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf ...
'Twas the Night Before Christmas', or Account of a Visit from
St Nicholas
Either by Clement Clarke Moore or
Major Henry Livingston,
Jr (1748 - 1828)
In centuries of Greek folklore, Nicholas was seen as
'The Lord of the Sea', often described by modern Greek scholars
as more or less a christianised version of Poseidon
(Neptune). The office of protector of sailors was
transferred from Poseidon to St Nicholas. One of Neptune's feast days
was December
3. In Roman Catholic countries, sailors hang up votive pictures
in seaside churches, and make offerings.
In
modern
Greece, he is still easily among
the most recognizable saints and
December 6
finds many cities
celebrating their patron saint.
His
feast day is presumably the date of his death.
The Companions of Saint Nicholas (or
Father Christmas) are a group of closely related figures who
accompany St Nicholas in many
European traditions. The tradition is particularly strong
amongst the
Germanic peoples, with some regional expression in the U.S.
(largely from European ethnic groups).
The most recognized companion, especially outside of Europe, is
Knecht Ruprecht, which translates as Farmhand Ruprecht
or Servant Ruprecht. Other companions include Krampus
(Austria,
Bavaria,
Croatia,
Slovenia,
Hungary [spelled Krampusz]), Klaubauf (Bavaria),
Bartel (Styria),
Pelzebock, Pelznickel, Belzeniggl,
Belsnickel (Pennsylvania),
Schmutzli (Switzerland),
Rumpelklas, Bellzebub, Hans Muff, Drapp
or Buzebergt (Augsburg),
Hanstrapp (Alsace,
East of France) and
Le Père Fouettard (Northern
France). In the
Czech Republic, St Nicholas or Svatý Mikuláš is
accompanied by the Čert (Devil) and Anděl (Angel).
These servants are often associated with, but are distinct from St
Nicholas's helpers in the Netherlands and Flanders (called
Zwarte Piet, meaning Black Pete(r) in English).
The symbol of the balls associated with St
Nicholas was part of the coat of arms of the Medici family, who
established the Medici
trading and banking empire in Florence, Italy.
The Medicis were a family of bankers and lenders, with considerable
fame and fortune. They became so well known in the finance and
lending profession that the other lenders, wanting to share in their
success, adopted similar coats of arms, signs, shields and symbols,
with three golden balls being the most popular. The Medici family
crest bore such a device.
The heraldic shield of the Medicis with its
three balls quite possibly derives from a family affiliation
with St Nicholas, but their own family legend explained it
otherwise. Before they were bankers, the Medicis were originally
engaged in the medical profession; Averardo de Medici, an officer
under Charlemagne,
slew a giant named Mugello, on whose mace were three gilded balls,
and Averardo adopted the three golden balls as the device of his
family.Later, other merchants involved
in monetary dealing adopted the balls as their symbol, with the
three balls coming to symbolise the entire profession.
The word 'Lombard' actually came to
mean, in English, a banker or moneylender, so called because the
first bankers were from Lombardy. The region is named for the Lombards
or Langobardi, who came to this region after the
fall of the (western) Roman Empire. During the Middle
Ages, Lombard businesses were set up in Lombard Street (London). The
business of lending money on pawns was carried on in England by
Italian merchants or bankers as early as the reign of King Richard
I.
Another
theory of the origins of the pawnbrokers' balls is that the symbol
derives from the coin known as the 'Silver Shekel' or 'Shekel
of Israel'. It was issued in 68 CE following the 66 CE Jewishrevolt against the Roman Empirewhen the Zealotstook Jerusalemand the Sicariicaptured the fortress of Masada. One side of this coin depicted
three pomegranates, with a common stalk. In Europe, Jewish people
were closely associated with the pawn broking industry.
Lombard in other expressions 'Lombard Fever' is
an old expression meaning laziness because lazy people will pawn
anything rather than settle down to steady work. The expression,
'Lombard Street to a China Orange'
means long odds. To stake the Bank of England, which is situated in
Lombard St, London, against a common orange is to stake something of
great value against a mere trifle.
As described by
Chambers in 1881, thousands of pilgrims would go
on this pilgrimage. Staves were bound with olive, pine or palm, each bearing a suspended
water-gourd. The priory gave food and shelter to many, and water
which exuded from the crypt was sold to the pilgrims. Many pilgrims
made a circuit of
the church on their knees, some pressing their foreheads to the
pavement, being led by a child with a string that the penitent
holds in his or her mouth. The foreheads of the penitents sometimes
bled on the marble.
On the Day of St Nicholas, a boy is chosen, called the 'boy bishop' because
the saint exhibited
marvellous indications of piety from the cradle. A custom was held
in English schools and colleges, eg, St Paul's, Eton, Winchester,
and King's College, Cambridge. A boy held office for three weeks as
'bishop'. The custom was abolished by
Henry VIII in 1541,
revived in 1552, and finally abolished by
Elizabeth I.
More recently, in church choirs, such
a boy has been chosen on December 6.
The boy bishop reigned until
Innocents' Day (Childermas, December
28), and was entitled to a monument and a bishop's funeral
should he die during his episcopal tenure. At least one monarch of
England heard mass celebrated by one of these boy bishops.
This was in the 13th
and 14th Centuries, still going in 1556 at least.
English
churches that still have boy bishops include
Hereford
Cathedral and
Salisbury
Cathedral.
We note that this custom, in its turning
upside-down of conventional positions in the hierarchy, bears
similarities to the Lord of Misrule and Twelfth Night
King customs.
Boy Bishop practices
continued in a form at
Eton College,
England, in the Eton Montem ceremony (Ad Montem: to the mount). Instead of
ecclesiastical garb, though, the children traditionally wore military uniforms.
Every three years, the students marched to
Salt Hillalso known as
Montem Mound, near the
Bath
Road in
Slough,
Berkshire,
where they dined
and marched back to Eton.
Certain boys (salt-bearers)
and their scouts,
traditionally extracted money from spectators. In olden days, each donor was given a bit of salt
from the salt-bearer's handkerchief.
The Eton
Montem, which was discontinued in
1844, was probably
originally some kind of initiation ceremony. About mid-18th-Century, it was a biennial
occasion; by the
19th Century, a triennial one. One custom, certainly
left over from the Boy Bishop customs, was a boy dressed as a parson
who read prayers, and kicked another boy, dressed as his clerk, down
the hill.
George III, attended the Montem with his family. Under him it was
very popular; however, the headmaster of Eton asked Queen Victoria to
discontinue the custom, due to the attendance of rough mobs of young
men who arrived by train from London in the last two years or so of
the commemoration. Originally it was held on a day between St
Nicholas's day and Holy
Innocents. It was then celebrated on the
first Tuesday in
Hilary term, which started on
January
13. After
1759, it was on Whit-Tuesday.
In
1299, King
Edward I permitted a Boy Bishop to
say vespers for him in his chapel at Heton. Queen Mary
('Bloody Mary') did the same in
1555,
but the practice disappeared with the advent of
Protestantism.
In Switzerland,
they say that St Nicholas threatens to put naughty children in a
sack and take them back to the Black Forest. On December 5 (qv),
St Nicholas Eve is celebrated as Klausjagen in the town of Küssnacht
by the Lake of Four Cantons.
Saint Nicholas's Day
arrives when the bogeyman called Schmutzli takes the gifts which the
parents have prepared and left at the front door, and comes to see
the children at their homes. Schmutzli talks to the children about
their vices and virtues, encouraging them to improve throughout the
coming year. The children then recite a poem or sing a song. During
the day, gifts are given by the parents and delicacies such
as tangerines, chocolates, nuts and gingerbread, are enjoyed, much
the same as at Christmas
in the Anglophone nations and others.
Candy
Canes These are really candy
croziers,
one of St. Nicholas's symbols. All
bishops
carry staffs, hooked at the top like a shepherd's crook, showing
they are the shepherds who care for, or tend, their people.
Christmas
stockings by the fireplace And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes
that St. Nicholas soon would be there, goes the oft repeated
Christmas rhyme. In the story of Nicholas rescuing the poor maidens
from being sold into slavery, the gold dowry money, tossed in
through the chimney or window, is said to have landed in stockings
left to dry before the fire.
Orange
or tangerine in the toe of filled Christmas stockings The gold Nicholas threw to provide the dowry money is often shown as
gold balls. These are symbolized by oranges or even apples. So the
orange in the toe of the stocking is a reminder of Nicholas's gift.
Stockings
filled in secret, during the night Nicholas did his gift giving secretly, under cover of darkness. He
didn't want to be seen and recognized as he wanted those he helped
to give thanks to God.
Authorship of 'Night before Christmas' poem in question A
smoking gun? You decide
"In a December 1899 issue of the Sun, a
Long Island, New York newspaper published by another Henry
Livingston, this Henry argued that the rightful author of A Visit
from St. Nicholas was, in fact, his grandsire. And though the
article did bring together other descendants to share their stories
with Long Island Henry, it didn't result in much impact on the
public's attribution of the poem to Moore."Source
More on
this on December 23 (1823) in the Book
of Days
Santa Claus, Last of the Wild
Men ... and last of the oldest pagan gods Santa's history is truly ancient, perhaps 70,000 years old.
In Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men,
Phyllis Siefker traces this creature from the prehistoric High Alps through the Middle Ages and into the 20th Century.
Krampus
"Once the Christians criminalized orgiastic excess, the Krampus-fertility
nexus evolved into more of a taboo-stalker kind of scenario, in
which the devilish figure, traditionally depicted with a swollen
foot-long red tongue, malevolently thrusts himself on nubile women
who are eternally "protesting" his advances."
Source
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.)
In 1453, Henry had an attack of the
hereditary mental illness that plagued the French house of Valois;
Richard, Duke of York , was made protector of the realm during
Henry's illness.
1896Ira Gershwin (d. August
17, 1983), American lyricist,
collaborator with, and
brother of George Gershwin.
He received
three Academy Award nominations and was the first songwriter to be awarded the Pulitzer
Prize (Of Thee I Sing). Ira wrote lyrics for the scores of
more than 40 stage and screen musicals.
1900Agnes Moorehead
(d.
April 30,
1974, US actress (Citizen Kane; Pollyanna; Endora
in the TV series
Bewitched). Nicknamed
'the Lavender Lady', she was a popular character actress, tending to be cast as puritanical, possessive and neurotic women. She was the first woman to co-host the Academy Awards (with
Dick Powell) in 1948.
Moorhead was one of the cast members of the ill fated film
The Conquerer, which was filmed in 1954
(released 1956)
in the Nevada desert near where dozens of above-ground nuclear fission bombs had been detonated since 1951.
The film crew returned to Hollywood with 60 tons of local fallout-contaminated red sand for studio retakes.
In later years, those nuclear tests were suspected to have caused the cancer deaths of several of the film's stars, including
John Wayne,
Dick Powell,
Susan Hayward and
Pedro Armendáriz.
Of the 220 persons who worked on The Conqueror on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it. In a population of that size and a similar age distribution, the expected cancer incidence might have been about thirty persons.
Armendáriz developed cancer of the kidney just four years later, and later committed suicide upon learning that his condition was likely to be fatal. Moorhead's
death
certificate lists uterine cancer as the cause of death.
1993Elián González, Cuban boy
who was taken from Cuba by his mother in an attempt to emigrate to the
United States in November,
1999. She and ten others died in the
attempt, leaving him to float into Florida
on an inner tube with three other survivors.
On April
22, 2000,
U.S. Marshals burst into his great-uncle's home to seize him. A
famous photograph exists of a Marshal with a submachine gun pointed in the general
direction of Elián and a caretaker who is hiding in a closet. See this
page.
Your family and friends will get a
kick when they hear their own name being sung in 'Happy Birthday'!!
You can schedule your singing cards in advance, and even add your
own face to funny animations. (Pay cards)
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ezine
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Pip Wilson's articles are available for your website or publication, on
application. Further details
1648
'Pride's Purge': Oliver Cromwell, his power threatened by Presbyterian
members of
parliament, sent troops to block the entry of some 200 of them from parliament,
enabling his supporters therein to vote on his side.
Pride's Purge "When Charles I was a
captive, after his defeat in the field, the Long Parliament declared for a
reconciliation (5 December), whereupon a body of soldiers under Colonel Pride
arrested 45 MPs and debarred 78 others from entry. Another 20 refused to sit and
the Rump was prepared to serve the Army's purposes." Ivor H
Evans, Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988
'Mary Had a Little Lamb' (Listen: MP3 207kb)
Performed by Thomas Alva Edison
1927 re-enactment of the first sound recording in 1877.
"The first words I spoke in the original phonograph. A little piece of
practical poetry. Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. And
everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go." Source
1892 A Greek
manuscript of the Gospel of St Peter was found in an ancient Egyptian tomb.
1902Henry Lawson (1867
- 1922),
Australia's national poet, jumped off a cliff while intoxicated, at Fairy
Bower, a small beach near Manly, New South Wales.
(A source had December 6 as the date of Henry's fall; however, The Taranaki
Herald (New Zealand)
reported
the fall on December 6, so I am uncertain of the actual date.)
1905Roald Amundsen,
the Norwegian explorer, landed at Fort Egbert, Alaska, after two and a half
years journeying along North America's Arctic coast in a
14-metre cutter.
1907 USA: 361 coal workers killed. In
West Virginia's
Marion County, an
explosion at a mine owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in
Monongah became the
worst mining disaster in American history.
1914 Germany
captured the Polish city of Łódź
(Lodz).
1917Halifax
explosion: In Halifax
Harbour, Nova Scotia,
Canada, a collision between a French ammunition ship, the Mont
Blanc, and the Norwegian
cargo ship Imo caused an explosion killing more than 1,900 people on sea and land.
It was one of the largest man-made explosions until the first atomic bomb
test explosion in 1945.
"At 9:04:35 Mont-Blanc
explodedwith a force stronger than any manmade explosion before it.
"The steel hull burst
sky-high, falling in a blizzard of red-hot, twisted projectiles on Dartmouth
and Halifax.
"Some pieces were tiny;
others were huge. Part of the anchor hit the ground more than 4 kilometers
away on the far side of Northwest Arm. A gun barrel landed in Dartmouth more
than 5 kilometers from the harbour.
"The explosion sent a white
cloudbillowing 20,000 feet above the city.
"For almost two square
kilometers around Pier 6, nothing was left standing. The blast obliterated
most of Richmond: homes, apartments and business, even the towering sugar
refinery.
"On the Dartmouth side,
Tuft's Cove took the brunt of the blast. The small Mi'kmaq settlement of
Turtle Grove was obliterated.
"More than 1500 people were
killed outright; hundreds more would die in the hours and days to come. Nine
thousand people, many of whom might have been safe if they hadn't come to
watch the fire, were injured by the blast, falling buildings and flying shards
of glass.
"And it wasn't over yet.
"Within minutes the
dazed survivors wereawash in water. The blast provoked a tsunami that washed up as high as 18 meters above the harbour's
high-water mark on the Halifax side."
"Like the rest of the Stones'
tour, the group waited as long as possible before taking the stage. They wanted
their entrance to be as great as possible. The lights around the medical units
were even asked to be turned off so that as their set began the only light would
be a single spotlight on Jagger. Small fights kept breaking out as the Stones
played. Meredith Hunter, an eighteen year old black man, was near the stage with
a knife and a gun. Hunter was beaten to death by the Angels. 'There could
be no worse circumstances for making music, and the Stones are playing their
asses off.' It soon became apparent what was happening, Jagger stopped singing,
and tried to calm everyone down, finally calling for an ambulance. They had to
continue playing their set, otherwise even more violence was sure to follow."Source
1978 Did NASA prove that the
day stood still for Joshua?
(As alleged around the Internet)
12 Then spake Joshua to the
LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites
before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand
thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
13 And the sun stood still,
and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.
Is not this written in the book of Jasher?
So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a
whole day.
14 And there was no day like
that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for
the LORD fought for Israel. Joshua 10:
12-14
On December 6, 1978 (sources
differ widely as to date; one source cites
October 10, 1969), The Evening Star of Spencer, Indiana, USA,
published a story by Mary Kathryn Bryan which, in various forms, has
attained wide circulation and credence on the Internet. It says that NASA's
Greenbelt facility has proved that the universe lost a day, as intimated in the
Bible.
The story actually dates back to the book The
Harmony of Science and Scripture, by Harry Rimmer, written in 1936, before
NASA's Greenbelt facility was even built.
So, did NASA prove that
the day stood still for Joshua? The
answer is a resounding 'no'. It's an urban legend – even
Apologetics Press,
a Christian fundamentalist organization, calls it a 'farce', and the
July,
1989 Bible-Science Newsletter carried an article that debunked the tale.
The
'GSFC finds missing
day' urban legend doesn't make sense for the following reason. If we want to
know where the planets will be in the future, we use accurate knowledge of their
initial positions and orbital speeds (which would be where they are located
now), and solve for their positions for some time in the future. We solve a very
well determined set of equations that describe their motions. The major
dynamical component of any planet's orbital motion is determined by solving an
equation (force is equal to the
mass times the
acceleration) which is the perhaps the most fundamental in classical physics.
The validity and predictive power of this equation are well documented and can
be seen every day ... This calculation would not cover any time before the
present, so some missing day many centuries ago, if it had occurred, could not
be uncovered with this method."
Time stopped for Joshua, and it
ran backwards for Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:9-11).
The sun's shadow moved backwards by ten steps, probably five to six hours on the
sundial. That is, the sun appeared to move eastward instead of westward.
The Roman poet Ovid tells us,
that a day was once lost, and that the earth was in great danger from the
intense heat of an unusual sun; the fable originated with the Phoenicians, the
same people whom Joshua fought.
There are many stories
similar to this, to be found among other nations of antiquity. We have, as an
example, that which is related of Bacchus in the Orphic hymns, wherein it says
that this god-man arrested the course of the sun and the moon. An Indian legend
relates that the sun stood still to hear the pious ejaculations of Arjouan after
the death of Crishna. A holy Buddhist by the name of Matanga prevented the sun,
at his command, from rising, and bisected the moon … The Chinese also, had a
legend of the sun standing still, and a legend was found among the Ancient
Mexicans to the effect that one of their holy persons commanded the sun to stand
still, which command was obeyed.
TW Doane, Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions,
fourth ed., Charles P Somerby, New York, 1882, p. 91
In the ancient Chinese
writings there is a legend of a long day. The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of
Mexico have a like record, and there is a Babylonian and a Persian legend of a
day that was miraculously extended. Another section of China contributes an
account of the day that was miraculously prolonged, in the reign of Emperor Yeo.
Herodotus recounts that the priests of Egypt showed him their temple records,
and that there he read a strange account of a day that was twice the natural
length.
Harry Rimmer, The Harmony of Science and Scripture, William B
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1940, pp. 269-270
In
the Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan – the history of the empire of Culhuacan and
Mexico, written in Nahua-Indian in the sixteenth century –it is related that
during a cosmic catastrophe that occurred in the remote past, the night did not
end for a long time …
Sahagun, the Spanish savant who came to
America a generation after Columbus and gathered the traditions of the
aborigines, wrote that at the time of one cosmic catastrophe the sun rose only a
little way over the horizon and remained there without moving; the moon also
stood still.
Immanuel
Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, The Macmillan
Company, New York, 1950, pp. 45, 46. (The Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan
were also known as the Codex Chimalpopca; these manuscripts contained a
series of annals of very ancient date, many of them going back to more than a
thousand years before the Christian era.)
"
According
to Montesinos and other chroniclers, the most unusual event took
place in the reign of Titu Yupanqui Pachacuti II, the fifteenth
monarch in Ancient Empires times. It was in the third year of
his reign, when 'good customs were forgotten and people were
given to all manner of vice,' that 'there was no dawn for twenty
hours.' In other words, the night did not end when it usually
does and sunrise was delayed for twenty hours. After a great
outcry, confession of sins, sacrifices, and prayers, the sun
finally rose."SourceShop VelikovskyMoreAnd
more
1992
In Ayodhya, India, a mob of nearly one million right-wing
Hindu activists
(karsevaks) belonging
to the nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party and allied organisations demolished the Babri Masjid, a 16th
century mosque,
which they claimed was built upon the birth place of Lord Rama.
"The police stood by and watched, while some men
wearing saffron headbands and appointed by the organisers to control the crowd
did try to stop them.
"They soon gave up, however, and joined the
intruders in beating up television journalists, smashing their cameras and
trampling on their tape recorders. …
"As telephone lines had been cut, I drove to
Faizabad to file my story for the BBC and then tried to return to the site.
"Before I could reach there, I and the
Hindi-language journalists with me were threatened and then locked in a room by
kar sevaks (Hindu volunteers).
"We were kept there for several hours before we
were rescued by a local official assisted by the head priest of one of Ayodhya's
best known temples. But by then the Babri Masjid had been totally demolished." Mark Tully, BBC
Johnny, then a 12-year old Karen boy, and his twin brother Luther met Associated Press
at their jungle base of Ka Mar Pa Law in Myanmar (Burma), opposite Thailand's Ratchaburi
province,
95 km west of Bangkok. Johnny and Luther, the twin adolescent leaders
of a mystical Myanmar rebel group called
God's Army, smoked constantly and said they'd lost
count of how many Burmese soldiers they had killed. The Htoo twins and 14
followers surrendered to Thai authorities on
January 16,
2001.
A Christian pastor, named The Pe,
helped the twins recruit their force and christened them "Jesus' Commandos".
The legend of the twins began two years earlier, when Burmese troops staging a
major offensive killed Karen men in front of their families; they raped the
women and torched villages. Jesus' Commandos waylaid Myanmar troops in a
noontime rout and the twins' legend was born.
Followers believe the twins offer
them divine protection in battle, keeping bullets from hitting them and mines
from exploding under their feet. The twins have fundamentalist values, barring
fighting, swearing, drugs and alcohol among their troops who, like most members
of the Karen ethnic group, are Christians in a predominantly Buddhist country.
Facts
About Child Soldiers
Today,
as many as 300,000 children under the age of 18 serve in government forces or
armed rebel groups. Some are as young as eight years old.
Child soldiers are
used by armed opposition forces, although many are used by government armies.
Children are uniquely
vulnerable to military recruitment because of their emotional and physical
immaturity. They are easily manipulated and can be drawn into violence that
they are too young to resist or understand.
Technological
advances in weaponry and the proliferation of small arms have contributed to
the increased use of child soldiers. Lightweight automatic weapons are simple
to operate, often easily accessible, and can be used by children as easily as
adults.
Children are most
likely to become child soldiers if they are poor, separated from their
families, displaced from their homes, living in a combat zone or have limited
access to education. Orphans and refugees are particularly vulnerable to
recruitment.
Many children join
armed groups because of economic or social pressure, or because children
believe that the group will offer food or security. Others are forcibly
recruited, "press-ganged" or abducted by armed groups.
Both girls and boys
are used as child soldiers. In case studies in El Salvador, Ethiopia, and
Uganda, almost a third of the child soldiers were reported to be girls. Girls
may be raped, or in some cases, given to military commanders as
"wives."
Once recruited, child
soldiers may serve as porters or cooks, guards, messengers or spies. Many are
pressed into combat, where they may be forced to the front lines or sent into
minefields ahead of older troops. Some children have been used for suicide
missions.
Children are
sometimes forced to commit atrocities against their own family or neighbors.
Such practices help ensure that the child is "stigmatized" and
unable to return to his or her home community.
Few peace treaties
recognize the existence of child soldiers, or make provisions for their
rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Many former child soldiers do
not have access to the educational programs, vocational training, family
reunification, or even food and shelter that they need to successfully rejoin
civilian society. As a result, many end up on the street, become involved in
crime, or are drawn back into armed conflict.
2002
"It is
announced that in a mere 400 hours in September 2002, the value of pi was
calculated to 1.24 trillion places, by a Hitachi supercomputer programmed by a
team of ten led by Professor Yasumasa Kanada at the Information Technology
Center at Tokyo University. [click
here to download the complete number. Download time depends on the speed of
your internet connection. For a typical 2002 vintage dial-up connection it is
120 years; with a high-speed connection, it could be as little as 5 years.
Warning: if the download is interrupted for any reason, you will have to start
over from the beginning.]"Source
2004
"Pip ... we were wondering if it might be possible to have a day to commemorate the launching of the show. December
6th as Mornings on WNMC Day, commemorating one full year on the air at the ungodly hour of 6am.
"Eric Hines, General Manager, WNMC-FM,
Traverse City, MI 49686, USA" Seeing WNMC Day broadcasts Wilson's Almanac
at the ungodly hour of 6 am, why wouldn't I add this great event to the Almy?
Happy anniversary to the team.
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Christmas
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