*Ø* Wilson's Almanac free daily ezine | Book of Days | February 13 | Colin Powell's lie to UN, Parentalia, Hilton bombing, Trndez, Tiarnandaraj, Tearnandarach

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13

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Today is

Tomorrow is St Valentine's day
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your valentine!
William Shakespeare; Hamlet , IV, v (Ophelia)

... a man is never so well Employ'd, as when he is labouring for the advantage of the Public; without the Expectation, the Hope or Even a wish to derive advantage of any Kind from the Result of his exertions.
Sir Joseph Banks, British botanist born on February 13, 1743; from a note in the Kent archives

I had one experience which gave me some slant on the way large organizations run. I was not allowed to take spherical trigonometry because I'd sprained my ankle. Because I'd sprained my ankle I had an incomplete in gym, phys ed. And the rule was that if you had an incomplete in anything, you were not allowed to take an overload. I argued with some clerical person in the administration office, and was stopped there. It's an experience which I've remembered since, and advised people not to be stopped at the first point.
William Bradford Shockley, British-born American physicist and inventor, born on February 13, 1910

Hilton Bombing
Did Australia's anti-terrorist police
bomb the Sydney Hilton in 1978?

You meet a better class of people in pubs.
Oliver Reed, English actor, born on February 13, 1938

I do not live in the world of sobriety.
Oliver Reed

My only regret is that I didn't drink every pub dry and sleep with every woman on the planet.
Oliver Reed

I believe that my woman shouldn't work outside the home. When I come home and I'm tired from filming all day, I expect her to be there and make sure that everything is cool for me. You know, like drawing my bath and helping me into bed. That's the kind of job she had and, in return for it, she can bear my children and if any man talks bad to her, I'll hit him.
Oliver Reed

For me the image isn't important, it's the human behaviour of wanting to touch.
Sigmar Polke, German post-modern painter and photographer, born February 13, 1941

We cannot rely on it that good painting will be made one day. We have to take the matter in hand ourselves.
Sigmar Polke

This is the meeting point of ideas and materials … you see what you want, but you have to work with the painting, and the results are always different.
Sigmar Polke

My campaign is based upon the proposition that the answers to the problems which currently plague our cities, our towns, and our homes, are not to be found in the decisions in Washington. They are instead to be found in the hearts, minds and resources of our own people here at home.
Jerry Springer, British-born American TV celebrity born on February 13, 1944; from a speech given c. 1970 to citizens in Cincinnati, Ohio, as reported on This American Life, Ep. 258 (January 30, 2004), 'Leaving the Fold'; Act One

The Statue of Liberty means everything. We take it for granted today. We take it for granted. Remember the Statue of Liberty stands for what America is. We as Democrats have to remind ourselves and remind the country the great principles we stand for. This is a place of protection. This is not a country of bullies. We are not an empire. We are the light. We are the Statue of Liberty.
Jerry Springer; speech given January 2003, as reported on This American Life, Ep. 258 (January 30, 2004), 'Leaving the Fold'; Act One

I still do politics but I do it behind the scenes now. So that's still my passion. It's what I believe most strongly in, and I love that. Do I miss being in elective politics? Sometimes. This show is fun to do, my American show, and it's obviously silly, sometimes stupid. It gives me a good living and I enjoy it but I'm not passionate about it like I am about politics.
Jerry Springer; Chatshow Net interview with Lara Lewington (July 13, 2001)

The overarching issue, as I see it, is the elitism of America's political system; the fact that regular, ordinary Americans aren't considered in policy debates or legislation, and regularly get shafted by the powers-that-be in Washington.
Jerry Springer; Democratic Veteran, interview with Jo Fish (June 23, 2003)

I opposed the war in Iraq because I did not believe it was in our national security interest, and I still don't. What we did was akin to taking a baseball bat to a beehive. Our primary security threat right now is terrorism – and by doing what we did in Iraq, we've managed to alienate a good part of the world and most of the allies whose intelligence and other help we need to combat and defeat terrorism.
Jerry Springer; ibid

Country comes before politics.
Jerry Springer; Springer On The Radio for Air America Radio (July 15, 2005)

Somebody once said I had a face for radio and a voice for newspapers.
Jerry Springer (attrib.)

February 13 is the 44^th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 321 days remaining (322 in leap years).
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Anthesteria, ancient Greece (Feb 13 - 15), festival to the god Dionysus

The Attic festivals of Dionysus were four: The Rural or Lesser Dionysia, the Lenaea, the Anthesteria and the City or Great (or Urban) Dionysia.

These festivals were drunken revels, partaken in with enthusiastic joy and boisterous music of flutes, cymbals and drums. Processions were held, in which women were dressed as Bacchae, Lenae, Thyades, Naiades, Nymphs and so on, adorned with garlands of ivy, and bearing the thyrsus in their hands. The thyrsus was a pole carried by Bacchus, and by Satyrs, Maenades and others who engaged in Bacchic festivals and rites. It was sometimes tipped with a pine or fir cone; the fir tree was dedicated to Bacchus because its sap was used in wine making. In ancient art the cone was represented with a bunch of vine or ivy leaves and grapes or berries, arranged into the form of a cone. Bacchus was said to have converted the thyrsi into dangerous weapons by concealing an iron point in the leaves. Hence its point was said to invoke madness.

The choruses sung at such festivals were called dithyrambs, image-filled songs to the god. The phallus was also carried, the symbol of Nature's fertility. The Greeks believed they owed the gift of their intoxication to the god, and in some places it was thought a crime to remain sober.

During the Anthesteria the participants ritually expelled the Keres, evil female spirits, from their houses.

From Wikipedia: On the first day, called Pithoigia (opening of the casks), libations were offered from the newly opened casks to the god of wine, all the household, including servants and slaves, joining in the festivities. The rooms and the drinking vessels in them were adorned with spring flowers, as were also the children over three years of age.

The second day, named Choës (feast of beakers), was a time of merrymaking. The people dressed themselves gaily, some in the disguise of the mythical personages in the suite of Dionysus, and paid a round of visits to their acquaintances. Drinking clubs met to drink off matches, the winner being he who drained his cup most rapidly. Others poured libations on the tombs of deceased relatives. On the part of the state this day was the occasion of a peculiarly solemn and secret ceremony in one of the sanctuaries of Dionysus in the Lenaeum, which for the rest of the year was closed. The basilissa (or basilinna), wife of the archon basileus for the time, went through a ceremony of marriage to the wine god, in which she was assisted by fourteen Athenian matrons, called geraerae, chosen by the basileus and sworn to secrecy. The days on which the Pithoigia and Choës were celebrated were both regarded as αποφραδες (nefasti) and μιαραι ('defiled'), necessitating expiatory libations; on them the souls of the dead came up from the underworld and walked abroad; people chewed leaves of whitethorn and besmeared their doors with tar to protect themselves from evil. But at least in private circles the festive character of the ceremonies predominated.

The third day was named Chytri (feast of pots, from χυτρος, 'a pot'), a festival of the dead. Cooked pulse was offered to Hermes, in his capacity of a god of the lower world, and to the souls of the dead. Although no performances were allowed at the theatre, a sort of rehearsal took place, at which the players for the ensuing dramatic festival were selected.

The name Anthesteria, according to the account of it given above, is usually connected with ανθος ('flower', or the 'bloom' of the grape), but AW Verrall (Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx., 1900, p. 115) explains it as a feast of 'revocation' (from αναθεσσασται, to 'pray back' or 'up'), at which the ghosts of the dead were recalled to the land of the living (cp. the Roman mundus patet). JE Harrison (ibid. 100, 109, and Prolegomena), regarding the Anthesteria as primarily a festival of all souls, the object of which was the expulsion of ancestral ghosts by means of placation, explains πιθοιγια as the feast of the opening of the graves (πιθος meaning a large urn used for burial purposes), χοες as the day of libations, and χυτροι as the day of the grave-holes (not 'pots', which is χυτραι), in point of time really anterior to the πιθοιγια. E Rohde and M P Nilsson, however, take the χυτροι to mean 'water vessels', and connect the ceremony with the Hydrophoria, a libation festival to propitiate the dead who had perished in the flood of Deucalion.

More Festivals in ancient Greece

'Bacchanalia' by Auguste Léveque (1864 - 1921)

Bacchanalia

The worship of Dionysus, whom the Romans called Bacchus, was introduced from southern Italy into Etruria, thence to Rome. According to Livy, many vices took place. Rites were held at the Bacchanal (sanctuary); it was only for women until Pacula Annia, a Campanian matron, admitted men to the initiation. The Bacchanalia went from three days in the year to five days per month and, in a decree that proved ineffective, was banned, except by special permission of the Senate and for only five initiates at a time, in 186 BCE by the Roman Senate because of extreme licentiousness. The Liberalia, another festival of Bacchus, was celebrated on March 16 - 17. Adorned with garlands of ivy, priests and old priestesses carried through the city wine, honey, cakes and sweets together with an altar in the middle of which was a small fire-pan in which sacrifices were sometimes burnt. On this day youths who had turned 15 received their costume, the toga virilis.

Parentalia, ancient Rome (Feb 13 - 21)

Temples were closed and weddings prohibited during the Parentalia, ancient Rome's main festival of the dead, which lasted until the Feralia (February 21).

It was customary for people to visit the graves of their parents and other relatives, placing offerings of wine, milk, oil, honey and water from springs. Also laid at the graves were sacrificial blood from the bodies of black animals. Mourners decorated the graves with roses and violets, then partook of a ritual meal at the graveside.

The mourners greeted each other with the words, Salve, sancte parens, "Hail, holy ancestor".

Today was a day for the famed Vestal Virgins to perform a special ritual, in honour of their sacred ancestor, when they visited the cult's parental shrine which was sacred to the early Vestal, Terpeia.

The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Global Spiritual Calendar (Phoenix and Arabeth, Ukiah, CA, USA, 1992) called it a "purification festival of [the] Goddesses Mania and Vesta, devoted to ancestors".

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

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St Valentine's Eve

At Norwich, England, this night was kept as a time for gift giving. Boxes of gifts would be left anonymously on the doorsteps of loved ones. Sometimes a box would say "With care – this side upwards", and when the lady opened it, little boys would jump out calling a Valentine's greeting. One trick was to place a mock parcel on the doorstep, which would disappear when the door was opened, as it was hoisted up on strings. Parcels-within-parcels were also left, that at the end revealed a motto such as "Happy is he who expects nothing, and he will not be disappointed".

Valentine's Eve in olde England was one of a number of nights throughout the year on which prognostications would be made in order to discover when one would find a lover, and who that lover would be. An English practice of the mid-eighteenth century was for a girl to gather five bay-leaves. One was pinned to each of the four corners of the girl's pillow, and one in the middle. If she dreamed of her sweetheart she would be married before the year was out. To make it more sure, and the dream presumably more vivid, the girl would hard-boil an egg, take out the yolk, fill it with salt, and eat it shell and all at bedtime, without speaking or drinking after it. I tried it last year but I think it only works for females.

Another custom for tonight was for a girl to write potential lovers' names on bits of paper, roll them up in clay, and put them into water: the first that rose up was to be the valentine.

Valentine's Eve: a poem

Ides of February, ancient Rome

The Faunalia, ancient Rome

Feast day of St Agabus

Feast day of St Archangela Girlani

Feast day of St Catherine de Ricci, virgin
(Polyanthus, Primula polyantha, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

Feast day of St Christina of Spoleto

Feast day of St Ermenilda

Feast day of St Gilbert of Meaux

Feast day of St Gosbert

Feast day of St Huno

Feast day of St John of Triora

Feast day of St Jordan of Saxony

Feast day of St Julian of Lyons

Feast day of St Martinian the Hermit, of Athens

Feast day of St Matthias, East Anglia
Matthias took Judas's place as the twelfth Apostle of Jesus Christ. This is a traditional East Anglian feast day, but the Church generally reveres him on February 24. His symbol is a battleaxe, because after having been stoned, he was beheaded with one of those weapons.

Feast day of St Modomnoc, or Dominic, bishop of Ossory

Feast day of St Polyeuctus of Melitene

Feast day of St Stephen of Lyons

Feast day of St Stephen of Rieti

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints

Old Leap Year's Day

Yuki Matsuri, or Snow Festival, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan (dates vary in early February)
Hokkaido's largest festival. Snow images are made in the main street, and a costume parade and skating contests are held. See February 7 for more.

Shiwasu Matsuri, Mikado Jinja, Nango, Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan (Jan 20 - Feb 20)

Sounkyo Ice Festival, Sounkyo Onsen (spa), Hokkaido, Japan (Jan 29 - Mar 5)

Powamu, Pueblo/Hopi purification ceremony, (Feb 12 - 28)

Blessing of the salmon nets, Northumberland, England

Borrowed, or borrowing days, Scotland (Feb 12, 13 and 14, and Mar 29, 30 and 31)

Eve of Trndez, Tiarnandaraj or Tearnandarach, Armenian Christian Church

The titles of today's celebration are local variations of the same word – Tiarnandaraj means 'to go towards Jesus' while Trndez means 'let Jesus be with you'. When St Gregory the Illuminator converted Armenia to Christianity in 301, the pagan rituals of Trndez were rooted deeply in the population. The traditional rituals were adapted and this Orthodox Candlemas celebration began.

"As darkness descends upon the land on the evening of February 13, the air fills with the hustle and bustle of families preparing bonfires.

"It is the same every year at this time as Armenians celebrate the festival of Trndez or Tiarnandaraj by making newlyweds and would-be weds jump through the flames as a blessing …

"People believe that the warmth of the festive fire symbolizes the end of winter and the coming of spring. In some villages, people try to predict whether the coming year will bring luck and wealth by watching the direction in which the smoke leaves the fire … Meanwhile, the mothers of the village treat their new daughters-in-law to delicious dishes and sweets, turning Tiarnandaraj into a real family festival.

"When the flames have died out, villagers scatter the ashes over the fields and gardens to secure a good harvest.

"Many of those sticking most zealously to the rituals dilute the ashes in water and give the mixture to sick people and pregnant women to reduce the pain of disease or childbirth."
Source: Burning Love: Flames of fidelity fired by pagan and Christian beliefs

Breakup Day
From Wikipedia: International Breakup Day, or simply Breakup Day was established as a holiday in 1997 as a response to the commercialization of Valentine's Day. On this day, which precedes Valentine's Day by one day (ie, February 13th, and most appropriate if that happens to be a Friday), those who no longer wish to be in their relationship can break off their relationship one day prior to a day which has brought the expectations of expensive gifts, vacations/holidays and expensive, hard to find flowers.

Some stores sell anti-Valentine cards, which look like a Valentine card from the outside, but on the inside have text such as "as of today, you are my ex".

1599 Pope Alexander VII (d. 1667)

1682 or 1683 Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (d. 1754), painter

1743 Joseph Banks (later Sir Joseph; d June 19, 1820), British naturalist and botanist on Captain James Cook's first great voyage (1768 - 1771). Some 75 species bear Banks' name. He is credited with the introduction to the West of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa, and the genus named after him, Banksia, all well known species in Australia where his mark was firmly left. He was to be the greatest proponent of settlement in New South Wales (see January 26, 1788), as is hinted by the name Botany Bay, which was the colloquial term for the whole colony before Australia was named.

Banks was a prominent member of the Royal Society, and its president for a record 42 years. From this exalted position, he was able to direct much of the course of British science for the first part of the 19^th Century, a time of incredible scientific and imperial expansion. He was directly responsible for several famous voyages, including that of George Vancouver to the Pacific Northwest of North America, and William Bligh's voyages to transplant breadfruit from the South Pacific to the Caribbean Sea islands; the latter brought about the famous mutiny on the Bounty.

Sir Joseph Banks was also adviser to King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a prominent Freemason. He published the first Linnean descriptions of the plants and animals of Newfoundland and Labrador. Banks made the first scientific description of a now common garden plant, bougainvillea (named after Cook's French counterpart, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville). In 1772, he made a voyage to Iceland with the great Swedish botanist Daniel Solander.

Banks's library, a five-volume catalogue of which was published in his lifetime, became the core of Britain's Natural History Museum Library. His name dots the map of the South Pacific: for example, Bankstown in Sydney, Australia, Banks Peninsula on South Island, New Zealand, and Banks Island in modern-day Vanuatu.

Guide to the papers of Sir Joseph Banks

1849 Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt (d. January 3, 1922), German impostor who masqueraded as a Prussian military officer in 1906 and became famous as the Captain of Köpenick (Hauptmann von Köpenick) (see October 16, 1906 for his best-known escapade).
1873 Feodor Chaliapin (d. 1938), Russian operatic bass

1884 Alfred Carlton Gilbert (d. 1961), gold medal winner at 1908 Summer Olympics, inventor of Erector Set
1885 Bess Truman (d. 1982), First Lady, wife of American President Harry S Truman
1892 Grant Wood (d. 1942), painter
1903 Georges Simenon (d. 1989), prolific Belgian crime writer (Maigret series of novels)

The unbelievably busy Monsieur Simeon
"For the forty-year period from 1931 through 1972, a new Inspector Maigret investigation appeared at the average rate about 2.5 per year: 75 novels and 28 short stories, 103 episodes of what has been called George Simenon's Maigret Saga."

Source

1910 William Bradford Shockley (d. 1989), controversial Nobel Prize-winning physicist and social commentator whose work led to the miniaturization of radio, TV and computer circuits

1919 Tennessee Ernie Ford (d. 1991), American musician
1923 Chuck Yeager, American pilot of first supersonic flight
1930 Ernst Fuchs, painter and graphic artist
1933 Kim Novak, actress
1933 Paul Biya, president of Cameroon
1934 George Segal, actor
1938 Oliver Reed, (d. 1999), English actor, misogynist and famed dipsomaniac.
Reed needed 36 stitches to cuts on his face after a bar fight in 1963.

It took Director Ridley Scott $3,000,000 to recreate Reed's face after the actor died during the filming of Gladiator.

"Reed told the Los Angeles Times in 1971 that he had to drink a whole bottle of vodka before shooting his nude wrestling scene with Alan Bates in 'Women in Love.' Reed claimed 'He didn't mind exposing himself in a bedroom or a urinal, but he had to get drunk before he could get in front of the camera.' Reed often resented interviewers asking about his drinking feats (like downing 106 pints of beer in 24 hours) instead of his current film.

"He died of a heart attack in a bar after downing three bottles of rum and beating five sailors at arm-wrestling."   Source

1941 Sigmar Polke, painter
1942 Peter Tork, musician and actor (The Monkees)
1942 Carol Lynley, American actress
1944 Jerry Springer (Gerald Norman Springer), British-born American celebrity. He is a former Democratic mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio; a musician; and host of the controversial television tabloid talk show, The Jerry Springer Show.
1950 Peter Gabriel, musician
Website    Peter Gabriel and Related Links Gabmiration
1956 Peter Hook, bass player for Joy Division and New Order, bass player and lead vocals for Revenge and Monaco
1958 Pernilla August, Swedish actress
1961 Henry Rollins, musician
1971 Sonia, British singer
1974 Robbie Williams, pop singer

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858 Death of Kenneth MacAlpin (Kenneth I), King of the Picts and, according to national myth, first King of Scots.
1130 Death of Pope Honorius II. Innocent II was voted Pope.
1247 An earthquake was felt in England which did considerable damage in London.

1327 Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim, 1260-1328, German Dominican theologian, philosopher and mystic), stated publicly when he was tried for heresy, that he had always detested everything wrong, and should anything of the kind be found in his writings, he now retracted it. Pope John XXII (reigned 1316 - '34) issued a bull ('In agro dominico') on March 27, 1329, in which certain statements from Eckhart were characterized as heretical; others were suspected of heresy. Meister Eckhart's writings are still popular in many quarters today.

1542 Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, was executed for adultery.
1633 Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
1657 Death of Miles Sindercombe, attempted assassin of Oliver Cromwell.
1660 Death of King Charles X of Sweden (b. 1622).
1668 Spain recognized Portugal as an independent nation.
1689 William and Mary were proclaimed co-rulers of England, and accepted the Declaration of Rights.

The Declaration of Rights

"An instrument submitted to William and Mary, after the Glorious Revolution, and accepted by them (13 February 1689). It sought to remove the specific grievances which arose from the arbitrary acts of James II such as the use of the dispensing and suspending power, the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace, taxation without parliamentary consent, freedom of elections, etc. The Declaration, together with a settlement of the succession, etc, was passed into law (October) as the Bill of Rights. It emphasised the importance of Parliament in the constitution of Parliament in the constitution [sic] which no king subsequently dared to question."
Ivor H Evans, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988

1692 The Massacre of Glencoe: Robert Campbell and the Campbell clan murdered 129 of the Macdonald clan Glen Coe, Scotland, on the orders of England's Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir Robert Dalrymple. About 78 Macdonalds were killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.
1728 Death of Cotton Mather (b. 1663), American colonial Puritan minister, author.
1741 The first magazine was published in the USA.
1787 Death of Ruđer Bošković (b. 1711), scientist and diplomat.

1820 As predicted by Nostradamus (pictured), Charles Ferdinand, Duc de Berry was assassinated.

The duke was mortally stabbed when leaving the opera-house at Paris with his wife, by a saddler named Louis Pierre Louvel.

Nostradamus got at least one right

Quatrain III:96 of the prophetic Centuries of Nostradamus says:

The leader from Fossano will have his throat cut
By the man who exercised the bloodhounds and greyhounds.
The deed will be committed by those of the Tarpean rock,
When Saturn is in Leo on the thirteenth of February.

The Duc de Berry (b. 1778) was the younger son of Charles X of France (1757 - 1836) and grandson of Louis, dauphin de France (1729 - 1765), King of Fossano (although he never reigned). The assassin: a Republican, linking him to the Tarpean rock of execution in Republican Rome (a steep cliff of the southern summit of the Capitoline Hill, overlooking the Roman Forum).

1832 The King's School opened at Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.
1866 American outlaw Jesse James robbed his first bank.
1875 "On February 13, 1875 the Chicago Times ran a story describing a fire in a local theater. It claimed that more than 200 people had died in the flames, and it published the names of 108 victims. In fact, there had not been any fire, which people would have known if they had paid careful attention to the headline of the story which read 'Description of a Suppositious Holocaust Likely to Occur Any Night.' The rival Chicago Tribune denounced the hoax, and reported that a woman had collapsed and become insane after seeing her husband's name listed among the victims. However, the Tribune admitted in the same story that this report was, in turn, a hoax."   Source
1880 Thomas Edison became the first person to observe the Edison effect.
1881 The feminist newspaper La Citoyenne was first published in Paris by activist Hubertine Auclert.
1883 Death of Richard Wagner (b. 1813), German composer
1894 Auguste and Louis Lumière patented the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector.
1914 Copyright: In New York City the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) was established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.
1917 Dutch spy Mata Hari was arrested by the French.
1920 USA: The Negro National League was formed.
1924 Egypt: The tomb of Tutankhamun was opened.

1933 Blondie and Dagwood married in the Blondie comic strip by Chic Young.

Comix, comics and cartoons in the Book of Days
1934 The Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sank in the Arctic Ocean.
1935 A jury in Flemington, New Jersey found Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann was later executed.
NY Times article, February 14, 1935

1941 Penicillin was used for the first time on a human – an Oxford, England policeman.

WWII WMDs

1945 World War II: Tens of thousands of civilians were killed (sources vary from between 35,000 and 200,000) in the Allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany.

Even though the end of World War II was foreseeable, the British Royal Air Force (RAF), under the command of Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) fire-bombed Dresden over three days (February 13 - 15).

It remains a little-known event even today, as the British, Americans and other Allies downplay this slaughter of innocents and devote propaganda to the German and Japanese atrocities.

Pictured above: A messenger boy in Hamburg who didn't make it through the firestorm. Very little remains of his body except a partial skeleton.

In a three-day period, 3,400 tons of explosives and incendiaries were dropped, reducing six square miles of the beautiful city of art and architecture, to rubble. Many Allied officials were outraged – Germany was clearly on the verge of collapse anyway, the war was almost over, and Dresden was not a war production city. Dresden had been famous for its artwork and historic buildings until it became the victim of the single most destructive air raid of World War II.
More

"Low-flying planes machine-gunned the fleeing population along the banks of the Elbe river. A fourth attack on Dresden concentrated its bomb load on the roads used by the fleeing population."
Source: The Truth about the 1945 Bombing of Dresden

One soldier – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr – tried for many years to put into words what he had experienced during that horrific event.

"I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen," Vonnegut noted.

It took him more than twenty years, however, to produce Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade, A Duty-Dance With Death.

"Before World War II, Dresden was called 'the Florence of the Elbe' and was regarded as one the world's most beautiful cities for its architecture and museums. Although no German city remained isolated from Hitler's war machine, Dresden's contribution to the war effort was minimal compared with other German cities. In February 1945, refugees fleeing the Russian advance in the east took refuge there. As Hitler had thrown much of his surviving forces into a defense of Berlin in the north, city defenses were minimal, and the Russians would have had little trouble capturing Dresden ...

"Because there were an unknown number of refugees in Dresden at the time of the Allied attack, it is impossible to know exactly how many civilians perished. After the war, investigators from various countries, and with varying political motives, calculated the number of civilians killed to be as little as 8,000 to more than 200,000. Estimates today range from 35,000 to 135,000. Looking at photographs of Dresden after the attack, in which the few buildings still standing are completely gutted, it seems improbable that only 35,000 of the million or so people in Dresden that night were killed. Cellars and other shelters would have been meager protection against a firestorm that blew poisonous air heated to hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit across the city at hurricane-like speeds."   Source: History Channel

Bombing of Dresden in World War II    Atrocities of WWII    Dresden online    More

See also the firebombing of Tokyo, March 10, 1945, in the Book of Days

1945 World War II: Soviet Union forces captured Budapest, Hungary, from the Nazis.
1955 Israel obtained four of the seven Dead Sea scrolls.
1960 Nuclear testing: France tested its first atomic bomb, in the Sahara.
1969 The first fertilization of a human egg in a test tube took place at the University of Cambridge, by scientists RG Edwards and BD Bavister, with obstetrician Patrick Steptoe.
1971 Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos.
1971 US Vice-President Spiro Agnew hit three spectators with his golf ball during the Bob Hope Desert Classic tournament.
1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, was exiled from the Soviet Union because of his book The Gulag Archipelago.

1978 The Hilton Bombing, leading to perhaps Australia's worst miscarriage of justice.

A bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel, Sydney, killing two garbage men and a police officer. Inside the hotel were heads of government from a number of Commonwealth countries. Corrupt police began a campaign of framing members of the Ananda Marga religious organization for the crime, but eventually the 'Ananda Marga Three' were released from prison and compensated. (Then, years later, Tim Anderson, one of the Three, was charged over the bombing, jailed, and again released and compensated. He served years in prison for no crime committed.)

It is usually called 'Australia's first outbreak of terrorism', but was it really? To this day the identity of the person or persons responsible remains a mystery. Were Australia's security police responsible? ...

Read the article at the Almanac's Scriptorium

1979 The intense February 13, 1979 Windstorm struck western Washington state, USA, and sank a section of the Hood Canal Bridge.
1982 Zeng Jinlan, 17, the world's tallest recorded woman, died in Hunan Province, China. She stood 246.5 cm (8ft 1in).
1984 Konstantin Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1990 German reunification: An agreement was reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.
1991 During the Gulf War, approximately 400 Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, were killed during a US laser-guided smart bombs missile attack on an air-raid shelter in the centre of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.

Demonizing the Enemy

"Retired Army Col. Harry Summers said the United States has a long history of demonizing enemies, sometimes an entire population like the Japanese during World War II, but more often individual leaders.

"'It helps explain things to the American people,' Summers said. 'It always makes it easier to fight a war if you demonize people so that you're not killing human beings, you're killing the devil.'"
Source: Demonizing entire people (1999)

Demonization of Islam - Who's responsible?

"The International Institute for Strategic Studies calculates that the $262 billion U.S. defense budget accounts for about 37 percent of global military expenditures. Russia, Japan, and China each will spend about $80 billion, $42 billion, and $7 billion. The six 'rogue states' – Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea -- have a combined annual military budget of $15 billion."   Source: Why The West Fears Islam: The Enemy Within

1991 Germany's Red Army Faction attacked the US Embassy in Bonn.
1996 The Nepalese People's War began.
1997 Tune-up and repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope was started by astronauts from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
2000 The last original Peanuts comic strip appeared in newspapers a day after Charles M Schulz died.
Comix, comics and cartoons in the Book of Days    Wilson's Almanac Comics Page

2001 An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hit El Salvador, killing at least 400.

2002 USA: The media learned that Iran-Contra Affair fraudster, Vice Admiral John Poindexter had been appointed (by George W Bush) the Director of The Pentagon's Information Awareness Office (IAO).

Controversy over Poindexter's integrity followed his appointment to the position due to his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. He had been indicted on March 16, 1988 on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, and on June 11, 1990 was sentenced to six months imprisonment.

The IAO is a secretive intelligence bureau whose mission is to gather and centralize as much information as possible about everyone, intending to unify all private databases about US citizens into one central database run by the government (including information about travel, credit card purchases, medical history, and so on). It uses the full capabilities of Echelon technology and a sister organization called the Information Exploitation Office for its Big Brother capabilities.

In being selected to head up this domestic spying operation, Poindexter joined a growing list of recycled Reagan/Bush officials with Iran-Contra scandal involvement to find a home in the George W Bush administration, including Otto Reich, Elliott Abrams and John Negroponte.

The eyeball animation above, by the way, is not one of my toonimations. Hard though it might be to believe, it is the actual animated logo that the IAO put on the Web, providing the public with an insight into these people's utter bereftness of a sense of irony and ... how shall I put this ... lack of awareness.

From the Blogmanac, Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Who Ya Gonna Call?

"I don't want to alarm anyone who still thinks that life and liberty are safe because of Western intelligence agencies, but if you click on this actual logo from The Firm you'll see what 'intelligence' means in the USA administration. No, it's not a joke, it's the actual website, if you check the URL. There really are people like that in power."

Eyeballing Total Information Awareness    Cryptome    Echelon Watch

2002 Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom bestowed on former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani an honorary knighthood.

2004 Travis Metcalfe from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093.

Tomorrow: Valentine's Day origins and folklore

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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.

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