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I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave - thank God for the quiet grave
– O! I can feel the cold earth upon me – the daisies growing over me – O for this quiet – it will be my first.
John Keats, English poet who died on February 23, 1821, aged 25
Severn – lift me up – I am dying – I shall die easy; don't be frightened – be firm, and thank God it has come.
Last words of John Keats
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. John
Keats; 'Endymion'
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that
is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. John Keats; 'Ode on a
Grecian Urn'
Some say, that Signor Bononcini,
Compared to Handel's a mere ninny;
Others aver, to him, that Handel
Is scarcely fir to hold a candle.
Strange! that such high dispute should be
'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee. John
Byrom, English poet (b. 1692); composer Georg Friederich Händel was born on February 23, 1685
Handel
is the greatest composer who ever lived. I
would bare my head and kneel at his grave. Ludwig
van Beethoven (1824)
Keats's grave, Rome
It has been my particular high and good fortune
to serve your lofty princely Serenity at various times and to your
most gracious satisfaction. I stand ready to exert all my energies and
my entire fortune to serve your lofty princely serenity whenever in
future it shall please you to command me. An especially powerful
incentive to this end would be given me if your lofty princely
serenity were to distinguish me with an appointment as one of your
Highness' Court Factors. I am making bold to beg for this with the
more confidence in the assurance that by so doing I am not giving any
trouble; while for my part such a distinction would lift up my
commercial standing and be of help to me in many other ways that I
feel certain thereby to make my own way and fortune here in the city
of Frankfurt. Mayer Amschel Rothschild, born on February 23,
1743, coin dealer who rose up to be a wealthy head of a banking
dynasty; letter to Prince William of Hanau (on September 21, 1769,
Rothschild nailed a gold-letter sign bearing the arms of Hess-Hanau to
the front of his shop which read: "M. A. Rothschild, by
appointment court factor to his serene highness, Prince William of
Hanau")
To change your mind from good to bad is the height of absurdity. True goodness changes from evil to righteousness.
Saint Polycarp, whose feast day this is
It is the last of earth. I am content.
Last words of John Quincy
Adams, 6th American president, who died on February 23, 1848
I know that all things on earth must have an end, and now I am come to mine.
Last words of Sir Joshua Reynolds, English artist, who died on February 23, 1792
They tell me I'm the most powerful man in the world. I don't believe that. Over there in the White House someplace, there's a fellow that puts a piece of paper on my desk every day that tells me what I'm going to be doing every 15 minutes. He's the most powerful man in the world.
USA President Ronald
Reagan on an unidentified aide, February 23, 1984
The Terminalia
was celebrated on the last day of the old Roman year, whence its name.
Today's was a festival in honour of the god Terminus,
who presided over
boundaries.
Terminus was considered to have the appearance of stone and was often
honoured with the placement of a large stone at the boundaries, a
farmers' practice even today in some countries.
The public festival
in honour of this god was celebrated at the sixth milestone on the road
towards Laurentum. Locally, adjacent neighbours crowned the god's statue
with garlands and raised a rough altar, on which they offered up some
corn, honeycomb, and wine, and sacrificed a lamb (Horace,
Epod. ii.59) or a suckling pig.
The women contributed torches ignited on their
hearths; the sons brought baskets of produce from the property and the
daughters added to the repast with special honey cakes. The women made two
fires at the altar, these made carefully with interlaced sticks.
Meanwhile, the sons held their baskets over the fire and their sisters
shook them three times to scatter its contents into the fire, then
sacrificed the cakes to the flames. Farm workers attended as well, dressed
in white, carrying the wine. They concluded with singing the praises of
the god (Ovid, FastiII. 639). Ovid says the rites of
the Terminalia form the close of all others.
When the intercalary month
Mercedonius was added, the last five days of February were added to the
intercalary month, making February 23 the last day of the year (Varro,
L.L. vi.13, ed. Müller;
Macrob. Sat. i.13).
Jupiter,
too, was worshipped as Jupiter Terminus or Jupiter Terminalus, fitting
into the same role as the independent god Terminus.
Collop Monday (Shrove Monday;
Rose Monday; Merry Monday; Hall Monday) a
moveable feast,
(February 23 in 2004)
The
day after Hall
Sunday and the day before Shrove Tuesday. In olden times, Britishers
cut their meat into collops, or steaks for salting or
hanging up until Lent was over. It's still a custom to have eggs and
collops, or slices of bacon, today.
In Salisbury, England: boys would sing:
Shrove-tide is nigh at hand,
And I am come a shroving;
Pray, dame, something,
An apple or a dumpling,
Or a piece of Truckle cheese
Of your own making,
Or a piece of pancake.
The medieval Roman writer, Polydore Virgil,
explains how the feasts of Bacchus
were celebrated in Rome at the same time of year. At Eton, on Shrove Monday it
was a custom for boys to write verses concerning Bacchus, which were
affixed to the college door.
After Shrove Tuesday follows
Lent, the forty days' fast preceding Easter. The word
'Hall', as in today's alternative name, 'Hall Monday', is a contaction
of 'hallow', meaning 'holy'.
"The night preceding Shrove Tuesday was so
called in Cornwall because boys played tricks and practical jokes on that
night [cf nicker, 18th century term for those who break
windows by throwing halfpennies at them – PW] . The following night
they went from house to house singing –
Nicka, nicka nan
Give me some pancake and then I'll be gone;
But if you give me none
I'll throw a great stone
And down your doors shall come."
Rosenmontag (literally 'Rose Monday') is the highlight
of the German Karneval ('carnival'), and is on Collop Monday, two days
before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. This event can be compared to 'Mardi Gras', though is celebrated on Monday, not Tuesday. It is
celebrated in German-speaking countries, including Germany, Austria, and
Switzerland, but most heavily in the 'Hochburgen', German carnival strongholds,
which include the Rhineland (especially
Cologne,
Düsseldorf and
Mainz).
She
was a daughter of King Merewald of Magonset and his wife, St
Ermenburga (alias Aebbe of Minster-in-Thanet);sister to St Mildredand St Mildgytha. Goscelin wrote her vita in
the late-11th Century, and her feast was common in English calendars
from the Bosworth Psalter (c. 1000) onwards
St Milburga
built the monastery
of Much Wenlock,
Shropshire. She ordered the wild geese that ate the
corn of her monastery to go, and they obeyed. After her death, in
1100 two children discovered her remains, sinking up to their knees
in her grave, and the dust there cured leprosy, restored sight, and
so on.
In one legend, Milburga crossed the River
Corve to escape from an unwelcome suitor. After she had crossed the
river the waters dramatically rose, making certain the suitor could
not follow. In another version, Milburga was riding an ass that
stumbled and fell, injuring itself. Milburga brought forth the
waters to heal the beast. St Milburga's Well was supposed to have
cured eye diseases, and in Victorian times to have helped young
women to find sweethearts.
A diseased woman of Patton drank water
which had had the saint's bones steeped in it; from the woman's
stomach came "a filthie worme, ugly and horrible to behold, having
six feete, two hornes on his head, and two on his tayle". The
worm, says Brother Porter, "was shutt up in a hollow piece of
wood, and reserved afterwards in the monasterie, as atrophie, and monument of St
Milburg". Wenlock Monastery was destroyed by anti-Catholic
fanatics in the Reformation; on November 7, 1547 the precious relics
were burned on a common bonfire together
with the images of various saints.
Her feast day falls in the middle of the
Spring wheat sowing season in Shropshire, and she is associated with
ploughing and sowing, as the days get warmer and the soil more
receptive. Milburga's monastery was destroyed by the Danes in 874; but the Cluniac monks from La-Charité-sur-Loire
refounded Wenlock in 1079.
In art, Saint Milburga holds the abbey of
Wenlock. There may be geese near her.
"A poor widow came to her in her
oratory, bringing the body of her little dead son. Throwing
herself at the feet of the abbess, she besought her to raise the
child to life. 'You must be mad!' exclaimed Milburga, 'How can I
raise your child? Go and bury him and submit to the bereavement
sent to you by God!'
"'No,' said the sorrowing mother, 'I will
not leave you till you give me back my son!'
"The abbess prayed over the little corpse
and, while doing so, she suddenly appeared to the poor
supplicant to be raised from the earth and surrounded by lovely
flames – the living emblem of the fervour of her prayer. Within
a few minutes, the child had recovered."Source
From Wikipedia:
Polycarp of Smyrna (martyred in his 87th year, c. 155
- 167)
was a Christianbishop
of Smyrna
(now Izmir in Turkey)
in the 2nd Century. He died a martyr,
the first known Christian martyr
outside the Bible, by being
stabbed and his corpse burned at the stake in Smyrna. He
is recognized as a saint
in both the Roman
Catholic and Eastern
Orthodox churches. "He had been a disciple of John, and
opinions differ as to whether this John was the
son of Zebedee, or John
the Presbyter" (Lake, 1912). Traditional advocates follow
Eusebius of
Caesaria
in insisting that the apostolic connection was with John
the Evangelist, and that the author of the Gospel
of John was the apostle. Polycarp never quotes from the
Gospel of John
in his own writings, which may be an indication that whichever John
he knew was not the author of that gospel, or that that gospel was
not finished during Polycarp's discipleship with John.
"One day he found a woman and her
daughters walking in the garden around noon. He recommended they
withdraw, and return in the cool of the evening, but the way he
said it led her to believe he was simply chasing them out. Her
husband was an imperial guard, and he convinced Emperor Maximian
to revenge this imagined insult. Serenus was arrested and brought to trial,
but simply repeated what he had said, and was immediately
acquitted. However, his demeanor led the judge to suspect Serenus
was a Christian, which was illegal. When questioned about it,
Serenus admitted his faith. He was ordered to sacrifice to pagan
gods; he refused, and was sentenced to death.
"His story was very popular in times past due to
his being a simple man brought to ruin not through any fault of
his own, but as a result of the arrogance of the ruling class, a
theme which has resonated in many an age, and because many
writers and preachers liked to use the metaphor of the garden as
an example of a proper Christian life."Source
Born at Halle in Saxony,
Handel spent most of his life in England.
In 1703, at Hamburg, he
had a duel with a musician named Mattheson. Mattheson's sword broke
when it struck a musical score that Handel had under his coat and
thus the great composer's life was saved. He never married though
it has been said that his music attracted many women. He died on a
Good Friday (1759), according to his own wish.
1743Mayer Amschel
Rothschild, (d.
1812),
German banker, founder of the banking dynasty of Rothschilds. Born
in the ghetto of Frankfurt-am-Main he developed a
finance house and spread his empire by installing each of his five
sons in European cities to conduct business. A coin collector, one
day he was ushered into the presence of Prince William of Hanau who
bought a handful of his rarest medals and coins. This was the first
transaction between a Rothschild and a head of state, but soon the
ambitious Rothschild was doing business with other princes. His
greatest break came by wheeling and dealing on the wars of Europe.
"Owing to Napoleon's
seizure of Holland in 1803, the leaders of the anti-Napoleonic
league chose Frankfort as a financial center where-from to obtain
the sinews of war. After the battle of Jena in 1806 the Landgrave
of Hesse-Cassel fled to Denmark, where he had already deposited
much of his wealth through the agency of Mayer Amschel Rothschild,
leaving in the hands of the latter specie and works of art of the
value of 600,000 pounds. According to legend, these were hidden
away in wine-casks, and, escaping the search of Napoleon's
soldiers when they entered Frankfort, were restored intact in the
same casks in 1814, when the elector returned to his electorate
(see Marbot, "Memoirs," 1891, i. 310-311). The
facts are somewhat less romantic, and more business-like.
Rothschild, so far from being in danger, was on such good terms
with Napoleon's nominee, Prince Dalberg, that he had been made
in 1810 a member of the Electoral College of Darmstadt. The
elector's money had been sent to Nathan in London, who in 1808
utilized it to purchase 800,000 pounds worth of gold from the
East India Company, knowing that it would be needed for
Wellington's Peninsular campaign. He made no less than four
profits on this: (1) on the sale of Wellington's paper, (2) on
the sale of the gold to Wellington, (3) on its repurchase, and
(4) on forwarding it to Portugal. This was the beginning of the
great fortunes of the house …" The Jewish Encyclopedia, Volume X, 1905 (p. 494)Source
His other novels were ignored for
many years in North America, while his work was being acclaimed
internationally and translated into numerous languages.
Traven wrote numerous other novels, which include The Death Ship
and the epic Jungle Novel series, which is a description of
government corruption, and an Indian uprising set at the birth of
the Mexican revolution. The Jungle novels include Government,
The Carreta, March to the Monteria, Trozas, The
Rebellion of the Hanged, and The General from the Jungle
and powerfully portray the human basis of the Mexican
revolution. As of 2005, some works are still awaiting
translation from German to English.
Until recently, very little was known about the man himself; it was
not even clear whether he was German or merely wrote in the
language. It is clear from the descriptions in his novels that he
must have at least travelled extensively (if not lived) in Europe,
the United States
and Mexico.
On the basis of comparing writing styles, it has been suggested
that Traven was a pseudonym for the German anarchist Ret
Marut, who published an underground magazine in the last years of
the Weimar Republic.
Another identity for Traven may have been 'Traven's
agent', the seemingly English Hal Croves who met with director John
Huston during the filming of The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Traven's widow, Rosa Elena Lujàn, supported both of these
speculations in an interview published in 1990 in The New York
Times.
"Traven died on March 26, 1969 in Mexico
City. His ashes were flown to Chipas and scattered over Río
Jataté. Traven's will stated that he was Traven Torsvan Croves,
born in Chicago in 1890 and naturalized as a Mexican citizen in
1951. However, Traven's widow, Mrs. Luján, stated in an
interview: ''He told me that once he died, I could say that he had
been Ret Marut, but not before. He was afraid he would be
extradited. So I always had to lie, because I had to save my
husband.'' (The New York Times, June 25, 1990)"
Source: Authors
Calendar
"The enigmatic writer, German anarchist
revolutionary, B Traven, also called Berick Traven Torsvan, or Ret
Marut or Hal Croves (b. March 5, 1890?; or Feb 25?) ; (d. March 27,
1969, Mexico City).
"B. Traven is an internationally best selling
& highly-regarded author virtually unknown in America.
"In 1934, The Death Ship was
issued in English, followed by The Treasure of The Sierra
Madre (1935), The Bridge in The Jungle (1938)
& one of his jungle novels, The Rebellion of The Hanged
(1952).
"Two of Traven's works, Land Des
Fruhlings (Land of Springtime) & Aslan Norval
remain untranslated.
"As a young man Traven went by the name Ret
Marut, & published an underground anarchist magazine, Der
Ziegelbrenner (The Brick Burner) in Germany.
"A Stirnerite anarchist, Marut joined the
Bavarian Soviet of 1919 with Gustav
Landauer & other anarchists.
B Traven was said to be: Jack London Ambrose Bierce
An American millionaire
A Black American ex-slave
Frans Blom
A leper
Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos
The President's sister, Esperanza
August Ribelje
Jacob Torice
Mexican President Elias Calles
Chief editor of a German Publisher
Cap'n Bilbo
Arthur Breisky
A group of writers in Honduras
A group of leftist Hollywood scriptwriters et al
1899Erich Kästner
(d. 1974),
German satirist/poet/novelist, whose military experiences made him a pacifist and opponent of totalitarian systems. He is best known for his children's books, but they were not popular among Nazis. Kästner wrote
Emil and the Detectives (1929); The School of Dictators (1956), among others.
1901Ivar Lo-Johansson
(d. 1990), Swedish author/social critic, recognized for his
working class and landless peasant novels and short stories. His
books include The Share Croppers (1936-36); Proletarians
of the Earth (1941).
Your family and friends will get a
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1669 On his 36th birthday, English
diarist Samuel Pepys
visited Westminster Abbey. The body of Catherine of Valois, interred 200 years
earlier, was on show to a privileged few. Pepys kissed her on the mouth and
wrote in his famous journal that night: "This was my birthday, 36-years-old
that I did first kiss a Queen."
1792 Sir
Joshua Reynolds, English portraitist and first president of the Royal Academy,
died in London.
1820The
Cato Street conspiracy was exposed, London.
It was a plan to assassinate the entire British cabinet at dinner. Some
of the captured conspirators were hanged, and some transported. George Edwards,
a police
informer and agent
provocateur, had infiltrated the revolutionary group led by real estate agent
Arthur Thistlewood.
1821 Aged only 25, English poet John Keats(b. 1795) died
of tuberculosis. He was buried in the Protestant
Cemetery, Rome, near
the grave of Caius Cestius.
At his request, his
headstone reads: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water". 'Endymion',
Keats's first long poem,
appeared when he was just 21. In 4,000 lines, it told of the love of the moon goddess
Cynthia (Selene) for the young
shepherd Endymion.
'A Thing of
Beauty is a Joy Forever'
from Book 1 of Endymion
By John Keats
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
1852South
Africa: The1,400-ton paddle-wheel steamer HMS
Birkenhead ran aground on rocks near the Cape of Good
Hope (near Danger Point, now near Gansbaai,
Western
Cape). As the ship began to
sink, soldiers were ordered to stand in ranks on deck while women and children
were loaded into lifeboats. Some 200 were saved by lifeboats and another 30-40
were pulled from the wreckage of boat, but 420 others died, almost all soldiers.
This incident established the now traditional concepts of 'women and children
first' and of captains 'going down with the ship'.
"Jimmy Tambo, an Australian Aborigine who performed
in Barnum & Bailey's Circus under the name Tambo Tambo, died of pneumonia
at the age of 23. 109 years later, his mummified body was found in the
basement of a funeral parlor in Cleveland, Ohio.
"Tambo and 8 other Aborigines had been lured (some
say kidnapped) from their homes on Palm Island, in North
Queensland, in 1883, and brought to the United States as performers. After a
year of being exhibited as an untamed cannibal, Tambo contracted pneumonia and
died. His companions were not allowed to give him the proper funereal rites.
Instead, his body was sold to the owner of a dime museum, who mummified it and
put it on display. 5 more members of the group, including Tambo's widow, died
within the next year; the fates of the others are unknown.
"It is unclear for how long Tambo
remained as a mummified exhibit. What is known is that in October 1993, his
remains were discovered and identified. Three representatives from Palm
Island travelled to the United States to bring Tambo home. On February 23,
1994, 110 years after his death, Tambo was finally laid to rest."Source
The man they
couldn't hang
1885 English hangman
James Berry
(pictured;
1852 - 1913) of Heckmondwike, Yorkshire, who carried out around 200 hangings in his eight years in office, attempted to execute John Lee
(John
'Babbacombe' Lee) for the murder
(on November 15, 1884)
of Lee's wealthy employer, Ellen Keyse, and pulled the lever.
But something malfunctioned and Lee would not drop through the trapdoor. The equipment was tested repeatedly and seemed to be in working order; weights used in a test run plunged to the ground as expected. However, each time the lever was pulled when Lee stood over the trap door, nothing happened. Two more execution attempts were made without success, and Lee was returned to prison.
A message was sent to London to inform the Home Secretary of the failed execution attempts. While all involved waited for the messenger to return, the convicted man was asked if he felt like eating a last breakfast; ironically, Lee ate the hangman's breakfast, for Berry's nerves had been too bad for him to eat it.
The authorities, amazed by the trapdoor's inexplicable malfunction, decided to ascribe it to an
'act of God'. Lee was removed from death row, his sentence changed to life imprisonment, and he spent the next 20 years in prison.
It turned out not to be a good year for Berry, as when he tried to hang Robert Goodale at Norwich Castle on November 30, Goodale, who weighed 15 stone (95 kg) and was in poor physical condition, was decapitated by the force of the drop.
This is the only recorded instance of this in Britain, although two other of Berry's victims, Moses Shrimpton at Worcester and John Conway at Kirkdale were nearly decapitated by the drop. The last case led to Berry's resignation as he blamed the prison doctor, Dr Barr, for interfering with his calculations.
Lee, by the way, the man that would not be hanged, married his childhood sweetheart and moved to
America, supporting himself through lecturing on his life, even becoming the
subject of a silent film. Until his death he swore he was innocent, and ascribed (at least, publicly) his strange experience to divine intervention.
1903Cuba leased Guantanamo
Bay to the United States "in
perpetuity". In the early-21st Century the place became a
notorious site of torture of uncharged prisoners of the USA.
1919 Portugal: A Batalha, the second daily
newspaper in the country, began, published by the anarcho-syndicalist CGT (the
General Confederation of Workers in Portugal comprised of 150,000 workers). It
printed 25,000 copies daily before being suppressed after the military coup
d'etat in 1926.
There has been some controversy as to whether the
photo was staged, as was the famous 1944 image of General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore
in the Philippines, an image set up by photographer Roger Wrenn after the actual
event, because the first take proved not to be sufficiently photogenic. However,
Joe Rosenthal, the Iwo Jima
photographer, has protested that his famous photo is the real McCoy.
"It's perfect: The position, the body language. ... You couldn't
set anything up like this – it's just so perfect."
Therein lies the problem. Some people think Rosenthal's picture is too perfect.
The Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima
"A stiff wind was blowing off the Pacific when six American boys – the
youngest was 19 – used their combined muscle to plant a 96-by-56-inch flag
in a heap of rocks on an ugly, stinking island 650 miles from Tokyo. As a
distracted Associated Press photographer swung his camera toward the
flag-raising, he pressed his finger down on the shutter, unintentionally
capturing a millisecond of history."
Was the Iwo Jima
photograph staged? "For 50 years now, Rosenthal has battled a
perception that he somehow staged the flag-raising picture, or covered up the
fact that it was actually not the first flag-raising at Iwo Jima.
"
All the available evidence backs up Rosenthal. The man
responsible for spreading the story that the picture was staged, the late
Time-Life correspondent Robert Sherrod, long ago admitted he was wrong. But
still the rumor persists."SourceMoreAnother version
1971 USA: Lt. William Calley confessed he
directed a mass execution of South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, and
implicated his commanding officer, Capt. Ernest L Medina, who he said issued the
orders to murder. He got his wrists slapped and was sent home.
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Terminalia, Festival of Terminus,
God of Boundaries and Endings, ancient Rome
The
day after Hall
Sunday and the day before Shrove Tuesday. In olden times, Britishers
cut their meat into collops, or steaks for salting or
hanging up until Lent was over. It's still a custom to have eggs and
collops, or slices of bacon, today. 
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