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The Star of Bethlehem : The Legacy of the
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Ancient Ways
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Golden Bough
Folklore classic
Sabbat Entertaining
The Pagan Book of Days
The
World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ
The Dark Side of Christian History
Be A Goddess
The Five Biggest Lies Bush
Told Us About Iraq
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints
Lucifer Ascending: The
Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture
The Da Vinci
Code
The Book of Spells
Spellcraft
The Book of Saints
The Encyclopedia of Saints
Daily Everything
Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Lord of the Rings
365 Goddess
Adventures in a TV Nation
Michael
Moore
Drawing Down the Moon
Globalization/Anti-Globalization
Body Wisdom
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Remotely
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How
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Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate
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The Price of Loyalty
The
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The
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The God Who Wasn't There
A
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When Corporations Rule the World
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 The Twelve Days of Christmas
Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Twelve drummers drumming,
eleven pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping,
nine ladies dancing, eight maids a-milking,
seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying,
Five golden rings.
Four colly birds,
three French hens,
two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.
'The Twelve Days of Christmas', traditional English carol; today is the last of the Twelve Days of Christmas
Epiphany of Kore
and Days of Aeon, Byzantium, Greece and
Egypt
(Jan 5 - 6) Day Two
The Greek goddess Kore (or Persephone),
who was abducted into Hades, was worshipped at the Koreion at
Alexandria. The nocturnal rite for her was held overnight on January
5 - 6. A mystic drama was performed, preparing the way for her rise to
the world above Hades.
All
sleeping seeds She wakens,
The rainbow
is Her token,
Now winter's
power is taken,
In love,
all chains
all broken.
From
Starhawk's
The Spiral Dance
Kore's Chant; Days of Kore and Aeon, Byzantium, ancient Greece and
Egypt
Source
Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
Day
of Sirona
Sirona was a Romano-Celtic (Gallic) healing goddess associated
with the god Grannos
(Grannus) or with the
Celtic
Apollo. She is represented
with a snake writhing around her arm reaching for a bowl containing
three eggs. She sometimes also has a lap-dog. Some authorities say
Sirona is associated with the sky.
A healing deity, she was associated with healing springs; her
attributes were wolves and children. She was particularly worshipped
by the Treveri in
the Moselle
Valley.
Feast day
of St Diman Dubh
of Connor
Feast day
of St Edeyrn
Feast day
of St Gertrude
van Oosten
Feast day
of St Guarinus
Feast day
of St Hywyn of
Aberdaron
Feast day
of St John de
Ribera
Feast day
of St Martyrs in
Africa
Feast day
of St Melchior
Feast day of St Nilammon
(Screw moss, Tortula rigida
(a variety of Tortula
tortuosa), is
today's plant, dedicated to St Nilammon.)
Feast
day of St Peter of
Canterbury
This Peter was the first abbot of
St Augustine's monastery at
Canterbury and a disciple of Pope
Gregory the
Great. Once when a
weasel gnawed his robe, the rodent died for its cheekiness. St Peter
drowned in 608 while en route to
France; the locals buried his body
without even knowing who he was, and were amazed every night, it is
said, when a heavenly light appeared above his tomb.
Feast day of St Peter Baptist, martyr in
Japan
This saint died near
Nagasaki in
1597. The feast day of the whole group of Japanese martyrs is held
on February 5; six of them were European Franciscans, and Peter was
their leader. They were all crucified at the same time.
Feast
day of St Wiltrudis
of Bergen
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Three Kings'
Day, Puerto Rico
Three Kings'
Day, Virgin Islands
Public Holiday,
Andorra
Christmas Day,
Ethiopia
Shusho-E Matsuri,
Japan (Jan 1
- 14)
Amamehagi Demons
Festival, Monzen-machi, Ishikawa, Japan (Jan 2 - 6)
Celebration day for Orunmila, Voudon
(Voodoo) Source
Three King's Cake Festival, Voudon
(Voodoo) Source
Les Rois (The
Kings), Voudon
(Voodoo) Source
Perchtenlauf,
Austria
Festival of the goddess
Perchta. Scary masks and dances to frighten winter away.
Maroon Festival,
Jamaica
Nollaig na mBan, Women's Little Christmas
"This holiday is celebrated in Ireland. Small buttercakes
flavored with orange rinds, vanilla, raisins, and sugar called Faerie
Cakes are eaten. These cup-cakes are thought to heal the sick,
enable you see faeries, and promote fertility." Source
(which gives it as December 12, but other sources
say January 6)
(Author cites
Joanne Asala, Celtic Folklore Cooking, Llewellyn Pub., Saint
Paul, Minnesota, 1998)
Celtic Christmas cakes Nollaig na mBan
(recipe)
New
Mexico Admission Day
New Mexico entered the Union (USA)
on this day in 1912 as the 47th State.
Children's
Day, Uruguay
Uruguayans have a holiday from work
today, with special events and programs staged for boys and girls.
Blessing
the Waters Day, Turkey
An Epiphany ceremony is held today
on the shores of the Bosporus, as in many Greek Orthodox places in
the world. Today is Epiphany which celebrates the baptism of Christ,
so the celebrations have a watery character. The waters are blessed
by a priest, and youths dive for wooden or golden crosses thrown
into the deep.
Crown
of St Stephen Day, Hungary
Today is the anniversary of Hungary
regaining, on January 6, 1978, the ancient and legendary crown of St
Stephen, which had been held in Fort Knox since World War II.
Four
Freedoms Day, USA
Today commemorates a speech to
Congress by US President Franklin Roosevelt defining the national
goals: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and
Freedom from Fear. The speech was given on this day in 1941.
Greek
Cross Day,
Tarpon Springs,
Florida,
USA
As an Epiphany celebration, a mass
is held at the Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas and a solemn
procession is made to the banks of the local bayou. There, a gold
cross is thrown into the waters to be reclaimed by competing divers,
while doves are released overhead.
Dezome-Shiki
(Dezomeshiki),
Tokyo
At the Meiji Shrine or at Hibiya
Park, Tokyo, firemen perform acrobatic feats on top of bamboo
ladders to show their agility in the face of peril, in a ceremony
dating back to the Edo
period.
Toshi-Koshi
Matsuri, Japan
On the island of Itsukushima in
Hiroshima
Prefecture, this is an annual festival to see off the old year and
welcome the new.
Shorinzan
Daruma-Ichi, Japan (Jan 6 - 7)
At Takasaki, market stall-holders sell
papier-mâché tumbling
dolls which symbolise happiness, strength of will and stubbornness.
They are bought without eyes; an eye is then painted on when a wish
is made, and a second eye painted on when the wish comes true.
Carnival begins
The period from Epiphany (January 6), until
Shrove Tuesday
(Pancake Day, or Pancake Tuesday; Mardi Gras in French) is
called Carnival. In Roman
Catholic countries it is a period for amusement and revelry, hence
the fairground meaning of the word. Thus, the famous 'carnival'
celebrations of the Christian world (such as at New Orleans, USA,
Bagolino, Italy and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) take place at the end
of the period when all foods may be eaten, and at the beginning of
the period of fasting, although the weeks before Shrove Tuesday are
in fact the period of carnival, or 'removal from meat'.
The word
'carnival' doesn't, as we might presume, originate in something like
'farewell (vale in Latin) flesh', though that's a reasonable
assumption. It comes from
the Latin carnis, flesh,
and levare, to remove.
Lent, when flesh may not be eaten, immediately follows Carnival. On
Shrove Tuesday, people shrive (confess) their sins and might
eat pancakes to use up the last of the eggs and butter before the
fast of Lent … which is why the French called it Mardis Gras:
Fat Tuesday.
From
Webster's Revised
Unabridged
Dictionary
(1913) [web1913]
Carnival
\Car"ni*val\,
n. [It. carnevale,
prob. for older
carnelevale,
prop., the putting
away of meat; fr. L. caro,
carnis, flesh + levare to take away, lift up, fr. levis
light.]
"The season immediately
preceding Lent, ending on Shrove Tuesday and a period in many
Roman Catholic countries devoted to amusement.; hence revelry,
riotous amusement, From the Lat. caro, carnis flesh; levare, to
remove; signifying the abstinence from meat during Lent. The
earlier word carnilevamen
was altered in Italian to carnevale,
as though connected with vale,
farewell – farewell to flesh."
Evans, Ivor H, Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988
In Mexico, cascarones, or egg shells,
painted and filled with scraps of coloured paper, are broken against
the heads of women and children.
Like Christmas,
the season known as Carnival owes some of its roots to the Roman
Saturnalia festival, which influenced the early Christians at Rome.
Milan, Rome and Naples were famous for their Carnival celebrations
centuries ago, but Venice had the greatest of them all.
"Milan, Rome and Naples were celebrated for
their carnivals, but they were carried to their highest perfection
at Venice. Bishop Hall, in his Triumphs
of Rome, thus describes the Jovial Carnival of that city:
'Every man cries Sciolta, letting
himself loose to the maddest of merriments, marching wildly up
and down in all forms of disguises; each man striving to outgo
others in strange pranks of humorous debauchedness, in which
even those of the holy order are wont to be allowed their share;
for, howsoever it was by some sullen authority forbidden to
clerks and votaries of any kind to go masked and misguided in
those seemingly abusive solemnities, yet more favourable
construction hath offered to make them believe it was chiefly
for their sakes, for the refreshment of their sadder and more
restrained spirits, that this free and lawless festivity was
taken up.'
"In modern Rome, the masquerading in
the streets and all the out-of-door amusements are limited to
eight days, during which the grotesque maskers pelt each other
with sugar-plums and bouquets. These are poured from baskets from
the balconies down upon the maskers in carriages and afoot; and
they, in their turn, pelt the company at the windows: the confetti
are made of chalk or flour, and a hundredweight is ammunition for
a carriage-full of roisterers.
"The Races, however, are one of the
most striking out-of-door scenes. The horses are without riders,
but have spurs, sheets of tin, and all sorts of things hung about
them to urge them onward; across the end of the Piazza del Popolo
is stretched a rope, in a line with which the horses are brought
up; in a second or two, the rope is let go, and away the horses
fly at a fearful rate down the Corso, which is crowded with
people, among whom the plunging and kicking of the steeds often
produce serious damage.
"Meanwhile, there is the Church's
Carnival, or the Carnivale Sanctificato. There are the
regular spiritual exercises, or retreats, which the Jesuits and
Passionists give in their respective houses for those who are able
to leave their homes and shut themselves up in a monastery during
the whole ten days; the Via Crucis is practiced in the
Coliseum every afternoon of the Carnival, and this is followed by
a sermon and benediction; and there are similar devotions in the
churches. In the colleges are given plays, the scenery, drops, and
acting being better than the average of public performances; and
between the acts are played solos, duets, and overtures, by the
students or their friends.
"The closing revel of the Carnival
is the Moccoletti, when the sport consists in the crowd
carrying lighted tapers, and trying to put out each other's taper
with a handkerchief or towel, and shouting Sens moccolo. M.
Dumas, in his Count of Monte Christo, thus vividly
describes this strange scene:
'The anoccolo or moccoletti
are candles, which vary in size from the paschal taper to the
rushlight, and cause the actors of the great scene which
terminates the Carnival two different subjects of anxiety: 1st,
how to preserve their Moccoletti lighted; secondly, how
to extinguish the moccoletti of others. The moccolo
is kindled by approaching it to a light. But who can describe
the thousand means of extinguishing the moccoletti?
The gigantic bellows, the monstrous
extinguishers, the superhuman fans?
The night was rapidly approaching: and,
already, at the shrill cry of Moccoletti! repeated by the
shrill voices of a thousand vendors, two or three stars began to
twinkle among the crowd. This was the signal. In about ten
minutes, fifty thousand lights fluttered on every side,
descending from the Palais de Venise to the Plaza del Popolo,
and mounting from the Plaza del Popolo to the Palais de Venise.
It seemed the fėte of Jack-o'-Lanterns.
It is impossible to form any idea of it
without having seen it. Suppose all the stars descended from the
sky, and mingled in a wild dance on the surface of the earth;
the whole accompanied by cries such as are never heard in any
other part of the world. The facchino follows the prince,
the transtavere the citizen: every one blowing,
extinguishing, relighting. Had old Æolus appeared at that
moment, he would have been proclaimed king of the Moccoli,
and Aquilo the heir-presumptive to the throne. This flaming race
continued for two hours: the Rue du Cour was light as day, and
the features of the spectators on the third and fourth stories
were plainly visible. Suddenly the bell sounded which gives the
signal for the Carnival to close, and at the same instant all
the Moccoletti were extinguished as if by enchantment. It
seemed as though one immense blast of wind had extinguished them
all. No sound was audible, save that of the carriages which
conveyed the masks home; nothing was visible save a few lights
that gleamed behind the windows. The Carnival was over.'
"In Paris. the Carnival is
principally kept on the three days preceding Ash Wednesday; and
upon the last day, the procession of the Bænf-gras or Government
prize ox, passes through the streets; then all is quiet until the
Thursday of Mid-Lent, or Mi-caréme, on which day only the revelry
breaks out wilder then before."
Robert
Chambers,
(Ed.), The
Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection
with the calendar, etc,
W
& R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879
Edition is online and 1869
edition here
with CD-ROM available; See also The
English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of
Days)
More on worldwide carnival celebrations in the Book
of Days, permanently placed at February 24
1367 King Richard II of England (d. February 14,
1400), son
of Edward the Black Prince and grandson of King
Edward III.
Richard was born
on Epiphany, and because of this, and that there were three kings
present at his birth, came a legend that, despite being a second
son, he was destined for great things.
1412 Joan
of Arc (d. 1431), French heroine and Roman Catholic saint.
France's national heroine is commemorated today on her birthday, as well as on her
saint's day, which is the day of her death (May 30) and on
May 16,
which is the day on which she was made a saint.
She was the daughter of
prosperous peasants, and became a very religious, not to mention
witty and persuasive young woman. France gained previously
unattainable unity when she was martyred at only 19.
"Joan of Arc
was born in 1412 and died May 30, 1431. It was around 1424, when
she was 12, that Joan said she began to have visions of Saints
Catherine and Margaret and St. Michael the Archangel. Michael
had been chosen in 1422 as one of the patron saints of the
French Royal army, and had long been the patron of the fortified
island of Mont-St-Michel, which had been holding out against
repeated English assaults." Source
1745
Jacques
Montgolfier (Jacques Étienne Montgolfier; d. August
2, 1799), French pioneer
hot
air balloon maker and pilot
1811 Charles
Sumner, American
politician, statesman
and abolitionist, author of The Barbarism of Slavery
1822 Heinrich Schliemann (d.
December 26, 1890),
German
treasure
hunter, an advocate of the historical reality of places
mentioned in the works of
Homer, and an
important excavator of
Troy and of the
Mycenaean
sites Mycenae and
Tiryns. He was
conversant in
English,
French,
Dutch,
Spanish,
Portuguese,
Swedish,
Italian,
Greek,
Latin,
Russian,
Arabic,
and Turkish
as well as his native
German.
International Troy Festival
1832
Gustave Doré
(d. January
23, 1883),
painter and sculptor.
Woodcut master Gustave Doré's output was truly staggering. By
the age of only 22, the amazingly prolific Gustave Doré had already
published 700 drawings, as well as five albums of artwork. Doré,
from Strasburg, was both prolific and fast with his detailed
woodcuts, but it still took him three years to illustrate
Dante's
Inferno.
By his death at
only 51, his output included: 200 books (some with 500 plates), 280
watercolours, 100 lithographs and etchings, 500 drawings, 50
sculptures, 100 paintings -
in total some 10,000 works. Yet his work is known not for its ease,
but its difficulty of execution, being very finely detailed.
1838 Max
Bruch, German
composer
and conductor
1842
Clarence King
(d. December
24, 1901),
American
geologist
and climber,
and the first director of the USGS,
from 1879
- '81.
King was noted for his exploration
of the Sierra
Nevada. With William
H Brewer and Josiah
D Whitney, he was a member of the California
Geological Survey. King had the first ascent of
Mount Tyndall,
at the time labelling it mistakenly as the highest peak in the
Sierra Nevada.
In 1872,
he uncovered a diamond and gemstone hoax perpetrated by Philip
Arnold (see Great Diamond Hoax, November
26, 1872 in BoD).
 1848 Hristo Botev (Khristo
Botev; d. June
2, 1876), Bulgarian poet and revolutionary
whose death is commemorated on Bulgaria's Poetry Day
"Botev's life and death has striking
similarity in the deeds of two other poets and revolutionaries. In
Hungary, Shandor Petjofi and in Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko, fought
also with pencil and sword their nations' oppressors. The
motherland of these three poets and revolutionaries was
nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, partitioned among three
empires: the Russian, the Habsburg, and the Ottoman one. Two
strong movements, Nationalism and Romanticism influenced strongly
their poetry ... Botev's life followed the blueprints for a
nineteenth-century National revolutionary in Eastern Europe. Born
in 1848 (the year of revolutions throughout Europe), raised with
the living traditions of hayduks (guerilla fighters), studied in
Russia (influenced by narodniks), taught in his home town, and
eventually joined the revolutionaries across Danube to cross the
river again in 1876 and find his death and immortality." Source
More (Bulgarian)
Bulgarian
freedom fighters Early
progressives in the Book of Days
 1854
Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle's fictional creation William (or Thomas) Sherlock Holmes
(middle name: Scott). Holmes was born at the
farmstead of Mycroft, near Sigerside, in the North Riding of
Yorkshire,
England. He
will always have a pipe in hand, play the
violin, and use cocaine when bored. He would later reside at 221B Baker Street.
Doyle never provided Holmes's birth date; it has been provided by
imaginative Sherlockians and become a tradition.
It seems he will always wear a deerstalker
cap, but in fact he doesn't wear this in the books.
Sherlockian Carl
Thiel informs your almanackist that, of the 60 original stories,
Holmes was depicted in illustrations as wearing a deerstalker cap in
only four. However, nowhere does Doyle mention that type of
headgear.
Mr Thiel adds: "Although Holmes’s date of
birth is nowhere mentioned in the Canon (ie, all 60 stories
written by Doyle), the 6th of January was first suggested by
Christopher Morley (1890-1957) in his 'Bowling Green' column in
The Saturday Review of Literature in 1933. Through the efforts
of the
Baker
Street Irregulars, and largely the influence of William S
Baring-Gould’s 1962 biography of Holmes (Sherlock Holmes of Baker
Street: A Biography of the World's First Consulting Detective),
January 6th has become the traditional birthday of the great
detective.
"Morley wrote: 'I have not looked up the data, but if, as an
astrologer has suggested, Sherlock Holmes was most likely born in
January, some observance is due. Therefore, if the matter has never
been settled, I nominate January 6th (the date of this issue of the
Saturday Review) as his birthday.
"Morley, incidentally, believed the year of Holmes’s birth was 1853.
Subsequent tradition has settled on 1854, largely due to the fact
that in the story 'His Last Bow' (which takes place in August 1914)
Holmes is described as a 'man of sixty'."
'Sherlock Holmes Day'
Today, the birthday of the
world's greatest fictional detective will celebrated by the Baker
Street Irregulars, a sort of Sherlock Holmes 'fan club'.
One Australian
group is known as the 'Sydney
Passengers', whose website says: "We take our name from the
Sherlock Holmes story 'The Adventure of the "Gloria Scott"'
... in which the survivors of a mutiny at sea are rescued by a
ship bound for Australia and 'after an excellent voyage the Hotspur
landed us at Sydney'." There are other Sherlockian Societies in Australia.
Shop
Sherlock Holmes
1867
Jacques
Urlus, Dutch opera
singer
1878
Carl Sandburg
(d. July 22,
1967),
twice Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, folklorist and
biographer whose works are deeply rooted in the life of common
people (d.
1967).
A labor
organizer and editor of a business magazine, he published articles in
the International Socialist Review and later joined the staff
of the Chicago Daily News. His poems started to appear in Harriet
Monroe's magazine Poetry. In 1918, he visited Sweden and was
accused by federal authorities upon his return of supporting the
Bolsheviks in Russia. From 1945, he lived as a farmer and writer,
folk-singing and breeding goats, in Flat Rock, North Carolina.
When
Sandburg's biography of
Abraham
Lincoln won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize,
Edmund Wilson
said: "... the cruellest thing that has happened to
Lincoln since he was shot by Booth has been to fall into the hands
of Carl Sandburg".
More
1880 Tom
Mix,
American silent film cowboy
1883
Khalil Gibran
(d. April 10,
1931; name often
spelled Khalil), Lebanese-born American poet, author of
The Prophet
"Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet was first published in 1923, but remains one of the most popular new age texts, selling over 11 million copies to date. However the life of the Lebanese-born American writer, would become a pale shadow of his own lofty message, that "you are far greater than you know." His biographer Robin Waterfield tells the tale of an unlikely rise to fame and the equally unexpected fall ..."
Kahlil
Gibran: Fallen Prophet
Robin Waterfield, Prophet:
The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran
Online copies of texts by Gibran
Kahlil
Gibran Fan Site
On
Children, a poem by Kahlil Gibran with animation
1895 Sir Hudson Fysh (d April
6, 1974), Australian aviation
pioneer
, one of the founders of the airline Qantas
1913 Loretta Young (b. Gretchen Young;
d. 2000), Hollywood actress (Oscar:
The Farmer's Daughter)
 1914
John C Lilly
(d.
September 30, 2001),
American author and philosopher
"John C. Lilly, M.D., an unparalleled scientific
visionary and explorer, has made significant contributions to
psychology, brain research, computer theory, medicine, ethics,
delphinlogy, and interspecies communication. His work helped launch
the global interest in dolphins and whales, providing the basis for
the book and movie Day of the Dolphin, and stimulating the enactment
of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. His research is largely
creditted [sic] as the grandfather of many modern dolphin researchers, and
inspiration to an entire generation of dolphin enthusiasts …
"Devoted to a philosophical quest for the nature of
reality, Lilly pursued a brilliant academic career among the
scientific leaders of the day. He has lived in the company of
associates and intimates including Nobel physicists Richard Feynman
and Robert Milliken, philosophers Buckminster Fuller, Aldous Huxley,
and Alan Watts, psychotherapy pioneers R.D. Laing and Fritz Perls,
spiritual teachers Oscar Ichazo and Baba Ram Dass, and a host of
luminaries, inventors, writers, and Hollywood celebrities." Source
More
1914 Danny
Thomas (d. 1991), American singer, actor,
comedian
 1915
Alan
Watts (d. November 16,
1973),
British-American author, born at Chilehurst, England; mystic,
meditation exponent and author (The
Book – On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are; The
Way of Zen; The Wisdom of
Insecurity). Watts wrote and lectured extensively on Zen Buddhism,
Taoism,
Christianity, Hinduism
and other paths.
Watts
bibliography and more
The
Alan Watts Foundation
Discussion
Forum
More
 1920 Rev. Sun Myung Moon,
Korean evangelist, leader of the 'Moonies' (Unification Church), self-styled
Messiah, genuine extreme-right-wing tosser and owner of the Washington Times.
On March 23, 2004 (qv),
Moon and his his wife Hak Ja
Han, were crowned the 'King and Queen of Peace' on
Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, inside the Dirksen Senate Office
Building with Members of Congress looking on.
Where in Washington,
DC is Sun Myung Moon?
More info on the
coronation
Is
George Bush a Moonie?
Former President Bush and Sun Myung Moon's 'Holy Wine' Ceremony
The
Rev, Bush & North Korea
Bush Sr. To Celebrate Moon—Again
King of America
vid
Moon, Money & Messiah Bush and the Moon Men
Freedom of Mind Center
1924 Earl Scruggs, American bluegrass/country musician
1931
EL Doctorow
(Edgar Larence Doctorow), American novelist (Welcome to Hard Times; Ragtime),
author of several critically acclaimed novels
that blend history
and social
criticism. Although he had written books for years, it was not
until the publication of The
Book of Daniel in 1971 that he obtained acclaim.
1934
Harry M Miller (Harry Maurice Miller), New Zealand-born Australian theatrical
entrepreneur
1935 Johnny O'Keefe,
Australian rock singer – 'the King' ('Shout!';
'She Wears My Ring').
His popular TV show was
6 O'Clock Rock.
Official homepage
1946
Syd
Barrett (Roger Keith Barrett), English
musician, one of the founding members of the group Pink
Floyd
1952
Malcolm Young, Scottish-born Australian musician,
founding member and rhythm guitarist for the Australian hard
rock band AC/DC
1955 Rowan
Atkinson, British comedian, actor
1960 Nigella
Lawson, British TV chef and writer
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January
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1066
Harold II was crowned King of England.
1413 Oldcastle's
plot discovered
England: Sir John Oldcastle (d.
December 14, 1417), English Lollard leader, had been accused of being a heretic.
However, his friendship with the new king Henry V (1387 - 1422) prevented any decisive action against the former
soldier and parliamentarian until convincing evidence of his heterodoxy was
found in a book belonging to Oldcastle, which was discovered in a shop in
Paternoster Row, London.
Oldcastle refused to obey
the archbishop's repeated citations, and it was
only under a royal writ that he at last appeared before the ecclesiastical court
on September
23. In a confession of his faith, he declared his belief in the sacraments
and the necessity of penance and true confession; but to put hope, faith or
trust in images was the great sin of idolatry. Oldcastle refused to assent to
the orthodox doctrine of the sacrament as stated
by the bishops, or admit the necessity of confession to a priest. Consequently,
on September
25, Oldcastle was convicted as a heretic.
Henry was still anxious to
find a way of escape for his old comrade, and granted a respite of forty days.
Before that time had expired, Oldcastle escaped from the Tower with the help of one
William Fisher, a parchment-maker of Smithfield.
Soon, Oldcastle put himself at the head
of a widespread Lollard conspiracy, which assumed a definitely political
character. He plotted to seize the king and his brothers during a Twelfth-night mumming at Eltham, and
perhaps, as was alleged, to establish some sort of commonwealth. Henry,
forewarned of their intention, took himself to London, and, when the Lollards
assembled in force in St Giles's Fields on January 10,
they were easily dispersed.
Oldcastle went into hiding for four years, but, in
November, 1417, was captured by the Lord
Charlton of Powis. Oldcastle, who was "sore wounded ere he would be
taken", was brought to London in a horse-litter. On
December 14, he
was formally condemned, on the record of his previous conviction, and that same
day was hanged in St Giles's Fields, and burnt "gallows and all". It
is not clear whether he was burnt alive and died a martyr.
1540 Henry
VIII of England married his fourth wife, Anne of
Cleves, as part of his rebellion against the Pope.
1563
Mary,
Queen of Scots allowed her court to play Twelfth-Cake, a game played on Epiphany
(January 6) throughout Europe, with the one who gets the bean being queen,
rather than king. The bean was found by her attendant, Mary Fleming, who was
allowed to dress in the queen's robes and vast numbers of jewels.
1721
The Committee of Enquiry on the
South Sea Bubble made its findings public.
1772 At
Stockwell, Surry, England, the home of a Mrs Golding became the scene of an
amazing amount of poltergeist activity.
The 'Stockwell Ghost'
Today,
in 1772, began the strange phenomena at the home of Mrs Golding in Stockwell,
England. Extreme poltergeist activity seemed to have invaded the house: plates
flying about, pots of water boiling unexpectedly, basins smashing ...
1838 The
telegraph was demonstrated publicly by Samuel
Morse and Alfred Vail for the
first time, at Morristown,
New Jersey, USA.
1839 'The Big
Wind': Today began a two-day storm in
Ireland that
destroyed hundreds of houses in
Athlone,
Limerick, and
Galway "in
addition to causing hundreds of shipwrecks in the Irish Sea. Fires
raged across the land, spread by gale winds. The storm was the
largest to hit the British Isles in memory ...".
Source
Related:
the
Great Storm
of 1703 and the
The Great Storm of 1987
1872 Australia: The Prince of Wales Theatre in
Sydney caught fire, for the
second time in twelve years.
1912
New Mexico was proclaimed the
47th State of the USA.
1916 As the numbers of young men,
'cannon fodder', were depleted
by the war in France, Britain
introduced conscription to replace them.
1918 A passenger in a
military aeroplane fell out of the plane and back in again at a lower altitude.
1921
Lufthansa, the
German airline, was founded.
1928 The River Thames in flood killed four people in London.
1930 In the Around Australia Air Race, aviator 'Puck' Grosvenor
died when his flying boat crashed near
Melbourne.
1930 Sherlock Holmes died, on his 85th birthday (according to fan
club).
1931 The New Sadler's Wells Theatre in London was opened.
From Wikipedia:
Richard Sadler opened a "Musick House" in 1683
and the name Sadler's Wells originates from his name and the discovery of the
existence of wells on his property. The well water being thought to have
medicinal properties, Sadler was prompted to claim that drinking the water from
the wells would be effective against "dropsy, jaundice, scurvy, green
sickness and other distempers to which females are liable - ulcers, fits of the
mother, virgin's fever and hypochondriacal distemper".
1932 Joseph
Lyons, leader of the United Australia Party, defeated
James Scullin to
become the 10th prime minister of Australia.
1941 US President Franklin Roosevelt placed the Lend-Lease Bill before Congress.
1950 Britain recognized Communist China.
1958 Chuck Berry recorded his hit,
'Sweet Little Sixteen'.
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1959 Construction began on the seven-mile
Mont Blanc road tunnel
between France and
Italy.
1964 Pope Paul
VI, the first pope to leave Italy in 150 years, ended
his three-day tour of the Holy Land. Remarkably, in nearly two thousand years of
Christianity, Paul VI was the first Pope ever to visit the land of
Jesus Christ.
1969 Possible date
on which Jimmy Carter,
later President of the USA, saw a UFO.
"The first mistake made in
recording Carter's UFO sighting related to the date that the
sighting occurred. The sighting was first filed by then governor
Jimmy Carter on September 18, 1973, based upon a request from
Hayden C. Hewes, director of the International UFO Bureau. The
date that Carter gave in his sighting report was October 1969.
Later research indicated that the actual date was more probably
January 6, 1969. Some people reporting on the Carter sighting
were even using the 1973, date when Carter filed the details of
the sighting as the date for the event."
Source
1969 Double-decker train carriages were introduced in
Sydney, Australia.
1975 Ronald
Reagan retired as Governor of California.
1977 Despite their considerable commercial success
the Sex Pistols,
were sacked by EMI.
1978 The crown of St
Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was
returned to Hungary after having been held at Fort Knox,
Kentucky, USA, since
World War II. Stephen [died c.
35 CE -
Feast day December 26] is patron saint of stonecutters and Hungary.
1981
UK: Peter Sutcliffe was charged with the 'Yorkshire Ripper'
murders.
1984 Australia: In Melbourne, the world's first
IVF quadruplets, three girls
and a boy, were born to Helen and Graham Muir.
1984 A non-fiction book named The
Caravaggio Conspiracy was published. Its author, journalist Peter Watson,
told the true story of his posing as an art dealer named Blake in order to
recover a stolen painting by the Italian baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi ('Caravaggio',
1573 -
1610). By a strange coincidence, two days previously author Oliver Banks
published a fictional book, The Caravaggio
Obsession, about an art dealer named Blake and his exploits while trying to
recover a stolen Caravaggio.
1986 Australian parachutists set a new world record by stacking
eight parachutes in 45.6 seconds, over
Toogoolawah,
Queensland.
1987 Elton John underwent a successful operation to remove vocal
chord nodules, at St Vincent's Private Hospital, Sydney.
2002
A team of journalists at
The Boston Globe (USA) began 'Spotlight',
a series
of investigative reports into sexual abuse, by Roman Catholic clergy. The
reports began with an exposé of former priest,
John J Geoghan whom it alleged
had allegedly fondled or raped more than 130 young people over three decades.
In the following brouhaha
surrounding what came to be seen as an endemic culture of sexual abuse in the
Catholic Church, what was as remarkable as the allegations was the sudden way in
which the issue became so large. For many years, such allegations had been
commonly made against Catholic clergy in the media worldwide, yet never before
had the public become so inflamed, the media so focused, nor the Church so
remorseful. Even the Church media took up the issue, where before they had been
reticent.
The reasons for this eruption of
interest in an old topic might give food for thought for academics and pundits
for years to come. Perhaps the American public, as is their wont, was ready for
a new craze as the September 11
media blitz had run its course. Perhaps political considerations within the
Catholic Church, even as high up as the Vatican, had required a general
blood-letting or a more specific sacrifice for expiation. Your almanackist, mind
ever poised to suspect, wonders whether the Church needed a decoy issue for some
purpose of which he has no intimation.
Click for the next big page of Epiphany/12th Night customs
Tomorrow: St Distaff, the saint that's not
a human being
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Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine they lay down for the night, and went to sleep.
Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend. "Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."
Watson replied, "I see millions and millions of stars." "What does that tell you?" Watson pondered for a minute. "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.
Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.
Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant.
Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you, Holmes?"
"Watson, you idiot. Someone has stolen our tent."
Q. What
did Alan Watts say to the hot dog seller?
A:
Make me one with everything.
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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