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Rien. (Nothing.)
Diary entry by King Louis XVI on July 14, 1789, the day the Bastille fell and his days were numbered.

Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé (bis)
Entendez vous dans les campagnes mugir ces féroces soldats
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras, égorger vos fils, vos compagnes
Aux armes citoyens ! Formez vos bataillons !
Marchons, marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons
From 'La Marseillaise', France's national anthem

¿Quién es? ¿Quién es? (Who is it? Who is it?)
Billy the Kid; last words after being shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett on July 14, 1881

Children don't read to find their identity. They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology. They detest sociology. They still believe in good, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation and other such obsolete stuff.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, American author born in Poland on July 14, 1904

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

The Elements of Ritual

The Spiral Dance
By Starhawk
20th Anniversary Edition

The Rule of Four

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Fasti
Roman calendar lore, by Ovid

Chronicles, Vol. 1

Holiday Symbols

Life in a Medieval Village

Medieval Celebrations

Women's Activism and Globalization

The Atlas of Holy Places and Sacred Sites

Stand and Deliver
Hip Hop activism

The Clash of Civilizations

Imperial Crusades

The Medieval Cookbook

The Spiritual Traveler

Peace Under Fire

Environmental Activism

Astro pic of the day

American Folklore

Permaculture

The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro

Sun Goddess

The Da Vinci Code

Daily Everything

A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend, and Folklore

Architects of Peace

Celtic Folklore Cooking

The Secret Language of Birthdays

Live with Passion!
Anthony Robbins


More books, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, music, posters, etc at  
Cafe Diem!

Celtic Daily Prayer

Fraud

Poor Richard's Almanack
By Benjamin Franklin

Photo of the day

Wheel of the Year

Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft

The Survival of the Pagan Gods

On which day of the week were you born? Find out here

1602 Jules Mazarin (d. 1661), statesman and cardinal

1858 Emmeline Pankhurst (d. June 14, 1928), most influential and famous of the British suffragettes, mother of Christabel, Sylvia and Adela.

She was born Emmeline Goulden in Manchester, England to abolitionist parents, and married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister, in 1879. Dr Pankhurst was already a supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and had been the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882. 

In 1889, Mrs Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, but her campaign was interrupted by her husband's death in 1898. In 1903 she founded the better-known Women's Social and Political Union, an organization most famous for its militancy which began in 1905. Its members included the notorious Annie Kenney, the suffragette 'martyr', Emily Davison and the composer, Dame Ethel Smyth.

"Emmeline Pankhurst, Honorary Secretary, and later Honorary Treasurer, of the WSPU, c1909. Born in Manchester from a Radical political background, Emmeline Goulden married Dr Richard Pankhurst, the 'Red Doctor', a Radical, feminist barrister. Their three daughters were all involved in the WSPU, one son died before the campaign had started, and the other died at the height of the militancy in 1910. Emmeline was a charismatic and eloquent speaker and was 'immensely popular' with the membership. By 1913 she had served three prison sentences: two in 1908 for leading a deputation to Parliament, and for inciting the public to 'rush' the House of Commons; and in the wake of the window smashing of March 1912, she was sentenced to nine months in prison for conspiracy to commit damage. Superimposed on the photograph is a portrait brooch of her, with ribbons in the suffragette colours of purple, green and white. She is also wearing the Holloway Badge, a medal of honour designed by her daughter Sylvia, and awarded to suffragettes who had been imprisoned for their involvement in the campaign. It is an enamel arrow, also in the suffragette colours, mounted on a silver portcullis."   Source

"The struggle to get votes for women, led by Mrs Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel at the head of the militant suffragists, convulsed Britain from 1905 to 1914. The opposition the Liberal government put up looks incomprehensible today, and it provoked, among all classes and conditions of women, furious and passionate protests. The response of the police, the courts and sometimes the crowds of suffragist opponents still makes shocking reading. Women were battered in demonstrations and, on hunger strikes, brutally force-fed in prison. When these measures risked taking lives, the infamous Cat and Mouse Act was passed so that a dangerously weakened hunger striker would be released and then rearrested when strong enough to continue her sentence. Under its terms, Mrs. Pankhurst, age 54 in 1912, went to prison 12 times that year …"  Source

Early progressives in the Book of Days

Pankhurst photos    A world chronology of women's suffrage    More

1860 Owen Wister (d. 1938), author, The Virginian

1862 Gustav Klimt (d. 1918), painter and graphic artist

1868 Gertrude Bell (d. 1926), archaeologist, writer, spy and administrator known as the 'Uncrowned Queen of Iraq'

1896 Buenaventura Durruti y Domingo (d. November 20, 1936), a central figure of Spanish anarchism during the period leading up to and during the Spanish Civil War. When he died, more than a quarter of a million people filled the streets to accompany the cortege during its route to the cemetery on Montjuich.

Emma Goldman's Durruti is Dead, Yet Living (1936)    More

1903 Irving Stone, American novelist (Lust For Life; The Agony and the Ecstasy)

1904 Isaac Bashevis Singer (d. 1991), Polish-born American journalist and novelist (The Manor; The Estate) who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature; born Radzymin, Poland

1910 William Hanna (d. 2001), American animator

1911 Terry-Thomas, English comic actor

1912 Woody Guthrie (d. 1967), American folk singer/songwriter ('This Land is Your Land').

'This Land is Your Land' is almost always sung as a patriotic song, which is why the last three stanzas are usually deleted. Most schoolchildren aren't even aware of their existence. Yet they are essential to Woody's meaning. This is not an ode to the US as a collective entity. It is an affirmation that the land is a sacred trust, whose purpose is the well-being of all its inhabitants. On his birthday, let us celebrate Woody Guthrie and his words of human freedom:

'This Land is Your Land (in D)'

By Woody Guthrie

CHORUS: This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me

CANADIAN CHORUS:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From Bonavista to Vancouver Island
From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake Waters
This land was made for you and me

SANIBEL CHORUS:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to Sanibel Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me

I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps
O'er the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me, a voice was saying
This land was made for you and me

When the sun came shining and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
As the fog was lifting, a voice was chanting
This land was made for you and me

As I went walking, I saw a sign there
On the sign it said NO TRESPASSING
But on the other side it didn't say nothing
That side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple
In the relief office, I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me

 

In 1998, Woody's daughter Nora approached the British singer Billy Bragg about recording lyrics her father had composed in the later years of his life. After researching the lyrics at the Woody Guthrie Archive in New York City, Bragg worked with the band Wilco to record 40 tracks, a number of which were released on the album Mermaid Avenue, followed by Mermaid Avenue II. In 2004, Bob Dylan wrote his own recollections about these unrecorded Guthrie songs:

"On one of my visits, Woody had told me about some boxes of songs and poems that he had written that had never been seen or set to melodies – that they were stored in the basement of his house in Coney Island and that I was welcome to them. He told me that if I wanted any of them to go see Margie, his wife, explain what I was there for. She'd unpack them for me. He gave me directions on how to find the house.

"In the next day or so, I took the subway from the West 4th Street station all the way to the last stop, like he said, in Brooklyn, stepped out on the platform and went hunting for the house. Woody had said it was easy to find. I saw what looked to be a row of houses across a field, the kind he described, and I walked towards it only to discover I was walking out across a swamp. I sunk into the water, knee level, but kept going anyway – I could see the lights as I moved forward, didn't really see any other way to go. When I came out on the other end, my pants from the knees down were drenched, frozen solid, and my feet almost numb but I found the house and knocked on the door. A babysitter opened it slightly, said that Margie, Woody's wife, wasn't there. One of Woody's kids, Arlo, who would later become a professional singer and songwriter in his own right, told the babysitter to let me in. Arlo was probably about ten or twelve years old and didn't know anything about any manuscripts locked in the basement. I didn't want to push it-the babysitter was uncomfortable, and I stayed just long enough to warm up, said a quick good-bye and left with my boots still waterlogged, trudged back across the swamp to the subway platform.

"Forty years later, these lyrics would fall into the hands of Billy Bragg and the group Wilco and they would put melodies to them, bring them to full life and record them. It was all done under the direction of Woody's daughter Nora. These performers probably weren't even born when I had made that trip out to Brooklyn."
Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, Simon & Schuster, NY, 2004, pp 99 - 100

Billy Bragg, in the Book of Days

Woody Guthrie songs    My favourite: '1913 Massacre'

1912 Northrop Frye (d. 1991), educator, literary critic

1913 Gerald Ford, American president

1916 Natalia Ginzburg (d. 1991), writer

1918 Ingmar Bergman, Swedish film and stage director and playwright (films The Seventh Seal; Wild Strawberries)

1918 Arthur Laurents, American playwright, novelist, director and librettist (West Side Story; Gypsy)

1919 Lino Ventura (d. 1987), actor

1926 Harry Dean Stanton, actor

1927 John Chancellor (d. 1996), American television journalist.

1938 Jerry Rubin (d. November 28, 1994), author (Do It! – Scenarios of the Revolution; Yippie Manifesto; We Are Everywhere) and activist. Along with Abbie Hoffman and others, Rubin was a leader of the Yippies.

He was one of the Chicago 7 (see also David Dellinger, Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden. (Originally the Chicago Eight, they also included John Froines, Lee Weiner and Bobby Seale.)

Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman (seen here in the judicial robes they wore to the Chicago 7 trial, 
when they weren't wearing American revolutionary uniforms, etc), 
perhaps the best-known and certainly the most flamboyant of the Chicago 8, are both now in Yippie heaven.

Who is Jerry Rubin?    Deoxyribonucleic Yippie!    More Yippie

Related items at March 19, 1969; March 22, 1968;  August 23, 1968; September 17, 1968; January 23, 1970.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list    CounterCulture Wiki

1939 George E Slusser, scholar, professor and writer

1941 Maulana Karenga, author and activist

1986 Spongebob Squarepants (fictional character)

1989 Sean Flynn-Amir, American actor

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

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Zodiac birthday Free astrology e-cards Friendship Thoughts Birthdays Ice Cream Cone Day [ Jul 16 ] Bastille Day [ Jul 14 ]

Varies Full Moon Day
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July

13 International Puzzle Day
13 Beans And Franks Day
14 French Fries Day
14 Bastille Day
14 Pick Blueberries Day
14 Pandemonium Day
15 Cow Appreciation Day
15 I Love Horses Day
15 Respect Canada Day
15 Shark Awareness Day
15 No-Hitter Day
16 Ice Cream Cone Day
16 Talk To A Telemarketer Day
17 Peach Ice Cream Day
18 Chrysanthemum Day
18 Dental Awareness Day
18 Wiener Day
19 Bloomer Day
20 Moon Day
20 Lollipop Day
20 Fortune Cookie Day
20 Chess Day
21 Monkey Day
22 Spoonerism Day
22 Cleveland Day
23 Vanilla Ice Cream Day
23 Private Eye Day
24 Cousins Day
24 Public Opinion Day
24 Coffee Day
25 St James Day
26 Groovy Chicken Day
26 Aunt And Uncles' Day
26 Coffee Milkshake Day
26 Groovy Chicken Day
27 St Pantaleone's Day
28 Hamburger Day
29 Rain Day
30 Cheesecake Day
31 Jump For Jellybeans Day

  ... More Events

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160 CE Founding of the kingdom of Copan (Mayan Indians), which lasted for over 1,000 years.

1223 In France, Louis VIII became King of France upon the death of his father, Philip II.

1742 Death of Richard Bentley, English classical scholar.  

1789 French Revolution: Parisians stormed the Bastille Prison in Paris and freed seven political prisoners.

When the revolutionary mob stormed the French prison they were surprised to find most of the cells empty but for the miserable scratchings of prisoners on the walls. 

Only seven prisoners were resident, under the relatively (for his time) lenient penal policies of King Louis XVI (1754 - 1793). Among those inmates, the Marquis de Sade (1740 - 1814) is believed to have triggered the assault by crying that people were being executed inside.

Three of the prisoners were old men, legitimately incarcerated; two of these had become insane, no doubt because of the horrible conditions in the cells. The other four prisoners had been in the Bastille for only four years each, for various crimes such as forgery. The seven were paraded through the streets as heroes, though the revolutionaries must have been disappointed that they did not have more to show off.

The Man in the Iron Mask

It was widely believed at the time and for years afterwards, that the wasted body of the celebrated Man in the Iron Mask had been found there, with the dreadful mask still on his skull.

Held for over forty years in prison [the 19^th Century folklorist Robert Chambers says only the last five years of his imprisonment were actually in Bastille] during the reign of King Louis XVI, the Man in the Iron Mask was an unknown prisoner. When travelling from prison to prison, he always wore a mask of velvet, not iron. He was buried as 'M. de Marchiel', but his true identity has never been revealed. One suggestion was that he was the Duc de Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis XVI.

Alexandre Dumas in his romantic novel suggested that he was an illegitimate elder brother of the king, with Cardinal Mazarin his father – a suggestion originally made by Voltaire.

Lord Acton, the British historian, suggested a minister of the Duke of Mantua, who, in his negotiations with the king, was found to be treacherous and imprisoned at Pignerol.

Whenever he was moved, he was disguised with a velvet and whalebone mask, though it entered the popular imagination that this mysterious, unknown character, was masked with iron. Whoever this mystery man was, he apparently died on November 19, 1703; his dungeon was scraped to the stone, and his doors and windows burned, lest any inscribed message get out to the world and thus reveal his identity, and Louis's great cruelty to the representative of another state.

The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas

1791 The Priestley Riots in Birmingham, England. The home of British scientist and heterodox clergyman, Joseph Priestley (1733 - 1804), was attacked by conservatives outraged by his sympathies with the French revolutionaries.

1798 The Sedition Act became United States law, making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the United States government.

1824 Six days after his favourite wife, Kamamalu, died of measles, Liholiho, King Kamehameha II of Hawaii (b. November, 1797) also succumbed while visiting Britain.

"In November 1823 Liholiho sailed to England to endeavor to complete his father's negotiations with King George IV. He took with him on his voyage to England his favorite wife, Kamamalu. They reached Portsmouth in late May 1824 and traveled immediately to London, where although their arrival was completely unexpected, they were accorded respectful treatment by the British government. All arrangements were made for their comfort and entertainment. They were shown the sights of the city and taken to the Theatre Royal. Unfortunately, before Kamehameha II's scheduled audience with King George IV, both he and his queen caught measles, a disease to which, like many Polynesians, they had no immunity. On 8 July 1824 Queen Kamamalu died, and six days later the king passed away. Their bodies were placed in splendid coffins; put aboard the HMS Blonde, whose captain was the Right Honorable Lord Byron; and returned to their homeland, arriving in May 1825.

"Liholiho reigned for only five years, during which time he never escaped the domination of the chiefs or of his stepmother, Kaahumanu. History has depicted him rather disparagingly in comparison with Kamehameha I, a strong leader, and Kamehameha III, his younger brother, who, during a long reign, developed into a wise and prudent ruler. In his negotiations with the kings of Kauai and England, Liholiho attempted to break out of the ceremonial role to which he had been relegated by the chiefs, but his best efforts were cut short by his early death."   Source

1841 The first issue of Punch, the British weekly magazine of humour and satire published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002. Early staff members include the authors William Makepeace Thackeray and Thomas Hood, and the illustrator-cartoonists John Leech and Sir John Tenniel.

1842 The first building allotments went on sale in Brisbane, Australia.

1865 The Matterhorn was first climbed, by a British expedition led by Edward Whymper. Four of the seven men were killed on the descent.

1867 Alfred Nobel (1833 - '96), Swedish chemist, demonstrated his invention, dynamite, for the first time.

1868 Alvin J Fellows of New Haven, CT, USA patented the tape measure.

 

1881 Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed Billy the Kid.

Henry McCarty (b. c. 1860) better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the alias William Henry Bonney, was a 19^th-Century American frontier outlaw and murderer. He is reputed to have killed 21 men but the figure is probably closer to nine (four on his own and five with the help of others) and he was also a participant in the Lincoln County War.

Pat Garrett (1850 - 1908) was a bartender and later a sheriff in Lincoln County, New Mexico.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid    Photos    Fact vs. Myth

 

1888 Australian poet Barcroft Boake and a friend at Rocklands station in the Monaro district of southern New South Wales had a mock hanging which Boake engaged in rather more seriously than his companion. Cecil Hadgraft writes: "The friend's performance was tentative, but Boake's was almost fatal. After two days he wrote a rueful account of it to his father. A more imaginative version was published in the Bulletin nearly four years later."

On May 2, 1892, Boake hanged himself from a tree with his stockwhip at Long Bay, Middle Harbour, Sydney. Nearly all his published verse was collected and issued in 1897 by Alfred Stephens of The Bulletin. It has been suggested that he might have killed himself for the love of one of the sisters of the horseman, Charlie McKeahnie.

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1900 Australia's first governor-general was appointed. John Adrian Louis Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun commenced his official duties on the day of federation, January 1, 1901.

 

1921 The Sacco and Vanzetti case went to the jury (having commenced on May 24 that year).

At 7:30 in the evening the jury returned its verdict: both were both found guilty of murder in the first degree. Their long years of appeals and massive protests world-wide, began.

Sacco & Vanzetti links

Woody Guthrie, Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti

1933 In Germany, all political parties were outlawed except the Nazi Party.

1940 World War II: Canadian army officer Andrew McNaughton took command 7th Army Corps consisting of British, Canadian and New Zealand troops.

1951 USA: In Joplin, Missouri, George Washington Carver National Monument became the first United States National Monument in honour of an African American.

1958 Iraqi Revolution: In Iraq the monarchy was overthrown by Arab nationalists and Abdul Karim Kassem became the nation's new leader. King Faisal II (b. 1935) and the rest of the royal family were assassinated in the coup.

1959 USS Long Beach, the first nuclear warship, was launched.

1965 Mariner 4 flyby of Mars.

1966 In Chicago, Illinois, Richard Speck murdered eight student nurses in their dormitory.

1966 French sex symbol Brigitte Bardot married millionaire Gunther Sachs.

1967 Britain's parliament legalized abortion.

1987 Martial law was lifted in Taiwan.

1989 More than 300,000 Siberian coal miners went on strike for better pay and conditions.

1990 "In 1990 the small uninhabited island of Eynhallow off Rousay in the Oarkneys [sic] played host to 88 tourists. According to the ferry crew, only 86 returned. A thorough search by police, coastguards and helicopter failed to find the missing people. The island was long regarded as spooky 'vanishing isle', a sort of marine Brigadoon. Alternatively, superstitious locals speculated the couple were actually mermen or mermaids, returning to their ancestral home; it was easy to mistake the Fin Folk for ordinary humans. Or maybe humans had been kidnapped by Fin folk."   Source

1992 A major fire consumed an entire city block in tourist destination Gatlinburg, Tennessee, destroying the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Museum and several other local businesses and attractions in the process.

1995 The mp3 format was named.

2000 George Speight, the principal instigator of the Fiji coup of 2000, was arrested with 369 of his followers and charged with treason.

2002 During Bastille Day celebrations, Jacques Chirac escaped an assassination attempt unscathed.

2006 Stargate SG-1 began its tenth season, making it the longest-running science fiction series on American television.

 

 

Tomorrow: England's rainy day saint

 

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