|
 Third Saturday in July, Tolpuddle Martyrs
Festival, UK [2004]
On
the dating of items in the Almanac
The Tolpuddle Festival is held every
year to commemorate the sacrifices made by the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of 19th-Century British
labourers who formed a trade union, and were subsequently arrested and
sentenced to transportation to Australia.
They were six farm
workers whose courage in standing up to their ruthless bosses is credited
with the birth of the UK's trade union movement.
Their struggle began in 1833 when, close to starvation and
facing a wage cut for the third year in a row, a handful of farm workers
led by George
Loveless decided to start a 'friendly society' to protest against
their meagre pay. Loveless's landowner, James Frampton,
employed a spy to infiltrate meetings of the newly-formed society. The
informer took back to his master the information that the members had
voted an oath of secrecy at the beginning of the meeting, an act that was
illegal under an obscure 1797 law.
Thus, on March
19, 1834, Loveless, his brother
James and co-workers James Brine, Thomas and John Stanfield and James
Hammett were sentenced to seven year's transportation
to the Australian penal colonies of New
South Wales and Van
Diemen's Land [Tasmania], despite an 800,000-strong petition
complaining about their unjust treatment.
In June 1835 the British Government offered the men
conditional pardons which the men rejected out of hand, demanding free
pardons because they had done nothing wrong. Nine months later their
demands were met and they returned home the following year as heroes.
An annual
festival is held in Tolpuddle, organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) featuring a
parade of banners from many trade unions, a memorial service, speeches and
music. Recent festivals have featured speakers such as Tony Benn
and musicians such as Billy Bragg, as well as others from all around the
world.
More
Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum
Birthday of Nepthys, ancient Egypt
Goddess
of Death; sister of Isis.
Source:
The Phoenix
and Arabeth 1992 Calendar
Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
Amaterasu-o-mi-kami, Shinto Sun
goddess, Japan
Procession
for Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, who was
born from the eye of the primordial god Izanagi
while he was purifying himself in a river. She became the ruler of the
High Celestial Plain (Takamagahara).
Source of date: The Phoenix
and Arabeth 1992 Calendar
Dog Days,
ancient Rome (Jul 3 - Aug 11)
Feast of Tailiu, Ireland
"Honours Mother of
Lugh."
Source: The Phoenix
and Arabeth 1992 Calendar
Feast day of
St Alexius,
confessor
Patron saint of hermits and beggars. He lived on his father's estate as
a hermit until his death.
Feast day of
St Anne Petras
Feast day of
St Carmelite
Martyrs of Compiegne
Feast day of
St Ceslas
Odrowaz
Feast day of
St Clement of
Ohrid
Feast Day of St Cynllo
Saint Cynllo is a Welsh saint, who lived in
the 5th Century. His
knee imprints are said to exist in a rock, near the farm Felin
Gynllo, which lies just outside of Llangoedmor. The
miraculous foundling, the infant Taliesin sang,
"Not an empty treasure is the prayer of Cynllo".
Feast day of
St Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia
Feast day of
St Generosus
Feast day of
St Gorazd
Feast day of
St Hugh the
Little
Feast day of
St Humility of
Mary
Feast day of
St Hyacinth
Feast day of
St Januaria
Feast day of
St Leo IV,
pope and confessor
Feast day of
St Marcellina,
eldest sister of St Ambrose
(Sweet pea, Lathyrus odoratus, is
today's plant,
dedicated to this saint.)
Feast day of
St Marie-Geneviθve
Meunier
Feast day of
St Nerses
Lambronazi
Feast day of
St Pavol Gojdic
Feast day of
St Rose Chrιtien
Feast day of
St Sicilian
Martyrs
Feast day of
St Speratus and his Companions, martyrs
Feast day of
St Turninus, confessor
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
 Various mathematics departments: Yellow Pig's Day
Yellow
Pig's Day
is a mathematics celebratory day held at some US
college campuses and other locations since at least the 1960s, as part
of efforts to make mathematics fun. Places where people report this day to
be celebrated include:
Hampshire College Summer Studies
in Mathematics sessions. Every yellow pig in David
C Kelly's collection is said to "get up and jig". On
good years, a large contingent of attendees may be found dancing jigs of
their own on the fields and hills of Amherst, Massachusetts. The singing of
Yellow Pig's Day carols is traditional. Ultimate frisbee has long been the official
sport of Yellow Pig's Day. Gifts containing or consisting of yellow pigs
and mathematical knick knacks featuring the manifold properties of 17
are frequently exchanged among friends.
Princeton University:
students have celebrated it for many decades; it is rumoured to have been
started by David C. Kelly and Michael
Spivak while they were grad students there. Spivak, now a famous
author, has hidden references to yellow pigs in each of his books.
The University of Chicago: at least one
person reports to have celebrated it there in the 1970s.
Boston, Massachusetts: there are reports of YPD parties
in Boston in 2002 and 2003.
Source: Wikipedia
Canada/USA Mathcamp
Vincent Lefθvre's 17
and Yellow Pigs page
Math Camps 2003
description (PDF) Brad Johnson's Online TV
report, 1998
Seth
Schoen's Vitanuova blog: 2001
Owen Ozier,
letters from Kenya
Sara's
Yellow Pig index
Why Yellow Pigs?
 La Festa del Redentore, Venice, Italy (third
weekend of July)
A note about the dating of
items in Wilson's Almanac
Every year on the 3rd Saturday of July, Venice celebrates the
festival of Christ Redemptor or the Redentore.
In 1575
after the people of Venice prayed for an end to a plague, the illness
dropped away. The Doge
Alvise Mocenigo had made a solemn vow to build, should the plague
lift, a votive
temple, "that generations to come will solemnly visit in perpetual
memory of the received miracle".
On the third Sunday in July of the same year, His
successor, Doge Sebastiano Venier, proclaimed the Serenissima Republic
free from the plague and he fulfilled the vow to build a temple of
thanksgiving to the Redeemer. The church was built on the Giudecca island and
the foundation stone was laid on May 3, 1577. On July 21, 1578 an open-air altar with
tabernacle was opened and in four days a bridge consisting of 80 galleys
was laid across the Giudecca Canal.
To mark the event a boat bridge was built to take
worshippers to the spot were the new church was being built. The church
was designed by Andrea
Palladio and completed in only 15 years.
To this day that event is commemorated by the city by
building the boat bridge across the Giudecca Canal to take people to the
church. In the evening people will take to their boats and spend the night
watching a splendid firework display on the lagoon and will wait for the
sun to rise.
Pilgrims walk from the city to Giudecca across the decks
of boats while spectators gather on waterfront balconies. People eat sweet
and sour sole with pine nuts and raisins, and deck boats and houses alike
with flowers and party lights. Handel's famous Water Music was written in 1771 for
this spectacle, and it is played as fireworks are let off.
Thank you Sylvia de Vanna for sending in much of this
information.
More
And
more
Venice;
the Giudecca, looking towards Fusina,
by Turner
Ba'ath Revolution Day, Iraq (formerly)
Gion
Matsuri,
Kyoto, Japan (all of July)
Luis Muρoz Rivera's Birthday, Puerto
Rico
Constitution Day, South Korea Luis Muρoz Rivera's Birthday, Puerto
Rico
Celebrates the
birthday of Luis Muρoz Rivera (1859 - 1916), patriot and
journalist.
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
1555
Richard
Carew (d. November
6, 1620),
English poet and antiquary
1591 Anne Hutchinson
(d. 1643),
unauthorized Puritan preacher of
a dissident church discussion group, and pioneer in Rhode Island
and the Bronx.
Banished as a heretic in 1638, she died in 1643,
with five or six of her children, of scalping by the
members of the Siwanoy tribe.
1674 Dr Isaac
Watts (d. 1748), English
hymnist and clergyman
1787 Friedrich Krupp, industrialist (d. 1826), see
Krupp
1797 (Hippolyte)
Paul Delaroche, French painter ('Death of Queen Elizabeth',
1828)
1859 Luis Muρoz
Rivera (d. November 15,
1916), poet, journalist
and a politician from Barranquitas,
Puerto Rico.
Muρoz Rivera was largely responsible for the Jones-Shafroth
Act (signed March 2, 1917),
granting United States citizenship to Puerto Ricans
and creating a bicameral legislature in Puerto Rico which is
modelled
on the United
States Congress. Still, he was not pleased with the Jones Act
since the judicial and executive branches would still be in the
control of the United States.
Luis Muρoz
Rivera - Library of Congress
1876 Maksim
Litvinov, Soviet statesman and diplomat
1883 Barthιlemy De
Ligt, antimilitarist and Dutch libertarian pacifist.
A pastor, he was repudiated by his church for encouraging disobedience in
the face of full mobilisation for WWI. His Christian pacifism evolved to
anarchist pacifism. He was active following the war, including
l'Association Internationale Antimilitariste and the War Resisters
International.
On July
27, 1924, at the
'Maison du Peuple' in the Hague, he spoke alongside Ferdinand
Domela Nieuwenhuis, Rudolf
Rocker, Emma
Goldman, Pierre
Ramus, et al, for the 20th anniversary of the AIA.
He was active in the
1930s also, and De Ligt wrote the handbook of passive resistance, The
Conquest of Violence, especially influential amongst English and
American pacifists.
"S'il y a des
conflits armιs entre les pouvoirs rιactionnaires et les masses en
rιvolte, les tenants de l'action rιvolutionnaire non-violente sont
toujours du cτtι des rιvoltιs, mκme quand ceux-ci ont recours ΰ la
violence."
De Ligt did not live to see the government-sponsored
butchery of WWII, as he died in 1938.
Source: The Daily Bleed
1899 Erle Stanley Gardner (d. 1970), American
author of Perry Mason
mystery novels
1899
James
Cagney (d. 1986),
Oscar-winning American actor (Mayor
of Hell; Lady Killer)
1902
Christina
Stead, Australian author (Seven
Poor Men of Sydney; House
of All Nations; The
Man Who Loved Children)
1909 Hardy Amies,
dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II
1912 Art
Linkletter (born Arthur
Gordon Kelley), Canadian-born American author and television personality
1917
Phyllis Diller (born
Phyllis Driver), American comedienne, actress and pianist
"A 'late bloomer, she started her career at
the age of 37. At the time, she was a working housewife and mother
of five children employed at radio station KSFO, San Francisco, as
a publicist, newspaper writer and columist.
"Urged by her husband, Sherwood Diller, she
prepared a night club act and was booked info San Francisco's
Purple Onion. She slithered around the piano, lampooned current
celebrities, branished a cigarette holder and made fun of high
fashion and life in general. Her first appearance took place on
March 7, 1955. Booked for 2 weeks, she stayed for 89!" Source
Are you, like Phyllis Diller, a late starter?
You
Know You're Old
(vid)
Fang
(vid)
1917 Margarete Mitscherlich, physician
 1920 His
Excellency, the Marques de Samaranch (Juan
Antonio Samaranch), Spanish
sports official, president of the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) from 1980 to 2001, its
greatest period of corruption.
Samaranch
is probably remembered for four main things: his fascist career, his
long reign as president of the IOC, his commercialization of the
Olympics, and the corruption among officials and athletes that the
commercialization engendered.
Samaranch was for years a member of the fascist
Falange party in Spain and a national councillor under the notorious
36-year dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco
Franco. The Times of
London wrote: he 'proved expert at
the mixture of obeisance to the regime and political
manoeuvring necessary to progress through the [fascist] ranks'. By
1975, when Franco died, Samaranch was top fascist in Barcelona, and
an IOC Vice-President.
"When
Franco died and democracy was restored, the Spanish establishment
was
hard-pressed to save Samaranch's scrawny neck. They hastily got
him out of
the country as Spain's ambassador to, of all places, Moscow.
"Three
years later, the skilled ultra-right political manoeuvrer, no
doubt
with help from certain countries who also wanted the Olympics kept
from
falling under the control of progressives, was elected IOC
President.
"And lo and behold, as The Times points
out, 'six years after that
Barcelona was awarded the 1992 Games'. Would it be churlish to
wonder
whether Samaranch's property developments and other commercial
interests in Barcelona benefited from the Games at all?" Source
The Secret
Life of Juan Antonio Samaranch
Proud
and happy fascist
Pictured above: IOC President
Samaranch in the Spanish fascist dress uniform is sworn in as a
national councillor in 1967. Fascist Dictator, General Franco
(second from the left), looks on.
Beijing Olympics: Never too early to think
'boycott'
It's not too early to start planning
to boycott the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Many will scoff, as competition is a modern mythology with few
agnostics or atheists, but it's worth remembering that the USA
boycott of Moscow in 1980 had many positive effects, even though it
didn't stop the communists killing 1.5 million Afghans in the
following decade. (Australian sportsmen and women, to their shame,
put narcissism and "gold, gold, gold" before international
solidarity, and competition before cooperation and did not follow
Jimmy Carter's boycott.)
The Olympic movement is a discredited beast and agency of chauvinism
and nationalist propaganda whether it is at Sydney, Beijing, Athens,
or Berlin, where Hitler was early to recognise its PsyOps value. It
was run from 1980 till 2001 by Juan
Antonio Samaranch, national councillor under the fascist
dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and the man who
presided over the Olympics' descent into the corrupt, drug-riddled
spectacle that they are today.
Let's keep our countries out of Beijing in 2008 on behalf of a
quarter of the world's population still living under dictatorship.
A New Wave of Repression Justified by the Olympics
"While a wide majority of International Olympic Committee (IOC)
members were voting, on July 13, 2001, to attribute the 2008 Summer
Olympics to Beijing, Chinese police received an order to step up
their executions of delinquents and intensify repression against
'subversive Internet users'. IOC members, encouraged by their
president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, who personally supported China's
bid, paid no attention to the repeated calls against the Beijing bid
...
"The Olympic movement was discredited in 1936, when it allowed
the Nazis to make the Games a spectacle to glorify the Third Reich.
In 1980, in Moscow, the IOC suffered a terrible defeat when more
than 50 countries boycotted the Olympics. The Netherlands, Germany,
the United States, Egypt and so many others refused to countenance
the Soviet regime. In 2008, the international sporting movement must
refuse to tolerate one of the world's bloodiest dictatorships.
Boycott
Beijing Sign
the petition
 New Lords of the Rings
"The world of modern Olympic sport is a secretive, elite domain
where decisions are taken behind closed doors, where money is spent
on creating a fabulous life-style for a tiny circle of officials and
funds destined for sport are siphoned away to offshore bank
accounts. This investigation of the hidden corruption behind the
Olympic ideal reveals: how Princess Anne's attempt to unseat the
unpopular athletics supremo Primo Nibiolo was sabotaged by secret
deals from within, how bribes were paid to win gold medals for
Korean boxers in the Seoul Olympics, that Berlin's bid for the 2000
Olympics was so corrupt that the State parliament set up an enquiry,
that millions of dollars are spent by bidding cities to woo those
who decide where the games will be held, when in fact often the
decision has already been made, and that the Olympic number two,
Korea's Dr Kim Un Yung, is a trained killer and a former spy."
The New Lords of the Rings: Olympic Corruption and
How to Buy Gold Medals (from Cafe Diem!, our store)
1928 Vince
Guaraldi (d. 1976), musician, composer
1935 Diahann Carroll, singer
1935
Donald Sutherland, actor
1938 Franz Alt,
journalist
1939 Maria Ilva Biolcati, known as Milva,
singer
1941 Spencer Davis
1941 Jόrgen
Flimm, theatre director and manager
1942 Tim Brooke-Taylor, comedian
1948
Luc Bondy,
Swiss film and theatre director
1952 David Hasselhoff, actor, musician
1952 Phoebe Snow
(Phoebe Laub),
American singer, guitarist, songwriter. Phoebe Snow was
also a fictional character created around 1900 to promote the Delaware,
Lackawanna and Western Railroad.
1956 Peter D'Adamo, physician, author
1971 Cory
Doctorow, American
blogger,
journalist and
science fiction author who serves as
co-editor of the blog
Boing Boing.
1975 Konnie
Huq, television presenter
Phew!!
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July
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
31 Cotton
Candy Day
31 Raspberry
Cake Day
August
3 Watermelon
Day
4 Champagne
Day
5 Cards
For Sister
6 Halfway
Point Of Summer
7 Lighthouse
Day
8 Cheesecake
Day
9
Send
An Email Greeting Day
10 Lazy
Day
10 Grab
Some Nuts Day
... More
Events
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180 Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa were executed for being
Christians, this being the earliest record of Christianity
in that part of the world.
855 Pope
St Leo IV was buried in St Peter's, Rome. Or was he? Was his death
put forward from 853 in order to hide the two-year papal reign of a female
pontiff, Pope Joan?
1203 Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople
by assault; the Byzantine emperor Alexius III Angelus
fled from his capital into exile.
1212 The Christians defeated the Muslim Caliph Mahommed al-Nasr
near Toledo, Spain.
1453 The French under Jean Bureau
utterly defeated the English under the Earl of
Shrewsbury (who was killed in the Battle of Castillon
at Gascony), ending the
Hundred Years' War and diminishing British control of territory in France.
1596 Sir Francis Walsingham unravelled the Babington plot to
murder Queen Elizabeth I
of England, and
confirmed that Mary, Queen of Scots was involved in the conspiracy.
1603 Sir Walter Raleigh was
arrested on suspicion of plotting to dethrone King James
I.
1732
"17th, Munday
At Birchouse feast. Coz. John Prince told me that formerly the present Mr.
Hall's grandfather, of Swaith, lived there. It happened that as his man and
boy were ploughing in a close where there had lately been some wood stubbed, the
plough happened to touch upon a sheet of lead in which there was money hid. The
man looses the draught, comes home, and tells his master. The boy was ordered
into the barn to thrash, where the[y] lock't him up. The master and the man
went to fetch it. The boy look't thro' a rift in the barn door, and saw them
bring it home in panniers, upon two horses; which was the first rise of the
family of the Halls of Swaith. Mr. Prince had the relation from the boy when he
was an old man, and he says there has often been money found there since, as
they have been ploughing, which he supposes was scattered out of the lead when
they opened it to see what was in it. He shewed me a silver shilling, on which
was this inscription : 'Edwar. . .Posui Deum adjutor : meum : Civitas
London,' which was either Edward the Third, who live ann. 1327, or Edward the
4th, 1461. He says his sister Micklethwait has severall more peeces
of money found in the same place. There is part of the rein of wood standing in
the close yet."
From John Hobson's Diary
 1762 Catherine II ('Catherine the Great';
1729 - 1796),
became Empress of Russia upon the assassination of her husband, the unpopular Peter III of Russia, eight days after he
had been ousted by forces loyal to his wife.
Earlier that year, after moving into the new Winter
Palace in Saint Petersburg, Peter succeeded to the throne as tsar, but his
eccentricities and policies alienated the very groups that Catherine had
cultivated. Grigori Orlov, Catherine's lover at the time, headed
a conspiracy that proclaimed Catherine the ruler, and Peter was murdered on this
day, less than six months after taking the throne. It is often speculated that
Catherine was somehow involved in Peter's death, but her complicity has never
been proved.
Ekaterina (her name in
Russian) exemplified an 'enlightened monarch'. A cousin to Gustav III of Sweden and to Charles XIII of Sweden, and a distant cousin of Queen
Victoria, Catherine the Great reigned
as empress of Russia
from June
28, 1762 till
her death.
Catherine
is still famous for her sexual appetites and many lovers. She even had a secret
room constructed, filled with paintings and sculptures depicting many sexual
acts, rape, pedophilia and bestiality
in realistic and graphic detail. Even the furniture incorporated depictions of
giant sexual organs. However, there is no historical base for the often-told
story that she was crushed to death when
attendants lost their grip on ropes supporting a horse that was being lowered on
her
for sexual purposes.
Some have suggested that
Polish emigrιs might have invented the story in order to discredit her and the
Russians in general, because Poland fared badly at the hands of Russian armies
during her long and authoritarian reign.
1771 Massacre at Bloody Falls: Chipewyan
chief Matonabbee, travelling as the guide to Samuel
Hearne on his arctic overland journey, massacred a group of unsuspecting Inuit.
1790 Death of Adam Smith,
Scottish economist.
1790 Londoner Thomas Saint patented
the first sewing machine.
A
brief history of the sewing machine
1791 The Massacre of Champs de Mars (Field of Mars) by the Marquis
de LaFayettte restored order in Paris.
1793 Charlotte Corday was guillotined for the murder of French
revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat (July
13, 1793) in his
bathtub.
1794
The three-year-old Commune of Paris was suppressed.
"Commune of Paris,
insurrectionary governments in Paris formed during (1792) the French Revolution and at the end (1871) of the Franco-Prussian War. In the French Revolution,
the Revolutionary commune, representing urban workers, tradespeople, and radical
bourgeois, engineered the storming of the Tuileries and the arrest of the king.
During the reign of terror, several leaders of the commune, such as Hιbert,
were executed (1794), and when the moderates gained control of the Convention
(1794-95), they broke the commune's power." Source
1801 A US squadron under Commodore Richard Dale blockaded
Tripoli after the Pasha of Tripoli threatened US shipping in the Mediterranean.
1815 Napoleonic Wars: In France, Napoleon surrendered at Rochefort to
British
forces.
1841 The first issue of Punch
magazine was published, England.
"One
evening at the beginning of June, 1841Mark Lemon and Henry Mayhew, met at the
Edinburgh Castle in the Strand, London, to discuss the possibility of starting a
new comic journal. Lemon and Mayhew were both reforming liberals and the plan
was to combine humour and political comment. Others invited to the original
meeting included Douglas Jerrold, a journalist with the reputation for
campaigning against poverty, and John Leech, a medical student whose drawings
had impressed Lemon. During the meeting at the Edinburgh Castle, someone
remarked that a humourous magazine, like good punch, needed lemon. Mayhew,
remarked 'A capital idea! Let's call the paper Punch'." Source
1867 USA: In Boston, Massachusetts, USA, the Harvard School of
Dental Medicine was established as the first dental school in the United
States.
1880 Japan adopted a new penal code, based on the French
system.
 1882 Australia: James
Donovan, Thomas Walker
(1858 - 1932; pictured) and others founded the Australasian Secular
Association, which came to be most active in Melbourne.
From February, 1884, Joseph Symes, who came
to Melbourne from England, was president, chief lecturer and editor of its
journal, The Liberator. Symes was an adherent of a Darwinian-progress
style of social philosophy, favouring
individualism over socialism, like many of the early secularists, and
dogmatically opposed any influences of leftism in the ASA. Needless to say,
there was a split, or splits, and largely out of the Association grew the Melbourne Anarchist Club
(May, 1886), political home of activists such as Chummy Fleming (who
attended the [2nd annual] Secular Conference in Sydney in 1884). The ASA ran a Sunday School
for children, which also served as a Sunday social gathering for freethinking
adults, one of whom was pioneer feminist Rose
Summerfield.
"Almost all the executive positions on the
Liberator Publishing Coy at its launch, as were ASA posts throughout its early
years, were filled by men who later turned to anarchism, the most prominent
being the Andrade brothers, Fred Upham, Donovan and George
Newberry. Other secularists who went from the ASA to play prominent parts in
anarchist history included John William Fleming, Rose Stone, William McNamara
and John Andrews ... In those days readers' interests were decidedly
international and not surprisingly the ASA began receiving specifically
anarchist literature from overseas around 1884-1885. There was no home-grown
product before 1887." Source
Lawson & Co:
associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
Melbourne Anarchist Club
Manifesto, May 1886 Skeptic Tank: Free texts by Symes
and others
A
History Of The British Secular Movement More
1890 Cecil Rhodes became
Premier of Cape Colony in Africa.
1894 Italian forces took Kassale, the Sudan, from the
dervishes.
1897 The Klondike gold rush began when first successful prospectors
arrived in Seattle, Washington, USA.
1898 Spanish-American War: Battle of Santiago Bay Troops under United
States General William R Shafter took the city of Santiago
de Cuba from the Spanish.
 1900 Death in Sydney,
Australia of Orpheus
Myron McAdoo (Bill McAdoo; b. 1858), African-American 'black minstrel' singer who toured
Europe, South Africa and Australia with McAdoo's American Minstrels and McAdoo's Alabama
Cakewalkers.
In 1876 McAdoo graduated from Hampton Normal and
Agricultural Institute (founded in 1868 at Hampton, Virginia by Northern
philanthropists, notably General Samuel Chapman
Armstrong) and taught in
Virginia schools before returning to teach at his alma mater. In 1881 he took
the place of his fellow student, African American educator and author Booker T
Washington (1856 - 1915), in charge of the Native
American boy students' dormitory.
Before commencing his own theatrical company in 1890 (mostly composed
of fellow Hampton graduates - see Booker T
Washington's papers), he had been one of the
troupe of the eminent bass singer Frederick J Loudin and the Fisk
Jubilee Singers, who first arrived in Australia at
Melbourne on May 14, 1886. The Fisk style of music included cakewalks and spirituals.
McAdoo took ill of unknown causes about 16 months before
his death. He returned to the US, and came back to Sydney, apparently in good
health, but on April 28 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that
"During the week Mr. McAdoo has suffered from a somewhat serious attack of
illness". His death
certificate gives as the cause of death, "Pernicious anaemia; Dilation
of the heart; Cerebral anaemia sycope".
Like his Sydney contemporaries Henry Lawson, Henry Kendall, Dorothea Mackellar, JF Archibald and Victor Daley and numerous other Australian celebrities, McAdoo's grave is in Waverley Cemetery
at Bronte, a suburb of Sydney. After the funeral, his widow Mattie Allen McAdoo
and their son Myron returned to America, breaking with the troupe in 1903. Tenor
RH Collins became the troupe's manager; Orpheus's brother Eugene was basso and
treasurer.
On October 6, 1900, a letter from a performer named Mr Willis Gauze,
apparently a sometime female impersonator, appeared in the Freeman,
denying certain unstated rumours about McAdoo, and adding, "we mourn for
him as manager and gentleman for a better man never lived and his
treatment of us was so very nice that we say, may his soul rest in peace. The
minstrel company he brought out was the cause of his death. I never traveled
with such people before."
McAdoo,
Solomon Linda and 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'
Before McAdoo's death the McAdoo Jubilee Singers had extensive tours in South Africa until hostilities began in the Boer War. McAdoo was shocked by the racism he saw and wrote to the Hampton Institute:
"There is no country in the world where prejudice
is so strong as here in Africa. The native today is treated as badly as ever the
slave was treated in Georgia. Here in Africa the native laws are most unjust;
such as the Christian people would be ashamed of. Do you credit a law in a
civilized community compelling every man of dark skin, even though he is a
citizen of another country to be in his house by 9 o' clock at night, or he is
arrested? Before I go into parts of Africa, I had to get a passport and a
special letter from the governors and presidents of the transvall [sic] and the Orange
Free States, or we would have all been arrested. Black people who are seen out
after 9 o' clock must have passes from their masters, indeed, it is so strict
that natives have to get passes for day travel
. I met a few colored men,
Americans, living here. One opened a business in Johannesburg and before he
could open, he had to get a white man to allow him to use his name, because no
Negro is allowed to have his own business."
Many indigenous Africans were no doubt influenced and
inspired by the visitors as role model, as they had not long ago been slaves
themselves. Orpheus Myron McAdoo's legacy in Africa and the world is far
reaching for in the 1890s
it was his singers who popularised African American spirituals
in South Africa through their widespread touring two separate tours
totalling eight years.
McAdoo's syncopations and American styles reached deep
into South Africa, in mining towns and bush villages. It reached as far as Gordon Memorial School,
above a valley called Msinga, in Zulu country about 300 miles southeast of Johannesburg.
A generation later, the sounds influenced a pupil of that school, Solomon Linda, who
formed a group called Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds
(photo).
Solomon Linda wrote a song called 'Mbube', Zulu for
'the lion', and recorded it in the Evening Birds' second session, in
Johannesburg in 1939 after they had been 'discovered' by a talent scout. The
song's lyrics told the tale of a group of men hunting a sleeping lion; the song was a South
African hit, selling about 100,000 copies during the 1940s. Pete Seeger, the
American folk musician, heard the compelling song in 1949 and in 1951 cut it himself with his band, The Weavers, calling it 'Wimoweh', making it a
Number 6 hit in the USA. The song has been
recorded by Jimmy Dorsey,
Yma Sumac, Glen Campbell, Roger Whittaker, New
Christie Minstrels, Stylistics, Tremeloes, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Chet Atkins, Arthur Fiedler and the
Boston Pops
Orchestra, They Might Be Giants, The Kingston Trio, Brian Eno, R.E.M.
('The Sidewinder
Sleeps Tonite'), Miriam Makeba,
Barry Manilow, and
many others, with The Tokens' version being a global smash
hit in 1961. Among the many
languages it has been recorded in apart from the original Zulu,
are French, Japanese, Spanish and Danish. In 2000, Rolling Stone estimated that
'Mbube' had earned at least $15 million in composer royalties. Everyone made money off it except Solomon
Linda ...
Read the full story at the Orpheus Myron
McAdoo page in the Scriptorium
1917 King George V of the United Kingdom issued
an Order in Council stating that the male line descendants of the British royal family would henceforth bear the
surname Windsor. The name change of the British Royal House
from the German-origin House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the House
of Windsor was to appease British nationalist feelings during the First World War.
1918 Russian Revolution: At Ekaterinburg,
Bolsheviks
executed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family (Gregorian
calendar date).
Family members killed
with the Tsar
Grand Duchess Olga of Russia
Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia
Tsarevich Alexei of Russia
Grand Duchess Maria of Russia
Tsarina Alexandra of Russia
Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia
What happened to Anastasia?
"In the late 1970's, a local geologist and a filmmaker
began their quest to find the site. They retrieved three skulls but replaced
them and held onto their secret until 1989, as Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost
opened doors previously slammed shut. In 1991, the bodies were exhumed the
same month that Boris Yeltsin became Russia's first president.
"The process to identify the remains was exhaustive.
Samples were sent to Britain and the United States for DNA testing. The tests
concluded that five of the skeletons were members of one family and four were
unrelated. Three of the five were determined to be the children of two parents.
The mother was linked to the British royal family, as was Alexandra. The father
was determined to be related to several other Romanovs. Scientists said they
were more than 99 percent sure that the remains were those of the Czar, his
family and their attendants. Two skeletons remain unaccounted for Alexei,
the 13 year old heir to the throne, and one of his sisters, either Maria or
Anastasia.
"After the identities of the skeletons were
established, President Boris Yeltsin declared that the remains should receive a
state funeral and be interred at the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, along
with the remains of other Czars." Source
Using DNA science to prove identities
" A key player in the positive
identification of the bones as belonging to the czar family was Prince Philip,
husband of the British Queen. He is the great-grandson, by maternal lineage, of
the mother of the czar's spouse. The mitochondrial DNA sequence of Prince Philip
matched up with DNA from four reconstructed skeletons, one of an adult and three
of children, but not with any of the other skeletons. This implies the adult
skeleton is that of the czar's spouse, and the other three belong to three of
her five children."
Nostradamus and the Czar
'The Royal
Martyrs of Russia'
The Lost Princess
"
the Russian Orthodox Church officially decided
to canonize Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsarina Alexandra and their five
Royal Imperial children, the young Grand Duchess' Olga, Marie, Tatiana,
Anastasia and the young Prince the Tsarevitch Alexei." Source
Myrrh Oozing (Streaming) From Tsar Icon Raises
Hopes Of Canonization
1936 Spanish
Civil War: A conservative rebellion against the recently-elected leftist Popular
Front government of Spain sparked the Spanish
civil war.
1944 Port Chicago disaster: Near the San
Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition
for the war exploded in Port Chicago, California, killing 232.
1944 World
War II: The largest convoy of the war embarked from Halifax, Nova Scotia under Royal Canadian Navy protection.
1945 World War II: Potsdam Conference At Potsdam, the
three main Allied
leaders Harry
Truman, Josef
Stalin, Winston Churchill (later replaced by
Clement Attlee) began their final summit of the war. The meeting ended on August 2.
1951 Dublin's famous Abbey Theatre burned down.
1951 On the enforced abdication of his father King Leopold
III,
Baudouin became King of the Belgians.
1954 The first
Newport Jazz Festival began, Newport,
Rhode Island, USA.
1955 Disneyland
opened in Anaheim, California, USA.
1959 Louis
Leakey,
English archaeologist and palaeontologist, discovered remains of Australopithecus in Africa.
1959 American
jazz-blues singer Billie
Holiday died as a result of her drug addiction.
1961 A new constitution went into effect in British Guiana.
1962 Nuclear testing: The 'Small Boy' test shot Little Feller I became the last atmospheric test
detonation at the Nevada Test Site, USA.
1964 Donald Campbell set the world land speed record of
648.6
kph on Lake Eyre, South Australia.
1965 US B-52 bombers from Guam made their first raid over
Vietnam in support of Allies' ground operations.
1968 The Beatles' animated film Yellow Submarine premiered, London.
 Playboy: 'Hey Bulldog'?
Lennon: That's me, cuz of the Yellow
Submarine people, who were gross animals apart from the guy who drew the
paintings for the movie. They lifted all the ideas for the movie out of our
heads and didn't give us any credit. We had nothing to do with that movie and
sort of resented them. It was the third movie we owed United Artists. Brian had
set it up and we had nothing to do with it. But I liked the movie, the artwork.
They wanted another song, so I knocked off 'Hey Bulldog'. It's a
good-sounding record that means nothing.
"Probably the most fondly remembered of the four Beatles
movies, Yellow Submarine's hallucinogenic, dazzling animation still looks
pretty good away from the acid enhanced glare of 1968. This trip through a
psychedelic universe in a big old sub works best as a reminder of just how
influential the Beatles were."
Source
Midi files
Yellow Submarine at IMDB
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
More
1968 Rightist military officers overthrew Iraq's
government.
1969 Kenneth Tynan's controversial
and long-running avant-garde
theatrical revue Oh! Calcutta!
(written in collaboration with notables such as John
Lennon, Sam
Shepard, Jules
Feiffer, Edna
O'Brien and Nobel
prize winner Samuel
Beckett) opened in New York.
1973 King Zahir Shah's 40-year rule ended in a palace coup
and Afghanistan was proclaimed a republic.
1975 Apollo-Soyuz
Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz
spacecraft docked with each other in orbit, marking the
first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations which were
technically at cold war. Astronauts and cosmonauts joined hands.
8:05 am
Speaking
in Russian, Slayton called, "Soyuz, Apollo. How do you read me?" Kubasov
answered in English, "Very well. Hello everybody."
Slayton:
Hello, Valeriy. How are you. Good day, Valeriy.
Kubasov:
How are you? Good day.
Slayton:
Excellent. . . . I'm very happy. Good morning.
Leonov:
Apollo, Soyuz. How do you read me?
Slayton:
Alexey, I hear you excellently. How do you read me?
Leonov:
I read you loud and clear.
Slayton:
Good.
2:17:26
pm
"Stafford opened hatch number no. 3, which led into the Soyuz
orbital module. With applause from the control centres in the background,
Stafford looked into the Soviet craft and, seeing all their umbilicals and
communications cables floating about, said, 'Looks like they['ve] got a few
snakes in there, too.' Then he called out, 'Alexey. Our viewers are here. Come
over here, please.' High above the French city of Metz, the two commanders shook
hands. In the background was a hand-lettered sign in English 'Welcome aboard
Soyuz'."
Source
NASA images NASA
patches
1979 Nicaraguan
president General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigned and fled
to Miami.
1981 Hyatt Hotel disaster: Two skywalks filled with
people at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri collapsed into a crowded
atrium lobby, killing 114.
1981 Queen
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland formally opened the Humber Estuary
Bridge - the longest
single-span bridge in the world.
1984 Laurent
Fabius became Prime Minister of France.
1988 Police imposed a curfew with provisions to shoot on
sight, in Hyderabad, Pakistan, after gunmen attacked the mayor.
1990 Helmut
Kohl, Chancellor of Germany, stated that all major
obstacles to German reunification had disappeared and said that elections for a
united German parliament would probably take place in December.
1991 USSR's Mikhail Gorbachev and US President
George HW
Bush announced a treaty to make large cuts in intercontinental nuclear weapons.
1995 The Nasdaq
stock index closed above the 1,000 mark for the first time.
1996 Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound Boeing 747
carrying TWA flight 800 exploded, killing all 230 on board.
1997 The FW Woolworth Company closed after 117 years
in business.
1998 In St Petersburg, Nicholas II of Russia and his family were buried
in Ekaterininsky Predel (St Catherine Chapel), 80 years after they were killed
by Bolsheviks.
1998 A tsunami
triggered by an undersea earthquake destroyed 10 villages in Papua
New Guinea, killing an estimated 1,500, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for
and thousands more homeless.
1998 Biologists reported in the journal Science how they sequenced the genome of
Treponema
pallidum, the bacterium
that causes syphilis.
2002
Apple's
program iCal
premiered at the Macworld
Expo in New
York City. This date is displayed on the icon of the program when it
is not being used.
2003
Mysterious death of
UK
Ministry of Defence biologist,
David Kelly,
CMG
(b.
1944),
employee of the
UK
Ministry of Defence (MoD), an expert in
biological
warfare and a
United Nations
weapons inspector in
Iraq.
Kelly's discussion with
Today
Programme journalist
Andrew
Gilligan about the British government's dossier on
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq inadvertently caused a
major political scandal. He was found dead days after appearing
before the
parliamentary committee charged with investigating the scandal.
The Hutton
Inquiry, a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his
death, ruled that he had committed suicide, but it is widely
believed that he was murdered. On
October 15,
2007, it was
discovered, through a Freedom of Information request, that the knife
with which Kelly allegedly committed suicide had no fingerprints on
it. The book,
The Strange Death of David Kelly, by
Norman Baker,
MP, was published in October, 2007, and serialized in the
Daily Mail.
Dead In The Woods
(2007) is an investigative documentary that explores the links
between Kelly's death and a global bio-weapons conspiracy.
Concerns regarding the official account of the death of David Kelly
The murder of David Kelly
Email sent several hours before his death by Kelly to US journalist
Judith Miller on July 17, 2003 (PDF)
Mysterious Death of Dr. David Kelly: Murder theory that just won't
go away
Who Ordered the Assassination of Dr David Kelly?
Why I believe David Kelly's death may have been murder
More
Tomorrow: Statue of Jesus levitates
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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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