This page is big! If it fails to load fully, please click Refresh on your browser menu.
It's fully loaded when you see the purple menu bar at the foot of the page.

reetings from Australia. 

Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.

First time here?  See the Index for How it works

Celebrate each and every day with a free subscription to the daily ezine. You can apply by form or send a blank email. Read what the 'Almaniacs' (members) say about Wilson's Almanac.

I request your support if this website pleases and informs you, as this is my livelihood. Thank you, from the bottom of my fridge. 

Inquiries from publishers are welcome, but, dear reader, please don't use my work without my written permission. If I've inadvertently used something of yours that you consider not to fall under the fair use doctrine, please tell me and I'll remove it.

Carpe diem! (Seize the day!)

Pip Wilson

Our news on your homepage (that is, if you use My Yahoo, which we recommend for your start-up page)

Carpe diem! 2 Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search Open links in a New Window

Today is

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth? 
Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots. 
Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster. 
Eros: No, you hold on. First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite. 
Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, there's no such thing. 

Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, a particle of sunlight can't even be seen or measured. 
Eros: Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one. A ray of sunlight is made up of many atoms. 
Jeff Trent: So what if we do develop this Solaranite bomb? We'd be even a stronger nation than now. 
Eros: "Stronger." You see? You see? Your stupid minds. Stupid. Stupid. 

Tanna: Eros, do we have to kill them? 
Eros: Yes. 
Tanna: It seems such a waste. 
Eros: Well, wouldn't it be better to kill a few now than, with their meddling, permit them to destroy the entire universe? 
Tanna: You're always right, Eros. 

Colonel Tom Edwards: You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it? 
Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it. 
Lieutenant John Harper: He's mad. 
Tanna: Mad? Is it mad that you destroy other people to save yourselves? You have done this. Is it mad that one country must destroy another to save themselves? You have also done this. How then is it "mad" that one planet must destroy another who threatens the very existence-... 
Eros: [shoves her roughly aside] That's enough. 
[to the humans] 
Eros: In my land, women are for advancing the race, not for fighting man's battles. 

[On what that strange sound was.] 
Lieutenant John Harper: It was a saucer. 
Patrolman: A flying saucer? 

The Ruler: Plan 9? Ah, yes. Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary gland of the recently dead. 

Colonel Tom Edwards: For a time we tried to contact them by radio but no response. Then they attacked a town, a small town I'll admit, but never the less a town of people, people who died." 

Criswell: My friend, you have seen this incident, based on sworn testimony. Can you prove that it didn't happen? 

Criswell: Perhaps, on your way home, someone will pass you in the dark, and you will never know it ... for they will be from outer space. 

Jeff Trent: You promise you'll lock the doors immediately? 
Paula Trent: I promise. Besides, I'll be in bed before a half hour's gone ... with your pillow beside me. 
Jeff Trent: My pillow? 
Paula Trent: Well, I have to have something to keep me company while you're away. Sometimes in the night, when it does get a little lonely, I reach over and touch it. Then it doesn't seem so lonely anymore.

More memorable quotes from Plan 9

If it rains on St Mary's Day, it will rain for four weeks.
English traditional proverb

July the second. I, John Aleman, citizen of Marseilles, in good faith and without guile, sell and transfer to you, Peter Bertoumieu, son of the late Raymond Bertoumieu, a certain Saracen maid of ours, commonly called Aissa, for a price of ten pounds in the mixed money now current in Marseilles, which I confess to have had and to have received from you, renouncing the benefit of all laws, etc. And if the said Saracen maid is worth more at any time in the future I grant it all with the price, or I give all that extra worth to you and yours, etc.
Bill of sale for the purchase of a Saracen (Muslim) girl, Aissa, 1248   Source

On board the brig we also saw Cinques, the master spirit and hero of this bloody tragedy, in irons. He is about five feet eight inches in height, 25 or 26 years of age, of erect figure, well built, and very active. He is said to be a match for any two men on board the schooner. His countenance, for a native African, is unusually intelligent, evincing uncommon decision and coolness, with a composure characteristic of true courage, and nothing to mark him as a malicious man. He is a negro who would command in New Orleans, under the hammer, at least $1500.
  He is said, however, to have killed the captain and crew with his own hand, by cutting their throats. He also has several times attempted to take the life of Senor Montes, and the backs of several poor negroes are scored with the scars of blows inflicted by his lash to keep them in subjection. He expects to be executed, but nevertheless manifests a sang froid worthy of a Stoic under similar circumstances.
New York Journal of Commerce, August 30, 1839; the Armistad Mutiny, led by Joseph Cinqué (Cinque, or Cinques), occurred on July 2, 1839   Source

We have seen a wood-cut representation of the royal fellow [Joseph Cinqué]. It looks as we think it would. It answers well to his lion-like character. The head has the towering front of Daniel Webster, and though some shades darker than our great countryman, we are struck at first sight, with his resemblance to him. He has Webster's lion aspect. – his majestic, quiet, uninterested cast of expression, looking, when at rest, as if there was nobody and nothing about him to care about or look at. His eye is deep, heavy – the cloudy iris extending up behind the brow almost inexpressive, and yet as if volcanoes of action might be asleep behind it.
The Colored American, October 19, 1839   Source

I heard one of our most distinguished citizens remark yesterday, that his sympathies had at first been warmly enlisted in favor of the blacks – that he had been induced to believe, by the representations of the pseudo-philanthropists, that they were a set of hapless beings who had been torn from the enjoyments of social and domestic life and sold to hopeless misery, to feed the insatiate avarice of a blackhearted planter; and he should have rejoiced at their escape, even if they had reached our shores dyed to the elbows in the blood of their oppressors. He thought of Cinguez [sic] as he had been represented by Leavitt and his coadjutors, the heroic liberator of his enslaved brethren, who nobly preferred death to the degrading bondage of the white man; and was almost ready to wink at an infraction of our treaty with Spain, if necessary, to protect him from the consequences of his daring gallantry. But a look at the hero and his compatriots had wrought an instantaneous change in his sentiments. Instead of a chivalrous leader with the dignified and graceful bearing of Othello, imparting energy and confidence to his intelligent and devoted followers, he saw a sullen, dumpish looking negro, with a flat nose, thick lips, and all the other characteristics of his debased countrymen, without a single redeeming or striking trait, except the mere brute qualities of strength and activity, who had inspired terror among his companions by the indiscriminate and unsparing use of the lash. And instead of intelligent and comparatively civilized men, languishing in captivity and suffering under the restraints of the prison, he found them the veriest animals in existence, perfectly contented in confinement, without a ray of intelligence, and sensible only to the wants of the brute.
Mr Bennett, En Route To Hartford, September 15; 'The Captured Africans, Correspondence of the Herald'; New York Morning Herald, September 18, 1839, p. 2   Source

All hail! thou truly noble chief,
Who scorned to live a cowering slave;
Thy name shall stand on history's leaf,
Amid the mighty and the brave:
Thy name shall shine, a glorious light
To other brave and fearless men,
Who, like thyself, in freedom's might,
Shall beard the robber in his den.
Thy name shall stand on history's page,
And brighter, brighter, brighter grow,
Throughout all time, through every age,
Till bosoms cease to feel or know
"Created worth, or human woe."
Thy name shall nerve the patriot's hand
When, 'mid the battle's deadly strife,
The glittering bayonet and brand
Are crimsoned with the stream of life:
When the dark clouds of battle roll,
And slaughter reigns without control,
Thy name shall then fresh life impart,
And fire anew each freeman's heart.
Though wealth and power their force combine
To crush thy noble spirit down,
There is above a power divine
Shall bear thee up against their frown.
James Monroe Whitfield; 'To Cinque', in America and Other Poems, Buffalo, USA, 1853   Source

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Herman Hesse, German novelist and poet, born on July 2, 1877, Demian, Ch. 6

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
Herman Hesse; Demian

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood.
A finger fired the trigger to his name.
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game.
Bob Dylan; 'Only a Pawn in Their Game'; Medgar Evers, US civil rights activist, was born on July 2, 1925

A man can't just sit around.
Larry Walters ('Lawnchair Larry'; d. October 6, 1993), immediately after his flight above Los Angeles on July 2, 1982, when asked by a reporter why he did it

If the FAA was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk.
Larry Walters

It was something I had to do. I had this dream for twenty years, and if I hadn't done it, I think I would have ended up in the funny farm. I didn't think that by fulfilling my goal in life – my dream – that I would create such a stir and make people laugh.
Larry Walters

The human race sits in its chair. On the one hand is the message that says there's nothing left to do. And the Larry Walterses of the earth are busy tying balloons to their chairs, directed by dreams and imagination to do their thing.
Robert Fulghum; from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten   Source

July 2 is the 183^rd day of the year (184^th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 182 days remaining. It is the middle day of a non-leap year, because there are 182 days before and 182 days after. It falls on the same day of the week as New Year's Day (of non-leap years) and New Year's Eve.
On the dating of items in the Almanac  Translate this page  Birthday star  Your birth day  Daily Everything  NNDB  Time/Date  Google
Calendar converter  Almanacs, calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc  Almanac screensavers  On this day  Dictionary  I recommend
IMDB days  IMDB years  Wikipedia days  Wiki decades  Wiki centuries  Timelines  Conversions  Calendrica  Lunabar  Birthday calculator
When 'Source' links on this page move address or die, I might allow them to stay here, but the Wayback Machine might help you locate the original.

Full moon around now, Green Corn Festival, Native American

"The Green Corn Festival or Ceremony is a Native American harvest celebration. Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Yuchi, and Iroquois as well as other Native American tribes celebrate this ceremony in some manner.

"The ceremony is typically held during the full moon when the first corn crop is ready to harvest. The exact date cannot be determined ahead of time; it's all up to the corn. It is a time of thanks and forgiveness. A thanksgiving for the crops and old grudges are forgiven. The ceremony lasts for several days. The holy man as a symbol of health, life, and spiritual power tends a sacred fire. The first few days, known as the Busk, people fast, cleanse themselves, and their homes. Men and women then drink an herbal concoction, the 'Black Drink' that help cleanse and purify their bodies. Then the first corn harvest is tasted followed by dancing, singing, playing, and feasting. Many foods are included in the feast with an emphasis on corn: roast corn, corn tortillas, corn soup, corn bread ...

"A ball game is quite popular in which teams of boys and girls try to hit a target on a large pole, the original source of our lacrosse. The game varies, of course, from tribe to tribe."   Source

"The Creek Indian women perform the Ribbon Dance. Four women who have been appointed for life by the tribal elders dance for three hours, adorned with vivid ribbons, rattles, and shells. The Santa Ana Pueblo, near Albuquerque, New Mexico, has an annual feast day, open to the public, on July 26th with a green corn dance and fiesta."
Source: Earth, Moon and Sky

The first Friday in July, the Fairlop Fair

Traditions don't fall from the sky, they are created by people, and sometimes by good-hearted people whose simple acts of generosity become enshrined over time and bestow on their originators a place in history. The Fairlop Oak Festival (or Fairlop Fair) is a good example.

Long ago in England – the early- to mid-18^th Century – on the first Friday in July, the Fairlop Oak Festival was held. The Fairlop Oak, a large tree, in Hainault Forest, Essex was said to have a whopping diameter of 6.7 metres (22 feet) and a girth of 20 metres (66 feet). These estimates are no doubt exaggerated; however, one Peter Kalm, a student of the great Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707 - '78), measured the tree at 9.1 metres (30 feet) in 1748.

A prosperous pump-maker named Daniel Day (1673-1767), known to his friends as Good Day (perhaps he had an Australian cousin called Gid Day), started the practice of sharing a meal with his friends (and tenants, for Day had inherited some property and this was his annual rent-collecting day) under the oak on the first Friday in July. Day was quite particular as to the meal served each year: they always ate just beans and bacon beneath the 91-metre (300-feet) circumference canopy. 

The English poet John Gay (1685 - 1732) referred to this quaint repast:  

Pedlars' stalls with glitt'ring toys are laid,
The various fairings of the country maid.
Long silken laces hang upon the twine,
And rows of pins and amber bracelets shine.

Good Day's friends in the pump-and-block trade, about 40 of them, used to come, accompanied by a band, from Wapping town via the hamlets of Bow, Stratford and Ilford in a huge six-horse-drawn float which was a brightly decorated boat mounted on a carriage – not just any boat, but a fully rigged frigate created by Good Day who was a keen sailor.

A circus atmosphere
Day's day developed into a major festival, complete with stalls and amusements, as more and more people became interested in the tradition. In the 1750s, more than 100,000 people attended the Fair from all over London. Stalls sold gingerbread men, toys, ribbons, and there were entertainments such as puppet shows, musicians, circus acrobats and even wild beasts. Fairlop Fair enjoyed a reputation of being a very well conducted day, but as early as 1736 certain stallholders were prosecuted for gaming and illegal sales of liquor. In 1793, the Fair was banned for its bacchanalian reputation ...

Read on at the Fairlop Fair page in the Scriptorium

Find an error or dead link? 
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda

Click stars for Universe today Cafe Diem! Our store Highly recommended: Folklore of World Holidays by Margaret Read MacDonald The Elements of Ritual The Encyclopedia of Eastern Mythology Myths and Legends of Japan Asian Mythology Myths and Legends of Japan Thomas Cranmer The Rule of Four Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Fasti Roman calendar lore, by Ovid Holiday Symbols Life in a Medieval Village Medieval Celebrations Women's Activism and Globalization Stand and Deliver Hip Hop activism The Atlas of Holy Places and Sacred Sites The Clash of Civilizations Imperial Crusades Lonely Planet Australia The Medieval Cookbook The Spiritual Traveler Peace Under Fire Environmental Activism American Folklore Permaculture The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro Sun Goddess The Da Vinci Code Daily Everything How to Practice The Art of Happiness at Work The Dalai Lama's Book of Wisdom The Roswell Encyclopedia The Roswell Report: Case Closed The Chinese Roswell Roswell, High Times - An Unofficial ... UFOs Are We Alone in the Universe?   To support this project Search by keywords for books, music, computers, software, home and family products and much more.     Search for posters What Would Jefferson Do? By Thom Hartmann When Corporations Rule the World The Big Buy - Tom Delay's Stolen Congress The Corporation Highly recommended DVD Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America By Bruce Shapiro Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy By Robert F Kennedy, Jr The Skeptic's Dictionary The Daily Planet   Plan 9 from Outer Space Live with Passion! Anthony Robbins More books, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, music, posters, etc at   Cafe Diem! Celtic Daily Prayer Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism Murray Bookchin 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

Former feast day of Visitation of the Blessed Virgin (White lily, or Madonna lily, Lilium candidum, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.) The visit paid by the Virgin Mary to her cousin St Elizabeth (Luke i, 39, 40) is celebrated. Instituted by Pope Urban VI in 1383. Originally, in the Roman Catholic Church, the Feast of the Visitation was celebrated on this day, although it has since been transferred to May 31. "The Archangel Gabriel, at the time of the Annunciation, informed the Mother of God that Her cousin Elizabeth had miraculously conceived and was soon to be the mother of a son, the destined precursor of the Messiah. The Blessed Virgin out of humility concealed the wonderful dignity to which She Herself was raised by the Incarnation of the Son of God in Her womb, but in the transport of Her holy joy and gratitude, determined She to go to felicitate and assist the mother of the Baptist. 'Mary therefore arose,' Saint Luke says, 'and with haste went into the hill country into a city of Judea, and entering into the house of Zachary, greeted Elizabeth.'"   Source   Inti Raymi, Incan Winter Solstice Festival of the Sun, Sacsayhuaman, Cuzco, Peru (Jun 24 - Jul 2) Feast of Expectant Mothers, ancient Rome Source: The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Calendar Feast day of St Acestes Feast day of St Ariston Feast day of St Bernadine Realino Feast day of St Crescention Feast day of St Felicissimus Feast day of St Felix Feast day of St Futychian Feast day of St Justus Feast day of St Lidanus Feast day of St Marcia Feast day of Ss Processus and Martinian, martyrs Feast day of St Monegundis (Monegondes), recluse at Tours Feast day of St Otto  (Otho), bishop, Bishop of Bamberg Feast day of St Oudoceus, Bishop of Landaff Feast day of St Swithun (Swithin; Svithin; July 15 feast of the translation of his relics) Feast day of St Symphorosa Feast day of St Urban Feast day of St Vitalis Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints Hakata Yamagasa, Japan (Jul 1 - 15) This festival of dolls is held at Kushida Shrine, Fukuoka and culminates in a parade on July 15 which goes to Fukuoka shrine, circles about, then returns to the two temples. Zumarraga, Basque region of Spain "On Saint Isabel's day, on 2nd July, a very special romeria is held in the lovely setting of the Hermitage 'de la Antigua', in Zumarraga. Dancers inside the hermitage perform the Ezpatadantza 'de la Antigua', first on their knees and then on foot, dance in front of the image of the Virgin, making amazing movements with their daggers."   Source National Literacy Day, USA Blessed Virgin of the Berries, Poland Corso del Palio (Palio di Siena – Race for the Palio), Siena, Italy The Palio di Siena (known locally simply as the Palio), the most famous palio in Italy, is a horse race held twice each year on July 2 and August 16 in Siena, in which the horse and rider represent one of the seventeen Contrade, or city wards. The race is preceded by a spectacular pageant, which includes (among many others) Alfieri, flag-wavers, in medieval costumes. Just before the pageant, a squad of carabinieri on horseback, wielding swords, demonstrate a mounted charge around the track. National Anisette Day, Kiribati Distressed Elves' Creditors' Day (Fairy) Royal International Agricultural Show, UK Gion Matsuri, Kyoto, Japan (all of July)   Mt Fuji climbing, Japan (Jul 1 - Aug 31) Through July until the end of August, the warmest season, it is a Japanese rite of passage to climb to the summit of Fujiyama (Mt Fuji), which Shinto tradition says is the home of gods. A favourite time to climb is through the night so the eighth and final station can be reached at sunrise. Fuji (Konohansakuyahime no Mikoto; Konohana Sakuya Hime) is an ancient fire goddess, grandmother of the indigenous Ainu people of Japan ... More at July 1     Wilson's Webcam Watch The image at right, if it's appearing, is generated by a live webcam. Webcam images refresh at set intervals, so if you refresh this page it might show a changed image. If you click it, you'll go to an enlargement or the recommended webcam site. List of  featured webcams Recommend a webcam or report malfunction         On which day of the week were you born? Find out here 419 Valentinian III (d. 455), Roman Emperor who assassinated Flavius Aetius with his own hands   1489 Thomas Cranmer (d. March 21, 1556), made Archbishop of Canterbury for his support of King Henry VIII, and also served under Edward VI. During the reign of Queen Mary I ('Bloody Mary'), who had been brought up a Catholic and wished to return the country to its former faith, Cranmer was removed from office, imprisoned and charged with both treason and heresy on February 14, 1556 and later burnt at the stake as a heretic. 1644 Abraham a Sancta Clara (Johann Ulrich Megerle; d. December 1, 1709), court vicar, appointed imperial court preacher at Vienna in 1669 1714 Christoph Willibald Gluck (d. 1787), German composer (Alceste; Orfeo ed Euridice) 1724 Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (d. 1803), poet 1821 Sir Charles Tupper (d. 1915), Father of Canadian Confederation, sixth Prime Minister of Canada   King O'Malley (right) at the Naming of Canberra ceremony, Capital Hill, Canberra, Australia, 1913 1858 King O'Malley (d. December 20, 1953), eccentric American-born Australian politician in the Australian Government, one of the most colourful characters of the early federal period of Australian political history. Neither the date nor the place of O'Malley's birth is known with certainty. His biographers Larry Noye and Arthur Hoyle say he was born on July 2, while the Australian Parliamentary Handbook says July 4, which would be appropriate given O'Malley's American origins. O'Malley claimed all his life to have been born in Canada, which would have made him a British subject and thus eligible to stand for election, but it is more likely that he was born at his parents' farm in northern Vermont. 'King' was his mother's maiden name. He was educated at a primary school in New York City, then worked in a bank and as an insurance and real estate salesman, travelling widely around the United States. According to his biographer Hoyle, women found him very attractive and this, as well as his espousal of the women's suffrage issue, won him many female votes when some of his opponents in his early political career had not yet awoken to this political factor. In 1881, he married Rosy Wilmot, but she died in 1886. In 1889 he migrated to Queensland, probably to escape debt and possibly prosecution for embezzlement. In Australia, he again worked as an itinerant insurance salesman, also preaching evangelical Christianity and temperance. In 1895, he settled in Gawler, South Australia, and, in 1896, he was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly as a radical democrat, opposed to the wealthy landowners who then dominated colonial politics. O'Malley was defeated in 1899, and the following year he moved to Tasmania, the smallest and most parochial of the Australian colonies. Here a tall, fashionably dressed American preaching the Gospel and radical democracy drew immediate attention (he was known to wear a lavender suit and 10-gallon hat), and, in 1901, he was elected as one of Tasmania's five members in the first Australian Parliament. Although there was no Labour Party in Tasmania at this time, he joined the Labour Caucus when the Parliament assembled in Melbourne. Historian Gavin Souter describes O'Malley at this time: O'Malley's monstrously overgrown persona seemed to be inhabited simultaneously by a spruiker from Barnum's three-ring circus, a hell and tarnation revivalist, and a four-flushing Yankee Congressman. He was a moderately big man, auburn-haired with watchful grey eyes and a red-brown beard, wearing a wide-brimmed felt hat, blue-grey suit with huge lapels and a low-cut vest, loose cravat with a diamond collar stud, and in the centre of his cream silk shirt-front a fiery opal. O'Malley was thus one of the most prominent and colourful members of the Parliament, but his radical ideas were not widely accepted, and many regarded him as a charlatan. He became a prominent advocate of a national bank as a means of providing cheap credit for farmers and small businessmen - one of the most common platforms of the late 19th century populism. He was not a member of Chris Watson's first Labor ministry in 1904, or of Andrew Fisher's first ministry in 1908. But in 1910 the Caucus elected him to the ministry of Fisher's second government. In the same year he married again, to Amy Horton. O'Malley became Minister for Home Affairs, and played a prominent role in selecting the site of the future capital of Australia, Canberra. He was present at the ceremony for the naming of Canberra on March 12, 1913; he also drove in the first peg which marked the start of development of the city in February 1913. As a teetotaller he was responsible for the highly unpopular ban on alcohol in the Australian Capital Territory. He could also claim credit for beginning the building of the Transcontinental Railway from Melbourne to Perth. He also agitated for the establishment of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, a state-owned savings and investment bank, although he was not the bank's sole inspirer as he later liked to claim. He later wrote that he had led a "torpedo squad" in Caucus to force a reluctant Cabinet to establish the bank, but historians do not accept this. Prime Minister Fisher was the bank's principal architect. Partly to allay fears of "funny money" aroused by O'Malley's populist rhetoric, Fisher ensured that the bank would be run on firmly "sound money" principles, and the bank as established did not provide easy credit for farmers as the radicals desired. O'Malley's other legacy was the spelling of "Labor" in the Australian Labor Party's title in the American style. He was a spelling reform enthusiast and persuaded the party that "Labor" was a more "modern" spelling than "Labour". Although the American spelling has not become established in Australia, Labor has preserved the spelling. Labor was defeated at the 1913 elections, and, when it returned to office in 1914, O'Malley was not re-elected to the Cabinet. In 1915, however, Fisher retired and O'Malley returned to office in the first ministry of Billy Hughes, again as Minister for Home Affairs. But, within a year, the government split over the determination of Hughes to introduce conscription for Australia's contribution to World War I. O'Malley resigned from Hughes's Cabinet in protest and became an outspoken anti-conscriptionist. Hughes called an election in 1917, and O'Malley was very narrowly defeated in his northern Tasmanian seat by a Nationalist candidate. He stood for the seat again in 1919, and for another seat in 1922, but he never returned to elective office. Although he was only 59 at the time of his defeat, he retired to Melbourne and devoted his time to building up his own legend, particularly in relation to the Commonwealth Bank, and to polemical journalism on a variety of pet causes. He lived to be 95, outliving his nemesis Hughes. At the time of his death he was the last surviving member of the first Australian Parliament. A popular pub in Canberra, King O'Malley's Irish Pub in Civic, is named after him – this is a tongue-in-cheek reference to his above-mentioned role in an unpopular alcohol ban in the Australian Capital Territory. The Canberra suburb of O'Malley is also named after him. Based on the Wikipedia article    Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson   1862 William Henry Bragg (d. March 10, 1942), English physicist and chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1915. Bragg was educated at King William's College, Isle of Man, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He served on the faculties of the University of Adelaide in Australia (1886-1908), the University of Leeds (1909-15), and the University College London (1915 - '25). From 1923, he was Fullerian professor of chemistry in the Royal Institution and director of the Davy-Faraday research laboratory. He shared with his Australian-born son William Lawrence Bragg (1890 - 1971) the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics for their studies, using the X-ray spectrometer, of X-ray spectra, X-ray diffraction, and of crystal structure. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1906 and served as president of the society from 1935 to 1940.