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June 3^rd: …on that day Bellona is said to have been consecrated … and ever she comes gracious to Latium. Her founder was Appius.
Ovid, Fasti, vi. 199. Today is the Festival of the ancient Roman goddess Bellona. 

Such is Mars, when with deadly slaughter he has devastated the Geloni and thereafter rests, a dread figure, in the Getic plain, while Bellona, goddess of war, lightens him of his armour and unyokes his dust-stained coursers; an outstretched spear, a huge cornel trunk, arms his hand and flashes its tremulous splendour over Hebrus' stream.
Claudian (court poet to the Emperor Honorius and Stilicho); 'Panegyric on the Consulship of Probinus and Olybrius', Loeb Classical Library, 1922, p. 11   Source

Mars blushed, Bellona scoffed and turned her from the disgrace of the East whene'er with arrows strung and flashing quiver the aged Amazon practises battle or hurries back as arbiter of peace and war to hold parley with the Getae.
Claudian; 'Against Eutropius', Loeb Classical Library, 1922, p. 157   Source

Bellona, implacable goddess, who, her raiment all stained with blood, was combing her snake-hair, fattened on the slaughter of Illyrians.
Claudian; ibid, p. 193   Source

Why delayest thou, Bellona, to sound the trumpet of hell and to arm thyself with the scythe wherewith thou mowest the people to the ground?
Claudian; ibid, p. 195

Bellona, too, hastens forth with speed no less than that of Mars' whistling spear; a hundred ways of hurt she pondered and at last approached Tarbigilus, fierce leader of the Getic squadron. It chanced he had but late returned with empty hands from a visit to Eutropius; disappointment and indignation aggravated his ferocity, and poverty, that can incite the gentlest heart to crime, inflamed his savage breast. Taking upon her the similitude of his wife she comes to meet him; proudly she steps forth like the barbarian queen, clothed in linen raiment. Close to her breast a brooch fastened her dress that trailed behind her; she had bound her locks into a coil that a polished circlet confined, and bidden her green snakes turn to gold. She hastens to greet him on his return and throws her snowy arms about his neck, instilling the poison of the furies into his soul by her kisses. Guilefully to stir his rage she asks if the great man has been generous to him; if he brings back rich presents. With tears he recounts his profitless journey, his useless toil, the pride and insults, moreover, which he had to bear at the eunuch's hands. At once she seized the favourable moment, and tearing her cheek with her nails, discloses her complaints.
Claudian; ibid, p. 199

Moreover, while the senate was busied with the soothsayers about these prodigies, and holding its session in the temple of Bellona, a sparrow came flying in, before the eyes of all, with a grasshopper in its mouth, a part of which it threw down and left there, and then went away with the other part. From this the diviners apprehended a quarrelsome dissension between the landed proprietors and the populace of the city and forum; for the latter is vociferous like a grasshopper, while the former haunt the fields (like the sparrow).
Plutarch; 'Life of Sulla'

He says, moreover, that at Silvium, a servant of Pontius met him, in an inspired state, declaring that he brought him from Bellona triumph in war and victory, but that if he did not hasten, the Capitol would be burnt; and this actually happened, he says, on the day which the man foretold, namely, the sixth day of Quintilis, which we now call July.
Plutarch, ibid

O Phoebus, O Diana, Queen of forests, radiant glory of the heavens, O ye ever cherished and ever to be cherished, grant the blessings that we pray for at this holy season when the verses of the Sibyl have commanded chosen maidens and spotless youths to sing the hymn in honour of the deities who love the Seven Hills.
  O llithyia, that, according to they office, art gracious to – bring issue in due season, protect our matrons, whether thou preferrest to be invoked as 'Lucina' or as 'Genitalis', Rear up our youth, O goddess, and bless the ancestral edicts concerning wedlock . … destined, we pray, to be prolific in new offspring, that the sure cycle of ten times eleven years may bring round again music and games thronged thrice by bright daylight and as often by gladsome night!
Horace's hymn, the Carmen Saeculare, hymn  composed for the Ludi Saeculares, Rome's centennial games, which ended today   Source  

Of course, I do have a slight advantage over the rest of you. It helps in a pinch to be able to remind your bride that you gave up a throne for her.
Former King Edward VIII, who married Mrs Simpson on June 3, 1937

It must have been a little after three o'clock in the afternoon that it happened -- the afternoon of June 3rd, 1916 ... Rather might I have experienced a cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which I have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time – things that no other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a world so long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it remains …
Edgar Rice Burroughs, the opening of The Land That Time Forgot

Tall, coffee skin, ebony eyes, legs of paradise, a smile to end all smiles.
Pablo Picasso, on Josephine Baker, black American dancer, born on June 3, 1906

She seemed to move every part of her body in a different direction at once. She clowned outrageously, unable to stop herself. She crossed her eyes. Her feet tripped over each other while the other girls were kicking neatly in step. The effect of her performance was to mock the very idea of a chorus line, a row of people mechanically repeating the same gestures. The chorus line hated her. They had a simple term for what she was doing: scene stealing. But audiences loved her.
Phyllis Rose, author of Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time

... I improvised, crazed by the music…. Even my teeth and eyes burned with fever. Each time I leaped I seemed to touch the sky and when I regained earth it seemed to be mine alone.
Josephine Baker

Beautiful? It's all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest ... beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.
Josephine Baker

I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.
Josephine Baker

If an orchid could sizzle, it would be something like Josephine Baker.
Josephine Baker; excerpt from a review in The Los Angeles Examiner

Since I personified the savage on the stage, I tried to be as civilized as possible in daily life.
Josephine Baker

She is the Nefertiti of now.
Pablo Picasso; on Josephine Baker

We must change the system of education and instruction. Unfortunately, history has shown us that brotherhood must be learned, when it should be natural.
Josephine Baker

It [the Eiffel Tower] looked very different from the Statue of Liberty, but what did that matter? What was the good of having the statue without the liberty?
Josephine Baker

The most sensational woman anybody ever saw, or ever will.
Ernest Hemingway; on Josephine Baker

Josephine left Paris rich, adored, famous throughout Europe. But in New York, in spite of the publicity that preceded her arrival, she was received as an uppity colored girl.
Jo Bouillon, Josephine Baker's fourth husband

I'm not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.
Josephine Baker

Art is an elastic sort of love.
Josephine Baker

One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States…. A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore ... I felt liberated in Paris.
Josephine Baker

The picture of you in the newspaper saying that, amongst other reasons, you have come to London to see me has greatly enhanced my credit line in the neighborhood, and particularly with the greengrocer across the street.
TS Eliot; letter to his friend, Groucho Marx, June 3, 1964

The male is just a bundle of conditioned reflexes, incapable of a mentally free response … The conflict, therefore, is not between females and males, but between SCUM – dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe …
Valerie Solanis, American feminist activist and author, who shot American artist, Andy Warhol, on June 3, 1968, SCUM Manifesto

June 3 is the 154^th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (155^th in leap years), with 211 days remaining.
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Festival to Bellona, goddess of war, Roman Empire

Platner (1929) tells us that Bellona (seen here as portrayed by Rembrandt) was a goddess who probably represented that characteristic of Mars, the Roman war god, which was displayed in the fierceness of battle frenzy.

In Greek mythology, Enyo ('horror') was an ancient goddess known by the epithet 'Waster of Cities' and frequently depicted as being covered in blood and carrying weapons of war. She was frequently portrayed as a companion of Ares, the chief god of war, and has been variously said to be his mother or sister. She was occasionally said to be one of the Graeae.

Enyo's Roman counterpart, Bellona, like Ares's counterpart Mars, was much more popular. She is believed to be one of the numinous gods of the Romans (without a particular mythology and possibly of Etruscan origin), and is supposed by many to have been the Romans' original war deity, predating the identification of Mars with Ares. Her name, Bellona, is derived from the Latin word for 'war' (bellum), and is directly related to the modern English word 'belligerent' (lit., 'war-bearing'). In art, she is portrayed with a helmet, sword, spear, and torch.

Near the beginning of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth is introduced as a violent and brave warrior when the Thane of Ross calls Macbeth "Bellona's bridegroom" (I.ii.54).

Politically, all Senate meetings relating to foreign war were conducted in the Templum Bellonae (Temple of Bellona) on the Collis Capitolinus outside the pomerium. Victorious generals on their return to Rome were received here, and to vote upon their claims for a triumph; foreign ambassadors were also received here. In front of the building stood the Columna Bellica. This temple was vowed by Appius Claudius Caecus in 296 BCE (Liv. x.19.17; Plin. NH xxxv.12; Ovid, Fasti, vi.201-204) and dedicated some years later on June 3 Ovid, Fasti vi. 201) and was burned down in 48 BCE.

Roman calendar    Roman festivals and notable days in the Book of Days    Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days   More

The Poson Festival commemorates the anniversary of the introduction of Buddhism to Sri Lanka.

Full moon in June would be an excellent time to be in the mountainous heart of Sri Lanka at Mihintale (aka Mihinthele), the 'cradle of Buddhism' in that beautiful but tragic island. For two days of the full moon of June, the Festival of Poson is in full flight. It is a nationwide commemoration, but Mihintale is the place to be.

It was here in 246 BCE that the Buddhist apostle Arhat Mahinda Thero, special envoy of his father (Asoka, 264 - 267 BCE King of India), met King Devanampiyatissa (307 - 267 BCE) on the full moon day in the month of Poson and officially introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka.

Devanampiyatissa was out deer-hunting in the wilderness around Mihintale. The royal party pursued a stag that fled in the direction of Silakuta (the northern peak of Mihintale mountain), and the king suddenly came upon Arhat Mahinda and his companions. The thera (elder, or saint) soon engaged the king in repartee that led to Devanampiyatissa's conversion to Theravada Buddhism ...

Read on at the Poson page at the Scriptorium

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Ludi Saeculares, or Centennial Games, ancient Rome, final day The first celebration of the ludi saeculares in the reign of Augustus Caesar took place in the summer of the year  17 BCE (Tacit. Ann. xi.11); the second took place in the reign of Claudius,  47 CE (Suet. Claud. 21). The third games were in the reign of Domitian, in 88 (Suet. Dom. 4) – so we can see that they weren't actually commemorated only every 100 years –  and the last in the reign of Marcus Iulius Philippus (Philip the Arab) in 248, which was generally believed to be just 1,000 years after the founding of the city of Rome by Romulus and Remus. The celebrations were concerned essentially with the chthonian (non-Olympian) divinities Dis (Dis Pater) and Prosperpina, but on the first day the games, in the Tarentum, sacrifices were offered also to Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Ceres, Vulcan, Mars, Diana, Vesta, Hercules, Latona and the Parcae. Today, offerings were made to Apollo and Diana on the Palatine Hill of Rome. First on the Palatine and then on the Capitoline Hill, 27 boys and as many girls sang Horace's hymn, the 'Carmen Saeculare', which was commissioned by Augustus for the games. They sang other hymns and paeans in Greek and Latin, to ensure the safety of the cities under Rome; other ceremonies besides were performed. More   More And more   Athena, ancient Greece "The third day of each month is sacred to the Goddess Athena." Source: Earth, Moon and Sky Feast day of St Achileo Kiwanuka Feast day of St Adolofu Mukasa Ludigo Feast day of St Albert of Como Feast day of St Ambrosio Kibuuka Feast day of St Anatoli Kiriggwajjo Feast day of St Anderea Kaggwa Feast day of St Antanansio Bazzekuketta Feast day of St Bruno Sserunkuuma Feast day of St Caecilius, confessor (Rosa de meaux, Rosa provincialis, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.) Feast day of St Charles Lwanga and companions, Martyrs of Uganda Executed by by King Mwanga II. More Feast day of St Clotilde (Clotildis; Clotilda), Queen of France Feast day of St Kevin (Coemgen; Caoimhín; Coemgenus), Irish bishop and confessor Abbot of Glendalough in County Wicklow, Ireland, b. about 498. His name signifies 'fair-begotten'. He was baptised by St Cronan, Abbott of Roscrea and educated by St Petroc. He established a church for his own community at Glendalough. This monastery was to become the parent of several others and eventually, with its seven churches, became one of the chief pilgrimage destinations in Ireland. His legend says that he lived to the age of 120. 'Kevin' is the English-language spelling of the Irish name Caoimhín (Coemgen in Old Irish, latinised as Coemgenus). Legend says he retired to a cave on the steep shore of a lake where he vowed no woman should ever land. A girl, Kathleen, followed him; he flogged her with nettles and hurled her from a rock. Her ghost never left the place where he lived. A cave at Glendalough, Wicklow, is said to be the bed of St Kevin. Ivor H Evans, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988 "On arrival in Glendalough Kevin chose the area of the upper lake and settled on the south side of the foot of that lake in St. Kevin's Bed, an artificial cave about thirty feet above the level of the lake which was originally a Bronze Age tomb. Kevin lived the life of a hermit there with an extraordinary closeness to nature, his companions were the animals and birds all around him. He lived as a hermit for seven years wearing only animal skins, sleeping on stones and eating very sparingly."   Source More  Feast day of St Denis Ssebuggwawo Feast day of St Diego Oddi Feast day of St Gausmarus Feast day of St Genesius, Bishop of Clermont, confessor Feast day of St Glunshallaich Feast day of St Gonzaga Gonza Feast day of St Gyavire Feast day of St Hilary Feast day of St Hypatius Feast day of St Isaac Feast day of St James Buzabaliao Feast day of St John Grande Feast day of St John Maria Muzeyi Feast day of St Joseph Mukasa Feast day of St Kizito Feast day of St Lifard (Liphardus), abbot Feast day of St Lukka Baanabakintu Feast day of the Martyrs of Uganda Feast day of St Matiya Mulumba Feast day of St Mbaga Tuzinde Feast day of St Morand Feast day of St Muggaga Feast day of St Mukasa Kiriwawanvu Feast day of St Nowa Mawaggali Feast day of St Oliva Feast day of St Our Lady of the Holy Letter Feast day of St Ponsiano Ngondwe Feast day of St Wyllow (Willow) A Cornish hermit saint and martyr said to have been born in Ireland, he was reputedly beheaded by Melyn ys Kynrede in the parish of Lanteglos, near Fowey. Supposedly, he then carried his head for half a mile to St Willow's Bridge, where a church was later built in his honour. Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints Confederate Memorial Day, pubic holiday, Louisiana, USA Jefferson Davis Day (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina)   Memorial to Broken Dolls Day, Japan A Buddhist ritual attended by little girls and their mothers, in which broken dolls are enshrined by a priest. Gregory, Ruth W, Anniversaries and Holidays, American Library Association, Chicago, 1983 Broken Dolls Day is dedicated to Children's Goddesses.   Jack Jouett Day, Virginia, USA Honours the anniversary of the ride of Jack Jouett from Cuckoo Tavern to Charlottesville to warn Thomas Jefferson of the approach of the British. Gregory, Ruth W, Anniversaries and Holidays, American Library Association, Chicago, 1983, 75 Festival of Cataclysmos, Cyprus "[A] seaside ritual which consists of prayers for the souls of the departed, water games, and a sacred dance." Source: Earth, Moon and Sky Anti-Smoking Day, Republic of China in Taiwan Commemorates the day on which Lin Zexu confiscated crates of opium. National Reconciliation Week, Australia (May 27 - Jun 3) Green Week (May 31 - Jun 3)       On which day of the week were you born? Find out here 1726 James Hutton (d. 1797), geologist 1761 Henry Shrapnel (d. March 13, 1842), British Army officer and inventor (shrapnel shell). The Oxford English Dictionary documents that the term 'shrapnel' is often incorrectly used to describe fragments or shot included in explosive weapons. Hence, 'shrapnel' is also British and Australian English slang for loose change. In fact, according to the dcitionary, the term is correctly used to describe the weapon itself. 1774 Robert Tannahill (d. May 17, 1810), Scottish poet known as the 'Weaver Poet' 1780 William Hone (d. November 6, 1842), English folklorist, author and publisher (The Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, 1825-26 edition online; The Year Book of Daily Recreation and Information). In 1816, Hone opened a shop at 67 Old Bailey, London and associated with leading radicals of his time. Three times in 1817, he was arrested for blasphemous and seditious libel charges allegedly made against Lords Sidmouth and Castlereagh in three pamphlets, The late John Wilkes’s Catechism of a Ministerial Member, The Political Litany, Diligently Revised and The Sinecurist’s Creed, or Belief. Hone's three trials and three acquittals marked a turning point in the fight for British press freedom, and he became a national celebrity. In The Political House that Jack Built, a George Cruikshank-illustrated pamphlet published by Hone in 54 editions (1819 - '20), he satirized the corruption of government and excesses of royalty. "A few dozens of miles to the west in Bath, a young woman is delivered of her first child – a boy named after his father, William Hone. The Gordon Riots, as an amused Hone would remember in his later years, offered an entirely fitting backdrop for his introduction into the world. After all, Hone worked for much of his life to level the economic divisions and aristocratic hierarchies that constituted the very fabric of eighteenth-century life in Britain. He achieved celebrity (or notoriety, depending on one's perspective) as an 'infidel' parodist, and, though his methods were not so overtly disruptive as the various popular insurrections that troubled England during his lifetime, he nonetheless became a kind of humble giant-killer who permanently altered the nature of the printing and publishing industries and paved the way for the emergence of a free and politically critical press. To put the case simply, Hone, more than any of the other radical journalist/publishers of the early nineteenth century, reconfigured the relations between writers, publishers, and the reading public. At the beginning of his career, 'print culture,' and the social and political clout that goes with it, was chiefly the province of the wealthy or aristocratic few; at the end, a mass reading public that is the precursor to a more modern demographics of mass readership had emerged. Hone's activities as a parodist, a publisher, a political commentator, and even as an antiquarian did much to encourage this shift."   Source Hone Manuscript Collection    More 1804 Richard Cobden (d. April 2, 1865), British manufacturer, peace campaigner and Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with John Bright in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League. In 1849, he brought forward a proposal in parliament in favour of international arbitration, and, in 1851, a motion for mutual reduction of armaments. He was not successful in either case, not did he expect to be. In pursuance of the same object, he identified himself with a series of peace congresses which from 1848 to 1851 were held successively in Brussels, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Manchester and Edinburgh. Early progressives in the Book of Days 1808 Jefferson Davis (d. 1889), President of the Confederate States of America 1844 Detlev von Liliencron (d. 1909), poet 1853 Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, archaeologist 1864 Ransom E Olds, automobile pioneer 1865 King George V of the United Kingdom (d. 1936), born at Marlborough House, London 1877 Raoul Dufy (d. 1953), French painter 1888 Tom Brown (d. 1958), jazz musician 1901 Maurice Evans (d. 1989), actor   1906 Josephine Baker (d. 1975), Afro-American dancer, singer and actress. By age 15, Baker ran away from home, left her first husband, and joined Clara Smith in a travelling show. After a short stay in Harlem, NYC, Baker left for Paris to appear in La Revue Negre where her nude dance with Joe Alex tantalized audiences. Eclipsing every other performer in Paris, Josephine Baker represented Europe's new black music following WWI. During WWII, Baker spied in German-occupied France for the resistance. Returning to the US in 1951, Baker refused to perform at segregated venues. She housed the first black troupe in any Las Vegas hotel. But in the 1970s, Baker was forced to wander the streets begging for her adopted child