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The sky split apart and a great fire appeared. It became so hot that one couldn't stand it. There was a deafening explosion [and my friend] S. Semenov was blown over the ground across a distance of three sazhens [six meters]. As the hot wind passed by, the ground and the huts trembled. Sod was shaken loose from our ceilings and glass was splintered out of the window frames.
Eyewitness to the Tunguska event of June 30, 1908

The results of even a cursory examination exceeded all the tales of eyewitnesses and my wildest expectations.
Leonid Kulik, the first academic investigator to visit the Tunguska 'event' scene (1921)

... a huge meteorite is said to have fallen in Tomsk several sagenes from the railway line near Filimonovo junction and less then 11 versts from Kansk. Its fall was accompanied by a frightful roar and a deafening crash, which was heard more then 40 versts away. The passengers of a train approaching the junction at the time were struck by the unusual noise. The driver stopped the train and the passengers poured out to examine the fallen object, but they were unable to study the meteorite closely because it was red hot ...
A contemporary newspaper account of the Tunguska 'event'    Source

Tunguska

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Inti Raymi, Incan Winter Solstice Festival of the Sun, Sacsayhuaman, Cuzco, Peru (Jun 24 - Jul 2)

Hekate, or Hecate
"The last day of each month is sacred to the Goddess Hekate. In ancient times, worshippers would leave a 'Hecate's Supper' with specially prepared foods as offerings to Hecate. The offerings were also gifts to appease the restless ghosts, called apotropaioi by the Greeks. These offerings are best prepared for the goddess on the eve of the new moon, to be left behind at crossroads at night, without looking back."   Source

Feast day of St Airick

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Feast day of St Martial, Bishop of Limoges
In medieval Europe, tall tales arose that depicted St Martial as a friend of Jesus Christ, and a worker of extravagant miracles, who was dispatched to Gaul by St Peter. The stories were a couple of centuries wide of the mark, but it is believed to be true that Martial went with St Denis of Paris to evangelize Gaul.

Feast day of the Martyrs of Rome

Feast day of St Ostianus

Feast day of St Philip Powell

Feast day of St Raymond Lull

Feast day of St Theobald

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Pridie Kalendas July (Day Before the Kalends of July)
This is one of the dies comitiales, when committees of citizens could vote on political or criminal matters.

Burning of the Fires, Thann, France
Thann is a town in the Alsace region of France. This day celebrates three 'stars' that moved to a spot over the forest in the 12^th Century and then stopped, marking the village's founding.

Independence Day, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire)
Since 1998, the country has suffered greatly from the devastating and genocidal Second Congo War (known also as the African World War), the deadliest conflict since World War II.

More in the Scriptorium (a graphic representation of the Congo carnage)

Bank Holiday (Balance Day), El Salvador

Army Day, Guatemala

National Salvation Revolution Day, Sudan

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

1470 King Charles VIII of France (d. 1498)

1685 John Gay, English poet and playwright (The Beggar's Opera)

"English poet and dramatist, friend of Pope and Swift, Gay is remembered from his play The Beggar's Opera (1728), which have (sic) been basis for Bertold Brecht's classical work The Threepenny Opera (1928). The play was highly successful and enabled Gay to spent (sic) more money on gambling and drinking. Its sequel, Polly (1729), was supposedly suppressed by the prime minister Robert Walpole, who thus only incited people to buy its printed version.

Let us drink and sport to-day,
Ours is not to-morrow:
Love with youth flies swift away,
Age is naught but sorrow.
Dance and sing,
Time's on the wing,
Life never knows the return of spring.
(from The Beggar's Opera)

Source

1685 Dominikus Zimmermann (d. 1766), Rococo architect, master builder

1775 Paul de Barras (d. 1829), politician

1789 Horace Vernet (d. 1863), painter and graphic artist

1807 Friedrich Theodor Vischer (d. 1887), narrator, lyricist, philosopher

1817 Joseph Dalton Hooker (d. 1911), botanist

1825 Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, (German: Müller) (d. October 10, 1896), German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably botanist.

1861 Sir Frederick Hopkins (Frederick Gowland Hopkins), English biochemist, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1929 with Christiaan Eijkman for the discovery of vitamins

1891 Sir Stanley Spencer, British artist

1893 Walter Ulbricht (d. 1973), politician

1899 Harry Shields (d. 1971), jazz musician

What killed Susan Hayward?

1917 Susan Hayward (born Edythe Marrenner; d. 1975), American actress (Oscar: I Want To Live!); portrayed an alcoholic in three films, (Smash-Up, The Story of a Woman, My Foolish Heart, and I'll Cry Tomorrow) and was nominated for an Oscar for each performance.

Hayward died of brain cancer, possibly because she was one of the cast members of the ill fated film The Conquerer, which was filmed in 1954 in the Nevada desert near to where dozens of above-ground nuclear fission bombs had been detonated since 1951. The film crew returned to Hollywood with 60 tons of local fallout-contaminated red sand for studio retakes.

In later years those tests were suspected to have caused the cancer deaths of several of the film's stars, including John Wayne, Dick Powell, Agnes Moorehead and Pedro Armendáriz. Of the 220 persons who worked on The Conqueror on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it. In a population of that size and a similar age distribution, the expected cancer incidence might have been about thirty persons. Actor Pedro Armendariz developed cancer of the kidney just four years later, and later committed suicide upon learning that his condition was likely to be fatal.

Producer Howard Hughes is said to have loved his anachronistic tale of Genghis Khan (with John Wayne in the title role!), but withdrew it from distribution when it was met with a barrage of mockery from critics.

1917 Lena Horne, American singer and actress (film Stormy Weather)

"Began her career at 16 as a chorus girl at the Cotton Club in Harlem, appeared in the movies Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather and has Broadway career culminating in her one woman show.

"Horne was a strong civil rights advocate, refusing to perform in clubs where African-Americans were not admitted and marching during the civil rights movement in the 1960s."   Source: The Daily Bleed

1944 Glen Shorrock, Australian lead singer of the Little River Band

1944 Raymond Moody, parapsychologist

1959 Vincent D'Onofrio, actor (Full Metal Jacket, Ed Wood, Law & Order: Criminal Intent)

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

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4 Country Music Day
5 Workaholics Day
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7 Tanabata
7 Father And Daughter Take A Walk Together
8 Ice Cream Sundae Day
8 Be A Kid Day
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8 Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Omelette Day
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1651 Battle of Beresteczko ended with Polish victory.

1789 Revolutionists in Paris attacked Abbaye Prison.

1822 Spanish rebels took King Ferdinand VII prisoner.

1837 By Act of Parliament, the British banned the use of the pillory.

1841 Rain of fish, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
There are about 70 recorded rains of fish, but nearly all of the rains of fish are small ones. There is, however, one account of a fish fall in India in which more than 10 people picked up fish weighing up to eight pounds each. There are many accounts of rains of ice-coated ducks, grasshoppers, fish and frogs, but there is none of a raining of cats and dogs.  Source

 

1859 Tightrope maestro Charles Blondin (Jean François Gravelet) crossed Niagara Falls on a rope in five minutes.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, Blondin started the trip that was to make history. Dressed in pink tights and a yellow tunic, the great Blondin crossed a cable about five centimetres (two inches) in diameter and 335 metres (1,100 feet) long with only a balancing pole to protect him from a plunge into the swirling rapids below.

"He began his ascent toward the Canadian shore, paused, steadied the balancing pole and suddenly executed a back somersault. Never content merely to repeat his last performance, Blondin crossed his rope on a bicycle walked blindfolded, pushed a wheelbarrow, cooked an omelet [sic] in the centre and made the trip with his hands and feet manacled."   Source

Blondin crosses Middle Harbour, Sydney, Australia    More

 

The Lambing Flat Massacre, Australia

1861 The Lambing Flat riots or Lambing Flat massacre were a series of violent anti-Chinese demonstrations that took place in the Burrangong region, in New South Wales, Australia. They occurred on the goldfields at Spring Creek, Stoney Creek, Back Creek, Wombat, Blackguard Gully, Tipperary Gully, and Lambing Flat (now Young, New South Wales), in 1860 - '61.

From 1855, during periods of high unemployment, strikes occurred in the NSW gold mines. A major element of the strikes was violent opposition to immigrant Chinese labourers who had settled on the goldfields. The first disturbance grew out of a demonstration organised by a white miners' vigilance committee against gambling dens and other alleged vice on December 12, 1860. The miners attacked the Chinese quarter, killed several people and wounded many others. Other attacks followed and the Chinese miners were eventually forced to abandon the fields.

Some of the rioters were arrested whilst others fought gun battles with the police. A military detachment finally restored order in mid-1861. When the Chinese returned to the fields and the troops departed, a final, devastating riot occurred on June 30. Several thousand miners descended on the Chinese, plundering their dwellings. Mounted pursuers overtook the fleeing Chinese and degraded, beat, and robbed them. Police soon returned to restore order.

The NSW legislative bodies passed the Chinese Immigration Act in November 1861, restricting Chinese immigrants to certain areas and charging a residence tax in order to discourage immigration. In Victoria, Chinese arrivals were denied the right to naturalisation. Such sentiments sowed the seeds for the White Australia Policy that would dictate Australia's immigration policy for more than a century.

A banner from the period, painted on a tent-flap in 1861, is now on display at the Lambing Flat museum in Young, New South Wales. Bearing a Southern Cross superimposed over a St. Andrew's Cross with the inscription, 'Roll Up - No Chinese', the banner was a variant of the Eureka Flag. It served as an advertisement for a public meeting that presaged the infamous Lambing Flat riots later that year. Painted by a Scottish migrant, it is a testimony to the transfer of cultural practices and values through migration. It is possibly a unique example of the Chartist art form.

Source: Wikipedia

 

 

1864 Abraham Lincoln granted Yosemite Valley to California for "public use, resort and recreation".

1892 USA: The Homestead Strike began in the Pittsburgh-area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, resulting in a bloody and fatal battle between workers, their families and 300 Pinkerton agents on July 6.

1892 A fall of little frogs from the sky near Birmingham, UK, was reported. The frogs were almost white, unlike the local variety.

1894 The official opening of London's Tower Bridge.

1899 'Mile-a-Minute' Murphy reaches 60 mph on a bicycle.

The mysterious Tunguska Event

1908 7:17 am A giant fireball impacted in Central Siberia (Tunguska Event).

The mass of the unidentified object has been estimated at around 90,000 tonnes (about 100,000 tons) and the force of the explosion at 40 megatons of TNT. This is 2,000 times the force of the bomb exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. Even today, the exact cause of the explosion is unknown.

As old photographs show, and modern research confirms, an area as big as a large city had all its trees flattened by the awesome blast. The 'event' was so enormous that it has been estimated that had such an explosion occurred over Europe instead of the sparsely populated region of Siberia, the number of human victims might have been 500,000 or more.

Surprisingly, scientists of the day showed little interest in this extraordinary event and its consequences. Russia for the first two decades of the 20^th Century was embroiled in war, revolution, and civil war, so it wasn't until the 1920s that anyone performed a serious investigation of what had happened on that fateful day at Tunguska ...

 

Read on at the Tunguska page in the Scriptorium

 

1918 Australia's census revealed the national population as 4,980,056. The Aboriginal population was not counted in those days; it is estimated to have been 75,000 - 100,00.

1926 Alan Cobham began the first Australia-England-Australia flight.

1934 Adolf Hitler eliminated most of his political opposition in Germany in the Night of the Long Knives.

1936 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was published.

1938 Action Comics published Superman for the first time.

1941 HMAS Waterhen became the first Australian ship sunk in World War II; it was lost off Libya.

1960 Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller movie, Psycho, opened.

1969 In an attempt to prevent supplies falling into the hands of Biafran troops, the Nigerian government took control of all aid agencies within the country.

1971 Three Russian cosmonauts on the Soyuz 11 spacecraft were found dead in their spaceship after a record-breaking 24 days in space. They died of oxygen starvation in the final stage of their journey when their air supply leaked out through a faulty valve.

1971 The 26^th Amendment to the US Constitution, lowering the voting age to 18, was ratified as Ohio became the 38^th state to approve it.

1974 Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defected to the West while touring with the Bolshoi Ballet in Canada.

1977 MAN BITES DOG is supposed to be a better news headline than DOG BITES MAN. It happened, according to a Reuters report on this day, in Blankenberge, Belgium. A dog-owner intervened in a fight between his 'bitser' dog and a setter, biting the setter. The man was first hit on the head by the setter owner's handbag, then charged with assault.

1981 A youth fired a blank cartridge in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom at the Trooping the Colour, London.

1985 Yul Brynner gave his final performance in the musical The King and I – his 4,633^rd performance.

1989 Brigadier General Omar Hasan Ahmed al-Bashir led a coup against the Sudanese government of Sadiq el-Mahdi.

1990 East and West Germany merged their economies.

2005 Spain legalised same-sex marriage.

 

 

Tomorrow: Naval tragedy forgotten by USA and Australia

 

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Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
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