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China's laogai (gulag) system holds millions for forced labor in brutal conditions without a fair trial, including many prisoners of conscience who are free of any crime. Falun Gong members and House Christians are brutally persecuted, tortured, and killed. Tibet is occupied and its people subjugated. The Chinese can't even look up many sources of news and information on the internet; the government is afraid for them to be exposed to freedom. Oppression and atrocities in China are not a thing of the past, but an ignored fact of the present.
Freedom for China: China Support Network, 2004

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
Socrates, ancient Athenian philosopher, (b. June 4, 470 BCE; d. soon after his conviction, February 15, 399 BCE)

The life that is unexamined is not worth living.
Socrates, Apology, 38

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Socrates, Phaedo, 91

Nothing can harm a good man, either in life or after death.
Socrates

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife
you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates

And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave - for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!
The closing words of the celebrated Diary of  Samuel Pepys (1633 - 1703); he lived another 34 years and did not go blind as he had feared. He was buried on June 4, 1703.

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia

Worse Than Watergate
John Dean

8 Weeks to Optimum Health

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The Case Against Wal-Mart

Methods of Nonviolent Action

The Torture Debate in America

You Can Prevent Global Warming (and Save Money)

Pagan Christianity

Waging Nonviolent Struggle

An Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore

The God Who Wasn't There

When Corporations Rule the World

A Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy

The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD

The Weather Makers
Tim Flannery

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

Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America
By Bruce Shapiro

Fraud

Salam Pax
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Seeds of Deception

Cutting Your Car Use

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Dude, Where's My Country?

Photo of the day

Mother Earth Spirituality

Rich Media, Poor Democracy
Robert McChesney

Votes for women

Woman Suffrage in Australia

How the Vote Was Won

Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment

More women's suffrage books

Psychedelic Experience
Leary/Alpert/ Metzner

Your Brain Is God

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Change Your Brain

High Priest

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Chaos & Cyber Culture

Politics of Self-Determination

Timothy Leary

Flashbacks

Feast day of St Breaca, or Breague, virgin, of Ireland

Feast day of St Buriana (Burian) of Ireland

Feast day of St Francis Caracciolo
St Francis Caracciolo (October 13, 1563 - June 4, 1608), the Italian founder of a contemplative order of priests known as of the Minor (or Lesser) Clerks Regular, chose to live out his last days in a recess under the stairs of the Neapolitan branch of the order. He died aged 44. Caracciolo was beatified by Pope Clement XIV on June 4, 1769, and canonized by Pope Pius VII on May 24, 1807. Today is an important feast day in Naples and Francis is the patron saint of Naples and Italian cooks.

St Francis and the mistaken invitation
Born in 1563 in the Abruzzi, Italy, Ascanio Caracciolo, as his name was at first, at the age of 22 developed a skin disorder like leprosy. He promised to dedicate himself to God if he was miraculously cured, which happened. In 1588 he received by mistake a letter inviting another Ascanio Caracciolo to help establish a contemplative order of priests. This accident led to the foundation of the Minor (or Lesser) Clerks Regular.

More 

Feast day of St Margaret of Vau-le-Duc

Feast day of St Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad

Feast day of St Metrophanes

Feast day of St Nennoc (Nennoca), virgin, of Britain

Feast day of St Optatus, Bishop of Milevum (Milevis), confessor

Feast day of St Quirinus, Bishop of Siscia, martyr
(Indian pink, Dianthus chinensis, is today's plant, dedicated to St Quirinus.)

Feast day of St Rutilius and Companions

Feast day of St Saturnina

Feast day of St Walter, abbot of Fontenelle, or St Vandrilles

Feast day of St Walter, abbot in San-Serviliano

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Labor Day, the Bahamas
Today is a holiday in this Caribbean nation. It's celebrated with parades, colourful displays and picnics.

Emancipation Day (National Day), the Kingdom of Tonga
On June 4, 1970, after seventy years as a British Protectorate, the Pacific Island nation of Tonga became independent.

Yamashiro Shobuyu, Iris Bath Event, Japan (June 4 - 5)
Scores of young men carry shobu mikoshi around the public baths at the Yamashiro Spa at Kama, Ishikawa Prefecture. When the baths are opened to the public, bales of iris (shobu) leaves are thrown into the spa, which is done to expel evil. Ryokan (hotels) are decorated with special curtains called mammaku. The eaves of inns and homes are decorated with iris leaves and red lanterns. Geishas dance to the beat of drums played by young men.
Bauer, Helen, and Carlquist, Sherwin, Japanese Festivals, Doubleday & Co, Garden City, New York, 1965, 156

Fiesta, Berga, Spain
'Turks' on hobby horses stage dance-battles, joined by bizarre devils exploding fireworks, who are then disposed of by the Archangel Michael and huge, giraffe-necked mules, eagles, dancing giants and dwarves.

Old Maids' Day (source unknown)

See Flag days in Finland   Holidays in Finland

Free Women's Festival, Pennsylvania, USA

International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression (UN)

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

470 BCE Socrates, Athenian philosopher, who was eventually executed by being forced to drink hemlock, following his conviction on February 15, 399 BCE (see the Trial of Socrates)

1489 Anthony II of Lorraine, 'Il Buono', Duke of Lorraine (d. 1544)

1738 King George III of Great Britain (reigned 1760 - his death in 1820), born at 7:30 am.

King George III
Possibly the most popular monarch of Britain ever (except, of course, to the Americans, with good cause), George III ruled for sixty years and his birthday was celebrated as a holiday all over the Empire, including the colony of New South Wales (Australia) from its earliest days. In Britain, bonfires burned in the streets and fireworks were let off. It wasn't uncommon for there to be riots on account of drunkenness. In 1809, the fiftieth year of his reign, celebrations were particularly high spirited.

1754 Franz Xaver, Baron Von Zach, scientific editor, astronomer (d. 1832)

1838 Margaret Sangster, American writer

1843 Charles C Abbott, American naturalist and author (Days Out of Doors)

1844 Alban Joseph Riley (d. July 24, 1914), Mayor of Sydney who provoked the Republican Riot of 1887 at Sydney Town Hall. See June 3 and June 10.

"Alderman for Cook Ward, 1 December 1885 to 30 November 1891. He was a draper. He was a magistrate in 1883 and an alderman in the Burwood Municipal Council in 1884. Riley was Mayor in 1887. He was appointed Special Commissioner to organise the State's Centenary Celebrations of 1888. He was elected as a free trader to the Legislative Assembly for South Sydney, 1877-1889, and appointed MLC 1891-1893. Riley actively supported the School of Arts, and served as a Director of the Sydney Hospital and the Benevolent Asylum. He was also a special commissioner for the Centennial celebrations and a New South Wales commissioner for the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition in 1887. He was born on 8 June 1844 and died on 24 July 1914."   Source

List of Mayors and Lord Mayors of Sydney    Sydney trivia

1857 Barbara Baynton (d. May 28, 1929), Australian writer whose short stories appeared in The Bulletin. Six of these were published as Bush Studies (1902). Later she published appeared Human Toll, a novel (1907). During WWI she lived in England, marrying her third husband, Baron Headley, in 1921.

"For many years, the date of her birth and the identities of her parents were uncertain, because Baynton altered her birth date and disguised her parents' identities. She claimed to have been born in 1862, to Penelope Ewart and Captain Robert Kilpatrick, who were supposedly Irish immigrants to Australia and fell in love on the ship en route to Australia. Although Penelope Ewart was supposedly married at the time, she began a relationship with Kilpatrick and later married him when her husband died. This story, which was believed even by Baynton's own grandchildren, was later proven false."   Source

"Barbara Baynton took a blacker view of the bush than Lawson - particularly in relation to the fortunes of women who were often left alone for months by their husbands who were off droving or looking for work.

"In Lawson's The Drover's Wife, the wife, beset by a snake is alone except for her dog, Alligator, and her children. She is a woman of whom Lawson says:

"One of her children died while she was here alone. She rode 19 miles for assistance, carrying the dead child ... She seems contented with her lot. She loves her children, but has no time to show it. She seems harsh to them. Her surroundings are not favourable to the development of the 'womanly' or sentimental side of nature.

"In Baynton's The Chosen Vessel the scenario is similar. The husband, a shearer, is off working, leaving the woman alone with their baby in their shanty.

"In The Drover's Wife, the drover is presented as a decent man: 'he is careless, but a good enough husband'. In Baynton's story, the husband laughs at his wife's fear of their cow:

"It was he who forced her to run and meet the advancing cow, brandishing a stick, and uttering threatening words till the enemy turned and ran. 'That's the way!' the man said, laughing at her white face. In many things he was worse than the cow, and she wondered if the same rule would apply to the man, but she was not one to provoke skirmishes even with the cow.

"Where Lawson's drover's wife endures and overcomes hardships alone, in Baynton's story, the woman, alone, friendless and isolated in the impassive Australian bush is raped and murdered by a passing traveller."   Source

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1867 Alfred Vierkandt, sociologist (d. 1953)

1867 Carl Mannerheim, Finnish soldier and President

1877 Heinrich Wieland (d. 1957), biochemist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1927

1878 Frank Buchman, American founder of the religious organisation, the 'Oxford Group', which became Moral Rearmament, out of which grew the organisation, Alcoholics Anonymous

Frank Buchman's association with Nazism and Fascism

1882 Karl Valentin, comedian and author (d. 1948)

1887 Tom Longboat, marathon runner and World War I despatch runner (d. 1949)

1907 (or 1908; 1911; 1912) –Rosalind Russell, actress (d. 1976) (His Girl Friday; Auntie Mame; Night Must Fall)

1910 Robert Anderson, economic advisor to President Dwight D Eisenhower

1910 Christopher Cockerell, British inventor of the Hovercraft  

1911 Rev. Dr Sir Alan Walker Kt, OBE, MA, DD (d. January 30, 2003), often controversial Australian churchman, antiwar activist, founder of Lifeline.

The telephone service for people in trouble is now in 14 countries and 41 Australian cities, and in Australia alone is staffed by 10,000 volunteers.

"The Rev Dr Sir Alan Walker started Lifeline in Sydney in 1963 after the suicide of a man named Roy Brown. Roy took his own life before he and Rev Walker had the chance to meet and talk about his problems. His death was the catalyst for Rev Walker's vision of a counselling service that could be accessed by phone any time of the night or day. An announcement was placed in a Sydney newspaper which read "help is as close as the telephone. You don't have to be alone. Someone who cares is available 24 hours a day" – and Lifeline was born.

"Lifeline still reflects Rev Walker's community-based approach to providing care to those in need. Today Lifeline operates in 14 countries around the world."   Source

"Sir Alan saw that Australia's largest city – Sydney – had a crying need for a counselling service and a means to address this problem in a caring and practical way. With this realisation and vision, Sir Alan established the Lifeline movement.

"Forty years later, Lifeline is an international organisation with a mantle of care over some of the world's largest cities. As a result, millions of men and women around the world have received support and hope in times of loneliness, isolation and need. Lifeline phone counsellors take 400,000 calls a year, 20,000 in Sydney alone."   Source

Obituary   More

1915 Heinrich Tenhumberg (d. 1979), theologian, bishop of Münster

1916 Gaylord Nelson (d. July 3, 2005), American Democratic politician from Wisconsin and the principal founder of Earth Day

1919 Robert Merrill, opera singer

1922 Gene Barry, American actor. An early starring film role was in the 1953 production of The War of the Worlds. He made a cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg's 2005 War of the Worlds, along with his 1953 co-star Ann Robinson. Known for his suave manner, Barry starred on television in Our Miss Brooks, Bat Masterson, The Name of the Game, and Burke's Law.

1923 Elizabeth Jolley (d. February 13, 2007), English-born Australian writer (The Well; Lovesong) who wrote her first novel when she was nearly sixty years old. It is said that Jolley began writing early in her twenties, but was not recognised or published until much later. Her first book, Five Acre Virgin, a collection of stories, was published in 1976, when Jolley was 53. In 1986, her novel The Well won the top Australian literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award. She was made an officer of the Order of Australia in 1988 and declared a National Living Treasure in 1997. In her later career she taught at Fremantle Arts Centre and Curtin University, both in Western Australia.

Australian literature    Australian novelists

1924 Dennis Weaver, American actor (TV series: Gunsmoke; McLeod)

1928 Dr Ruth Westheimer, American sex therapist, author

1929 Günter Strack (d. 1999), actor

1929 John Drew Barrymore, American actor

Barrymore family of American actors

1936 Bruce Dern, American character actor (Oscar nomination: Coming Home)

1937 Freddy Fender, American Tex-Mex, country musician and rockabilly singer

1937 Robert Fulghum, American author (All I Really need to Know I learned in Kindergarten; It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It)

1942 Robbie Porter, Australian musician and record producer, who, as Rob EG, had several guitar hits in the 1960s

1944 Michelle Phillips, American actress, singer (The Mamas & the Papas)

1945 Gordon Waller, musician (Peter and Gordon)

1947 Viktor Klima, former Austrian Chancellor

1952 Parker Stevenson, actor, director

1956 John Hockenberry, journalist

1962 Lindsay Frost, actress

1971 Noah Wyle, actor

1975 Angelina Jolie, actress

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