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The name "sheela-na-gig" was most likely derived from the Irish language. The two most common translations are "Sile na gCioch" ("sheela of the breasts") or "Sile-ina-Giob" ("sheela on her hunkers"). In the Encyclopedia of Sacred Sexuality, Rufus Camphausen notes that in Mesopotamia the term "nu-gug" ("the pure and immaculate ones") referred to the sacred temple harlots, and he postulates that the name may somehow have had its origins there. Kathryn Price Theatana outlines an interesting etymological study of the name on her website – well worth a look.
Source

My girlfriend always laughs during sex – no matter  what she's reading.
Steve Jobs, co-founder, Apple Computers. The Apple II, the first practical personal computer, first went on sale on June 4, 1977.

My cousin just died. He was only 19. He got stung by a bee – the natural enemy of a tightrope walker.
Dan Rather, American TV news anchorman

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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World Environment Day

Inaugurated by a resolution of the United Nations at the June 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, today is observed by the many member states of the United Nations.

WED Alphabet - 60 Ways to Celebrate

Festival of Semo Sancus, ancient Rome

A note on the dating of items in the Almanac

From Wikipedia: In Roman mythology, Sancus was the god of loyalty, honesty, and oaths. His cult is one of the most ancient of Romans, probably derived from Etruscan or Oscan influences.

He was also the god who protected loyalty in commerce, and contracts in particular. Some forms of swearings were used in his name and honour at the moment of the signing of contracts and other important civil acts. Some words (like sanction – for the case of disrespect of pacts) have their etymology in the name of this god, whose name is connected with sancire 'to hallow' (hence sanctus, 'hallowed').

There was a temple to him on the Quirinal Hill, under the name Semo Sancus Dius Fidus.

"A statue of Semo Sancus Dius Fidius on the island in the Tiber, where an inscription of the second century was found in 1574 (CIL vi.567). The marble base on which this inscription is placed supported a statue which, because of the similarity of names, the early Christians mistook for one of Simon Magus (Justin Mart. Apol. pr. 25, 56; Iren. contra haeres. i.23; Tert. adv. gent. 13; Cyrill. Hierosol. Catechesis 6; Euseb. Hist. eccles. ii.13, 14). There is no evidence for the existence of any shrine or altar here, and the cult of Semo Sancus may well have been connected with that of Iupiter Iurarius (q.v.), and this statue may have stood at or near his temple."   Source

Feast day of St Adalar

Feast day of St Dorotheus of Tyre, martyr

Feast day of St Dorotheus the Theban, abbot

Feast day of other saints named Dorotheus

Feast day of St Eoban

Feast day of St Felix of Fritzlar

Feast day of St Franciscan Martyrs of China

Feast day of St Genesius, Count of Clermont

Feast day of St Gobnet, (Gobnat; Gobnatt; Domnu; var. of Dymphna?)

(Suggested by some to be Sheel-na-Gig, Irish Earth Mother, patroness of birth and women.)

(Also at February 11 as she apparently is commemorated on that day as well.)

Sheela-na-gigs (pictured at right) are also gargoyles on ancient Christian churches in Ireland and throughout Britain. Stone carvings of one persona of the goddess, they show a woman, often with her legs open and exposing her gaping vagina. On January 9, 1990, a sheela-na-gig was stolen from Kiltinan Church, Lethard, Tipperary, Ireland.

More: Feast day of Sheela-na-gig at the Book of Days, March 18

See also Day of Sophia, November 27

Source of this date: Nigel Pennick, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992, p. 77 (Diane Stein, The Goddess Book of Days, Llewellyn Publications, St Paul Minnesota, 1989, says June 4).

"In the name of the female saint, Damhnaid, Damnata, Davnat or Dimna  … we may possibly also recognise that of Domnu, Domna, or Damna. The late Bishop Reeves called my attention to the fact that this saint was also the patroness of Gheel of Holland.

"One other place in Ireland, although not hitherto attributed to this latter divinity, was, I am inclined to think, a celebrated centre of her worship. This was Ballyvourney in Cork, where, however, she was known, not as Davnat, but as Gobnet  … The cultus of this divinity or saint is well worthy of note. The site of it is near the bank of the Sullane river. Here there is a green mound of slight elevation 'Gobnatt's Stone'. [Nineteenth-century Co. Cork historian, artist and antiquarian John] Windele [more] regarded it as a pagan monument. 'Here' says Windele, 'is neither church nor cell, but the remains are as pagan in their aspect and character as can be conceived …' The bushes on the mound were garnished with rags tied on by devotees, as is usual at sacred fountains … Near the cairn was the Holy Well, the branches over which were covered with rags. The ritual customary for the devotees consisted in going four times round the cairn and saying seven prayers at each round. The Pattern, or festival-day of Saint Gobnatt, was June 5th. The Boccoghs, or beggars (particularly lame beggars), then assembled in great strength and exhibited a sheela (note by Borlase: 'Sheelanagyg ... Gyg is the name in Norse for a female Iotun or Giantess'), that is to say, the image of a woman. Sheela was the patroness of women. In the drawer of the sacristy at Ballyvourney was preserved a wooden image of' Gobnatt, or Abigail, as she was called. The Boccoghs, whom Windele terms 'Irish Fakirs', were styled at Ballyvourney 'Gobnatt's Clergy'. It was said that they kept the image concealed, and only exhibited it on this occasion.

"The place where the Pattern was held on Gobnatt's Day was called Ballyvourney Ulla a word which, according to O'Reilly, means 'a place of devotion'."
William Borlase, The Dolmens of Ireland, their distribution, structural characteristics and affinities in other countries [...] together with the Floklore attaching to them, and with [a] supplement on the anthropology, ethnology, and traditions of the Irish People, 3 vols, Chapman & Hall, London, 1897, Vol. III, 1114   Source

 

Feast day of St Hadulph

Feast day of St Illidius, Bishop of Auvergne, confessor

Feast day of St Luke Loan

Feast day of St Marcian

Feast day of St Pacificus of Ceredano

Feast day of St Sanctinus

Feast day of St Tudno

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Agata (Shrine) Matsuri, at Uji, Agata Shrine, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan (June 5 - 6)
This festival is held in total dark at midnight. About 150 young believers carry a huge paper ball to the shrine and watch a ceremony of transferring a god to the bonten (inner shrine). Paper bits are scattered from the bonten; people who pick them up are assured happiness and prosperity.
Helen Bauer and Sherwin Carlquist, Japanese Festivals, Doubleday & Co, Garden City, New York, 1965, 157

Yobuko Otsunahiki, or Big Tug-of-War Event, at Higashi Matsuura, Saga prefecture, Japan (June 5 - 6)
"Two teams, one representing the land and one the sea, engage in a tug of war; if the land team wins, there will be a good harvest; if the sea team wins, the fishing season will be good."
Ibid, 157

Shirane Takogassen, or Kite-fighting Event, at Shirane, Niigata Prefecture, Japan (June 5 - 12)
About three hundred years ago, a levy was built on the banks of the Nakanoguchi River (a branch of the Shirane River), and kites were flown in celebration on work's completion. Depending on the wind, at about this time of year, the tradition continues. Some of the kites are as big as five by six metres. The smaller ones are engaged in air battles.
Ibid, 157

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

1341 Edmund of Langley (d. 1402), a younger son of King Edward III of England

1718 Thomas Chippendale (d. 1779), English furniture maker

From Wikipedia: His Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was one of the earliest attempts to study the historical development of industry and commerce in Europe. That work helped to create the modern academic discipline of economics and provided one of the best-known intellectual rationales for free trade, capitalism and libertarianism.

1757 Pierre Jean George Cabanis (d. 1808), physiologist

1771 King Ernest I of Hanover (d. 1851)

1781 Christian August Lobeck (d. 1860), classical scholar

1819 John Couch Adams, co-discoverer of Neptune

1850 Pat Garrett (d. 1908), Western lawman

1870 Jeannie Gunn (Mrs Aeneas Gunn), Australian author (We of the Never Never)

1876 Tony Jackson (d. 1920), musician

1878 Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary

1879 Robert Mayer (d. 1985), philanthropist

1883 John Maynard Keynes (d. April 21, 1946), British economist who developed Keynesian economics

1884 Ralph Benatzky (d. 1957), composer

1894 Roy Thomson (d. 1976), Lord Thomson of Fleet, publisher

1895 William Boyd (d. September 12, 1972), American actor who played Hopalong Cassidy in many popular movies and on TV

1898 Federico García Lorca (d. 1936), Spanish poet, lyricist and dramatist

"Federico García Lorca was born in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada on the 5th of June, 1898 and died the 19th of August, 1936. His life spanned the years between the Year of Disaster and the Spanish Civil War which ultimately victimized him. He travelled throughout Spain and America, principally Argentina, living and writing some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. His poetry has been translated into a dozen languages and his name is known worldwide. His personal life is the subject of much debate now, relating to his tendencies and friends."  Source

'Arc of Moons'
By Federico Garcia Lorca

An arc of black moons over the motionless sea.
My unborn children are chasing me.
'Father, dont run, wait, the youngest is dead!'
They hang from my pupils. The cock crows.
The sea turned into stone, laughs its last laugh full of waves.
'Father, don't run!'... My shouts turn into spikenards.
High towers. Long rivers.

Source

1919 Richard Scarry, American artist/writer, one of the world's best-selling children's book authors who wrote or illustrated more than 300 books. Scarry died in his chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, on April 30, 1994.

1928 Tony Richardson (d. 1991), British film and theatre director who spearheaded Britain's 'New Wave' of filmmaking in the late 1950s and early 1960s

1928 Robert Lansing (d. 1994), American actor

1931 Martin Vaughan, Australian actor (Picnic at Hanging Rock; Phar Lap)

1931 Jacques Demy, playwright

1932 Christy Brown (d. 1981), Irish author (My Left Foot)

1939 Joe Clark, sixteenth Prime Minister of Canada

1939 Margaret Drabble, English novelist

1941 Martha Argerich, Argentinian pianist

1941 Spalding Gray (d. 2004), actor, screenwriter, and monologue artist

1947 Laurie Anderson, performance artist, actress, composer

1949 Ken Follett, author

1954 Nicko McBrain, musician (Iron Maiden)

1962 Princess Astrid of Belgium

1971 Mark Wahlberg ('Marky Mark'), singer, actor

1979 David Bisbal, singer

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

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June

4 Cheese Day
5 World Environment Day
6 Applesauce Cake Day
6 D-Day Anniversary
7 Boone Day
8 Best Friends Day
8 Ice Cream Day
8 World Ocean Day
9 Cuddle Up Day
9 Profess Your Love Day
10 Iced Tea Day
10 Great Turtle Races Day
10 Strawberry Festival (West Virginia, USA)
10 Tomato Festival (Louisiana, USA)
10 Mourn For Your Money Day
10 Tomato Festival (Texas, USA)
11 Red Rose Festival
11 King Kamehameha Day (Hawaii)
12 Diary Day
13 Kitchen Klutzes Of America Day
13 Lobster Day
14 Flag Day
15 Sneak A Kiss Day
15 Smile Power Day
15 Electricity Day
15 A Friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed Day
15 Career Nursing Assistants Day
16 Morticians Day
17 International Violin Day
17 World Juggling Day
17 Sweden-America Day
17 Sandcastle Day (Oregon, USA)
17 Oyster Festival (California)
17 Hollerin' Contest (North Carolina)
17 Pepperfest (Oklahoma)

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Atlantis

8498 BCE Today is a traditional date of the natural calamity that destroyed the supposed ancient civilization of Atlantis.

One wonders what is the origin of the human love of the unlikely, the irrational, the bizarre and the preposterous, but no amount of wondering will solve the puzzle. The chance that an advanced civilization lies beneath the ocean, undetected by 21^st-Century oceanography, satellite imaging, geology and any number of modern scientific aids, is slim indeed, but here we have a persistent legend that is probably believed by more people today than in the Middle Ages. I confess to having my own imp of fascination for many things to which I give no credence whatsoever. A hobgoblin, a tale from the crypt, or a UFO or two can brighten the dreariest evening.

Atlantis, or so it is said, was a huge island lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules (now known as the Straits of Gibraltar) and its culture had dominated the Mediterranean nine thousand years before Solon, the lawmaker of Athens. From its ideal condition as an advanced culture, it deteriorated into a military aggressor, so the gods resolved to punish the civilization. We have this on authority of Plato in his Timaeus and Critias (c. 350 BCE). He learned the story from his cousin, who got it from his grandfather, who heard it from his father, who got it from Solon himself, who heard it from the priests of Sais in Egypt in 590 BCE ...

Atlantis (Donovan) midi

Read on at the Atlantis page at the Scriptorium

Ignatius Donnelly

As an interesting sidelight, one of the most prominent 19^th-century Atlantist authors (he made his fortune with Atlantis: the Antediluvian World) was Ignatius Donnelly (born Philadelphia, November 3, 1831), pictured, an idiosyncratic and somewhat quixotic American Congressman whose writings, particularly the utopian sci-fi novel, Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century, profoundly influenced the working class in pre-federation Australia. Perhaps ironically, he died in Minneapolis on January 1, 1901 (precisely 100 years before this Almanac was founded) on the first day of the century, the very day that Australia's federation took effect.

Donnelly is perhaps better known for his The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in Shakespeare's Plays about an alleged code in Shakespeare's work that reveals that Francis Bacon wrote much of Shakespeare's work.

Ignatius Donnelly and the End of the World

Atlantis in Myths and Religion

Theories about Atlantis

More    And more  

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

 

8239 BCE Presumed origin of Mayan Era of Creation.

70 Titus and his Roman legions breached the middle wall of Jerusalem.

535 Death of Epiphanius of Constantinople, patriarch of Constantinople.

754 or 755 CE St Boniface of Crediton, English missionary, was killed with 53 companions, by Frisian pagans.

1305 Pope Clement V was elected.

1316 Death of King Louis X of France.

1527 Paracelsus (1493-1541), Swiss alchemist and physician, pinned a notice up at the University of Basel announcing his forthcoming lectures, drawing the ire of local authorities.

"Pinning a program of his forthcoming lectures to the notice board of the university on June 5, 1527, he invited not only students but anyone and everyone. The authorities were scandalized and incensed by his open invitation."   Source

More on the philosophers' stone More on Paracelsus

Yet more on Paracelsus

Alchemists in the Almanac

Cornelius Agrippa  Roger Bacon  Count Cagliostro  John Dee  Edward Kelley  Robert Fludd  Isaac Newton  Paracelsus  James Price  Tycho Brahe  Raymond Lulle   Elias Ashmole

The Alchemy Web Site   Wilson's Almanac Alchemy Clock (a bit of fun)     Shop Alchemy

 

1637 New World: 600 Pequot Indians were killed by colonists at Mystic, Connecticut.

1783 The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne, publicly demonstrated their montgolfière (hot air balloon) and spent ten minutes aloft at 2,000 metres, the first such flight. See also April 4, 1783.

1806 Louis Bonaparte was declared King of the Netherlands.

1817 The first Great Lakes steamer, the Frontenac, was launched.

1827 Allan Cunningham discovered the Darling Downs in Queensland, Australia.

1829 HMS Pickle captured the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba.

1837 Houston, Texas was granted a city charter.

1849 Denmark became a constitutional monarchy by the signing of a new constitution.

1851 Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly started a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.

1855 The Know-Nothing Party held its national convention, USA.

1861 Russia: Mikhail Bakunin, leading Russian anarchist, escaped from Siberia.

Early progressives in the Book of Days    CounterCulture Wiki

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Piedmont – Union forces under General David Hunter defeated a Confederate army at Augusta County, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.

1900 Boer War: British soldiers took Pretoria, South Africa.

1900 Death of Stephen Crane (b. 1871), American author (The Red Badge of Courage).

1916 World War I: Horatio Kitchener (b. 1850), leader of the British military forces, died at sea when the HMS Hampshire, carrying him on a mission to Russia, hit a German mine west of the Orkney Islands.

1916 Johnny Stein's Dixie Jass Band played its first gig under its new name, the Original Dixieland Jass Band.

1916 Louis Brandeis was sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1917 World War I: Conscription began in the United States as 'Army registration day'.

1924 Ernst Alexanderson sent the first facsimile message across the Atlantic Ocean (to his father in Sweden).

1930 Pascin (b. Julius Mordecai Pincas in 1885), Bulgarian artist known as the 'Prince of Montparnasse', committed suicide in his studio. On the wall, he left a message written in his own blood that said good-bye to his lost love, Elvire 'Lucy' Ventura. On the day of his funeral, all the galleries in Paris closed.

1933 The United States Congress abrogated the USA's use of the gold standard by enacting a joint resolution (48 Stat. 112) nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold.

1944 World War II: More than 1,000 British bombers dropped 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

1947 Marshall Plan: At a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall called for economic aid to war-torn Europe.

1956 Elvis Presley introduced his new single, 'Hound Dog', on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing much of the American audience with his suggestive hip movements.

1959 The first government of the State of Singapore was sworn in.

1963 British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigned from parliament following his admission that he lied about his relationship with sex worker Christine Keeler.

1967 Six-Day War began: The Israeli air force launched simultaneous attacks on the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

1967 Muhammad Ali (b. 1942), American boxer, was jailed for five years for refusing to join the Army.

1968 US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of his assassination. Kennedy died on June 6.

"Jamie Scott Enyart, who was behind and to the left of RFK during the shooting, took a series of photos of the event. His film was immediately confiscated by L.A.P.D. officers and was sealed for 20 years. When the seal was lifted in 1988, Enyart applied for the return of his film, and was only given prints of photos from the same roll that were taken before he entered the pantry. The ten photos that he took in the pantry during the assassination were reported to be lost."   Source

Was Robert Kennedy killed by a real 'Manchurian candidate'-style assassin?

The Robert Kennedy Assassination: Unraveling the Conspiracy Theories    The Real Manchurian Candidate

Was the CIA Involved in Bobby Kennedy's Assassination?    RFK assassination

Howard Hughes inner circle man alleged Hughes was in RFK assassination

1969 The Australian production of the rock musical Hair opened at Sydney's Minerva Theatre.

1975 The Suez Canal opened for the first time since the Six-Day War.

1976 Collapse of the Teton Dam in Idaho.

1977 A coup took place in Seychelles.

1977 The Apple II, the first practical personal computer, first went on sale.

1977 Rock singer Alice Cooper's pet boa constrictor died after having been bitten by Cooper's pet rat.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1981 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that five homosexual men in Los Angeles, California had a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems (these were the first recognised cases of AIDS).

1984 Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi ordered an attack on the Golden Temple, the Sikh holy spot.

1988 Australian Kay Cottee became the first woman to sail around the world solo and non-stop when she sailed into Sydney Harbour.

1989 Solidarity beat the Communists in the first free Polish elections since World War I.

1990 Iran demanded that author Salman Rushdie be handed over to British Muslims.

1995 Bose-Einstein condensate was first created. I have no idea what that means.

1998 A strike began at the General Motors parts factory in Flint, Michigan, USA, that quickly spread to five other assembly plants (the strike lasted seven weeks).

1998 "[S]chool bus driver Lillie Balltrip, driving to a ceremony in Houston to pick up a safe driving award, turned a corner too sharply and overturned the bus carrying 29 other school bus drivers. The driver and passengers went to hospital, but no-one was seriously injured, said Larry Yawn, spokesman for the Houston independent School District. Similar cosmic black humour was shown the previous September when a flag was hoisted at Marnham power station on the River Trent to mark the 100th accident-free day. The pulley wheel fell 20ft and hit the flag-hoister on the head."   Fortean Times

2001 USA: Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican party, an act which changes control of the United States Senate from the Republican party to the Democratic party.

2001 The GrandMother Drum was born.

"The GrandMother Drum, a seven foot diameter, kettle shaped drum was born at 4:00 am on June 5, 2001, after 13 years of prayer, ceremony and physical labor by the Alaskan community. The Whirling Rainbow Center received the vision of the GrandMother Drum from indigenous GrandMothers as the first international, multicultural, interactive "world drum" dedicated to promoting Unity, Peace and Life, healing the separation between all Earth's children. According to the GrandMothers, we are in conflict outside because we are in conflict inside. Healing, they say, must happen within ourselves first. World peace can happen only through inner peace, becoming that which we are seeking outside ourselves."   Source

2002 Mozilla 1.0, the first 'official' version, was released.

2002 Death of Gwen Plumb, Australian stage and television actress.

2002 Death of Dee Dee Ramone, American musician, bassist with The Ramones (b. 1952).

2003 Death of Jürgen Möllemann, German politician (b. 1945).

2004 Death of Ronald Reagan, President of the United States (b. 1911).

2005 Our changing planet revealed

"'An atlas of environmental change compiled by the United Nations reveals some of the dramatic transformations that are occurring to our planet.'

"It compares and contrasts satellite images taken over the past few decades with contemporary ones.

"'These highlight in vivid detail the striking make-over wrought in some corners of the Earth by deforestation, urbanisation and climate change.

"'The atlas has been released to mark World Environment Day' (June 5).

"Go here and click on 'open in pictures' to see some fascinating examples.

"The World Environment Day theme selected for 2005 is Green Cities and the slogan is Plan for the Planet! The main international celebrations of the World Environment Day 2005 will be held in San Francisco."
Source: Extra!Extra!

Tomorrow: 1984

 

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