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reetings from Australia.
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this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations,
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Mistletoe
is, however, seldom found on a hard-oak,
and when it is discovered it is gathered with great ceremony, and
particularly on the 6th day of the moon (which for those tribes
[Druids] constitutes the beginning of the months and the years) and
after every thirty years of a generation, because it is then rising in
strength and not one half its full size. Pliny
the Elder (Plinius maior or Gaius
Plinius Secundus;
23 CE - 79),
Natural
History XVI xcv. 250 (see Coligny
Calendar)
I regret that I have but one life to give for my
country. Nathan Hale, American
revolutionary soldier born on June 6, 1755; executed on September 22, 1776 by the British
for spying
The greatest happiness of the greatest
numbers is the foundation of morals and legislation. Jeremy
Bentham, English Utilitarian philosopher who died on June 6,
1832
My
life is music. And in some vague, mysterious, and subconscious way, I have
always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost
compulsively reach for perfection in music, often-- in fact, mostly-- at
the expense of everything else in my life.
US jazz sax player, Stan
Getz, who died on June 6, 1991
The embalmed corpse of Jeremy
Bentham
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage
and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for
an ideal, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of
hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy
and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the
mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. US Senator
Robert F Kennedy; June 6, 1966 at University of Cape Town, South
Africa on its 'Day of Affirmation'
I interned with the Bush administration for six
months. I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with — homosexual groups being
invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I
think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.
Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater Worldwide, born on June 6, 1969; Grand
Rapids Press, Michigan, 1992
Source
A few weeks ago the world almost saw a nuclear war.
Pakistan and India were at full alert and poised for a large-scale war – which
both sides appeared ready to escalate into nuclear war. The situation was
defused – for now! Most of the world knew about this situation and watched and
worried. But few know of an event over the Mediterranean in early June of this
year that could have had a serious bearing on that outcome.
Speech by Gen. Simon Worden: 'Military Perspectives on the Near-Earth Object
(NEO) Threat', referring to the
Eastern Mediterranean Event of June 6, 2002
Formerly Flag Day, today commemorates the adoption of Swedish constitution on June 6,
1809, and
honouring June 6, 1523, when King Gustavus I (Gustav Vasa) ascended the
throne. Commencing in the year 2005 it is an official Swedish public holiday,
taking that honour from Whit Monday.
That date was
declared the official National Day of Sweden in the year 1983, but has been celebrated as the Day of the Swedish Flag since
1916.
Du gamla, du fria, du fjällhöga Nord,
du tysta, du glädjerika sköna.
Jag hälsar dig, vänaste land uppå jord,
din sol, din himmel, dina ängder gröna,
din sol, din himmel, dina ängder gröna!
Du tronar på minnen från fornstora dar,
då ärat ditt namn flög över jorden.
Jag vet att du är och du blir vad du var.
Ja, jag vill leva, jag vill dö i Norden!
Ja, jag vill leva, jag vill dö i Norden!
Feast day of St Norbert,
Archbishop of Magdeburg, founder of the Premonstratensian Order,
confessor
(Common pink, Dianthus
deltoides, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
The first Sunday after Pentecost (Whitsunday),
instituted to honour the Holy Trinity.
Marborasa Festival, Madang, Papua-New Guinea Festival held during nearest weekend to June 7
with traditional dancing, choir, string band contests. Madang is famous
for bamboo bands.
1819Sir Edward Knox,
Danish-born Australian founder of CSR
(Australian sugar company)
1845Georgina
King (d. June
7, 1932), eccentric Australian geologist and anthropologist
whose prominence was not matched by her theories' accuracy.
One
such theory was that woman is the 'missing link' ('The Discovery of the "Missing
Link": the appearance of Woman as a "Sport" in Nature, and the
Evolution of Anthropoid Man', Science of Man and Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia, vol. 5, no. 11,
December 1902).
King spent much of her scientific career fighting
other scientists and sometimes accusing them of plagiarism of her
work, but she was also widely published, and
The Sydney Morning
Herald printed many of her articles which are now considered to be
quite fanciful and erroneous mixtures of science and spiritualism.
Georgina
King was a long-term friend of Daisy Bates, a
woman who lived and worked amongst Australia's indigenous people and was
also one-time wife of Breaker Morant.
1868
Captain Robert
Falcon Scott ('Scott of the Antarctic'; d. March 29, 1912),
English Antarctic explorer. Scott commanded two Antarctic
expeditions. In January, 1912, he was just beaten to the South Pole
by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (at approximately 3pm on December 14,
1911, Amundsen had raised the flag of Norway at the South Pole,
naming the spot Polheim – 'Pole Home'). On their return
journey, Scott and his four companions lost their lives in a
blizzard.
1898
Dame Ninette de Valois (d. 2001),
Irish founder of the Royal Ballet. Born Edris Stannus in Ireland,
she founded the Royal Ballet company of Great Britain in 1926,
serving as its director until her retirement in 1963. She also is
noted for having choreographed several plays.
1909
Sir
Isaiah Berlin,
OM
(d. November 5, 1997),
political philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the
leading liberal thinkers of the twentieth century; best known for his
essay, 'Two
Concepts of Liberty'
1950Robert Englund, a
classically-trained American actor, best known as Freddy Krueger in
the Nightmare on Elm Street
movies.
Englund studied
at Britain's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and soon began his
horror carer in a TV mini-series named V. He also starred in
the movie of Phantom of the
Opera.
Blackwater trains more than 40,000 people per annum, from all
the military services and a variety of other agencies. In 2007 it was
estimated by the Pentagon and company representatives that there were
20,000 to 30,000 armed security contractors working in Iraq, with some
estimates as much as 100,000, though no official figures exist.
Prince, who has close ties to America's
fundamentalist
Christian political movements, was an intern in
George HW Bush's
White House and campaigned for
Pat Buchanan
in 1992.
In addition to running Blackwater, Prince also
serves on the board of
Christian Freedom International. His father, Edgar Prince,
co-founded the conservative
Family
Research Council. A July, 2004, story in The News and Observer
(Raleigh, NC, USA), described Prince as positioning himself "at the
intersection of free enterprise, activist Christianity, conservative
politics and military contracting".
The Tale of Prince – A War
Profiteer, from YouTube
Your family and friends will get a kick when
they hear their own name being sung in 'Happy Birthday'!!
You can schedule your singing cards in advance, and even add your own face
to funny animations. (Pay cards)
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1178Some monks at
Canterbury, England reported
having seen an
explosion on the moon.
1638A football match on Burnt Fen, England, was the
guise for rioters from Ely and Lakenheath to assemble and destroy the drainage
ditches. The rioters were protesting enclosure, whereby wealthy landowners
enclosed lands formerly considered de facto as public property for agriculture
and animal husbandry. By the end of the 19th Century the process of
enclosure was largely complete.
"Littleport seems to have been a rebellious village in
earlier times. In June 1638 the Justice of the Peace for the Isle reported that
'40 or 50 men gathered in a fen called Whelpmore, near Littleport … and that
their assembly was appointed to throw down ditches which the drainers had made
for enclosing their fen ground from the common, which was left to the
inhabitants …' In the same month Sir Miles Sandys of Wilburton was writing to his
son at Court describing the tumults and disturbances, and declaring that 'If
order not be taken it will turn out to be a general rebellion in the fen towns'.
There was for example 'A great riot made at Wickham whilst writing word is
brought to me by my Lord of Bedford's workmen, that the country rose up against
him both in Coveney and Littleport, by example of the Wickham men'
"In more recent times there is the 'Littleport Riots' which
started on the night of May 22nd 1816 at the Globe Inn. Between 50 and 60 men
were present and the talk was of the high prices of wheat and bread."Source
The museum, in Oxford, England is the
world's first and oldest universitymuseum. It was designed by Sir
Christopher Wren and built in 1678 - 1683
to house the collection of curiosities Ashmole gave Oxford
University in 1677
– the ones he had collected himself as well as those he had inherited from the
travellers John Tradescant, father and son. The collection
included antique coins, books, engravings, geological specimens, and zoological
specimens – one of which was the stuffed body of the last dodo ever seen in
Europe, but by 1755 it was so moth-eaten it was destroyed, except for its head
and one claw.
1760The transit of Venus over the Sun. Transits of Venus are rare,
coming in pairs, 8 years apart, separated by approximately 120 years. The next
such transit, on June 3,
1769, was observed at Tahiti by
a party led by legendary mariner Captain James Cook(1728 -
'79),
on a voyage on which Cook claimed the continent of Australia in the name of King
George III of Britain.
1778Debtors'
prisons were abolished in the US; debtors, however, continued to flourish.
1790
British colony of New
South Wales: The
first convict ship for females, and the first ship of the second fleet, the Lady
Juliana, arrived at Port
Jackson ( Sydney Harbour) . Lady
Juliana carried 221 females, five having died on the arduous voyage to Sydney
Town.
"In 1822, John Nicol, a mariner who served on the Lady Juliana when that vessel was reserved for women prisoners, published his reminiscences. His journal in illuminating: 'The Lady Juliana carried 245 female convicts. Amongst these was Mrs. Barnsley, a noted sharper and shop-lifter who openly boasted that for a century her family had been swindlers and highwaymen. Indeed, her brother, a highwayman, as well-dressed and genteel in his appearance as any gentleman, came to farewell her on board before we sailed from Portsmouth. Other notorious women in our company were Mrs. Davis, swindler and fence, and Mary Williams, receiver of stolen goods, who had spent a long time in Newgate prison'. Then there was Nelly Kerwin, 'a female of daring habits' who had specialised in impersonating the wives of various sailors and drawing their pay envelopes. Her sentence was transportation for the rest of her natural life. Nicol pens vivid impression of various other members of the convict cargo (the need for which he explains quite simply - 'the colony at that time being in great want of women'), including the 'pretty well-behaved girl who was rumoured to be the illegitimate daughter of a British Prime Minister. He records the tragedy surrounding the lives of some of the young women convicts. There were, for example, Sarah Dorset, Mary Rose, and a young Scots girl who moved him deeply. The latter, obviously cultured, kept to herself all the time the Lady Juliana lay in harbour. Nicol often saw her crying to herself but he never learned her story. 'The poor young Scots girl I have never yet got out of my mind', he wrote years later. 'She died, probably of a broken heart, before the transport sailed. She was young and beautiful even in convict dress, but pale as death, and her eyes red from weeping'.
"Most of the women, in Nicol's opinion, were 'harmless, unfortunate creatures, the victims of the basest seduction'." Source:
Wild Wild Women
"Suprisingly [sic], during the voyage only five convicts died. Rations were properly issued, the vessel kept clean and fumigated, the women were given free access to the deck, and supplies of fresh food were obtained at the ports of call."
reetings from Australia.
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