|
|
|
|
This page is big!
If it fails to load fully, please click Refresh on your browser menu.
It's fully loaded when you see the purple menu bar at the foot of the page.
reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
First time here? See the Index for
How it works
Celebrate each and every day with a free subscription to the daily ezine. You can apply by form or send a blank email. Read what the 'Almaniacs' (members) say about Wilson's Almanac.
I request your support if this website pleases and informs you, as this is my livelihood. Thank you, from the bottom of my fridge.
Inquiries from publishers are welcome, but, dear reader, please don't use my work without my written permission. If I've inadvertently used something of yours that you consider not to fall under the fair use doctrine, please tell me and I'll remove it.
Carpe diem! (Seize the day!)
Our news on your homepage (that is, if you use My Yahoo, which we recommend for your start-up page)
|
|
|
O Allah! Pardon my sins. Yes, I come. Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. Deism teaches us that God is
a God of truth and justice. Does the Bible teach the same doctrine? It
does not. He who dares not offend
cannot be honest. My mind is my own church. No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other. |
The
path of Venus is predicted for the 1761 transit; from Johann
Doppelmayer's Atlas Coelestis, 1742 |
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Frank Lloyd Wright
I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes — and six months later you have to start all over again.
Joan Rivers, American comedienne, actress, director and writer, born on June 8, 1933
I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door – or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.
Joan Rivers
I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.
Joan Rivers
My mother could make anybody feel guilty – she used to get letters of apology from people she didn't even know.
Joan Rivers
I don't think I'm good in bed. My husband never said anything, but after we made love he'd take a piece of chalk and outline my body.
Joan Rivers
Never floss with a stranger.
Joan Rivers
So, who are you wearing?
Joan Rivers
I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
Joan Rivers
Knock me out with the first pain, and wake me up when the hairdresser arrives.
Joan Rivers (her idea of a perfect childbirth experience)
June 8
is
the 159th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (160th
in leap years), with 206
days remaining.
Calendar converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc
Almanac screensavers
On this day
Dictionary
I
recommend
IMDB
days
IMDB years
Wikipedia days
Wiki decades
Wiki centuries
Timelines
Conversions
Calendrica
Lunabar
Birthday calculator
When 'Source'
links on this page move address or die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Lindisfarne Day
When I was with you, the closeness of
your love would give me great joy. In contrast, now that I am away from
you, the distress of your suffering fills me daily with deep grief, when
heathens desecrated God's sanctuaries, and poured the blood of saints
within the compass of the altar, destroyed the house of our hope, trampled
the bodies of saints in God's temple like animal dung in the street …
Letter from Alcuin (Flaccus
Alcuinus),
Anglo-Saxon theologian, to
Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne
June 8 is, rather perversely, one might say, celebrated by
Odinists (worshippers of Odin, the
Norse god). Odin is the supreme deity of the old religion of Norway,
eldest of all the gods in the Nordic pantheon and leader of
the race of gods known as the Aesir, they who live in Asgard.
Odin is called All-father for he is father of all the gods.
It
is the day that in 793 Vikings raided Lindisfarne, the holy island off
the coast of Northumberland. The Vikings hacked the monks to death or
dragged them into the sea where they drowned them. The chapels and
monastery were looted of the riches they contained, much of which had been
derived from the payment by the common folk for their indulgences –
monetary payments to safeguard them from the torments of hell. The
treasure included gold, silver, jewellery, ivory coffins and much beside.
It was not the first
violent encounter between Vikings and the people of the British Isles –
in 789 the crews of three Viking vessels landed at the present site of
Portland, near Weymouth, England. There they were approached by a party of
men led by Beaduheard, the shire reeve (from which title we derive the
word 'sheriff') of the King of Wessex, who demanded that they
accompany him to Dorchester, some nine miles away; an altercation ensued
and the visitors slew Councillor Beaduheard.
In Britain, naturally
enough, this incident
is generally portrayed as the first Viking raid – a friendly councillor
rushing to the quay to welcome what he thought was a Nordic package tour,
and getting slewn … err … slain … for his troubles by a pack of
horn-helmeted barbarians. However, it might well have been simply a case
of Scandinavian sailors coming to port for purely honourable commercial
purposes, being met by a pompous and xenophobic bureaucrat who handled the
situation badly, from which a fight followed and things got out of hand
[see Eelia's
Page, Chapter One). It might perhaps be thought of as a dockside brawl
rather than an invasion from the north, whereas the Lindisfarne expedition
some four years later was a raid, albeit more criminal than military.
Be that as it may, no
fewer than four medieval scribes saw the 789 Portland incident as
sufficiently significant to record it in their chronicles. Interestingly,
one source, the important Anglo-Saxon chronicle, in recording the affair
of 789, reveals the Britishers' uncertainty about whence the raiders
came, calling them both Norwegians and Danes:
In this year Beorhtric took to wife Eadburh, daughter of
king Offa. And in his days came first three ships of Norwegians from Höthaland
and then the reeve rode thither and tride [sic] to compel them to go to
the royal manor, for he did not know what they were: and then they slew
him. These were the first ships of the Danes to come to England.
Who knows, maybe in
death Beaduheard gained immortality, all for being a jumped-up clerk with
a tin badge and a somewhat capacious mouth.
Footnote: the Vikings were great travellers, as is well known.
For lovers of
illuminated manuscripts: Painted
Labyrinth - the World of the Lindisfarne Gospels
Find an error or dead link?
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
Feast day of St 
Bounty
Day, 
