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Akitu Festival,
Sumeria (c. Mar 20 - 31)
Borrowed, or
borrowing days, Scotland
(Feb 12, 13
and 14,
and Mar 29, 30,
31)Feast day of St Acacius
(or Achates), Bishop of Antioch
Feast day of St Balbina
Feast day of St Benjamin,
deacon, martyr
Feast day of St Bonaventure
Tornielli
Feast day of St Daniel
Feast day of St Guy (or
Witen), Abbot at Ferrara
Feast day of St Guy of
Vicogne
Feast day of St Jane of
Toulouse
Feast day of St Machabeo
Feast day of St Renovatus
Feast day of St Theodulus
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
National Day, Malta
 Rabbits
on the last day of the month
In the 1920s, there was a custom in the UK to say the word
'rabbit' three times when going to bed on the last day of the month.
The superstition did not end there: on rising, the person was to say
'hare' three times. However, sources differ on this point, with one
saying that the words 'rabbit, rabbit, rabbit', and not
'hare' should be said on the morning of the month's first day ...
Read more at Wilson's Almanac
http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/ed4.html
Oranges and Lemons
Service, St Clement Danes, Strand, London WC2
(weekday near 31 March)
"On or near 31 March every year
at St Clement Danes in the Strand, the Oranges and Lemons Service
takes place. This is a children's service, attended by the pupils
of St Clement Danes primary school. They read the lesson, recite
the famous nursery ' rhyme and, on occasions, play the tune on
handbells. At the conclusion of the service, each one is presented
with an orange and a lemon from a table outside the church (if
dry). The nursery rhyme, which begins with the lines:
Oranges and lemons
Say the bells of St Clement's
"was first recorded in Tommy
Thumb's Poetry Song Book in about 1744, sung to the tune familiar
to every child in the country. When the bells were restored to St
Clement Danes in 1920, after they had been silent since 1913 when
their timbers were found to be dangerous, the vicar decided to
inaugurate the service for children. On 31 March that year, he
distributed the oranges and lemons for the first time, which he
persuaded the Danish community in London to donate. This continued
until 1940 when, during the Second World War, the church was
nearly destroyed by bombing. In 1957 the church was restored as a
memorial to the RAF, and the familiar carillon now rings out at 9
o'clock, at noon and at 6 o'clock in the evening.
"The Danish association is unclear, though it is
said that Harold Harefoot, son of King Canute, was buried here
in 1040, and there was at some stage a massacre of Vikings in
the vicinity." Source
Thomas
Mundy Peterson Day, New Jersey, USA
An annual commemoration marking the rights of all citizens to vote.
César
Chávez Day
Official holiday in five states and many cities across the USA.
Freedom
Day, Malta
Transfer Day, US
Virgin Islands
At the Scriptorium
The
origins and folklore of April Fools' Day
The origin and
folklore of Easter
250 Constantius
Chlorus
(d. 306), Roman Emperor
 1135 Moses Maimonides
(d. December 13,
1204), Jewish
physician, rabbi, and philosopher. Born of Spanish
Jewish parents in Cordoba, Spain, he soon fled to Morocco
after the fall of Córdoba to the Almohads.
After that he lived in southern Syria
– now Israel
– and Egypt
from 1165, where
he was the doctor of Saladin, the Sultan
of Egypt.
As head of the Jewish communities in Egypt, he devoted
himself to the exposition of the Talmud.
His main works are: The
Commentary on the Mishna, The Guide of the Perplexed,
and The Mishneh Torah, a comprehensive code
of Jewish law. Most of Maimonides' works were written in Arabic. However, The Mishnah Torah
was written in Hebrew.
Maimonides was one of the few medieval Jewish
philosophers who also influenced the non-Jewish world. Even today he
is among the most respected of all Jewish philosophers. A popular
saying in the Middle Ages stated that From Moses
[of the Torah] to Moses [Maimonides] there has not been such a
Moses. He died at Cairo and
was buried at Tiberias in Palestine.
More
1499 Pope Pius IV (d. 1565)1504 Guru Angad Dev
(d. 1552),
Second Guru
of the Sikhs 1519 King Henry II of
France (d.
July 10, 1559) 1536 Ashikaga
Yoshiteru (d. 1565), Ashikaga shogun
1596 René
Descartes (d. 1650),
French philosopher and mathematician; to him is attributed much of
the Western strict conceptual division ('Cartesian dualism')
between mind and body, these days often argued against
.
Although
Roman Catholic, Descartes opposed scholasticism and argued one can
doubt all, but not one's own existence as a thinking being. He
concluded God must exist and because God cannot be a deceiver, the
significance on sensory data must be evaluated by reason.
Descartes's
conceptions influenced European culture and thinking. Even his
opponents, Blaise Pascal, or, later, those like Voltaire, largely
followed him in his emphasis on analysis and in rejection of
tradition. Source:
The Daily Bleed
"With
the exception of parts of the Rules and a few fragments,
most of Descartes' early 'metaphysical' writings are lost. It
was after he moved to Amsterdam that Descartes began working in
earnest on the philosophical ideas upon which his fame now rests
…
"Descartes was hugely influential on
individual, and key, philosophers throughout the 17th and 18th
Centuries (Spinoza, Malbranche, Locke, Leibniz, etc.). His
insistence on a radical philosophy that dispensed, as far as
possible, with authority; his insistence on the perspective of
consciousness in epistemology; his attempt to raise the standard
of philosophical argumentation to a science akin to geometry;
his close integration of philosophy and physical science; his
emphasis on methodology, all were hugely important. Even
philosophers who rejected his thought spent a great deal of time
and energy doing so – Descartes could not be ignored." Source
1621
Andrew
Marvell (d.
August 16,
1678), English poet ('An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return
from Ireland'; 'To His Coy Mistress')
1675 Pope
Benedict
XIV (d. 1758)1732 Joseph Haydn
(d. 1809),
composer 1742 PDQ Bach (d. 1807),
fictitious composer
 1809
Nikolai Gogol
(Nicolay Gogol; d. March 4, 1852), Ukrainian-born
Russian
novelist, dramatist, satirist, founder of the so-called
critical realism in Russian literature. Perhaps his best known work
is Dead Souls,
seen by many as the first 'modern' Russian novel.
"In his later life Gogol came under
influence of a fanatical priest, Father Konstantinovskii, and
burned sequels for Dead Souls, just 10 days before he died
on the verge of madness on the 4th of March 1852. Gogol had
refused to take any food and various remedies were employed to
make him eat – spirits were poured over his head, hot loaves
applied to his person and leeches attached to his nose. Rumors
arise from time to time that Gogol was buried alive, a situation
familiar from the story The Premature Burial of the
contemporary writer Edgar
Allan Poe (1809-1849)."
Source
1809
Edward
FitzGerald (d. June 14, 1883), English
writer,
best known as the poet of the English
translation of the 'Rubáiyát'
of Omar
Khayyám
1811 Robert
Wilhelm Bunsen
(d. 1899),
chemist, inventor of the Bunsen burner
 1871 Young Griffo (Albert Griffiths; d. December 7, 1927), Australian
boxer, Lightweight* Boxing Champion of the World.
Young Griffo
was born at Sofala
on the goldfields of New South
Wales, and grew up in the tough dockside district of Millers Point in Sydney
(where Griffo is the usual nickname for anyone named Griffiths).
There he sold newspapers for a living and learned to bare-knuckle
fight. Australian boxer Larry
Foley saw him in a street fight and added him to the Foley's
Hall stable, and in 1893
the champion Young Griffo left for the USA, departing Sydney with
his entourage on the same steamship as Robert
Louis Stevenson, who was bound for Samoa.
Young Griffo's brilliant
boxing career in America came to a grinding end in New York City in 1895, at the peak of
his international fame, after he was convicted of
raping William Gottlieb, an 11-year-old boy. He spent the last three decades of his life
drinking himself to death, was arrested for public drunkenness on
numerous occasions, sometimes committed to psychiatric hospitals,
worked in Tommy
Burns's troupe for a time, and famously sat vacantly for
years begging in Times Square, a familiar figure on the steps of the Rialto Theater.
He was also the star of Young Griffo vs. Battling Charles Barnett
(filmed on the roof of Madison Square Garden, May 4,
1895), the first
motion picture in the world to be screened before a paying audience, at 153
Broadway in New York City. It premiered on May 20,
1895, more than seven months before the Lumière brothers showed
their film at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris,
on December
28 – the event usually said to be the first movie-by-ticket
screening in the world.
Click thumbnail for poster
"'When Griffo was in his prime the
boxer scarcely lived who could get a glove on him. Lavigne, Dixon,
and all the best of the light-weights and featherweights tried, and
were made to look ridiculous by the dodging, ducking, and
side-stepping of the Antipodean. The battle with Dixon was
especially notable. Old Chocolate was then at his best, and besides
being a hard hitter, was a clever boxer and great general. For
twenty-five rounds the colored champion exhausted all his skills to
land effectively on the elusive Griffo. In that time he did not land
half-a-dozen blows. Griffo hit Dixon at will, but not hard enough to
hurt him. So the contest went the limit'.
"Griffo may have seen much more success had it not been
for his heavy drinking. Legend has it in later years he would wager
on his ability to stand in one spot and avoid punches without taking
a step back or sideways."
Source
"The streets of Sydney were once filled with the sound of the newspaper criers. Perhaps the most famous was
'Griffo', born Albert Griffiths, a resident of The Rocks. Long before he was recognised as Australia's first world champion feather weight boxer - he built a reputation as a news vendor down at Circular Quay and woe betide anyone who might wish to challenge his patch. Griffo's method of dealing with would-be interlopers was to draw a
'kerchief' from his pocket, spread it at his feet and then, placing his feet squarely on it and with fists raised, he would yell:
'Come on! Come and Take It'. No one could dislodge him from the tiny square. It is reported that a world heavy weight champion later said that he
'couldn't put a glove on him' in spite of the difference in their size.
" Source
"One of the greatest defensive fighters
of all time, Young Griffo compiled an outstanding record while
eschewing traditional training methods. Born in Australia, the
illiterate Griffo got his first experience fighting while selling
newspapers on the docks of Sydney. When noted Australian boxer Larry
Foley saw him in a street fight, Foley added Griffo to his stable of
fighters. Griffo first started boxing under the old London Prize
Ring Rules in 1886 ...
"In 1893, Griffo journeyed to the United States and
dazzled fans with his incredible ability to avoid getting hit. He
used to boast that he could stand on a handkerchief and dodge
punches without taking a step in any direction. Griffo fought a host
of notables, usually competing as a lightweight, although he did not
earn a title shot. He fought three draws with George Dixon, which
could have gone Griffo's way had the rules allowed the rendering of
a decision. He also lost a controversial decision to Hall of Famer
Jack McAuliffe, who barely touched Griffo in ten rounds." Source
"His name is Young Griffo. You don't remember him, do
you? Very few people do ... He was Young Griffo, the cleverest
featherweight America had ever seen." Source
(1927)
"Young Griffo or
Alfred Griffith, as he is known outside the prize ring was arraigned
before Judge Moore in the Court of Sessions, Brooklyn, N.Y., May 25
(1895), charged with an unprintable offence ... The eleven-year-old boy complainant, William Gottleib,
was placed under $100 bonds to prosecute."
-Police News. May 26,
1895
Young
Griffo's Summer of 1895
May
4, 1895: Film of Griffo 'Young Griffo
vs. Battling Charles Barnett', Directed by Otway Latham.
Ramsaye-Million
p. 136 maintains that this film was the first to be publicly
projected onto a screen. References: Blum-Silent
p. 7; Musser-Emerge
pp. 94, 98; Ramsaye-Million
pp. 134, 136, 180-181, 185, 210; Robertson-Guinness
pp. 3, 5: FilmHistory-3-3
p. 252.
(This
source says Young Griffo was born on April 15,
1869. This
source says January
1, 1871.)
"He was recognized as the featherweight world champion when he defeated Torpedo Billy Murphy and must be considered a all time great for his abilities. Griffo was a featherweight but in those times he was allowed to take on all comers, which he did with zeal. Early accounts of his career have Griffo fighting a young black boxer Called
[sic] Pluto and they drew in two contests with the longest going 70 rounds! National recognition came when Griffo weighing 112 pounds won a tourney for 140 pound boxers, that was followed by a Australian title wining
[sic] effort against
Nipper Peakes. Now he challenged the best of Australia the most notable of which was a win over Billy Murphy for a version of the world title in a 15th round knockout. After one title defense Griffo set sail for America in search of bigger money and more recognition. He earned immediate recognition in fights that were declared
draws against very the good Solly Smith, George Lavigne and Johnny
Herst." Source
Nipper
Peakes Young
Pluto Young
Griffo in International Boxing Hall of Fame
*This
site has Young Griffo as Featherweight Champion in 1900
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
Young
Griffo remembered More
More
And more
1885
Pascin (b.
Julius Mordecai Pincas; d. June
5, 1930),
Bulgarian artist known as
the 'Prince of Montparnasse' who, despite constant
partying during his
lifetime, created thousands of watercolours, sketches, drawings and caricatures.
1890
William
Lawrence Bragg (d. July
1, 1971)
Australian physicist who won the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1915,
which he shared with his father, William
Henry Bragg (1862
- 1942).
Three Nobels from the one high school
Robin Warren, who was awarded the 2005
Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology, went to the same school
as Lawrence Bragg, St
Peter's College in Adelaide, and so did Howard
Florey, the pharmacologist (Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine in 1945 for his role in the extraction of penicillin).
Another boy from St Peter's, which is not a selective high school,
is Andy
Thomas, the Australian astronaut with NASA and Mission
Specialist for the STS-114
Space
Shuttle Discovery. The school's 40 Rhodes
Scholars should probably get a mention as well. 1900
Richard
Alexander Walter Windsor, Duke of Gloucester 1911 Elisabeth Grümmer
(d. November
6, 1986),
Alsatian soprano 1912
Hermann Höcherl
(d. May 18, 1989),
German politician 1914
Octavio Paz (d.
April 19, 1998), Mexican
poet ('The Other Mexico'; 'The Bow and the Lyre'),
critic and diplomat.
He was awarded the 1990 Nobel
Prize for Literature. Paz's
father worked as a secretary for the anarchist Emiliano
Zapata.
"In
1937 during the Spanish Revolution, Paz participated in the Second
International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers in Valencia and
met, among others, André Malraux, André Gide and Ilya Ehrenburg
(recorded in the collection Bajo Tu Clara Sombra Y Otros
Poemas (1937)).
"By the time the Cold War began, Octavio Paz rejected the
Marxist left. His works show in turn influence by Marxism,
surrealism (together with Andre Breton and Benjamin Peret),
existentialism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Central themes were
history, violence, lies and truth, corruption and revolution, as
reflected in the reality of Latin American and its literature.
Many of Paz's later poems are based on paintings by Joan Miró,
Marcel Duchamp, Antoni Tapies, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roberto
Matta." Source: The
Daily Bleed
More
1914 Maria Lang
(d. 1991), prolific Swedish mystery writer. Lang's best known
characters are Puck Ekstedt and Christer Wijk, who are considered
classical figures in Swedish mystery novels. Her own alter ego is
the author Almi Graan, who started to appear in her stories from the
1960s. Lang also wrote children's books and short stories.
1915 Albert Hourani
(d. January
17, 1993),
historian1916
Norman David Mayer (d. December
9, 1982), anti-nuclear
weapons activist who was shot four times on December
8, 1982 by the United
States Park Police after threatening to blow up the Washington
Monument. He had no explosives as he had claimed.
1922 Richard Kiley
(d. March 5, 1999),
actor, singer 1926 John
Fowles (d.
November 5,
2005), British novelist (The French Lieutenant's Woman) 1927 César Chávez
(Cesar Chavez;
d.
April 23, 1993), American labor
activist
"Blending the nonviolent resistance of
Gandhi with the organizational skills of his mentor, the social
activist Saul Alinsky, Mr. Chavez captured worldwide attention
in the 1960's. Leading an initially lonely battle to unionize
the fields and orchards of California, he issued a call to
boycott grapes that soon became a cause celebre." Source
More1927 William Daniels,
actor
1928 Lefty Frizzell
(d. July 19,
1975),
country music
performer 1934 Shirley Jones,
singer, actress 1935 Richard Chamberlain,
Hollywood actor (TV series: Dr Kildare) 1935 Herb Alpert,
musician (Hit single: 'This Guy's In Love With You') 1939 Zviad
Gamsakhurdia (d.
December 31, 1993), scientist and writer, first President of the Republic of
Georgia 1939 Volker Schlöndorff,
German film director 1940 Patrick Leahy,
United States Senator from Vermont 1943 Christopher
Walken, actor 1948 Al Gore,
former Vice
President of the United States 1948 Rhea Perlman, American actress
(Cheers) 1949 Bethel Enproe
Adam, second Angam Baby 1955 Angus
Young, Scottish-born rock guitarist from Sydney, Australia band
'Ackadacka' (AC/DC)
1971 Ewan McGregor,
Scottish actor 1976 Josh Saviano,
actor (The Wonder
Years)
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March
31 Bunsen
Burner Day
April
1 April
Fools' Day
1 Firefighters
Day
1 World
Catfish Festival (Mississippi, USA)
1 Taro
Festival (Hawaii, USA)
2 Great
Lovers Day
2 Reconciliation
Day
2 Peanut
Butter And Jelly Day
3 Find
A Rainbow Day
3 Chocolate
Mousse Day
3 Circus
Day
3 Workplace
Napping Day
4 Tell
A Lie Day
4 Vitamin
C Day
4 Independence
Day (Senegal)
5 Lady
Luck Day
5 Thank
Your School Librarian Day
5 Bell
Bottoms Day
5 Tomb
Sweeping Day
6 Animated
Cartoon Day
6 California
Poppy Day
6 Caramel
Popcorn Day
6 International
Fun At Work Day
6 Tartan
Day
6 International
Special Librarians' Day
7 Coffee
Cake Day
7 Lets
Someone Else Clean Day
7 Ham
Radio Day
7 World
Health Day
8 Buddha
Day (Japan)
8 Hana
Matsuri
9 Astronauts
Day
10 Siblings
Day
10 Salvation
Army Founder's Day
11 Cheese
Fondue Day
... More
Events
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application. Further details
297 CE Diocletian's edict
against the Manicheans.
307 After divorcing his wife Minerva, Constantine married
Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
1204 Death of Eleanor of Aquitaine
(b. c. 1122), wife of Henry
II of England. On of the most powerful women in Europe during the Middle
Ages, she was Queen
consort of both France
and England
in her lifetime.
 1631
English cleric and
metaphysical poet,
John Donne (b. 1572), died, London,
England, possibly of stomach cancer, a short time after having
his portrait painted in a funeral shroud (to provide the
sculptor of his monument with a design from which to work).
Donne was a
Jacobean poet and preacher, representative of the
metaphysical poets
of the period. Only a few days before his death he gave an address called 'Death's Duel', one of the high points of seventeenth-century English prose.
"We have a winding sheet in our mother's womb," he told the congregation, "which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave".
He hung the portrait in his chamber as a reminder of the transience of life. Donne
died having never published a poem in his lifetime.
John Donne is buried in
St Paul's
Cathedral, London, where he was the
dean. A
memorial statue of him was erected (carved from the portrait of him
in his shroud), with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself.
Izaak Walton
(1593 -
1683), the famed
author of The Compleat Angler, wrote a biography of the poet
in 1640.
'The
Funerall', by John Donne
John Donne at
Luminarium.org
Selected Poems of John Donne
Poems by John Donne at PoetryFoundation.org
Homepage of the John
Donne Society
Complete sermons of
John Donne
The Donne Variorum
Images of early Donne works
1774 American
Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great
Britain ordered the port of Boston, Massachusetts
closed in the Boston Port Act.
1783 Death of Nikita Ivanovich Panin
(b. 1718),
Russian statesman.
1814 The US wartime economy was in such dire
straits that President James Madison
recommended repeal of the 'Non
Importation and Embargo Acts', a measure permitting merchants to trade with
the enemy. Congress saw no alternative (surprise), and within two weeks, both
houses passed Madison's new bill by overwhelming majorities.
1820 American Christian missionaries arrived in Hawaii.
1831
Australia's first steamboat, The Surprise,
was launched.
1836
The first monthly part of Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club,
Charles Dickens's first novel, was published. By the 15th
part the printing had
ballooned from 400 copies to 40,000.
1837
Death of John Constable
(b. 1776),
painter.
1854 Under threat of force,
the Japanese
government signed with US Commodore Matthew Perry the Treaty of Kanagawa,
opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American
trade.
1855 Death of Charlotte
Brontë
(b. 1816),
author.
1858 China
agreed to trade concessions for the British and French.
1866
The Spanish Navy bombed the harbour of Valparaíso, Chile.1870 The
first African American (Thomas Mundy Peterson)
voted after passage of 15th
Amendment.
1871 France:
The Commune of Narbonne fell, as incarnated by Emile Digeon. Digeon (1822 -
1894) was a revolutionary journalist who headed the Commune, proclaimed in
conjunction with the Paris
Commune. In 1883 Digeon was 'an anarchist candidate' in the Narbonne elections and in 1885 published La Commune de Paris
devant les anarchistes.
1873
Henry James wrote, after meeting Matthew Arnold: "He is not as handsome
as his photographs – or as his poetry."
1880
Death of Henryk Wieniawski,
composer.
1883 American poet Emily Dickinson was asked to submit a book of poems
for publication two months before her death.
1885 The United
Kingdom established a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
1889
The Eiffel
Tower opened in Paris, France. At 289 metres (948
ft), it was the world's tallest
building.
Eiffel trivia
Built for
the Paris Exhibition of 1884
Over 300 meters high
1671 steps to the top
15,000 structural members
2,500,00 rivet holes
8,000 tons
Only 250 workers to build
Can withstand winds of up to 148 miles per hour
at the top
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1898 USA: Emma Goldman
lectured on 'The Inquisition of Our Postal Service' to the Progressive Bohemian
Labor Organization, addressing recent censorship cases, including the conviction
of the Firebrand editors. The organisation voted unanimously to adopt a
resolution protesting postal censorship.
1901 The
Mercedes motor car was named by its creator, Gottlieb Daimler, after his
daughter.
1903 Richard
Pearse (1877 - 1953) was reputed to have flown a heavier than air
machine (before the Wright Brothers's more celebrated flight on December
17 of the same year) in powered flight near
Pleasant Point, South Canterbury, New Zealand; some
claim 1902.
 1905 Sleuth Sherlock
Holmes was resurrected by his creator, British novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (Holmes had been killed off
on May 4,
1891 by falling to his death over the
Alpine Reichenbach
Falls, Switzerland.)
1909 Serbia accepted Austrian control
over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1909 Women
in the state of Victoria gained the right to vote, the last of any
non-Aboriginal citizens in Australia.
A world
chronology of women's electoral rights
1912 Death of Karl May (b. 1842), author.
1917
The United
States took possession of the US Virgin Islands
after paying US$25 million to Denmark.
1918 Daylight
saving time
went into effect in the United States for the
first time. 1921 The
Royal Australian Air Force was founded.
1921 William 'Big Bill' Haywood
fled the US for asylum in the Soviet Union.
Early
progressives in the Book of Days
1924 India: Mahatma Gandhi began a
non-violent campaign for
temple entry, Vykom.
1929 Aviators
Keith Smith,
his brother,
Ross Smith, and companions left for England on a pioneering
Australia-UK flight.
1930
USA: The Motion
Pictures Production Code was instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the
treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next forty
years.
1931 An earthquake
destroyed Managua,
Nicaragua,
killing 2,000.
1933 The Civilian
Conservation Corps was established with the mission to relieve rampant
unemployment.
1934 Notorious
US bank robber, John
Dillinger, escaped from police custody.
1945
The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, opened at the Playhouse Theatre, New York.
1950 Thor
Heyerdahl's classic book, Kon-Tiki,
was published.
"After the war, Heyerdahl continued
his research, only to meet a wall of resistance to his theories amongst
contemporary scholars. To add weight to his arguments, Heyerdahl decided to
build a replica of the aboriginal balsa raft (named the Kon-Tiki) to
test his theories. In 1947, Heyerdahl and five companions left Callio, Peru
and crossed 8000 km (4300 miles) in 101 days to reach Polynesia (Raroia
atoll, Tuamotu Archipelago). Despite skepticism, the seaworthiness of the
aboriginal raft was thus proven and showed that the ancient Peruvians could
have reached Polynesia in this manner." Source
Pyramids
of the Canary Islands for a shopping mall?
"Archaeologists
and authorities scoffed when a local newspaper published an article claiming
to have discovered mysterious step-pyramids on the island of Tenerife. Just
more agricultural stone terraces they said, such as are common throughout the
Canaries.
"But Thor
Heyerdahl thought differently. Dr Heyerdahl, who has done
extensive research on the pyramids of Tucume in Peru, was intrigued by photos
of the site, and on visiting the valley of Guimar to see for himself, he was
no longer in any doubt. These were neither terraces nor random piles of stone
cleared by the Spaniards, as some had tried to explain them away. They were
painstakingly built step-pyramids, constructed according to similar principles
as those of Mexico, Peru, and ancient Mesopotamia
" … The priority is to preserve the pyramids,
which were slated for destruction to make way for urban development. Two of
the smaller pyramids, which were partially damaged in recent decades, have
also been restored." Source
Thor Heyerdahl believes Scandinavians
originated in Azerbaijan
See The
Tigris expedition, with Heyerdahl's dramatic war protest of April 3, 1978.
Thor Heyerdahl Research Center Kon-Tiki Museum Bjornar
Storfjell's account
Research, writings and a photograph
Thor Heyerdahl expeditions
His last project Jakten
på Odin (The Search for Odin)
Kon-Tiki by Heyerdahl Shop
Heyerdahl
1959 Following the Chinese
incursion into Tibet, its leader the 14th
Dalai
Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crossed
the border into India
and was granted political asylum.
"A day later, China announced in an order signed by leader Chou En-lai that a large-scale rebellion had been crushed in Lhasa, although it said the revolt was still continuing outside the capital.
"It announced that the Tibetan governing body had been dissolved under
martial law, and said the Dalai Lama had been replaced by the Panchen
Lama, his pro-Chinese rival, as the nominal head of a committee to set
up a Tibetan Autonomous Region within the Chinese People's Republic."
BBC
feature (watch/listen)
1959
England: Sir Winston
Churchill's home burgled to the tune of £10,000.
1964 The dictatorship in
Brazil, under the aegis of general Castello Branco,
began.
1966 The Soviet
Union launched Luna 10 which later became the
first spaceprobe
to enter orbit around the Moon.
1967 American guitarist Jimi
Hendrix burned his guitar for the first time at London's Astoria
Theatre. He was sent to the hospital afterwards for burns on his hands.
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1968 US President Lyndon
Johnson announced he would not run for re-election.
1970 Explorer 1 re-entered the Earth's atmosphere
(after 12 years in orbit).
1977 Zamboanga, Philippines: Planning to rob all
38 passengers and crew, charter pilot Ernesto Abuloc left the cockpit and opened
fire in the cabin, but could only kill seven before passengers overpowered him. Source:
The Daily Bleed
1979 Linda
Jones became Australia's first female jockey competing against men, at Rose
Hill, Sydney. She rode Northfleet into third place.
1981 The
Soviet Union introduced Daylight
saving time for the first time, at midnight.
1985 Australia: At the height of the Cold War,
300,000 demonstrated in peace rallies countrywide.
1986 Six metropolitan county
councils were abolished in England.
 1990
London, England: The
Trafalgar Square
poll tax riot broke
out. Simultaneously,
Strangeways Prison in Manchester (built for about 1,000 men but housing more than
1,600) exploded with a riot that would become the longest
rooftop protest in British history – lasting until April
25. Riots had
commenced on March 9.
Margaret
Thatcher planned to impose a poll tax – a tax of a uniform, fixed
amount per individual (as opposed to a percentage of income).
It was seen to
be unfair as the tax burden shifted from the estimated price of a
house to the number of people living in it, with the perceived
effect of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor.
Eighteen million
people refused to pay and enforcement measures became increasingly
draconian, unrest mounted and culminated in a number of riots.
The most serious of these happened in London on March 31, 1990,
during a protest at Trafalgar
Square, London, which more
than 200,000 protesters attended (see also Poll tax riot).
Source: Wikipedia
Pictures
of the riots
Activism & action page
Protest pictures (current)
The Poll Tax: The battle that
brought down Thatcher BBC
watch/listen More
1991 The Warsaw
Pact came to an end.
1991 USA: Five Plowshares
Movement activists hammered
missile launching cones on nuclear Navy ship, Milwaukee.
Christian
anarchism Plowshares
Movement Chronology Daniel
Berrigan Philip
Berrigan
1992 USA: New York state cancels contract to buy
power from controversial James Bay II hydroelectric project. The project, a
massive series of dams that would have wiped out tens of thousands of square
miles of Cree and Inuit land, is eventually cancelled as a result.
1992 The
American television news
program Dateline NBC
premiered.
1993 Actor Brandon Lee
was accidentally killed during the filming of The Crow.
1994 The journal
Nature
reported the finding in Ethiopia of the
first complete Australopithecus
afarensis skull (see Human evolution).
1995 Popular Tex-Mex
singer Selena
Quintanilla was murdered by her assistant Yolanda
Saldivar in a Corpus Christi,
Texas
motel after a heated discussion in which the latter was accused of
embezzling from the artist's fan club.
1997 Four East Timorese were arrested in Warton,
England, at the British Aerospace factory where Indonesian Hawk fighter jets,
used in the occupation of and genocide in their homeland, were being built.
Source:
The Daily Bleed
1998 Netscape
gave the code base of its
browser under an open-source license agreement, thus creating Mozilla
Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation to oversee the
development of Mozilla.
2002 Matza
restaurant massacre: a Palestinian Hamas suicide bomber
detonated his bomb inside the Matza restaurant in Haifa, Israel,
killing 15 people and injuring more than 40.
2004 Google
announced Gmail,
the first web-based mail service to offer 1 gigabyte of
storage.
2004 In Fallujah,
Iraq,
four American private
military contractors working for Blackwater USA,
were killed and their bodies mutilated after being ambushed.
2004 Sandton Square in Johannesburg, South Africa,
was renamed Nelson
Mandela Square.
2005 Death of Terri Schiavo
(Theresa Marie Schiavo; b.1963), American woman
who spent the last fifteen years of her life in a persistent
vegetative state. Her husband's successful legal efforts to
discontinue life support
prompted a fierce debate over bioethics, euthanasia,
legal
guardianship, federalism, and civil rights,
while overcoming active counter-efforts to keep her alive.
Tomorrow: Socrates tomb hoax
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Wikipedia
and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed
are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft'
and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright
policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.
Read more about today at Wilson's
Blogmanac
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reetings from Australia.
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Roman festival of Luna, goddess of
the full moon
