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The constellation of Gemini is generally represented as two small children, who, according to the ancients, were born out of eggs, possibly the ones that the Bull broke with his horns. The stories concerning Castor and Pollux, and Romulus and Remus, may be the result of amplifying the myths of these celestial Twins. The symbols of Gemini have passed through many modifications. The one used by the Arabians was the peacock. Two of the important stars in the constellation of Gemini still bear the names of Castor and Pollux. The sign of Gemini is supposed to have been the patron of phallic worship, and the two obelisks, or pillars, in front of temples and churches convey the same symbolism as the Twins.
Manly P Hall; The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 'The Zodiac and Its Signs'

The stars in the feet of Gemini have an influence similar to that of Mercury, and moderately to that of Venus. The bright stars in the thighs are like Saturn: of the two bright stars on the heads, the one, which precedes and is called Apollo, is like Mercury; the other which follows, called Hercules, is like Mars.
Ptolemy; Tetrabiblos (translated by JM Ashmand in 1822); 'Chapter IX. The Influence of the Fixed Stars'

 
Albrecht Dürer self portrait

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Dossier: Secret History of Armand Hammer

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The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq

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Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture

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Seeds of Deception

Gaian Democracies

Cutting Your Car Use

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The Book of Saints

The Da Vinci Code

Daily Everything

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

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Aries  Taurus  Gemini  Cancer  Leo  Virgo  Libra  Scorpius  Ophiuchus  Sagittarius  Capricornus  Aquarius  Pisces

Sun enters Gemini, 3^rd sign of the Zodiac
(May 21 - June 20)  

Gemini (the twins) is one of the constellations of the zodiac. It is part of the northern winter sky, lying between Taurus to the west and the dim Cancer to the east, with Auriga and the near-invisible Lynx to the north and Monoceros and Canis Minor to the south. The Gemini program is named for it.

Gemini includes two bright stars, named after the two twins, who correspond to the Dioscuri in Greek mythology – Castor (α), a pretty telescopic binary (actually sextuple), and Pollux (β), which is brighter and more south-westerly. The other stars are relatively dim – only one, Alhena (γ) is ever seen from a large city – and trace out a rectangle to the southeast.

This constellation is identified with the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux (or Polydeuces), for whom its brightest stars are also named. These twin brothers were the brothers of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, by Leda.

The astrological sign Gemini (May 21 - June 20) is associated with the constellation. In some cosmologies, Gemini is associated with the classical element Air, and thus called an Air Sign (with Libra and Aquarius). Its polar opposite is Sagittarius. 

Astrology    The Real Constellations of the Zodiac    Astrology: Pro    Astrology: Con

The brothers Bagadjimbiri

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A list of twins, including multiple twins, conjoined twins, modern twin celebrities, twins in sports, mythological twins, historical twins, fictional twins, famous people who had a twin and records related to twins.

Hi'ikia and Cho'i the Twins, a Yaqui myth   

More twin stories at Sacred Texts    Dioscuri at Sacred Texts

Ollin, Aztec calendar
Today is Ollin in the Aztec calendar, a good day for transmutation, which arrives like an earthquake, leaving in its wake the ruins of rationality, order and the preconceived.   Source

Festival of Demeter (Ceres) and Persephone, ancient Greece

Simbi blanc, Voudon (Voodoo), (May 20 - 21)

Anastenaria, fire-walking festival, northern Greece (May 21 - 23)

Held on the day of Saints Constantine (Roman emperor Constantine the Great) and his mother Helena, this day is known as the Anastenaria among the villagers of Ayia Eleni near Serres, and of Langada near Thessaloniki. The ritual dates back to pre-Christian times and was brought here by refugees from Eastern Thrace who arrived in Greece in the 1920s.

Folklore scholar George A Megas observes that "the cradle of Dionysiac worship was precisely in the Haemus area where the Anastenaria are danced today, passed down by the Greeks to the neighboring Bulgarian villages".

"The Anastenaria is a traditional ritual of fire walking which dates back to pagan times. Barefoot villagers of Ayia Eleni near Serres, and of Langada near Thessaloniki, and other places, annually walk over hot coals. As there are variations in the ritual from place to place, the following description is largely based upon the performance of the festival as celebrated at Ayia Eleni, the most authoritative Anastenarian community, and the illustrations are from the ritual at Langada."   Source

Firewalking    Firewalking – Skeptic's Dictionary    

More (translated from the Greek)    More    And more

Feast day of St Adalric

Feast day of St Ageranus

Feast day of St Ansuinus

Feast day of St Berard

Feast day of St Christopher Magallanes

Feast day of St Collen (Collen, Colan), monk of Llangollen, Abbot of Glastonbury

Collen was a 7^th-Century monk who founded a church besides the river at Llangollen (named for him), a small town in Denbighshire, north-east Wales, situated on the River Dee, at which place he is said to have arrived by coracle. Collen had spiritual conflict with Gwynn ap Nudd, King of the Fairies and Lord of the Underworld.

"Monk in Wales, Brittany and Cornwall. Believed to have travelled to Rome. Hermit in a small cave near Glastonbury. Abbot of a monastery in Wales ...

"Legend says that Collen was once invited to dine with the King of the Fairies; some say he was asked by a man, some say by a fairy, and some say by a talking peacock ... The saint declined three times, but finally accepted. Though the king appeared to live in an enormous castle, wealthy and fair, surrounded by courtiers and servants, and seated before a table groaning under the weight of good eatings. Collen, however, knew him for the lying spirit he was. The saint reminded the king of the fate of the Godless, then sprinkled holy water in all directions; in an instant there was nothing left but an angry, demonic bird, flying away from the scene.

"Another version has it that Collen, while he lived as a hermit near Glastonbury, was summoned to settle the eternal May Day struggle of Gwynn ap Nudd, Lord of the Underworld, with Gwyther, Lord of Summer, for the hand of the fair Creiddylad, the Maiden of Spring. Collen ordained that the quarrel would be resolved on Doomsday, and not before. Then with a sprinkle of holy water, the faerie folk and fortress disappeared."   Source

More    More    More

Feast day of St Constantine the Great, Roman emperor

Feast day of St Crispin of Viterbo (Peter Fioretti)
He was an apprentice shoemaker who took the name of St Crispin (patron of cobblers).

Feast day of St Elena (St Helena) in the Eastern Orthodox Church

"While discussing the link between bread and religion that runs so deep in Italy, Waverley Root [Root, Waverley, The Food of Italy, Scribner, 1971] comments on a ritual that takes place at Quartu Sant'Elena, near Cagliari in Sardinia on May 21st. The people dress in traditional costumes and make an offering to St. Elena of eight large loaves of bread, which contain wine and honey, and are sweetened with jam."
Source: School of the Seasons (Note: St Helena's feast day in the Western Church is August 18.)

Feast day of St Eugene de Mazenod

Feast day of St Eutychius

Feast day of St Felix of Cantalicio
(Ragged robin, Lychnis flos cuculi, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

Feast day of St Genesius

Feast day of St Godric (Godrick), hermit, of Finchale, or Finkley, England
Godric (c. 1065 - May 21, c. 1170) visited Lindisfarne, and being moved by an account of the life of St Cuthbert, converted to Christianity. There are many legends about his affinity with animals.

"In the time of Rainulf, Bishop of Durham, certain of his household had come out for a day's hunting, with their hounds, and were following a stag which they had singled out for its beauty. The creature, hard pressed by the clamor and the baying, made for Godric's hermitage, and seemed by its plaintive cries to beseech his help.

"The old man [Godric] came out, saw the stag shivering and exhausted at his gate, and moved with pity bade it hush its moans, and opening the door of his hut, let it go in. The creature dropped at the good father's feet but he, feeling that the hunt was coming near, came out, shut the door behind him and sat down in the open; while the dogs, vexed at the loss of their quarry, turned back with a mighty baying upon their masters.

"They, nonetheless, following on the track of the stag, circled round about the place, plunging through the well-nigh impenetrable brushwood of thorns and briars; and hacking a path with their blades, came upon the man of God in his poor rags.

"They questioned him about the stag; but he would not be the betrayer of his guest, and he made prudent answer, 'God knows where he may be.' They looked at the angelic beauty of his countenance, and in reverence for his holiness, they fell before him and asked his pardon for their bold intrusion.

"Many a time afterwards they would tell what had befallen them there, and marvel at it, and by their oft telling of it, the thing was kept in memory by those that came after. But the stag kept house with Godric until the evening; and then he let it go free. But for years thereafter it would turn from its way to visit him, and lie at his feet, to show what gratitude it could for its deliverance" (Reginald).

Source    More on saints and deer in the Scriptorium

More

Feast day of St Hospitius, recluse in Provence

Feast day of St Isberga

Feast day of St Rodron

Feast day of St Serapion the Sindonite

Feast day of St Sifrard

Feast day of St Theobald of Vienne

Feast day of St Vales

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Lilies and Roses Day, London
Observed at the Tower of London in commemoration of the death of Henry VI, May 21, 1471 (founder of Eton College and King's College). Services are attended by representatives of both colleges, bearing lilies and roses.  

Battle of Iquique Day, or Navy Day, Chile
Día de las Glorias Navales. Victory of naval battle of May 21, 1879; a public holiday.

Mikuni Minato Matsuri, or Port Festival, Japan (May 19 - 21)

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development (UNESCO)
Further to the adoption of UNESCO's Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in November 2001, the General Assembly of the United Nations welcomed the Declaration and the main lines of the Action Plan and proclaimed May 21 as World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development (Resolution 57/249).

More    More

Dia de la Afrocolombianidad, Colombia
Commemoration of the date slavery was abolished in Colombia in 1851.

Schizophrenia Awareness Week begins (dates vary from year to year and in different countries)

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

428 BCE Plato, Greek philosopher (The Republic; The Last Days of Socrates)

1471 Albrecht Dürer (Albrecht Durer; d. April 6, 1528), German painter, printmaker, draughtsman and art theorist, best known for his woodcuts in series

More

1527 King Philip II of Spain (d. 1598)

1688 Alexander Pope (d. 1744), English poet, satirist and translator.

Although he suffered an illness at 12 that left him a hunchback, he was acclaimed the chief poet of his day by the time he was 30. His translations of Homer were so successful that he became the first English poet to make his fortune by writing. Pope is still famous for his witty satires and aggressive, bitter quarrels with other writers. After his edition of William Shakespeare was attacked he answered with the mock-epic The Dunciad (1728).

1780 Elizabeth Fry (d. October 12, 1845) English social reformer and philanthropist noted especially for her work among prisoners, making efforts to improve the treatment of prisoners deported to Australia.

1832 Hudson Taylor (d. June 3, 1905), British Protestant Christian physician and missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission (now OMF International)

More

1844 Henri Rousseau (d. 1910), French naïve artist

1898 Armand Hammer (d. December 10, 1990), American physician, entrepreneur, oil magnate, art collector, founder of Occidental Petroleum when he was in his 60s.

New York-born billionaire Dr Armand Hammer led a most extraordinary life as an American businessman and a confidant of US presidents as well as Communist dictators. As a youth, he met Lenin and was the first capitalist to gain a business concession in the USSR; during the 1920s he was a courier for the Soviet government to the American Communist Party. It might even have been a job he continued into his old age.

The new Marxist-Leninist regime in the USSR gave Hammer the rights to sell old Czarist paintings in the West, and he amassed a fortune as a young man. Many American and other art galleries and institutions as well as private collectors still own Russian masterpieces that the Communist regime and Armand Hammer shipped out of their rightful homeland.

Good guy/bad guy?

His autobiography painted him as a philanthropist and worker for peace, though other biographies portrayed him as a liar, a Communist propagandist (and possibly an espionage agent through several US administrations), a bully and a briber. He always seemed to skirt prosecution, perhaps because his fortune and fame protected him, though he did come under investigation for a bribery scandal in Venezuela where he had oil concessions. In 1976, he pleaded guilty to charges of concealing a $54,000 contribution to the re-election campaign of Richard Nixon, receiving just a small fine and eventually a pardon from President George Bush (Daddy).

Bucks or ideology?

In fact, according to his biographer, Carl Blumay (The Dark Side of Power, Simon & Schuster, 1992), his former press agent of many years, Armand Hammer was named after the arm-and-hammer insignia of the Socialist Labor Party that became, under Julius Hammer's leadership, the Communist Party of the USA.

Whether over six decades Armand Hammer used the enemies of freedom to help him make a buck, or made bucks so he could help the enemies of freedom (and whether he was a Party member all through those decades that the USSR was determined to defeat the capitalist world) is a moot point and perhaps we shall never know. My guess is that it is not an either/or question; he was probably both. As the Spectator wrote: Hammer was "one of the century's shysters, fraudsters, double-dealers, self-promoters and manipulators, a mephistophelean character ...".

Armand Hammer Art Museum, UCLA    Hammer and the Fabergé eggs

FBI - Freedom of Information Act - Armand Hammer

Did Armand Hammer have anything to do with Arm & Hammer baking soda?

Biography   More    Other late starters & late achievers in the Scriptorium

1904 Thomas 'Fats' Waller (d. 1943), American jazz musician.

A huge man, he weighed 300 lbs for much of his life. Although he was fairly short, his hands were so large that he could span 13 keys on the piano, a distinct advantage in his profession. He wore size 16 shoes. He would often drink a quart of whiskey at rehearsal.

He played piano and organ, and composed. He was a master of the "stride" style of piano playing, similar to ragtime, but made more use of a "striding" left hand, where his massive hand was a boon. Waller's hit songs included 'Ain't Misbehavin'' (written while in jail for not paying alimony), 'I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter', 'Your Feet's Too Big' and 'It's a Sin to Tell a Lie', all still well known today.

It was not only his great jazz talent but also his composing genius, his irrepresible humour and his attractive vocal style that made him an international star.

A lifestyle of eating, boozing and partying caught up with him at the age of only 39, when he died of pneumonia while on a train near Kansas City, on December 15, 1943. 

1904 Robert Montgomery (d. 1981), actor

1916 Harold Robbins (d. 1997), best-selling American novelist (The Carpetbaggers).

Harold Robbins, who was born on this day in New York City in 1916, and died on  October 4, 1997, had a remarkable life. During the Depression, he made a million dollars (which was an even more vast fortune in those days than it is today) by buying up crops and selling options to canning companies - and did it all by the age of 20. A bad deal with sugar, however, wiped him out before World War II, and he had to start over. He recouped his losses with novels that sold in staggering numbers. The Carpetbaggers (1961), for example, sold six million copies.

1917 Raymond Burr (d. 1993), American actor (TV series Perry Mason; Ironside)

1921 Andrei Sakharov (d. 1989), Russian physicist, human rights activist, recipient of the Nobel Prize

1930 Malcolm Fraser, twenty-second Prime Minister of Australia

1940 Tony Sheridan (b. Andrew Esmond Sheridan McGinnity, Norwich, Norfolk), English rock and roll singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known as an early collaborator of the Beatles

1941 Greg Hill (d. July 20, 2000), also known as Gregory Hill, Malaclypse the Younger, Mal-2, wrote the Principia Discordia with Kerry Thornley (aka Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst). According to a Usenet post, Hill died of cancer on July 20, 2000 in the San Francisco Bay area. Fnord.

Today in the Discordian Calendar

1945 Ernst Messerschmid, physicist and astronaut

1948 Leo Sayer, British pop singer

1951 Al Franken, Emmy Award–winning American comedian, actor, author (Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right), screenwriter, political commentator, radio host and, recently, politician

1952 Mr T, American actor

1959 Nicole Brown Simpson, murdered wife of OJ Simpson

1972 The Notorious B.I.G. (murdered 1997), American rap musician

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May

20 Pick Strawberries Day
20 Be A Millionaire Day
20 Flower Day
20 Strawberry Festival (Maryland, USA)
21 Waitstaff Day
21 Greek Philosophers' Day
21 Neighbour Day
21 International AIDS Candlelight Memorial
22 Victoria Day (Canada)
22 Skyscraper Day
23 World Turtle Day
23 Bifocals Day
23 Mesmerism Day
25 Ascension Of Christ
25 Tap Dance Day
25 Self Reliance Day
25 Wine Day
26 Bob Day
26 Cherry Dessert Day
27 International Jazz Day
27 Bridge Day
28 Whale Day
29 Mount Everest Day
29 Wisconsin Day
30 Compact Disc Day
31 Poetry Day
31 World No Tobacco Day

June

1 Children's Day (China)
3 Love Conquers All Day
3 Egg Day
3 Family Day
3 Tattoo Day
3 Repeat Day
3 Strawberry Festival (New Jersey, USA)
3 Blueberry Festival (Florida, USA)
4 Cheese Day
5 World Environment Day
6 Applesauce Cake Day
6 D-Day Anniversary

... More Events

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216 BCE Hannibal, with allies, defeated the Romans at Cann, killing 40,000.

996 Sixteen-year-old Otto III was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

 

1382 Just a year after reeling from the poll-tax induced Peasants' Revolt, England reeled again, this time from a strong earthquake. (Some sources say the earthquake struck on May 19; there are about 30 contemporary accounts.) The greatest destruction was in Kent.

A sitting of Parliament in London and a trial of heretics at Blackfriars were both interrupted by the quake. William Courtenay (c. 1342 - 1396), Archbishop of Canterbury (1381 - 96) was busy that day presiding at a synod to condemn the doctrines of John Wycliffe (1328 - December 31, 1384) in Blackfriars when the earthquake struck and the meeting was suspended, with both parties of course claiming divine intervention on their own behalf. The participants of the synod were terrified and wished to break up the assembly, but Courtenay declared the earthquake a favourable sign that meant the purification of the earth from erroneous doctrine.

"Steeples toppled, buildings fell down, and large waves rolled up the Thames River, overturning ships. The bell tower of Canterbury Cathedral tumbled down."   Source

The UK's most destructive earthquake hit Colchester, England on April 22, 1884, killing just one person. (See also April 6, 1580.) The most devastating earthquake in world history was probably that which destroyed Shaanxi and Kansu, China on January 23, 1556 with the loss of some 850,000 lives. (Another earthquake in the same area in the mid-1950s reportedly killed more than 1 million people, but the Chinese government has never confirmed the disaster.)

List of some major earthquakes of the world

1420 King Henry V of England became ruler of France in the Treaty of Troyes.

"Thanks in part to Shakespeare's portrayal of him, Henry V is usually remembered as a heroic warrior-king, admired for his charismatic leadership, military and political genius, and extreme piety.

"Henry's war with France was probably motivated more by the need to win support and prove his legitimacy than by a belief in his right to the French throne."   Source

1471 King Henry VI of England died in the Tower of London, possibly murdered on the orders on King Edward IV.

1502 The island of Saint Helena was discovered by the Portuguese navigator João da Nova. (St Helena's Day in the Eastern Church - which is celebrated elsewhere on August 18). Napoleon lived there in exile from 1815 till his death in 1821.

1553 Lady Jane Grey, great-grand daughter of King Henry VII of England was forced to marry Lord Guildford Dudley, who wanted to be king of England.

1542 Death of Hernando de Soto, explorer.

De Soto archaeological site

1639 Tommaso Campanella (b 1568) died, in Paris. Italian utopian author of The City of the Sun, which he wrote in 1602 just after he was condemned to life imprisonment for sedition and heresy. He was a Dominican monk tossed into prison with Giordano Bruno. A precursor of egalitarian communism, when released he preached revolutionary insurrection and peasant seizure of the lands.

1647 Death of Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, Dutch poet and historian.

1674 John Sobieski was elected by the nobility to be the King of Poland.

1805 Freidrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner first crystallized morphine in Einbeck, Germany.

1819 The first bicycle ride in New York City was made.

1840 New Zealand was proclaimed a British colony.

1851 Slavery was abolished in the Republic of Colombia.

1856 The world's first eight-hour working day was achieved, by stonemasons in the State of Victoria, Australia. The masons had marched on the previous April 21 demanding that the working day be no longer than eight hours.

It was not a new concept; Robert Owen (1771 - 1858) had raised the demand for a ten-hour day as early as 1810, and instituted it in his socialist enterprise at New Lanark, Scotland. As early as 1817 he had formulated the goal of the eight-hour day and coined the slogan "Eight hours labour, Eight hours recreation, Eight hours rest".

We're still waiting on the four hour day of our Paleolithic ancestors though currently only a three hour 'working' week would be all it would take to produce our basic needs. As it happens, the length of the working week is actually increasing: the majority of Western workers now doing over forty hours is standard.
Source: 'Calendar Riots'

The Abolition of Work

 

1856 Lawrence, Kansas, USA was captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.

1863 American Civil War: Siege of Port Hudson – Union forces began to lay siege to the Confederate-controlled Port Hudson, Louisiana.

1871 France: The beginning of 'Semaine Sanglante' (Bloody Week). Horrendous repression and butchery in the suppression of the Paris Commune began. The massacres and summary executions left 20,000 - 35,000 dead. The Thiers butcher declared "the expiation will be complete. It will take place in the name of the laws, by the law, with the laws."

1879 War of the Pacific: naval battle of Iquique and Punta Gruesa. Chilean ships Esmeralda and Covadonga, that were blocking the Iquique harbour fought against Peruvian vessels Huascar and Independencia. The Huascar sank the Esmeralda and the Covadonga forced the Independencia to run aground. Chilean captain Arturo Prat died.

1881 The American Red Cross was established by Clara Barton, its first president.

1894 Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom opened the Manchester Ship Canal.

1894 "Courage camarades, vive l'anarchie": The last words of French anarchist Emile Henry, executed at dawn, guillotined at age 21.

Early progressives in the Book of Days    CounterCulture Wiki

1906 A Japanese naval squadron visited Australia.

1908 The first horror film, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, was released in Chicago, USA.

1910 After a music-hall stage career and the break-up of her first marriage, novelist Colette began to serialise La Vagabonde in La Vie Parisienne.

1916 USA: Clocks went forward for the first Daylight Saving Day, originally sold to the public as a wartime emergency measure.

Workers of the world, go back to bed!

1923 The International Congress of Dancing Masters in Paris condemned two new dances, the tango and the foxtrot.

1924 Loeb and Leopold case: In one of the most sensational American crime cases of the 20^th Century, two University of Chicago students, the 19-year-old sons of millionaires, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, confessed to the 'thrill killing' of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago. Their lawyer was Clarence Darrow, who was also in the famous Scopes trial.

Leopold and Loeb Trial Home Page   Leopold and Loeb

1927 Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight, begun on May 20.

1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, begun on May 20.

1936 Sada Abe was apprehended after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her hand. Her story soon became one of Japan's most notorious scandals.

1941 World War II: 950 miles off the coast of Brazil, the freighter SS Robin Moor became the first United States ship sunk by a German U-boat.

1945 American actor Humphrey Bogart married actress Lauren Bacall.

1956 Nuclear testing: In the Pacific Ocean, Bikini Atoll was nearly obliterated by the first airborne explosion of a hydrogen bomb.

1960 The musical My Fair Lady opened in Sydney at Her Majesty's Theatre, starring Robin Bailey and Bunty Turner.

1961 American civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Patterson declared martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots broke out.

1968 At a protest demonstration in Peking the group Sheng Wu Lian (Sheng-wu-lien) called for the people to govern themselves directly, as in the Paris Commune. The Red Guards accused them of being anarchists. 

Sheng Wu Lian "was formed in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, on October 11, 1967. During its brief existence between October 1967 and January 1968, it produced a series of articles to advertise its political program. Three of them, namely, a program, a resolution, and an essay, soon reached the outside world. The most influential of the three was the essay, "Whither China," which was written on January 6, 1968 by Yang Xiguang, a high school student. Yang also authored "Report on an Investigation of the Educated Youth Movement in Hunan (November 16, 1967)" and "A Proposal Concerning the Establishment of Maoist Group (October 1967)," which were less well-known in the West."
Source: "New Trends of Thought" on the Cultural Revolution [PDF]  View as HTML

Sheng-wu-lien: Whither China?    Left Communism in China - Wikipedia

 

1972 A toy balloon left Atherton, California, ending up on June 10 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

1972 A Catholic Lithuanian youth immolated himself during a week of uprisings against Soviet troops.

1975 The Red Army Faction (commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof gang) of leftist terrorists went on trial in Stuttgart, Germany.

1979 Elton John performed the first western rock concert in the USSR, in Leningrad.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1980 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back opened in cinemas.

1980 Punk musician Joe Strummer of The Clash was arrested in Hamburg for smashing his guitar over the head of an audience member.

1981 Pierre Mauroy became Prime Minister of France.

1990 Ion Iliescu won the first free elections in Romania.

1991 In Madras, former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a terrorist bomb hidden in a bouquet of flowers.

1997 Germany: About 50 activists occupied and prematurely harvested a trial field of genetically engineered maize, ruining the test, in Schonfeld.

Activism & action page    Protest pictures (current)

1998 At Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, Kipland Kinkel (who was suspended for bringing a gun to school) shot a semi-automatic rifle into a room filled with students, killing two wounding 25 others, after killing his parents at home.

1998 Reproductive rights: In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics were hit by a butyric acid attacker.

2003 An earthquake hit northern Algeria, killing more than 2,000 people.

 

2004 After more than 20 years without any formal recognition of his extraordinary actions in 1983, Stanislav Petrov was officially presented with the World Citizen Award in Moscow, Russia for averting a potential World War III, which he did on September 26, 1983 (qv).

Soviet military officer Petrov averted a worldwide nuclear war by refusing to accept that missiles had been launched against the USSR by the United States, despite the indication given by his computerised early warning systems. The experience nearly ruined his health, and his incredible tale was hushed up. The World Citizen Award is awarded by the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with branches in 30 countries.

BrightStarSound.com a Petrov tribute website

S Petrov on SkySurfer.co.uk    Cdi.org article May 28, 2004    World Citizen Award

A YTMND tribute to Petrov

20 mishaps that might have started an accidental nuclear war

The Man Who Saved the World Finally Recognized    BBC story   MosNews article    More

See also October 7, 1962: for a similar story about Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov

 

2004 Sherpa Pemba Dorje climbed Mount Everest in 8 hours 10 minutes, breaking his rival Sherpa Lakpa Gelu's record from the previous year.

 

Tomorrow: Krishnamurti, the reluctant guru

 

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