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Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but
talent instantly recognises genius. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born on
May 22, 1859; The Valley of Fear
If you, Sir Conan Doyle,
believe in fairies,
Must I believe in Mister Sherlock Holmes?
If you believe that round us all the air is
Just thick with elves and little men and gnomes,
Then must I now believe in Doctor Watson
And speckled bands and things? Oh, no! My hat!
Though all the t's are crossed and i's have dots on
I simply can't Sir Conan. So that's that! JE Wheelwright; contemporary poem to Arthur Conan Doyle's
gullibility
June 30
Dear Miss Elsie Wright
I have seen the wonderful pictures of the fairies which you and your
cousin Frances have taken, and I have not been so interested for a
long time. I will send you tomorrow one of my little books for I am
sure you are not too old to enjoy adventures. I am going to Australia
soon, but I only wish before I go that I could get to Bradford and
have half an hours chat with you, for I should like to hear all about
it. With best wishes
Yours sincerely
Arthur Conan Doyle Mr Gardner told me about it. Arthur Conan Doyle letter as his interest was aroused on the
Cottingsley fairies
One of the fairies
photos that fooled Arthur Conan Doyle (b. May 22, 1859); Frances Griffiths with the fairies, photographed by Elsie Wright in July 1916
THUS the emperor in all his actions honoured
God, the Controller of all things, and exercised an unweariedoversight over His churches.
And God requited him, by subduing all barbarous nations under his
feet, so that he was able everywhere to raise trophies over his
enemies: and He proclaimed him as conqueror to all mankind, and made
him a terror to his adversaries: not indeed that this was his natural
character, since he was rather the meekest, and gentlest, and most
benevolent of men. Eusebius of Caesaria, writing of Emperor Constantine, who died on
May 22, 337 CE Source
In history we are told Mungo Park
discovered the Niger, whereas the Niger was there before Mungo Park. Victoria Agodo, executive secretary of Nigeria's National Institute
for Cultural Orientation
Out of the clear blue ether of the
sky there seems to condense a wonderful yet at first hardly
perceptible vision; and out of this there gradually emerges, ever more
and more clearly, an angel host bearing in its midst the sacred Grail. Richard Wagner, German composer born on May 22, 1813
While there is a lower class, I am
in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while
there is a soul in prison, I am not free! American progressive activist, Eugene V
Debs, who was imprisoned on
this day in 1895
Truth
is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever,
by any religion, by any sect. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned,
unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor should
any organisation be formed to lead or to coerce people along any
particular path. Jiddu
Krishnamurti, Indian spiritual teacher, born on May 22, 1895
Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential
to the understanding of a problem. Krishnamurti
To the so-called
religious to be sensitive is to sin, an evil reserved for the worldly; to
the religious the beautiful is temptation, to be resisted; it's an evil
distraction to be denied. Good works are not a substitute for love, and
without love all activity leads to sorrow, noble or ignoble. Krishnamurti
All authority of
any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the
most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers
destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own
disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as
valuable, as necessary. Krishnamurti; Freedom
from the Known
When you call
yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything
else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are
separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself
by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who
is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any
religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with
the total understanding of mankind. Krishnamurti; ibid
It is important to
understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life, how you
have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbour, your
child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods--you have
nothing but images. The images create the space between you and what you
observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find
out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we
create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which
divides people in all their relationships. Now the very attention you give
to a problem is the energy that solves that problem. When you give your
complete attention--I mean with everything in you--there is no observer at
all. There is only the state of attention which is total energy, and that
total energy is the highest form of intelligence. Naturally that state of
mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness, comes
when there is total attention, not disciplined stillness. That total
silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed is
the highest form of a religious mind. But what takes place in that state
cannot be put into words because what is said in words is not the fact. To
find out for yourself you have to go through it. Krishnamurti; ibid
Man cannot
come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma,
priest or ritual, nor through any philosophic technique. He has to find it
through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the
contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual
analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a
fence of security – religious, political, personal. These manifest as
symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's
thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the cause
of our problems, for they divide man from man. Krishnamurti
The town didn't
have a rabbi, and it was time for me to be bar mitzvahed. Suddenly a rabbi
showed up under strange circumstances for only a year. He and his wife got
off the bus in the middle of winter. He showed up just in time for me to
learn this stuff. He was an old man from Brooklyn who had a white beard
and wore a black hat and black clothes. They put him upstairs above the
cafe, which was the local hangout. It was a rock and roll cafe where I
used to hang out, too. I use to go up there every day to learn the stuff,
either after school or after dinner. After studying with him an hour or
so, I'd come down and boogie. Bob Dylan, who had his bar mitzvah on this day in 1954Source
"A Eurasian plant (Taraxacum officinale)
of the composite family having many-rayed yellow flower heads and deeply
notched basal leaves. Widely naturalized as a weed in North America, it
is used in salads and to make wine. 2. Any of several similar or
related plants. 3. A brilliant to vivid yellow ...
"Dent-de-lioun,
the Middle English form of dandelion, makes it easy to see that
our word is a borrowing of Old French dentdelion, literally,
"tooth of the lion," referring to the sharply indented leaves of the
plant. Modern French dent-de-lion, unlike Modern English dandelion,
reveals to anyone who knows French what the components of the word are.
The English spelling reflects the pronunciation of the Old French word
at the time it was borrowed into English. The t in dentdelion
probably disappeared early in Old French, having been absorbed into the
related sound of the d. The earliest recorded instance of the
word occurs in an herbal written in 1373, but we find an instance of dandelion
used in a proper name (Willelmus Dawndelyon) in a document dated 1363."Source
Bear Waking Day, Norway
Today is said to be the day that bears awaken from hibernation and leave
the den.
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Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
He was
a Viking leader captured by the Northumbrians (England), tortured,
and put in a pit full of venomous snakes.
Ragnar Lodbrok (Regnar Lodbrok) was a semi-legendary King of
Sweden and Denmark
who reigned sometime in the eighth or ninth centuries. Although he
is something of a hero in his native Scandinavia,
reliable accounts of his life are very sketchy and heavily based on
ancient Viking
sagas. Even the dating of his reign is not certain; there are
sources that date it from 750-794, and others from 860-865. Neither
matches with what we know of him, and he probably held power as a
warlord from approximately 835 to his
death in 865,
perhaps only being recognized as king in the last five years of his
life ...
Ragnar was a pagan
who claimed to be a direct descendant of the god Odin. One
of his favorite strategies was to attack Christian
cities on holy feast days, knowing that many soldiers would be in
church ...
In 865, he landed in Northumbria
on the northeast coast of England. Here, it is claimed that he was
defeated in battle for the only time, by King
Ælla of
Northumbria. Ella's men
captured Ragnar, and the King ordered him thrown into a pit filled
with poisonous snakes. As he was slowly being bitten to death, he
was alleged to have exclaimed "How the little pigs would grunt
if they knew the situation of the old boar!"
One Viking saga states that when his four sons heard
the manner of his death, they all reacted in great sorrow. Hvitserk,
who was playing chess, gripped the piece so hard that he bled from
his fingernails. Bjorn grabbed a spear so tightly that he left an
impression in it, and Sigurd, who was trimming his nails, cut
straight through to the bone.
Feast Day of St Julia of
Corsica, martyr (Lilac, Syringa vulgaris is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
A slave who was tortured and crucified. Patron of Corsica.
Feast day of St Rita of
Cascia Saint Rita (1381
– May
22, 1457)
was born at Roccaporena near Cascia
in the Diocese of Spoleto,
Italy.Called La Abogada de Imposibles,
'the saint of desperate cases' in Spanish-speaking countries.This 14th
Century woman suffered at the hands of a brutish husband and two
nasty sons. She is also the patron saint of the unhappily married,
and has attributes of a goddess of mercy. A large sanctuary of Saint
Rita was built in the early 20th century in Cascia: it and the house
in which she was born are among the most active pilgrimage sites of Umbria.
Saint Rita, along with St Jude
is a patron saint of "Lost Causes".
International Day for Biological Diversity
(UN; formerly
December 29,
changed in 2001) Modern civilisation bears much of
the responsibility for the loss of species and the
genetic-homogenisation of plants on our planet. With an estimated
one species a day disappearing from the earth, and agribiz depleting
the gene pool of human nutrition-providing plants, a change of
lifestyle and political action are both called for.
Sovereignty and
Thanksgiving Day, Haiti Holiday;
honours the head of State, the national culture and thanksgiving.
Heroes Day, Sri Lanka Holiday
in Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Honours those
patriots who died in insurrection of 1971. Sri Lanka ratified its
constitution on this day in 1972.
National Maritime Day,
USA Proclaimed
by president; honours SS Savannah
which made the first transatlantic crossing in 1819.
May 22 least common birthday in USA;
October
5 is most common
"A recent in depth database query conducted by
Anybirthday.com suggests that October 5th is the United States most
popular birth date. It seems that on average more people are born on
this day than any other.
"According to
the inquiry, an average of 12,576 people are born each year on the
5th of October. It also suggests that some 968,000 Americans
celebrate this day annually.
"What makes
this early October birth date so fashionable? October 5th however
held a not-so-surprising significance, as conception would have
fallen right on New Years Eve.
"Which birth
date is the least common? May 22nd with an average of 10,259 persons
born each year."Source
1859Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (d. July 7, 1930), Scottish physician and author, creator of Sherlock Holmes.
After his son died in World War I, he dedicated himself to spiritualistic
studies. An example is The Coming of the Fairies
(1922)
in which he supported the existence of 'little people' and spent
more than a million dollars on their cause. He was
apparently totally convinced of the veracity of the obviously faked Cottingley fairy photographs, which
he reproduced in the book, together with theories about the nature
and existence of fairies.
Doyle's gullibility possibly was heightened
because he had first been told about the photographs by his fellow
devotee of esoteric matters and enthusiastic believer in the pictures, Gerald Gardner,
the founder of modern Wicca.
By May, 1920, Gardner was using slides of the Cottingley pictures at lectures.
Doyle saw the first two photos and Gardner convinced him they were
real, whereupon Doyle wrote an article on the subject in The
Strand,
the magazine that published his Holmes tales. Doyle did, however,
say that the photos should be tested by disinterested people.
While Doyle was in Australia on a lecture tour in 1921, Gardner sent him information about three more photos that he
had been shown by the Cottingley cousins, and Doyle shed any doubts
that he might have had, apparently believing that Gardner fit the
bill of his "disinterested" person.
Doyle at this time was a major international celebrity,
but his fascination with ghosts, fairies and "the
afterlife" drew ridicule worldwide. In 1923, as he toured
America, an editorial in the New York Times said: "Again
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is placing on many of this country's
inhabitants the embarrassing task of trying to strike a balance
between their long-established liking for him and their equally
well-settled dislike for what he is doing."
Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright were two young cousins living in Cottingley,
near Bradford, England. The children took a
total of five photographs between 1916 and
1920 of what appeared to
be fairies
dancing. The photos showed the fairies as small humans with 1920s
style haircuts, dressed in filmy gowns, and with large wings on
their backs. One picture is of a gnome,
about 12 inches tall, dressed in a somewhat Elizabethan
manner, and also with wings.
Examination of the pictures today shows that the
fairies look like paper cutouts, having a flat appearance, with
lighting that does not match the rest of the photograph. At the
time, however, the photos were viewed by many as evidence of
fairies, most notably by Doyle.
The
cousins remained evasive about the authenticity of the pictures for
most of their lives, at times claiming they were forgeries, and at
other times leaving it to the individual to decide. In a BBC
interview in 1975, Elsie said: "I've told you that they're
photographs of figments of our imagination and that's what I'm
sticking to." However, in 1981, in an interview by Joe Cooper
for the magazine The Unexplained, the cousins confessed
that the pictures were fakes. Frances maintained that the final
picture taken is genuine, however, and both girls have claimed that
they saw fairies, but were unable to take pictures of them.
The girls said that Elise had drawn
the fairies from a book called Princess Mary's Gift Book. Four years earlier, in 1977, Fred
Gettings, an author on anomalies, had asserted the very same
thing. He
discovered that a Claude
Allin Shepperson(1867
- 1921) illustration for
Alfred Noyes's poem
'A Spell for
a Fairy' in Princess Mary's Gift Book (Hodder and
Stoughton, London, 1915, p. 101 and following pages) showed fairies dancing in almost
precisely the same poses as those in at least one of the Cottingley
photographs.
Incredibly,
there was another story of interest in Princess
Mary's Gift Book
'Bimbashi Joyce' written by … Arthur Conan Doyle.
On the left, a Cottingley fairy. On the right, a Shepperson fairy.
Click image for Shepperson's fairies to compare with the photo at
the top of this page
(opens in a new window)
Doyle
in Australia
"He came to Melbourne as part of a world-wide tour promoting his new beliefs; here, as elsewhere, he drew vigorous denunciations as a devil worshipper, but the criticism was not sufficient to stop packed houses from coming to hear him. As a keen follower of sport, he also attended the grand final of that year at the MCG, between South Melbourne and Richmond, watching the match from the members' pavilion. Conan Doyle was to write favorably of Australian football in which he referred to HCA Harrison. Doyle said that in a certain sort of Australian – and I fancy he was talking of Harrison – he had found qualities of Britishness, not least restraint, which he believed the British had lost as a result of the American influence. In fact, he saw Melbourne as a British city – rather, he thought, like another outpost of empire, Edinburgh - and predicted an optimistic future for Australia provided it maintained a high proportion of Britons in its population stock. His two major criticisms of the country were the number of drunks on the streets and the fact that the whole nation stopped for the Melbourne Cup which he saw as a lottery."
Source
"Artist, poet and short story writer Hal Gye is best known for his illustrations of C. J. Dennis's Sentimental Bloke (1915) and of other works by Dennis, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. Originally a law clerk in Melbourne, Gye became an illustrator for Angus & Robertson, the Bulletin and other newspapers and magazines. Under the name of 'James Hackston' he wrote a series of (often humorous) short stories for the Bulletin from 1936 on; they were later collected into Poetic volumes."
Source
Not far from my previous home in
Sydney, at Balmoral (a harbour beach suburb), in 1924 the local
Theosophical
Society commenced construction of a grand marble edifice,
the 'Star
Amphitheatre'. Its purpose was to provide a vantage point to
witness a grand event: J Krishnamurti, who many Theosophists
believed to be the second incarnation of Christ, was expected to
walk on the water through Sydney Harbour Heads.
When the
Indian mystic and teacher did arrive, in 1926, it has been said, he
did indeed walk on the water, but it was on the deck of a ship when
he did so. Krishnamurti had long since given up the messianic claims
that had been made for him, since his boyhood, by Theosphical
Society leaders CW Leadbeater and Annie Besant.
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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application. Further details
12 CE A daytime meteor
shower, possibly Zeta Perseid, was observed in China.
337 CE The
son of Constantius I Chlorus and St Helena,
an innkeeper's daughter, Constantine
I, the Great, died at Nicomedia, having refused baptism until he was on his
deathbed. However, later, Christians claimed he was converted to Christianity
before he became Roman
emperor. Ironically, he might
have favoured the losing side of the Arian controversy, because, according to Jerome, he was baptized by an Arian bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia.
His body was taken by escort to
Constantinople where it
was laid in state in the palace. His sarcophagus was placed in the Church of the
Holy Apostles, surrounded by the memorial steles of the Apostles of Jesus
Christ, symbolically bestowing on him the honour of being the thirteenth
Apostle.
Constantine was the emperorwho imposed on the Roman Empire Christianity
as a state religion. The legend that he had a vision of
the cross (a flaming cross outlined against the sun, emblazoned with the
Greek words En toutoi nika – 'In this sign you shall conquer') in 312on the road
to fight Maxentius at
the Battle of Milvian Bridge was not recorded by his contemporaries, and
appeared at a much later date.
Flavius Valerius Constantinus was born at Naissus, the
modern Nish in Serbia, on February 27,
271, 272, or 273. In
the Eastern Orthodox churches he is considered a saint and shares a feast day, May 21, with his
mother. He additionally has a feast day of his own, September 3.
"Before Constantine advanced against his rival
Maxentius, according to ancient custom he summoned the haruspices, who
prophesied disaster; so reports a pagan panegyrist. But when the gods would
not aid him, continues this writer, one particular god urged him on, for
Constantine had close relations with the divinity itself … He saw, according
to the one in a dream, according to the other in a vision, a heavenly
manifestation, a brilliant light in which he believed he descried the cross or
the monogram of Christ … A monogram combining the first letters, X and P, of
the name of Christ (CHRISTOS), a form that cannot be proved to have been used
by Christians before
…"Source
1541
In Germany, the Ratisbon (Regensburg) Conference ended, its mission to reunify
the Catholic Church having failed. From this time on, the Protestant movement
was established.
1611
King James I of England
created baronets, at the suggestion of Robert
Cecil, 1st
Earl of Salisbury. The
honour was sold to two hundred men at £1,000 each. The only qualification that
was required was an income of £1,000 a year.
1703Daniel
Defoe,
British author (Robinson
Crusoe), was fined, imprisoned, and later pilloried for his ill-timed
satire, The Shortest Way with Dissenters.
1891 The
first demonstration of motion pictures took place in the laboratories of Thomas
Alva Edison, West Orange, New Jersey, USA.
1894 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent
of civil disobedience, proposed an organisation to watch interest of Indians and
to oppose colour bar against them in South Africa.
1895Eugene V Debs was
imprisoned for his role in the Pullman railway strike, Woodstock, Illinois, USA.
1954
Robert Zimmerman (Bob
Dylan) had his bar mitzvah.
Tangled up in Jews, website
by Larry Yudelson devoted to studying and collecting trivia relating to the
Jewish religious/cultural odyssey of Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham v'Rachel Riva,
a.k.a Bob Dylan
In the coffee
room of Powell's bookstore, three teenage boys with spiky hair and skateboards
were reading Interview magazine and discussing the current music scene.
The conversation turned to Robert Zimmerman, a.k.a. Bob Dylan.
Said one: "I
don't get why he changed his name from Zimmerman. All the coolest guys I know
are named Zimmerman."
His friend:
"Yeah, when I grow up I'm gonna change my name to Zimmerman." Gesher: A Journal of Outreach to Unaffiliated Jews, Fall 1995
1957A
ten-megaton hydrogen bomb accidentally fell from a bomber in an uninhabited area
near Albuquerque (USA) owned by the University of New Mexico. Non-nuclear
explosives detonated, blasting a crater approximately 4 metres (approx. 12
feet)
deep and 8 metres (approx. 25
feet) across.
Its huge nuclear charge
miraculously did not detonate, narrowly averting horror for New Mexico. The bomb
was hundreds of times more powerful than the one that had levelled
Hiroshima. No
one was injured, but radiation was detected in the crater. Source: The Daily Bleed
1967 The Innovation department store
in the centre of Brussels (Belgium) burned down. It was the most devastating fire in
Belgian history, resulting in 323 dead and missing and 150 wounded.
1974 Rock critic
Jon Landau saw Bruce Springsteen perform in
Massachusetts and wrote "I saw rock and roll'sfuture -
and its name is Bruce Springsteen", helping to launch the relatively unknown
musician's career.
1975 "John
and Arthur Mowforth were twins who lived about 80 miles apart in Great Britain.
On the evening of May 22, 1975, both fell severely ill from chest pains. The
families of both men were completely unaware of the other's illness. Both men
were rushed to separate hospitals at approximately the same time. And both died
of heart attacks shortly after arrival. (Chronogenetics: The Inheretance of
Biological Time, Luigi Gedda and Gianni Brenci)"Source
1981The Yorkshire Ripper,Peter
Sutcliffe, was found guilty at
London's Old Bailey, of the murder of 13 women.
1989 Danie du Toit, a South African businessman, gave a club speech
warning that one never knows when death might strike, so one must live for the
moment. Several minutes later he choked to death on a peppermint.
2004 The USA town of Hallam,
Nebraska, was wiped out by a powerful F4
tornado that broke a width record at an astounding 4km (2.5
mi) wide. It also killed one local resident.
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Feast day of 
Doyle's gullibility possibly was heightened
because he had first been told about the photographs by his fellow
devotee of esoteric matters and enthusiastic believer in the pictures, 
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