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240 BCE  First recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet (named for Edmond Halley).

585 First known calculated prediction of a solar eclipse.

709 Death of Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne.

735 Death of Bede, English historian and monk.

992 Death of Mieszko I, (b. c. 935), the first (historically known) Piast duke of the Polans, which gave that name to a country later called Poland.

From his first marriage he had a son, his successor Boleslaus, and a daughter(s): the wife (as queen Sigrid the Haughty) of Eric the Victorious, king of Sweden and then (as queen Gunhilda) of king Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, and mother of king Canute of Denmark and England.

1085 Death of Pope Gregory VII; his feast day is today.

1085 Alfonso VI of Castile took Toledo, Spain back from the Moors.

1184 On St Urban's Day, a great fire utterly destroyed the abbey church at Glastonbury a small town in (Somerset, England) and the Old Church of St Mary's, which had stood adjacent to it. Glastonbury, according to tradition, was visited by St Joseph of Arimathea and possibly also by Joseph's nephew, Jesus Christ. It is also closely associated with King Arthur and is supposedly the same place as Arthur's 'mystic Isle of Avalon'.

What groans, what tears, what beatings of the breast were yielded by spectators, can be imagined only by those who have suffered similar affliction. The confusion of relics, treasures in silver and gold, silks, books and other ecclesiastical ornaments might justly provoke grief. More vehement was the woe of the monks mindful of their earlier happiness, seeing that in all adversity bygone joy is the saddest part of misfortune.
Adam of Domerham, writing a century after the fire that destroyed Glastonbury Abbey; Hearne, T, Adam de Domerham: Historia de rebus glastoniensibus, Oxford, 1727, p 344

For more on Joseph of Arimathea, see January 5, January 24, March 17, April 22, May 19 and June 20 in the Book of Days.

1185 The Battle of Dan-no-ura established Minamoto no Yoritomo as shogun.

1201 Start of first Faire at Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England.

1261 Death of Pope Alexander IV.

1315 Edward Bruce invaded Ireland.

1420 Henry the Navigator was appointed governor of the Order of Christ.

1521 The Diet of Worms ended when 21-year-old Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor issued the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw.

1555 Death of Henry II of Navarre.

1559 First Protestant synod in France met in Paris.

1571 Election of Stefan Batory as Prince of Transylvania.

1571 Founding of Barinas, Venezuela.

1583 Dr John Dee and Edward Kelley conversed with spirits.

Alchemists in the Almanac:  Cornelius Agrippa  Roger Bacon  Count Cagliostro  John Dee
Edward Kelley  Robert Fludd  Isaac Newton  Paracelsus  James Price  Tycho Brahe  Raymond Lulle   Elias Ashmole

The Alchemy Web Site   Wilson's Almanac Alchemy Clock (a bit of fun)     Shop Alchemy

1622 The 500-tonne Tryal, believed to be the first English ship to sight Australia, was wrecked on the Monte Bello Islands off Western Australia. Ninety-seven people died but 46 made it to Batavia (now Jakarta, capital of Indonesia).

1650 Hanging of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, in Edinburgh.

1681 Death of Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

1720 A ship arrived at Marseilles, France, from Sidon, and brought with it a plague that killed large numbers of citizens.

1768 Captain James Cook set forth in the Endeavour on the journey that took him to Australia.

1774 Black slaves in North America petitioned the British government for freedom.

1787 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates began to convene a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution for the United States (George Washington presiding).

1789 Death of Anders Dahl, botanist after whom the dahlia was named.

1805 Death of William Paley, philosopher.

1810 Armed citizens of Buenos Aires expelled the Viceroy from Spain and established a provincial government for Argentina.

1844 Stuart Perry of New York City patented the gasoline engine.

1850 London Zoo received the first hippopotamus ever seen in Britain.

1865 Mobile magazine explosion: 300 were killed in Mobile, Alabama when an ordnance depot exploded.

More at Folkways TV program    Grave photo    Pardon sought for NC legend    More

1870 Captain Thunderbolt (Frederick Ward), the notorious Australian bushranger, was allegedly shot dead by Constable AB Walker. Thunderbolt had been the scourge of inns and mail coaches around Bourke and Uralla, New South Wales, and had done at least 80 robberies netting him £20,000. Many of these ill-gotten gains, however, were in the form of cheques and half notes, pretty useless to a highwayman out in the Armidale tablelands wilderness.

A number of years ago I sometimes used to stay on Cockatoo Island, in Sydney Harbour. The house I stayed in had once been the mansion of the governor of the notorious Cockatoo Island Prison that existed during the convict days of Australia – like a mini-Alcatraz or Robbin Island. In the old sandstone prison yard I have seen the iron rings on the walls, with which prisoners were restrained as they were scourged with the cat o' nine tails, a leather whip sometimes made more fearsome by the addition of small pieces of sharp lead at the end of nine knotted thongs. Cockatoo has only recently been opened to public tours so visitors can get a feel for what a terrible living tomb it was.

On September 11, 1863, Fred Ward and Frederick Britten were the only prisoners ever to escape from the hell of that place, which they did by covering their heads with boxes and swimming a kilometre or so to land. Some say that Thunderbolt was shot dead on May 25, 1870, but a respectable theory has it that Thunderbolt lived a long life and died in a Sydney boarding house in the 1920s; the boarding house was, I believe, in Stanmore, possibly within a few blocks of where I was born. Ward family members have long asserted that it was not Fred at all who was shot, but his brother William (known as 'Harry'), and word has it that there was a tall, veiled 'woman' with a masculine gait at the funeral, but no one ever saw 'her' face. Was Fred having a larrikin lark at his own interment?

Thunderbolt's associate, Will Monkton, was the one who identified the body for the authorities, but he alleged later that he had been coerced by the police to swear falsely. Unlike today, the constabulary of New South Wales didn't entirely comprise fine, upstanding citizens, so perhaps there is some truth to the story.

Perhaps Constable Walker never did kill Captain Thunderbolt, and perhaps Ward didn't die in that Stanmore boarding house at all. Perhaps, like me, you prefer to think that Fred Ward is still hiding out in Thunderbolt's Rock on the Uralla road, with one eye out for a Cobb & Co, and one eye out for the troopers.

There's a graveyard in Uralla,
that's in New South Wales, you know.
Where a highwayman was buried,

many, many years ago.
'Thunderbolt', His tombstone names him
He rides the road at night
Those who've met him in the moonlight
Say he's Thunderbolt, alright.

There's a legend in New England
Thunderbolt has never died.
He still haunts the Moonbi Ranges

and the lovely countryside
Folks declare that they have seen him
When the moon is on the wane
Riding like a flash of lightning to Uralla, once again.

Author unknown   Source

"Ward's career had seen him involved in more than eighty major hold-ups and robberies, which netted him almost £20,000. Much of this money, however, was in cheques and half notes, useless to a bushranger. It is interesting that the reward of £400, did in no way match the value of several of the race horses which Thunderbolt rode, which were in excess of £1000.

"But questions have arisen as to the true identity of the man shot by Constable Walker. Family descendants have suggested that it was his half brother Harry, as it was he that had been shot in the knee during an exchange of shots with the police and not Fred. It was this injury that William Monkton used to positively identify the body as that of Fred Ward, and not the marking that Thunderbolt was known to have had such as the large mole on the back of the second finger of the left hand."

More, from Ned Kelly World: Australia's Famous Bushrangers

Thunderbolt's Rock
"Thunderbolt's Rock is essentially a large granite outcrop which has been attacked by graffitists. It is located on the eastern side of the New England Highway 7.2 km south of Uralla. Although it is claimed that Thunderbolt used the outcrop as a vantage point and hide-out it is possible that he had little if any real connection with the agglomeration, but Blanch's Inn, where the final ride of Thunderbolt started, was located only about 300 metres further south of the rock, on the opposite side of the road."   Source

Bushranger Profiles: Thunderbolt    Ned Kelly's Last Stand, in the Scriptorium

Highwaymen, outlaws, bushrangers, pirates, gangsters, etc in the Book of Days

Pip's picture of Thunderbolt's Rock, near Uralla

1871 France: Defeat of the Paris Commune as 'Bloody Week' (Semaine Sanglante) continued. Only Butte aux Cailles still resisted. The Left Bank was now in the hands of the reactionaries of Versailles, which began summarily executing the Communards with a machine-gun.

1895 Playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde was convicted of 'sodomy and gross indecency' and sentenced to serve two years in a London prison.

1895  The Republic of Taiwan formed, with Tang Ching-sung as the president.

1896 South Australian women first exercised their right to vote, one of the first such events in any legislature in the world.

A world chronology of women's electoral rights

1903 Death of Max O'Rell (pen name of Paul Blouet; b. 1848), French author and journalist.

He was born in Brittany. He served as a cavalry officer in the Franco-German War, was captured at Sedan, but was released in time to join the Versaillist army which overcame the Paris Commune, and was severely wounded during the second siege of Paris. In 1872, he went to England as correspondent of several French newspapers, and, in 1876, became the very efficient French master at St Paul's School, London, retaining that post until 1884. What induced him to leave was the brilliant success of his first book, John Bull et son lie (published in English as John Bull and Co), which in its French and English forms was so widely read as to make his pseudonym a household word in England, Australia and America.

"The old man sat on the front seat, stooping forward, with his elbow resting on the desk and his chin on his hand, bunching up his beard over his mouth with his fingers and staring gloomily at Peter with dark, piercing eyes from under bushy eyebrows, just as I've since seen a Scotchman stare at Max O'Rell all through a humorous lecture called 'A nicht wi' Sandy.'"

Max O'Rell died in Paris, where he was acting as correspondent of the New York Journal.

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. Thanks also to Allister Hardiman.

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1904 Australia: Five miners died in a mine-shaft fall at the Great Boulder gold mine, East Coolgardie. 

1914 The United Kingdom's House of Commons passed Irish Home Rule.

1915 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience, founded Satyagraha Ashram at Kochrab, near Ahmedabad, India.

1925 Scopes Trial: John T Scopes was indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

1925 The National Forensics League was founded.

1927 Henry Ford stopped producing the Model T car (began the Model A).

1938 In the war of the Falangists against the Republicans, General Francisco Franco's forces bombed Alicante.

1940 World War II: The Battle of Dunkirk began.

1946 The parliament of Transjordan made Emir Abdullah their king.

1948 France: Garry Davis, ex-US GI, renounced US citizenship to become Citizen of the World. About 400,000 joined the movement.

1950 Battle between French and Viet Minh (Việt Minh) guerillas in Vietnam.

1951 Two senior British diplomats  formerly stationed in Washington, Donald Maclean (b. this day in 1913) and Guy Burgess, went absent without leave in London. Both were later revealed to be Soviet agents.

1953 Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducted its first and only nuclear artillery test.

1961 Apollo program: USA President John Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a 'man on the moon' before the end of the decade.

Why Does the Ku Klux Klan Burn Crosses?

1963 In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organisation of African Unity was established.  

First 'shots' in China's bloody Proletarian Cultural Revolution

1966 China's Cultural Revolution: One of the very first incidents in Mao Zedong's period of terror that left millions dead at the hands of their own countrymen and women. Today, Nie Yuanzi and six others placed a poster attacking Beijing University authorities as reactionary, and soon Maoist bloodletting began nationwide among men, women and children.

"At Beijing University, Nie Yuanzi and six others put up a 'big character poster', (da zi bao) attacking the authorities of Beijing University for being 'members of a black gang,' putting out a call to 'firmly, thoroughly, cleanly and totally eliminate any ox ghosts and snake demons.' On the evening of June 1, 1966, the Central People's Radio Station broadcast the text of this poster. The poster sent a shock wave throughout the country. Students took Beijing University as their example and started attacking the authorities of their schools with the same set of words.

"In early June in Beijing, the 'working groups' were sent to schools to replace the authorities of the schools and to lead the Cultural Revolution there. In order to conduct the Revolution full time, all colleges and middle schools ceased their regular curriculum, which had been accused of being a part of the 'feudal, capitalist and revisionist educational system.' In many schools, those who verbally attacked teachers earliest drew support from the 'working group' and became members of the new 'Committee of the Cultural Revolution.'

"Starting in early June of 1966, educators in general became the target of the Cultural Revolution. When students encountered teachers, they no longer greeted them. When they did address teachers, they rudely called them by their whole name instead of 'Teacher + family name,' in the traditional way. Students were encouraged by the working groups to write 'big character posters' to 'expose' (jie fa) their teachers. In addition to political terms such as 'counterrevolutionary,' 'anti-Party, anti-socialist, anti-Maoist' and so on, they also used derogatory words, such as 'pig' or 'poisonous snake,' to condemn their teachers. Almost every teacher was attacked verbally on the 'big character posters' or at the 'exposing and denouncing' meetings. The teachers who were accused were not allowed to defend themselves. 

"The 'working groups' organized sessions to expose and to criticize teachers and divided all teachers into four categories: good, fair, those with serious errors, and anti-Party, anti-socialist rightists. For example, the working group at the Girls Middle School attached to Beijing Teachers University led an 'exposing and denouncing session' against vice principal Bian Zhongyun on June 21 and all students of this school attended. According to the working group's record of July 3, 1966, the working group put two out of six leading cadres of this school into category IV, the worst one, two in category III and two in category II. Some teachers, unable to bear the pressure and insults, committed suicide. For example, at Beijing University, students pasted a poster on the door of history professor Wang Qian. There are two versions of this story. One says that the poster was blown away by the wind; another says that Wang was angry and tore it down. Some students accused Wang of hating the Revolution and wrecking the poster intentionally. The 'working group' ordered Wang to apologize and to paste it up again. Wang did what they asked him to do, but then committed suicide that night by drinking insecticide. That was June 11, 1966. In the same school, Dong Huaiyun, a lecturer of the Department of Mathematics, committed suicide in late June after the 'big character posters' criticized him and the 'working group' ordered him to clean the dining hall with a group of people who were considered the targets of the Revolution.

"Some students started to physically attack teachers in June."

Source: Student Attacks Against Teachers: The Revolution of 1966    Mao holocaust

From Wikipedia: Millions in China had their human rights casually discarded during the Cultural Revolution. Forced displacement of millions of people occurred. During the Cultural Revolution, young people from the cities were moved to the countryside. Once there, they were forced to abandon all forms of normal education for the propaganda teachings of the Chinese Communist Party. Nearly a generation of China's youth, scientists and other useful intellectuals were brainwashed ...Estimates of the death toll, civilians and Red Guards, from various Western and Eastern sources are about 500,000 in the true chaos years of 1966–1969. However, these figures are increasingly being challenged, since many deaths went unreported or were actively covered up by the police or local authorities. The true death toll may be in the low millions, but the state of Chinese demographics at the time, combined with the reluctance of the PRC to allow serious research into the period, means that the real figures are unlikely ever to be known.

Attempts to document using eyewitness accounts events during the Cultural Revolution

Chinese propaganda posters, Cultural Revolution statuettes, maoist stuff and revolutionary songs

Cultural Revolution in the Book of Days    More

1966 Explorer program: Explorer 32 was launched.

1968 In St Louis, Missouri, US Vice-President Hubert Humphrey and US Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall dedicated the Gateway Arch as part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

1969 Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and crew set sail in a reed boat named Ra to try and prove that ancient Egyptians could have sailed to America.

1973 Mike Oldfield released Tubular Bells.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1975 USA: The grizzly bear was classified as a threatened species.

1977 Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope opened in cinemas and became the highest-grossing movie to that date.

1977 The Chinese government removed its ban on Shakespeare; to the West, it was one of the confirming signs that the Cultural Revolution was over. On October 10, 1976, the 8341 Special Regiment had arrested all members of the Gang of Four, thus concluding the bloody Cultural Revolution as a whole.

1979 American Airlines flight 191: In Chicago, Illinois, a DC-10 crashed during takeoff at O'Hare International Airport, killing 271 on board and two people on the ground.

1981 In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council was created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

1983 Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi opened in theatres

1985 Bangladesh was hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge which killed approximately 10,000 people.

1986 Thirty million people around the world ran the 'Race Against Time' for Sport Aid to raise money for starving people in Africa.

1986 South African troops drove 25,000 blacks from the Crossroads squatter camp.

1990 British prime minister Margaret Thatcher pledged her nation to a 30 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions due to the dangers of global warming.

1991 The last Cuban troops left Angola.

1993 England's Daily Star newspaper reported that Ann Urquhart was notified by a Blenheim, New Zealand, High Court computer that she had to be on jury duty in the trial of a man accused of murdering - herself!

1994 The first International World Wide Web Conference opened at CERN, the European Particle Physics Lab in Geneva.

More

1997 A military coup in Sierra Leone replaced President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah with Major Johnny Paul Koromah.

1997 Strom Thurmond became the longest serving member in the history of the United States Senate (41 years and 10 months).

2000 Lebanon celebrated the liberation of the south after 22 years of Israeli occupation.

2001 Mountain climbing: 32-year old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, became the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

2001 Mountain climbing: 64-year old Sherman Bull, of New Canaan, Connecticut, became the oldest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

2003 Néstor Kirchner became President of Argentina after defeating Carlos Menem. He was the first elected President since the December 2001 economic crisis.

Click to see Google News -- Hall Dead then Hall Alive (opens in new window)

2006 It was widely reported that Australian mountain climber Lincoln Hall had died while descending from the summit of Mount Everest, after suffering from a form of altitude sickness leading to him hallucinating and becoming confused.

According to reports, sherpas attempted a rescue for hours but as night began to fall were ordered by expedition leader Alexander Abramov to leave an apparently dying Hall on the mountain and return to camp.

However, the next morning Hall was found still alive by another climber, after Hall had spent the night exposed on the mountain. Another rescue attempt was mounted and he was brought down to Everest's North Col, where he was treated by a doctor. Hall arrived at Advanced Base Camp in reasonably good health but reported to be suffering from acute cerebral edema and frostbite.

This dramatic turn of events was reported over two days in Wilson's Blogmanac in a series of blog posts: Lincoln Hall dies on the Mother of the Universe; Friend confirms Lincoln Hall's alive but seriously ill; Climber walks into base camp, Lincoln Hall first pictures after rescue; Lincoln Hall rescue pix.

Tomorrow: Kaspar Hauser, mystery boy of Nuremburg

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Wikipedia and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed are both excellent resources that aid my research.
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© My own copyright policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.

Read more about today at Wilson's Blogmanac