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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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You ain't heard nothing yet! Jack Robin: Wait a
minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet. Wait a minute,
I've said, you ain't heard nothing yet. Wanna hear 'Toot, Toot,
Tootsie'? Well, let's take what people think
is a dignified death. Christ, was that a dignified death? Do you think
it's dignified to hang from wood with nails through your hands and
feet bleeding, hang for three or four days slowly dying, with people
jabbing spears into your side, and people jeering you? Do you think
that's dignified? Not by a long shot. Had Christ died in my van with
people around Him who loved Him, the way it was, it would be far more
dignified. In my rusty van. There's no doubt I expect to die in
prison. All the big powers, they've silenced me. ... So much for free
speech and choice on this fundamental human right. Tommy Cooper, English comedian |
Kaspar Hauser |
May
26
is
the 146th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (147th in leap years), with 219
days remaining.
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Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Festival of the goddess Diana, Roman Empire (May 26
- 31, 17 BCE)
Preceding the Ludi Saeculares,
or Centennial Games
The
last days before the kalends of June in the year 17 BCE were a marvellous
festival to the goddess Diana leading up to the centennial games, the Ludi
Saeculares. These games take their name from saeculum, a word which
originally meant a period stretching roughly a century but by a
proclamation of Roman emperor
Augustus became a period of 110 years.
[These games are at May 31 in the
Book of Days.] Horace's
hymn the Carmen Saeculare was commissioned by
Augustus for the occasion.
This festival, which must have been held in great excitement because it was once in a blue moon, was one of purification before the games. As this part of the event, the days dedicated to Diana, came around, heralds were sent about to invite the people to a spectacle the like of which no one had ever beheld, and which no one would ever behold again.
On the first few nights there were ceremonies
dedicated to the Parcae, or
Fates (known to the Greeks as the Moerae or
Moirae, identified in various cultures with 'the three wise crones', cf
the witches of Macbeth) who controlled
the fate of every mortal and immortal from birth to death (and beyond).
Then, after a proclamation was made according to a sacred formula, on the Capitoline Hill and the Palatine
Hill of Rome,
the quindecemviri distributed among the Roman citizens, torches, sulphur,
and bitumen, by which they were to purify themselves. There, and on the Aventine Hill in the
temple of the goddess, the people were given wheat, barley, and beans,
which were to be offered at night-time to the Parcae, and perhaps as pay
to the actors in the dramatic representations that were took place during
these days.
According to Perowne, (Roman Mythology, p
108), writing on the games held by Augustus in 17 BCE: 'On the 26th May
and the two following days material for purification, torches, sulphur and
bitumen, were distributed by the priests to all free inhabitants of Rome,
whether citizens or not. Even bachelors, who had recently been banned from
public entertainments, were to be admitted. During the next three days,
the people came before the College of Fifteen, the Quindecimviri, and
offered first fruits, as is done today at harvest festivals. It was just
at this time that the Ambarvalia used
to go round the ripening crops, and that the penus of Vesta was cleaned to
receive the new grain'.
Diana
Wikipedia tells us
[the following is verbatim] that Diana is the equivalent in Roman Mythology of the Greek Artemis
(see Roman/Greek equivalency in
mythology for more details). She is the daughter of Jupiter and Latona, and
the twin
sister of Apollo.
Diana
is the mother of wild animals and forests, and
a moon
goddess. Oak
groves are especially sacred to her. She is praised for her strength,
athletic grace, beauty and her hunting skills. With two other Roman
deities she made up a trinity: Egeria the
water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius,
the woodland god.
Diana
was worshipped in a temple on the Aventine Hill where mainly lower-class
citizens and slaves worshipped her. Slaves could
receive asylum in her temples. She was worshipped at a festival on August
13 and is worshipped today by women practicing religion known as Dianic
Wicca.
Her
legend has reached recent history, as she is usually considered (specially
by Freemasonry)
as a symbol of imagination, sensibility, creativity and insanity, that is,
of poets and artists. She represents the matriarchy
that is supposed to have preceded patriarchy
in human history. She also represents Dyonisiacs against
Apollineans.
Diana and her values were enslaved in our world along with women, and the
sun gods' values were imposed: that of reason and absolute order.
Roman
festivals and notable days in the Book of Days
Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
Feast day
of St Augustine of Canterbury (Anglican)
(Rhododendron, Rhododendrum ponticum is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint)
(Catholic Church celebrates on May 27)
The first Archbishop of
Canterbury,
Augustine (also known as Austin) was sent from Rome by Pope
Gregory the Great (c. 540 – 604) in 597, with 40 monks to Ethelbert of Kent
(Bretwalda
of England) to convert the heathens.
The pope
mandated Augustine to consecrate heathen temples and rituals to Christian
service and the latter, so far as possible, to be transformed into
dedication ceremonies or feasts of martyrs, since "he who would climb to
a lofty height must go up by steps, not leaps" (letter of Gregory to
Mellitus, in Bede, i, 30). (Hence we still call the days of the
week by Saxon names.) Thus began centuries of the Christian conversion of ancient pagan
holidays, rites and sacred sites. Most of the history of how this was
achieved has been lost, both to time and the inevitability that 'history
is written by the victors'. We may be sure, however, that it was a far
more violent cultural change than is generally known.
The old monkish chroniclers liked to say that the day
Augustine landed at Ebbe's Fleet, in the island of Thanet, was the same day that Mohammed was
born, according to some Muslim traditions. Ethelbert was baptised on Whitsunday,
June 2, 597. Then, 10,000
Saxons were baptised in the waters of the Swale, near Sheerness.
The first heathen temple Augustine dedicated as a church
was dedicated to St Pancras, patron saint of children, appropriate to the
story of the three Saxon boys whom Gregory had seen in the slave market in
Rome, which led to Augustine's missionary expedition.
Gregory, then a Roman abbot, had never seen anything like
the blonde-haired boys before.
"Whence come these children, and what name do they bear?" asked the
bishop of a man near him.
"From a savage island far over the sea," he answered, "and men call them
Angles."
Gregory replied, "They should be called not Angles, but angels."
The incident is said by tradition to have persuaded
Gregory to send a missionary to convert the British, and Augustine was the
man.
Augustine is said to have visited the Welsh and journeyed
into Yorkshire, but not much is known about his life in Britain. The year
of his death is uncertain.
He once went to Strode in Kent, England, where the 'wicked people' threw fishes' tails at him. He cursed them, and their children grew tails like fish, until their parents repented.
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Photo of the day
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Late May: Frangipani festival,
Rabaul, Papua-New Guinea
Commemorates
first flowers that blossomed after the 1937 eruption of volcano
Matupi which covered large area with ash. Processions and dancing. Dear Pip: RE: Late May: Frangipani festival,
Rabaul, Papua New Guinea "Commemorates first flowers that blossomed after the 1937 eruption of volcano Matupi which covered large area with ash. Processions and dancing." It was also a very good excuse for a good old fashioned Aussie piss-up at the many licensed clubs :-) Maputi, aka Matupit, volcano is
known by the Tolai people as Tavurvur in the Kuanua language. I
lived in Rabaul from 1968 until 1983 and my ex-wife is a Tolai and
we were both members of the Frangipani Festival committee for many
years. However, in 1994 Matupit aka
Tavurvur blew its stack, covering Rabaul town the immediate
surrounds in about 4metres of volcanic ash. The Rabaul airport and shipping
facilities no longer exist and neither does the commercial centre
... Rabaul is now not much better than a ghost town. Having said that, and from
friends who still live and work there, I understand that the
Frangipani Festival is no longer celebrated. For economic reasons Kokopo, that
has existed since pre-World War One (1) when it was the
German Headquarters/Capital when NG was divided into Dutch New
Guinea (now Indonesia), German New Guinea and British New Guinea
(with Port Moresby as its capital) now stands as the commercial
centre with adequate shipping facilities and existing
infrastructure. A new airport was built on a plantation and this had
been planned long before the family and I departed in '83. If you are interested in reading
about Rabaul further and it's historic seismic history, I
recommend: "Volcano Town: The 1937-43
Rabaul Eruptions", by Johnson R. W. and Threfall N. A.,
published (1985) by Robert Brown & Associates, P. O. Box
29, Bathurst, New South Wales 2795, Australia. ISBN 0 979267 18X. Hope you're having a good
weekend. Cheers and beers, Queensland, Australia
Bees in May
Feast day of St Alphaeus Feast day of St Becan Feast day of St Berencardus Feast day of St Damian Feast day of St Dyfan Feast day of St Eleutherius, pope, martyr Feast day of St Eva of Liege Feast day of St Felicissimus Feast day of St Fugatius Feast day of St Guinizo Feast day of St Heraclius Feast day of St John Hoan Feast day of St Mary Ann de Paredes Feast day of St Matthew Phuong Feast day of St Oduvald, abbot of Melrose Feast day of
St Philip
Neri Feast day of St Quadratus Feast day of St Quadratus Feast day of St Ursula Ledochowska Feast day of St Zachary Wednesday before
Pentecost,
Romeria del Rocia,
Huelva, Spain
Day of Chin-hua-fu-jen, Chinese
amazon
goddess I can't find any info on the WWW about a deity named Chin-hua-fu-jen, except for identical brief mentions of a "Chinese amazon goddess similar to the Greek Artemis or Roman Diana" by that name. These references I can find only in calendars similar to my own, and I suspect they are all repeating Phoenix and Arabeth's original. Does anybody have any more information? Let me know. :)]Ancient Chinese Mythology ~ Gods ~ Goddesses ~ Folklore Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days
Late May: Mayoring Day, Rye, Sussex,
England Unlucky
to wash blankets in May
Ivor
H Evans, Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988 Cheese-rolling,
Cooper's Hill, Gloucestershire,
England Cheese-rolling and -throwing is a popular Whitsuntide custom.
Independence Day, Guyana Dunkirk Day
In 1998, as the result of an inquiry into the forced removal of Aboriginal children (see Stolen Generation) from their families, a National Sorry Day was instituted, to acknowledge the wrong that had been done to indigenous families, so that the healing process could begin. Many politicians, from both sides of the house, participated, with the notable exception of the then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard. The day was held annually until 2004. It was renamed National Day of Healing in 2005. However, in September 2005 the name reverted when the National Sorry Day Committee decided to restore the name Sorry Day.
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here 1478 Pope Clement VII (d. September 25, 1534) 1566 Mehmed
III, Ottoman Emperor (d. 1603) 1650 John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (d. 1722), English statesman and general 1667 Abraham de Moivre, mathematician (d. 1754)
From Turkey, Lady Mary (who herself bore the scars of smallpox, and had lost her brother to it) brought back to England the practice of inoculation against the disease. She had her own children inoculated (the first, inoculated on March 18, 1789, suffered no ill effects), and encountered a vast amount of prejudice in bringing the matter forward. Before starting for the East she had met Alexander Pope, and during her absence he wrote her a series of extravagant letters, which appear to have been chiefly exercises in the art of writing gallant epistles.
Works by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at Project Gutenberg
1700 Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf
(d. 1760) 1764 Edward Livingston, jurist and
statesman (d. 1836) 1799 Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian author (d. 1837) 1822 Edmond de Goncourt, writer (d. 1896) 1865 Robert W Chambers, artist (d. 1933) 1867 Mary of Teck, queen consort of King George V of the United
Kingdom (d. 1953) 1873 Olaf Gulbransson, painter (d. 1958) 1885 Al Jolson (Asa Yoelson; sources differ as to birth date; d. October 23, 1950), American singer and actor who starred in the first talkie movie, The Jazz Singer 1887 Paul Lukas, actor (d. 1971)
1893 Norma Talmadge (d. December 24, 1957), American actress who, on May 18, 1927, became the first celebrity to leave her mark in the famous concrete outside Grauman's Chinese Theater. Legend has it that before the theatre officially opened, owner Sid Grauman was giving a tour to some celebrities, during which Norma unintentionally walked across a wet slab of cement. Grauman's publicists saw the fortunate mistake as the opportunity for publicity, so they continued the practice. Variations of this honoured tradition are imprints of the spectacles of Harold Lloyd, the cigars of Groucho Marx and George Burns, the legs of Betty Grable, the ice skating blades of Sonja Henie and the noses of both Jimmy Durante and Bob Hope. Two of today's birthday boys are also represented in Grauman's concrete in unusual ways: a stroll outside the theatre will reveal the knees and fist respectively of today's birthday boys Al Jolson and John Wayne. Errol Flynn I'm not sure about. One of Norma's husbands was comedian George Jessel (1898 - 1981). Like her actress sisters Natalie Talmadge (who married Buster Keaton in 1921) and Constance Talmadge, her grave marker gives a false date of birth (1897). Grauman's
Chinese Theater Talmadge
gallery
1895 Dorothea Lange, socially-aware photographer, born in New York 1904 George
Formby, English music hall comic 1907 John
Wayne (born Marion Michael Morrison; d. 1979),
American actor; he won an Oscar for True Grit 1908 Robert Morley, British actor (d. 1992) 1911 Ben Alexander, actor (d. 1969) 1912 Jay Silverheels (d. 1980), native
Canadian actor famed for his role as Tonto in The Lone Ranger 1913 Peter Cushing (d. 1994), British horror film actor (Frankenstein Must Be
Destroyed!; Horror
of Dracula). (Curiously,
Vincent Price
and Christopher
Lee were born on the same day (May 27) and
Peter Cushing
was born on the 26th.) 1916 Henriette Roosenburg, journalist
(d. 1972)
1920 Peggy
Lee (d. 2002),
American singer, songwriter and actress 1923 James Arness, American actor (Gunsmoke TV series) 1926 Miles Davis (d. September 28, 1991), American trumpeter, bandleader and composer
On March 22, 1999, Kevorkian went on trial on murder charges for the first time. Acting as his own lawyer, Kevorkian told a jury in Pontiac, Michigan, he was merely carrying out his professional duty in a videotaped assisted death shown on TV's 60 Minutes. Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison.
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