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When Corporations Rule the World
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A Dictionary of Saints Days, Fasts, Feasts and
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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,
Colin T,
Queensland, Australia
Bees in May
If bees swarm and leave in May, you'll get good honey
that year. You are allowed by custom to follow them over anyone's
land and claim them when they rest. You must, however, make a
beating sound on a metal utensil. This will also make the bees stop.
Thomas Tusser (1524
- '80), Redivivus, 1710; Charles
Kightly, The
Perpetual Almanack of Folklore, Thames and Hudson, London,
1987, May 5)
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
(Yellow azalea, Azalea pontica, is today's other plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Born at Florence, Italy in 1515; he would levitate while praying. During Easter, 1544, while praying in the catecomb of
San Sebastiano, he had a vision of a globe of fire that entered his
chest, and he experienced an ecstasy that enlarged his heart. He could tell hidden sins by the smell of a person. He
founded the religious order of the Oratory, members of which whipped
themselves during the recital of Psalm 50, (the Miserere) and Psalm 129. He
is known as 'the apostle of Rome who became the patron saint of
Rome'.
Feast day of St Quadratus
Feast day of St Quadratus
Feast day of St Ursula
Ledochowska
Feast day of St Zachary
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Wednesday before
Pentecost,
Romeria del Rocia,
Huelva, Spain
"This is Spain's biggest festival. Pilgrims transport an image of
the Virgen del Rocio (Our Lady of the Dew) through Andalucia on
foot, horseback and ox cart (no motorized vehicles are allowed).
Gypsy caravans covered with flowers travel through the woods and
ford the Guadiamar River. Accompanied by tambourines, flutes and
guitars, the pilgrims cross across the plain. In the marches, the
oxen run up the steps of the El Rocia shrine to deliver the Virgin's
image before mass. For the next few days, there are fireworks,
dancing, singing, local food and wine."
More
Mothers' Day,
Poland
Day of Chin-hua-fu-jen, Chinese
amazon
goddess
[Note: I obtained this info from a 1992
calendar by two talented Americans who go by by the name of Phoenix and Arabeth who
also had quite a presence on the WWW some years ago when all the
almanackists seem to know of each other.
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
Carries on the old custom of the
hot-penny scramble in which the new mayor tosses hot pennies to
children. A ritual that might go back to when Rye minted its own
coins which were distributed hot from the moulds.
Unlucky
to wash blankets in May
"This superstition still survives
in parts of Britain, especially in the S. W. The old rhyme says:
Wash a blanket in May
Wash a dear one away."
Ivor
H Evans, Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988
Cheese-rolling,
Cooper's Hill, Gloucestershire,
England
"At Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire large cheeses are rolled down
the steep hill chased by a gaggle of mad racers. The hill is
horribly steep and injuries to racers are common." Source
More on cheese-rolling at
Gloucestershire (Randwick
Wap)
Cheese-rolling
and -throwing is a popular Whitsuntide
custom.
Dear Pip
You might be interested to know that the BBC has film of the 2002 event.
Best wishes
George Hargraves
Independence Day, Guyana
Independence on May 26, 1966.
Formerly British Guiana.
Dunkirk Day
May 26 to June
3, 1940, the evacuation of most of the British Expeditionary
Forces from Dunkerque on French coast, the alternative being
military catastrophe. Civilian and naval craft took part.
Mothers' Day,
Poland
(date may vary)
National Day, Georgia
National
Sorry Day, Australia
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.
More
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)
 1689
Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu (d. August
21, 1762),
English
author, traveller and medical pioneer.
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.
"It was well known that one only got smallpox once. In the Islamic world in Turkey it became the habit to
'engraft' people with the dried pustule from smallpox and that this provided protection. Upon learning of the Turkish practice, Lady Mary immediately had her son inoculated. After returning home to England, she introduced the custom to the nobility by having her daughter inoculated,
too ...
"Edward
Jenner (1749-1823) would eventually be
given credit for the smallpox vaccine, but it was really Lady Mary
who pioneered the approach in western Europe and made it
acceptable to the influential, the rich and the powerful.
Eventually, the practice of inoculation would filter down to the
middle and working classes and would be extended to inoculation
against a variety of infectious diseases ...
"She was also a prolific
writer of diaries, essays and poems and translated plays from
French and Latin. She
had a variety of lovers and boyfriends during her travels. But
when famed poet and essayist, Alexander
Pope, professed his love in a flowery series of letters, Lady
Mary did not conceal her derision. Thus was born a public
feud that eventually led to financial scandal and Mary leaving
England to live in Italy and France until 1761 when her daughter
(now wife to the Prime Minister) finally persuaded her to return
to London where she died August 21, 1762."
Source
The
Story of Lady Montagu
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
More
More
And more
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
 1928 Dr Jack Kevorkian ('Doctor Death'), controversial American medical doctor and social activist who is
most famous for his support for assisted suicide.
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.
Mailing address:
Dr. Jack Kevorkian # 284797
Thumb Correctional Facility
3225 John Conley Dr
Lapeer, MI 48446-2987
Jack likes to receive letters, feel free to write him
Source
Not Dead Yet: The Resistance
International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force
The Kevorkian Verdict More
1946 Mick
Ronson (d. 1993), guitarist, session musician for stars such as
Bob Dylan,
David Bowie and
Lou Reed
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1942 Levon
Helm, musician ('The
Band)
1948 Stevie Nicks, American singer, lead
singer with Fleetwood Mac
She
is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark
When the sky is starless
All your life you've never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you heaven
Will you ever win
Will you ever win
Rhiannon,
Rhiannon, Rhiannon, Rhiannon
1949 Hank Williams Jr, American singer
1949 Ward Cunningham, inventor of Wiki
1949 Philip Michael Thomas, actor
1951 Sally
Ride, astronaut
1953 Michael Portillo, politician
1955 Morimoto Masaharu, Japanese chef (Iron
Chef)
1955 Doris
Dörrie, actor and screenplay writer
1957 Margaret Colin, actress
1958 Pete Michaels, actor, comedian,
ventriloquist
1962 Bobcat Goldthwait, actor, comedian
1964 Lenny Kravitz, guitarist, singer
1966 Helena Bonham Carter, actress
1968 Crown Prince Frederik of
Denmark
1975 Lauryn
Hill, hip-hop singer
Phew!!
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day in history section
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May
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
7 Boone
Day
8 Best
Friends Day
8 Ice
Cream Day
8 World
Ocean Day
9 Cuddle
Up Day
9 Profess
Your Love Day
10 Iced
Tea Day
10 Great
Turtle Races Day
10 Strawberry
Festival (West Virginia, USA)
10 Tomato
Festival (Louisiana, USA)
10 Mourn
For Your Money Day
10 Tomato
Festival (Texas, USA)
11 Red
Rose Festival
... More
Events
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604 (traditional) or 605 (Thorn) Death
of St Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury.
818 Death of Ali ar-Rida,
Shia Imam.
946 Death
of King Edmund I of England.
1232 Pope
Gregory IX sent the first
Inquisition team to Aragon,
Spain.
"Nobody expects the
Spanish Inquisition"
1328
William
of Ockham, Franciscan
Minister-General Michael
of Cesena, and two other Franciscan leaders secretly left Avignon,
fearing a sentence of death from Pope John
XXII.
1538
Geneva expelled
John
Calvin and his followers from the city. Calvin lived in exile in Strasbourg
for the next three years.
1608 King Phillip III of Spain decreed non-Roman
Catholic (American) Indians could legally be enslaved.
1637 Pequot
War: English Puritan Captains
John Mason and John Underhill and Mohegan allies attacked
and burned Pequot
forts at Mystic, Connecticut,
massacring 600 Indians and starting the Pequot
War.
1647 A new law banned Catholic priests from the colony of Massachusetts, the penalty
being banishment, or death for a second offence.
 On the same day at Meeting House Square in Hartford, Connecticut,
America's first witch execution occurred. Alse Young
(also known as Alice, or Achsah), of Windsor, became first known person in
America to be executed as a witch, her execution anticipating the 1692 Salem
witch trials (which took place not in
Salem, Massachusetts
but in nearby Salem Village, modern-day Danvers) by some 45 years. There is no
further record of the trial or the details of the charge or charges. John
Winthrop, the Governor of Massachusetts
wrote in his diary that "One of Windsor was hanged", and the Second Town
Clerk of Windsor, Matthew Grant, wrote the May 26, 1647 diary entry, "Alse
Young was hanged". Not much ado about very much. From 1715, the crime
of witchcraft was struck from the list of capital crimes in Connecticut, and was
not prosecuted.
Salem witch trials
1648 Death
of Vincent Voiture, poet.
1660 King
Charles II of England landed at Dover
after nine years in exile.
1670 In
Dover,
Charles II of England and
Louis XIV of France secretly signed a treaty
ending hostilities between their kingdoms.
1703 Death
of Samuel
Pepys (b. 1633), English civil servant, famous for his diary.
1736 Battle
of Ackia: British and Chickasaw
Native Americans defeated French troops.
1784 The first
Handel Musical Festival was held.
1791
King Louis XVI was forced by the revolutionary
French Assembly to relinquish his crown and state assets.
1805 In
Milan's
cathedral, Napoleon I of France was crowned King of
Italy.
1824 Death
of Capel
Lofft, English writer.
The
wild boy of Nuremburg
 1828
Kaspar Hauser showed up
in Nuremburg.
On this day, at about 4
o'clock in the afternoon, a youth of about 16 or 17 years of age showed up in a
pathetic condition in the marketplace in Nuremburg, Germany.
The boy was dressed in peasant clothes, and had with
him a letter addressed to the cavalry captain of the city. He was led to the
captain and interrogated, and it was found he could scarcely speak. To every
question he replied "Von Regensburg" (from Regensburg) or "Ich
woais nit" (I don't know). Except for dry bread and water, he showed a
violent dislike to all forms of food and drink. He seemed ignorant of
commonplace objects. He carried a handkerchief marked 'KH' and a few written
Catholic prayers.
In the letter that he carried, it was stated that the
writer was a poor day-labourer who had ten children of his own. The man had
found the boy deposited on his doorstep by his mother, and had secretly brought
the boy up as his own, keeping him confined to the house, somewhere in Bavaria.
The boy, said the letter, had expressed an interest in becoming a horse soldier.
Accompanying this letter was also a note purportedly from the boy's mother,
saying that she, a poor girl, had had the baby, named Kaspar Hauser, on April 30 (Walpurgisnacht,
the witching time), 1812, and that his father, an officer in Nuremburg's sixth
regiment, was dead.
A burgomaster named Binder took a
kindly interest in Kaspar. In the course of many conversations with him, it was
discovered that the boy had been kept underground all his life, in a space so
small he could not stretch to full length. He had been fed only on bread and
water by a man who never showed himself ...
Read
on at the Kaspar
Hauser page in the Scriptorium
www.feralchildren.com
1830 The
Indian Removal Act was passed by the United States Congress.
1853 Australia: The last convict arrived in Hobart,
Tasmania after fifty years of
transportation.
1864 Montana was
organised as a United States territory.
1865 American Civil War: Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate
Trans-Mississippi division, was the last general of the Confederate Army to
surrender, at Galveston, Texas. This was the end of
organised resistance in the Civil War.
1868 The impeachment
trial of US President Andrew
Johnson ended, with Johnson being found not guilty by one vote. He
had been impeached on grounds political rather than criminal.
1868 The practice of public executions ended in Britain.
1871 France: Paris
Commune (Bloody Week). Battles at the Bastille and Villette, the Communards were
defeated this evening at Belleville and Pčre Lachaise. The Versailles forces
assassinated casualties in their ambulances; a crowd sought revenge by executing
50 hostages on Rue Haxo, despite the protests of Eugene Varlin.
1879 Russia and the United
Kingdom signed the Treaty of Gandamak, establishing an Afghan
state.
1881 Death
of Jakob
Bernays, philologist.
1883 Death
of Edward
Sabine, astronomer.
1896 Nicholas II became Tsar of Russia.
1896 Charles Dow
published the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
1897 The novel Dracula, by
Irish novelist Bram
Stoker, went on sale in London.
1903 Two views of
the same tornado at Goddard, Kansas May 26, 1903. Figure 135 of Meteorology
by Willis Milham, 1912.
1906 Vauxhall
Bridge opened in London.
1908 At Masjid-al-Salaman
in southwest Persia
(Iran), the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East
was made. The rights to the resource were quickly acquired by the United
Kingdom.
1908 Death of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadi sect.
1908 The Abbé Gueniot of the church at Remiremont, France, and 107
other witnesses, saw vast quantities of hailstones which fell in a storm.
bearing a likeness of a woman's face.
1918 The Democratic Republic of Georgia was
established.
1938 The House Un-American Activities
Committee began its first session.
1940 World War
II: Battle of Dunkirk – In France, Allied forces
began a massive evacuation from Dunkirk.
Seven hundred boats from Britain helped evacuate 380,000 Allied
troops trapped at Dunkirk when surrounded by German troops. Everything from
ferries and destroyers to pleasure craft were used in the evacuation.
1942 Winston
Churchill, Britain's prime minister, signed a pact with
Soviet dictator Josef
Stalin, who promised him "close collaboration after the
war".
1948 The United States Congress passed Public Law 557 which permanently established the Civil
Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.
1954 The funeral ship of the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops (Khufu) was
unearthed in the Great Pyramid.
1958 Jerry Lee Lewis
played the third and last of what should have been a 37-date tour of England.
The London Morning Star ran an editorial calling him "an
undesirable alien" and demanded his deportation. That night, Lewis was
booed from the stage. The next day, he was gone.
1963 The Organization of African Unity formed.
1966 British
Guiana gained independence, as Guyana.
1966 Bob Dylan and
the Hawks rocked the Royal Albert Hall in London. Attendees included the Stones,
some Beatles, etc. The concert, heard on various bootleg albums, substantiates
claims of this concert being one of the high-water marks of live rock &
roll.
Source:
The Daily Bleed Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1969 Apollo
program: Apollo
10 returned to earth
after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the upcoming
first manned moon
landing.
WAR IS OVER. IF YOU
WANT IT.
1969 John
Lennon and Yoko Ono
began their bed peace in
Montreal, Canada (see also the first bed-ins, in Amsterdam, March
26).
"For a week, John and Yoko give interviews, ignoring
the mockery and hostility to "spread their words of peace to a global
audience.
"London's Daily Mirror noted: 'A not
inconsiderable talent seems to have gone completely off his rocker.' …
"As Dave Bist, a reporter
for the Montreal Gazette recalled, 'All kinds of people came to pay their
respects, from comedian-singer Tommy Smothers to L'il Abner
cartoonist Al Capp, who kind of betrayed the price of entry by
getting into a shouting match with the Peaceful Pair.'"
Source
Photo
album
1970 The Soviet
Tupolev
Tu-144 became the first commercial transport to exceed Mach
2.
1972 Australia: Willandra National Park was established.
1972 The United
States and the Soviet Union signed the SALT Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1972
George W Bush
transferred to the Alabama Air
National Guard unit in order to campaign for Senator William
Blount. According to his commanding officer, Bush did not show up
for duty while in Alabama, nor has anyone confirmed that he ever
served in the Guard again.
Bush's military record
1975
Evel
Knievel, American daredevil, sustained severe spinal damage when he attempted to
leap thirteen buses in his car.
1978 In Atlantic City, New Jersey, Resorts International, the first legal casino in the
eastern United States, opened.
1984 A Frisbee was kept aloft for 1,672 seconds in
Philadelphia, USA.
1986 The
European Community adopted the European
flag.
1988
Andrew
Lloyd Webber's musical Cats opened in
Moscow.
1991 A Lauda Air Boeing 767-300
exploded over rural Thailand, killing 223
2002 The
Mars
Odyssey found signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars.
2002 Álvaro
Uribe became President of Colombia.
2003 Only three days
after a previous record, Sherpa Lakpa Gelu climbed Mount
Everest in 10 hours 56 minutes. The tourism ministry of Nepal confirmed this
record in July that year.
2004 The New York Times
published an admission of journalistic failings, claiming that its flawed
reporting and lack of skeptism towards sources during the build-up to the 2003 war in Iraq
helped promote the belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction.
Myths of the 'War on
Terrorism' and Iraq
Tomorrow: Wild Bill Hickock and the Dead
Man's Hand
Main calendar
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Search
More dumb questions
See yesterday
for more
Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?
Why does Goofy stand erect while Pluto remains on all fours? They're both dogs!
Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
Why doesn't the fattest man in the world become a hockey goalie?
Why don't they call moustaches "mouthbrows?"
Why don't you ever see the headline "Psychic Wins Lottery"?
Why get even, when you can get odd?
Why is "abbreviated" such a long word?
Why is a boxing ring square?
Why is bra singular and panties plural?
Why is it called lipstick if you can still move your lips?
Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them?
Why is it considered necessary to nail down the lid of a coffin?
Why is it that bullets ricochet off of Superman's chest, but he ducks when the gun is thrown at him?
Why is it that famous people are always born on holidays?
Why is it that only adults have difficulty with childproof bottles?
Why is it that rain drops but snow falls?
Why is it that to stop Windows, you have to click on "Start"?
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?
Why is the word dictionary in the dictionary?
Why is your index finger the same size as your nostrils?
Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?
Why isn't there mouse-flavoured cat food?
You know that little indestructible black box that is used on planes? Why can't they make the whole plane out of the same substance?
Wikipedia
and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed
are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft'
and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright
policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.
Read more about today at Wilson's
Blogmanac
|
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Festival of the goddess Diana, Roman Empire (May 26
- 31, 17 BCE)
Feast day
of St Augustine of Canterbury (Anglican)
