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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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There will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today. August Spies, one of the Haymarket anarchists who were framed and hanged; spoken to the judge before his execution on November 11, 1887 That I have made myself generally obnoxious to the extortionists and fleecers during my management of the
Arbeiter Zeitung [the Chicago German labor newspaper Spies edited] – this I need hardly add ... I am proud of the enemies, and no less of the friends I have made. A time will come, when from our coffins In peace I will sleep with Him and take my rest. I've been a prisoner at Port Macquarie |
Haymarket Anarchists |
"Do you know what day it is?" I answered that it was the fourth of May. She shook her head as she said again: "Oh, yes! I know that, I know that! but do you know what day it is?" On my saying that I did not understand, she went on: "It is the eve of St George's Day. Do you know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?..."
Bram Stoker; Dracula, 1897;
May 6 is the Eastern Orthodox St
George's Day, so May 4 is actually the eve of the eve of that day
In his well-documented study, 'Historic Thorn Trees in the British Isles', Mr. Vaughan Cornish writes of the sacred
hawthorns growing over wells in Goidelic provinces … at Tin'ahely in County Wicklow:
"Devotees attended on the 4th of May, rounds were duly made around the well, and shreds torn off their garments and hung on the thorn." He adds:
"This is St. Monica's Day ..." Plainly, since St. Monica's Day, New Style, corresponds with
May 15th, Old Style, this was a ceremony in honour of the
Hawthorn
month, which had just begun.
Robert
Graves; The White
Goddess, p. 175
"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice.
From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis
Carroll, who wrote it for Alice Liddell who was born on May 4, 1852
It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip.
Arthur Conan Doyle; The
Adventure of the Final Problem, 1891; Sherlock Holmes fell to his presumed death at Riechenbach Falls, Switzerland on May 4, 1891
Well, Jim, I haven't read any of your books but I'll have to someday because they must be good considering how well they sell.
Nora Joyce, to her novelist husband, on May 4, 1940
He must be the worst man in the world to take on a commando raid. You might as well take a large radiogram with the volume turned up. On and on, hour after hour, tiring the sun with talking and sending him down the sky. Michael chats, quips, fantasises, reminisces, commiserates, encourages, plans, discusses, and elaborates. Then, some nights, when everyone else has gone to bed, he goes home and writes up a diary.
However, in Life of Brian Michael brings to the screen a series of brilliant comic creations. Asked about his controversial portrayal of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, Michael, typically relaxed and friendly, but with his eyes twinkling with effervescent irony, says
"Hell it's funny you should ask me that because when I was up at Brasenose, well actually it happened before that in fact, It was at school at Shrewsbury in Shropshire, there's a Norman Church there called St. Chad's ... Chad's dated from Norman times but in 1788 the tower fell down so it was rebuilt but the real Norman church is St. Mary's, anyway there was a fellow there called Paul Scott. I was reminded of him because I was reading the Raj Quartet last night, actually I finished it this morning, it is absolutely marvellous, bit like Hardy in a way, there's one scene where the British Commissioner is questioning an Indian spy, well he doesn't know he's
a spy, and the point is ..."
John Cleese on fellow Monty Python actor, Michael Palin, born on May 4, 1943
Source
May 4
is
the 124th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (125th
in leap years), with 241
days remaining.
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Festival of Tarentia, for the goddess
Bona Dea, ancient Rome (May 3 - 4)
Veneration of the Thorn
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Highly recommended:  Monty Python's Life of Brian DVD  The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus DVD  Monty Python and the Holy Grail
 Spellcraft
To support this project
By Thom Hartmann
By Robert Fisk
Photo of the day
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Feast day of St Antony Page
Feast day of St Augustine Webster Feast day of St Carthusian Martyrs Feast day of St Conleth Feast day of St Cyriacus Feast day of St Florian Feast day of St George Haydock Feast
day of St Godehard (Godard,
Gothard), bishop Feast day of St Gregory Celli of Verucchio Feast day of St Hilsindis Feast day of St John Houghton Feast day of St John Payne Feast day of St Judas Cyriacus Former feast day of St Monica
of Hippo Feast day of St Nepotian Feast day of St Paulinus of Sinigaglia Feast day of St Pelagia of Tarsus Feast day of St Richard Reynolds Feast day of St Robert Lawrence Feast day of St Sacerdos Feast day of St Venerius of Milan Takoage (Big Kite-Flying), at the Suwa shrine, Hamamatsu, Shizoka Prefecture, Japan (May 1 - 5) Dainembutsu Kyogen, Shinsen-en Shrine, Kyoto, Japan (May 1 - 5) Mizusawa
Komagata Matsuri, at Mizusawa, Iwate Prefecture, Japan (May 2 - 4) Kurayami Matsuri (Darkness Festival), Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan (May 3 - 6) Himeji Oshiro (Castle) Matsuri, at Himeji Castle, in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan (May 3 - 5) Dodenherdenking (Remembrance of the dead
or Memorial Day), The Netherlands Youth Day, China (observing May Fourth Movement) Rhode Island Independence Day, Rhode Island, USA Frustrating the Fairies Ageuma
Shinji, or Steeplechase Event, at Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, Japan On May 4, a parade of horsemen dressed as ancient warriors; May 5, a chigo parade and divination event. Rhode Island Independence Day, Rhode Island, USA King
George Tupou V
Day, Tonga Kent students' Memorial Day, USA Martin Z Mollusk Day (if the hermit crab sees his shadow, summer will be a week early) Source International Firefighters' Day Greenery Day, Japan
First Thursday in May,
National Day Of Prayer, USA
1008 King Henry I of France (d. 1060) 1655 Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco (d. January 27, 1731), Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano. 1733 Jean-Charles de Borda (d. 1799)
1749 Charlotte Turner Smith (d. October 28, 1806), English poet and novelist whose works have been credited with influencing Jane Austen and particularly Charles Dickens. In
1787 she left
her husband to begin writing to support her 12 children, producing several
well-received works of verse, then turned to the more lucrative novel, including
Desmond (1792), and her best work, The Old Manor-House
(1793).
1772 Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus (d. 1823) 1777 General Sir Richard Bourke, KCB (d. August 13, 1855), Governor of the Colony of New South Wales, Australia between 1831 and 1837. Progressive for his day, he was controversial for opposing the inhumane treatment handed out to convicts, limiting the number of lashes they could receive to 50, and by abolishing the privilege of the Anglican Church as the state church of the colony. 1796 Horace
Mann, American public school system innovator
At the famous Oxford University Meeting of 1860, Huxley defended Darwin's theory of Natural Selection against Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford. Wilberforce used essentially the same arguments that he had used in his anonymous review of Darwin's epochal On the Origin of Species for the previous July's The Quarterly Review. Then he smugly asked, was it through Huxley's grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?
1826 Frederic Edwin Church, painter 1827 John Hanning Speke (John Speke; d. September
15, 1864),
English explorer who was the first European to see
Lake Victoria.
Later he identified it as the long-sought-for source of the Nile. 1852 Alice
Liddell, English girl for whom Lewis Carroll wrote his Alice books 1873 Joe De Grasse (d. 1940), film director 1881 Alexander Kerensky (OS April 22; d. June 11, 1970), Russian revolutionary leader who was instrumental in toppling the Russian monarchy. He served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the October Revolution. 1889 Francis Cardinal Spellman (d. 1967),
religious leader 1918 Tanaka Kakuei, Japanese
political leader 1921 Edo
Murtić, Croatian painter 1923 Eric
Sykes, British actor and comedian 1928 Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt 1928 Maynard Ferguson, jazz
musician 1929 Audrey Hepburn (d. 1993),
English-born actress 1941 George
Will, writer 1942 Tammy Wynette (d. 1998) 1954 Pia
Zadora, actress 1958 Keith Haring, graphical artist 1959 Randy Travis, country musician
Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section
Do you forget birthdays and anniversaries? Schedule your cards to be sent during the coming year.
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