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When a star falls from the sky
It leaves a fiery trail. 
It does not die.
Its shade goes back to its own place to shine again.
The Indians sometimes find the small stars
where they have fallen in the grass.
Native Americans legend, among the Menominee of the Great Lakes region (Wisconsin)   Source

The bay trees in our country are all wither'd, 
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; 
The pale-fac'd moon looks bloody on the earth 
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change; 
Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap, 
The one in fear to lose what they enjoy, 
The other to enjoy by rage and war. 
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. 
William Shakespeare; Richard II, Act II, Scene iv (a Welsh captain warns the Earl of Salisbury)   Shakespeare on Omens and Prophecies

By nature I am not subtly spun, nor is it the custom of my native land to accomplish anything by spinning silk. Nor are we raised on figs, nor on mead, nor on wheaten bread, but on cheese, milk and oatcakes, which cannot give one a subtle disposition. Moreover, a man clings all his days to what he received in his youth; and my youth was coarse as compared to that of the subtle, pampered, and over-refined. For those who are raised in soft clothes and in women's apartments and we who are brought up among the pine-cones have trouble in understanding one another well.
Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Paracelsus, Switzerland, physician and alchemist, born on November 12, 1493; from Paracelsus: Selected Writings, ed. by Jolande Jacobi, 1951

Paracelsus

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Leonids meteor showers

"The Leonids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The meteor stream is viewable every year around November 17 and is thought to be comprised of particles ejected by the comet as it passes by the Sun. When the Earth moves through the meteor stream, the meteor shower is visible. The Leonids get their name from usually making their appearance in or near the constellation Leo.

"The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or storms, can be among the most spectacular. They seem to follow a 33 year cycle, associated with the 33 year orbit of Tempel-Tuttle. Storms in peak years can feature thousands of meteors per hour; notable events were observed in 1698, 1799, 1833, 1866, 1966, and 2001."  

Pictured above right: The Leonids were particularly spectacular in 1833 and they are seen here over Niagara Falls

Source: Wikipedia

The peak of Leonids visibility is around November 17; more then in the Book of Days.

Were meteor showers responsible for omens in ancient sacred texts?

Meteors & Native American Folklore    List of meteor showers

Meteor observing calendar    Meteors and the Native Americans    Sky map

Thunderstones and Shooting Stars: Meteors and Meteorites in Folklore 

Jaw-dropping Leonids    Picture of the Tempel-Tuttle Comet    More     And more

See also Perseid and Lyrid meteor showers in the Book of Days

If you can't see the Milky Way outside at night, join the International Dark-Sky Association and help lobby for some laws to save the human spirit!

St Michael's day for the Nile, Egypt

Related (use Search): Tears of Isis; Lamentations of Isis, Rising of the Nile)

Feast day of St Astricus

Feast day of St Cummian Fada (Cumian, Cummin)
Irish monk, c. 590 - c. 665, had charge of the abbey school at Clonfert. The surname Fada or Fota means 'the tall'.

Feast day of St Gabriel Ferretti

Feast day of St Himerius

Feast day of St Isaac

Feast day of St John Cini della Pace

Feast day of St Josaphat

Feast day of St Lebuin (Lebwin), patron of Daventer

Feast day of St Livinus (Livin), bishop and martyr

Feast day of St Nilus the Elder, anchoret, father of the church
(Grape aloe, Velthennia uvaria, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

Feast day of St Rene

Wuwuchim (Hopi) Fire Ceremony (Nov 5 - 21)

On which day of the week were you born? Find out here

1493 (Sources vary as to date) Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Paracelsus (d. 1541), Switzerland, physician and one of history's greatest alchemists. He called himself para-Celsus because he surpassed even first-century Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus. He broke with tradition by teaching in German rather than Latin, burned Avicenna's Canon to mark his break with academic colleagues at Basel, and lambasted the Greek physician Galen (131 - 201 CE) at every opportunity.

Paracelsus believed that "magic is a teacher of medicine preferable to all the written books". He also believed that epileptics were ill, not possessed. Paracelsus was the first to use tincture of opium in medicine, and he correctly associated head injury with paralysis, and miners' lung with the occupation. He claimed to have discovered the philosopher's stone and that he was immortal.

On September 24, 1541 Paracelsus made his will, but there was no mention of gold or silver, the alchemists' holy grail. His only legacy was a 125 grams (approx. 4 oz Troy/Apoth.) silver chalice. Paracelsus died in 1541, possibly from a fall (he was a heavy drinker).

Science > Anomalies and Alternative Science > Alchemy

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

1729 Louis Antoine de Bougainville (Louis-Antoine, comte de Bougainville; d. August 20, 1811), French navigator and military commander

1493 Bartolommeo Bandinelli (d. 1560), Italian sculptor

1815 Elizabeth Cady Stanton (d. October 26, 1902), American social reformer and feminist, co-founder, with Lucretia Mott, of the women's rights movement; first president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association

A world chronology of women's electoral rights, in the Scriptorium

Louisa Lawson, Australian suffragette, also in the Scriptorium

A USA chronology of women's suffrage    Shop Suffragettes

1817 Mírzá Husayn-'Alí (Bahá'u'lláh; d. May 29, 1892), founder of the Bahá'í Faith. He was born in Tehran, Persia, now a part of Iran. His father was Mirza Buzurg of Nur (in the province of Mazandaran), a distinguished nobleman from the court of Fath Ali Shah, the king of Persia.

See also Birthday of the Bab

1833 Alexander Borodin (d. 1887), Russian composer (opera Prince Igor)

1840 Auguste Rodin (d. 1917), French sculptor

1866 Sun Yat-sen (d. March 12, 1925), Chinese revolutionary and political leader often referred to as the father of modern China'

1889 DeWitt Wallace (d. March 30, 1981, also known as William Roy), United States magazine publisher who co-founded Reader's Digest with his wife Lila Wallace and published the first issue in 1922

1896 Salim Ali (d. 1987), Indian ornithologist

1903 Jack Oakie (d. 1978), American actor

1908 Harry Blackmun, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court; wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade (d. 1999)

1910 Kurt Hoffmann, film director

1915 Roland Barthes (d. 1980), French writer

1917 Jo Stafford, singer

1920 Richard Quine, actor

1922 Sunset Carson, actor

1922 Kim Hunter (d. 2002), actress

1923 Vicco von Bülow, known as Loriot, graphic artist, actor and film director

1929 Grace Kelly (d. 1982), Princess Grace of Monaco, actress

1929 Michael Ende (d. 1995), writer

1930 Ann Flood, actress

1934 Charles Manson, murderer

1943 Brian Hyland, singer

1943 Wallace Shawn, actor, playwright

1944 Booker T Jones, musician (Booker T and the MGs)

1945 Neil Young, singer, songwriter, musician

1966 David Schwimmer, actor

1978 Andrew Kinlochan, singer, musician

 

Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section

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November

9 Mariachi Night (California, USA)
10 Forget Me Not Day
10 USMC Birthday
10 Toothpaste Day
10 Headache Day
11 Veterans Day (USA)
11 Sundae Day
11 Remembrance Day (Canada)
11 Ones Day
11 Independence Day (Poland)
11 Veterans Day Parade (Alabama, USA)
11 Independence Day (Poland)
12 Pizza But No Anchovies Day
12 The Birth Of Baha'ullah
13 World Kindness Day
13 Start A Rumour Day
13 Actors' Day
14 Pickle Appreciation Day
14 Guacamole Day
14 Monet Day
14 Children's Day (India)
15 Guru Nanak's Birthday
15 America Recycles Day
15 Pikes Peak Day
15 Shichi-Go-San (Japan)
15 Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day
16 Fast Food Day
16 Birth Of The Blues Day
16 International Day For Tolerance
16 Fast For A World Harvest Day
17 Lung Cancer Awareness Day
17 Take A Hike Day
17 World Peace Day
17 Homemade Bread Day
17 Coping With Uncertainty Day
18 Moms And Dads Day
18 Buffalo On The Block Day
18 Teddy Bear Day
19 Doo Dah Parade (California)
19 International Pickle Festival
(New York)
19 Pencil Day
19 US Marine Corps Day

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764 Tibetan troops occupied Chang'an, the capital of the Chinese Tang Dynasty, for fifteen days.

1035 Death of Canute II, the Dane, King of England.

1094 Death of King Duncan II of Scotland.

1381 Adolphus, Count of Cleves, founded a benevolent association called The Order of Fools.

"The Order of Fools was set up in 1381 by Adolphus, Count of Cleves. For centuries the members, mostly from the Flemish upper classes, held a week-long grand court every year and planned acts of charity. They had the figure of a fool or jester embroidered on their mantles. The last reference to the Order is in some verses appended to Sebastian Brand's celebrated Navis Stultifera (Ship of Fools), published in Strasbourg in 1520."   Source

1439 Plymouth, England, became the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.  

1660 English Baptist lay preacher John Bunyan, soon to be author of Pilgrim's Progress while in prison, was jailed for preaching without a licence.

1799 "On the morning of the 12th of November, 1799, thousands of shooting stars, mixed with large meteors, illuminated the heavens, for many hours, over the whole continent of America, from Brazil to Labrador; they were observed even in Greenland and Germany."
Meteorites and the Leonids of 1833, by Samuel Goodrich (from A Glance at the Physical Sciences. Boston: Rand and Mann, 1849)   Source

More about the Leonid meteor showers, November 17 in the Book of Days

 

1799 Hereford, England: A UFO like a pillar of fire was observed overhead by people in the Forest of Dean, as reported in Gentleman's Magazine.

"On Nov. 12, something like a large red pillar of fire passed north to south over Hereford, and alarmed people in the Forest of Dean, some miles away. Flashes of extremely vivid electrical sort preceded its appearance, and at intervals of half an hour, several hours before. This was at 5:45 a.m ... On this night the moon shone with uncommon vividness, when between 5 and 6 a.m., bright lights in the sky became stationary. They then burst with not perceptible report, and passed north leaving behind them [sic] beautiful trains of floating fire. Some were pointed, some radiated. Some sparkled and some had large columns.... Nov. 19, at 6 a.m., folk of Huncoates, Lincolnshire, were alarmed by vivid flashes lasting 30 seconds, from a ball of fire passing in the sky."

Harold T Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Attack   Source

 

1833 "But by far the most splendid meteoric shower on record was in 1833. It began at nine o'clock in the evening of the 12th of November, and continued till sunrise the next morning. It extended from the great lakes of Canada, southward, to Jamaica, and from the 61st degree of longitude in the Atlantic, westerly, to the 100th degree in Central Mexico. Shooting stars and meteors, of the apparent size of Venus, Jupiter, and even the full moon, darted in myriads towards the horizon, as if all the stars in the heavens had started from their spheres. Those who witnessed this grand spectacle were surprised to see that every one of these luminous bodies, without exception, moved in lines which converged to one point in the heavens. None of them started from that point; but their paths, when traced backward, met in it like rays in a focus, and the manner of their fall showed that they descended from it in nearly parallel straight lines. The most extraordinary part of the phenomenon is, that this radiating point was observed to remain stationary, in the constellation Leo, for more than two hours and a half, – which proves the source of the meteoric shower to be altogether independent of the Earth's rotation. Other observations showed it to be far above the atmosphere."
Meteorites and the Leonids of 1833, by Samuel Goodrich (from A Glance at the Physical Sciences. Boston: Rand and Mann, 1849)   Source

1847 Sir James Simpson gave the first demonstration of the anaesthetic, chloroform, at Edinburgh, Scotland.

1865 Death of Elizabeth Gaskell, English novelist.

1887 "Nov. 12, 1887 Cape Race (Atlantic Ocean). A huge sphere of fire was observed rising out of the ocean by witnesses aboard the "Siberian." It rose to an altitude of 16 m, flew against the wind, and came close to the ship, then "dashed oft" toward the southeast. Duration: 5 min. (LDLN 48; Anatomy 14)"   Source  

1894 Lawrence Hargrave, Australian engineer, explorer, astronomer, aeronautical pioneer and inventor of the box kite, flew for about 5 metres in a kite of his own design.

"On November 12, 1894, Lawrence Hargrave, the Australian inventor of the box kite, linked four of his kites together, added a sling seat, and flew 16 feet. By demonstrating to a sceptical public that it was possible to build a safe and stable flying machine, Hargrave opened the door to other inventors and pioneers. The Hargrave-designed box kite, with its improved lift-to-drag ratio, was to provide the theoretical wing model that allowed the development of the first generation of European (and American) airplanes."   Source

1901 Two hundred people were killed in England when a gale hit.

1905 Russia imposed martial law on Poland.

1912 Searchers found the bodies of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions frozen in a tent in Antarctica.

1918 Austria became a republic.

1919 England-Australia Air Race: Australian brothers, Keith and Ross Smith, and mechanics Bennet and Sheirs took off from London to become the first to fly from England to Australia, landing in Darwin on December 10

1927 Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin with undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

1927 The Holland Tunnel opened to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicular tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.

1927 The first automatic telephone exchange opened in London.

1933 The first known photo of the alleged Loch Ness monster was taken.

Nessie    Nessie and St Columba 

The Legend of Nessie    China's 'Loch Ness Monster' resurfaces

Nessie's 1933 appearance, at the Book of Days (May 2, 1933)

1934 The musical Babes in Toyland debuted, featuring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (Laurel and Hardy) as comic relief.

1936 In California, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic.

1941 World War II: Temperatures around Moscow dropped to -12° C and the Soviet Union launched ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city.

1942 World War II: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces began near Guadalcanal, and lasted for three days.

1943 Japanese aircraft made their 64^th and final bombing raid on Darwin, Australia. The air raids had begun on February 19, 1942 [qv]. No one knows how many died; the number is probably many hundreds.  

Japanese 'Betty bomber'

"It is also often forgotten that the 19 February attacks were only the first of 64 raids made on Darwin between February 1942 and November 1943. Here it is important to focus on what is significant. None of these raids was as heavy as the first, and most caused no damage or casualties at all. Their significance, however, is often missed. They were part of an air campaign fought across northern Australia during those years."   Source

Wikipedia article on the air raids    Aust. gov't archives

 

1944 World War II: The Royal Air Force launched one of the most successful precision bombing attacks of war and sank the German battleship Tirpitz off the coast of Norway.

1946 A branch of the Exchange National Bank in Chicago, Illinois, USA, opened the first ten drive-up teller windows.

1948 In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentenced seven Japanese military and government officials to death, including General Hideki Tojo, for their roles in World War II.

1955 The great electrical storm of Hill Valley, USA, which stopped the clock in the tower. The events around Marty McFly (Back to the Future) took place on this day.

Doc: Are you sure about this storm?

Marty: Since when could the weatherman predict the weather, let alone the future.

Doc: You know Marty, I'm gonna be very sad to see you go. You've really made a difference in my life, you've given me something to shoot for. Just knowing, that I'm gonna be around to see 1985, that I'm gonna succeed in this. That I'm gonna have a chance to travel through time. It's going to be really hard waiting 30 years before I could talk to you about everything that's happened in the past few days. I'm really gonna miss you, Marty.

 

 

1960 Death of Lord Buckley (b. 1906), American hip monologist.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1961 Huge iron ore discoveries in Western Australia's Pilbara region were announced.

1969 Vietnam War: My Lai Massacre – Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai story.

1970 The Oregon (USA) Highway Division attempted to destroy a rotting beached Grey whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous exploding whale incident.

PERP Exploding Whale video page

 

 

1971 Vietnam War: As part of Vietnamization, US President Richard M Nixon set February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam.

1979 Iran hostage crisis: In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter ordered a halt to all oil imports from Iran into the United States.

1980 The NASA space probe Voyager I made its closest aproach to Saturn.

1981 Space Shuttle Columbia becomes the first spacecraft to make a second trip into space.

1982 In the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov was selected to become the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding the late Leonid Brezhnev.

1987 USSR: President Mikhail Gorbachev fired Boris Yeltsin as head of the Moscow Communist Party

1989 The decision was announced that the Berlin Wall was to come down.

1990 Crown Prince Akihito was formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125^th Japanese monarch (he ascended the throne on January 7, 1989).

1990 Tim Berners-Lee published a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.

1990 More than 200,000 French schoolchildren demonstrated in Paris for better education, with the protest turning into a riot.

1991 The Dili Massacre: In a cemetery in Dili, East Timor, a demonstration against Indonesian oppression of Timor turned ugly. Indonesian soldiers opened fire on the unarmed protesters, with the loss of as many as 180 lives.

1992 Absolutely Fabulous aired its first episode on BBC1.

1997 Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

1998 Daimler-Benz completed a merger with Chrysler to form Daimler-Chrysler.

2001 2001 Attack on Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandoned Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, ahead of advancing Northern Alliance troops.

2003 Occupation of Iraq: In Nasiriya, Iraq, at least 23 people, among them the first Italian casualties of the 2003 Iraq war, were killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base.

 

Tomorrow: Bull run at Stamford, England

 

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