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 Night of Hecate, ancient Greece
"In Greece, this day was celebrated as the Night of Hecate, known to the Romans as Diana Lucifera. Diana had three forms, Luna in the Heavens, Diana on Earth, and Hecate in the Underworld. Diana was the goddess of the moon and was often called Diana Lucifera, Diana the Bringer of Light. The Greeks knew her as Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo, and daughter of Zeus and Leto. She was born under Mount Cynthus in Delos and hence was also called Cynthia and Delia. She was the goddess of hunting, carried a bow and quiver like her brother, and was especially fond of music and dance. Diana was never conquered by love, and submitted to no man, hence she was the goddess of a
'chaste' moon and, except for her family, tolerated only female companions. Her priestesses were all chaste."
Source
"'The From-a-far Powerful' was portrayed
most of the time in triple statues with triple faces. (f.e.in
Aigina). Her names Trioditis (gr.) Trivia (latin: Goddess of Three
Roads) and Tricephalus or Triceps (The Three-Headed) refer to her
triple nature. She carries torches, whips, daggers and keys. Hecate
is most of the time followed by dogs or wolfs. Sometimes she even
has the heads of a snake, dog or lion or three heads and six arms
(reference to Kali, Indian goddess). In later times the Triple
Hekate took on the form of a pillar called a Hecterion. One such
statue depicts her with three heads and six arms, bearing three
torches and three sacred emblems – the Key, Rope, and Dagger. With
her key to the underworld, Hekate unlocks the secrets of the occult
mysteries and knowledge of the afterlife. The rope, which is also a
scourge or cord, symbolizes the umbilical cord of rebirth and
renewal. The Dagger is related to the curved knife that cuts
delusion and is a symbol of power and judgment."
Source
Hecate
Night
Begins
at sunset; the threefold goddess of Wicca (Perseis) is celebrated.
Pennick,
Nigel, The
Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont,
USA, 1992
Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
Festivals in ancient Greece
Shop
Greek Mythology Shop
Goddesses
Leonids
meteor showers (Nov 12 - 23
annually)
The celestial lightshow peaks on November 17
and we'll have more on that day.
Feast day of St Afan
Feast day of St Agnes of
Assisi
Feast day of St Domingo
Iturrate Zubero
Feast day of St Edmund Rich
of Abingdon, confessor, Archbishop of Canterbury
(African
hemp, Sansciviera guineam, is
today's plant, dedicated
to this saint.)
Edmund, King of East Anglia, was killed by Danish archers, then
beheaded. According to Saxon magic kingship tradition, his severed
head was guarded by a wolf until his head and body were buried at St
Edmundsbury, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK, a place of pilgrimage and
a well-named place.
Feast
day of St Gertrude
the Great (Gertrude of Helfta), virgin and abbess
(Some sources give November 15)
(Sweet coltsfoot, Tussilagro
fragrans, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
A
German
Benedictine and mystic writer, Gertrude was born on January 6,
1256 and died at Helfta, near Eisleben, Saxony, November 17,
1301 or 1302. Her patronage includes the West Indies, nuns and
travellers. She had various mystical experiences, including a vision
of Jesus,
who invited her to rest her head on his breast to hear the beating
of his heart. Although called Saint Gertrude, she was never formerly
canonized. Her feast day of November
16 was declared in 1677
by Pope Clement
XII.
More
And more
Feast day of St Gobrain
Feast day of St Gratia of
Cattaro
Feast day of St Joseph
Moscati
 Feast day of St
Margaret of
Scotland
Born
a Saxon circa 1046
(d. November 16, 1093)
and raised in Hungary, Margaret was daughter of the English prince Edward the
Exile or 'Edward Outremer',
and granddaughter of King Edmund
Ironside of England. She was great-niece of Saint Stephen of
Hungary. When her uncle, King Edward the
Confessor, died in 1066,
she was living in England where her brother,
Edgar Ćtheling,
had decided to make a claim to the vacant throne.
After
the conquest of England by the Normans, the widowed
Agatha decided to leave Northumberland
with her children and return to the Continent, but a storm drove
their ship to Scotland where (c. 1067 - '70) the beautiful and
learned Margaret married Malcolm
Canmore (King Malcolm III of
Scotland – son of "the gracious
Duncan", that good old king whom
Shakespeare's
Macbeth murdered in his own castle), who is reputed to have been
extremely cruel, but she helped convert him to gentler ways. Legend
has it that, although he could not read, he would turn the leaves of her books, and kiss those which she liked
best. He gave her
jewel-encrusted books as presents, one of which, a book of the
Gospels, richly
adorned with jewels, one day dropped into a river and was
according to legend miraculously
recovered, is now in the Bodleian library
at Oxford with the tale about the miracle written at the end.
She helped the
church in Scotland and was noted for her piety and learning. She founded Dunfermline Abbey as the new burial place for Scottish kings;
it was also built to enshrine her greatest treasure, a relic of the True Cross.
Margaret was probably born in Hungary.
The provenance of her mother Agatha is disputed: certainly related
to the kings of Hungary, she was either a descendant of Emperor Henry III
or a daughter of Yaroslav I of
Kiev. Under Margaret's sons, Edgar, Alexander
I and David I,
the Scottish court practically became anglicized.
She is
said to have been virtuous, and whenever she went out she was
besieged by crowds of poor, troubled and sick people. Every morning
she prepared breakfast for nine little orphans (some sources say she
waited on 24 persons before eating), and in the evening
she washed the feet of six poor persons, and entertained mendicants
at dinner.
Queen Margaret encouraged the making of pilgrimages to
the shrine of St Andrew
(patron saint of Scotland) at
St Andrews. Turgot tells us that,
"Since the Church at St. Andrews was much frequented by the devout who flocked to it from all quarters, she erected dwellings on either shore of the sea which divides Lothian from Scotland, so that the poor people and pilgrims might shelter there and rest after the fatigues of their journey … Moreover she provided ships for the transport of these pilgrims both coming and going, nor was it lawful to demand any fee for the passage from those who were crossing."
She also rebuilt the monastery of Iona.
Margaret foretold the day of her death,
November 16, 1093,
four days after her husband and her eldest son Edward, who were
killed in an invasion of Northumberland and as they defended Edinburgh
Castle. Legend says that her coffin would not be moved till that of Malcolm was also brought.
She was canonised in 1251 by Pope Innocent IV
on account of her great benefactions to the Church.
The Roman Catholic church formerly marked
the feast of Saint Margaret of Scotland on June 10,
but the date was transferred to November 16 in the liturgical reform
of 1972.
At the Reformation, her head passed into the possession of Mary Queen of
Scots, and later was secured by the Jesuits at
Douai, where it is believed to have perished during the French Revolution.
There is a chapel in her honour in Spain (where she has long been
admired because she reintroduced the Catholic mass into Scotland and
established Sunday as a day of worship), built by King Philip II of
Spain in the 16th
century.
Her patronage includes death of children,
large families,
learning,
queens,
Scotland,
and widows.
St Margaret's name signifies 'pearl', "a fitting name," says Theodoric, her confessor and her first biographer,
"for one such as she".
Margaret is still a popular name for girls in Scotland, because of
this saint. Queen
Margaret University College, founded in 1875, is named after
her.
Margaret and Malcolm had eight children,
six sons and two daughters:
- Prince Edward of Scotland, killed
1093.
- King Edmund
I of Scotland
- Ethelred, Earl of Fife
- King Edgar
I of Scotland
- King Alexander
I of Scotland
- King David
I of Scotland
- Edith
of Scotland, also called Matilda, married King Henry
I of England
- Mary of Scotland, married Eustace
III of Boulogne
More
More
And
more Yet more
Feast day of St Othmar
Feast
day of St Rufinus
Shop Saints
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days
Wuwuchim
(Hopi) Fire Ceremony (Nov 5 - 21)
Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ćgypticus or
dies mala), unlucky day in
Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord"
was the associated saying.)
Hungerford Revels, Berkshire, England
Traditional festive event with greasy pole, hot tea drinking contests and sack jumping for cheese.
International
Day for Tolerance
The International Day for Tolerance is an
annual observance declared by the United
Nations to generate public awareness of the dangers of intolerance.
It was created as a part of the UNESCO
Declaration of the Principles of Tolerance at the twenty-eighth
session of the General Conference in Paris.
The conference was held from October
25 to November 16, 1995.
Dagur Íslenskrar Tungu (Icelandic Language
Day), Iceland
Loy
Krathong festival, Thailand
(2005) Admission of Oklahoma, 46th
state, USA
(1907)
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
42 BCE Tiberius
(Tiberius Claudius Nero
Caesar;
d. 37), Roman emperor
1717
Jean le Rond d'Alembert (d. October
29, 1783),
French mathematician,
mechanician,
physicist,
philosopher.
He was also one of the editors of the
Encyclopédie,
an early French encyclopedia. D'Alembert's method for the wave
equation is named after him.
1720 Carlo Antonio Campioni (d. 1788), composer
1766 Rodolphe Kreutzer (d. 1831), violinist
1811 John Bright (d. March 27, 1889), British
Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with Richard Cobden
in the formation of the Anti-Corn
Law League. In 1857, Bright's
unpopular opposition to the Crimean War led
to him losing his seat as member for Manchester.
1873 WC
Handy (d. 1958), blues composer
1889
George
S Kaufman (d. 1961),
American playwright and collaborator on musicals (Of Thee I Sing;
A Night at the Opera;
The Man Who Came to Dinner)
1894
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi
(d. 1972),
politician
1895 Paul Hindemith (d.1963), German
composer and viola player
1896 Joan Lindsay
(d. 1984),
Australian author (Picnic at
Hanging Rock). A
movie of the book
was made by Peter
Weir; it is considered one of the most significant of Australian
films.
1896 Lawrence Tibbett (d. 1960), American actor and
singer
1896 Oswald
Mosley (d. 1980), British fascist
1903 Queenie Ashton,
British actress
1905 Eddie Condon (d. 1973), jazz
musician
1907 Burgess Meredith, actor (d. 1997), American
character actor (Grumpy
Old Men)
"One of the truly great and
gifted performers of the century who often suffered lesser roles,
Meredith was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1908 and educated in
Amherst College in Massachusetts before joining Eva Le Gallienne's
stage company in New York City in 1933. He bcame a favorite of
dramatist Maxwell
Anderson, premiering on film in the playwright's Winterset
(1936). Served in the Air Force in WWII. He continued in a variety
of dramatic and comedic roles until being named an unfriendly
witness by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early
1950s, whereupon studio work disappeared. His career picked up
again, especially with television roles, in the 1960s, although
younger audiences know him best for either the Rocky
(1976) or Grumpy
Old Men (1993) films. Meredith also did a large amount of
commercial work, serving as the voice for Skippy Peanut Butter and
United Air Lines, among others. He was also an ardent
environmentalist who believed pollution one of the greatest
tragedies of the time, and an opponent of the Vietnam War.
"On the Batman
(1966/II) TV series, developed his grunting "Penguin" laugh out of
necessity. Meredith had given up smoking some twenty-odd years
earlier, but his character was required to smoke with a
cigarette holder. The smoke would get caught in his throat and
he would start coughing. Rather than constantly ruin takes in
this matter, he developed the laugh to cover it up. "Actually,
it was a pretty funny noise for a penguin to make," said
Meredith. "I sounded more like a duck." Needless to say,
Meredith gave up smoking again immediately after the series
ended." Source
Shop Hollywood
1916 Daws
Butler (d. 1988), voice actor
1920
Colin
Thiele (d.
September 4,
2006), Australian author, especially of books for children and
young people (Storm Boy)
1922
José Saramago, author, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1998
1922 Gene
Amdahl, computer scientist
1924 James
Bond, archetypal spy created
by British author
Ian Fleming
1928
Clu Gulager, American actor
1930
Chinua
Achebe, prominent
Igbo novelist acclaimed for his depictions
of the disorientation brought about by the imposition of Western
civilization upon traditional African society (Things
Fall Apart and
Arrow
of God)
1937
Lothar Späth, German politician
1938 Robert Nozick, philosopher
1941
Max Gillies,
Australian comic impressionist, writer and actor (The Cars That Ate Paris;
The Coca-Cola Kid;
Gillies and Company)
1942
Joanna Pettet, British
actress (The Group;
Casino Royale)
1943 Donald DeFreeze
('Field Marshal Cinque'; d. May 17, 1974), leader of the Symbionese
Liberation Army, an American terrorist
group operating in the mid-1970s. His group
kidnapped Hearst
newspaper heiress Patty Hearst
on February 4,
1974.
1943 Michael Cimino, film director
 1946
Terence McKenna
(d.
April 3, 2000),
theoretician of consciousness,
the originator of the timewave zero theory, which claims time to be
a fractal
wave of increasing novelty,
which ends in 2012.
"Terence
McKenna (1946-2000)
has been studying the ontological foundations of Shamanism and the Ethnopharmacology
of spiritual transformation for the past quarter century. An
innovative theoretician and spellbinding orator, Terence has
emerged as a powerful voice for the psychedelic movement and the
emergent societal tendency he calls The Archaic Revival.
Poetically dispensing enlightened social criticism and new
theories of the fractal dynamics of time, Terence deobfuscates
many aspects of the visionary lexicon, and then some. As Artist Alex Grey
suggests, 'In the twilight of
human history, McKenna's prescription for salvation is just so
crazy it might work.'" Source: Terence McKenna Land
McKenna audio
More
on 2012 at the Scriptorium
More
And more
1952 Shigeru Miyamoto, video game legend
1964 Diana
Krall, singer
1958 Marg Helgenberger, American actress
1967 Lisa
Bonet, actress
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1380 French King Charles VI
declared no taxes forever.
1384
Although a ten-year-old girl,
Jadwiga was crowned
King of Poland.
1532 The Battle of Cajamarca
A satisfactory afternoon's work for Spanish imperialism
 New World: Spanish conquistador
Francisco
Pizarro (c. 1475 -
1541)
seized Incan
emperor Atahualpa
(pictured; c. 1502 - August 29,
1533) after
victory at Cajamarca,
Peru.
Pizarro
had just 168 men and Atahualpa had 80,000 battle-hardened soldiers who had
recently defeated an indigenous enemy. However, the Spaniards had iron swords,
guns, horses and armour, which the Incas did not. The result: surely one of history's
most incredible battles – although largely forgotten today – and it was all over in
a single afternoon. The Spaniards' losses? Nil.
Atahualpa (or
Atahuallpa; Atabalipa) (ah'-ta-oo-al'-pa), was the 13th and final emperor
of the Incan Empire. He was a younger son of the Incan ruler Huayna Capac and an
Ecuadorian princess of the Quito; although not the legitimate heir, he seems to
have been the favourite. When Huayna Capac died (c. 1527), the kingdom was
divided between Atahualpa, who ruled the northern part of the empire from Quito,
and his half-brother Huáscar, the legitimate heir, who ruled from Cuzco, the
traditional Inca capital. Contemporary chroniclers depicted Atahualpa as
courageous, ambitious, and very popular with the army. In 1532, he was
celebrating his victory in a devastating war of accession with his elder
half-brother.
He
had been embroiled in war with Huáscar for control of the whole Incan Empire.
The war ravaged Inca cities, wreaked havoc on the economy, and decimated the
population. Early in 1532, near Cuzco, while Pizarro was making his way to
Atahualpa's heartland, the army of the Incan lord had defeated Huáscar's army
in what was probably the greatest of any Incan military engagement to date.
Atahualpa treacherously captured his half-brother and his family and later had
them executed, while Atahualpa was himself a prisoner – of Pizarro. (As Huáscar
had been something of an ally to the Spanish, his half-brother's actions were
later cited as a cause of the treatment Pizarro meted out to Atahualpa.)
In
November, while the newly victorious Atahualpa and his battle-hardened army of
80,000 were relaxing with the hot springs in the town of Cajamarca, before their
planned triumphal entry into Cuzco, Francisco Pizarro entered the city with a
force of 168. Atahualpa got wind of the incursion. History was about to change
in a most dramatic way.
On
November 15, as the Spanish band moved close
to Cajamarca, they tortured a few natives and discovered that Atahualpa was
waiting for them at Cajamarca. Bravely, 'Governor' Pizarro's 'army' moved
towards the Incan town, and saw a beautiful place filled with so many tents that
the soldiers were filled with fear. Hernando Pizarro, the leader's brother,
estimated the number of Incan soldiers at 40,000, but an eyewitness wrote that
he gave this estimate in order to calm his comrades: there were in fact more
than 80,000. Meanwhile, most of Pizarro's men were hidden around the main
courtyard of Cajamarca.
 Atahualpa ambushed
Invited
by the Spaniard to attend a feast in his honour, the Inca chief accepted. The
next day, he arrived at the appointed meeting place with several thousand
unarmed retainers; Pizarro, prompted by the example of Hernán Cortés and
Moctezuma in Mexico, had prepared an ambush.
The next day
at around noon, Atahualpa appeared in the town centre, carried on a litter,
or palanquin,
borne by 80 Incan noblemen in rich blue livery, and with a retinue of 2,000
Indians sweeping the road before him. An eyewitness wrote "Then came a number
of men with armour, large metal plates, and crowns of gold and silver which they
bore, that it was a marvel to observe how the sun glinted on it." ...
... By evening, Pizarro and his men had killed 7,000 Indians yet lost not one of their own merry men
...
Read on at the Battle of Cajamarca
page in the Scriptorium
1632 Death of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, in
the Battle of Lützen.
 1720 Pirates
Anne
Bonny (Anne Bonney) and Mary Read were convicted of piracy.
Anne Bonny (1698
-
1782) was an
Irish
pirate and Mary
Read (c. 1690
- 1721) an
English one, and
together they sailed throughout the
Caribbean.
Bonny and Read became close companions on
the Revenge, commanded by pirate
John 'Calico
Jack' Rackham, and
one day
when Bonny walked in on Read (who was, unlike
Bonny, disguised as a man) undressing, she discovered her secret.
"Anne Bonney and Mary
Read are the most famous – and ferocious – women pirates in history, and
they are the only ones known to have plied their trade in the Western
Hemisphere. [The author neglects to mention Granuail –
Grace O'Malley – PW] ...
"Both Anne and Mary were known for their violent tempers and ferocious
fighting, and they shared a reputation as 'fierce hell cats.' Their fellow
crewmembers knew that -- in times of action – no one else was as ruthless and
bloodthirsty as these two women were. Captain Jack, nicknamed 'Calico Jack'
for his love of colorful cotton clothing, was a well-known pirate in those days,
but his reputation has survived through the ages primarily because of these two
infamous women pirates on his crew.
"Anne and Mary were ... found guilty. But at their sentencing, when asked by
the judge if they had anything to say, they replied, 'Mi'lord, we plead our
bellies.' Both were pregnant, and since British law forbade killing an unborn
child, their sentences were stayed temporarily." Source:
The Legend Of Anne Bonney and
Mary Read
"Jack was still under the impression that Mary was male and became
engulfed with jealousy at the closeness the two shared. It was not until he
threatened to slit Mary's neck that the girls revealed to him Mary's
identity. Shortly after, they revealed their sex to the rest of the crew. No
one seemed to mind, or at least had the courage to speak up. The girls even
began dressing as women during moments of peace." Source
Salmonson,
Jessica Amanda, The
Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era
Mary Read: Woman Pirate
Taxco,
Mace, The Women Pirates, Ann Bonney and Mary Read
Images
More
Highwaymen, outlaws, bushrangers, pirates, gangsters, etc in the
Book of Days
1724 The
notorious burglar
and skilled escapee,
Jack Sheppard,
was executed
with an audience of 200,000 people at
Tyburn,
the principal location
in London
for public executions by hanging.
Highwaymen, outlaws, bushrangers, pirates, gangsters, etc in the
Book of Days
1769
English mariner Captain James Cook
took possession of
New Zealand
in the name of the British
Crown.
1776 American Revolutionary War: Hessian
mercenaries captured Fort Washington from the Patriots.
1793 French revolutionaries loaded a
barge with 90 priests then towed it out and sank it off
Nantes,
France. All on board perished.
1802 Death of André Michaux (b. 1746), French botanist.
1807 The husband of Ching Shih (Cheng
I Soa) died during a gale; Ching Shih stepped into the breach and
became a pirate like her husband, commanding 400 ships and 70,000
sailors.
Ching Shih, once a a Cantonese
prostitute
named Shih Yang, died at the age of 60 in 1844, running a brothel
and gambling house in Guangzhou.1811 According to some
sources, Indian chief
Tecumseh predicted a
"light across the
sky" tonight. It is supposed to have appeared, as predicted. Source
1813 Father Sebastian Alvarez, a
priest in New Mexico, wrote a letter to the Episcopal See of
Durango, Colorado, USA, expressing his feelings about the people
coming from afar seeking cures for their diseases and the spreading
of the fame of their cures.
New Mexico is home of the historic
Chimayo Shrine, which commemorates an event during Holy Week on the night of
Good Friday, circa 1810, when a Chimayo friar, Don Bernardo Abeyta, who was a
member in good standing of the Hermandad de Nuestro Padre Jesus el
Nazareno (Penitentes), was performing the customary penances of the
Society around the hills of El Potrero. There he saw a light
bursting from a hillside near
the Santa Cruz River. He dug and found a crucifix, quickly
dubbed the miraculous crucifix of Our Lord of Esquipulas.
A local priest, Fr. Sebastian Alvarez,
took the crucifix to Santa Cruz, but it disappeared three times and
was later found back sitting in the hole the friar had dug, leading
believers to understand that El Senor de Esquipulas wanted to
remain in Chimayo. Consequently, a small chapel was built on the
site, following which miraculous healings started occurring. These
were so frequent that the chapel was replaced by the larger, current
adobe Chimayo Shrine in 1816. El Santuario was a privately
owned chapel until the year l929, when several benefactors bought it
and turned it over to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
El
Santuario de Chimayo
is now known locally as the 'Lourdes of
America'. The crucifix still resides on the chapel altar, although
its curative powers have been overshadowed by El Posito, the
'sacred sand pit' from which it sprang, now behind the main
altar. More than 300,000 pilgrims visit Chimayo's strange shrine
each year.
(Note: On June 15, 1963, the face
of cult leader JR 'Bob' Dobbs
appeared on a tortilla of a humble Mexican woman in Plano, Texas, USA.)
1821 American Old West: Missouri
trader
William Becknell arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a route
that became known as the Santa Fe Trail.
1824 Australian
explorers Hamilton
Hume and William
Hovell became the first non-indigenous people to see the Australian river
that became called the Murray,
thus initiating its decline as one of the world's great rivers.
The River Murray Basin of
1,057,000 square kilometres (408,109 sq miles) is about one-seventh
of the total area of the continent of Australia. From its sources to its mouth is
about 2560 kilometres (1,590 miles). The Murray is continuously
navigable for 1986 kilometres (1,234 miles).
Like many Australian rivers,
pollution and salinization due to agribiz practices have played havoc
with the mighty Murray. The introduced fish species, carp, is also a
major problem, displacing many species, including the
Murray
cod, a once plentiful but now rare fish that can grow to as
large as 100 kg (220 pounds).
More at
Project Gutenberg Australia
1836 Death of Christian Hendrik Persoon (b. 1761),
Dutch mycologist.
1841 The cork
life preserver was patented (by NE Guerin).
1849 A Russian
court sentenced
Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for
anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual
group. His execution was cancelled at the last minute on December 22.
1857 The relief of Lucknow.
The most Victoria Crosses won in a single day
(24).
1863 American Civil War:
Battle of Campbell's Station
near Knoxville, Tennessee. Confederate troops
unsuccessfully attacked Union forces.
1885 Canadian
rebel leader of the Métis and 'Father of Manitoba',
Louis
Riel, was executed for high treason.
1885 Dr David
Livingstone became the first non-African to discover
Victoria
Falls.
1891
Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma
Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience,
applied for enrolment in the
Bombay High Court.
1900 In Germany, a woman hurled an axe at Kaiser
Wilhelm, but
missed.
1907 Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory became Oklahoma
which was admitted as the 46th US
state.
1908 Arturo
Toscanini, Italian operatic conductor, made his US debut,
conducting his
Aida.
1914 The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opened for
business.
1916
Margaret
Sanger was arrested in Brownsville, NY, for operating a birth
control clinic – the first in the US. She went on to found Planned
Parenthood. Source
1920 The
Bolsheviks defeated the
White Russians in the
Crimea, and
the Russian
Civil War ended.
1920 Hudson Fysh,
Fergus McMaster and Paul
McGuiness founded the Queensland
and Northern Territory Aerial Service (Qantas).
1922 The
Italian Chamber of Deputies was threatened with dissolution
by Benito Mussolini if his wishes were not obeyed.
1928 In London,
Radclyffe Hall's novel,
The Well of Loneliness, was
the centre of an obscenity trial.
"When
the English writer Radclyffe Hall's (1880-1943) book, The
Well of Loneliness, was published in London, authorities
declared it obscene and seized it. Even though the book
lacked a single sex scene Hall used her characters to plead for
understanding of sexual
inversion, and that was enough to alarm the censors. A
few reviewers liked the book, but James Douglas of the Evening
Standard erupted that "I would rather put a phial of prussic
acid in the hands of a healthy girl or boy than the book in
question". Alerted by this and other expressions of
outrage, the Home Secretary asked the publisher to suspend
distribution. Even though they complied, they were slapped
with an obscenity charge. They lost in court, and all the
copies authorities could find were removed from stores." Source
1933 The United States and the Soviet Union established formal diplomatic
relations.
1937 Britain's House of Commons voted in favour of the
construction of air raid shelters.
1940 World War II: In response to Germany
levelling Coventry two days before, the Royal Air Force bombed Hamburg.
An eye for an eye
makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma
Gandhi (attributed)
1940 Holocaust:
In Poland,
Nazis
closed off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.
1940 Marshal Pétain
took over the French government and asked
Hitler for an
armistice.
1943
World
War II: American bombers struck a hydro-electric power facility and heavy
water factory in German-controlled Vermork, Norway.
1944 In England's Church
Times, the expression 'iron curtain', describing Communist
dictatorships in Europe, was used for perhaps the first time.
Winston Churchill, to whom the expression is often attributed, first
used the term on a later occasion, in a speech given on March 5,
1946.
1945 Cold
War: The United States controversially imported 88 German
scientists to help in the production of rocket
technology.
1957
American
serial killer, Edward
Gein, murdered his list last victim, Bernice Worden.
1965 Venera program: The Soviet Union launched the Venera
3 space probe towards Venus, the first spacecraft to reach the
surface of another planet.
1969 The first episode of The Clangers was broadcast by the BBC.
1973 Skylab program: At Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, NASA
launched Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts
for an 84-day mission.
1973 US President
Richard Nixon signed the
Trans-Alaska
Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the
construction of the Alaska Pipeline.
1979 The first line of Bucharest Metro (Line M1) was opened
from Timpuri Noi to Semanatoarea in Bucharest,
Romania.
1980 Marxist
philosopher Louis Althusser (1918 - '90), a
manic-depressive who had been hospitalized many times in his life, murdered
his wife, Helene, by strangling, and immediately confessed. He
spent most of the next ten years, until his death, in a psychiatric
hospital.
1981 Luke and Laura married on General Hospital; this important
event was the highest-rated hour in daytime television's illustrious
history.
1988 The Supreme Soviet of the
Estonian SSR declared that
Estonia
was "sovereign", but stopped short of declaring independence for
the Baltic state.
1988 In the first open election in more
than a decade, voters in Pakistan
chose populist candidate
Benazir Bhutto to be Prime Minister.
1989 Black and coloured people in South Africa were allowed
unrestricted access to beaches for the first time.
1996 Mother Teresa received honorary US
citizenship.
1997 After he had endured nearly
18 years of incarceration, the People's Republic of China
released Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy
dissident, from jail for medical reasons.
2000 Bill Clinton became the first sitting US
President to visit Vietnam.
2001 The first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and
the Philosopher's Stone, was released, becoming the
second-highest grossing film around the world of all time.
2004
Vivendi Universal and Valve Software released Half-Life
2, the sequel to the groundbreaking hit PC game Half-Life.
Tomorrow: Leonids meteor shower
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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.
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