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.

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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 Ætheling, 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 16^th 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:

1. Prince Edward of Scotland, killed 1093.
2. King Edmund I of Scotland
3. Ethelred, Earl of Fife
4. King Edgar I of Scotland
5. King Alexander I of Scotland
6. King David I of Scotland
7. Edith of Scotland, also called Matilda, married King Henry I of England
8. Mary of Scotland, married Eustace III of Boulogne

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Feast day of St Othmar

Feast day of St Rufinus

Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ægypticus 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.

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.

Loy Krathong festival, Thailand (2005)

Admission of Oklahoma, 46^th 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

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