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Gaius also proceeded, and said, I will now speak on the behalf of women, to take away their reproach. For as death and the curse came into the world by a woman, Gen. 3, so also did life and health: God sent forth his Son, made of a woman. Gal. 4:4. Yea, to show how much they that came after did abhor the act of the mother, this sex in the Old Testament coveted children, if happily this or that woman might be the mother of the Saviour of the world. I will say again, that when the Saviour was come, women rejoiced in him, before either man or angel. Luke 1:42-46. I read not that ever any man did give unto Christ so much as one groat; but the women followed him, and ministered to him of their substance. Luke 8:2,3. 'Twas a woman that washed his feet with tears, Luke 7:37-50, and a woman that anointed his body at the burial. John 11:2; 12:3. They were women who wept when he was going to the cross, Luke 23:27, and women that followed him from the cross, Matt. 27:55,56; Luke 23:55, and sat over against his sepulchre when he was buried. Matt. 27:61. They were women that were first with him at his resurrection-morn, Luke 24:1, and women that brought tidings first to his disciples that he was risen from the dead. Luke 24:22,23. Women therefore are highly favored, and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the grace of life.
John Bunyan, Christian writer and preacher, born on November 28, 1628; from 'Encomium on women' in The Pilgrim's Progress, (Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1853), p. 146

If there's a man among ye, ye'll come out and fight, like the men ye are to be!
Anne Bonney, Irish pirate, convicted of piracy on November 28, 1720 (to her drunken crew, before their capture, attrib.)

M'lord, we plead our bellies.
Anne Bonney and Mary Read (attrib.)

Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul,
Let the world wag as it will.
Let the heavens growl, the devil howl,
Drain drain the bowl and fill!
Anne Bonney (attrib.)

Well, I must arrange my pillows for another weary night! When will this end?
Putative last words of Washington Irving, American author who died on November 28, 1859   Source

While I complain of being able to glimpse no more than the shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is taking shape at this very moment, since I have not reached the stage of development at which I would be capable of perceiving it. A few hundred years hence, in this same place, another traveller, as despairing as myself, will mourn the disappearance of what I might have seen, but failed to see.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, French anthropologist and writer, born on November 28, 1908; from Tristes Tropiques (1955), Chapter 4: The Quest for Power, p. 43 (This is the Penguin edition translated by John and Doreen Weightman.)

In the case of European towns, the passing of centuries provides an enchancement; in the case of American towns, the passing of years brings degeneration. It is not simply that they have been newly built; they were built so as to be renewable as quickly as they were put up, that is, badly.
Claude Lévi-Strauss; ibid, p. 95

If we judge the achievements of other social groups in relation to the kind of objectives we set ourselves, we have at times to acknowledge their superiority; but in doing so we acquire the right to judge them, and hence to condemn all their other objectives which do not coincide with those we approve of. We implicitly acknowledge that our society with its customs and norms enjoys a privileged position, since an observer belonging to another social group would pass different verdicts on the same examples. This being so, how can the study of anthropology claim to be scientific? To reestablish an objective approach, we must abstain from making judgments of this kind. We must accept the fact that each society has made a certain choice, within the range of existing human possibilities, and that the various choices cannot be compared with each other: they are all equally valid. But in this case a new problem arises; while in the first instance we were in danger of falling into obscurantism, in the form of a blind refusal of everything foreign to us, we now run the risk of accepting a kind of eclecticism which would prevent us denouncing any feature of a given culture — not even cruelty, injustice and poverty, against which the very society suffering these ills may be protesting. And since these abuses also exist in our society, what right have we to combat them at home, if we accept them as inevitable when they occur elsewhere?
Claude Lévi-Strauss; ibid, pp. 385-386

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize – because they set so little store by them – the immense riches accumulated by the human race on either side of the narrow furrow on which they keep their eyes fixed; by underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.
Claude Lévi-Strauss; ibid, p. 393

November 28 is the 332^nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (333^rd in leap years), with 33 days remaining.
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Feast of Hathor as Sekhmet, ancient Egypt
"Lioness and Sun Goddess, Beer Goddess, the alternate of Bast, the Cat Goddess."  (Source of date: The Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Calendar)

"Sekhmet was a goddess of the Memphis triad, sometimes shown as a lion-headed woman. Sekhmet was prayed to by mothers who wished to nurse their children, as in the following incantation: O thou who lives on the water, hasten to the Judge in his divine abode, to Sekhmet who walks behind him, and to Isis, ruler of Dep, saying, 'bring her this milk.'"   Source

In Egyptian mythology, Hathor is the mother goddess and goddess of love of ancient Egypt. She was worshipped c. 2700 BCE or possibly earlier, to c. 400 CE, in a cult that flourished in Ta-Netjer ('Land of God' – modern day Dendera, or Dendara) in Upper Egypt, as well as Thebes and Giza, and her priests included both men and women.

Other names for Hathor are Het-Hert, Athyr and Hetheru. Her name appears to mean 'house of Horus', a reference to her role as a sky goddess, the 'house' denoting the heavens depicted as a great cow. (At the temple of Queen Nefertari at Abu Simbel, Nefertari is shown as Hathor, and her husband Ramses II is shown in one sanctuary receiving milk from Hathor the cow.) Hathor was often regarded as the mother of the Egyptian pharaoh, who styled himself the 'son of Hathor'. During the Old Kingdom she assumed the properties of an earlier bovine goddess, Bat. She is an ancient goddess and appears to have been mentioned as early as the 2^nd Dynasty.

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Click stars for Universe today Cafe Diem! For all my Yule needs Highly recommended: Folklore of World Holidays by Margaret Read MacDonald Hathor Rising The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt The Search for God in Ancient Egypt A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses Magic in Ancient Egypt Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends Egyptian Gods and Goddesses Egyptian Paganism for Beginners Bast and Sekhmet The Goddess Sekhmet The Great Goddesses of Egypt The Marriage of Heaven and Hell William Blake Blake, Jung, & the Collective Unconscious The Book of Saints Daily Everything Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them Adventures in a TV Nation By Michael Moore Drawing Down the Moon Globalization/Anti-Globalization Body Wisdom Celtic Daily Prayer   To support this project Search by keywords for books, music, computers, software, home and family products and much more.     Search for posters An Inconvenient Truth By Al Gore; DVD & book The Permaculture Home Garden By Linda Woodrow The Corporation Highly recommended DVD How to Kill a Country Dark Figures in the Desired Country: Blake's Illustrations to the Pilgrim's Progress Remotely Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives and What We Can Do About It What Would Jefferson Do? By Thom Hartmann How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World Pagan Christianity Hello Laziness! By Corrine Maier For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire By James Yee Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy By Robert F Kennedy, Jr The Price of Loyalty The Torture Debate in America The Culture of the New Capitalism Lawless World The Great War for Civilisation By Robert Fisk The God Who Wasn't There A Question of Torture By Alfred McCoy When Corporations Rule the World Alternatives to Economic Globalization Feminism Without Borders Commercializat of Intimate Life By Arlie Russell Hochschild The Men Who Stare at Goats The Skeptic's Dictionary The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh   The Sisters (On the Mitfords) The House Of Mitford Internet Sacred Text Archive CD-ROM The New Book of Goddesses & Heroines Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations Life in a Medieval Village Medieval Celebrations Women's Activism and Globalization Secrets and Lies The Clash of Civilizations Imperial Crusades Aborigine Dreaming The Medieval Cookbook The Murray Bookchin Reader Environmental Activism Votes for women The Suffragettes and After The Scottish Suffragettes The Suffragettes in Pictures The Ascent of Woman Louisa Woman Suffrage in Australia Astro pic of the day American Folklore Permaculture Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature & Art (Seyffert) Sun Goddess A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend, and Folklore More books, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, music, posters, etc at   Cafe Diem! Photo of the day Mother Earth Spirituality Bushwhacked Shamanism The Survival of the Pagan Gods The Skeptic's Dictionary Why People Believe Weird Things How We Know What Isn't So The Sokal Hoax Click to promote  your blog or website  another excellent  way we do

Stir Up Sunday (Christian), Sunday before Advent A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac The last Sunday in Trinity, and the last Sunday before Advent, is so called from the first words of the collect (short prayer) read in churches on that day: "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people." Today is traditionally the time to get the Christmas plum pudding made – it's quite easy to see the punning application of the words of the collect as an injunction to start making "fruitful" Christmas puddings and pies (recipes here). Traditionally, these should be stirred clockwise with a wooden spoon, with the members of the family taking turns in the order of mother, father, children then visitors. Today tells British schoolchildren the near approach of the Christmas holidays. More History "As with most things associated with Christmas, some suggest the pudding came from Germany with Prince Albert in the 19th century. Allegedly, he was very fond of this rich, dark dessert. Before that people in Britain did eat a form of plum pudding containing shredded meat (as mincemeat once did) as well as spices, dried fruits and alcohol. Plum pudding was so called because it had so many prunes in the recipe." Early versions "In old recipe books the pudding was a dark, rich affair. Eliza Acton's Christmas pudding recipe contains 2kg (4.5lb) of dried fruit and candied peel, 16 eggs, 570ml (1 pint) of brandy and 900g (2lb) beef kidney suet. She also recommends a lighter vegetarian alternative - "cheap and good" - which doesn't contain the beef suet but includes 450g (1lb) mashed potatoes, 450g (1lb) boiled carrots and just 900g (2lb) of dried fruit." Source     The first Alfred E Neuman?       Fourth Sunday preceding Winter Solstice, First Day of Pagan Advent   Buy Nothing Day (date varies) "Since its launch in the Pacific Northwest [USA] ... Buy Nothing Day has grown into a worldwide celebration of consumer awareness and simple living. Observed on the day after US Thanksgiving – America's busiest shopping day of the year – the campaign has sparked debate, radio talk shows, TV news items and newspaper headlines around the world.    "People in more than thirty countries have made a pact with themselves and, as a personal experiment and public statement, stepped out of the consumer stream for 24 hours. The ways in which people have marked the event worldwide have been as diverse as the participants themselves.    "The daredevils of the Ruckus Society, a California-based direct-action group, dropped a boxcar-sized banner ridiculing overconsumption smack in the middle of the Mall of America. Other more down-to-earth-types created and distributed the Gift Exemption Voucher – a polite way of saying, Let's not get each other anything this year, out of principle. In Seattle, helpful Buy Nothing Day celebrants offered a credit-card cut-up service outside a downtown mall."   Source Runic half-month of Is commences Literally, 'ice': a static period.  Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992 Goddess month of Astraea commences Feast day of St Andrew Feast day of St Andrew Trong Van Tram Feast day of St Basil Feast day of St Calimerius of Montechiaro Feast day of St Catherine Laboure Feast day of St Crescens Feast day of St Crescentian Feast day of St Cresconius Feast day of St Eustace Feast day of St Felix Feast day of St Fionnchu of Bangor Feast day of St Florentian Feast day of St Gregory III, Pope Gregory III (731 - 741), a Syrian by birth, succeeded Gregory II in March, 731. He beautified Rome and supported monasticism. Feast day of St Hilary Feast day of St Hippolytus Feast day of St Hortulanus Feast day of St James of the Marches (James of La Marca) , of Ancona, confessor Feast day of St James Thompson Feast day of St Joseph Pignatelli Feast day of St Mansuetus Feast day of St Papinianus Feast day of St Papius Feast day of St Peter Feast day of St Quieta Feast day of St Rufus Feast day of St Simeon the Logothete Feast day of St Sosthenes Feast day of St Stephen the Younger, martyr (Variegated stapelia, Stapelia variegata, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.) Feast day of St Urban Feast day of St Valerian Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints Independence Day (Dita e Pavarësisë; Albanian Flag Day), Albania (from Turkey, 1912) This day, proclaimed by Ismail Qemali in 1912, commemorates the end of five centuries of Ottoman rule. Independence Day, Mauritania (from France, 1960) Independence Day, Panama Canal Zone Accession of the Ruler of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates The Ascension of 'Abdu'l-Bahá (Bahá'í Faith) 'Abdu'l-Bahá 'Abbás Effendí (May 23, 1844 - November 28, 1921) commonly known as 'Abdu'l-Bahá (abdol-ba-haa Arabic: عبد البهاء‎​), was the son of Bahá'u'lláh, the prophet and founder of the Bahá'í Faith. "The Master passed away on November 28, 1921 at the age of 77. He had shared in all of Bahá'u'lláh's exiles and had Himself been a prisoner for much of His life. He had tirelessly led the Bahá'í community and, when opportunities arose, made historic journeys through Europe and North America to spread His Father's teachings. He had been knighted by Queen Victoria for His humanitarian services in Palestine during World War I ... The commemoration of the Master's passing affords Bahá'ís around the world an opportunity to reflect on His life of service and sacrifice, and to rededicate themselves to emulating His example."   Source Feast of the Holy Sovereigns, Episcopal Diocese of Hawaii A tradition of the defunct Anglican Church of Hawaii, it is observed by the Episcopal Diocese of Hawaii. The feast celebrates the founders of the Anglican Church of Hawaii (also called the Hawaii Reformed Catholic Church), Kamehameha IV and Emma, Queen Consort of Hawaii, the monarchs of the Hawaiian Kingdom.       1118 Manuel I Comnenus (d. September 24, 1180), Byzantine Emperor of the 12th Century who presided over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean 1489 Margaret Tudor (d. November 24, 1541), daughter of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York; her first marriage was to James IV of Scotland   1628 John Bunyan (d. August 31, 1688), English Puritan Christian writer and preacher. Imprisoned several times between 1660 and 1672, Bunyan used these periods of isolation to write his two literary masterpieces, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and The Pilgrim's Progress (1678). It has been said that his famous allegory about Pilgrim on his journey to the Celestial City is second only to the Bible in number of copies sold through the ages and throughout the world. Bunyan was a Dissenter, or Nonconformist, more specifically a Baptist, and thus a member of a persecuted minority. The Nonconformist denominations included the Baptists, the Wesleyan Methodists, Primitive Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians, Congregationalists, and Salvation Army. In Britain in 1662, the Act of Uniformity required episcopal ordination for all ministers. As a result, nearly 2,000 clergymen left the established church. The Test and Corporation Acts, which lasted until 1828, excluded all nonconformists from holding civil or military office. They were also prevented from being awarded degrees by the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. The term Dissenter came into use, particularly after the Toleration Act (1689), which exempted nonconformists who had taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy from penalties for nonattendance at the services of the Church of England (Wikipedia). Bunyan died from a cold caught riding through the rain to reconcile a father and son. The Pilgrim's Progress    The Holy War    More    More   1632 Jean-Baptiste Lully, (d. 1687) composer 1640 Willem de Vlamingh (d. ?), Flemish sea-captain who explored the southwest coast of Australia (then 'New Holland') in the late-17th century. On February 4, 1697, he landed at Dirk Hartog Island, Western Australia, and replaced Dirk Hartog's pewter plate with one bearing a record of both visits. The original plate is preserved in the Rijksmuseum. 1700 Rev. Nathaniel Bliss (d. 1764), British Astronomer Royal   1757 William Blake (d. 1827), English visionary poet (Songs of Innocence and of Experience) and artist who believed in a spiritual and artistic New Age, and produced books in a total celebration of self-publishing, including writing the text, making relief etchings of the text (as mirror image) and the illustrations, printing and hand colouring the pages. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake began to develop his own mythology, which included a pantheon of characters such as Orc, a messiah, and Urizen, a cruel Old Testament-style god. Blake himself remarked that he had to "create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's". Perhaps Blake's life is summed up by his statement that "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself". "British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. He joined for a time the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem in London and considered Newtonian science to be superstitious nonsense. Misunderstanding shadowed his career as a writer and artist and it was left to later generations to recognize his importance. "William Blake was born in London, where he spent most of his life. His father was a successful London hosier and attracted by the doctrines of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Blake was first educated at home, chiefly by his mother. His parents encouraged him to collect prints of the Italian masters, and in 1767 sent him to Henry Pars' drawing school. From his early years, he experienced visions of angels and ghostly monks, he saw and conversed with the angel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, and various historical figures."   Source Assorted images of his work Blake resources Blake Archive More A Mike Keith puzzle "The poem [reproduced in part] below is a transformation of William Blake's 'The Tyger' via an unusual linguistic constraint. Your challenge is to determine the constraint, given the hint that strict application of the rule will invariably result (as it does here) in a composition containing exactly 109 words. Hydra, hydra, looming bright (Be calm now, O forest night!), No man's art - so plainly, see - Can ask, know, capture symmetry! Translate, villain - can man feel, Capture now Creator's zeal? Gauntly go as sorrows brew, Knowing, really seeing you? ... Read the full mystery poem   1785 Achille-Léonce-Victor-Charles (d. 1870), 3rd duc de Broglie, Prime Minister of France 1805 John Stephens (d. 1852), archaeologist 1810 William Froude (d. 1879), engineer, naval architect 1820 Friedrich Engels (d. August 5, 1895), German Socialist philosopher and the co-founder of modern Communist theory with Karl Marx. In 1848, they published The Communist Manifesto together. Engels edited several volumes of Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy) after Marx's death.   1821 Nikolai Nekrasov (d. 1878), poet, journalist 1829 Anton Rubinstein (d. 1894), composer, pianist, conductor 1837 John Wesley Hyatt (d. 1920), inventor of celluloid, the first synthetic plastic 1853 Helen Magill White (d. 1944), educator, first American woman to earn a PhD (1877) 1866 Henry Bacon (d. 1924), architect (Lincoln Memorial) 1881 Stefan Zweig (d. 1942), poet, essayist, dramatist 1887 Ernst Röhm (d. 1934), Nazi official 1894 Brooks Atkinson (d. 1984), drama critic 1895 José Iturbi (d. 1980), pianist 1896 Lilia Skala (d. 1994), actress 1904 Nancy Mitford (d. June 30, 1973), British author (Love in a Cold Climate), best known for her series of novels about upper-class life. She was one of the noted Mitford sisters, namely Diana Mitford (1910 - 2003), who married the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley; author Jessica Mitford (1917 - '96); and well-known Hitler supporter, Unity Mitford (1914 - '48). 1907 Alberto Moravia (d. 1990), Italian novelist (The Woman of Rome; Two Women)   1908 Claude Lévi-Strauss, French anthropologist and author (Structural Anthropology; From Honey to Ashes) 1908 Erich von Holst (d. 1962), behaviourist 1916 Mary Lilian Baels (d. 2002), Princess of Rethy, Belgium 1925 Gloria Grahame (d. 1981), actress 1925 Virginia Hewitt (d. 1986), actress 1929 Berry Gordy Jr, record company owner (Motown) 1931 Hope Lange, American actress (The Young Lions; The Best of Everything; Wild in the Country; Pocketful of Miracles) 1931 Tomi Ungerer, graphic artist, author 1936 Gary Hart, American politician 1941 Laura Antonelli, actress 1943 Randy Newman, composer, musician ('Short People')   1944 Emmett Grogan, San Francisco Digger, anarchist, author (Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps; Final Score). Grogan was one of the founders of the New York Diggers, a group that scrounged and provided food and services on the Lower East Side in the 1960s to the influx of hippies and other kids who arrived in the city barefoot and entranced. Abbie Hoffman was another (though many Diggers felt that Hoffman and the Yippies stole their ideas). The American Diggers took their name from the 17th-Century English radical movement, the Diggers, which opposed feudalism, the Church of England and the British Crown. One of their main activities was feeding the masses of homeless youth in New York and San Francisco, much like the present-day Food Not Bombs. Emmett Grogan wrote an autobiography called Ringolevio. He sang back-up, along with Ramblin' Jack Elliott, on Bob Dylan's song Mr Tambourine Man, and Dylan also dedicated his 1978 album Street-Legal to Grogan. In their publications, the Diggers coined such phrases as "Do your own thing" and "Today is the first day of the rest of your life". "He'd been a professional burglar, convict, mountaineer, playboy traveller, film-maker, Soho porn-broker, saboteur, and a U.S. Defence Department certified schizophrenic who deliberately sent himself amphetamine-crazy on a military bazooka range.  "But it was his impact on the Haight-Ashbury population and the underground cultural activities flourishing there in the late sixties that made Grogan a legend in his own time. A fearless champion of the poor, the addicted, the derelict hundreds whom society had left behind, he enraged and alienated arm-chair radicals and commercial 'hippies' cashing in on the trend. He and the San Francisco 'Diggers' gave free food to anyone who asked." Source: The Daily Bleed Encyclopedia 'The Band's Perfect Goodbye', by Emmett Grogan    Diggers theater   1949 Alexander Godunov (d. 1995), composer, ballet dancer 1949 Paul Shaffer, orchestra leader, musician 1950 Ed Harris, actor 1957 David Van Day, musician 1959 Judd Nelson, actor 1961 Martin Clunes, actor 1961 Alfonso Cuarón, director 1961 Jane Sibbett, actress 1962 Jon Stewart, comedian, actor, television host 1964 Cornelia Guest, American actress, socialite, author, and equestrian 1965 Erwin Mortier, Belgian author 1967 Anna Nicole Smith (d. February 8, 2007), model, television personality 1988 Scarlett Pomers, actress (Star Trek: Voyager, Reba) 1988 Michael Shanks, Canadian actor   Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section Send free e-cards to friends & family for celebrations & any topic Do you forget birthdays and anniversaries? Schedule your cards to be sent during the coming year. Zodiac birthday Free astrology e-cards Hanukkah [Varies ] Birthdays Bro 'n' Sis Endangered Species Varies Full Moon Day Varies Friday the 13th Varies Buddhist e-cards Varies Christian e-cards Varies Hindu e-cards Varies Jewish e-cards Varies Muslim e-cards Varies Pagan e-cards Varies Peace e-cards Varies Friendship e-cards Varies Durga Puja Varies Thanksgiving, USA Varies Buy Nothing Day Varies Hanukkah November 24 Espresso Day 25 Saint Catherine's Day 25 You're Welcome Day 25 Winter Wonderland And Parade Of Lights (California, USA) 26 Cake Day 26 Good Grief Day 26 College Fraternity Day (USA) 26 Lighted Christmas Parade (NM, USA) 27 Electric Guitar Day 27 Pie In The Face Day 27 Freckle Pride Day 27 John F Kennedy Day (Massachusetts, USA) 28 Auto Race Day 28 Red Planet Day 28 Camera Day 28 Independence Day (Albania) 29 Throw Out Your Leftovers Day 30 Computer Security Day 30 St Andrew's Day 30 Independence Day (Barbados) 30 Clear Up The Clutter Day December 1 World AIDS Day 1 Eat A Red Apple Day 1 Pie Day 1 Rosa Parks Day 1 Christmas Parade Of Lights (Texas, USA) 2 Play Basketball Day 2 Mars Landing Day 3 Make A Gift Day 3 Telescope Day 3 Flamenco Guitar Day 3 Christmas Parade (CA, USA) ... More Events Visit the Blogmanac, where today's Almanac is 'live' And I hope you will sign my GuestMap Your family and friends will get a kick when they hear their own name being sung in 'Happy Birthday'!! You can schedule your singing cards in advance, and even add your own face to funny animations. (Pay cards)         If you are enjoying this page, click to receive similar items daily with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine Webmaster, webmasters free content, or else articles at very reasonable rates Pip Wilson's articles are available for your website or publication, on application. Further details   741 Death of St Gregory III, Pope.   1095 On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appointed bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land against the people of Palestine, declaring "God Wills It!". 1170 Death of Owain Gwynedd, Prince of Gwynedd. 1262 Death of Shinran, founder of Japan's True Pure Land Buddhist sect. 1499 Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, was beheaded. 1520 After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan) reached the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first European party to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. 1523 Francisca la Brava was sentenced and whipped. The peasant girl from El Quintanar, Spain, was punished by the Inquisition for having visions of the Virgin Mary, whom she claimed gave her devotional instructions, starting on Wednesday night, October 21, with trances or fits continuing until Sunday, October 25. She was interrogated in the city of Belmonte, November 21, 1523, before the Reverend Señor Licenciado Mariana, Inquisitor. 1582 In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway paid a £40 bond for their marriage licence, issued the previous day. 1660 At Gresham College, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decided to found what was to become known as the Royal Society. 1694 Death of Basho (Matsuo Bashō; b. 1644), the Japanese haiku poet. It has rained enough to turn the stubble on the field black. The sea darkens; the voices of the wild ducks are faintly white. 1815 Death of Johann Peter Salomon, violinist, impresario and composer. 1827 Death of Dov Baer Schneersohn, Lubavitch leader, author. 1855 Victoria, Australia, formed its first government ministry. 1859 Death of Washington Irving (b. 1783), American writer. 1862 American Civil War: Battle of Cane Hill. 1872 Death of Mary Fairfax Somerville (b. 1780), British mathematician and scientific writer. 1905 Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Féin as a political party whose goal was independence for all of Ireland. 1905 Austria gained universal suffrage. 1907 USA: In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B Mayer opened his first movie theatre. 1907 King Leopold II of Belgium handed over control of the Congo to the Belgian government after ruling absolutely for two decades. 1909 In Paris, a law was passed allowing pregnant women eight weeks' maternity leave. 1912 Albania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire. 1914 World War I: Following a war-induced closure in July, the New York Stock Exchange re-opened for bond trading. 1916 Min Sheng (The Voice of the People) ceased publication, with issue number 29. "In this journal and in pamphlets, were reprinted various original articles and translations from Hsin Shih-chio. In this manner, anarchist thought was widely disseminated. The names of Proudhon, Bakunin , Kropotkin, and Malatesta – and some of their theories – were now introduced into the main stream of Chinese 'progressivism.' "See The Chinese Anarchist Movement, by R. Scalapino and G. T. Yu (1961)" Source: The Daily Bleed   1919 Lady Astor was elected to be the first female member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. 1920 USA: The Mask of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr opened. 1925 USA: Country-variety show Grand Ole Opry made its radio debut on station WSM.   1932 Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons unveiled the statue of the Dog on the Tuckerbox, near Gundagai, New South Wales, at the point where O'Brien's Creek crosses the main Gundagai Road, the site of an old time bullockies' camping-ground. And thereby hangs a tale ... The "dog that shat in the tuckerbox" is a famous Australian folk tale that was immortalized in an old folk song, possibly penned by someone who called himself 'Bowyang Yorke'. It was amended ("the dog sat on the tuckerbox") and brought to wider attention by Jack Moses, one of Henry Lawson's close mates, fellow pranksters and bards. Lawson and Moses probably would have been drinking mates, too, if Moses, although a wine salesman, were not a teetotaller – something no one could accuse Henry of being. Jack O'Hagan wrote a hit 'Dog on Tuckerbox' song based on the bowderlized lyrics. 'Tucker', by the way, is an obsolescent Australianism for food. From the liner notes and booklet of the LP record The Great Australian Legend: "This celebrated and much commented song has its mysteries. It seems to have bred countless variants, some far-fetched, some close to the 'original' version published by Jack Moses in his Beyond the City Gates remembered from his travels as a whiskey salesman in the bush some fifty years previously. Perhaps the grandfather of the song is Bill the Bullocky, another Gundagai-dog epic whose words gained currency in the bush in the late 1850s, through being printed on a matchbox. "The bullock-driver with his wagon piled high with wool-bales, his eight or ten yoke of oxen, his long whip and fluent oaths, was eminent among the oldtime bushman. We hear of Slabface Bill, whose bullock team was so long, he'd a telephone wire running along the tips of the bullocks, from the polers to the lead. He'd an Aborigine for a helper, and whenever Bill wanted to stop, he would just ring through; the blackfellow would halt the lead bullocks, and twenty minutes later the polers could stop. Bill got a wrong number one day, and the team didn't halt in time and half the Tabratong wool-clip tipped into the Bogan River. Bill wasted two hours trying to ring the exchange to make his complaint; finally his curses burnt the cable and started the big bush fires of 1908."   Source I'm used to drivin' bullock teams Across the hills and plains I've teamed outback these forty years In blazin' droughts and rains I've lived a heap of troubles through, Without a bloomin' lie But I can't forget what happened me Nine miles from Gundagai 'twas gettin' dark, the team got bogged, The axle snapped in two I lost me matches and me pipe, Now what was I to do? The rains come down, 'twas bitter cold, And hungry too was I And the dog shat in the tucker-box Nine miles from Gundagai Some blokes I know has all the luck No matter how they fall But there was I, Lord love a duck, No flamin' luck at all. I couldn't make a pot of tea Nor keep me trousers dry And the dog shat in the tucker-box, Nine miles from Gundagai I could forgive the blinkin' tea, I could forgive the rain; I could forgive the dark and cold, And go through it again. I could forgive me rotten luck, But hang me till I die, I won't forgive that bloody dog, Nine miles from Gundagai.   Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson    More on the dog   1942 In Boston, Massachusetts, USA, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub killed 491 people. 1943 World War II: Teheran Conference – US President Franklin D Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin met in Tehran to discuss war strategy. 1948 In Boston, USA, the first Polaroid cameras went on sale. 1950 Chinese forces entered the Korean War when 200,000 troops were ordered across the Yalu River. 1958 Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon became autonomous republics within the French Community. 1960 Mauritania became independent of France. 1964 Mariner program: NASA launched the Mariner 4 probe towards Mars. 1964 Vietnam War: National Security Council members agreed to recommend that US President Lyndon B Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam. 1965 Vietnam War: In response to US President Johnson's call for "more flags" in Vietnam, Philippines Dictator-Elect Ferdinand Marcos announced he would send troops to help fight in South Vietnam. Did you know? Presidents Johnson, Marcos and Ho Chi Minh received not one injury among them in the Vietnam War! 1965 The Alice's Restaurant Massacree, USA: On Thanksgiving, 18-year-old Arlo Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins, 19, were hauled into jail for illegally dumping some of Alice Brock's garbage near a deconsecrated church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, after discovering that the dump was closed for Thanksgiving. Two days later they pleaded guilty in court and were each fined $25 and told to pick up their garbage. This is the true story that inspired Guthrie's hit album, Alice's Restaurant, which rose to #17 on the Billboard chart. Police chief William Obanhein ('Officer Obie') played himself in the 1969 movie, as did Guthrie. Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list 1967 Horse racing was temporarily banned in Britain, following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. 1969 The Newcomers stopped airing on the BBC. 1969 The Rolling Stones released the classic album Let It Bleed. 1975 East Timor declared its independence from Portugal. Into this power vacuum stepped Indonesia, resulting in the deaths of at least 200,000 East Timorese people. 1975 As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the final two American soap operas that had resisted going to pre-taped broadcasts, aired their last live episodes. 1978 The Iranian government banned religious marches. 1979 In Antarctica, a DC-10 carrying Air New Zealand Flight 901 crashed into Mount Erebus on a sightseeing trip, killing all 257 people on board. 1982 Representatives from 88 countries gathered in Geneva to discuss world trade and ways to work towards aspects of so-called free trade. 1984 More than 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn were made Honorary Citizens of the United States. 1987 In Wappingers Falls, New York, USA, Tawana Brawley was found wrapped in garbage bags, with faeces smeared all over her body and a racial slur on her body. An ex-boyfriend of Brawley's told Newsday that Brawley had told him that she made the attack up. A grand jury was convened, and after seven months of examining police and medical records, the jury determined that Brawley's assault was a hoax. 1989 Cold War: Velvet Revolution – In the face of protests the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced they will give up their monopoly on political power. 1990 Following criticism by her deputy, Sir Geoffrey Howe, and his subsequent resignation, Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister of Great Britain after more than eleven years. 1994 Alan Sokal, a lecturer from the Department of Physics at New York University, wrote 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity', a blatantly ridiculous hoax article that was published in good faith as a genuine research paper by the postmodernist cultural studies academic journal, Social Text of Spring/Summer 1996. Sokal's purpose was to expose postmodernism as nonsense, as he believed it to be. The article contains a number of statements that Sokal stated were "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense". At one stage he asserts that "physical reality is at bottom nothing more than a social and linguistic construct", and at another he proposes that the New Age concept of the morphogenetic field actually constitutes a "cutting edge theory of quantum gravity". The affair, together with Paul R Gross and Norman Levitt's book Higher Superstition, can be considered to be the beginnings of the so-called Science wars. A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies by Alan Sokal Sokal Affair - Wikipedia 1994 Voters in Norway rejected European Union membership. 1994 In Portage, Wisconsin, USA, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was clubbed to death by a deranged inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institute gymnasium. 1995 US President Bill Clinton signed a highway bill that ended the federal 55mph (88kph) speed limit. 1998 The people of Albania voted in a referendum for their new Constitution. 2000 Ukrainian politician Oleksander Moroz began the Cassette Scandal by publicly accusing President Leonid Kuchma of involvement in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze. 2000 The eighth tar drop fell in the University of Queensland pitch drop experiment. 2002 Thirteen people were killed in a hotel bombing in Mombasa. 2004 Male Po'o-uli died of avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct. 2005 The Official Opposition (Conservative Party of Canada, New Democratic Party, and Bloc Québécois) brought down the 38th Minority Liberal Government of Canada in a vote of non-confidence, forcing immediate campaigning for the 39th Federal Election.   Tomorrow: Mayan astrological strategic planning Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search       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

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