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O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sport of the sun-flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask of one who is the Spirit of love and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset, and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord and Thine shall be the praise and honor and glory now and ever, Amen.
Mark Twain, The War Prayer

I am a revolutionist – by birth, breeding, principle, and everything else.
Mark Twain, to a reporter in 1906, cited in Kaplan, Justin, Mr Clemens and Mark Twain. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1966, p 368

The Australians do not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general appearance.
American humorist Mark Twain, observing in Australia, More Tramps Abroad

I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says, "Yes; the little ones does."
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad

Abbie Hoffman

There is no such thing as an innocent bystander.

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.
Mark Twain

He had a pleasant, utterly unassuming charm and a friendliness of manner which captivated the serious-minded lad that I was ... He seemed to me dear, gentle and saintly, sad and immensely modest for so great and famous a genius. He reminded me of one of those delicate white flowers, so sensitive that when you touch them they recoil and fold their clear, waxen petals, as if too shy and retiring to tolerate the slightest probe.
Aga Khan III (1877 - 1957), recalling his meeting Mark Twain in 1895 when he (Khan) was a youth of 18   Source

I had hardly completed my course at the Real Gymnasium when I was prostrated with a dangerous illness or rather, a score of them, and my condition became so desperate that I was given up by physicians. During this period I was permitted to read constantly, obtaining books from the Public Library which had been neglected and entrusted to me for classification of the works and preparation of the catalogues. One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears.
Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 - January 7, 1943), Serbian-American physicist, mathematician, inventor, and electrical engineer; My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla, Hart Bros, 1982. Originally appeared in Electrical Experimenter magazine in 1919

St Andrew the king,
Three weeks and three days
Before Christmas comes in.

East Anglian saying for St Andrew's Day

There is ultimately a connection between the words 'advent' and 'adventure'. The earliest sense of the latter word was something that 'arrived' by chance, without being planned.
Leslie Dunkling,
A Dictionary of Days, Routledge, London, 1988, p. 2

To Andrew all the lovers and
   the lustie wooers come,
Beleeving through his ayde, and
   certaine ceremonies done,
(While as to him they presentes bring,
   and conjure all the night,)
To have good lucke, and to obtaine
   their chiefe and sweete delight.

Naogeorgus (1511 - '63) on St Andrew's Day; The Popish Kingdom, (translated by Barnabe Googe, 1540 - '94)

The head is as large as an ordinary flour barrel, and has the shape of a sea lion head. The neck, if the creature may be said to have a neck, is of the same diameter as the body. The mouth is on the under side of the head and is protected by two tentacle tubes about eight inches in diameter and about 30 feet long. These tubes resemble an elephant's trunk ...
Verrill, AE, 1897. 'A gigantic Cephalopod on the Florida coast' American Journal of Science 4th series [January 1897] 3: 79 (see St. Augustine Monster, This day in history, below, 1896)   More

I think I am rather more than a Socialist. I am something of an Anarchist, I believe ...
Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright, who died on November 30, 1900

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.
Oscar Wilde

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.
Oscar Wilde

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age ... The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colour of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder ... I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.
Oscar Wilde

This wallpaper is killing me; one of us has got to go.
Oscar Wilde, as he lay dying

It is a fine thing to be honest but it is also very important to be right.
Sir Winston Churchill, British prime minister, born on November 30, 1874

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.
Sir Winston Churchill

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Sir Winston Churchill (from a radio broadcast, October 1, 1939)

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using gases against uncivilised tribes.
Great Britain's then Colonial Secretary, Winston S Churchill, referring to the Kurds, in an official communication, 1921

Maybe Winston Churchill was right. Maybe that lone voice expressing concern about what was happening was right.
Donald Rumsfeld, August 2002

I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia by the fact that a stronger race has come in and taken their place.
Winston S Churchill

It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.
Sir Winston Churchill (from The Malakand Field Force)

And you, madam, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning.
Sir Winston Churchill, replying to Bessie Braddock, MP, who told him he was drunk

Lunch proceeded, rather burdensome for a teetotaller — I didn't dare to be one, alone with Churchill. There had been Bristol Cream before lunch, a very good hock during lunch. When it came to cheese, I drew the line at port — port, at lunch! "What? No port? Then you must have some brandy." (I can't bear brandy.) "What? No brandy? Then you must have some liqueur with your coffee. Have some Cointreau: it's very soothing." I had some Cointreau: it was very soothing.
British historian AL Rowse, on dining with Sir Winston Churchill; 'A Visit to Chartwell'

One of the boys said I was looking well. Of course I am. There is going to be a racket and I am going to be in it!
Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones), 1910. The US labor activist died on November 30, 1930

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.
Abbie Hoffman, Yippie leader, born on November 30, 1936, Soon to be a Major Motion Picture

Free speech is the right to yell "theater" in a crowded fire.
Yippie proverb coined by Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman is something akin to an American prophet.
USA President Jimmy Carter

There was the Youth International Party (yippies), minions of the absurd whose leaders failed last fall to levitate the Pentagon but whose antics at least leavened the grim seriousness of the New Leftists with much-needed humor.
TIME, September 6, 1968

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.
Abbie Hoffman

I want to be tried not because I support the National Liberation Front -which I do -but because I have long hair. Not because I support the Black Liberation Movement, but because I smoke dope. Not because I am against a capitalist system, but because I think property eats shit. Not because I believe in student power, but that the schools should be destroyed. Not because I'm against corporate liberalism, but because I think people should do whatever the fuck they want, and not because I am trying to organize the working class, but because I think kids should kill parents. Finally, I want to be tried for having a good time and not being serious.
Abbie Hoffman

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Abbie Hoffman

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
Abbie Hoffman

Fantasy is the only truth.
Abbie Hoffman

I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.
Abbie Hoffman

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
Abbie Hoffman

There is no such thing as an innocent bystander.
Abbie Hoffman

When decorum is repression, the only dignity free people have is to speak out.
Abbie Hoffman

Morality seems to enter the picture only when individuals interact with each other. It's universally wrong to steal from your neighbor, but once you get beyond the one-to-one level and pit the individual against the multinational conglomerate, the federal bureaucracy, the modern plantation of agro-business, or the utility company, it becomes strictly a value judgment to decide who exactly is stealing from whom. One person's crime is another person's profit. Capitalism is license to steal; the government simply regulates who steals and how much.
Abbie Hoffman

Avoid all needle drugs. The only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.
Abbie Hoffman

All the isms lead to schisms which lead to wasms.
Abbie Hoffman;
'Reflections on Student Activism'   Source

In the late sixties we were so fed up we wanted to destroy it all. That's when we changed the name of America and stuck in the "k." The mood today is different, and the language that will respond to today's mood will be different. Things are so deteriorated in this society, that it's not up to you to destroy America, it's up to you to go out and save America. The same impulse that helped us fight our way out of one empire 200 years ago must help us get free of the Holy Financial Empire today. The transnationals – with their money in Switzerland, headquarters in Luxembourg, ships in tax-free Panama, natural resources all over the emerging world, and their sleepy consumers in the United States – do not have the interest of the United States at heart. Ronald Reagan and the CIA are traitors to America, they have sold it to the Holy Financial Empire. The enemy is out there, he's not in this room. People are allowed to have different visions and different views, but you have to have unity.
Abbie Hoffman; 'Reflections on Student Activism'

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.
Dorothy Day, anarchist, pacifist, co-founder of Catholic Worker movement; she died on November 30, 1980

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us
Dorothy Day

Not only do we know that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, we also know he is capable of using them.
Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister, November 30, 2002

 

 

November 30 is the 334th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (335th in leap years), with 31 days remaining.
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St Andrew's cross on flag of ScotlandAndrew-tide, feast day of St Andrew the Apostle

St Andrew the King
Three weeks and three days before Christmas begins.

So goes the old English saying. Today is St Andrew's Day (Andrew-tide or Andrewtide is the season in British parlance) in both the Western and Eastern Christian traditions. Saint Andrew, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ and the brother of Simon (later the Apostle Peter), was a Galilean fisherman of Bethsaida, and originally a disciple of John the Baptist. In the Gospel of John (1:35-42), Andrew was the first called of Jesus' disciples. 

According to tradition, Andrew was crucified at Patmos, in Achaia, on the Cross Saltire, or X-shaped cross, the form of which became known as St Andrew's Cross, which is still on the Scottish (pictured above right) and British flags. The Saltire is also called the Boundary Cross (because it was used by the Romans as a barrier) and the crux decussata. Andrew's cross is the same as the cross of Wotan (Odin/Woden) which Norse invaders of Scotland carried. In Scotland it became the national symbol, as Andrew the national patron saint. Waverly Fitzgerald points out, "The cross saltire, is also a sun symbol, which looks similar to a Catherine wheel or the rune of Gefjon, the Giver, which is associated with Freya, the great Scandinavian goddess who is much honored at wintertide." (See also Freya and St Catherine in the Book of Days.) The phrase 'The Saltire' is sometimes used in patriotic literature to refer to the Scottish flag. Because of its use in the Scottish arms and flag, the saltire appears in the flag of the United Kingdom (Union Jack) and the arms and flag of Nova Scotia. A similar saltire design is also found on the Confederate Navy Jack.

Andrew is the patron saint of fish dealers, fish mongers, fishermen, gout, Greece, maidens, Russia, Scotland, singers, sore throats, unmarried women, and women who wish to become mothers.

He is usually depicted in Christian art as an old man with long white hair and beard, holding a Gospel in his right hand and leaning on a Cross Saltire.

More on crosses, at Wikipedia

"Of English customs on this day the most interesting perhaps are those connected with the 'Tander' or 'Tandrew' merrymakings of the Northamptonshire lacemakers. A day of general licence used to end in masquerading. Women went about in male attire and men and boys in female dress. In Kent and Sussex squirrel-hunting was practised on this day -- a survival apparently of some old sacrificial custom comparable with the hunting of the wren at Christmas ...

"On the Thursday nights in Advent it is customary in southern Germany for children or grown-up people to go from house to house, singing hymns and knocking on the doors with rods or little hammers, or throwing peas, lentils, and the like against the windows. Hence these evenings have gained the name of 'Kloepfel' or 'Knoepflinsnaechte' (Knocking Nights). The practice is described by Naogeorgus in the sixteenth century:--

"'Three weekes before the day whereon was borne the Lord of Grace,
And on the Thursdaye Boyes and Girles do runne in every place,
And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps,
And crie, the Advent of the Lorde not borne as yet perhaps.
And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell,
A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well:
Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee,
For these three nightes are alwayes thought, unfortunate to bee;
Wherein they are afrayde of sprites and cankred witches' spight,
And dreadfull devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.'

"With it may be compared the Macedonian custom for village boys to go in parties at nightfall on Christmas Eve, knocking at the cottage doors with sticks, shouting 'Kolianda! Kolianda!' and receiving presents, and also one in vogue in Holland between Christmas and the Epiphany. There 'the children go out in couples, each boy carrying an earthenware pot, over which a bladder is stretched, with a piece of stick tied in the middle. When this stick is twirled about, a not very melodious grumbling sound proceeds from the contrivance, which is known by the name of 'Rommelpot.' By going about in this manner the children are able to collect some few pence." (Hoermann, Tiroler Volksleben, 230 f)

"Can such practices have originated in attempts to drive out evil spirits from the houses by noise? Similar methods are used for that purpose by various European and other peoples. Anyhow something mysterious hangs about the 'Kloepfelnaechte'. They are occasions for girls to learn about their future husbands, and upon them in Swabia goes about Pelzmaerte, whom we already know.

"In Tyrol curious mummeries are then performed. At Pillersee in the Lower Innthal two youths combine to form a mimic ass, upon which a third rides, and they are followed by a motley train. The ass falls sick and has to be cured by a 'vet,' and all kinds of satirical jokes are made about things that have happened in the parish during the year. Elsewhere two men dress up in straw as husband and wife, and go out with a masked company. The pair wrangle with one another and carry on a play of wits with the peasants whose house they are visiting. Sometimes the satire is so cutting that permanent enmities ensue, and for this reason the practice is gradually being dropped."
Clement A Miles, Christmas In Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1912

 

Andros Andrew

Pagan origins

According to Nigel Pennick (The Pagan Book of Days, 1992, 131), Andrew is a version of the divinity Andros, the Man, personification of virility, seen as an aspect of Dionysus. Scotland's matronal goddess is Skadi, the Scathing One. Depicted at left, above, is an image of man by Leonardo da Vinci.

 

St Andrew and the meaning of 'X' on a letter

People used to sign with an X if they couldn't sign their name. Then they would kiss the X and promise by St Andrew (whose cross the X resembles) to abide by their oath or contract. Over the years, 'X' on a letter came to mean a kiss.

While on the cross for two days he continued preaching. Part of his cross was carried to Brussels, by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and Brabant, in honour of it, instituted the knights of the golden fleece, who wear a St Andrew's cross (or Cross of Burgundy) as a badge.

In 369, an abbot called Regulus brought to Scotland from Constantinople certain relics of St Andrew, and deposited them in a church he built in his honour, with a monastery called Abernethy, where the city of St Andrew now stands.

The people of Moscow say he preached among them, and claim him as the principal titular saint of their empire. Peter the Great instituted the first order of knighthood under his name (the order of the blue ribbon).

Some marriage-related superstitions have become part of Saint Andrew's feast day, some on the previous day ('eve') and some on the day following.

At Easling, Kent, England, labourers and working people traditionally assembled and hunted squirrels, hares, pheasants, partridges, and anything that came their way as they rambled through the fields with guns, poles and clubs. In the evening, there was drinking in alehouses.

Dudingston, Scotland: the wealthier citizens partook of singed sheep's heads, boiled or baked. The custom arose from the practice of slaughtering sheep fed on the neighbouring hill for the market, removing the carcasses to town, (Edinburgh, one mile away) and leaving the heads to be consumed locally.

London: The St Andrew's Day procession; the Scots traditionally carried before them a sheep's head on a pole.  

Meanings for the letter 'X'

 

Scottish legends about St Andrew

From Wikipedia: About the middle of the 8th Century, Andrew became the patron saint of Scotland. Concerning this there are several legends which state that the relics of Andrew were brought under supernatural guidance from Constantinople to the place where the modern St Andrews stands (Pictish, Muckross; Gaelic, Cill Rμmhinn).

The oldest surviving accounts are two: one among the manuscripts collected by Colbert and willed to the King, now in the Bibliothθque Nationale, Paris, the other in the Harleian Mss in the British Library, London. They state that the relics of Andrew were brought by one Regulus to the Pictish king Angus (or Ungus) Macfergus (c. 731 - 761). The only historical Regulus (Riagail or Rule) — the name is preserved by the tower of St. Rule — was an Irish monk expelled from Ireland with St. Columba; his date, however, is c. 573 - 600. There are good reasons for supposing that the relics were originally in the collection of Acca, bishop of Hexham, who took them into Pictish country when he was driven from Hexham (c. 732), and founded a see, not, according to tradition, in Galloway, but on the site of St. Andrews. The connection with Regulus is, therefore, due in all probability to the desire to date the foundation of the church at St. Andrews as early as possible.

Another legend says that in the late 8th Century, during a joint battle with the English, King Oengus mac Fergus of the Picts and King Eochaid IV of Dalriada, saw a cloud shaped like a saltire, and declared Andrew was watching over them, and if they won by his grace, then he would be their patron saint. However, as noted above, there is evidence Andrew was venerated in Scotland before this, and the two kings in question do not appear to have ruled at the same time.

A third theory as to Andrew's connection with Scotland is that, following the Synod of Whitby, the Celtic Church felt that Columba had been "outranked" by Peter. They therefore decided that the patron of the Celtic Church would now be Peter's older brother. While a satisfying piece of folklore, there is no more evidence for this than any other theory.

The 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, which declared Scottish independence from England, cites Scotland's conversion to Christianity by St. Andrew, "the first to be an Apostle", as evidence of Scotland being held in especially high regard by God.

Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, Russia, and Romania. The flag of Scotland (and consequently the Union Flag and the arms and Flag of Nova Scotia, and possibly the Confederate flag) feature a saltire in commemoration of the shape of St. Andrew's cross. The saltire is also the Flag of Tenerife and the naval jack of Russia.

Texts of The Acts of Andrew The Acts and Martyrdom of Andrew and The Acts of Andrew and Matthew

 

US tourists want to hunt wild haggis

November 27, 2003

"One-third of all American visitors to Scotland believe haggis is a real animal, according to a survey.

"Almost one in four (23 per cent) of those questioned said they had come to Scotland under the belief they could hunt and catch Scotland's most famous dish ...

"Hall's said it would sell more than 3.7 million haggis worldwide, from America to Australia, in the next week for the feast of Scotland's patron saint.

"The recipe for haggis varies but it can be made using a sheep's stomach bag filled with a mix of sheep's liver, heart and lung, oatmeal, suet, stock, onions and spices."   Source

 

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Aries  Taurus  Gemini  Cancer  Leo  Virgo  Libra  Scorpius  Ophiuchus  Sagittarius  Capricornus  Aquarius  Pisces

Sun enters Ophiuchus, the missing sign of the Zodiac

(Nov 30  -  Dec 17)

Ophiuchus is one of the 88 constellations, and was also one of the 48 listed by Ptolemy. Of the 13 zodiacal constellations (constellations that contain the Sun during the course of the year), Ophiuchus is the only one which is not counted as an astrological sign.

Ophiuchus is depicted as a man supporting a serpent; the interposition of his body divides the snake into two parts, Serpens Caput and Serpens Cauda, which are nonetheless counted as one constellation.

The reason that Ophiuchus is not a part of the western astrological zodiac is because that zodiac is defined on unscientific basis of the sun spending an equal amount of time in twelve astrological signs starting at the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere — this is called the tropical zodiac. There is also a sidereal zodiac, which is based on the actual location of the stars in the sky, and which is used by Hindu and some Western astrologers.

 

Ophiuchus in mythology

There are several mythological possibilities for whom the figure represents.

The most recent interpretation is that the figure represents the legendary physician Asclepius (Aesculapius), who learned the secrets of life and death from one serpent bringing another some herbs which healed it (Asclepius had previously tried to kill it). In order to avoid the human race becoming immortal under Asclepius's care, Zeus eventually killed him with a bolt of lightning, but placed him in the heavens to honour his good works. The involvement in the myth of Chiron may be connected to the nearby presence of the constellation Sagittarius, which was in later times occasionally considered to represent Chiron (who was more usually identified as the constellation Centaurus).

Another possibility is that the figure represents the demise during the Trojan War of the Trojan priest Laocoφn, who was strangled by a snake or a sea serpent after warning the Trojans against accepting the Trojan Horse. A suggestive statue in the Vatican Museums depicts the tragedy.

A third possibility is Apollo wrestling with the Python to take control of the oracle at Delphi.

There is also the story of Phorbas, a Thessalonikan who rescued the people of the island of Rhodes from a plague of serpents and was granted a place in the sky in honor of this deed.

One intriguing explanation is that Ophiuchus is an avatar for Cernunnos, the Celtic serpent-bearing god who is also the basis for our modern image of the devil.

Source: Wikipedia    

 

Aesculapius and Ophiuchus, Celestial Medicine Man

"King James I of England, who reigned in the 1600s, once referred to Ophiuchus as 'a mediciner after made a god,' because the Serpent Bearer was often identified with Aesculapius, who in Greek Mythology, was originally a mortal physician who never lost a patient by death.  This alarmed Hades, god of the dead, who prevailed on his brother, Zeus, to liquidate Aesculapius. 

"In recognition of his merits, however, Aesculapius was put up into the sky as a constellation. 

"In the sky he appears not so much like a man but more like a large upended oblong structure with a peaked roof where a star as bright as the North Star appears to shine.  That star is the brightest of Ophiuchus and is known as Ras Alhague, the 'head of the Serpent Holder.' [Map]

"An oddity about Ophiuchus is that the ecliptic—the apparent path of the Sun, Moon and planets—actually cuts through this constellation.  In fact, the Sun spends more time traversing through Ophiuchus than Scorpius!  It officially resides in Scorpius for less than a week: from November 23 through 29.  It then moves into Ophiuchus on November 30 and remains within its boundaries for more than two weeks—until Dec. 17.  Yet the Serpent Holder is not considered a member of the Zodiac and so must defer to Scorpius!  Perhaps the reason was that in order to include Ophiuchus, there would have been an unlucky thirteen "Houses of the Sun" instead of the currently accepted twelve."   Source

 

The legend of Ophiuchus    More    More

 

Astrology    The Real Constellations of the Zodiac    Astrology: Pro    Astrology: Con

 

 

 

 

Advent begins

 

(Lat. adventus, arrival). The four weeks before Christmas, beginning on St Andrew's Day (November 30), or the Sunday nearest to it, commemorating the first and second coming of Christ; the first to redeem, and the second to judge the world.

Advent Sunday: The first Sunday in Advent, the beginning of the Church Year, except in the Greek Church where it begins on St Martin's Day (November 11).

The Christian ecclesiastical year begins on Advent Sunday. It is always the nearest Sunday to St Andrew's day, whether before or after.
In This Holy Season...
In This Holy Season...

A note to wish peace and joy to your friends/ acquaintances.
[ Flash Ecard ]

Click for more Advent e-cards

Celebrating Advent: School of the Seasons

Closed seasons for marriage

"These were of old, from Advent to St Hilary's Day (13 January); Septuagesima to Low Sunday; Rogation Sunday to Trinity Sunday. They continued to be upheld in the English Church after the Reformation, but lapsed during the Commonwealth.

   Advent marriage doth thee deny,
   But Hilary gives thee liberty.
   Septuagesima says thee nay,
   Eight days from Easter says you may.
   Rogation bids thee to contain,
   But Trinity sets thee free again.

The Roman Catholic Church does not allow nuptial (wedding) mass during what is left of the 'close season', ie between the first Sunday of Advent and the Octave of the Epiphany, and from Ash Wednesday to Low Sunday."
Ivor H Evans, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988

 

Folklore, customs, pre-Christian origins of: 

Epiphany  Candlemas/Imbolc  Hall Sunday  Collop Monday  Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day

  Ash Wednesday & Lent  Mid-Lent  Care Sunday  Painful Friday  Lazarus Saturday

  Palm Sunday  Spy Wednesday  Maundy Thursday  Good Friday  Easter Saturday  Easter

Easter Monday  Easter Tuesday  Hocktide  Ascension  Rogation Days  Whitsunday/Whitsuntide

Corpus Christi  May Day/Beltaine  Lammas/Lughnasadh  Michaelmas  Halloween/Samhain

Martinmas  Advent  Christmas Eve  Christmas  More at Articles Index

Hundreds of feast days of saints, gods and goddesses at Wilson's Almanac Book of Days

 

"In ancient Greece, this was known as Andros' Day."   Source: Roman Calendar  

 

Hekate, or Hecate, ancient Greece

"The last day of each month is sacred to the Goddess Hekate. In ancient times, worshippers would leave a 'Hecate's Supper' with specially prepared foods as offerings to Hecate. The offerings were also gifts to appease the restless ghosts, called apotropaioi by the Greeks. These offerings are best prepared for the goddess on the eve of the new moon, to be left behind at crossroads at night, without looking back."   Source

Festivals in ancient Greece

Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ζgypticus or dies mala), unlucky day in Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord" was the associated saying.)

Feast day of St Andrew of Antioch

Feast day of St Arnold of Gemblours

Feast day of St Castulus

Feast day of St Constantius

Feast day of St Euprepis

Feast day of St Joscius

Feast day of St Joseph Marchand

Feast day of St Justina of Constantinople

Feast day of St Ludwik Gietyngier

Feast day of St Mahanes, Abraham and Simeon, martyrs

Feast day of St Maura

Feast day of Ss Sapor and Isaac, bishops
(Three-coloured wood sorrel, Oxalis tricolor, is today's plant, dedicated to Sapor.)

Feast day of St Narses, bishop, and his companions, martyrs

Feast day of St Trojan

Feast day of St William de Paulo

Feast day of St Zosimus

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

National Day, People's Republic of Benin

Independence Day (from Britain, 1966), Barbados

Andres Bonifacio Day, Philippines

 

Rabbits on the last day of the month
In the 1920s, there was a custom in the UK to say the word 'rabbit' three times when going to bed on the last day of the month. The superstition did not end there: on rising, the person was to say 'hare' three times. However, sources differ on this point, with one saying that the words 'rabbit, rabbit, rabbit', and not 'hare' should be said on the morning of the month's first day ...

Read more at Wilson's Almanac http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/ed4.html

 

Official End of the Hurricane Season, USA

Computer Security Day
Started in 1988, Computer Security Day is to help raise awareness of computer-related security issues.

 

Cities for Life Day

Three hundred cities around the world declare their opposition to the death penalty today.

From Wikipedia: it commemorates the first abolition of the death penalty by a European state, decreed by the elightened monarch, Peter Leopold Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine in 1786 for his Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

On this day, participating cities enlighten their symbolic monument, such as the Atomium in Brussels, the Colosseum in Rome and the Plaza de Santa Ana in Madrid. Participating cities include 30 capitals worldwide, and 300 cities and towns around the world, such as Rome, Bruxelles, Madrid, Ottawa, Mexico City, Berlin, Barcelona, Florence, Venice, Buenos Aires, Austin, Dallas, Antwerpen, Vienna, Naples, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Reggio Emilia, Bogotΰ, Santiago de Chile.

By this symbolic action, these cities demand a stay of all executions worldwide. This initiative is promoted by the Community of Sant'Egidio and supported by the main international human rights organizations, gathered in the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty ( Amnesty International, Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort, Penal Reform International, FIACAT).

In 2005, the Cities for Life Day also featured the 'Africa for Life' conference about the death penalty in Africa, in which 14 ministers of justice from as many African countries participated. The conference took place in Florence, Tuscany.

Cities for Life Day    2005 Africa for Life conference

 

Hari Kugo; Daitosai, or Good-Luck Market, Omiya, Japan (Nov 30 - Dec 11)

Broken Needle Festival, honouring women's crafts and tools. (Source of date the Phoenix and Arabeth 1992 Calendar.) At Hikawa Shrine, Omiya, Saitama Prefecture. A large market selling good luck charms and many products.

 

 

 

539 Gregory of Tours (d. 594), bishop and historian. His feast day is November 17.

1466 Andrea Doria (d. 1560), Italian naval leader

1508 Andrea Palladio (d. 1580)influential Italian neo-Classical architect and master builder

1554 Sir Philip Sidney (d. October 17, 1586), English poet  

1603 Khwaja Mohammed Baqi Billah, Sufi Naqshbandi (Naqshbandiyya) mystic and missionary

 

1667 Jonathan Swift, Anglo-Irish novelist and satirist (d. October 19, 1745), famous for works like Gulliver's Travels and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is also well known for his poetry and essays.

Although an idle schoolboy, Swift entered Oxford University in 1692, under the patronage of Sir William Temple. Here he obtained an MA. He later became a vicar in Ireland. The Tory party made him Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. In 1726 he published Gulliver's Travels, his best-known work.

Swift used to read the Book of Job aloud on his birthday, perhaps because his Gulliver's Travels was the only work for which he ever received payment: 200 pounds.

He was a moody and in some ways misanthropic man; though he had a bad temper and was often incapable of accepting criticism, he was charitable, giving one-third of his income to the needy and a large bequest to a hospital. It is said that he cared little for the approbation of a public whose opinions he mistrusted.

He carried on an affair with Esther Vanhomrigh, though he was married at the time. The grief of his rejection of her led to his mistress dying soon after.

Gulliver's Travels online

 

1670 John Toland (d. 1722), philosopher

1723 William Livingston (d. 1790), revolutionary governor of New Jersey

1781 Alexander Berry (d. September 17, 1873), Scottish born surgeon, merchant and explorer, founder of Berry, New South Wales, Australia. In New Zealand in 1809, he was involved with the rescue of several survivors of the Boyd Massacre.

1796 Carl Loewe (d. 1869), composer

1810 Oliver Winchester (d. 1880), developer of the Winchester rifle

1817 Theodor Mommsen (d. 1903), author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1902

 

 

Mark Twain at Tesla lab1835 Mark Twain (d. April 21, 1910), anti-war, anti-imperialist American humorist and novelist (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; 'The War Prayer').

Twain is pictured here in the laboratory of Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943Serbian-American physicist, mathematician, inventor, and electrical engineer. The two had a close and lasting friendship and spent quite a bit of time together from time to time (in Tesla's laboratory, among other places).

On November 11, 1865, Twain wrote an epitaph for Bummer, Emperor Joshua Norton's dog, the long-time companion of his other pet, Lazarus.

Mark Twain hated those – especially 'Colonel Mustard' (Arthur Evans) – who belittled Norton. Twain worked next door to Norton's pathetic flophouse and saw the man nearly every day. Later in life, Twain hinted to others something of the torment that Joshua Norton suffered and the cruelty others showed him. Upon hearing of the Emperor's death, Twain wrote to his editor, William Howells, suggesting that the Emperor would make a fine subject for a book; a fit of writer's block removed itself and Twain was able to complete two novels: Huckleberry Finn, which featured a lost Dauphin, and The Prince and the Pauper, a story of confused identities. Through these, he paid homage to the man he'd known.  

 

We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by the Providences of God – and the phrase is the government's, not mine – we are a World Power.
Mark Twain

Source

On October 24, 1901, when US Marines landed in Samar during the Philippine-American War (sometimes rather patronisingly referred to as the Philippine Insurrection), Brigadier General 'Hell-roaring Jake' Smith issued his orders: "I wish you to burn and kill; the more you burn and kill, the better it will please me."

Some Americans, notably Mark Twain, strongly objected to the annexation of the Philippines. (Many other Americans mistakenly thought that the Philippines wanted to be 'liberated' by the United States.) Twain was, in fact, the most prominent literary opponent of the bloody war and imperialism in general, and served as a vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death. His short story 'The War Prayer', which we reproduce in the Scriptorium, remains one of the world's great pro-peace pieces of literature.

On December 17, 1877, when the Atlantic Monthly gave a party to celebrate the 70th birthday of John Greenleaf Whittier, American Quaker poet, abolitionist and reformer, Twain, in a speech, shocked the diners by comparing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes, (all guests) to three drunken tramps in the Sierras.

Mark Twain died at Redding Connecticut, USA, upon the reappearance of Halley's Comet, which had last shone as he was being born. He had once jokingly predicted that, since his birth had coincided with the appearance of the comet, his own death would come when Halley's next returned. He attributed his long life and good health to whiskey, cigars and pocket billiards.

Twain the anti-imperialist
"Mark Twain (1835-1910) was the most prominent literary opponent of the Philippine-American War and he served as a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death. In February of 1901, as his essay 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness' was creating a storm of controversy throughout the United States, a Massachusetts newspaper editorialized that 'Mark Twain has suddenly become the most influential anti-imperialist and the most dreaded critic of the sacrosanct person in the White House that the country contains.'"   Source

Mark Twain on War and Imperialism    Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935

Mark Twain Debunks Phrenology

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is the fifth most challenged book in the American library system, ie, by readers who wish it removed from the shelves.    Source

Jumping Frog Jubilee Day, Angel's Camp, California
A frog-jumping contest inspired by a Mark Twain story, written when he was 29, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, published on November 18, 1865, is observed on or around May 22.

In 1885 Mark Twain designed and patented a game intended to help people keep historical facts straight.
Mark Twain's Memory Building Game
 

Twain mentioned my Aussie town

From 2002 - '06 I lived at Sandy Beach, 5 km south of the little town of Woolgoolga, NSW, Australia, mentioned by Mark Twain (now I live 60km south of Woolgoolga, at Bellingen):

In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain
The Yatala Wangary withers and dies,
And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain,
To the Woolgoolga woodlands
Despairingly flies.

Source


I know of no one who knows what any of the Aboriginal terms, apart from Woolgoolga, refer to. Twain left Victoria, BC, Canada on the SS Warrimoo on August 21, 1895 [more] and arrived in Australia on September 15, of that year, spent about three months here and wrote of his travels in
Following the Equator, of special interest to our Australian and New Zealand readers. He had to do a lecture tour due to lack of finances. Six days before sailing from Canada, he wrote to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Now that I reflect, perhaps it is a little immodest in me to talk about my paying my debts, when by my own confession I am blandly getting ready to unload them on the whole English-speaking world. I didn't think of that – well, no matter, so long as they are paid. Lecturing is gymnastics, chest-expander, medicine, mind healer, blues destroyer, all in one. I am twice as well as I was when I started out. I have gained nine pounds in twentyeight days, and expect to weigh six hundred before January. I haven't had a blue day in all the twenty-eight. My wife and daughter are accumulating health and strength and flesh nearly as fast as I am. When we reach home two years hence, we think we can exhibit as freaks." Mark Twain. Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 15, 1895.

Mark Twain on the Platform in Australia    Twain in Australia   Twain's works online    More online

Ken Burns' Mark Twain    Misattributed Quotes    Twain scrapbook    Shop Mark Twain    More

Twain came up with many brilliant quotes, but many brilliant quotes have been incorrectly attributed to him. See Misattributed Quotes: What Twain  Didn't Say and TwainQuotes.com

 

"November 30 is a remarkable day in world history. Mark Twain was born that day, and so were two other extraordinary people: Andres Bonifacio, founder of the Katipunan, the organization that waged the Philippine Revolution for independence from Spain, and British statesman Winston S. Churchill. The lives and legacies of these three men converged in 1900 and 1901 when Mark Twain met Churchill and wrote about Bonifacio and the Katipunan."   Source  

 

1836 Lord Frederick Cavendish (d. 1882), British politician

 

1874 Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (d. January 24, 1965), British politician and author, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He was born at the family seat of Blenheim, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire. In 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his six volume history, The Second World War. In 1921 he recommended gassing the Kurds (see quote at top of page).

Churchill lived to the age of ninety, and was active into his old age (his four-volume history of Britain and the other English speaking nations, A History of the English Speaking Peoples was published 1956 - 1958), yet he also had a hearty appetite for alcohol. However, according to Professor Warren Kimball of Rutgers, who has researched and written extensively about the man, Churchill was not an alcoholic, for "no alcoholic could drink that much!"

On May 17, 1990 (qv) some researchers in England said that they had found that at least three of Churchill's broadcast speeches during World War II were in fact spoken by an actor, Norman Shelley, but this claim has probably been debunked.

"Where he did put away copious amounts of alcohol was at meals ... Drinking at meals may be less deleterious than drinking at random, but in any case no colleague who can be taken seriously ever reports seeing Churchill the worse for drink. Thus WSC's famous quip, 'I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.'"   Source

"Beating out such worthy Britons as Darwin, Shakespeare, Newton, Nelson and Elizabeth I, Churchill was voted the Greatest Briton of all time in a poll conducted by the BBC.

"Over 1.3 million people voted by telephone and on the web.  Churchill garnered over 400,000 votes."   Source


Dispelling an urban legend about Churchill: Did Sir Alexander Fleming Save Churchill's life?

Rebuttal to some criticisms by Christopher Hitchens    More    More

 

1874 Lucy Maud Montgomery (d. 1942), author

1904 Clyfford Still (d. 1980), painter

1912 Gordon Parks, director, writer

1915 Brownie McGhee (d.1996), American blues performer, singer/guitarist, pianist; songwriter, of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee

More    Shop The Blues

1918 Efrem Zimbalist Jr, American actor (Wait Until Dark; Airport 74)

1920 Virginia Mayo, American actress (Up in Arms; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)  

1924 Shirley Chisholm, American politician

1924 Allan Sherman (d. 1973), comedian

1927 Richard Crenna (d. 2003), actor

1927 Robert Guillaume, actor

1929 Joan Ganz Cooney, children's television pioneer

1929 Dick Clark, television host

1930 G Gordon Liddy, Watergate scandal figure

Abbie Hoffman at Amazon.com

1936 Abbie Hoffman (aka 'Free'; d. April 12, 1989), American leader of the Yippies (Youth International Party), a New Left group in the 1960s which he co-founded with Jerry Rubin, Stew Albert and others. Hoffman was the author of a number of bestselling books, including Steal This Book, Revolution for the Hell of It and Woodstock Nation. He was also one of the Chicago Eight.

His contribution to political analysis and fun-oriented situationist action in the late-1960s and 1970s was profound, but he went off the rails when promoting violence as a valid tactic (see 'People's Chemistry',  in which he extolled the virtues of making bombs, and 'Piece Now' which exhorted political activists to have and presumably use firearms). He wrote "Once you get the hang of using a gun, you'll never want to go back to the old peashooter".

"Abbie Hoffman was a leader of the Youth International Party. At trial, Hoffman described himself as 'an orphan of America' and 'a child of Woodstock Nation.' He was, perhaps, the most intriguing figure in Judge Hoffman's courtroom. Hoffman believed that identity is defined by myth propagated through the media. 

"Hoffman was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on November 30, 1936. He graduated from Brandeis in 1959, then picked up a master's degree at Berkeley. In the early 1960s, he returned to Worcester to work as a psychologist in a state hospital. His career in political activism began with his work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the South. Hoffman was still relatively straight until 1966 when he turned onto drugs and began the loosely organized Yippie movement. 

"Hoffman went underwent [sic] plastic surgery and assumed the underground alias of 'Barry Freed' in 1974 to avoid trial on charges of possessing cocaine. He stayed underground in upper New York state until 1980, when he surrendered to authorities. He was sentenced to a work-release program in 1981-82, then resumed his life of political activism. In 1987, Hoffman was arrested for the forty-second time while protesting CIA recruitment at the University of Massachusetts with Amy Carter and thirteen others. 

"At a 1988 reunion of the Chicago Seven, Hoffman described himself as 'an American dissident. I don't think my goals have changed since I was four and I fought schoolyard bullies.'"
  Source

"He was best known for his rejection and parody of American corporate culture. In 1967, Hoffman and several friends threw dollar bills from the visitors' gallery onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, resulting in a near-riot as traders scrambled for the cash. During a major anti-war demonstration, he organized an 'Exorcism of the Pentagon', in which he led over 50,000 people to surround the Pentagon in an effort to levitate the building by their combined psychic energy. He, along with Jerry Rubin and other activities, became 'Yippies', and formed the Youth International Party. The Yippies held a Festival of Life at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which led to violence and arrests; these, in turn, led to the famous Chicago Seven trial (which started off as the Chicago Eight trial, but was reduced to Seven when Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers was bound, gagged, and sent to prison for contempt of court). For the next several years, Hoffman was a full-time activist until 1973, when he was arrested for the sale of cocaine. Facing a mandatory life sentence, he went underground and disappeared for 6 years, during which time he had plastic surgery, nervous breakdowns, and was an environmental activist under an alias. After emerging from hiding in 1980, he served a brief prison sentence and then re-entered the world of activism. He continued to organize people on college campuses and elsewhere, especially about environmental issues, until his death by suicide in 1989." Source

Hoffman, who suffered from Bipolar Disorder, was found dead at his home in New Hope, Pennsylvania. He was 52 years old. The autopsy confirmed that he'd taken 150 Phenobarbital and was legally drunk at the time of his death, which was recorded as a suicide (Hoffman's friends asserted that he was not in a depresses state of mind). He left a note reading "It's too late. We can't win, they've gotten too powerful."

[Well I remember in my youth, at Bob Gould's Third World Bookstore in Goulburn St, Sydney, wondering if Bob would notice me pinch a copy of Abbie's best-known book, and whether he would get mad if he did.]

"Abbie Hoffman couldn't get a anyone to publish Steal This Book --thirty publishers turned it down. When the book was released, bookstores wouldn't carry it. Newspapers, TV and radio all refused to run advertisements. But despite these set backs, Steal This Book found its way on to the Best Seller list in 1971.

"The book sold more than quarter of a million copies between April and November 1971. So where are all those copies? The Chicago Public Library doesn't have one. Although the New York Public Library has 9,993,000 books, it hasn't had a copy of Steal This Book for twenty years. The Library of Congress, the world's largest library with 20 million books, doesn't have one either."   Source

Hoffman's FBI files    Steal This Book! Free online    Steal This Wiki    Steal This Movie (2000)

Quotes by Abbie Hoffman at Wikiquote    the abbie hoffman brigade

More    Shop Abbie Hoffman    disinformation | abbie hoffman (lotsa linx)

Spirit of 67 Library    Culture Jamming     Abbie Hoffman Webpage   YIP at Wikipedia

To America With Love: Letters From the Underground    The Chicago Seven Conspiracy Trial

Steal This Movie, entire film free online at Google Video

Abbie Hoffman Visits the Stock Exchange and Some Other Places, by Stew Albert

A lot of the Abbie Hoffman data found at various pages in the Book of Days was kindly sent to me by Almaniac Barbara in NC, USA, with thanks.

Listen to Abbie Hoffman (475 kb .au file)

 

"I think Abbie would be beating down the doors of City Hall over the USA Patriot Act, which he might have dubbed the Traitor Act. 

"There's a burgeoning movement throughout the USA to oppose this 342-page atrocity. Thanks to our yellow-bellied representatives in DC, the Patriot Act zipped through in 2001 with virtually no debate and no public hearings. Many of those voting had minimal comprehension of the new law's devastating scope.

"Citizens are correcting that crime. Over 104 cities have passed resolutions against the Act. With some of these resolutions city officials throw down the gauntlet; they will not abide by the provisions of the Patriot Act. Other resolutions are tamer. All are a patent recognition that the Nazification of America is proceeding apace. One more terrorist attack and the right of assembly, of protest, of dissent may be a goner.

"Luckily, to make our organizing easier, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has a website at which one can obtain sample resolutions, download a press release and get the names of the cities, thus far, on the bandwagon. Check out www.aclu.org/Safeandfree/ and then click on Pass Community Resolutions."

In Memory of Abbie Hoffman

 

'A Letter to Abbie'

A song written by Larry S. shortly after Abbie's death 
Copylefted - may not be used for any commercial purpose. 
Music by Michael B.

Dear Abbie, Dear Abbie, why did you go? 
The reasons you had well we'll never know. 
Dear Abbie, Dear Abbie, this letters for you 
From one you inspired, but you never knew. 

With your fist in the air and a laugh in your voice, 
You made revolution the reveler's choice. 
And your books sent a message, that life could be fun 
Whether fighting the system or livin' on the run. 

From Chicago to underground then on to New Hope, 
No matter the odds you found new ways to cope. 
The tactics, they changed but the ideals held firm, 
Even through the dark years of the actor's two terms. 

You supported the causes that you thought were right, 
and you always were there to teach others to fight. 
From Yippie! to fugitive, environmentalist and more, 
Without you the left is a little more poor. 

To see you speak, you were so full of life, 
With a wit that cut like a surgeon's knife. 
The torch must be past [
sic], the fight must go on,
But the journey is sadder now that you're gone. 

Dear Abbie, Dear Abbie, why did you go? 
The reasons you had we'll never know. 
Dear Abbie, Dear Abbie, this letters for you 
From one you inspired, but you never knew. 

 

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list    Wilson's Almanac Activism Page    CounterCulture Wiki

 

 

1937 Ridley Scott, director

1937 Noel Stookey (Paul Stookey), of 1960s American folk music group, Peter Paul and Mary

1937 Frank Ifield, Australian-English singer. His hit, 'I Remember You', topped the UK charts for seven weeks in 1962.

1943 Terrence Malick, writer, producer

1947 David Alan Mamet (November 30, 1947 -), American playwright, screenwriter, director and poet who said the revelation of 20th century drama is "that you can apply the Aristotelian unities to a microcosm, to a very, very small human interchange ... It [doesn't] have to be about conquering France. It can be about who did or did not turn on the gas on the stove." He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross.

1951 Christian Bernard (FRC), Rosicrucian, Imperator of AMORC

1952 Mandy Patinkin, actor, singer

1955 Billy Idol, musician

1962 Daniel Keys Moran, science fiction writer

1965 Ben Stiller, actor, director, producer, writer (There's Something About Mary; Meet the Parents; Zoolander)

1978 Clay Aiken, singer

1982 Elisha Cuthbert, actress

1985 Kaley Cuoco, actress

 

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406 BCE Death of Euripides (c. 480 BCE - 406 BCE), Athenian tragic dramatist; it was the same year as the death of Sophocles (496 BCE - 406 BCE), Athenian dramatist and politician. One unreliable tradition holds that Euripides was torn apart by hunting dogs.

1016 Death of King of England Edmund II (Edmund Ironside), colleague of England's King Canute, was assassinated (some say he was stabbed in the bowels while going to the toilet) and was buried at Glastonbury. He was a son of King Ethelred II and Aelgifu of Northampton; Edward the Confessor was his half-brother.

1216 Pope Innocent III ordered Jews to wear a special badge.

1222 Dragons were reported to have been seen over the city of London; after the supposed sighting severe thunderstorms severely flooded the district.

More such sightings    Dragons and saints in Wilson's Almanac

1554 Roman Catholicism was briefly restored to England under the reign of Mary Tudor (Mary I of England; 1516 - '58), the only child born to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to survive childhood. 'Bloody Mary' had Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and nearly 300 other Protestant leaders burned at the stake.

1624 New World: Richard Cornish was executed for violating Virginia's anti-sodomy law.  

Urbain Grandier1633 The remarkable Father Urbain Grandier, the parish priest of St.-Pierre-du-Marchι of Loudun, France, was arrested and imprisoned in the Castle of Angers, having been accused, on June 2, 1630, of witchcraft. In 1634 he was found guilty of 'diabolical pact' and the practice of witchcraft. On August 18, 1634, he was sentenced to death, tortured, and then burnt alive at the stake.

Urbain Grandier by Alexandre Dumas free online (Project Gutenberg)

 

1,000 years of Christian barbarity

 

 

1718 Death of King Charles XII of Sweden.

1782 American Revolutionary War: In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain signed preliminary peace articles (later formalized in the Treaty of Paris (1783)).

1803 At the Cabildo building in New Orleans, Spanish representatives Governor Manuel de Salcedo and the Marquιs de Casa Calvo, officially transferred Louisiana Territory to French representative Prefect Pierre Clιment de Laussat (just 20 days later, France transferred the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase).

1804 The Jeffersonian Republican-controlled United States Senate began an impeachment trial against Federalist-partisan Supreme Court of the United States Justice Samuel Chase (he was charged with political bias but was acquitted by the Senate of all charges on March 1, 1805).

1812 USA: Twice, General 'Apocalypse' Smythe ordered his troops to cross the Niagara River to invade Canada, and twice his courage failed and he called off the attack. As the soldiers clambered from their boats the second time, they turned their weapons upon their commander's tent; Smythe turned tail and fled to Virginia.

 

1815 George Stephenson's safety lamp was tested, six weeks before Sir Humphry Davy tested his invention, but Davy is remembered as the 'first'. The safety lamp, like Stephenson's other great invention, the railway, helped in the formation of the Industrial Revolution.

Whose, then, was the safety lamp?

Stephenson (1781 - 1848), the self-educated British engineer, son of a colliery fireman, who is best known for designing the steam-powered locomotive named The Rocket, also invented the safety lamp. Until 1815, miners worked with the realistic and ever-present fear that any lamp they carried underground might ignite gases beneath the earth's surface. Countless men died in gas explosions simply because they lacked a safe lamp.

Stephenson took the lamp, nicknamed the 'Geordie', down the Killingworth Colliery pit near Newcastle, England, on this day, six weeks before Sir Humphry's lamp was first tried on January 9, 1816. Davy's supporters carried on a war of words saying that a mere engine-wright could not have invented the lamp, and that only a chemist of Davy's standing could have done so. It is said that Stephenson's natural modesty prevented him entering into the war, and the plaudits went to Davy, so of a wood carver.

Source: Robert Chambers, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879 Edition is online and 1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers's Book of Days)

Davy and Stephenson had another contender for the glory of the invention. Dr William Clanny produced a safety lamp at about the same time – perhaps even earlier.

1830 English agricultural labourers rioted at Shaftesbury, Dorset, to secure the release of five imprisoned comrades. Simultaneously, in Banwell, Somerset, paupers rioted at the poorhouse, then followed up with an attack on the lock-up and released its prisoners.

1830 Death of Pope Pius VIII (b. 1761).

1853 Crimean War: Battle of Sinop – The Russian fleet destroyed the Turkish fleet.

1854 Peter Lalor was elected to lead the diggers at the Eureka Stockade (see December 3), a famous uprising of goldminers against the State of Victoria, Australia.

The Eureka Stockade was a miners' revolt in 1854 in Victoria against the officials supervising the gold-mining region of Ballarat. It is often regarded as being an event of equal significance in Australian history as the storming of the Bastille was to French history or the Battle of the Alamo to the history of the United States.

On this day, Italian writer and activist, Raffaello Carboni, called on all miners "irrespective of nationality, religion or colour to salute the Southern Cross as a refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on Earth".

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Franklin – The Army of Tennessee led by General John Bell Hood mounted a dramatically unsuccessful frontal assault on Union positions around Franklin, Tennessee (Hood lost six generals and almost a third of his troops).

1878 Australia's national anthem, Advance Australia Fair, was performed for the first time in Sydney on St Andrew's Day. The anthem was composed by Scotsman Peter Dodds McCormick.

 

1885 It was not a good year for the man who hanged Robert Goodale. Goodale, who weighed 15 stone (95 kg) and was in poor physical condition, was decapitated by the force of the drop. The hangman was James Berry (1852 - 1913) of Heckmondwike, Yorkshire, who carried out around 200 hangings in his eight years in office and was the first British executioner to write his memoirs, My Experiences as an Executioner.

This is the only recorded British instance of an accidental decapitation in a hanging, although two other of Berry's victims, Moses Shrimpton at Worcester and John Conway at Kirkdale nearly lost their heads in the drop. The Goodale mishap led to Berry's resignation as he blamed the prison doctor, Dr Barr, for interfering with his calculations.

As noted, it was not Bery's best year. On February 23 of that year, he had tried to execute one John Lee for the murder of his wealthy employer and former maid to Queen Victoria, Ellen Keyse (see November 15, 1884) and he pulled the lever. Something malfunctioned and Lee would not drop through the trapdoor. The equipment was tested repeatedly and seemed to be in working order; weights used in a test run plunged to the ground as expected. However, each time the lever was pulled when Lee stood over the trap door, nothing happened. Two more execution attempts were made without success, and Lee was returned to prison.

The authorities, amazed by the trapdoor's inexplicable malfunction, decided to ascribe it to an "act of God". Lee was removed from death row, his sentence commuted, and he spent the next 22 years in prison.

1886 The Folies Bergθre staged its first revue.

 

1894 The Kinetoscope Parlour opened in Sydney. In the first five weeks, 22,000 people went to at 148 Pitt Street to watch a two-second continuous-loop film.

The Kinetoscope was a forerunner of the modern movie projector developed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson during his employment with Thomas Edison. However, because Edison was said to have originally conceived the idea, there is debate on who the actual inventor was. Furthermore, the final product relied so heavily on the work of previous inventors, especially across the Atlantic, that Edison never bothered to apply for international copyright on the device, surmising that it would not stand up in European courts. This proved important to the subsequent development of cinema, allowing numerous imitations of and innovations on the Kinetoscope outside the United States.

According to the history, Edison's idea for the Kinetoscope was inspired by a visit with Eadweard Muybridge in 1888.

"The first motion pictures arrived in Australia in the mid-1890s and were run on the Edison Kinetoscope. On 30 November 1894 theatrical entrepreneur James McMahon opened a Kinetoscope Parlour in a converted shop at 148 Pitt Street, Sydney. Customers paid a shilling to view the films via eyepieces on successive Kinetoscope machines. Each machine showed a different film and could be viewed by only one person at a time. Early attendances were encouraging, with Murray (1994) reporting that the Kinetoscope Parlour attracted 22,000 patrons in its first five weeks and Sabine (1995) quoting 25,000 in the first month. 

"After their Sydney premiere, the Kinetoscope machines toured Australia for a year. They returned to Sydney in 1896 but a lack of new films and the emergence of film projection caused attendances to drop."   Source

"Sydney staged the world's first 'movie' projection in November 1894, a good 12-months before the Lumiere Brothers in Paris. Screened in a converted shop on Pitt Street, the 35 millimetre film ran at 40 images per second and was projected through a machine known as a kinetoscope. In the first five weeks of showing, there were 22,000 moviegoers – each paying a shilling each."   Source 
(NB: It seems unlikely to your almanackist that this was a world first if the Edison films were imported.)

"The stage bound, virtually static product of Edison's Vitascope Company and other early products suffered by comparison with the 'actualities' of the Lumiere brothers. A Lumiere agent could photograph the people of a district and show them the results the same day. Sent back to the Lumiere head office, prints of these film could then be distributed to other parts of the world."   Source

History of cinema

 

1896 Two boys, Herbert Coles and Dunham Coretter, while bicycling along Anastasia Island, near St. Augustine, Florida, USA, found what has become known at the St. Augustine Monster, one of the earliest recorded examples of a globster

Attack of the Globsters! at Skeptoid.com

1897 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience, declined to prosecute assailants who had stoned him, punched him to the ground and kicked him during the attack upon his arrival.  

1900 Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde  (b. 1854), Irish wit, playwright, self-professed anarchist, and gay pioneer, died of cerebral meningitis, following an ear infection, at the age of 46 in a Paris rooming house.

For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die.

Dublin-born Wilde published in 1890 The Soul of Man Under Socialism, which is characterised by its libertarian non-conformism. In 1895, he was condemned to two years hard labour for his homosexuality. 

He wrote De Profundis while in prison, exalting revolutionary action and political agitation. This small book was not published in its entirety until 44 years later. Wilde was released, practically a broken man, on May 19, 1897, spending his last years penniless on the Continent, under the name of Sebastian Melmoth in self-inflicted exile from society and artistic circles. He chose his name from St Sebastian (feast day January 20)*, who was killed by archers (suggested by the broad arrows on Wilde's prison uniform), and Melmoth, a family name.

Shortly before his death he converted to the Roman Catholic Church, which he had long admired.

*Saint Sebastian's help was sought against plague, the boils and swellings of which reminded people of the arrow wounds in Saint Sebastian's flesh. He is often shown virtually naked and tied to a tree or a column, with arrows penetrating his body.

More   Wilde meets Whitman: A poem

Shop Oscar Wilde   Complete Works    Wilde photo (reclining)        Images of St Sebastian

 

1902 American Old West: Second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, was sentenced to 20 years hard labor.

1916 The Hellenic Holocaust entered its last phase, when Turkish Minister of the Interior Rafet Bey was reported as saying "we must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians … on 28 November."

1919 Women got their first opportunity to vote in French elections.

A world chronology of women's suffrage    US chronology    Louisa Lawson, Australian suffragette

1924 The last French and Belgian troops withdrew from the Ruhr.

1924 The first photo facsimile was transmitted across the Atlantic by radio.

1924 While he was working on the opera Turandot, Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died. Whenever Arturo Toscanini directed Turandot, he would stop at that place in the performance, turn to the audience, and say, "Here il maestro died," and pause for a second of memorial silence before returning to conducting.

1930 Rabble-rouser and labor activist Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones) died, age 100, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. Her last public appearance was at her 100th birthday party, May 1, 1930, at a reception in Silver Spring, Maryland. She "made a fiery speech for the motion-picture camera".

Mother Jones Magazine   Shop Mother Jones magazine

1935 Non-belief in Nazism was proclaimed grounds for divorce in Germany.  

1936 In London, the 85-year-old Crystal Palace, a huge glass landmark built for the 1851 Great Exhibition, was destroyed by fire.

1939 The Winter War began: Soviet forces invaded Finland and reached the Mannerheim Line, starting the war.

1940 American entertainers Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were married in Greenwich, Connecticut.

1943 World War II: Teheran Conference – US President Franklin D Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin established an agreement concerning a planned June 1944 invasion of Europe, codenamed Operation Overlord.

1954 In Sylacauga, Alabama, USA, a 3.85kg (8.5 pounds) sulfide meteorite crashed through the living room roof of Mrs Elizabeth Hodges (who was sleeping on the couch at the time), bounced off of her radio and hit her on the thigh, giving her a bad bruise on her hip and leg. (This is the only unequivocally known case of a human being hit by a space rock.)

Ancient Chinese records tell of people being injured or killed by falling meteorites. The victim, who suffered bruising along her hip and leg, was sleeping on a couch at the time of impact. A dog in Egypt was killed in 1911 by the Nakhla meteorite.

1960 USA: Production of the De Soto automobile brand ceased.

1962 The United Nations General Assembly elected U Thant of Burma as the new UN Secretary-General.

1966 Barbados became independent.

1967 The People's Republic of South Yemen became independent from the United Kingdom. 

1967 USA: Senator Eugene McCarthy officially entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, running on an antiwar platform.

1974 Lucy, the skeleton of a 3.18 million year old female hominid was discovered by anthropologist Professor Donald Johanson and his student Tom Gray in a maze of ravines at Hadar in northern Ethiopia. 

That night, during a celebration and excitement over the discovery of what looked like a fairly complete hominid skeleton, the John Lennon song 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' was playing at the party. At some point during that night the skeleton was given the name 'Lucy' and the name stuck. Officially, Johanson named Lucy's species Australopithecus afarensis, which means 'southern ape of Afar', after the Ethiopian region in which Hadar is located.

1972 Vietnam War: White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler told the press that there would be no more public announcements concerning American troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels were now down to 27,000.

1979 Rock band Pink Floyd released the mega-selling rock opera The Wall.

1980 USA: Death in New York City of Dorothy Day (b. 1897), anarchist, pacifist, co-founder of Catholic Worker movement, a religious organization that espouses nonviolence, voluntary poverty and hospitality for the homeless, hungry and forsaken.

"The modern history of nonviolence is inevitably traced through Mohandas Gandhi and India's independence movement, and usually Martin Luther King, Jr. and the US civil rights movement. There are also many other great nonviolence leaders and theorists – to name a few: Starhawk, Petra Kelly, Barbara Deming, Thich Nhat Hanh, Julia Butterfly Hill, Dorothy Day, Albert Einstein, Cesar Chavez, and Gene Sharp."  

Source: Wikipedia

 

1981 Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union began to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe (the meetings ended inconclusively on December 17).

1982 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received a parcel bomb at 10 Downing Street.

1983 Alfred Heineken, the Dutch brewing magnate, was kidnapped in Amsterdam.

1986 USA: Admiral John Poindexter (President Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor) and Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, of Poindexter's staff, were dismissed due to the Iran-Contra scandal. The oft-disgraced Poindexter has recently been appointed head of the draconian Office of Homeland Security.  

Homeland Security jokes

1988 Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co bought RJR Nabisco for US$25.07 billion.

1988 Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO, was refused an entry visa to the USA to address the UN General Assembly in New York.

1989 Deutsche Bank board member Alfred Herrhausen was killed by a Red Army Faction terrorist bomb .

1989 Richard Mallory of Palm Harbor, Florida took a ride with Aileen Wuornos before becoming the female serial killer's first victim.

1989 An unsuccessful coup attempt was made against the government of Cory Aquino in the Philippines.

1989 At 3.15 am, Linda Napolitano, a New York mother of two, was spirited out of her 12th-storey Manhattan apartment, though a closed window, and into a waiting UFO, she claimed.

1993 US President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the Brady Bill) into law.

More

1996 Scotland's coronation stone, the Stone of Destiny (the Stone of Scone), was installed in Edinburgh Castle.

What is the Stone of Destiny?

1996 Death of American entertainer Tiny Tim.

1998 Deutsche Bank announced a US$10 billion deal to buy Bankers Trust, thus creating the largest financial institution in the world.

1999 In Seattle, Washington, the first major mobilization, in the United States, of the anti-globalization movement caught police unprepared and forced the cancellation of opening ceremonies of a World Trade Organization meeting (protests ended on December 3).

'Didn't We'

By Jim Page

November 30th, '99
history walkin' on a tightrope line
big money pullin' on invisible strings
gettin' into everything
so deep, it's hard to believe
it's in the food and the water and the air you breathe
and the chemistry, the bio-tech
the banker with the bottomless check
the corporations and the CEOs
and the bottom line is, the profit grows
the money talks, you don't talk back
they don't like it when you act like that
but didn't we
shut it down
didn't we
…

Source

Video online, Showdown in Seattle: 5 Days That Shook the WTO

http://www.foodfirst.org/progs/global/trade/wto2001/links.html

http://www.zmag.org/wto-seattle.htm

http://EatTheState.org/04-06/WTOOverview.htm

http://www.notbored.org/seattle.html

Thanx The Daily Bleed

Flash show: The facts on Saddam Hussein, America's puppet

Lots of stuff on Homeland Security at InfoClearinghouse

1999 British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merged to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defence contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.

1999 Indian eco-activist/author, Vandana Shiva, addressed the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, USA.

Interview Question: We just heard one of the protesters say that all you're all gathered here because you're fundamentally dissatisfied with the way the IMF and the World Bank do business. What is wrong with the way they do business?

VS: I used to be a physics professor. Twenty years ago I gave up a career in academics to start an independent research institute to help the groups in India fighting against World Bank projects because that is the main reason for the creation of poverty through the destruction of the only resources that people have, which is the natural resources: Their land, their forests, their coasts, their fisheries. And every time the World Bank lends, it's lending for destruction, it's lending for transfer of the assets of the poor. I started working on World Bank projects not because I chose to change the World Bank but because I wanted to support our people.
Source

 

2003 Roy E Disney, son of Roy Oliver Disney and nephew of Walt Disney, angrily resigned from the board of the Disney corporation citing in his letter of resignation "serious differences of opinion about the direction and style of management" in the company. He called for the resignation of CEO Michael Eisner and wrote to him of "[t]he perception by all of our stakeholders – consumers, investors, employees, distributors and suppliers – that the Company is rapacious, soul-less, and always looking for the 'quick buck' rather than the long-term value which is leading to a loss of public trust".

 

Tomorrow: Goddesses Athena & Vesta; Librarian saves Stupid White Men

Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

 

 

 

WTO protest poster

 

 

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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