|
Click stars for Universe today
Cafe
Diem! Our store
Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret
Read MacDonald
Fahrenheit 9/11
Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
By Prof. Peter W Singer
Lempriere's Dictionary
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Internet Sacred Text Archive CD-ROM
The New Book of Goddesses & Heroines
The Spiral Dance
By Starhawk
20th Anniversary Edition
Eats, Shoots & Leav
es
Uluru
Life in a Medieval Village
To support this
project
Search by keywords for books, music, computers, software, home and family
products and much more.
An Inconvenient Truth
By Al Gore; DVD &
book
The Permaculture Home Garden
By Linda Woodrow
The Big Buy - Tom Delay's Stolen Congress
The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD
Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of
Investigative Journalism in America
By Bruce Shapiro
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
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 Skeptic's Dictiona
ry
Tell
Me No Lies
By John Pilger
Medieval Celebrations
Women's Activism and Globalization
The Atlas of Holy Places and Sacred Sites
Secrets and Lies
The Clash of Civilizations
Imperial Crusades
Aborigine Dreaming
The Medieval Cookbook
The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe
The Murray Bookchin Reader
Environmental Activism
Astro pic of the day
American Folklore
Permaculture
The Story of the Moors in Spain
Islam and the West
The New Crusades
The Muslim Discovery of Europe
The Golden Age of the Moor
Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature &
Art (Seyffert)
Sun Goddess
African Folklore
Daily Everything
A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend, and Folklore
The Edible Asian Garden
The Secret Language of Birthdays
Live with Passion!
Anthony Robbins
More books, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, music, posters, etc at
Cafe Diem!
Celtic Daily Prayer
Hidden Agendas
Poor Richard's Almanack
By Benjamin Franklin
Photo of the day
Mother Earth Spirituality
Wheel of the Year
The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
The Survival of the Pagan Gods
Click to promote
your blog or website
another excellent
way we do
|
 Last day for eating blackberries, Britain
(OS)
Satan once fell into a blackberry thicket
and cursed the plant for scratching him. Each year he returns to
poison the plants by urinating and/or spitting on them. He does so
on Old Michaelmas
(October 11,
OS, now September
29), so blackberries must not be eaten after today. Because of
the change to the NS
(Gregorian) calendar, we have looked at blackberry lore
somewhat more closely on September 25.
Feast day of St Daniel
Comboni
Feast day of
St Francis
Borgia, confessor
(Cape Acetris; Velthemia viridifolia is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Feast day of St
Fulk
Feast day of St
Gercon
Feast day of St Gundisalvus
Feast day of St Hugh of
Macon
Feast day of St Hugolinus
Feast day of St
John of Bridlington, confessor
Feast day of St Maharsapor
Feast day of St Malo
Feast day of St
Patricain
Feast day of St
Paulinus of Capua
Feast
day of St Paulinus,
Archbishop of YorkShop Saints
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days
Ram
Mating Ceremony, Anatolia, Turkey (Oct 1 - 20)
Oklahoma
Historical Day, Oklahoma, USA
Health-Sports
Day (Japan)Black
Walnut Festival, Spencer, Roane County, West Virginia, USA (Oct 9 - 12)
Mop Fair,
Tewkesbury, England
"Many
autumn fairs were not chartered. These were known as Mop or Hiring
Fairs and a few are perpetuated to this day. At these events, those
seeking employment paraded before prospective employers and in
certain cases a second fair, known as a Run-Away Mop, was held a
fortnight later where those wishing to change jobs again or those
who were unable to find employment on the first occasion had a
further opportunity to rectify the matter." Source
Fiji
Day (National
Day), Fiji
Columbus
Day, USA
(see October
12)
Festival of Light, Brazil
"A centuries old
festival, celebrated for two consecutive weeks, which features a
parade of penance and the lighting of candles, torches, and
hearth-fires to symbolically drive away spirits of darkness who
bring evil and misfortune." Source: Earth,
Moon and Sky
Hull Fair, Hull, England
(Every year; not Sundays)
"One of Europe's largest
travelling funfairs, Hull Fair combines centuries-old traditions
with white-knuckle fairground thrills at the Walton Street
fairground.
"State-of-the-art
rides are brought from all over Europe, with technology
sophisticated enough to strike fear into the heart of the most
foolhardy adult, who will doubtless need to keep tight hold of their
kids' hands. There are also stalls selling food and local crafts."
Source
World Space Week (Oct 4 - 10)
 World
Day Against the Death Penalty
"The death penalty is never acceptable, and every execution constitutes an extreme violation of the right to life. The violation is exacerbated when judgements are passed after an unfair judicial process ...
"Discrimination, unfair trials, judicial error, the execution of child offenders and those suffering from mental disabilities all amount to a failure of justice; and provide more compelling reasons to abolish the death penalty."
Source
"The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
"It violates the right to life.
"It is irrevocable and can be inflicted on the innocent. It has never been shown to deter crime more effectively than other punishments.
"As an organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of human rights, Amnesty International (AI) works for an end to executions and the abolition of the death penalty everywhere."
Source
World Coalition
Against the Death Penalty
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
 1609 Gerrard
Winstanley (baptized; his date of birth is unknown; d. September
10, 1676), leader and theoretician of the group of English
agrarian communists known as the
Diggers, who in 1649 - '50 cultivated common
land on St George's Hill, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, and at nearby
Cobham until they were dispersed by force and legal harassment.
They
believed that land should be made available to the very poor. In
one of the Digger
tracts, The Law of Freedom, Winstanley took the view held
by the Anabaptists
that all institutions were by their nature corrupt:
"Nature tells us that if water stands
long it corrupts; whereas running water keeps sweet and is fit for
common use."
To prevent power corrupting individuals he advocated
that all officials should be elected every year.
Soon
after publishing The New Law of Righteousness (January 26,
1649; "In the beginning of time God made the earth. Not one word
was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule
over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach
and rule over another"), in which Winstanley identified private property as
"the curse and burden the creation groans under", he
established the Diggers. In April, 1649, Winstanley, William Everard,
a former soldier in the New
Model Army, and about thirty followers took over some common land
on St George's Hill and "sowed the ground with parsnips, carrots
and beans".
In 1652, Winstanley
published The Law of Freedom in a Platform
in which he proposed the introduction of his utopian commonwealth by
state action.
Oliver Cromwell is reported to have said: "What is the purport of
the levelling principle but to make the tenant as liberal a fortune
as the landlord. I was by birth a gentleman. You must cut these
people in pieces or they will cut you in pieces."
"Very
little is known about Winstanleys [sic] life prior to the
Digger movement, other than what can be gathered from his own
writings. He was born in Lancashire, probably in 1609, and raised
to be a tradesman. At the beginning of the Civil War he was
engaged in the cloth trade and a member of one of the City
Companies of London. Probably as a result of the war, Winstanley
suffered bankruptcy, and in 1649 he apparently earned his living
by tending his neighbors [sic] cattle. More, yet only a little, is known
of Winstanleys [sic] life after the Diggers dispersal in
1650. In particular, funds from his father-in-law greatly
improved his social status in the late 1650s. After the death of
his first wife and subsequent remarriage he cut his ties to the
Digger community and moved to London in 1665. Apparently he died
on 10 September 1676." Source
The Religion of
Gerrard Winstanley and Digger Communism
Diggers and Dreamers – The Guide to
Communal Living in Britain
Kenneth Rexroth's chapter on
Winstanley and the Diggers
English Diggers
The
World Turned Upside Down (film)
Kenneth Rexroth Winstanley,
The Diggers The
Diggers
Billy Bragg's page
on the Diggers, with links
Levellers.org
Acid Dreams: The
Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond
Utopia
links Intentional
community links
Diggers Archives
'Still Digging', by George Monbiot
More
And
more
Anarchism article at Wikipedia
(a good overview, with historical context)
Utopia article at Wikipedia
(quite a good introduction)
Radio
National: Re-imagining Utopia (cool interactive)
Wilson's
Almanac Activism Page
CounterCulture
Wiki
1684 Antoine Watteau
(d. 1721), French
painter
1780 John Abercrombie, Scottish
physician
and philosopher
1813 Giuseppe Verdi, Italian romantic
opera composer (d. 1901). He was a musical child prodigy
who became a church organist at the age of seven. Verdi became
extremely popular, commanding higher fees than any other composers
of his time. Within the next ten years, Verdi produced three
acknowledged masterpieces:
Rigoletto (1851),
Il Trovatore
(1853), and
La traviata
(1853).
1825
Paul
Kruger (d. July
14, 1904), South African statesman, President of the
Transvaal
Republic
1830
Freeman Cobb (d.
May 24,
1878), American
entrepreneur, who, at the age of 23, established
Cobb and Co,
which became Australia's pre-eminent
stagecoach
company in the
19th Century. He only spent from May,
1853 -
May 24,
1856 in Australia,
returning to the USA and
selling his Australian interests to fellow
American
James Rutherford and several partners in
1858. In
1864 - '65
he was a senator for Barnstaple County in the Massachusetts State
Legislature. After coach business ventures in South Africa, he died
insolvent. Poet
Henry Lawson
paid literary tribute to 'The
Lights of Cobb and Co.'
1834 Aleksis Kivi, a Finnish
author who wrote the first significant novel in
the Finnish language, Seven Brothers.
1861 Fridtjof Nansen (d. 1930), Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Arctic
explorer
1870
Louise
Mack (d.
November 23, 1935),
Australian bohemian journalist and author (The World is Round;
Maiden's Prayer), staff journalist on
The Bulletin,
writing the 'Woman's Letter' under the pen-name of 'Gouli Gouli'.
Mack, and her sister, writer Amy Eleanor Mack, were the Port
Adelaide-born daughters (two of thirteen children) of Rev. Hans
Hamilton Mack, a Wesleyan parson, and his wife Jemima. At
Sydney Girls High School, Mack and her friend
Ethel Turner
edited rival papers. In Florence, Italy, she edited (1904
- '07) Italian
Gazette. In WWI, Mack became the first woman war correspondent,
reporting for the UK papers Evening News and Daily Mail.
In England she lived in great poverty while composing the novel,
An Australian Girl in London (1902),
which met with considerable success.
Louise Mack: Woman War Correspondent
Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
More
1885 Walter Anderson
(d. 1962), German
folklorist
1898 Lilly Daché (d. 1989), milliner
1900 Helen
Hayes (d. 1993), actress
1901 Alberto Giacometti (d. 1966), Swiss
sculptor
1906 RK (Rasipuram
Krishnaswami) Narayan, Indian novelist and short story writer. One of
the first Indians writing in English to achieve international
acclaim, Narayan wrote hundreds of short stories, and more than 30
novels, including
The English Teacher (1945),
Waiting for
the Mahatma (1955),
The Guide (1958), and
The Vendor
of Sweets (1967). He died in May, 2001, aged 94.
1906 Paul
Creston (d. 1985), composer
1913 Claude Simon (d. July
6, 2005), Madagascan-born French writer,
whose works are among the most authentic representatives of
nouveau
roman that emerged in the 1950s. Awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1985.
Simon's style is a mixture of
narration and stream of consciousness. His prose frequently lacks
punctuation and is densely constructed, with 1,000-word sentences.
He was influenced during his youth by the aesthetic theories of
painter Raoul Dufy, and thus approaches writing with an emphasis on
artistic composition of language.
In the 1930s, Simon travelled in
the Soviet Union. During 1934 - '35, he served with the French
army's Thirty-first Dragoons. During the Spanish Civil War, he was
involved in gun-running to the Republicans.
He rejoined the Dragoons in WWII,
was captured by the Germans, and sent to a prison camp. Simon
escaped and joined the Resistance.
Source: The Daily Bleed
1917 Thelonious Monk (d. 1982),
American jazz
pianist.
Innovative
jazz pianist and composer of ''Round Midnight', one of the
fathers of jazz improvisation, in 1961 he was featured on the cover
of Time magazine, only one of three jazz musicians to appear
on its covers.
1924
Ed Wood, Jr, American filmmaker (d. 1978) (Plan
9 from Outer Space, reputedly the worst movie ever made – more and more in the
Book of Days)
1924 James
Clavell (d. 1994), author
1926 Richard Jaeckel (d. 1997), actor
1930 Harold Pinter, British playwright.
Pinter achieved international
success as one of the most complex post-World War II dramatists. His
plays are noted for their use of breakdown of communication,
understatement, cryptic small talk, and silence to describe the
thoughts of characters.
Born in East London, son of a
Jewish tailor. A conscientious objector (CO), Pinter was fined in
1949 for refusing to do military service.
Source: The Daily Bleed
1933 Jay
Sebring, Hollywood hair stylist murdered by the
Charles
Manson gang on August
9, 1969.
He was the partner of actress Sharon
Tate.
1941 Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian
author, television producer and environmental activist. As president
of the Movement for
the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent
campaign against environmental damage associated with the operations
of multinational oil companies, including Shell and British Petroleum. He was hanged after
a show trial with eight other
Ogoni rights activists in Port
Harcourt, on November 10,
1995.
"Saro-Wiwa's first novel, Sozaboy:
A Novel in Rotten English, was published in 1985. The antiwar
work was written in 'pidgin' English ... – an English-based
dialect spoken by many Nigerians. Its title means "soldier
boy". Influenced by James Joyce, Saro-Wiwa had already
experimented with the vernacular style while still an
undergraduate student. The story was partly based on Saro-Wiwa's
own experiences and was about a young man who serves as a soldier
during the Biafran War. Saro-Wiwa dedicated Adaku and Other
Stories (1989) to his sisters and depicted in its stories 'the
condition of women'. Lemona's Tale (1996), published
posthumously, also examined the role of women in changing society.
"For young people Saro-Wiwa wrote an
extremely popular series created around a character called Basi.
For the humorous television series Basi & Company, set
in Lagos, he wrote and produced more than 150 episodes. The series
was cancelled by the military dictatorship in 1992. Several of its
scripts were adapted into children's books. At the height of his
career, he wrote and published seven books in one year.
Saro-Wiwa's success as a writer was shadowed by a family tragedy.
His son, who was an Eton student, died during a rugby game. The
death was a deep blow to the author. He had sent five of his
children to private schools in England, hoping that they would all
return to Nigeria and contribute to the development of the
country.
"In 1990 Saro-Wiwa founded the
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). A more
radical youth movement, also founded by Saro-Wiwa, was reputedly
engaged in sabotage against Shell. The company decided to cease
operations in Ogoniland in 1993. In Nigeria, The Brink of
Disaster and Genocide in Nigeria (1992), Saro-Wiwa
criticized corruption and condemned Shell and British Petroleum.
The Nigerian government decided to break MOSOP and Saro-Wiwa was
arrested and a number of his supporters and relatives were slain
at Giokoo. In his letter, which was written in prison and
published in May 1955 in the Mail and the Guardian,
Saro-Wiwa stated: 'Ultimately the fault lies at the door of the
British government. It is the British government which supplies
arms and credit to the military dictators of Nigeria, knowing full
well that all such arms will only be used against innocent,
unarmed citizens.'"
Source
Goldman
Prize: Recipient Profile Ken
Saro-Wiwa overview
Saro-Wiwa:
Right Livelihood Award Symbolic
funeral for Saro-Wiwa
1942 Peter Coyote, actor
1946
Charles Dance, actor
1946 John
Prine, singer
1946 Ben
Vereen, actor, dancer
1951
Ratu
Epeli Ganilau, Fijian soldier and statesman
1953 Midge
Ure, musician
1955 David Lee Roth, singer
1957 Rumiko Takahashi, Japanese manga artist
1958 Tanya Tucker, country music singer
1960 Eric
Martin, rock vocalist
1961 Jodi
Benson, cartoon voice-over actress and singer
1963 Daniel Pearl (d. 2002),
American journalist murdered by fanatical islamists
1963 Rebecca Pidgeon, actress
1963 Anita Mui (d. 2003),
singer
1973
Mario López, actor (Saved by the Bell)
Phew!!
Have a rest before the big This
day in history section
Send
a free e-card to friends and family for today's celebrations and any
topic
Do you forget
birthdays and anniversaries? Schedule
your cards
to be sent during the coming year.
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
Chinese
Moon Festival
Varies Rosh
Hashanah
Varies
Navratri
Varies Dussehra
Varies
Ramadan
Varies
Durga
Puja
Second
Mon. in Oct. Canadian
Thanksgiving
![Ramadan [ Sep 24 - Oct 23 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/ramadan.gif) ![Canadian Thanksgiving [ Oct 9]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_eoct_canadianthanksgiving_1_3.gif) ![Boss's Day [ Oct 16 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_eoct_boss_1_2.gif) ![Sweetest Day [ Oct 21]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_eoct_sweetday_1_5.jpg)
October
9 Children's
Day
9 Leif
Erikson Day
9 Clergy
Appreciation Day
11 "You
Go, Girl" Day
11 Sausage
Pizza Day
12 Columbus
Day (USA)
13 Dessert
Day
13 Train
Your Brain Day
14 Honey
Bee Day
14 World
Egg Day
15 Sweetest
Day
15 Grouch
Day
15 Sewing
Lovers Day
15 Mother's
Day (Paraguay)
16 Bosses'
Day
16 Dictionary
Day
16 Oatmeal
Day
17 Pasta
Day
17 Black
Poetry Day
17 Gaudy
Day
18 Chocolate
Cupcake Day
18 Watch
A Squirrel Day
18 Alaska
Day
18 Boost
Your Brain Day
18 Long
Distance Day
18 St
Luke's Feast Day
19 Electricity
Day
19 Change
Your Life Day
19 Look
Back On Your Life Day
... 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
19 Death of
Germanicus,
father of Caligula
and brother of Claudius.
680
Battle of Karbala: Shia Imam Husayn
bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was decapitated
by forces under Caliph
Yazid I. This
is commemorated by Shi'a Muslims as Aashurah.
Battle of Tours
732 Battle
of Tours, near Poitiers,
France: The
governor of Cordoba,
Abd-ar-Rahman
and
his Moorish army were defeated by Charles
Martel ('Charles the Hammer'; 676 - 741), leader of the Franks. The result of this battle stopped the
northward advance of Islam
from Spain.
Contemporaries, from the Venerable Bede in Northumbria
to Theophanes
in Constantinople
carefully recorded this battle.
"In 610 Mohammed had received his call. He began to preach and
after many hardships developed a significant following. Within a hundred
years Islam had grown into a mighty empire. It conquered much of the Middle
East, North Africa, Spain and Southern Italy. The Mediterranean became an
Islamic lake. This had tremendous implications for Christianity, because
those areas had formerly been Christian. That Islam did not capture all of
Europe and wipe out Christianity is owing in part to the Franks' Mayor of
the Palace, Charles Martel, and his sturdy Merovingian knights." Source
1459 Death of Gianfrancesco Poggio Bracciolini
(b. 1380), Italian humanist,
classicist.
1471
The
Battle of Brunkeberg in Stockholm: Sten Sture the Elder, the Regent of Sweden, with help
of farmers and miners, repelled an
attack by Christian I, King
of Denmark.
1575
The Battle of Dormans: Catholic
forces under Duke Henry of Guise defeated the Protestants,
capturing Philippe de Mornay among others.
1718 Wealthy British merchant,
Elihu Yale, made a donation of gifts
worth $US1,470 to American Puritan leader Cotton Mather for the establishment of
Yale
University in New
Haven, Connecticut,
USA.
1729 English
gentleman, John Hobson, saw a strange light in the sky, according to his diary:
"At Birchhouse. At Mearsbrough dike, as I
was comming home, I saw the apearance of a very bright star, as I thought,
northwards, over Barnsly, pretty nigh the horizon; it was of the bigness of
Venus, but of a fiery red coulour. It twinkled like a fixed star, and was of
an ovall figure, the longer diameter being perpendicular to the horizon. I
kept my eye fix't upon it, whilst I came to the top of the hill, when it
disappeared at once, like the extinguishing of a candle, leaving no marks
behind it. It seemed to be then about 20 degrees high, and the night was so
cloudy and misty that there was not the least appearance of a star besides,
which makes me think it was non. It was about nine a clock at night." [sic]
1758 England: Townsfolk invaded the Justices
meeting at Dunchurch and seized the lists from which locals were to be chosen
for compulsory army service. Though three of the crowd were apprehended, two of
them were liberated in Coventry, on their way to Warwick Gaol.
Source: The Daily Bleed
1780 The Great Hurricane of 1780, deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history,
struck at Barbados, killing more than 4,000. In the following three days, the
storm destroyed English, Spanish and French fleets, and directly struck a number
of Caribbean islands. The final death toll was
approximately 20 - 30,000.
Source: The Daily Bleed
1789 Dr Joseph-Ignace
Guillotin (1738 -
1814), French physician,
proposed to the French legislative Assembly the guillotine,
the decapitation device that bears his name.
"Guillotin belonged to a small reform
movement that sought to banish the death penalty completely. On October 10th
1789 – the second day of the debate about France's penal code – Guillotin
proposed six articles to the new Legislative Assembly. In one of them he
proposed that 'the criminal shall be decapitated; this will be done solely by
means of a simple mechanism.' This was defined as a 'machine that beheads
painlessly'. This uniform method of executing was to replace the inhumane
methods such as burning, mutilation, drowning, and hanging. An easy death – so
to speak – was no longer to be the prerogative of nobles. Guillotin also
wanted the machine to be hidden from the view of large crowds, in accord with
his view that the execution should be private and dignified …
"Guillotin argued
for a painless and private capital punishment method equal for all the classes,
as an interim step towards completely banning the death penalty. His colleagues,
however, laughed when he claimed that a machine he had designed could cause
immediate and painless separation of the head from the trunk. It was not until
1791 that a law was passed that everyone condemned to death in France should be
decapitated." Source
1794 The Russians crushed the rebel Polish army, taking its leader
prisoner.
1796 According to sports historian, Prof.
Peter Radford, an English man named Weller might have run a four-minute mile, at
Oxford, UK. More at May 6,
1954 (Roger
Bannister).
1803 John Silkhorne became the first white man to die in the State
of Victoria, Australia.
Lewis and Clark on
the Lower Columbia by Charles
Marion Russell
1805 American explorers Lewis and Clark met
Nez Percé
native Americans, who offered food, helped them build canoes,
and guided them on their journey west. However, William Clark
wrote in his journal that the people were "verry Selfish and Stingey":
 "The Indians Came
down all the Courses of this river on each side on horses to view us as we were
descending.
"The Cho-pun-nish
or Pierced nose Indians are Stout likely men, handsom women, and verry dressey
in their way, the dress of the men are a White Buffalow robe or Elk Skin dressed
with Beeds which are generally white, Sea Shells and the Mother of Pirl hung to
their hair and on a piece of otter skin about their necks hair Ceewed in two
parsels hanging forward over their Sholders, feathers, and different Coloured
Paints which they find in their Countrey Generally white, Green and light Blue.
Some few were a Shirt of Dressed Skins and long legins and Mockersons Painted,
which appear to be their winters dress, with a plat of twisted grass about their
Necks.
"The women dress
in a Shirt of Ibex or Goat [bighorn] Skins which reach quite down to their
anckles with a girdle, their heads are not ornemented. their Shirts are
ornemented with quilled Brass, Small peces of Brass Cut into different forms,
Beeds, Shells curious bones andc. The men expose those parts which are generally
kept from few view by other nations but the women are more perticular than any
other nation which I have passed in secreting the parts.
"Their amusements
appear but few as their Situation requires the utmost exertion to procure food
they are generally employed in that pursute, all the Summer and fall fishing for
the Salmon, the winter hunting the deer on Snow Shoes in the plains and takeing
care of ther emence numbers of horses, and in the Spring cross the mountains to
the Missouri to get Buffalow robes and meet andc. at which time they frequently
meet with their enemies and lose their horses and maney of their people.
"Their disorders
are but few and those few of a scrofelous nature. they make great use of
Swetting. The hot and cold bathes, They are verry Selfish and Stingey of what
they have to eate or ware, and they expect in return Something for everything
given as presents or the survices whic they doe let it be however Small, and
fail to make those returns on their part." [sic]
Bernard DeVoto, the editor of the journals,
called this last remark "unjust", considering the hospitality with which the
Nez Percés had received them.
"Nez Perce is a
misnomer given by the interpreter of the Lewis and Clark expedition at the time
they first encountered the tribe in 1805. It is from the French,
'pierced nose.' This is an inaccurate description of the tribe. They
did not practice nose piercing or wearing ornaments. The 'pierced
nose' tribe, though related to the Nez Perce, actually lived on and around
the lower Columbia River, and in
other areas of the Pacific Northwest."
Source: Wikipedia
1827 Death of Ugo Foscolo,
Italian writer.
1837 Charles Fourier (b. 1772), French utopian theorist,
died.
See
Kenneth
Rexroth on Fourier, in Communalism
1845 In Annapolis, Maryland, the Naval School (later
renamed the United States Naval Academy) opened with
50 midshipmen students and seven professors.
1865 The celluloid
billiard ball was patented by John
Wesley Hyatt, winning $10,000 in a contest to come up with a substitute for the
ivory ball (in use at the time).
1868 Carlos
Céspedes issued the
Grito
de Yara from his plantation,
La Demajagua, proclaiming Cuba's independence.
1872 Death of William
H Seward, USA Secretary of State.
1875 Death of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy,
novelist, poet and dramatist.
1877 USA: Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer was given a funeral
with full military honours.
 The Bermagui Mystery
1880
Australia: At about 4:30
pm, William Johnston found a 6.7 m (22
ft) boat on Mutton Fish Point (also known as Corunna Point), about 14 km
(approx. 8 or 9 miles)
north of Bermagui,
a village on the south coast of New
South Wales.
The boat, made of cedar, pine and hardwood, had a hole in her
starboard bow and contained some large stones, apparently to weigh it down. The
hull was completely crushed in on the port side, and a bullet was later found in
the knee of the after thwart on the starboard side. Lamont Young, a 29-year-old
geological surveyor from the NSW Mines Department, and his four companions
(including Daniel
Casey, Thomas Towers and William Lloyd) who ought to have been aboard, were nowhere in sight, and have never
been found. Suspicion fell on a number of people, including Lamont's assistant
and the fifth member of the disappeared party,
a German named Karl Schneider. Schneider (full name Maximilian Karl Waldemar
Schneider) had arrived in Sydney in December the previous year, having worked
his passage on the barque Cesar Godfrey.
"Wanting to investigate possible sites further
north Young and his assistant were offered passage on a small boat with the
owner, Thomas Towers of Batemans Bay, and two of his friends. On the way all
five disappeared. At 11 am a passer-by saw the boat at Mutton Fish Point,
noted it was stationary and concluded there was only one man on board. On his
return journey he noted that the vessel was stranded on the rocks and that
no-one was on board. He raised the alarm and the authorities found that the
boat contained five bags full of clothing, Young's books and papers, a bullet
in its starboard side and some vomit. The craft was staved in and there was no
sign of the men. Subsequent searches, rewards, government inquiries and wide
media coverage turned up the remnants of a fire, some food and three shirt
studs. The mystery was never solved. A monument was erected at the site in
1980 to mark the centenary. To get to Mystery Bay take the Tilba Road 10 km
north until it rejoins the Princes Highway, continue north along the highway
for 7 km then take the signposted turnoff to the right." Source
Three
decades later, while visiting the South Coast, Australian author and poet Henry
Lawson mentioned the mystery in a sketch called 'Bermagui – In a Strange Sunset' (published in
The Bulletin, 1910):
"BERMAGUI: Where The Mystery was - and where
mystery is. Sunset, and a sad, old mysterious bright gold fan-like to dull
copper one. Red flag with broad white cross; gloomy and half fearful, half
threatening in sunset glare.
"Sort of jumbled curve of bay – sand, rotten
rock and beach scrub and tussock. As if it were meant to be a clean curve with
white sand. But juttings-out of rotting earth and sand and bastard rock that
were not 'points' nor anything else were left - mixed up with scraggy bush and
scrub and coarse tufts that Nature forgot, or hadn't time to shove away and
tidy up. Scene started in a hurry, left half finished, and – forgotten. Blue
hill – or bastard mountain – to the west, running down to pygmy peak at
the end of it: Mount Dromedary – and looks like it. Tired, sulky, obstinate
old Dromedary in the dusk, shutting out daylight. Point same rotten clay or
rock topped with a fringe of bastard, scraggy, half-dead trees. Stacks of
sleepers, sleepers, sleepers and sawn timber along darkening clay road. Jumble
of sand, and mongrel scrub, and tussock, and Beach Hotel. Sort of regular
jumble of weatherboard shanties. All seem to face sunset with guilty, guilty,
glazed and glaring eyes turned towards where, far out at the end of the
Mountain, Lamont Young's party were lost – or not lost – nearly thirty
years ago. One house, back half behind clump of decent trees to the left, with
only one guilty, glassy, brassy eye visible from deck. Showing well above
jumble of houses on hill at the back, one small, oblong, weatherboard, bare,
verandahless 'cottage' with two eyes more glassy, more glaring, more blaring,
and guiltier than all the rest, against sunset." Source
See
Cyril Pearl, Five Men Vanished: The Bermagui Mystery, Marlin Books
(Hutchinson Group), Australia, 1978
Aussie
mysteries in the Book of Days: Beaumont
children Bogle-Chandler
A
dingo took my baby
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson Crime
in Australia
1881 Opening of the Savoy
Theatre, London.
1881 English naturalist Charles Darwin published The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms,
With Observations on Their Habits, the result of 45 years of study. He
considered it his major work, even greater than On the Origin
of Species.
1886 The tuxedo
jacket made its debut in the USA. The tail-less dress coat, first introduced in
England, was worn for the first time in America at the Tuxedo Club in New York.
Most of the guests at the club were shocked by its informality, but the tuxedo
jacket eventually became more popular than the tailcoat, and remains so today.
In some Anglophone countries it is called a 'dinner jacket'.
Source: The Daily Bleed
1891 Australian bushranger Harry Power
drowned after falling into the Murray River at Swan Hill, Victoria. Power (real
name Henry Johnson) was a career criminal whose apprentice in 1869 was
15-year-old Edward Kelly – better known as the doyen of bushrangers, Ned Kelly.
Highwaymen,
outlaws, bushrangers, pirates, gangsters, etc in the Book of Days
1903 British suffragette Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst
formed the Women's Social and Political Union in Manchester to fight for
female emancipation.
A
world chronology of women's suffrage
US
chronology Louisa
Lawson, Australian suffragette
Pic: The cast of Porgy and Bess is
pictured during the first week of the show's Boston tryout,
prior to its Broadway opening, October 10, 1935 (photo by Richard Tucker)
1910
Porgy
and Bess
by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin opened on
Broadway. It is called by many the first American opera.
1911 The Wuchang
Uprising which led to the demise of Qing
Dynasty , the last imperial court in China, and the
founding of the Republic of China.
1913 US
President Woodrow Wilson
(no relation) triggered the explosion of the Gamboa Dike, thus ending construction on the Panama
Canal. Wilson pressed
a button in the White House Oval Office which detonated explosives more than
6,400 km away in Panama, clearing the final stretch of the famed canal.
1920 The Carinthian Plebiscite determined that the
larger part of Carinthia became part of Austria.
1933 USA: A United
Airlines Boeing 247 was destroyed by sabotage while
en route from Cleveland
to Chicago,
the first such proven case in the
history of commercial aviation.
1935
Australia: "On October 10th, 1935, an off duty military man took what was
possibly Australia's first UFO photograph at Nobby's Head near Newcastle, NSW.
Although the photos are now apparently unavailable, investigators who saw the
photo during 1968-69 reported it showed 'a definite circular object with details
seen well at enlargement.'"
Source
More on Australian UFOs,
Tully and Aboriginal experiences, at the Book of Days
1938 USA/Canada: The Blue
Water Bridge opened, connecting Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia,
Ontario
1939 World War
II: The Munich Agreement ceded the Sudetenland
to Germany.
1940 A German bomb destroyed the high altar of St Paul's Cathedral
in London.
1944 Holocaust:
Eight-hundred Gypsy children were systematically murdered at Auschwitz
death camp.
1946
Noakhali Massacre,
India, in which many thousands of Hindu men, women and children were killed by
Muslim fanatics. Several villages were completely destroyed.
1954 Ho Chi Minh returned to Hanoi as the French evacuated.
1955 Mrs Theresa Taylor, of
Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne, England,
saw a bead of moisture form in the left eye of a statue of the Madonna before
which she was praying. Later, neighbours claimed to see a flow of tears.
1957 USA President Dwight D Eisenhower
apologised to the finance
minister of Ghana,
Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, after Gbdemah was refused
service in a Dover, Delaware restaurant.
1957
Cumbria, England: Fire at the
Windscale nuclear facility caused radiation
leakage and contaminated milk in a 200-mile radius with Iodine-131. The
contaminated milk was dumped into the Irish
Sea.
1965 USA: Yale University announced publication
of 'The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation', the Vinland Map purportedly drawn
about 1440 based on 13th-century recordings of the early 11th-Century Norse
expedition to North America. The Leif
Erikson expedition was not in dispute,
but this map certainly was – from both chemical and linguistic analysis, style
and orientation of the map, and details that appeared to be copied form a
Portuguese map of 1503. Yale stood by the authenticity of the map.
Source: The Daily Bleed
1966 Simon and Garfunkel released the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1970 Fiji became
independent.
1970 In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hit Canada when Quebec
Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre
Laporte became the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.
1971 Sold, dismantled and moved to the United
States, the London Bridge reopened in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, USA.
1973 Disgraced
Vice President of the United States,
Spiro
Agnew, resigned after having been charged with federal income tax
evasion.
Under
investigation for taking kickbacks and bribes, Agnew pleaded
nolo contendere
to a charge of income tax evasion.
When
John Ehrlichman asked Richard Nixon why he kept Agnew on the ticket in the 1972
election, the US president replied,
"No assassin in his right mind would kill me. They know that if they did that
they would wind up with Agnew."
1975 Richard Burton and
Elizabeth Taylor
remarried in Botswana.
1978 USA: President Jimmy
Carter signed a bill into law that authorised the minting of the Susan B Anthony dollar.
1979 The French satirical newspaper,
Le Canard enchaîné,
claimed that French president Valér Giscard d'Estaing had accepted a gift of
diamonds from Marshal Jean Bedel Bokassa, the deposed leader of the Central
African Republic. The opposition Socialist Party demanded an inquiry.
1985 United States Navy F-14 fighter jets intercepted
an Egyptian plane
carrying the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijackers
and forced it to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily where they were arrested.
1986 An earthquake
measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale struck San
Salvador, El Salvador, killing an estimated 1,500 people.
1987 Fiji became a republic.
1987 West Germany: 30,000 demonstrated against a
nuclear power plant, Wackersdorf.
1995
Foundation of the Cuban Council (Concilio Cubano), a coalition of 130 civic, political, labor, and human rights organizations.
The coalition had the following mutual points of agreement: respect for human rights, amnesty for all political prisoners, and the re-establishment of the rule of
law for all Cubans inside and outside of Cuba.
Source
1995 A transcript was released by the US Chief of
Naval Operations of an actual radio conversation between a US naval ship and
Canadian lighthouse authorities off the coast of Newfoundland:
Americans: "Please divert your course 15
degrees to the North to avoid a collision."
Canadians: "Recommend you divert your
course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision."
Source: The Daily Bleed
1997 Jody Williams
(b. 1950) and the
International Campaign
to Ban Landmines won the Nobel Peace Prize.
 2000
Forty-four years after it was thrown from a
ship in the Indian Ocean, a message in a bottle was found in New Zealand near
the home of Austrian-born author, Hans Schwarz – the man who had thrown it in
the first place. While sailing to Melbourne, Australia in 1956, to attend the
Olympic Games, Schwarz had thrown the same bottle into the ocean, with a note
for a "dusky Pacific maiden". Schwarz, born in 1934, wrote the
message in English and German. The bottle was found by a man living about 70 km
north of Wellington, New Zealand where Schwarz was residing.
2000 Australian Communist labor union organiser, Vince Englart
(b. 1923), died.
When
his family attempted to place a death notice with the Brisbane Courier Mail
newspaper (part of the Rupert Murdoch News Limited empire), it was rejected.
Even the funeral director was shocked that a family term of endearment, "the
decrepit old bastard", was rejected for publication.
We
must correct others, even if not rewarded, because of a natural revulsion at
people doing wrong; especially when it involves a public good. Besides, who
hasn't made mistakes?
From Vince Englart's 'Parable of
the Sundial'
Source: The Daily Bleed
2001 USA: President George
W Bush announced an FBI
list of the 22
Most Wanted Terrorists, with
their photos.
Myths
of the War on Terrorism and Iraq
2003 Iranian
human rights activist,
Shirin Ebadi
(b. 1921), was
awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for
democracy and human rights, especially women's and children's rights.
First Muslim woman to win the Nobel
"OSLO,
Norway – Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, one of the Islamic
country's first female judges, won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for
her work fighting for democracy and the rights of women and children.
"Ebadi, 56, the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to win
the prize, has worked actively to promote peaceful, democratic
solutions in the struggle for human rights ..."
Source
Tomorrow: Drinking festivals
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
|
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Navratri
(Navaratri; Navratra) and Durga Puja, Hindu
(Oct 10 - 18,
2005)
