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Farewell, my children, forever. I am going to your father.
Last words of French Queen Marie Antoinette, who was executed on October 16, 1793

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

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

I think I am rather more than a Socialist. I am something of an Anarchist, I believe.
Oscar Wilde

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue.
Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry

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

Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations

Life in a Medieval Village

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Medieval Celebrations

Women's Activism and Globalization

The Atlas of Holy Places and Sacred Sites

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The Clash of Civilizations

Imperial Crusades

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

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


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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

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World hunger in the news

Take action! Action page in the Scriptorium

"Egyptian:  Month of Koiak corresponds roughly with this date on the Gregorian Calendar. – Netjer of the Month: Sekhmet."   Source

Sekhmet in the Book of Days

Niihama Drum Festival, Niihama, Ehime, Japan (Oct 16 - 18)
A festival going back more than three centuries. Each drum float, or Taiko-dai, decorated with cloth woven with gold and silver tassles, weighs about two tons.  It is carried by teams of over 150 men called Kakifu.  More than 30 drums and their Kakifu teams parade throughout the town, and competitions are held at three places of the city.

"Nepal: Lakshmi Puja - festival of lights in honor of the Goddess Lakshmi."   Source

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

Feast day of St Amandus of Limoges

Feast day of St Anicet Koplinski

Feast day of St Bercharius

Feast day of St Bertrand of Comminges

Feast day of St Gall, abbot
(Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Saint Gall or Gallus (c. 550 - c. 646) was an Irish disciple and one of the traditionally twelve companions of St Columbanus on his mission from Ireland to the continent and established themselves with him at first at Luxeuil in Gaul.

Feast day of St Gerald

Feast day of St Gerard Majella

Feast day of St Hedwig of Andechs
This Polish saint (Polish: Św. Jadwiga Śląska) was born in 1174 in Castle Andechs, Bavaria, the daughter of Berthold III, count of Tirol and prince of Carinthia and Istria (Andechs-Meran), and his wife Agnes. Died October, 1243.

Feast day of St Lull (Lullus; Lullon), Archbishop of Mentz

Feast day of St Margaret Marie Alacoque
Marguerite Marie Alacoque, or Al Coq (July 22, 1647 - October 17, 1690) was a French nun of a mystic tendency, the founder of the devotion of the Sacred Heart. She established the feast of Corpus Christi, a festival in honour of the  Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ.

Feast day of St Mummolinus (Mummolin; Mommolin), Bishop of Noyon

Feast day of the Purity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days

Ram Mating Ceremony, Anatolia, Turkey (Oct 1 - 20)

Preaching of the Lion Sermon, St Katharine Cree (formerly Catherine Cree) Church, London

Each year on October 16 at St Katharine Cree Church, Leadenhall Street, London, a sermon used to be preached to commemorate 'the wonderful escape' of noted fishmonger, royalist and Lord Mayor of London (in 1646), Sir John Gayre (some sources give 'Gayer'), from a lion that he met in the desert whilst travelling in Turkey (Brewer says while shipwrecked on the coast of Africa; some sources say Arabia).

While Sir John knelt and prayed, the lion approached and sniffed him, circled him, then left him alone. In gratitude to God, Sir John bequeathed, by a will dated December 19, 1648, £200 for the relief of the poor on condition that a commemorative sermon was preached annually at the church, and this sermon traditionally contained verses from the Book of Daniel, in which the prophet Daniel was similarly spared being devoured by lions in their den.

"Sir John Gayer, Knt., left by will dated 19th Dec. 1648, £200 for an annual Sermon to be preached at St Catherine Cree Church, 'in memory of his deliverance from the paws of a lion in Arabia.' The sum of £10 is applied to the use of this charity as follows: £1 to the minister for a sermon on 16th October; 8s. to the clerk and sexton; and £8 17s. on the same day to the poor inhabitants."   Source

While Gayre might have knelt before a lion, history records that he would not kneel "as a delinquent" before the House of Lords. However, it was for High Treason (charged with having "traiterously and maliciously complotted, contrived, and actually levied War, against the King, Parliament, and Kingdom", source) that on September 25, 1647, with three of his aldermen, he ended up a prisoner in The Tower:

"Hereupon the Lords ordered that Sir John Gayre Knight now Prisoner in the Tower of London be brought to their Bar on Wednesday Morning next to receive this Charge of High Treason and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors brought up from the House of Commons against him and this Order to be directed to the Lieutenant of the Tower."   Source

Pictured: Daniel in the Lions' Den, by Briton Rivière (1840 - 1920)

Epitaph of a John Gayre    More images of Daniel in the lions' den

"Greece: Festival of Pandrosos."   Source

Feast of 'Ilm (Knowledge) – First day of the 12^th month of the Bahá'í Calendar

Boss's Day (Bosses Day; Bosses' Day), United States
Boss's Day is a United States secular holiday celebrated on October 16. It has traditionally been a day for employees to thank their superiors for being kind and fair throughout the year. The holiday has been the source of some controversy and criticism in the United States, where it is often mocked as a Hallmark Holiday.

Patricia Bays Haroski registered National Boss's Day with the US Chamber of Commerce in 1958. She was working for State Farm Insurance Company at the time and chose October 16 because it was the birthday of her loving boss, her father.

World Food Prize Day, Iowa and Minnesota, USA
Apparently aka Dr Norman E Borlaug Day

National Feral Cat Day, USA

Third Saturday in October, Frabjous Day   Source

Third Saturday in October, New River Gorge Bridge Day, Fayette County, West Virginia (WV), USA

On which day of the week were you born? Find out here

1430 James II of Scotland (d. 1460)

1483 Gasparo Contarini (d. 1542), Italian diplomat and cardinal

1663 Eugene of Savoy, general of the Austrian army

1714 Giovanni Arduino (d. 1795), geologist

1758 Noah Webster (d. April 15, 1843), American lexicographer

"Webster published his first dictionary of the English language in 1806, and in 1828 published the first edition of his An American Dictionary of the English Language, whose title reveals his ambitions. Webster changed the spelling of many words in his dictionaries in an attempt to make them more phonetic. Many of the differences between American English and other English variants evident today originated this way."   Source: Wikipedia

"Today when we spell the word 'catalog' instead of 'catalogue' we can thank a crotchety, humorless man for saving the wear on our fingers, not to mention savings on paper and those obscenely expensive inkjet printer cartridges. Oct 16 marks the birth anniversary of Noah Webster (1758-1843), who compiled the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the first authoritative lexicon of American English.  

"Webster believed in establishing cultural independence from Britain and as such he emphasized a distinct American spelling and pronunciation. His dictionary listed various unusual and shortened spellings of the words. He would have hardly imagined how the tide would turn one day. According to reports, more British and Australian children spell 'color' instead of 'colour', for example. Webster's suggestion of using 'tung' instead of 'tongue' didn't stick, though. As he said, 'the process of a living language is like the motion of a broad river which flows with a slow, silent, irresistible current.'"   Source

1815 Francis Lubbock (d. 1905), Governor of Texas

1854 Oscar Wilde (d. November 30, 1900), Irish playwright, novelist and poet (The Importance of Being Earnest; The Picture of Dorian Grey)

Imagine, if you will, that the spirit of Walt Whitman mysteriously comes to life in an autographed first edition of his famous anthology, 'Leaves of Grass', in Oscar Wilde's personal collection.

Imagine, too, that the ghost of Whitman swears to make amends for a great injustice done to the Irish playwright -- the forced auctioning of Wilde's beloved library.

Imagine that book passing through several hands, all the while containing 
the outraged soul of the American poet, who swears:

"Walt Whitman shall not sleep"

 

1861 JB Bury (d. 1927), British ancient historian

Daisy Bates and a group of Australian indigenous women, c. 1911

1863 Daisy Bates (Daisy May O'Dwyer; Kabbarli; d. April 18, 1951), Irish-born Australian woman who lived for more than three decades among desert Aboriginal people in tents in small settlements from Western Australia to the edges of the Nullarbor Plain, notably at Ooldea in South Australia. She was the author of The Passing of the Aborigines (1938) and wrote millions of words on Australia's indigenous people.

On March 13, 1884, she married legendary Australian horsebreaker and Bulletin poet, Breaker Morant, but kicked him out after he was caught stealing pigs. Or, so it is said. She married again, this time to John Bates, a breaker of wild horses, a bushman and drover, on February 17, 1885. The bigamous nature of their marriage (as she was still married to Morant) was kept secret during Bates's lifetime. In 1933, she was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King George V.

Much about Bates's life is uncertain, as it seems probable that she gave misinformation about her early days. It was not until long after her death that the true facts of her early life emerged. 'Kabbarli' was noted for wearing a Victorian style of dress in and out of the cities and well into the 20th Century. She was a friend of eccentric Sydney anthropologist Georgina King.

"From 1894 to 1899, she worked in London as a journalist while her family remained in Australia. Subsequently, she was commissioned by The Times to return to Australia and investigate the alleged cruelty to the Aboriginal population.

"Thus began her life living amongst the Aborigines, for 26 years from 1919 to 1945, all up some 35 years."   Source

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson    Bates links    More    More    And more

1886 David Ben-Gurion (d. 1973), Polish-born first Prime Minister of Israel

1888 Eugene O'Neill (d. 1953), American playwright (Long Day's Journey Into Night; The Iceman Cometh)

1890 Michael Collins (d. 1922), Irish patriot

1890 Paul Strand, photographer

1898 William O Douglas (d. 1980), justice of the United States Supreme Court

1900 Primo Conti, Futurist painter

1914 Zahir Shah, King of Afghanistan

1922 Max Bygraves, British entertainer

1923 Bert Kaempfert, German conductor and composer, who wrote many hits including 'Strangers in the Night', recorded by Frank Sinatra

1925 Angela Lansbury, English-born American actress (TV series Murder She Wrote)

1927 Günter Grass, German sculptor and novelist (The Tin Drum)

1931 Charles Colson, Watergate scandal conspirator

1936 Andrei Chikatilo, Russian serial killer

1936 Peter Bowles, English actor

1940 Barry Corbin, actor

1946 Suzanne Somers, actress

1947 Bob Weir, musician (Grateful Dead)

1952 Boogie Mosson, musician (P Funk)

1958 Tim Robbins, American actor, director, writer

1959 Gary Kemp, musician, actor

1962 Flea, bassist (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section

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