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I was born on 21st October 1788, a day subsequently rendered memorable by being that on which the victory of Trafalgar was gained. My mother used to observe jocularly that my advent to the world prevented her from attending the public celebration of the centenary of the "Glorious Eevolu-tion" of 1688, which took place early in the November following the date of my birth. Whether the themes of liberty, which she would be hearing and reading about as that time approached, had any effect in modifying the cerebral organism of her babe, I do not know; but certain it is that she then gave birth to a child whose ruling passion through life was to act the part of a reformer.
George Combe, Scottish phrenologist, born on October 21, 1788

When yet a child I was animated by the strongest ambition to do some great and good service to my fellowmen, which should render me an object of their love and respect. I conjured up schemes in my imagination for the gratification of the desire until I wept in contemplating them ... I owe to Phrenology, presented to me by mere accident, a field in which it has been possible for me to pursue this object ...
George Combe

England expects that every man will do his duty.
Signal hoisted on Lord Nelson's flagship Victory prior to the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805

I thank God I have done my duty. Kiss me, Hardy.
Lord Nelson, to Captain Thomas Hardy, as Nelson lay dying on the deck of the Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar

Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years has been attempting to beat off pain by a constant return to the vice that reproduces it.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and opium-eater, born October 21, 1772; in a letter to Cottle, the Bristol bookseller

I have heard Coleridge talk, with eager musical energy, two stricken hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers.
Thomas Carlyle, on Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Beneath this sod
A Poet lies; or that which once was he.
O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.
That he, who many a year with toil of breath,
Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death.
Coleridge's self-written epitaph

Death of Nelson, by James Gilray

Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret Read MacDonald

2006 Witches' Cal

2006 Daily Planetary Guide

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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The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe

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Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Religion, Literature & Art (Seyffert)

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Feast day of Blessed Karl I of Austria

Pope John Paul II prepares Austrian emperor for sainthood

"The last emperor of Austria, Karl I, will be beatified by the Pope tomorrow amid fierce political and religious argument over how saintly he really was.

"While Austrian monarchists are delighted to see the first member of the defunct Habsburg dynasty set on the path to sainthood, critics claim that Karl I was an alcoholic adulterer who advocated the use of poison gas in the First World War.

"But the Vatican insists that he performed a miracle – the requirement for beatification. In 1960 a Polish nun based in Brazil was cured of severe leg sores and varicose veins after praying to him [What more proof do these skeptics want?! – PW]."
Source: Telegraph UK

"So why has the Pope beatified a man who seems to have done so little to have deserved it and so much – 10,000 dead, gassed Italians – to disqualify him? Is it, perhaps, because Karl was once titular Grand Duke of Kraków, and His Holiness was once Archbishop and Grand Metropolitan of the same city? Or is it simply because the time has finally come for the grand old man to retire?"   Source

Austria's last emperor was a saint, some say; others disagree

Feast day of St Charles of Austria

Feast day of St Finian Munnu, abbot, in Ireland

Feast day of St Gaspare of Bufalo

Feast day of St Gebizo

Feast day of St Gundisalvus of Lagos

Feast day of St Hilarion, abbot and anchorite

St Hilarion was an anchorite (hermit) who spent most of his life in the desert according to the example of Saint Anthony the Great (Anthony of Egypt). Hilarion was born in Thabatha, south of Gaza in Palestine of pagan parents. 

Hilarius went to the area southwest of Majoma, the port of Gaza, that was limited by the sea at one and marshland at the other side. It was the abode of robbers. With him he took only a shirt of coarse linen, a cloak of skins given to him by St Anthony and a coarse blanket. He led a nomadic life, subsisting only on dried figs, eaten after sunset.

After he was beset by carnal thoughts, he reduced his diet to the juice of herbs and less figs. Cold showers not being available, he took to praying, singing, the hoeing of the soil and the production of baskets made from rushes. Although he was quite starved, "so wasted that his bones scarcely held together" (St Jerome) he still had visions of naked women, voluptuous meals, chariots and gladiatorial contests. Often he heard voices, of infants or of domestic animals, which he identified as demons.

He finally built a hut of reeds and sedges, in which he lived for four years. Afterwards, he constructed a tiny low ceilinged cell, "a tomb rather than a house", where he slept on a bed of rushes, recited the Bible or sang hymns.

He never washed his clothes, changed them only when they fell apart and shaved his hair only once a year. He was once visited by robbers, but they left him alone when they learned that he did not fear death (and had nothing worth stealing, anyway), promising to mend their ways.

Jerome gives a detailed account of his diet:

• from 20-23: half a pint of lentils moistened with cold water
• 23-27: dry bread with salt and water
• 27-30: wild herbs and roots
• 31-35: six ounces of barley bread, and boiled vegetables without oil

After that, he suffered from signs of malnutrition, his eye-sight grew poor, his body shrivelled and he developed dry mange and scabs, so he had to slightly modify his diet.

• 35-63: six ounces of barley bread, and boiled vegetables with oil
• 63-80: six ounces of water, boiled vegetables with oil and a broth made from flour and crushed herbs, taken after sunset

After he had lived in the wilderness for 22 years, he became quite famous in Palestine. Visitors started to come, begging for his help.

His first miracle was when he cured a woman from Eleutheropolis who had been barren for 15 years. After that, he cured blindness, raised children from the dead, healed a paralysed charioteer, expelled demons, and even cured horses affected by evil magic, and a mad Bactrian Camel. In time, a monastery grew around his cell, which was so beset by visitors, especially females, that Hilarion fled. After numerous adventures, always beset by enthusiastic visitors seeking his help, Hilarion died in Cyprus in 371 CE.

Feast day of St Hugh of Ambronay

Feast day of St Imana of Loss

Feast day of St John of Bridlington

Feast day of St Margaret Clitherow

Feast day of St Wendelin

Trafalgar Day
Celebrated throughout much of the British Empire in the 19^th  and early 20^th Century.  

Palolo Worm
Southern Pacific; Leodice viridis, breaks off the posterior part of its body when breeding on the day of the first quarter of the October - November moon. If you want a good bit of software to work out when that is, I highly recommend Lunabar, which sits quietly on your desktop (I have no commercial interest in it, and it's free anyway).

"The nút, known commonly as the Palolo worm (Annelid palolo viridis or Eunice virldis in Oceania; Leodice viridis in Island South East Asia), is a marine creature which lives in the crevices of coral reefs across the Pacific Ocean and is particularly abundant in Melanesian waters. For the greater part of its life, the Palolo remains within its coral abode and is rarely visible. But on two specific days in every lunar year, the rear end of all the Palolo worms, which can measure from one to five inches in length, simultaneously detach themselves from their parent body and rise to the surface of the Melanesian seas in order to participate in a massive breeding frenzy (the Palolo worm itself remains safely within the reef and gradually grows back to full size). In this part of Remote Oceania, the first such emergence of the Palolo begins in the morning, around five to seven days after the last full moon in October."   Source

More phenology (Nature/calendar relationships) in the Book of Days

A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac

International Day of the Nacho
Celebrated in the United States and Mexico since the early 1990s.

Sweetest Day
Celebrated mostly in the Midwest United States (2006).

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

1449 George, Duke of Clarence

1660 Georg Ernst Stahl, German scientist

1760 Japanese painter, engraver and printmaker

1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (d. July 25, 1834), British romantic poet.

Coleridge and the poet Robert Southey were brothers-in-law (they married two sisters, penniless like themselves). Southey went about his poetry with all the regularity of a bank clerk, while Coleridge would spend whole days in dreaming and desultory reading. A vicar's son, he dropped out of Cambridge and wandered the streets of London until destitute. He met Southey at Oxford and the two poets planned a utopian society based on what they called 'Pantisocracy'.

Coleridge started a newspaper called  the Watchman, but it lasted only ten issues. He was friendly with William Wordsworth, with whom he stayed at Nether Stowey, where he composed much of the poetry for which he is justly famous.

The Wedgwood pottery family of magnates gave him funds to go to Germany to study. On his return he changed from a Revolutionist to a Conservative, and from a Unitarian to an English Churchman. He started a periodical, the Friend, but it ran only 27 issues. He was not of the right nature to run a periodical, with its deadlines. His earnings were spent in pursuit of opium, to which he was addicted. He was well aware of the desperation of his addiction, but did not have the strength to resist. A surgeon named Gilman helped him kick the habit and he spent the last years of his life quite happily, near London.

Early progressives in the Book of Days    CounterCulture Wiki    Coleridge poems online    More

1788 George Combe (d. 1858), the most prolific British phrenologist of the 19^th Century, whose Constitution of Man sold approximately 350,000 copies between 1828 and 1900, a sales figure almost unmatched at the time

"Combe's nephew Sir James Cox later recalled that Combe had a 'strong desire for posthumous fame'.

"In short, Combe was something of an opinionated egoist and exceedingly keen on acquiring as much attention for himself as possible-so long as it was respectable. As an egotistical phrenologist he was in good company. The history of phrenology could be written as the biographies of egotistical men, beginning with Gall, Spurzheim (the two indeed may have parted over a clash of egos), Combe, H.C. Watson, Charles Caldwell, and John Elliotson, for whom Cooter remarked phrenology was an 'egotistically satisfying means of affronting the conventional.' It should not be taken as censure to appeal to these character traits for the leading phrenologists. Instead it seems these character traits are important parts of the explanation for their behaviour. Phrenology attracted such men because of its promise of superlative intellectual authority with minimal effort."   Source

Phrenology    The History of Phrenology on the Web

The Constitution of Man in Relation to External Objects (8th ed., 1847)

Gibbon, Charles, The Life of George Combe: Author of 'The Constitution of Man', 2 vols., Macmillan and Co., London, 1878 (RTF document)

 

1790 Alphonse de Lamartine (d. February 28, 1869), French writer, poet (considered to be the first French romantic poet) and politician famous for his partly autobiographical poem, 'Le Lac' ('The Lake')

1821 The Monster of Glamis (reportedly a deformed member of the British peerage kept in seclusion in Glamis Castle, Scotland; whether fact or myth is hard to determine)

1833 Alfred Nobel (d. 1896), Swedish chemist and industrialist,  inventor of dynamite whose estate provided the capital for the Nobel Prize

1842 Thomas Price (Colonel Tom Price; d. July 3, 1911), soldier, lieutenant-colonel in Victoria's Permanent Military Forces. In Melbourne on August 30, 1890, during the Maritime Strike, Price earned the wrath of the nascent labor movement by telling his men that if they were commanded to fire on protesting strikers they should "fire low and lay the disturbers of law and order out so that their duty would not have to be performed again!'"

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1895 Edna Purviance (d. 1958), actress

1912 Sir Georg Solti (d. 1997), conductor

1914 Martin Gardner, American writer on mathematics and games

1917 Dizzy Gillespie (d. 1993), American trumpet player, an originator of Bebop (Night in Tunisia)

1920 Hy Averback (d. 1997), film and television director

1921 Malcolm Arnold, British composer

1924 Celia Cruz (d. 2003), singer

1929 Ursula K Le Guin, American science fiction author

1940 Manfred Mann, English rock musician

1941 Steve Cropper, musician

1942 Elvin Bishop, musician

1942 Judge Judy Sheindlin, American judge, television host

1943 Tariq Ali, British-Pakistani writer (Bush in Babylon), activist and filmmaker, a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review, and regular contributor to The Guardian, Counterpunch, and the London Review of Books. In the 1960s, he was drawn into revolutionary socialist politics through his involvement with The Black Dwarf newspaper; he became a Trotskyist but rejected that ideology. He was the inspiration for the Rolling Stones' song 'Street Fighting Man', recorded in 1968. Ali was one of 19 signatories of the Porto Alegre Manifesto.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list

1949 Benjamin Netanyahu, the 9^th Prime Minister of Israel

1955 Rich Mullins (d. 1997), American musician

1956 Carrie Fisher, American actress (Star Wars) and novelist (Postcards from the Edge)

1972 Felicity Andersen, actress

 

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

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