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I can still see the reproachful look he [Trotsky] gave Rivera when the latter maintained (which was hardly extravagant) that drawing had been in decline since the cave period …
French author, André Breton, radio interview with André Parinaud, 1952. Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist part of the USSR on October 23, 1926

The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things and yet are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
TS Eliot, Anglo-American poet, on October 23, 1950

You're either part of the problem or part of the solution. Why would anyone choose to shop in Wal-Mart or buy goods from a company that uses sweatshop labour in Nicaragua or Bangladesh?
Anita Roddick (October 23, 1942 - ), English businesswoman, social activist; interview, Ethical Matters magazine

If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.
Anita Roddick

I hope to leave my children a sense of empathy and pity and a will to right social wrongs.
Anita Roddick; in The Sunday Express, June 9, 1991

There is no scientific answer for success. You can't define it. You've simply got to live it and do it.
Anita Roddick

If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.
Anita Roddick

I wake up every morning thinking ... this is my last day. And I jam everything into it. There's no time for mediocrity. This is no damned dress rehearsal.
Anita Roddick   Source

Scorpio

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by Margaret Read MacDonald

Take It Personally

A Revolution in Kindness

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

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

Sun enters Scorpio, 8^th sign of the Zodiac

(Oct 23 - Nov 21)

Scorpius (the scorpion) is one of the constellations of the zodiac. In Western astrology it is known as 'Scorpio'. It lies between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east. It is a large constellation located in the Southern Hemisphere near the centre of the Milky Way.

According to Greek mythology, it corresponds to the scorpion which was sent by Gaia (or possibly the goddess Hera) to kill the hunter Orion, the scorpion rising out of the ground at the goddess's command to attack. We note that as Scorpius rises in the east, the constellation of Orion seems to die in the west. When Orion rises again, it may be seen as the deity's restoration. In the myth, this restoration to 'health' is performed by Aesculapius, the god of the healing art. As Orion rises in the east, he is 'crushed' by the constellation Ophiuchus, 'the serpent holder'. There was no classical god named Ophiuchus (which means 'toiling'), but the figure was thought to represent Aesculapius.

"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.'

"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

In many versions, however, Apollo sent the scorpion after Orion, having grown jealous of Artemis's attentions to the man. Later, to apologize for killing her friend, Apollo then helped Artemis hang Orion's image in the night sky. However, the scorpion was also placed up there, and every time it appears on the horizon, Orion starts to sink into the other side of the sky, still running from the attacker.

Scorpius also appears in one version of the fable of Phaethon, a foolish mortal who obtained permission to drive Apollo's sun-chariot for a day. The horses, already out of control in their sky journey, became scared when they encountered the great celestial scorpion with its sting raised to strike, and the inexperienced boy lost control of the chariot, as the sun wildly went about the sky. Finally, Jupiter struck him down with a thunderbolt to stop the rampage.

The astrological sign Scorpio (October 23 - November 21) is associated with the constellation. In some cosmologies, Scorpio is associated with the classical element Water, and thus called a Water Sign (with Cancer and Pisces). It is also one of the four Fixed signs (along with Taurus, Leo, and Aquarius). Its polar opposite is Taurus. Each astrological sign is assigned a part of the body, viewed as the seat of its power. Scorpio rules the genitals. The symbol for Scorpio is the scorpion. The qualities of Scorpio include: a lifelong fascination with sex, birth, and death, an extremely focused nature, penetrative insight, a strong sense of privacy, and an ability to subtly affect others in profound (often sexual) ways.

The Chinese included these stars in the Azure Dragon, a powerful but benevolent creature whose rising heralded Spring. To the Egyptians (for a period), the stars of Scorpius were seen as a serpent. In classical Greek and Roman times, the scorpion's huge claws included the stars that we now call Libra. 

To the Māori, Scorpius was seen as a magic fish-hook on which the fisherman demi-god Maui caught a large fish that was in fact a piece of land which then broke in two, forming the two main islands of Aotearoa, now called New Zealand. Then the hook was removed with great force from the islands, flying into the sky where it remains. In another version, the fish became the North Island and the boat's anchor became the South. The many valleys and mountains of the North Island were caused when Maui's brothers fought over the fish.

The scorpion's poison

According to folklore, scorpions carry with them an oil that is a remedy against their stings:

Tis true, a scorpion's oil is said
To cure the wounds the venom made.
And weapons dress'd with salves restore
And heal the hurts they gave before.
Samuel Butler; Hudibras, III, ii, 1029

Brewer (Ivor H Evans, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988) tells us that "the oil was extracted from the flesh and given to the sufferer as medicine; it was also supposed to be very useful to bring away the descending stone of the kidneys. Another belief was that if a scorpion was surrounded by a circle of fire it would sting itself to death with its own tail. Byron, in the Giaour (1. 422), extracts a simile from the legend:

The mind that broods o'er guilty woes
Is like the Scorpion girt by fire; ...
One sad and sole relief she knows,
The sting she nourished for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain."

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

Feast day of St Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius
Anicius ( 480 - 524 or 525) was a Christian philosopher of the 6^th Century.

Feast day of St Arnold Reche

Feast day of St Henry of Cologne
Having studied at  the university in Paris, Henry became one of the first Dominicans and was Cologne's first prior. Friend of Blessed Jordan. Died 1225.

Feast day of St Ignatius, Patriarch of Constantinople
Born around 799, Ignatius was the son of the Byzantine Emperor Michael I Rangabe and Prokopia. He became Patriach of Constantinople in 842. He made his reputation by fighting corruption in civil and religious life, even in the highest offices; he refused communion to Bardas Caesar due to his acts of incest. Because of his values, Ignatius was driven from his see for nine years, but eventually returned in triumph. Ignatius died on October 23, 877.

Feast day of St John Buoni

Feast day of St John of Capistrano (John Capistran; Giovanni da Capistrano)

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Feast day of St Josephine Leroux

Feast day of St Oda
St Oda was the wife of the Duke of Aquitaine. After his death she devoted her life and fortune to the care of the poor and suffering. Her shrine is at Amay, near Liege, France.  Died c. 723.   Source

Feast day of St Romanus, Archbishop of Rouen

Feast day of St Severinus Boethius, Archbishop of Cologne
Severinus (Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius) was a Roman statesman, philosopher and writer, born around 475 - 480. He was martyred in 524 or 525 at Pavia, where his relics are still kept.  He was canonized 1883. He is not to be confused with 'Another St Severin', patron of Bordeaux.

Feast day of St Severinus, patron of Bordeaux
Sometimes called 'Another Severin' to distinguish him from the saint of the same name, Archbishop of Cologne.

Feast day of St Theodoret of Antioch, priest and martyr
(Rushy starwort, Aster junicus, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days

Iga Ueno Tenjin Matsuri, Sugawara Shrine, Ueno, Mie Prefecture, Japan (Oct 23 - 25)
On October 23 and 24, locals and visitors enjoy lantern parades, a dashi parade in the daytime, strolling priests (yamabushi), a costume parade and mikoshi carried on young men's shoulders. On the 25^th, there is a procession of people disguised as demons that are said to dispel illness and bad luck.

Las golondrinas: the swallows of Capistrano depart

Swallows traditionally leave today from Goya, Corrientes province, Argentina, and return to Capistrano Mission, California, USA on or around St Joseph's Day (March 19) each year, greeted by large numbers of locals and visitors from all over the world. It is one of the planet's best-known equinox (or near-equinox) events.

In 1998, monks from the Mission had to entice the swallows with ladybugs and other insects, as renovations at Capistrano had frightened them away.

Origin of the Flight: Goya, Corrientes, Argentina

Final destination. Capistrano, California, USA

DATA

Distance of total flight . . . 12,000 km. 
Distance of each segment . . . 450 km. 
Number of segments . . . 30 
Type of flight . . . . . VFR (daylight) 
Total Real time of flight. . 450 hours 
Total calendar time . . . 30 days 
Total fuel consumption . . . 120 gm. 
Fuel performance . . . 0.01 gm. Grams per kilometer 
Cruising velocity . . . . 30 km./hour 
P.M.D. (maximum weight at takeoff). 280 gm. 

Source

The legend of the swallows    Swallows of Capistrano, image site and mpg

National Mole Day, USA (Chemistry)

Mole Day is celebrated among chemists on October 23, between 6:02 a.m. and 6:02 p.m (i.e. 6:02 10/23 in an American date style). The time and date are derived from Avogadro's number, which is 6.02×10²³, defining the number of molecules in a mole, one of seven basic SI units.

National Mole Day Foundation

molearchy - government in which moles are in complete control
mole-mole - a mole double agent
molebile - a mole which hangs from the ceiling   Source

See also: Newtonmas, Pi_Day, Darwin_Day, Square root day

National Day, Hungary (revolution of 1956, see below)

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

1705 Maximilian Ulysses Reichsgraf von Browne (d. 1757), Austrian field marshal

1715 Peter II of Russia (d. 1730)

1734 Restif de la Bretonne (Nicolas-Edme Rétif or Nicolas-Edme Réstif, called de la Bretonne for his father's farm in Burgundy; d. February 2, 1806), prolific French novelist, early communist theorist, known as 'the Chronicler of the Street' (also 'the Rousseau of the Gutter' and 'the Voltaire of the Chambermaids') during the French Revolution, and some say inventor of the term 'communism'. 

More than 250 of his novels were published (many printed by himself), mostly based on incidents in his own life. It must have been some life.

Bretonne helped inaugurate the 'personal novel', a genre that rose to prominence in the 19^th Century. Much of Restif's work was libertine and long excluded by the arbiters of literary taste as cynical, vulgar, and tasteless. The term 'retifism' ('shoe fetishism') was named after him.

Works include La Famille vertueuse (The Virtuous Family, 1767); Sara ou La Derniere Aventure d'un homme de quarante-cinq ans (Sara, or The Last Adventure of a Forty-Five Year Old Man, 1783); Les Contemporaines (Contemporary Women, 1780); La Paysanne pervertie (The Perverted Peasant Girl, 1784); La Vie de Monsieur Nicolas (The Life of Mr Nicholas, 1794 - 1797), his erotic autobiography; Les Nuits de Paris (Paris Nights, 1788); and Idees singulieres (Singular Ideas, 1769), which comprises his ideas for regulating prostitution. Just before Bretonne's death, Napoleon gave him a place in the ministry of police, which he did not live to take up. Bretonne, who also wrote 17 plays that were never performed, died in poverty.

Said the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910 - '11) in its article on Restif: "His books were written with haste, and their licence of subject and language renders them quite unfit for general perusal."

Shop de la Bretonne    More

1762 Samuel Morey (d. 1843), American inventor of the internal combustion engine

1786 Barron Field (d. April 11, 1846), Australian colonial judge and poet

1796 Stefano Franscini, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 1857)

1813 Ludwig von Leichhardt (d. 1848?), Prussian explorer and naturalist. In 1842, Leichhardt moved to Sydney, Australia, where he led three major expeditions. He was last seen on April 3, 1848, at McPherson's Station, Coogoon on the Darling Downs. His disappearance after moving inland, although investigated by many, remains a mystery.

1817 Pierre Athanase Larousse, French grammarian, encyclopaedist and lexicographer

1835 Adlai E Stevenson, Vice President of the United States; his grandson Adlai Ewing Stevenson II was Democratic candidate for President of the United States (1952 and 1956)

1844 Robert Bridges (d. April 21, 1930), English poet, Poet Laureate from 1913. At Corpus Christi College, Bridges became friends with Gerard Manley Hopkins who is now considered a superior poet but owes his present fame to Bridges' efforts in arranging the posthumous publication (1916) of his verse.

1875 Gilbert N Lewis, American chemist

1892 Gummo Marx (d. 1977), actor, comedian, Marx Brothers

1902 Kristmann Guðmundsson (Kristmann Guomundsson), Icelandic writer, who published more than 30 novels. Best-known for books of romantic fiction, several written in Norwegian. With Gunnar Gunnarsson (1901 - 1983) and Halldór Killian Laxness (1902 -) among the first internationally known Icelandic authors.

1905 Felix Bloch, Swiss physicist

1906 Gertrude Ederle, first woman to swim the English Channel

1909 Zellig Harris, American linguist

1923 Frank Sutton (d. 1974), American actor (Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.)

1925 Johnny Carson (d. January 23, 2005), American television presenter

1927 Philip Lamantia (d. March 7, 2005), American poet and lecturer. Lamantia's visionary poems – ecstatic, terror-filled, erotic – explored the subconscious world of dreams and linked it to the experience of daily life.

The poet was born in San Francisco's Excelsior neighbourhood to Sicilian immigrants. A self-taught literary prodigy, his poetry was published first in the Surrealist magazine View when he was fifteen. He later became involved with the San Francisco Beat Generation poets and The Surrealist Movement in the United States. He was on the bill at San Francisco's Six Gallery on October 7, 1955, when poet Allen Ginsberg read his poem Howl for the first time.

Nancy Peters, his wife and literary editor, said about him, "He found in the narcotic night world a kind of modern counterpart to the gothic castle – a zone of peril to be symbolically or existentially crossed."

The poet spent time with native peoples in the United States and Mexico in the 1950s, participating in the peyote-eating rituals of the Washoe Indians of Nevada. In later life, he embraced Catholicism, the religion of his childhood, and wrote many poems on Catholic themes.

Source: Wikipedia    Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list    More    More

1931 Diana Dors (d. 1984), British sex symbol and actress (Yield to the Night; There's a Girl in My Soup)

Who got Diana Dors' millions?

1942 Dame Anita Roddick (d. September 10, 2007), DBE, English businesswoman, author (Business as Unusual; Take it Personally; Body and Soul; A Revolution in Kindness) social reformer, founder of The Body Shop which uses business as a vehicle for social and environmental concerns. Today there are more than 2,000 Body Shop stores, serving more than 77 million customers in fifty different countries, in 25 different languages.

Roddick was also much in demand as a public speaker, particularly to corporate leaders, and was a member of the Demos think tank's advisory council. Roddick was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis due to long standing hepatitis C in 2004, and after she revealed this to the media in February 2007 she promoted the work of the Hepatitis C Trust, and campaigned to increase awareness of the disease. Dame Anita died of a brain haemorrhage.

The price of dignity: Anita Roddick on corporate citizenship
The Guardian

"In the past two years, 500 export assembly factories have shut down in Mexico, throwing 218,000 workers on to the street. Their crime was the $1.26-an-hour base wage they were paid by companies such as Alcoa Fujikura to produce auto parts for export to the US. Those wages are now "too high" in the global economy.

"Never mind that the Alcoa workers in Acuna live in makeshift cardboard huts that lack potable water. Never mind that many of the workers in nearby Piedras Negras were selling their blood plasma twice a week to Baxter International for $30 in order to survive. Those same auto parts are now being made in Honduras by workers earning 59 cents an hour, in Nicaragua for 40 cents an hour and in China for 27 cents an hour ..."   Source

Shop Anita Roddick    More

1942 Michael Crichton, writer, (Jurassic Park)

1954 Ang Lee, director, producer

1956 Dwight Yoakam, country music performer

1959 Weird Al Yankovic, American musical parodist

1959 Sam Raimi, director, producer

 

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4th Mon. in Oct. International School Library Day

 

October

22 Eat A Pretzel Day
22 Make A Difference Day
22 Used Car Day
23 Mole Day
23 Mothers-in-law Day
24 International Forgiveness Day
24 Match Day
24 United Nations Day
25 Say "Hey" Day
25 Picasso Day
26 Mule Day
27 Boxer Shorts Day
28 Chocolate Day
28 Statue Of Liberty Day, USA
29 The Internet's Birthday
30 Candy Corn Day
30 Bodybuilders' Day
31 Halloween
31 Samhain
31 Magic Day

November

1 All Saints' Day
1 Nutty Pecan Day
1 Play A Game Of Chess Day
1 World Vegan Day
1 Authors Day
2 All Souls' Day
2 "Practice Being Psychic" Day
2 Deviled Egg Day

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4004 BCE Planet Earth was created, according to the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar.

Later sages added to Bishop James Ussher's (1581 - 1656) computations, calculating that God created this planet at 9 in the morning. Much of the Creationist dating was flimsily based on a Biblical verse: "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8).

Following this kind of reasoning, the Great Flood began on November 25, 2438 BCE.

"One of the best known estimates in modern times is that of Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656), who proposed a date of Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC, in the Julian calendar. It is a common belief that he also gave an exact time of Creation, but this is not found in Ussher's work [1]."   Source

42 BCE Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi – Brutus's army was decisively defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian. Brutus committed suicide.

425 At the age of only six, Valentinian III was elevated as Roman Emperor.

1091 "London, England: The earliest known tornado in Britain, possibly the severest on record, hits central London. The church at St. Mary le Bow is badly damaged. Four rafters – each 7.9 m long ( 26 ft) – are driven into the ground (composed of heavy London Clay) with such force that only 1.2 m (4 ft) protrudes above the surface. Other churches in the area are also demolished along with over 600 (mostly wooden) houses."   Source

1613 Assassination of Gabor Bathory.

 

1641 Ireland: Some thousands of Scottish and English settlers in and around Dublin were massacred by Irish nationalists. In one incident at Portadown, about 80 Protestant captives were thrown off a bridge and piked or shot to death.

But what pen can set forth, what tongue express, whose eye can read, ear hear, or heart, without melting, consider the cruelties, more than barbarous, daily exercised upon up by those inhumane, blood sucking tigers! Stripping quite naked men, women and children, even children sucking upon the breast, whereby multitudes of all sorts in the extremity of that cold season of frost and snow have perished. Women being dragged up and down naked, women in child bed thence drawn out and cast into prison… a child of 14 years of age taken from his mother, in her sight cast into a bog pit and held under water while he was drowned.
  The forcing of 40 or 50 Protestants to renounced their profession, and then cutting all their throats. What should we speak of these murders, their hanging, half-hanging… and delighting in the tortures of the miserable? Of which their aforesaid many and barbarous cruelties, each day doth afford us variety of new instances. This city of Dublin being the common receptacle for these miserable sufferers. Here are many thousands of poor people, sometimes of good respects and estates, now in want and sickness, whereof many daily die, notwithstanding the great care of those tender hearted Protestants without whom all of them had before now perished.
Henry Jones, Remonstrance of Diverse Remarkable Proceedings Concerning the Church and Kingdom of Ireland, 1641

"On 23 October 1641 a series of uprisings in Ulster spread panic among the Protestant settlers. Those who were not killed by the rebels fled for safety into the defended towns, where plague and starvation soon took their toll. Modern historians suggest that first accounts of the rebellion exaggerated the number of deaths and the extent of atrocities committed by the native Irish. Wherever the truth lies, the rebellion created in Protestant minds a distrust of their Catholic neighbours which has survived to modern times."   Source

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1642 First English Civil War: Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads, under Robert Devereux, the third Earl of Essex, and King Charles I's Cavaliers, fought the Battle of Edgehill in the Cotswolds, England.

A strange case of suspended animation after the Battle of Edgehill

Among the casualties on the king's side that bloody Sunday morning was Sir Gervase Scroop. Left for dead on the battle field, Scroop lay until Tuesday evening, when his son came to retrieve the knight's corpse. In the meantime, his body had been robbed of its clothes by camp-plunderers, and left lying two days and nights in particularly cold and frosty weather.

When his son took Sir Gervase's corpse back to camp and into a warm room, the body stirred. Despite the sixteen serious wounds he had sustained, Sir Gervase Scroop "came back to life" and lived ten years further in good health.

Published January 23, 1643: A great wonder in heaven shewing the late apparitions and prodigious noyse of war and battels, seen on Edge-Hill, neere Keinton, in Northamptonshire 1642

This brochure described how on a Saturday in the previous Christmas season (1642), there had occurred at Keniton, Northamptonshire, "the apparition and noise of a battle in the air, a ghostly repetition of the conflict which two months before had taken place on the adjacent fields at Edgehill between the forces of the King and the Parliament". The alleged phenomena took place on four successive weekends; the King sent emissaries to report on it, and they were positive witnesses to the ghostly battle.

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1739 War of Jenkins's Ear: British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, reluctantly declared war on Spain.

1804 English visionary/poet William Blake wrote to his patron, William Hayley: "Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or engraver into my hand ..." 

Blake painted heads of poets to be hung in Hayley's library, and worked for three years in his cottage on commissions; however, the poet found Hayley fussy, disagreeable and philistine, and left his service. Hayley considered himself a poet, but not all his peers agreed.

"The works of Hayley, the other great idol of the decadence of eighteenth century poetry, are contemptible. The Loves of the Plants is not exactly silly. The Triumph of Temper is. That puerility and anility which were presently to find, for the time, final expression in the Della Cruscan school, displayed themselves in Hayley with less extravagance, with less sentimentality and with less hopelessly bad taste than the revolutionary school were to impart, but still unmistakably. Hayley himself, as his conduct to Cowper and to Blake shows, was a man of kindly feelings; indeed, everybody seems to have liked him. He was something of a scholar, or, at the worst, a fairly well-read man. His interests were various and respectable. But, as a poet, he is impossible. Southey, in deprecating one of Coleridge's innumerable projects—a general criticism of contemporaries (which would certainly, if we may judge from the well-known review of Maturin's Bertram in Biographia, have been a field of garments rolled in blood)—specified Hayley as a certain, but half-innocent victim, urging that "there is nothing bad about the man except his poetry." Unfortunately, on the present occasion, nothing about the man concerns us except his poetry; and the badness, or, at least, the nullity, of that it is impossible to exaggerate. A fair line may be found here and there; a fair stanza or passage hardly ever; a good, or even a fair poem, never."
'William Hayley; The Triumph of Temper'

1812 Claude François de Malet, a French general, began a conspiracy to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte, claiming that the Emperor died in Russia and that de Malet was now the commandant of Paris. The conspirator was executed on October 29.

1813 The Pacific Fur Company trading post in Astoria, Oregon, USA, was turned over to the rival British North West Company, and the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest was dominated for the next three decades by the British.

1850 USA: First National Women's Rights Convention, Worcester, Massachusetts (till October 24).

A world chronology of women's suffrage    US chronology

1855 USA: Kansas Free State forces set up a competing government under their Topeka, Kansas constitution, which outlawed slavery in that United States territory.

1864 American Civil War: Battle of Westport – Union forces under General Samuel R Curtis defeated Confederate troops led by General Sterling Price at Westport, near Kansas City.

 

1897 Brussels: The death of Tasma (Jessie Couvreur; b. 1848), Australian lecturer, author (Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill; The Penance of Portia James) and journalist who took her pen-name from her home in the State of Tasmania.

1903 USA: The occasion of the first attempt to test the anti-anarchist Immigration Act. At an event at Murray Hill Lyceum, where anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman was scheduled to speak, English anarchist John Turner was arrested and charged with promoting anarchism and violating alien labor laws. Turner was 'detained' on Ellis Island until his deportation, with the words "Let freedom ring" burning in his ears.

1906 Brazilian pioneer aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873 - 1932), made the first officially observed powered flight in Europe. Santos-Dumont is believed to have committed suicide by hanging himself in the city of Guarujá in São Paulo, on July 23, 1932.

1910 Death of Chulalongkorn (Rama V), king of Thailand.

1911 The first use of aircraft in war: an Italian pilot took off from Libya to survey Turkish lines during the Turco-Italian War.

1915 Woman's suffrage: In New York City, 25,000-33,000 women marched up Fifth Avenue to demand the right to vote.

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

1924 The first national radio broadcast in the USA was made.

1926 USSR: Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist party.

1929 Great Depression: After a steady decline in stock market prices since a peak in September, the New York Stock Exchange began to show signs of panic.

1941 World War II: Georgy Zhukov assumed command of Red Army efforts to stop the German advance into Russia.

1942 World War II: The Second Battle of El Alamein started – At El Alamein in Egypt, Britain's Eighth Army and Australia's Ninth Division under General Bernard Montgomery commenced a huge offensive against Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps.

1944 World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf began – The largest naval battle in history began in Leyte Gulf, and the Red Army entered Hungary.

1952 Ukrainian-born microbiologist Selman A Waksman won the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology, for his discovery of Streptomycin, the antibiotic.

1954 France, the USSR, The USA, and Britain agreed to withdraw troops from Germany and to allow West Germany to enter NATO.

1956 Thousands (as many as 250,000 according to some sources) of Hungarians took to the streets to protest Soviet influence and occupation in their nation after the reimposition of strict Communist controls, and also in support of the insurrection in Poland.

The Hungarian Revolution was put down on November 4. Unfortunately the US government, Radio Free America, CIA and others had long been telling Hungarians that if they rose up and threw off their communist-style capitalist shackles for their capitalist ones, they would be helped by the 'free' West. Instead they were left helpless in the cauldron.

Source: The Daily Bleed et al    More

1958 Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced a new set of comic strip characters, The Smurfs. Smurfday (2008) celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the creation of the Smurf characters.

1965 Vietnam War: Operation Silver Bayonet – The 1^st United States Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in conjunction with South Vietnamese forces, launched a new operation, seeking to destroy North Vietnamese forces in Pleku Province in II Corps Tactical Zone (the Central Highlands).

1966 Jimi Hendrix (1942 - 1970) recorded 'Hey Joe' and 'The Wind Cries Mary'.

1968 The first heart transplant in Australia was performed on 57-year-old Richard Pye at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney.

1970 American speedster, Gary Gabelich, broke the world land speed record. He hit 1,010 kph (627 mph) in his rocket-propelled Blue Flame on Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, USA.

1973 Watergate Scandal: US President Richard M Nixon agreed to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations about the scandal.

1976 Much of New South Wales, Australia experienced a total eclipse of the sun.

1983 Lebanon Civil War: US Marines barracks in Beirut were hit by truck bomb, killing 241. French barracks were also hit the same morning, killing 58.

1987 Legendary British jockey, Lester Piggott, was jailed for three years in Britain for tax evasion.

1991 Five UK Law Lords removed the marital exemption from the crime of rape.

1992 Akihito became the first Emperor of Japan to stand on Chinese soil.

1996 USA: The civil trial of former American football player OJ Simpson opened in Santa Monica, California.

1998 Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reached a 'land-for-peace' agreement.

1998 Abortion in the United States: In Amherst, New York, abortion doctor Barnett Slepian was killed by a sniper in his home.

2001 The Provisional Irish Republican Army of Northern Ireland commenced disarmament after peace talks encouraged by American President Bill Clinton.

2001 Apple Computer released the first iPod.

2002 The Moscow Theatre Siege began: Chechen rebels seized the House of Culture theatre in Moscow and took approximately 700 patrons hostage.

2003 US President George W Bush addressed a joint sitting of the houses of the Australian Parliament and was shouted down by Green Party senators Kerry Nettle and Dr Bob Brown.

2004 Brazil's 'Operation Cajuana' launched its first rocket into space, the VSB-30, just 14 months after its space program was devastated by a deadly launch pad accident.

2004 A powerful earthquake and its aftershocks hit Niigata prefecture, northern Japan, killing 35 people, injuring 2,200, and leaving 85,000 homeless or evacuated.

Tomorrow: Alexandra David-Néel, explorer, anarchist, spiritualist, Buddhist, writer

 

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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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