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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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If "heaven is the Lord's," the earth is the inheritance of man,
and that consequently any honest traveller has the right to walk as he
chooses, all over that globe which is his. David-Néel was exceptional. Not only were
independent women travelers like her unusual, but Europeans versed in
Sanskrit and Buddhist philosophy, who also spoke Tibetan and could
communicate with those they met, were extremely rare ... |
United
Nations Day stamps from Qatar |
No one ought ever do that again.
Annie
Edson Taylor, aged 63, first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel,
after accomplishing the feat on October 24, 1901
I know what I am doing here with my collection of papers, for
crying out loud. It isn't worth a nickle to two guys like you or me, but
to a collector it is worth a fortune; it is priceless. I am going to turn
it over to ... Turn your back to me please, Henry. I am so sick now. The
police are getting many complaints. Look out. Yey, Jack; hello, Jack.
Jack, mamma. I want that G-note. Look out, for Jimmie Valentine, for he is
an old pal of mine. Come on, Jim, come on, Jimmie; oh, thanks. OK. OK. I
am all through; I can't do another thing. Hymie, won't you do what I ask
you this once? Look out! Mamma, mamma! Look out for her. You can't beat
him. Police, Mamma! Helen, mother, please take me out. Come on, Rosie. OK.
Hymes would not do it; not him. I will settle ... the indictment. Come on,
Max, open the soap duckets. Frankie, please come here. Open that door,
Dumpey's door. It is so much, Abe, that ... with the brewery. Come on.
Hey, Jimmie! The Chimney Sweeps. Talk to the Sword. Shut up, you got a big
mouth! please come help me up, Henny. Max come over here ... French
Canadian bean soup ... I want to pay, let them leave me alone ...
Last words of American gangster, Arthur Flegenheimer aka Dutch
Schultz,
October 24, 1935
That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st
century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th
century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century.
George W Bush; on the Monica
Lewinsky scandal, Arlington Heights, Ill., USA,
October 24, 2000
Bushisms analysed Bushism of the day Bushisms at Amazon.com Bushism at Wikipedia Bush at Wikiquote More
October
24
is the 297th
day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (298th
in leap years),
with 68 days remaining.
Calendar converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc
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links on this page move address or die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
October 24 is celebrated internationally as United Nations Day. It commemorates the coming into being of the United Nations Organisation on that day in 1945 when the UN Charter was ratified by all permanent members of the security council and more than half of the signatories.
It is celebrated as a holiday in Costa Rica, Haiti, Korea, Mauritius and Swaziland, a half-day holiday in Nepal, and an official flag day in Sweden.
The United Nations officially came into existence when the Charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and by a majority of other signatories. The formation of the United Nations evolved from a number of other institutions including the Atlantic Charter, Food and Agriculture Organization, Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, Moscow Declaration, and others.
In Memoriam: A video tribute to Sérgio Vieira de Mello (1948 - 2003) and all the United Nations staff who died in the Canal Hotel Bombing at the United Nations Office in Baghdad on August 19, 2003. The tribute was created and produced by Saatchi and Saatchi, Sydney, Australia. (5 minutes 50 seconds: English.)
United Nations Association of USA 60 Ways the UN makes a difference (PDF)
The United Nations in the news
World Development Information Day (UN)
The United Nations General Assembly instituted World Development Information Day at its twenty-seventh session in December 1972 with the object of drawing the attention of world public opinion each year to development problems and the necessity of strengthening international co-operation to solve them. The General Assembly also decided that World Development Information Day should coincide, in principle, with United Nations Day to stress the central role of development in the work of the United Nations.
Disarmament Week (UN) (Oct 24 - 30)
TAKE BACK YOUR TIME is a major US/Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens health, families and relationships, communities and the environment. Well worth supporting!
Thanks Almaniac Helen for alerting me to this great day. :)
Did medieval peasants work less than we do? I can't say for certain, but it wouldn't surprise me. A surf, or serf, through the Book of Days will show how many feast days were commemorated each week, unlike our own lean and over-commercialised holidays.
For in a hard-working society, it is rare and even subversive to celebrate too much, to revel and keep on reveling: to stop whatever you're doing and rave, pray, throw things, go into trances, jump over bonfires, drape yourself in flowers, stay up all night, and scoop the froth from the sea.
Anneli Rufus, World Holiday Book
The Abolition of Work Bob Black's famed and inspiring essay, published in the Almanac
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Highly recommended:
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By Robert Fisk
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Feast day of Malaclypse the Elder, Apostle of the Goddess Eris. The Discordian year The five
seasons: Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and The
Aftermath (as described in
The Book of Uterus of the
Honest Book of Truth which was revealed to
Lord Omar). The Five Apostles of Eris and Who They Be
See the calendar in operation in Today in the Discordian Calendar
Lilith's Day, Mesopotamia Iga Ueno Tenjin Matsuri, Ueno, Sugawara Shrine, Mie Prefecture, Japan (Oct 23 - 25) Eve of St Crispin; ceremony at Tenby, Wales An effigy made of the saint [October 25, qv] and suspended from a steeple or other height. In morning it was cut down and carried in procession through town. Suez Day, Egypt A public holiday in the Arab Republic of Egypt, commemorating the cease-fire between Egypt and Israel on October 24, 1973, which restored control of the Suez Canal to Egypt. Independence Day, Zambia (1964) A public holiday lasting two days, it celebrates the day on which Northern Rhodesia became the independent Republic of Zambia. Feast of the Spirits of
Air, Wicca Labour Day, New Zealand (2005, 4th Monday in October) A note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac Fourth Monday in October, International School Library Day
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here 51 Roman emperor Domitian (d. 96) 1632 Anton van Leeuwenhoek (d.1723), Dutch microbiologist, the first to see bacteria 1710 Alban Butler (d. May 15, 1773; birth and death dates NS), English Roman Catholic priest and hagiographer. Butler's great work, The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints (usually referred to as Lives of the Saints), the result of thirty years study (4 vols, London, 1756 - 1759), has passed through many editions and translations. It is a popular and compendious reproduction of the Acta Sanctorum. 1788 Sarah Josepha Hale (Sarah Hale; d. April 30, 1879), American writer, perhaps best known as the author of the popular nursery rhyme, 'Mary's Lamb', better known as 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' 1811 Ferdinand Hiller (d. 1885), composer 1855 James S Sherman (d. 1912), Vice President of the United States
David-Néel was a French anarchist, singer, spiritualist, feminist, writer (My Journey to Lhasa), lecturer, photographer, Buddhist, architect, mail artist, Sanskrit grammarian and centenarian. Louise Eugénie
Alexandrine Marie David was the only daughter of a French father of
Huguenot ancestry and a Catholic mother of Scandinavian origin.
By the age of 18, she had already visited
England, Switzerland and Spain on her own, and she was studying in
Madame
Blavatsky's
Theosophical Society. In the period 1914 - '16 she lived in a cave in Sikkim, near the Tibetan border, learning spirituality, together with the Tibetan monk Aphur Yongden, who became her lifelong travelling companion, and whom she would later adopt. At age 54, David-Néel was the first European woman to venture into Tibet's capital, Lhasa. Disguising herself as a pilgrim, she journeyed into Tibet's 'forbidden city' in 1932. She died in Digne, France, in 1969 at the age of 101, and a museum is kept there in her honour.
1868 Charles Conder (d. February 9, 1909), English-born painter, who emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australian tradition in Western art. He is associated with such well-known Australian artists as Julian Ashton, Tom Roberts, Sir Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin.
Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
From November, 1892, they worked as house-painters together for John Hawley in Bourke, New South Wales, until Lawson resigned. On about November 24, Lawson, Gordon and probably socialist Ernest De Guinney set out for Hungerford in 'The Corner Country' (where NSW, Qld and SA meet; map). In mid-December, after De Guinney left them, or was forced away from them, Gordon and Lawson tramped along the Warrego River and worked as picker-ups at Toorale Station, though Jim Gordon calls it Fort Bourke (probably wrongly). They walked in summer heat for hundreds of miles through desert country. It's uncertain at recisely which point they separated on the road. In 1916, when Lawson moved to Leeton, NSW, in order to 'dry out', he bumped into Gordon and they renewed their friendship of 24 years earlier. Lawson later wrote: "Wringing my hand almost off at the wrist he said 'Good night and God bless you – God bless us both. We are Jim and Harry again now'." They went fishing and camping together around Leeton, while Lawson tried (rather vainly) to get sober, and plotted making a literary comeback (more).
Jim Gordon is a character in
Chapter One of my novel,
Faces in the Street, so I am grateful to Gordon's
descendant, Rosalie Raftis, nee Gordon, who sent me the
following information about the poet: "He was born under the flap of
a tilted cart at Bloody Gully just outside Creswick, Victoria ...
the birth wasn't registered until 1875 in
Skipton.
He spent quite some time in Creswick with his grandmother, Janet
Morgan, nee Tannahill, while his parents worked away. His
father had come to Australia in 1863 as a 16 year old; he was born
in Inverness, his mother was born in Geelong ...his great great
grand uncle (think I've got that right) was
Robert
Tannahill poet of Paisley, who wrote in a similar vein to
Robbie Burns.
His brother Tom had the post office and general store at
Nangus, his
youngest brother Aeneas (my grandfather) had a store at Wards River
– they were a family of store keepers as was their grandfather James
Gordon of Inverness. Reference to Jim Gordon in diary of Miles Franklin Royal Mail Hotel, Hungerford
1882 Dame Sybil Thorndyke (d. June 9, 1976), British actress (The Lady of the Camellias; Nicholas Nickleby; Smiley Gets a Gun; A Passage to India) 1887 Victoria Eugenia (d. 1969), Queen of Spain
1888 Captain Francis Edward de Groot (d. [appropriately] April 1, 1969), the man who upstaged Premier of New South Wales Jack Lang by cutting the ribbon at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on March 19, 1932
1891 Rafael Trujillo (Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina; d. 1961), President of the Dominican Republic 1896 Jack Warner (born Jack Waters), English character actor 1903 Melvin Purvis (d. 1960), FBI chief 1904 Moss Hart (d. 1961), American playwright and lyricist who wrote comedy hits, usually with George S Kaufman, such as The Man Who Came to Dinner 1915 Bob Kane (d. 1998), cartoonist and creator of Batman 1915 Tito Gobbi, Italian baritone 1925 Luciano Berio (d. 2003), Italian composer 1929 George Crumb, composer 1929 Yordan Radichkov, Bulgarian writer and playwright 1930 The Big Bopper (Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr; d. 1959), rock and roll star 1931 Sofia Gubaidulina, composer 1936 Bill Wyman, musician (The Rolling Stones)
For the longest time, being an actor must have been agonising for F Murray Abraham. He was 45 years of age before he got a really good role – then it all broke loose for him. Milos Forman cast him as the slimy, neurotic court composer, Antonio Salieri (1750 - 1825) in Peter Shaffer's story, Amadeus, and Abraham won an Oscar for his compelling performance. Are you a late starter? I hope this will encourage you; with a look at some other late bloomers
All the President's Men (1976) ... Sergeant Paul Leeper, arresting officer #1 The Sunshine Boys (1975) ... Mechanic The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1974) ... Taxi Driver How to Survive a Marriage (1974) TV Series ... Joshua Browne Serpico (1973) (uncredited) ... Detective Partner They Might Be Giants (1971) ... Clyde (the usher)
Silkwood was killed in a car crash under suspicious circumstances on November 13, 1974. During the week
prior to her death, Silkwood was reportedly gathering evidence for
the Union to support her claim that Kerr-McGee was negligent in
maintaining plant safety. In November 1974, Silkwood tested positive
for plutonium contamination.
1947 Kevin Kline, Academy Award-winning actor (A Fish Called Wanda) 1948 Kweisi Mfume, American civil rights activist; Congressman from Maryland 1954 Malcolm Turnbull, Australian politician, the current Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Parliament, and parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party. He rose to the public's attention as the successful advocate in the Spycatcher trial (he blocked the British Government's attempts to suppress the memoirs of former MI5 agent, Peter Wright), and later wrote a book on the trial. 1961 Mary Bono, United States House of Representatives from California
Phew!! Have a rest before the big This day in history section
Do you forget birthdays and anniversaries? Schedule your cards to be sent during the coming year.
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 Bhai Dooj Varies Eid ul-Fitr Varies Hari Raya Varies Sukkot Varies Navratri Varies Karva Chauth Varies Simchat Torah Varies Durga Puja Varies Daylight Saving Time Begins / Ends 4th Mon. in Oct. International School Library Day
October 22 Make
A Difference Day November 1 All
Saints' Day ... More Events Visit
the Blogmanac, where today's Almanac is 'live'
69 Second Battle of Bedriacum: Forces under Antonius Primus, the commander of the Danube armies, loyal to Vespasian, defeated the forces of Emperor Vitellius. 996 Death of King Hugh Capet of France. 1360 The Treaty of Brétigny was ratified at Calais, marking the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years' War. 1537 Lady Jane Seymour, English king Henry VIII's third wife, died soon after giving birth to a son. 1601 Tycho Brahe (b. 1546), Danish nobleman, astrologer, and alchemist, greatest naked-eye astronomical observer, died in Prague. 1648 The Peace of Westphalia was signed, ending the Thirty Years' War. 1672 Death of John Webb, architect. 1683 A letter dated today by Englishman, John Collinges, and now kept in the Blickling Hall, Norfolk, manuscript collection, refers to a rain of toads on the Norfolk village of Acle. The Acle publican, annoyed by the smell of them, threw them out by the shovelful from his pub. 1795 Partitions of Poland: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was completely divided between Austria, Prussia and Russia. 1799 Death of Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, composer. 1812 Battle of Maloyaroslavets. 1821 Death of Elias Boudinot, American President of the USA's Continental Congress. 1856 South Australia formed its first government ministry. 1861 The first US transcontinental telegraph line was completed, ending the Pony Express. 1870 The Aurora Borealis was seen in southern England, in a rare arch shape. 1886 The New York Sun reported that water had been steadily falling for fourteen days out of a cloudless sky onto one piece of ground in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, USA. 1889 Australia: Sir Henry Parkes gave his Tenterfield Oration at the Tenterfield School of Arts, advocating the Federation of the six Australian colonies, which were at the time self-governed but under the distant central authority of the British Colonial Secretary.
1896 Sydney, Australia: 'The Red Page' (edited by 'the Red Pagan' AG Stephens) in The Bulletin featured an interview with Australian suffragist editor Louisa Lawson. She said "I feel sorry for some of the women that come to see me sometimes: they look so weak and helpless ... I try to speak softly to them, but sometimes I can't help letting out and then they go away and say 'Mrs Lawson was unkind to us' ... Women are what men make them. No, I don't run men down, but I run down their vanity ..." Her father, Harry Albury, was still alive, aged 75, but her mother had died just a few days before. She also says: "Of the children, I think Bert takes after him more; Henry is like me; Gertie is more like my mother. You have heard how clever Bert is at music? and everybody knows Henry. Gertie is with me now, working on The Dawn. Henry and Bert are in Westralia." (Henry Lawson arrived back in Sydney on October 12. Whether she didn't know this, or if the interview was done much earlier than October 24, is uncertain.) Full text (Word .doc; 29 kb)
Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson 1898 Death of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, painter.
1901 US Marines landed in Samar during the Philippine-American War (sometimes rather patronisingly referred to as the Philippine Insurrection). Brigadier General 'Hell-roaring Jake' Smith issued his orders: "I wish you to burn and kill; the more you burn and kill, the better it will please me." Some Americans, notably Mark Twain, strongly objected to the annexation of the Philippines. Other Americans mistakenly thought that the Philippines wanted to become part of the United States. Illocano and other native languages." Source: Wikipedia Unacceptable comments on the Philippines Moro Massacre, by Mark Twain Mark Twain's War Prayer, in the Scriptorium
1901 Annie Edson Taylor (Annie Taylor; Anna Taylor), a 63-year-old Bay City, Michigan, USA school teacher, became the first person to survive the ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She did it for money to help pay the mortgage. Her words following the stunt: "No one ought ever do that again". The next person over the Falls in a barrel, almost a decade later, was Bobby 'The Canadian Daredevil' Leach (d. 1926), a native of Cornwall, UK, who survived his July 25, 1911 plunge over Niagara's Horseshoe Falls in a cylindrical steel barrel, resulting in six months in hospital recuperating from a broken jaw, and two broken kneecaps.
More
on Bobby Leach Daredevil Chronological Lists Daredevils of Niagara Falls
1917 The Battle of Caporetto started on the Austro-Italian front of World War I. Corto Maltese sailed into the Adriatic prior to the battle. 1929 'Black Thursday' crash of the New York Stock Exchange. 1930 A bloodless coup d'état in Brazil ousted Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa, the last President of the First Republic. Getúlio Dornelles Vargas was then installed as 'provisional president'. 1931
American Gangster Al Capone was sentenced to eleven years in jail
and a
1934 The Albury DC2 Uiver Rescue: In the early hours of the morning, the town of Albury, NSW, Australia switched on and off its street lights, spelling out the town's name in Morse Code, to aid a lost Dutch plane flying in a fierce electrical storm with torrential rain. The KLM aircraft DC2 Uiver, part of the 1934 MacRobertson England-Australia Air Race, was thus able to make a successful landing on the town's boggy racecourse, which was lit by the headlights of some 70 vehicles called to the location by the local radio station. The next day 300 Albury citizens put their muscles to the next part of the rescue mission, by pulling the stranded DC2 out of the mud so the aircraft could complete its flight in the pioneering aviation race. As a sad footnote to this success story, just two months later the same plane crashed in Syria, killing all on board.
Uiver Foundation More More (in Dutch) Pictures More
Dutch Schultz was a New York City-area gangster of the 1920s and '30s. Born into a Jewish family in the Bronx, he made his fortune in bootlegging illegal alcohol and in the numbers racket in Harlem. He was shot to death on the night of October 23, 1935, in the men's toilet of his hideaway, a Newark diner called The Palace Chophouse, by Charles Workman (aka 'Charlie the Bug'), Emmanuel Weiss, and a third, unidentified man known to this day only by his alias "Piggy'. Schultz's famous last words, influenced by a high fever and large quantities of morphine, were a delirious stream of consciousness babble. They were taken down by a police stenographer, and have since been used in literature by a number of writers, most notably William S Burroughs (The Last Words of Dutch Schultz), Robert Anton Wilson and EL Doctorow (Billy Bathgate). On October 24, 1935, in the last few hours of his life, the gangster (1902-1935), had more to say to the cops than he had in his entire previous 33 years. As the life leaked out of him through multiple gunshot wounds, Dutch babbled, ranted and raved to the policemen in his room at Newark City Hospital (New Jersey, USA). The cops kept trying to bring the conversation around to something they could use, like who had shot him and whether he had any information about other murders, but Dutch just kept on with his strange, sometimes beautiful, occasionally meaningful word soup. Newark Police stenographer Francis J. Long took down every word. In the years that have followed, the Dutchman's dying words have been literary inspiration for writers as various as E. L. Doctorow in Billy Bathgate, Robert Anton Wilson in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, and, perhaps most famously, William Burroughs in The Last Words of Dutch Schultz. English classes and psychologists (Not to mention criminologists) have studied them." Source
1937 New Zealand aviatrix, Jean Batten, broke the record for a flight from Australia to England, taking five days, 18 hours and 18 minutes. 1939 Nylon stockings went on sale in the USA for the first time. More than 64 million pairs were sold in the first year. 1944 Zuikaku Japanese aircraft carrier was destroyed. 1945 Founding of the United Nations. 1945 Vidkun Quisling, Germany's puppet ruler of Norway during World War II, was executed by firing squad at Oslo. 1954 USA President Dwight D Eisenhower pledged United States support to South Vietnam. 1964 Northern Rhodesia gained independence from the United Kingdom and became the Republic of Zambia (Southern Rhodesia remained a colony). 1970 Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile. 1973 The Yom Kippur War ended. 1976 The Gang of Four: Mao Zedong's widow Jiang Qing (1914 - May 14, 1991), was charged in a Chinese court with treason. 1977 The transatlantic liner France was sold to Saudi Arabia for use as a floating luxury hotel. 1980 The Government of Poland legalized the Solidarity trade union. 1980 SBS Television began multicultural broadcasting in Australia. 1989
American 'televangelist',
Jim Bakker, was sentenced to 45 years jail and fined 1998 The Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission was launched. 1998 Tropical Storm Mitch reached hurricane strength. 2002 USA: Police arrested spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.
2003
The
Concorde made its last commercial
flight, bringing the era of
airliner
supersonic transport to a close, at least
for the time being.
Tomorrow: Cursed be the cobbler that goes to bed sober
I had fun with this page. Due to instabilities in my computer as my mate Baz le Tuff and I tried to solve an email virus problem, this page crashed and I had to do it twice. I hope you enjoyed it twice as much as if it were half as good.
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and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed
are both excellent resources that aid my research. Read more about today at Wilson's Blogmanac |
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