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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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St Luke's little summer.
I was vastly excited and ran downstairs to obtain a living object. The first person to appear was the office boy from the floor below, a youth named William Taynton, and he, rather reluctantly, consented to subject himself to the experiment. I placed him in front of the transmitter and went into the next room to see what the screen would show. The screen was completely blank, and no effort of tuning would produce any result. Puzzled, and very disappointed, I went back to the transmitter, and there the cause of the failure became at once evident. The boy, scared by the intense white light, had backed away from the transmitter. In the excitement of the moment I gave him half a crown, and this time he kept his head in the right position. Going again into the next room I saw his head on the screen quite clearly. It is curious to consider that the first person in the world to be seen by television should have required a bribe to accept that distinction!
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
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Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Orson Welles, whose October 30, 1938 rendition of
War of the Worlds panicked many
listeners
The word 'genius' was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard while I was still mewling in my crib, so it never occured to me that I wasn't until middle age.
Orson Welles; excerpt from Orson Welles A
Biography, by Barbara Leaming
OW What's all that, for God's sake? You look like a one-man filing cabinet.
PB Research.
OW Throw it all away, Peter – it can only cripple the fine spirit of invention.
Orson Welles; from This Is Orson Welles, by
Orson
Welles, Peter
Bogdanovich and Jonathan
Rosenbaum, 1992
I don't want any description of me to be accurate; I want it to be flattering. I don't think people who have to sing for their supper ever like to be described truthfully – not in print anyway. We need to sell tickets, so we need good reviews.
Orson Welles; to Kenneth Tynan, 1967
For thirty years people have been asking me how I reconcile X with Y! The truthful answer is that I don't. Everything about me is a contradiction and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.
Orson Welles; to Kenneth Tynan, 1967
The great have no friends. They merely know a lot of people.
Ruth Gordon, American actress and author, born on October 30, 1896
The kiss. There are all sorts of kisses, lad, from the sticky confection to the kiss of death. Of them all, the kiss of an actress is the most unnerving. How can we tell if she means it or if she's just practicing?
Ruth Gordon
The best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.
Ruth Gordon
To get it right, be born with luck or else make it. Never give up. Get the knack of getting people to help you and also pitch in yourself.
Ruth Gordon; Myself Among
Others, 1970
Never give up; and never, under any circumstances, no matter what – never face the facts.
Ruth Gordon
If you believe, then you hang on. If you believe, it means you've got imagination, you don't need stuff thrown out on a blueprint, and don't face facts – what can stop you? If I don't make it today, I'll come in tomorrow.
Ruth Gordon
October
30
is
the 303rd
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (304th
in leap years), with 62
days remaining.
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Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
The Rhyne Toll, Chetwode Manor, UK (Oct 30 - Nov 7)
At
Chetwode,
near Buckingham, England, the Lord of the Manor has the right to levy a
yearly tax, called the 'Rhyne Toll', on all cattle found between
October 30 and November
7 on his 'liberty', a grazing domain.
The origins
of the ceremony associated with the toll are described in an Elizabethan-era document. The people had to blow a whelk-shell, or a horn,
immediately after the sun rose on Chetwode Manor (pictured), then blow it in the
field between Newton Purcell and Barton Hartshorne. Then the instrument
had to be blown a third time at "a place near the town of Finmere, in
the county of Oxford", then a fourth time at "a certain stone in the
market of the town
of Buckingham". Further places are given in the document. Then followed the customs associated with the actual collecting of
the tax.
By the 19th century, festivities
commenced at 9am, and gingerbread and beer were distributed amongst the
assembled boys, the girls being excluded.
The origin
The parish was formerly part of an
ancient forest called Rookwoode. The 'liberty' of Chetwode had the
boundaries of this forest. In olden times, it was inhabited by an enormous
wild boar. It attacked locals and visitors, ruining the tourist trade –
yes, there was always a tourist trade of sorts, however primitive by
modern standards.
Naturally, the Lord of Chetwode determined to have the beast slain ('slay' being a word meaning 'kill' as used in olden times – and currently by journalists), and eventually it was a certain Sir Ryalas who did the deed. As the old ballad says:
Then he Mowed a blast full north, south, east, and west
Wind well thy horn, good hunter;
And the wild boar then heard him full in his den,
As he was a jovial hunter.
Then he made the best of his speed unto him
Wind well thy horn, good hunter;
Swift flew the boar, with his tusks smeared with gore,
To Sir Ryalas, the jovial hunter.
Then the wild boar, being so stout and so strong
Wind well thy horn, good hunter;
Thrashed down the trees as he ramped him along,
To Sir Ryalas, the jovial hunter.
Then they fought four hours in a long summer day
Wind well thy horn, good hunter;
Till the wild boar fain would have got him away
From Sir Ryalas, the jovial hunter.
Then Sir Ryalas he drawed his broadsword with might
Wind well thy horn, good hunter;
And he fairly cut the boar's head off quite,
For he was a jovial hunter.
The gallantry of
the knight reached the ears of the king, who awarded him this tax, and to
his heirs forever.
Robert Chambers, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879 Edition is online and 1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)
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