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 Birthday
of the goddess Athena, ancient
Greece
Athena,
(Phoenician Onga)
also transliterated
as Athene, the Greek goddess
of wisdom,
strategy, and war associated by the Romans with their
Etruscan goddess Minerva,
was attended by an owl, carried the
goatskin shield (called the Aegis)
given to her from her father, Zeus
– she was born fully armed from his forehead – and was accompanied by the goddess of victory, Nike.
Athena is an
armed warrior goddess, never a child, always a virgin, (parthenos).
The Parthenon at
Athens, Greece is her most famous shrine. She never had a consort or
lover. According to Herodotus Athena
was a Berber
goddess originally.
The city of Pallas Athena
Athena was fond
of building towns. It came to pass one day that she said to the
people of a fishing village, "Raise me a temple on the hill and I
will be your protector forever." This they did, until the god of
the sea, Poseidon,
called out that as he was the only one who had watched the town
being built, he should have the honour of naming it, or else he
would unleash such tempests that would engulf the whole world.
However, Pallas Athene
(Athena) answered him: "If this place is destroyed, it will not
belong to either of us. Let each of us give a gift to the citizens,
and let them decide."
Poseidon struck
the sea with his trident, and a fine horse galloped out from the
waves, at which sight the people marvelled. Then Pallas touched a
blade of grass, upon which action an olive tree grew up suddenly.
The people cried
out blessings on the olive tree, because it would provide food and
oil for lamps. "More precious than the horse is the olive!" they
cried.
Thus the new town was named Athens, in
honour of the wise goddess.
 Source of date: The
Phoenix and Arabeth
1992 Calendar
See also
Panathenaea, ancient Athens, in honour of Athena (c. Aug 8 - 17)
Athena
online shrine
Festivals in ancient Greece
Greater
Eleusinian Mysteries, ancient Greece
(Sep 10 - 19)
Sixth
day: the procession to Eleusis
began at the Kerameikos in Athens. The very important Holy Night
of the Mysteries followed, in which the queen of the underworld was
summoned. Hippolytus (Refutatio, V8, 39) writes "The
Athenians when initiating (people) into the Eleusinian [Mysteries]
show to those who have been made epopts the mighty and wonderful and
most perfect mystery for an epopt there – a mown ear of corn –
in silence" (the ear of grain representing Demeter).
A
note about the dating of items in Wilson's Almanac
"The sixth [day] was called Iacchos, from Iacchus … who accompanied his mother in search of Proserpine, with a torch in his hand. From that circumstance his statue had a torch in its hand, and was carried in solemn procession from the Ceramics to Eleusis … In the way nothing was heard but singing and the noise of brazen kettles, as the votaries danced along. The way through which they issued from the city was called
Hiera hodos, the sacred way, the resting place Hiera syke, from the fig tree which grew in the neighbourhood. They also stopped on a bridge over the Cephisus, where they derided those that passed by. After they had passed this bridge they entered Eleusis by a place called
mystike eisodos, the mystical entrance."
John Lempriere
(c.
1765 -
February 1,
1824),
Bibliotheca
Classica or Classical Dictionary (1788), Hippocrene
Books, 1986
Source
"By the Greek reckoning the next day, the 20th of Boedromion, began with the evening of the holy night … We do not know precisely what sort of sacred objects had been brought from Eleusis to Athens five days before but only that after crossing the Athenian border those bearing them had stopped by the
hiera syke, the sacred fig tree. But as we shall soon see, the choice of the site probably had to do with these objects. They were kept for a time in the Eleusinion of Athens, and carried back to Eleusis in the procession. The priestesses bore them on their heads in baskets. Statues of these basket bearers flanked the inside of the gate leading into the sacred precinct. We should know still less but for the discovery of a painting, the gift of a certain Niinnion, representing the procession and more than that; the idea of the procession.
"It was impossible to keep secret certain of the elements characteristic of the procession: the myrtle boughs in the hair and in the hands of the
mystai, the cry 'lakchos' …
"In Niinnion's painting, lakchos and the goddess Hecate, both bearing torches, lead the initiates – men and women towards the great Goddesses of Eleusis. In dark clothing and bearing pilgrims' staffs like the simplest of wanderers, the mystai follow in the traces of the grieving goddesses. White garments were first introduced into the festival in 168 (of this era). Probably this was due to the influence of the Egyptian mysteries, the cult of Isis, of which such white garments were characteristic. But already in the classical period the garments worn on the occasion of the
myesis were held in high esteem. They were dedicated to the goddesses or kept as swaddling clothes for the new generation, although they were the simplest sort of dress, that worn by beggars and wayfarers … Apart from the myrtle the mystai are identified as such by two other signs: the women bear
kykeon vessels carefully bound to their heads, and in the
hands of the men we recognize the little pitcher which Herakles,
Hermes, and the gods of Agrai held in their hands.
"It was a kind of procession of spirits, cloaked in a veil of secrecy, which became more and more dense as the mystai approached Eleusis … On the bridge the procession was awaited by mockery and strange games, the
gephyrismoi, or 'bridge jests'. According to one report they were performed by a woman, a
hetaira … In Aristophanes a comic old woman boasts of having figured at the bridge, in a cart (Plutus 1014). She was playing the role of Iambe, or rather of Baubo, who with her jokes and lewd gestures moved Demeter to laughter. This episode served to relieve the mourning of the mystai. It was the moment to drink of the
kykeon which the women had brought along on their heads …
"A second watercourse, which is today still in evidence, the salty Rheitoi, was also crossed by a bridge … Here, in all probability, the
mystai had to identify themselves with the words that have come down to us as their password and sign of recognition, or
synthema. They are a summary of everything the initiated had to do before being admitted to the
epopteia. In the form that has come down to us, only what
was no secret is stated clearly: 'I have fasted, drunk the
kykeon, taken things out of the big basket and, after performing
a rite, put them in the little basket, whence I put them back in
the big basket'.
"The word that I have translated as 'little basket' is kalathos, while the
'big basket' is
kiste, the cista mystica. The 'rite' refers to the
myesis … The kalathos may have belonged to the Kore … the cista
mystica on which Demeter is sitting [is that] from which the
unnamed mysterious something is taken to be put into the little
basket and to which it is returned."
Carl
Kerenyi,
Eleusis,
Princeton University Press; Reprint edition (August 12, 1991)
Source
Ganesh
Chaturthi (Hinduism; date
varies annually, approx.
Aug 20
to Sep 15)
Feast day of St Hernan
Feast day of St John , the dwarf,
anchoret of Scete
Feast day of St Joseph
Abibos
Feast day of St Katherine of
Genoa, widow
Feast day of St Nicetas
(Byzantine saffron, Colchicum
byzantinum, is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Feast day of St Our Lady of
Sorrows
Our Lady of Sorrows (Latin: mater
dolorosa, the sorrowed mother) is a title given in the Roman
Catholic Church to Mary,
mother of Jesus.
She is the patron
saint of Slovakia,
the state of Mississippi,
and Mola di Bari, Italy.
Mary's Seven Sorrows
Canonically, seven of Mary's sorrows are specifically honoured:
The first altar to the mater dolorosa
was set up in 1221
at the monastery of Schönau. The veneration
of Our Lady of Sorrows on 15 September was initiated in 1239
by the Servite
order
in Florence,
Italy.
It was made universal by Pope Pius
VII in 1814.
Another feast,
established in the seventeenth century and made universal in 1727,
was originally celebrated on the last Friday
before Palm
Sunday, but in 1913 Pope Pius
X set the date on September 15.
In iconography,
Our Lady of Sorrows is represented as the Virgin Mary wounded by
seven swords in her heart.
Source:
Wikipedia Titles
of Mary Liturgical
Calendar
Feast day of
the Seven Sorrows of Virgin Maria, Slovakia
Feast day of St Paolo Manna
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Pilgrimage
of the Black Madonna, Switzerland (Sep 14 - 20)
Ginger
Festival, at Daijin Shrine, Tokyo, Japan (Sep 11 - 21)
Begin
fattening fowls for Michaelmas
feasts (Sep
29)
Feast
of San
Gennaro, New York, USA (c. Sep 11 - 22)Celebration
of Gahambar
Paitishahem, for Paitishahem the Corn-giver, Zoroastrian (Sep 12 - 16)
Commemoration of the Battle
of Britain, United
Kingdom
Commemorated on the day of the last massive Luftwaffe
attack in 1940.
Third Monday of
September, Respect
for the Aged Day, Japan
A Japanese
holiday
celebrated annually to honour elderly
citizens. In Japanese, it is known as Keirō no Hi. A national
holiday since 1966,
this used to be held on September 15. In 2000, Japan implemented the
Happy Monday Seido (Happī Mandē Sēdo) which
moved a number of national holidays to Mondays. Since 2003,
Respect for the Aged Day has been held on the third Monday of September.
Independence
Day from Spain (1821)
for Costa
Rica, El
Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras,
and Nicaragua,
celebrated everywhere with marches from schoolchildren. The first day of school, Bulgaria
Silpa
Bhirasri Day, Thailand
Eleven Days of Global Unity (Sep
11 - 21
annually)
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
 7 BCE Is this Jesus Christ's birthday?
Perhaps (in the Southern
Hemisphere) we
should deck the halls with boughs of spring flowers, because an
English astronomer suggested that Jesus
might have been born on September 15, 7 BCE.
Dr David Hughes,
of Sheffield University, argued that September 15 is the real Christmas for the
following reasons:
In the Gospel of
St Luke we read that
Joseph took Mary to
Bethlehem because "... there went out a decree from Caesar
Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was
first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And all went to be
taxed, every one in his own city" (Luke 2:1,2). Such a decree
occurred about 8 BCE.
King Herod
(Herod the Great) was
so infuriated that a rival had been born (the 'King of the
Jews') that he ordered
the massacre of all
baby boys in Israel, but Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt. They
stayed there for two years until Herod's death, said to have
closely followed a lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses occurred in 4 BCE and 1 BCE.
The distinctive
astronomical phenomenon that happened between 8 BCE and 1 BCE, that
could be equated with the Star of Bethlehem, is the conjunction of
the giant planet Jupiter with Saturn in the constellation of Pisces
(considered the Zodiacal sign of the Jews). This began on May 27, 7
BCE and continued for some months – long enough for the three wise men
(astrologers) to follow the phenomenon cross country. On September
15, the Magi (three wise men) would have seen a striking phenomenon,
the conjoined rising of this celestial light on the eastern horizon,
at sunset.
If Dr Hughes is right, the Magi would have
arrived at the inn at Bethlehem with their presents for the Christ
child, on the day the star stopped over that town – December 1,
7 BCE.
November 17, 3 BCE was the birthday of Jesus Christ,
according to early Christian theologian Clement of
Alexandria (c.155
CE - between
211 and 216).
Maya and Buddha; Isis and Horus; Mary and Jesus; Devaki and
Krishna
Another guess: September
29, 5 BCE What day was Jesus
born?
When was Jesus Born? The
UnMuseum: Bethlehem's Star
September
11, 3 BCE? March 1, 7 BCE, at 1:21
a.m.? (good day for a birthday!)
September
14, 5 BCE? In what
year was Jesus born?
Was Jesus
Born on the 25th of December? Was Jesus Born at the Church of
the Nativity?
December
25 in the Book of Days
Revealing the Star of
Bethlehem Star
of Bethlehem bibliography
973 Al-Biruni (d. 1048),
mathematician
1254
Marco Polo (d.
January 8, 1324), Venetian
trader and explorer who,
together with his father and uncle, was one of the first Westerners
to travel the Silk Road to China
(which he called Cathay) and
visited the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire,
Kubilai Khan
(grandson of Genghis Khan).
As a prisoner of war of the Genoese, he had
dictated to a fellow inmate, Rustichello of Pisa, a book of memoirs
called Travels,
which may be fact or fiction.
More
1613
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld, French writer (Reflexions ou sentences
et maximes morales)
1649
Titus Oates,
English priest who stirred up anti-Catholic sentiments in 1678 by
inventing a 'Popish
plot' to kill King Charles
II. He was later sentenced
for his crimes, and his total punishment was reported to have been
the staggering number of 2,256 lashes, applied with a six-thonged
whip. William III released Oates in 1689, and he received a
pension.
"Ruthless
and amoral, Titus Oates helped to inspire the "Popish Plot" of
the late 1670's. Claiming that he had infiltrated a secret
conspiracy to return the Catholic church to power, he gained the
support of many influential figures. At least 20 innocents were
executed because of his rants; but his acts did not go unpunished.
One Edward Coleman, private secretary of James, was executed
during the hysteria upon the discovery of personal letters he had
written to Louis
XIV supporting the promotion of Catholicism in England. He was
finally silenced after being convicted of perjury in 1685.
Sentenced to yearly whippings, he was not released until the
arrival of William
of Orange in 1688. He lived until 1705 in relative obscurity." Source
1789 James Fenimore Cooper (d. 1851),
American author (Leatherstocking
Tales; The Last of
the Mohicans)
1857 William Taft
(William Howard Taft; d. 1930), USA
Supreme Court Justice and 27th President of the United
States
1876 Bruno Walter (d. 1962), conductor
1879 Joseph Lyons
(d. 1939), tenth Prime Minister of Australia
1889 Robert Benchley (d. 1945),
American
humourist,
newspaper
columnist, film
actor,
and drama literary editor, grandfather of Peter
Benchley (b. 1940), author of
Jaws
1890 Agatha Christie (d. 1976),
British crime writer
1890 Claude McKay
(b. May
22, 1948), Jamaican-born
writer
and communist. His novel, Home to Harlem
(1928), became the most popular novel written by an American black
at the time. His poem
'If We Must Die' was used by Winston Churchill as a rallying cry
during World War II. McKay's
Selected Poems was published posthumously in 1953.
'The White
Houses'
By Claude
McKay
Your door is shut against my tightened
face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.
Source
1894 Jean
Renoir (d. 1979), French film director (The River), and son of the famous painter,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
1903 Roy
Acuff (d. 1992), country musician
1907
Fay Wray
('The Queen of Scream'; d.
August 8, 2004),
Canadian-American actress best known as the heroine in the original
King Kong.
In
January 2003, 95-year-old Fay Wray was awarded the 'Legend in
Film' Award at the
Palm Beach International Film Festival, USA.
1909
Jean Batten
(Jean Gardner Batten; d. November
22, 1982),
New
Zealand aviator,
born in Rotorua.
Internationally, she was the best-known New Zealander of the 1930s.
In 1934,
she flew solo from England
to Australia.
For this achievement and for subsequent record-breaking flights, she
was awarded the Harmon
Trophy three times from 1935
to 1937.
On October
13, 1936, she touched down at Sydney's Mascot Airport en route to New Zealand.
On October
24, 1937 she broke the record for a flight from Australia to England, taking five days, 18 hours and 18 minutes.
In 1938,
she was the first woman to be awarded the medal of the Federation
Aeronautique Internationale, aviation's highest honour. World
War II was the end of her flying adventures, and she retired
from public life. She became a recluse and died alone in a
Mallorca,
Spain, hotel, from dog bite complications. Because of her looks
she became known as the 'Greta
Garbo of the skies'.
- 1934
– England - Australia (women's record) 10,500 miles in 14
days 22 hours 30 minutes, breaking Amy
Johnson's record by six days.
- 1935
– Australia - England in 17 days 15 hours. First woman to
make return flight.
- 1935 – England - Brazil:
5000 miles in 61 hours 15 minutes, setting world record for
any type of aeroplane. Also fastest crossing South Atlantic
Ocean, 13 1/4 hours, and first woman to make England - South
America flight.
- 1936
– England - New Zealand. World record for any type. 14,224
miles in 11 days 45 minutes total elapsed time, including 2˝
days in Sydney. Source: Wikipedia
1913 John Mitchell (d. 1988),
former United States Attorney
General and convicted Watergate
criminal
1914 Adolfo Bioy Casares (d. 1999), writer
1915 Igor Cassini (d. 2002), fashion designer
1916
Margaret Lockwood (d. July 15, 1990), British stage
and screen actress (films:
The Man in Grey;
The Wicked Lady)
1922
Jackie Cooper,
American actor (The
Champ;
Treasure
Island;
Superman).
Cooper, known in his senior years as
Perry White in
the Superman movie (1978), was a famous child actor. Until 13-year-old Keshia
Castle-Hughes was nominated for Best Actress in 2004 he was the only
actor to have earned a Best Actor/Actress nomination for an Academy Award
before their 18th birthday. In
1931, when he refused to
do a crying scene on the set of
Skippy, director
Norman Taurog, who was
also his uncle, threatened to shoot his dog.
1924 Bobby
Short, jazz
musician
1924 Lucebert, Dutch
painter
and poet
1926 Jean-Pierre Serre, French
mathematician
1928 Cannonball Adderley (d. 1975), saxophonist,
bandleader
1929 Murray Gell-Mann, American physicist
1933 Henry Darrow, actor
1946
Tommy
Lee Jones, actor (The Fugitive;
JFK;
Men in Black)
Jones attended Harvard University (where
his roommate was future Vice President Al
Gore), studying English
Literature, and graduating
cum laude. He made his
feature-film debut in a small part in
Love Story (1970).
1946 Oliver
Stone, film director (Platoon;
Born on the Fourth of July;
JFK;
Alexander)
1984 Prince Harry of Wales
Phew!!
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September
15 Central
American Independence Day
16 Independence
Day (Mexico)
16 Collect
Rocks Day
16 Mayflower
Day
16 Spud
Day (Idaho,
USA)
16 Wife
Appreciation Day
16 Working
Parents Day
17 Women's
Friendship Day
17 God
Bless America Day
17 Citizenship
Day
(USA)
y (USA)
17 Constitution
Day (USA)
18 Thank
You Day
18 Women's
Friendship Day
19 Thank
You Day
19 Laundry
Day
20 Student
Day
21 International
Day Of Peace
22 Ice
Cream Cone Day
22 Autumnal
Equinox / Spring
Equinox
22 American
Business Women's Day
22
Native
American Day
23 Chocolate
Day
23 Fishing
Day
23 Autumnal
Equinox (Japan)
23 Neptune
Day
23 Apple
Harvest Festival (Wisconsin)
24 Kiss
Day
24 Good
Neighbor Day
24 Innergize
Day
24 World
Heart Day
25 Family
Day
25 New
Horizons Day
25 One
Hit Wonder Day
26 International
Tool Day
28 Strawberry
Cream Pie Day
28 St
Wenceslas Feast Day
29 All
Angels Day
29 Pumpkin
Day
29 Coffee
Day
29 Goose
Day
29 Michaelmas
Day
29 Pumpkin
Day
29 All
Angels Day
29 Coffee
Day
30 Ask
A Stupid Question Day
October
1 World
Vegetarian Day
1 Independence
Day (Nigeria)
1 Pumpkin
Day
1 International
Day Of Older Persons
1 National
Day (China)
2 Name
Your Car Day
2 Mahatma
Gandhi's Birthday
2 World
Farm Animals Day
4 Taco
Day
4 World
Animal Day
4 Golf
Lovers Day
4 International
Toot Your Flute Day
4 St
Francis Day
5 Long
Walk Day
5 World
Teacher's Day
6 Biscuit
Day
6 Soap
Opera Day
6 German-American
Day
6 Physician
Assistant Day
7 Send
A Smile Day
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Events
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608 Saint
Boniface IV became Pope.
921 St Ludmila (feast day September
16) was murdered at
the command of her daughter-in-law at Tetin, Bohemia. She is
a patron
saint of Bohemia, converts, Czech
Republic, duchesses,
problems with in-laws, and widows.
1588
The remnants of the defeated
Spanish Armada returned to Spain.
1620 The
Mayflower departed Plymouth, England.
1776 The British landed at Kip's Bay during the New
York Campaign.
 1784
Vincent Lunardi
made the first (acclaimed) aerial journey in
England, flying in a balloon from the Artillery
Ground, at Moorfields, in the presence of the Prince of Wales, Lord North, William
Pitt the Younger, Charles
Fox, Edmund Burke, the Duchess of Devonshire, various other distinguished personages,
and about 150,000 common folk.
Lunardi reached a height of some four miles (so he said). He finally touched down safely in a
field near Ware, in Hertfordshire, so frightening local labourers that no
promises of reward would induce them to approach the craft.
For
two years, the Italian aeronaut
barnstormed England, until an accident in which a
young man became entangled in a rope and fell to his death. One satirist wrote:
Behold
an Hero comely, tall and fair,
His
only food phlogisticated air, ...
Now
drooping roams about from town to Town
Collecting
pence t'inflate his poor balloon.
Robert
Chambers writes:
"Mr. Lunardi's publications exhibit him as a vain excitable young man, utterly carried away by the singularity of his position. He tells us how a woman dropped
down dead through fright, caused by beholding his wondrous apparition in the air; but, on the other hand, he saved a man's life, for a jury brought in a verdict of Not guilty on a notorious highwayman, that they might rush out of court to witness the balloon. When Lunardi arose, a cabinet council was engaged on most important state deliberations; but the king said: 'My lords, we shall have an opportunity of discussing this question at another time, but we may never again see poor Lunardi; so let us adjourn the council, and observe the balloon!'
"Ignorance, combined with vanity, led Lunardi into some strange assertions. He professed to be able to lower his balloon, at pleasure, by using a kind of oar. When he
subsequently ascended at Edinburgh, he
affirmed that, at the height of 1100 feet, he saw the city of Glasgow, and also the town of Paisley, which are, at least, forty miles distant, with a hilly country between. The following paragraph from the
General Advertiser of September 24, 1784, has a sly reference to these and the like allegations.
 "'As several of our correspondents seem to disbelieve that part of Mr. Lunardi's tale, wherein be states that he saw the neck of a quart bottle four miles' distance, all we can inform them on the subject is, that Mr. Lunardi was above lying.'
"Lunardi's success was, in all probability, due to the suggestions of another, rather than to his own scientific acquirements. His original intention was to have used a Montgolfier or fire balloon, the inherent perils of which would almost imperatively forbid a successful result. But the celebrated chemist, Dr. George Fordyce, informed him of the buoyant nature of hydrogen gas, with the mode of its manufacture; and to this information Lunardi's successful ascents may be attributed. Three days before Lunardi ascended, Mr. Sadler made an ineffectual attempt at Shotover Hill, near Oxford, but was defeated, by using a balloon on the Montgolfier principle.
"It is generally supposed that Lunardi was the first person who ascended by means of a balloon in Great Britain, but he certainly was not. A very poor man, named James Tytler, who then lived in Edinburgh, supporting himself and family in the humblest style of garret or cottage life by the exercise of his pen, had this honour. He had effected an ascent at Edinburgh on the 27th of August 1784, just nineteen days previous to Lunardi. Tytler's ascent, however, was almost a failure, by his employing the dangerous and unmanageable Montgolfier principle. After several ineffectual attempts, Tytler, finding that he could not carry up his fire-stove with him, determined, in the maddening desperation of disappointment, to go without this his sole sustaining power. Jumping into his car, which was no other than a common crate used for packing earthenware, he and the balloon ascended from Comely Garden, and immediately afterwards fell in the Restalrig Road. For a wonder, Tytler was uninjured; and though he did not reach a greater altitude than three hundred feet, nor traverse a greater distance than half a mile, yet his name must ever be mentioned as that of the first Briton who ascended with a balloon, and the first man who ascended in Britain.
"Tytler was the son of a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, and had been educated as a surgeon; but being of an eccentric and erratic genius, he adopted literature as a profession, and was the principal editor of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Becoming embroiled in politics, he published a handbill of a seditious tendency, and consequently was compelled to seek a refuge in America, where he died in 1805, after conducting a newspaper at Salem, in New England, for several years.
"A prophet acquires little honour in his own country. While poor Tytler was being overwhelmed by the coarse jeers of his compatriots, Lunardi came to Edinburgh in 1785, and was received with the utmost enthusiasm."
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)
More at our friends at
the other (Chambers) Book of Days
1795
Great Britain
took possession of the Cape of Good Hope.
1789 The
United States Department of State
was established (formerly known as Department of Foreign Affairs).
1821 Costa Rica,
Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua,
and El
Salvador were proclaimed independent
1830 William
Huskisson, MP, a popular member of the
British Parliament, fell under the wheels of George
Stephenson's train engine Rocket
on the inaugural run of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway, becoming the first railway fatality.
He
was killed by the Rocket while attempting to shake hands with the prime
minister, the Duke
of Wellington. When the train finally crawled into Manchester, the gathered mechanics and artisans booed and reviled the occupants of the Duke's carriage.
1859 Death
of Isambard Kingdom Brunel,
British engineer.
1862 USA: Confederate forces captured Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
1864
John Hanning Speke, English
explorer of Africa, who discovered the source of the Nile in 1858,
shot himself and died. It has long been speculated whether he took his own life
in fear of a public debate with explorer Sir
Richard Burton about
the source of the Nile. Speke's voyage did not resolve the issue, Burton
claimed, because Speke had not followed the Nile from the place it flowed out of
Lake Victoria to Gondokoro, so he could not be sure they were the same river. A debate
was planned between the two before the Royal
Geographical Society on September
16, 1864, but
Speke died just one day before from a self-inflicted gun-shot wound. It remains
uncertain whether the shot was an accident or suicide.
1870 Construction
began on the monumental overland telegraph line from Adelaide to
Darwin,
Australia. Due to the hard work of Australian labourers and Afghan camel drivers
often working in excruciating heat in the inland desert, the 3,178-kilometre (1,975-mile) line was built in less than two years and joined on August 22, 1872.
"Connecting
Adelaide and the rest of Australia, through Darwin, with England by means of a
single wire in 1872, was one of the greatest engineering achievements of the
nineteenth century. It was completed by South Australians, under the direction
of Charles Todd, in less than two years. It turned out to be a top business deal
and a political triumph …
"Transport, of the 36,000
poles, many of them from the Wirrabara Forest, 36,000 insulators and pins plus
the many tons of wire, had been one of the biggest problems. Todd bought horses
from Beltana on his first trip north. As there was no refrigeration, fresh meat
had to be transported alive, slaughtered and eaten when required. This herculean
task through arid country of merciless heat, red sand dunes, little or no water
but plenty of mosquitoes and flies was completed with the loss of only six men." Source
Uluru image gallery
Australia's
19th-century Afghan camel drivers Origins of
Islam in Australia
Nomads:
the Aboriginal descendants of the Afghan camel drivers
1883 The
Bombay Natural History Society was
founded in Bombay
(now Mumbai), India.
1885 Death
of the largest elephant in captivity, PT
Barnum's famous Jumbo, which was hit by a locomotive
while crossing the tracks; he died instantly. He was later stuffed and put on
display with the circus.
Barnum sued the railroad company, which had to pay $10,000 and transport the circus at no expense for a year.
When
the taxidermist did his job (making him one foot taller than in real life, which
pleased Barnum for it would enable the animal to keep being an 'earner'), inside
Jumbo's stomach were found "a bobby's whistle, a slew of keys, several rivets and a
'hatful' of English pennies".
Wikipedia says: Jumbo (1861 - September
15, 1885) was
the most famous elephant
ever, and is the root of the adjective 'jumbo'.
Jumbo was an African
elephant, born in 1861
in the French
Sudan from where he was imported to France and kept in
the old Zoo Jardin des Plantes close to the railway station
Gare d'Austerlitz in Paris. In 1865, he was
transferred to the London Zoo, where he became famous through the riding
operations. It was the London zoo-keepers who gave Jumbo his name, a
slightly garbled version of the word jambo, Swahili for
'hello'.
He was sold in
1882 to PT Barnum,
owner of 'The Greatest Show on Earth', the Barnum &
Bailey Circus. Barnum's publicity made the name Jumbo synonymous
with
'huge'.
Estimated to
be 3.25 metres high in the London Zoo, it was claimed that Jumbo was
approximately 4 metres tall by the time of his death.
Jumbo died at
a railway station in St Thomas, Ontario, Canada, where a
locomotive crushed him; a statue there now commemorates that event.
Jumbo's skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History
in New
York City and his hide was stuffed and travelled with Barnum's circus
for a number of years. In 1889, Barnum donated the stuffed Jumbo to Tufts
University, where it was displayed until destroyed by a fire in 1975. In
honour of Barnum's donation, Jumbo
became the Tufts mascot.
"Tragedy struck again in 1975, when a mysterious fire destroyed the now highly-combustible elephant. But Jumbo's memory would not be snuffed out. Phylis Byrne, a Tufts administrator, waded into the smoking debris and scraped Jumbo's ashes into a peanut butter jar. Jumbo's concentrated remains were then locked in a safe in the University's athletic department.
"Jumbo's aura still lingers over Tufts. A small statue in his honor graces the
Quad. And Tufts athletes who rub the peanut butter jar before their games report
good luck." Source
Did you know?
In 1254, King Louis IX of France gave Henry III the first elephant seen in
England since Roman emperor Claudius had brought some there. It was kept at the Tower of
London in a specially built elephant house and survived four
years. More
"Rage was also the response
when the British nation learned of Barnum's purchase, swiftly completed early in
1882. Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, preeminent British art critic John
Ruskin, the House of Commons, the R.S.P.C.A., and editorial writers at the
London Times were among those who expressed feelings ranging from concern to
dismay over the sale of Britannia's prized pachyderm."
More from
Tuft's
List of historical elephants
What's wrong with
elephants in circuses? Barnum Museum
Everything Elephants
More on Jumbo More
1891 Death
of Ivan
Goncharov (b. 1812), Russian author of Oblomov.
1893 Death
of Thomas Hawksley
(b. 1807), civil
engineer.
1894 Japan defeated China in the Battle of Ping Yang
(Pyongyang).
1895 American social activist, writer and humourist Mark Twain (The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn;
'The War Prayer')
arrived in
Australia on the SS Warrimoo for
a three-month lecture tour.
It was part of a larger tour as told in his book, Following the Equator.
More at his birth date, November
30, 1835.
Later, he wrote that the Australian and American accents were scarcely distinguishable (see quote above).
An interview with him appeared in Sydney press on September
17. Novelist Rolf Boldrewood
called on him in Melbourne. He dined with JF
Archibald (staying with him at Coogee, NSW), Henry Lawson and Sir Henry
Parkes.
"... in an interview with a newspaper reporter, printed in a Sydney newspaper of Sept 17, Twain explains that Chapter 33 of
A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court was written during American media coverage of the New South Wales expansion of trade and levying of tariffs. This is but one example of how Twain showed interest in all aspects of Australia including politics. Readers will find that Twain's travelogue contains various interesting episodes taken from both his public and private functions. All these allow us to see a little of how Australia fascinated him."
Mark
Twain in Australia
"I will give the House a taste of some of Mark Twain's anecdotes about his trip by train. He arrived on 16 September, disembarked, and moved to lodgings at the then Australia Hotel in Sydney. He gave a series of very popular lectures and interviews, creating some controversy as he did in the Bulletin and in other publications relating to the issue of free trade and protection—he was anti-protectionism—and he was made an honorary member of the Union Club while he was here. He went to lunch with such notable characters as Sir Henry Parkes, Henry Lawson, and others. J. F. Archibald, the editor of the
Bulletin, entertained him at his seaside cottage in Cronulla [sic].
"Mark Twain then travelled by steam train down to Sydney terminal and caught an overnight train to Albury, going through Picton, Thirlmere, Mittagong, and then to Moss Vale. The next day he went by train to Goulburn, Yass, Cootamundra, Junee and Wagga Wagga, and he had some lively stories to tell about that part of the trip. It was during that trip that he made the comment:
"Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most unaccountable marvel that Australia can show. At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their snug beds by lantern light in the morning in the biting cold to change cars on a railroad that has no break in it from Sydney to Melbourne. Think of the paralysis of intellect that gave that idea birth; imagine the boulder it emerged from, on some petrified legislator's shoulders. It is a narrow gauge to the frontier and a broader gauge thence to Melbourne. One or two reasons are given for this curious state of things. One is that it represents the jealousy existing between the two colonies—the two most important colonies of Australasia. What the other is I have forgotten, it could be but another effort to explain the inexplicable.
"That highlights one of the most extraordinary aspects of our Federal system of government. Later that year Mark Twain travelled from Sydney terminal station to Strathfield and then to Newcastle. He boarded another train and travelled to Scone, where he stayed at the Willow Tree Hotel, before heading south again. Tim Fischer suggests that these trips by Mark Twain could form the basis of a great Mark Twain down under train trail. I commend Tim, in his capacity as chair of Tourism Australia, for promoting the modern-day replication of Mark Twain's interesting and varied trips on trains throughout Australia. In fact, I think Tim should be the tour guide."
The
Hon. Jennifer Gardiner, NSW Legislative Council, Hansard, October 13, 2005
"When the 60-year-old Samuel Clemens sailed into Sydney for the second time in 1895, he had much to be confident and happy about. He was about to rejoin friends and visit some good clubs and hotels. He was confident, too, that his remaining public lectures would be a success, thanks to publicity generated by the press, particularly The Bulletin. He had waded into the charged debate about free trade versus protection when he had arrived, and it had made him hot property. Clemens was also pleased that he had raised a lot of money to pay off business debts back in the United States, after a printing press project venture had gone wrong.
"One of the first global celebrities, Clemens was better known – and famous – as the writer and humourist Mark Twain. He had written many books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but he was an adventurer, too. On this trip he had already traversed the country, with many stops. In Victoria, thanks to the newfangled telegraph system, his arrival in various centres had been, well, telegraphed. In Melbourne he dined with Edmund Barton – later Australia's first prime minister – and in Sydney with Henry Parkes and Henry Lawson.
"In the spring and early summer of 1895 Twain had been to five states or colonies, dined at almost every stopover with various personages and state ministers, and had made many friends, among them J. F. Archibald, editor of The Bulletin, even travelling to his Coogee cottage for some relaxation and sea
air ...
"After successful lectures in Sydney he continued north. Developing a sore tooth, he jumped off the train in Newcastle and visited the dentist, subsequently writing a letter thanking one Mr Wells for his magnificent
'ministrations'. While there he made a typically Twain observation; that Newcastle had a convict cemetery at one end with no bodies and a gentleman's club at the other end with no gentlemen. After another public lecture on a hot summer's night in Scone, in the Upper Hunter Valley, he returned to Sydney for yet another talk, before departing on P&O's Oceania on December 23 for Melbourne, Adelaide, Albany and India.
"Well-known as the spinner of unlikely tales, he gave fantastic praise to the Melbourne Cup, saying it was the day that totally dominated Australasia in a way that America could not match. Yet a close examination of his schedule reveals that he never actually made it to the 1895 Cup; he had already moved on to his Kiwi leg by
then ..
"I salute the redoutable Twain's writings, and commend Miriam Jones Shillingsburg's writings to those who would like more details of the
trip.".
Tim
Fischer, 'Yankee Doodles'
Miriam Jones Shillingsburg, At
Home Abroad: Mark Twain in Australasia
Twain the
anti-imperialist
"Mark
Twain (1835-1910) was the most prominent literary opponent of the
Philippine-American War and he served as a vice president of the
Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death. In February of 1901, as his
essay 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness' was creating a storm of
controversy throughout the United States, a Massachusetts newspaper
editorialized that 'Mark Twain has suddenly become the most influential
anti-imperialist and the most dreaded critic of the sacrosanct person in the
White House that the country contains." Source
Twain wrote about my town
I
recently lived two miles out of the little town of
Woolgoolga, NSW, Australia, mentioned
by Mark Twain:
In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain
The Yatala Wangary withers and dies,
And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain,
To the Woolgoolga woodlands
Despairingly flies.
Source
What Mr Twain meant, we shall probably never know, but
I assume he was just playing with Aboriginal words for the euphony. There was
not much at Woopi (as Woolgoolga is known locally) then (and not much now), and if
he stopped in it was likely just for the steamer to take on wood and water. I
haven't been able to find any other record of his visit to Woopi, though his
Australian tour is quite well documented. One source is The
Bulletin magazine editions of 1895. (More
on Woolgoolga, New South Wales.)
This
link will take you to many of his contemporaries in the Australian radical
and artistic/literary scene, some of whom he met while in Sydney.
Mark Twain also wrote (in Chapter
15 of Following the Equator) about the Tichborne claimant, a
subject we have covered in the Scriptorium.
Mark
Twain on the Platform in Australia
Misattributed
Quotes Shop
Mark Twain
Mark Twain's War Prayer Mark Twain on War and Imperialism
TwainQuotes.com
"In 1885 Mark Twain designed and patented a
game intended to help people keep historical facts straight."
Mark Twain's
Memory Building Game More
Early
progressives in the Book of Days
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
1898 Death
of William Seward Burroughs
(b. 1857), inventor of the calculator,
grandfather of William S
Burroughs the author of
Naked Lunch
and Junky.
1914 The
Battle of Aisne began between Germany and France.
1916 The first tanks
went into action at the Battle of the Somme, France, winning advances on the battlefield. The name
'tank' was a codename for the revolutionary new vehicle.
1917
The proclamation of Alexander Kerenski's republic, Russia.
1928
The first English-made robot was demonstrated in London by its inventors,
Captain Rickards and AH Renfell.
1931 The
Invergordon Mutiny began.
1935 Adolf
Hitler, at a huge rally at Nuremburg, announced new decrees that made Jews less than full human beings in Germany, depriving them of citizenship.
1947 USA: The
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was
established. Its predecessor, the
OSS, had been instrumental, along with the
Vatican, in helping Nazi war criminals flee to North and South America after
World War II.
US Media celebrates 50
years of CIA terror and spying
1950 United
States forces landed at Inchon, Korea.
1952 The
United
Nations gave Eritrea
to Ethiopia.
1954
"One of the strangest UFO sightings in India occurred on September
15, 1954 at Manbhum, in Bihar state.
"Ijapada Chatterjee was working in his office at the
mica mine outside Manbhum that day (he was the manager) when he heard the miners
shouting.
"Rushing outdoors, Chatterjee watched a saucer-shaped
object descend to an altitude of about 500 feet. The UFO hovered, then soared
upwards at terrific speed, causing a tremendous gust of wind.
"The object was seen
over a mine which has supplied berylium for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission." Source
1959 Nikita
Khrushchev became the first Soviet
leader to visit the United States. Khrushchev, who had been one of
Stalin's henchmen in mass
murders, was personally denied entry into
Disneyland by Walt Disney,
who received considerable criticism for this from the American Left.
1963 Four
children were killed when a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church, an
African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, USA.
1966
The Queen Mother launched Britain's first nuclear submarine, HMS
Resolution.
1972
Seven men were indicted in Washington, DC, USA for their part in the
Watergate
break-in.
1973
Chilean
pedagogue,
theatre director, poet, singer-songwriter
and political activist,
Victor Jara,
after having his hands crushed so that he could no longer play
guitar, was shot to death in the Chile Stadium (renamed the
Estadio Víctor Jara in
September,
2003). After holding a funeral for her husband, Joan Jara fled the
country in secret. The contrast between the themes of his songs, on
love, peace and social justice and the brutal way in which he was
murdered transformed Jara into a symbol of struggle for
human rights and justice across
Latin America.
1978
In London, Bulgarian defector, Georgi Markov, died four days after having been
shot with a poison pellet fired from a modified umbrella.
1981 Vanuatu became
member of the UN.
1996 Six thousand rallied and
1,033 were arrested near the
Headwaters
Forest in rural
Carlotta, California,
USA, in a protest against the logging of one of the last large unlogged
redwood
stands in the world.
1997
Hastings
Wise murdered four at the RE Phelon Company lawn mower parts manufacturing
factory in Aiken,
South
Carolina, USA. A possible motive for the murders was Wise's dismissal from
his job eleven weeks earlier.
1998
WorldCom
and MCI
Communications finished their landmark merger, forming MCI
WorldCom which would later be renamed WorldCom
and wind up in the largest bankruptcy
in United
States history.
Tomorrow: No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
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Oldie
but a goodie
President George W Bush goes to a primary school to talk with sixth graders about the war. After his talk he offers question time.
One little boy puts up his hand and George asks him what his name is.
"Billy."
"And what is your question, Billy?"
"I have 3 questions. First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? And third,
what ever happened to Osama Bin Laden?"
Just then the bell rings for recess. George Bush informs the kiddies that they will continue after recess.
When they resume George says, "OK, where were we? Oh that's right question time. Who has a question?"
Another little boy puts up his hand. George points him out and asks him what his name is.
"Steve."
"And what is your question, Steve?"
"I have 5 questions. First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? Third,
what ever happened to Osama Bin Laden?
"Fourth, why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early? And fifth, what the fuck happened to Billy?"
Jumbo in
heaven
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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