Sep 2 - 29, 2008; Aug 21 - Sep 19, 2009; Aug 11 - Sep 8, 2010; Aug 1 - 29, 2011.

Source

Ramadan Timetable    Ramadan (calendar month)

Festival of the Grape Vines, ancient Greek islands, in honour of Ariadne and Dionysus

In the ancient Greek islands, this was a time for commemorating the deities Ariadne, the fertility goddess of Crete, and Dionysus, the son of goddess Semele by Zeus. Dionysus's followers often went to libertine excesses as he was the god of wine and ecstasy.

Marathonia, ancient Greece

Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ægypticus or dies mala), unlucky day in Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord" was the associated saying.)

Feast day of St Agricola of Avignon

Feast day of St Antoninus

Feast day of St Antoninus of Pamiers

Feast day of St Apollinaris of Posat

Feast day of St Augustine Ambrose Chevreux

Feast day of St Brocard

Feast day of St Castor

Feast day of St Charles de la Calmette

Feast day of St Diomedes

Feast day of St Elpidius

Feast day of St Elpidius

Feast day of St Eutychian

Feast day of St Hesychius

Feast day of St Hieu

Feast day of St Ingrid of Sweden

Feast day of St John Mary du Lau

Feast day of St Julian

Feast day of St Julian Massey

Feast day of St Justus, Archbishop of Lyons

Feast day of St Leonides

Feast day of St Lolanus of Scotland

Feast day of St Margaret of Louvain (Marguerite la Fiere), virgin and martyr
(Golden rod, Solidago virgaurea, was designated today's plant. It is dedicated to St Margaret, whose feast day this is.)

Margaret's throat was cut by thirves in 1225; her killers threw her body into the River Deel, Ireland.

Feast day of the Martyrs of September

Feast day of St Mammes of Caesaria (Mamas of Caesaria)

This Cyprian saint, a semi-legendary child-martyr of the 3rd Century, befriended lions, milked lionesses and made cheese from the milk. When he hid from bandits in a Turkish cave, he was cared for by a pair of mountain sheep. At least two of his shrines are still visited by mountain sheep.

Mammes was tortured for his faith by the governor of Caesarea and was then sent before the Emperor Aurelian, who tortured him again. His legend states that an angel liberated him and ordered Mammes to hide himself on a mountain near Caesarea.

He was later thrown to the lions, but he managed to make the beasts docile. He preached to animals in the fields, and a lion remained with him as companion. Accompanied by the lion, he visited Duke Alexander, who condemned him to death. He was struck with a trident to the stomach. Bleeding, Mammes dragged himself to a spot near a theatre before his soul was carried into heaven by angels.

Today at Morphou, Cyprus, two saltwater springs bubble blood with medicinal properties. His body, which was fragrant, signifying sainthood, had the ability to cure abscesses. Or, so it is said. Pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela diffused his cult into Spain.

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Feast day of St Maxima

Feast day of St Menalippus

Feast day of St Nonossus

Feast day of St Pantagapes

Feast day of St Philadelphus

Feast day of St Philip

Feast day of St Solomon le Clerq

Feast day of St Sulien

Feast day of St Valentine of Strasbourg

Feast day of St William, Bishop of Roskilde (Roschild)

An Anglo-Saxon priest named who journeyed to Denmark with the fabled King Canute of England (994 / 995 - November 12, 1035), to whom he was chaplain.

There, as Bishop of Roskilde in the island of Zealand, he became friends with Canute's successor, King Svend Estridsen (Sweyn II Estridsson Ulfsson). Despite their friendship, he rebuked him for marrying his step-daughter. Once he challenged the king and would not allow the persecutor of Christians to enter the church, offering his own neck to the royal guards' drawn swords. This so impressed Svend that he converted, and became William's firm friend.

Despite their differences, the two men loved each other. When Svend died in 1076 and his body was being carried to Roskilde cathedral, the heart-broken saint met the cortège and fell dead. The bodies of both men were then buried together in the cathedral.

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Sunrise dance, Apache (Aug 31- Sep 3)
The sunrise dance is a puberty ceremony – or na'ii'ees ('preparing her,' or 'getting her ready') – for young women.

Late August, Early September, Freeing the Insects, Japan  

Independence Day, Vietnam

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam, so named, was proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh on this day in 1945.

Human Rights in Vietnam    Vietnam Human Rights

Human Rights Watch: Vietnam    Vietnam Human Rights Network

When we knew what happened in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon

Yatsuo Kaze-No-Bon, or Wind Bon Event, at Nei-Gun, Toyama Prefecture, Japan (Sep 1 - 3)
The Wind Bon Event, or Yatsuo Kaze-No-Bon, at Nei-Gun, Japan, is celebrated with dancing by people from eleven local villages. In ancient times the people believed they could appease an evil god, who had sent typhoons to the area, with this festival.

Jinja Matsuri, or Shrine Festival, at Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, Japan (Sep 1 - 3)
Jinja Matsuri, or Shrine Festival, is an event organised by three different shrines, and features a parade.  

Ganesha (Ganesh), the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is widely worshipped as the supreme god of prosperity and good fortune. He is worshipped as the lord of beginnings and as the lord of obstacles (Vighnesha), patron of arts and sciences, and the god of intellect and wisdom.

While held all over India, it is at its most elaborate in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, and other areas which were former states of the Maratha Empire. Ganesh Chaturthi is also widely celebrated in Mauritius, which has a large Hindu population.

Independence day, Transnistria  (note Transnistria is not an internationally recognized independent state)

National Day, Vietnam (independence from France, 1945)

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

1726 John Howard (d. January 20, 1790), English prison reformer.

John Howard's life is an example of what the wealthy can do with their good fortune. Though beginning his career as a lowly grocery worker, the English prison reformer inherited a fortune which he used to construct 'model villages' for his employees. Later he became shocked by the state of English prisons and dedicated his wealth to the fight for prison reforms.

1838 Queen Lydia Kamekeha Liliuokalani (d. November 11, 1917), last monarch of the Kingdom of Hawai'i; writer of the well-known Hawaiian song, 'Aloha Oe' ('Farewell to Thee')

"… born on 02 September 1838, Queen of the Hawaiian Islands from the 1891 death of her brother King Kalakaua until 1893, when she was imprisoned, forced to abdicate on 24 January (or else she and her supporters would be killed), and subjected to a mockery of a trial by treacherous US planters who sought annexation to the United States, which they obtained in 1898 after proclaiming the Republic of Hawaii in 1894."   Source

Lydia Kamekeha Liliuokalani Online: Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (1898)

More

1839 Henry George (d. October 29, 1897), American political economist, and the most influential proponent of the 'Single Tax' on land, perhaps best known for his book Progress and Poverty. Much like the modern Open Source movement, George was highly critical of restrictive patents and copyrights. He was one of the 19^th Century's most popular public speakers in Australia, where he lectured for more than three months in 38 towns across the continent.

"This image (from a Henry George Cigar box) reflects George's fame at the time of his run for the Mayoralty of New York in 1886 (and later in 1897). George outpolled a young Theodore Roosevelt, but lost to machine Democrat Abraham Hewitt. The rooster was George's campaign icon, and his slogan was "The democracy of Thomas Jefferson. And although the cigars were advertised "for men", George was in fact an outspoken advocate for women's suffrage."   Source: Who was Henry George?

In 1886 George ran for mayor of New York, and polled second (ahead of Theodore Roosevelt). He ran again in 1897, but died four days before the election. An estimated 100,000 people attended his funeral.

According to his grand-daughter Agnes de Mille, Progress and Poverty and its successors made Henry George the third most famous man in the USA, behind only Mark Twain and Thomas Alva Edison. He was also popular as a speaker, even making several speaking trips abroad to places such as Ireland and Scotland where access to land was (and still is) a major political issue. His ideas were taken up to some degree in South Africa, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Australia – where state governments still levy a Land Value Tax, albeit low and with many exemptions. An attempt by the Liberal Government of the day to implement them in 1909 as part of the budget caused a crisis in Britain which led indirectly to reform of the House of Lords. Henry George was familiar with the work of Karl Marx – and predicted that, if Marx's ideas were tried, the likely result would be a dictatorship.

Henry George's popularity declined in the 20th Century; however, there are still many Georgist organisations in existence, and many people who do remain famous were heavily influenced by him, such as George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Sun Yat-sen, Herbert Simon, and David Lloyd George. A follower of George, Lizzie Magie, a Virginia Quaker, applied for a patent for the original board game Monopoly on March 23, 1903 to demonstrate his theories.

In his last book, Martin Luther King referenced Henry George in support of a guaranteed minimum income.

Source: Wikipedia

"Except in Australia and New Zealand, Taiwan and Hong Kong and scattered cities around the world, his plan of social action has been neglected while those of Marx, Keynes, Galbraith and Friedman have won great attention ..."   Source: Who was Henry George?

"George was a crusading reporter who was later to have a considerable influence on a generation of investigative journalists such as Benjamin Flower, Frank Norris, Ida Tarbell, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, David Graham Phillips, C. P. Connolly, Upton Sinclair and Ray Stannard Baker."   Source

Henry George in Australia

In 1890 Henry George was in Australia for more than three months on a lecture tour, sending back to the USA reports for publication in his New York newspaper, The Standard. He was greeted on March 6 at Circular Quay, Sydney, by a cheering crowd and a brass band parade, then taken by four-horse coach to a Lord Mayoral reception at the Town Hall. Over the next 98 days he gave 48 lectures and nine Sunday sermons in 38 towns and cities, a hectic pace considering Australia's great distances, Cobb and Co stagecoaches and the poor roads of 1890.

Although largely forgotten today, such was his international fame and prestige that there was an audience for him even in the backblocks of the Australian colonies. In May, 1890, he delivered three public lectures in northern New South Wales. The following news report comes from the Glen Innes Examiner, June 3, 1890:

"Monday, the 26th inst., was announced as the date of the great social reformer's visit to Armidale, but somehow his managers had contrived to make the least possible use of the occasion by neglecting to give publicity to the event by the ordinary means of advertisement throughout the district. Although the visit of Mr Henry George was intended to serve as his personal introduction to the New England district - including Glen Innes, Walcha and Uralla; yet, so far as we know, no advertisement outside of Armidale was inserted in any other newspaper circulating in New England ...

"At the close of his lecture the chairman invited questions, and Mr George spent over half an hour in good humoredly replying to some childlike queries asked with a mysterious assumptions [sic] of importance by the junior member for Glen Innes, who, having been told by someone that Henry George is a Freetrader, sought to "put him down" by asking if he thought the Single Tax would abolish the natural selfishness of mankind, and especially of the Sydney importor [sic]. Fortunately Sir Henry Parkes was not there, but as the audience clamoured loudly against monopoly of the privilege of questioning the lecturer, place was given at the chairman's request to Mr Cleghorn and some other questioners who received instructive replies.

"Mr Henry George and the chairman occupied the stage alone, and though the effect was to make the lecturer's physique more striking when lit up by the footlights against the comparatively dark background, yet the loneliness of his position was to a stranger somewhat conspicuous, and suggestive of the position occupied by the prophets and truth seekers of all ages in the delivery of their messages, who have ever lived alone, worked alone, and died alone."   Source

Corney George (continuing conversation): "But Henry George says, in 'Progress and Poverty,' he says——" 
Missus (to the fowls): "Shoo! Shoo!" 
Corney: "He says——" 
Tom: "Marther, jist speak to this Jack." 
Missus (to Jack): "If you can't behave yourself, leave the table." 
Tom: "He says in Progress and——" 
Missus: "Shoo!" 
Neighbour: "I think 'Lookin' Backwards' is more——" 
Missus: "Shoo! Shoo! Tom, can't you see that fowl?" 
Selector: "Now I think 'Caesar's Column' [by Ignatius Donnelly – PW] is more likely——. Just look at——"
From 'A Day on a Selection', by Henry Lawson (While the Billy Boils, 1896)

[Another famous American who toured Australia giving lectures, five years after Henry George, and whose likeness appeared on a cigar box, was Mark Twain. See the image.]

Here is an antique advertising mural (source) for Henry George cigars indicative of the popularity of George in former days:

Henry George in Australia (PDF file)    San Francisco's Early Labor History

Incentives for invention    Breaking up monopolies    Earth Rights Institute    H George chronology

Henry George Homepages on the web    Progress and Poverty online

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

More    More    And more    Links

1850 Albert Spalding, American sporting goods manufacturer

1850 Eugene Field, American writer who wrote the nursery lullaby Little Boy Blue

1853 Wilhelm Ostwald, German chemist

1866 Hiram Johnson, former Governor of California and political activist

1871 John Le Gay Brereton (d. February 2, 1933), Australian academic and writer, close but battling friend of Henry Lawson. Mary Cameron, later Gilmore, introduced them at her place at Enmore some time after September in 1894, the year Brereton finished studies at Sydney University, where he was later employed. 

William Lane's wife Annie Lane was there on that first meeting (she thought HL a "waster" and warned Mary). Brereton later wrote, "[Mary] then tactfully waved us [Brereton and Lawson] into the street while the night was yet young. Of all the women I know there is none who better understands the nature of men" (Knocking Around, p5). As they walked in George St near the Quay, Lawson said (in reply to Jack's enthusiasm for the socialist struggle) "I couldn't say it in public because my living depends partly on what I'm writing for the Worker newspaper; but you can take it from me, Jack, the Australian worker is a brute and nothing else." The two became close friends. Brereton took Lawson to visit Sydney University; later they had a poetic duel in the Elector. 

Brereton was also a friend of and collaborator with Christopher Brennan. 'Jack' Brereton was a disciple of Annie Besant. In 1921, he was appointed professor of English literature at the Sydney University, after having been that institution's chief librarian.

"Dr Brereton [John Le Gay Brereton, the elder, his father] was converted to the teachings of Swedenborg and became a leader of the New Jerusalem Church, the tenets of which underlay his several published volumes of poetry and didactic prose. 

"John Le Gay Brereton the Younger (as he was always known) was the fifth son, born in the family's home in Richmond Terrace, which then existed between Sydney Hospital and the Domain, on September 2, 1871. In 1882, when John the Younger was 11, his father retired to Osgathorpe at Gladesville, reputedly the house occupied by Ludwig Leighhardt [sic: Ludwig von Leichhardt] before he left on his ill-fated expedition in 1848. 

"As a boy, John the Younger appears to have preferred his own company, being in his own words a 'timid child with heart oppressed ... by images of sin.' In 1881 he entered Sydney Grammar School where he had no enthusiasm for the team sports favoured by the other boys. However, in 1887 he joined the editorial committee of the school magazine, The Sydneian, and thus began what was to prove his most illustrious and influential literary career ...

"Brereton entered Sydney University as an undergraduate in the Faculty of Arts in 1891. His academic record in general was not outstanding. In English however, he was one of the most brilliant students Mungo MacCallum, the Professor of Modern Literature, ever had. He not only won MacCallum's own prize for English essays but also the University Medal for English Verse in both 1892 and 1893. As an undergraduate he was active in SUDS and from 1891 until 1894 he was one of the editors of the Arts journal Hermes ...

"Despite his academic brilliance, there were no suitable academic vacancies at the University when Brereton graduated in 1894 so from time to time he did some lecturing for the recently-established University Extension Board. He apparently shocked his former mentor, Mungo MacCallum, when he devoted his first such lecture to a frank discussion of the homosexuality apparent in Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass'."   Source

Poems of John Le Gay Brereton

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1876 Will Lawson (d. October 13, 1957), Australian writer who was inspired to literary pursuits by reading Henry Lawson, edited the publication Australian Bush Songs and Ballads (1944), wrote a number of novels including When Cobb & Co was King (1936), as well as historical and travel books, and became NSW secretary of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. English-born Will Lawson lived with Henry Lawson's widow Bertha Lawson at Northbridge, NSW from approximately 1943 until she died several weeks before him in 1957. A heavy drinker said to be 'awkward in his cups', he wrote that Bertha "saved me from the grog".

1877 Frederick Soddy, British chemist

1884 Dr Frank C Laubach, Christian missionary and founder of Laubach Literacy

1917 Cleveland Amory, author and animal rights proponent, founder of Fund for Animals

1918 Martha Mitchell, American Watergate scandal personality

1923 Rene Thom, French mathematician

1929 Hal Ashby, film director

1934 Dominic Chianese, actor

1934 Wolf Blass, German-born Australian winemaker

1935 Liam Clancy (Irish: Liam Mac Fhlannchadha), Irish folk singer. With his brothers Tom and Patrick Clancy, as well as Tommy Makem he was part of the popular group The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

Liam Clancy's website

1935 Ernie Sigley, Australian TV personality

1936 Andrew Grove, co-founder and chairman of Intel

1948 Christa McAuliffe (d. 1986), American teacher, astronaut

1949 Ted Mulry, UK-born Australian singer-songwriter, (Julia; Falling in Love Again)

1951 Mark Harmon, actor

1964 Keanu Reeves, American actor

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

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August

30 Toasted Marshmallow Day
31 Eat Outside Day

September

1 Cherry Popover Day
3 Football Day
5 Labor Day
5 Be Late For Something Day
5 Teachers' Day (India)
5 Cheese Pizza Day
6 Coffee Ice Cream Day
7 Do It Day
9 Teddy Bear Day
9 Hot Dog Day
11 Grandparents Day
12 Chocolate Milkshake Day
13 Positive Thinking Day
13 Programmers' Day
13 Peanut Day
13 Helicopter Day
14 Cream-filled Donut Day
14 Triumph Of The Holy Cross
14 Cream-filled Donut Day
15 Central American Independence Day
16 Independence Day (Mexico)
16 Collect Rocks Day
16 Mayflower Day
16 Spud Day (Idaho)
16 Wife Appreciation Day
16 Working Parents Day
17 Women's Friendship Day
17 God Bless America Day
17 Citizenship Day
18 Women's Friendship Day
19 Thank You 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

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31 BCE Roman Civil War: Battle of Actium – Off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeated troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

421 Death of Constantius III, Roman Emperor.

1347 Charles IV (1316 - 1378), King of Bohemia, was crowned. He was the first Czech monarch to become the King of the Romans, and, in 1355, Holy Roman Emperor – effectively making him the secular head of all of Western Christendom.

"Now, Charles IV's resilience as a ruler is not surprising: for his day he was an intellectual tour-de-force: the monarch spoke five languages fluently at a time when most rulers were not able to read and write. He was also a deeply religious man and a lover of architecture and art. By choosing to reside in Prague Charles IV ensured the city's future beauty and fame: Prague quickly became the most important city in the empire, benefiting from the ruler's commissions that still define it today: the creation of Prague's New Town which Charles himself helped design, the building of numerous Gothic structures, the founding of the first university in Central Europe, and the reconstruction of the royal palace. Finally, one can not forget the building of the Stone Bridge on the Vltava river – the landmark known today simply as the Charles Bridge, which so recently weathered devastating August floods. The bridge survived, and it is through it and other architectural sites in Prague and throughout the country that the memory of Charles IV remains most alive today, a daily reminder and tribute to a great ruler crowned so many centuries ago."    Source

[The Charles Bridge is indeed beautiful in both its construction and setting. And it has a code number carved on it which lets us know when it was constructed. See it on webcam, July 9 in the Book of Days.]

1666 Great Fire of London: A large fire broke out in London in the bakery of Thomas Farriner, Charles II's baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge.

The Great Fire raged until September 6, when it burnt itself out at Pie Corner, destroying 10,000 buildings, including St Paul's Cathedral. Sources differ on how many people are known to have died; perhaps between six and sixteen.

It left about 200,000 homeless and consumed 89 churches, 13,200 houses and 430 streets. At the time it was widely believed that the 'Protestant city' was torched by the 'popish (Catholic) faction', or so the monument on Fish Hill, London, revealed.

The only good things that came out of the Great Fire were the end to the Great Plague that killed up to a fifth of London's population in 1665, and the subsequent rebuilding of the city. Poor sanitation and the preponderance of rats had led to the plague, which is generally believed to have been bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis transmitted via a rat vector. I have heard that at the time, many people believed that many cats and dogs were killed in the mistaken belief that those animals were at fault, thus allowing the rats a greater chance at survival. I have no more information on this rather intriguing titbit.

An article in The Guardian of January 9, 2001 suggested that the Great Fire of London might have been caused by burning some 'small cakes'. Scroll down for a contemporary recipe.

On this day, a young Isaac Newton had a vision of a great phoenix above the flames of the Great Fire of London.

The Secret of William Lilly's Prediction
of the Great Fire of London
By Maurice McCann

Extracted from an article first published in The Astrological Journal, Jan/Feb 1990, vol.XXXII no.1

"On Friday, October 25, 1666, the famous astrologer William Lilly was ordered to appear in the Speaker's Chamber of the House of Commons to give testimony before the special Committee set up to examine the cause of the great fire which had devastated the City of London in September.

"Lilly, it was claimed, had successfully predicted the outbreak of the fire 14 years before when he had published Monarchy or No Monarchy in England a book containing 19 hieroglyphic drawings giving carefully disguised predictions. As a consequence of one of these, featuring a large fire, Lilly was seriously suspected of causing the fire. It was also thought that he wished to obtain credit for forecasting the event. Being fearful of what might happen to him, Lilly persuaded the committee that his prediction had not been precise and he was allowed to go.

"For over 300 years Lilly's hieroglyphic prediction has been dismissed, even by astrologers unable to work out his code, and no one has attempted to interpret it. Now, however, the code has been deciphered and the hieroglyphics shown to be a disguised horoscope for the moment of the outbreak of the Great Fire on Sunday, 2nd September, 1666 ...

"William Lilly was one of the most enigmatic and influential astrologers, whose prediction of the Great Fire of London nearly brought him to an untimely end. Only the fact that the prediction was made in a code which, for three centuries, has remained unbroken, kept him from finishing his career on the gallows tree at Tyburn, like young Robert Hubert, as a victim to London's hysterical cry for vengeance over what was, by all the evidence, a tragic accident which turned into a catastrophe of major proportions."   Source

London's Burning exhibition

1724 Margaret Dickson came back to life after hanging.

Half-hanget Maggy

On this day, single mother Margaret Dickson was hanged at Edinburgh for the crime of concealing a pregnancy in the case of a dead child. Somewhere on the six mile journey from the scaffold to the Musselburgh Cemetery, somehow the corpse of Ms Dickson revived. She went on to be reunited with her husband and to have several more children, and was known on the streets of Edinburgh, where she sold salt, as Half-hanget Maggy.

 

 

September 1752
Su	M	Tu	W	Th	F	Sa
		1	2	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30

 

1752 The United Kingdom adopted the Gregorian calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe.

These were years of turmoil in the Church, and Protestantism had broken out all over Europe. The Catholic countries, of course, took on the new calendar, but the Protestant countries wouldn't have a bar of it, no more than the Orthodox Christian countries would. Finally though, even the Prots had to see the sense in it and England caught up with the real world in 1752.

By now the English were out by eleven days, which King George II (by the Calendar Act of 1751) had to pinch from the calendar. Wednesday, September 2, 1752 was followed by Thursday,  September 14, 1752 to accommodate this change and be consistent with the rest of Europe. They called the new dates New Style, and New Style or NS is still used to signify which calendar date we are referring to, as we might do in the case of birthdays of people who lived around that time, even if not English, such as Benjamin Franklin, for example.

This theft was not taken kindly to by the workers and peasants, however, many of whom rioted with banners reading 'Give us back our eleven days' (I presume this is where Calendar Riots got its name). Historians say that they thought they had been robbed of eleven days' pay. Maybe they had. There was also much concern that by following continental Europe's Gregorian calendar, 'Popery' was afoot.

Generations of English folk had become used to a certain oak tree near Malwood Castle in Hampshire budding each year on Christmas day. The locals said they would use this tree to prove the propriety or otherwise of the change. When it failed to bud until January 5, Epiphany Eve (or the Eve of Twelfth Day), the 'anti-Gregorians' became confirmed in their opposition to the reforms, and for generations they celebrated the religious feasts on the Old Style (OS) calendar.  

As another lesser known consequence of the Calendar Act, 1751 was a short year, running only from March 25 (Lady Day) to December 31. New Year's Day had to move from March 25 to January 1, as had been the case in Scotland for some time, as it had gone Gregorian in 1600. The City of London refused to pay taxes early, so the powers that be moved the financial year's commencement to April 6, where it incongruously remains, to the irritation of many.

It can all get very confusing and working out dates of events, festivals and so on can be fraught with difficulties for harmless drudges such as almanackists. For example, in The Tower of London there is a graffito scratched into a cell wall by some poor bloke imprisoned in January, 1642, for his role in the Battle of Edgehill – which didn't even take place until October 23, 1642!

Because they were still British colonials, the Americans got what the British got, like it or not. (A colonial named Ben Franklin was the brains behind a scheme, widely practised in Australia even now, to 'add' daylight to people's waking hours. We call Franklin's brainchild Daylight Saving; but that's another story.) The following two and a half centuries of English-speaking hegemony over much of the world ensured the eventual capitulation of most of the world's calendars to Big Greg, or NS. Notable exceptions are the Jewish and Moslem calendars. The Greek Orthodox countries accepted the inevitable change to NS in 1924 for civil purposes, but maintain OS for ecclesiastical purposes, which is why your Greek neighbours celebrate Easter when you don't.

The Soviet Union's adoption of the Gregorian calendar was by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars, dated January 25, 1918. Russia, in the sway of the Russian Orthodox Church, had hung in there with OS until the Communists could hold back the tide no longer and switched to NS. Which is why the October Revolution happened in November. Still with me?

1764 Death of Rev. Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royal.

1789 United States Department of the Treasury was founded.

1793 The first surplus grain grown in the colony of New South Wales, Australia, was sold by farmers.

1824 John Oxley founded the first settlement of Moreton Bay (Queensland, Australia).

Moreton Bay had a reputation as one of the cruellest penal settlements in the British Empire, inspiring an unknown balladeer to compose the folk song, 'Moreton Bay'. On September 10, 1825, the settlement, in what was then known as New South Wales, was formally called Brisbane, and on May 4, 1842, Moreton Bay proper was declared a free settlement. On June 6, 1859, Queensland, formerly known generally as the Moreton Bay District, was granted separation from New South Wales, Australia, as a new state, with Brisbane as its capital city.

1832 Death of Franz Xaver, Baron Von Zach, scientific editor, astronomer.

1834 Death of Thomas Telford (b. 1757), British civil engineer.

1840 The Sydney Herald was published as a daily paper for the first time.

1858 The song 'The Yellow Rose of Texas', author unknown, was copyrighted, New York. The song is based on a Texas legend from the days of the Texas War of Independence.

1862 American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln reluctantly restored Union General George McClellan to full command after General John Pope's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Second Bull Run.

1864 American Civil War: Union forces under General William T Sherman entered Atlanta, Georgia a day after the Confederate defenders fled the city.

1865 New Zealand: Border disputes between British settlers and the Maori Kingitanga ended .

1870 Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan – After forty days of war, Prussian forces of Kaiser Wilhelm defeated the French armies and took emperor Napoleon III (King Louis Napoleon) and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner at Sedan.

1885 Rock Springs Massacre: In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners attacked their Chinese co-workers, killing 28, wounding 15, and forcing several hundred more out of town. The massacre in Rock Springs touched off a wave of anti-Chinese violence, especially in the Puget Sound area of Washington Territory. Rioting and mob actions also broke out in Seattle, Tacoma, and Issaquah, Washington.

1898 Battle of Omdurman – British and Egyptian troops led by Horatio Kitchener defeated Sudanese tribesmen led by Khalifa Abdullah al-Taashi, at Omdurman, Sudan, thus establishing British dominance in the Sudan. Kitchener's 25,000 Anglo-Egyptian troops killed at least 10,000 dervishes, followers of the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad. The general later became famous as Lord Kitchener of Khartoum (or, 'K of K') and his face on World War One recruitment posters is one of the most famous images of the 20^th Century.

1901 USA: Vice President Theodore Roosevelt uttered the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.

 

1922 Henry Lawson (b. 1867), one of Australia's greatest writers, and certainly its best known, died of a stroke, aged 55, addicted to alcohol and poverty stricken as he had been for most of his adult life. He was buried on September 4 . 

Lawson's body was found beneath a tree in the backyard of his small rented cottage in Abbotsford, a suburb of Sydney on the north side of the Bridge. It was the 51^st birthday of one of his best mates, fellow poet John Le Gay Brereton.

The Commonwealth Government provided a State funeral for the country's favourite bard, the first ever held for an Australian writer, and just two days after his death. His publisher and mentor, George Robertson, helped to arrange the funeral and dropped in a letter to Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who had known Lawson for many years: 

"I hope the Commonwealth Government will give some portion of Henry Lawson's pension to the old lady who mothered him for over twenty years. I refer to Mrs Byers, who must now be well into her seventies.
  "To be Henry's housekeeper was no sinecure, as you may know. The old lady slaved for and tended him without thought of reward, and with scant thanks, I am afraid, from Henry himself … her unselfish devotion to Australia's greatest writer deserves some slight national recognition."

The world shall yet be a wider world – for the tokens are manifest;
East and North shall the wrongs be hurled that followed us South and West.
The march of Freedom is North by the Dawn! Follow, whate'er betide!
Sons of the Exiles, march! March on! March till the world grows wide!
Henry Lawson

Many dignitaries attended the funeral in Waverley Cemetery, Sydney. On Lawson's headstone is a white marble plaque with the words:

Another plaque was unveiled fifty years later, on September 2, 1972.

"At his death his poems were regarded as the fourth best-selling creative works in Australia, but it is his short stories which are considered to bear the work of genius, and this is a word which is used over and over again to describe his talent."
Ollif, Lorna, Louisa Lawson: Henry Lawson's Crusading Mother, Rigby, Sydney, 1978, p. 136

The balladist, EJ Brady, an old mate of Henry's, remarked in a letter to Lawson biographer Denton Prout:

"You must make up your mind to accept the fact that Lawson was put in gaol for a debt he could not pay – that this beautiful country of yours never allowed him to earn as much as a carpenter's basic wage; and that he was reduced to begging in the streets of Sydney. After treating him as a man of no account all his life, they lifted a statue to him in Sydney Domain when he was dead!

"This is the way creative genius is rewarded in Australia ... the best country in the world for jockeys and racecourse touts, the worst for people of culture.

"I knew Lawson as well as I have known any man, and it makes me sick ... this posthumous exaltation of a writer who was scorned and exploited, while living, and whose value was only recognized after he was well underground."
Denton Prout, Henry Lawson: The grey dreamer, Rigby Ltd, Adelaide, 1963

Wilson's poem to Lawson    Henry Lawson's grave, an interesting tale

Louisa and Henry Lawson – they drove each other crazy!

Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson Chronology (our big online resource)

The Death of Henry Lawson, a play by Jon Elbourne

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

 

1935 USA: Labor Day Hurricane of 1935: A large hurricane hit the Florida Keys, killing 423.

1939 Following the invasion of Poland, Freie Stadt Danzig, ruled by Nazi leader Forster, was annexed to Nazi Germany.

1939 Britain went onto a war-footing with the coming into force of the National Service Bill, with all men aged 19-41 eligible to be called up into the armed forces.

1939 Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menzies announced that Australia was at war with Germany.

1942 The Nazi SS destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto, with the deaths of some 50,000 Jews.

1944 Holocaust: Diarist Anne Frank and her family were placed on the last transport train from Westerbork to Auschwitz, arriving three days later.

1945 World War II ended: The final official surrender of Japan was accepted by General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz from a delegation led by Mamoru Shigemitsu, aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. However, in Japan August 14 is recognized as the final day of the Pacific War.

1945 Vietnam declared its independence, forming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), with Ho Chi Minh as its first president.

1948 Australia: Margaret McIntyre, the first woman to be elected to the Tasmanian parliament, was killed when the DC-3 in which she was a passenger crashed en route from Brisbane to Tasmania.

1958 South Africa's new premier, Hendrik Verwoerd declared that his government would strengthen apartheid.

1962 The Soviet Union agreed to send arms to Cuba.

1963 USA: CBS Evening News became network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show was lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.

1963 Governor George Wallace used State troopers in Alabama, USA, to stop school racial integration.

1964 Norman Manley hit two consecutive holes-in-one in a single golf game, California, USA.

1967 The microstate Principality of Sealand unilaterally declared its independence.

1969 The first automatic teller machine in the United States was installed in Rockville Centre, New York.

1969 Ho Chi Minh, President of communist North Vietnam, died, but authorities told the world he died on September 3, so as not to let people know he died on the 24th anniversary of the day he declared the nation's independence. The truth did not emerge until 1995 when the country was celebrating 50 years of independence.

1971 Egypt discontinued the title 'United Arab Republic' and went back to its original name.

1976 The European Court of Human Rights said that Britain had tortured Ulster prisoners.

1976 Percy Shaw, the man who invented 'cats' eyes', which shine to mark lines on roads, died.

1977 A yowie sighting was made near Bateman's Bay, NSW, Australia.

 

1984 Australia: 'The Fathers' Day Massacre' - two rival motorcycle gangs, the Comancheros and the Bandidos, engaged in a gunfight at Milperra, a western suburb of Sydney, in which seven people were killed and more than 20 wounded.

The shooting began in the car park of Milperra's hotel, the Viking Tavern, where the club members had organized a party to celebrate Fathers' Day. Before long, the bikies were attacking each other with guns, knives and baseball bats. A young girl selling raffle tickets outside the pub was among those killed.

In August, 1983, the Bandidos formed when a rift occurred in the Comancheros MC; a similar split had occurred in Texas, also followed by a bloody shootout. The court case following the massacre was at the time one of the largest in Australian history. Forty-three people were charged with seven counts of murder.

The judge in the case named the instigator of the violence as the "supreme commander" of the Comancheros, William 'Jock' Ross. I met Ross in about 1992 when he was involved in fundraising for a children's hospital at which I worked. He was one of the organizers of the collection of waste paper within Sydney's Long Bay Prison, arranging to sell the paper to recyclers and channel the money towards the hospital. It was my job to escort Ross, who reminded me of Willy Nelson, and a number of his Comanchero comrades through the wards. They all seemed pleasant enough.

In June 1987, 30 motorcycle club members were found guilty of murder or manslaughter. The only person acquitted was a former Commonwealth Games boxing gold medallist named Philip Bruce McElwaine.

Brothers At War (movie)    More

1986 Australia: Eight people died in a Piper Navajo aircraft crash, near Cairns, Queensland.

1987 In Moscow, the trial of 19-year-old pilot Mathias Rust, who flew his Cessna airplane into Red Square in May 1987, began.

1995 The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

1998 In Canada, pilots for Air Canada launched the first strike in the company's history.

1998 A United Nations court found Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide, marking the first time that the 1948 law banning genocide was enforced.

 

Tomorrow: Britain stole 11 days

 

 Main calendar | Yesterday | Tomorrow | Search

 

 

Illustration: detail from the cover of The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight, 1675

 

An article in The Guardian of January 9, 2001 suggested that the Great Fire of London might have been caused by burning some 'small cakes'. Here is a contemporary recipe:

Small Cakes, after a recipe from Sir Kenelme Digby, 1669.
from 'The Closet of Sir Kenelme Digby Opened'.

Recipe

Take one pound of very fine flower, and put to it half a pound of sugar. Add one pound of currants well washed. When your flower is well mixed with the sugar and currants, you must put in it a half a pound of melted butter, three spoonfuls of milk, with the yolks of three new-laid eggs beat with it, some nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of Sack.

When you have mixed your paste well, you must put it in a dish by the fire, till it be warm.

Then make them up in little cakes, and prick them full of holes. Bake them in a quick oven unclosed. Afterwards sprinkle them with sugar.

The Cakes should be about the bigness of a hand-breadth and thin; of the cise of the Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet.

Word List: flower = flour, cise = size, bigness = size, sack = dry Spanish wine (can be left out or dry sherry used instead)

Ingredients

1 pound self raising flour.
Half pound caster sugar
1 pound currants
half pound butter
3 tablespoons milk
3 egg yolks
pinch of nutmeg
3 tablespoons Sack
icing sugar (to sprinkle on top)

Notes
1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds
Place in oven for 15 minutes at 200C – with the door shut!     Source  

Seventeenth Century English recipes

Convert weights & measures

 

 

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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