Today in History

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 29 April
International: Dance Day

1667 - Baptism of Bro. Dr. John Arbuthnot, Scottish writer and polymath

1854 - Birth of Henri Poincaré, French mathematician, astronomer and philosopher

1863 - Birth of William Randolph Hearst, US publisher (San Francisco Examiner)

1863 - Birth of Constantine P. Cavafy, Greek poet (historical, sensual and philosophical themes)

1875 - Birth of Rafael Sabatini, Italian-British author (romance and adventure novels)

1890 - Institution of the Grand Lodge of New Zealand (41 lodges & 1,236 members)

1980 - Death of Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, British-US director (Psycho, Birds)

Bro. Sir Joseph Banks, FRS, renowned British Botanist
(first known Freemason to set foot on Australian soil, this day 1770)

Who knows but that England may revive in New South Wales when it has sunk in Europe

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 30 April
Wicca: Walpurgis Night (Beltane eve)
Voudon: Mangé-les-morts (feeding the dead)

0065 - CE - Suicide by decree of Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus), Roman epic poet

1328 - Death of Meister Johann Eckhart, German theologian and mystic

1771 - Birth of Bro. Hosea Ballou, American utopian religious leader

1922 - Death of A.E. Housman, English classical scholar and poet

1929 - Birth of Ralf Dahrendorf, KBE, FBA, German-British sociologist and politician

1933 - Birth of Willie Nelson, US country singer (On the Road Again)

1945 - Birth of Annie Dillard, American writer (An American Childhood)

Beatrice Potter Webb
British labour historian (My Apprenticeship)
(Died this day 1943)

If I ever felt inclined to be timid as I was going into a room full of people, I
would say to myself, 'You're the cleverest member of one of the cleverest families
in the cleverest class of the cleverest nation ... why should you be frightened?’

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 1 May
May Day: Beltane / Labour Day

1471 - Death of Thomas a Kempis, German theologian and writer (The Imitation of Christ)

1751 - Birth of Judith Sargent Murray, American essayist, poet and advocate for women's rights

1852 - Birth of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish neuroscientist and Nobel laureate

1865 - Initiation of Bro. William McKinley, 25th US President (Hiram Lodge #21, Virginia)

1873 - Death of David Livingstone, Scottish medical missionary, abolitionist and African explorer

1881 - Birth of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French priest, philosopher and paleontologist

1927 - Birth of Harry Belafonte, Jamaican-American singer and Human Rights activist

Paracelsus
Swiss physician and alchemist
(Born this day 1493)

Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist
of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes
of life, which must be understood before they may be guided

[Tamrin]

Friday, 2 May
Commemoration of Leonardo da Vinci, Italian polymath extraordinaire (died this day 1519)

1551 - Birth of William Camden, English antiquarian, historian, topographer and officer of arms

1859 - Birth of Jerome K. Jerome, English writer & humourist (Three Men in a Boat)

1903 - Birth of Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician and author

1964 - Death of Nancy N Witcher Astor, US-English feminist and politician

1972 - Death of Bro. J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

1997 - Death of Sir John Carew Eccles, Australian neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate

2011 - Death of Osama bin Laden, Saudi Arabian terrorist and mass murderer (rot in hell)

A. M. Rosenthal
US newpaper editor (New York Times)
(Born this day 1922)

When something important is going on, silence is a lie

---

Saturday, 3 May
World Press Freedom Day

1469 - Birth of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian politician and writer (The Prince)

1835 - Birth of Alfred Austin, English Poet Laureate (Is Life Worth Living?)

1849 - Birth of Jacob Riis, Danish-American social reformer and photo-journalist

1919 - Birth of Pete Seeger, American folksinger (The Weavers)

1932 - Death of Charles Hoy Fort, American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena

1933 - Birth of James Brown, American entertainer (Godfather of Soul)

1959 - Birth of Ben Elton, English-Australian comedian, author, playwright and director

Septima Clark
US civil rights activist and educator
(Born this day 1898)

I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos,
it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 4 May
Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you)

1796 - Birth of Bro. Horace Mann, US educator, author and editor (pioneered public schools)

1824 - Death of Joseph Joubert, French moralist and essayist (Pensées)

1825 - Birth of Thomas Henry Huxley, English scientist, humanist and evolutionist (Darwin’s Bulldog)

1916 - Birth of Jane Jacobs, American-born Canadian urbanist, writer and activist

1929 - Birth of Audrey Hepburn, Brussels-born British-American actress

1939 - Birth of Amos Oz, Israeli professor of literature and author (The Same Sea)

1943 - Birth of Michael Palin, British comedian (Monty Python)

Col. David Hackworth
US Military Officer and journalist
(Died this day 2005)

If a policy is wrongheaded, feckless and corrupt, I take it personally and
consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed

[Tamrin]

Monday, 5 May
Mexico: Cinco de Mayo (commemoration of the Battle of Puebla, 1862)
Ethiopia: Victory Day (return of Haile Selassie from exile, 1941)

1813 - Birth of Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (Existentialism)

1818 - Birth of Karl Marx, German-English philosopher (Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital)

1821 - Death of Napoleon I Bonaparte, Emperor of France (1799-1815

1923 - Birth of Richard Wollheim, British philosopher (Socialism and Culture)

1851 - Initiation of Bro. Andrew Johnson, 17^th US President, Greenville Lodge #119, Tennessee

1882 - Birth of Bro. Sir Douglas Mawson, FRS, English-born Australian Antarctic explorer

1981 - Death Bobby Sands, MP (Roibeard Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh), Irish Republican

Bob Dylan
American singer-songwriter, poet, painter and activist

I married Isis on the fifth day of May, but I could not hold on to her very long. So I cut off
my hair and I rode straight away for the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong

“Isis” tells a tale of a man who married an enigmatic figure named Isis. The story’s main part, told by her spouse, is about his separation from her. The song opens with their wedding "on the fifth day of May," an allusion to Cinco de Mayo (a patriotic holiday of Mexico), one of several Mexican themes found in Dylan's songs during the 1970s. Still in the first verse, the tale describes the couple's separation and the narrator's adventure through what sounds like the Wild West or Mexico. He rides a pony and hitches it up "on the right" in a "high place" symbolically “divided by a line through the middle” into “light and dark”. He goes to wash his clothes, as though to wash himself of his past. He falls in with a shady character who promises easy treasure. They ride “to the pyramids all embedded in ice,” and dig in freezing conditions until the treasure-hunting companion dies. So the narrator breaks into the empty tomb, finds no treasure, and realizes the adventure had been crazy. He buries the dead man in the tomb within the pyramid, says a quick prayer, and rides back to Isis because he still loves her. He sees her in a meadow where Isis asks him if he is going to stay this time. The narrator replies, “If you want me to, yes!”

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 6 May
1st Black Masonic Lodge, African #459 (formed by Prince Hall, Boston, 1787)

1758 - Birth of Maximilien Robespierre, French revolutionary and advocate

1856 - Birth of Sigmund Freud, Austrian father of psychoanalysis

1859 - Death of Alexander von Humboldt, German naturalist and American explorer

1862 - Death of Henry David Thoreau, US writer and pacifist (Walden Pond)

1871 - Birth of Christian Morgenstern, German poet and author (Zarathustra’s Children)

1915 - Birth of Orson Welles, US film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer

1919 - Death of L Frank Baum, American theosophist and author (Wizard of Oz)

Gina Riley
Australian actress, writer, singer and comedian (Kath & Kim)
(Born this day 1961)

it's nice, it's different, it's unsual

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 7 May
Commemoration of Guru Nanak Dev ji, founder of Sikhism (died this day 1539)
French Revolution: Cult of the Supreme Being (introduced as the new state religion, 1794)

1711 - Birth of David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian (British Empiricism)

1748 - Birth of Bro. Olympe de Gouges, French author and feminist (Declaration of the Rights of Woman)

1812 - Birth of Robert Browning, English poet (The Pied Piper)

1861 - Birth of Radindranath Tagore, Hindu poet, mystic and composer (Nobel 1913)

1919 - Birth of Evita Perón, South American actress and Argentinian first lady

1941 - Death of Sir James George Frazer, FRS, Scottish anthropologist (The Golden Bough)

1943 - Birth of Peter Carey, OGG, Australian novelist (Bliss, Oscar and Lucinda)

Jenny Joseph, British poet
(Born this day 1932)

WARNING

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 8 May
Kent: Jack Cade’s rebellion (against King Henry VI, 1450)
Red Cross and Red Crescent Day (founder Henry Dunant born this day 1828)
WWII: V-E Day (Victory in Europe, 1945)

1794 - Death of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, French “father of modern chemistry” (identified oxygen)

1873 - Death of John Stuart Mill, British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist

1884 - Birth of Bro. Harry Truman, 33rd US President (1945–1953)

1891 - Death of H.P. Blavatsky, Russian-British Theosophist (The Secret Doctrine)

1895 - Birth of Fulton J. Sheen, American Catholic Archbishop and TV evangelist

1899 - Birth of Friedrich Hayek, Austrian-British economist, social scientist and political theorist

1936 - Death of Oswald Spengler, German philosopher (Underworld of Abendlandes)

Rev. Bro. Miguel Hidalgo (aka Cura Hidalgo, “Priest Hidalgo”)
Catholic priest, Freemason and “founder of the Mexican War of Independence”
(Born this day 1753)

My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it?
Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred
years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once…
Will not you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live
our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines!

[Tamrin]

Friday, 9 May
Romania: Declaration of Independence (Bro. Mihail Kogãlniceanu, 1877)

1265 - Birth of Dante Alighieri, Italian poet (Divina Commedia)

1805 - Death of Bro. Friedrich von Schiller, German poet, philosopher and playwright

1860 - Birth of Bro. Sir James Matthew Barrie, Scottish novelist and playwright (Peter Pan)

1873 - Birth of Howard Carter, British Egyptologist (found King Tutankhamen's tomb)

1883 - Birth of José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher (The Revolt of the Masses)

1893 - Birth of William Marston, American psychologist and inventor (polygraph)

1934 - Birth of Alan Bennett, English playwright, screenwriter, memoirist, essayist and actor

Bro. John Brown
Militant US abolitionist (Harper's Ferry Raid)
(Born this day 1800

In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, the design
on my part to free the slaves... That [referring to the Bible in the court room]
teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should
do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds,
as bound with them."... I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have
always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong,
but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the
furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of
my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are
disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!