Today in History

[Tamrin]

Monday, 9 June
Commemoration of Bro. Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George (“Black Mozart”),
African-French swordsman, soldier of fortune and composer (died this day 1799)
Australia (except W.A.): “Queen’s Birthday” Holiday

1849 - Institution of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Delaware

1870 - Death of Charles Dickens, English author (Oliver Twist)

1916 - Birth of Robert McNamara, United States Secretary of Defence

1917 - Birth of Eric Hobsbawm, CH, British Marxist historian and author

1954 - Birth of Gregory Maguire, American novelist (Wicked)

1956 - Birth of Patricia Cornwell, American crime writer (Kay Scarpetta, medical examiner)

1961 - Birth of Michael J. Fox, Canadian-American actor, producer, activist and author

Elizabeth May, OC, MP
American-born Canadian Greens Politician
(Born this day 1954)

I participate, therefore I am

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 10 June
Ancient Persia: Day of Anahita, goddess of Love

0323 - BCE - Death of Alexander the Great, Macedonian king

1832 - Birth of Sir Edwin Arnold KCIE CSI, English poet (The Light of Asia)

1849 - Establishment of Provincial Grand Lodge, New South Wales, EC

1914 - Birth of Saul Bellow, Canadian-born American author (Mr Sammler's Planet)

1929 - Birth of Edward O Wilson (EO Wilson), American etymologist and sociobiologist

1941 - Death of Marcus Garvey, Jamaican proponent of Black Nationalism

1988 - Death of Louis L'Amour, US western writer (frontier stories)

Luís Vaz de Camões
Portugal's national bard
(Died this day 1580)

Times change, as do our wills, what we are - is ever changing;
all the world is made of change, and forever attaining new qualities

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 11 June
Hawai'i: Kamehameha Day, in honour of its first monarch

1294 - Death of Roger Bacon, English mathematician and alchemist

1572 - Birth of Ben Jonson, first English Poet Laureate (The Alchemist)

1877 - Birth of Renée Vivien (Pauline Mary Tarn), British-French symbolist poet

1880 - Birth of Jeannette Rankin, first woman in the United States Congress

1910 - Birth of Jacques Cousteau, French, underwater adventurer and filmmaker

1934 - Death of Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist (cultural-historical psychology)

1960 - Birth of Mehmet Oz (Dr. Oz), Turkish-American cardiothoracic surgeon

Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Italian-born American anarchist
(Born this day 1888)

There is nothing, nowhere, neither on earth nor in heavens,
that can make the true untrue or the untrue true

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 12 June
World Day Against Child Labour

1659 - Birth of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Japanese monk (former samurai)

1802 - Birth of Harriet Martineau, English writer, philosopher, abolitionist and feminist

1819 - Birth of Charles Kingsley, English clergyman and novelist (Hypatia)

1851 - Birth of Bro. Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, FRS, English physicist and radio pioneer

1925 - Initiation of Bro. Lord Stanley Bruce, Australian PM, in Old Melbournians’ Lodge

1929 - Birth of Anne Frank, Dutch diarist and Nazi Holocaust victim

1972 - Death of Saul Alinsky, American community organizer and writer

Bro. Medgar Evers
US Civil Rights activist
(Murdered this day 1963)

I'm looking to be shot any time I step out of my car… If I die, it will be in a good
cause. I've been fighting for America just as much as the soldiers in Vietnam

[Tamrin]

Friday, 13 June
Celts: Feast Day of Epona, (horse goddess)

1752 - Birth of Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay), English author (Camille)

1865 - Birth of William Butler Yeats, G.D. Fr., Irish poet (Wild Swans at Coole, Nobel 1923)

1884 - Birth of Gerald Gardner (aka Scire), English occultist (reinvented or revived Wicca)

1889 - The Grand Lodge of North Dakota was instituted

1928 - Birth of John Forbes Nash, Jr., American Mathematician and Game Theorist

1931 - Birth of Irvin D. Yalom, M.D., American existential psychiatrist & author

1965 - Death of Martin Buber, Austrian-Israeli philosopher, theologian, story-teller and teacher

Ben Chifley
16^th Prime Minister of Australia
(Died this day 1951)

I try to think of the labour movement, not as putting an extra sixpence into somebody's
pocket, or making somebody Prime Minister or Premier, but as a movement bringing
something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass
of the people. We have a great objective — the light on the hill — which we aim to reach
by working the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a help-
ing hand. If it were not for that, the Labour movement would not be worth fighting for

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 14 June
World Blood Donor Day

1811 - Birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe, US author (Uncle Tom's Cabin)

1883 - Death of Bro. Edward FitzGerald, poet and translator (Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám)

1899 - Birth of Yasunari Kawabata, Japanese novelist and Nobel laureate (1968)

1927 - Death of Bro. Jerome K. Jerome, British author (Three Men in a Boat)

1936 - Death of G. K. Chesterton, English writer (Eugenics and Other Evils)

1995 - Death of Roger Zelazny, American science fiction and fantasy novelist

2002 - Death of June Jordan, African-American activist, poet, essayist and teacher

Max Weber, German sociologist
(Died this day 1920)

The Truth is the Truth

(Last words)

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 15 June
Eastern Orthodox Church: Feast Day of Augustine of Hippo (former Manichaean)

1215 - Magna Carta signed by King John at Runnymede, England

1849 - Death of Bro. James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States

1902 - Birth of Erik H Erikson, Danish-German-American developmental psychologist

1916 - Birth of Herbert A. Simon, American polymath, Nobel laureate (economics, 1978)

1939 - Birth of Brian Jacques, English writer (Redwall series)

1941 - Death of Evelyn Underhill, British writer (Mysticism)

2002 - Death of Choi Hong Hi (General Choi), South Korean army general and martial artist

'J.R. "Bob" Dobbs'
Iconic Pop Guru
(face appeared on a tortilla in Plano, Texas, this day 1963)

You know how dumb the average person is?
Well, by definition, half of 'em are even dumber than that

[Tamrin]

Monday, 16 June
Dublin: Bloomsday (events in James Joyce's Ulysses, 1904)

1723 - Birth of Adam Smith, Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

1752 - Death of Joseph Butler, English bishop, theologian, apologist and philosopher

1821 - The Grand Lodge of Alabama was instituted

1902 - Birth of Barbara McClintock, American geneticist and Nobel Laureate (1983)

1902 - Birth of George Gaylord Simpson, American paleontologist (Quantum Evolution)

1920 - Birth of John Howard Griffin, American journalist and author (Black Like Me)

2003 - Death of Georg Henrik von Wright, Finnish-Swedish- British philosopher

Hammurabi the Great
6th King of Babylon, law giver
(Died this day 1686 BCE)

The gods Anu and Enlil… named me by my name: Hammurabi, the pious
prince, who venerates the gods, to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish
the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak,
to rise like the sun-god Shamash over all humankind, to illuminate the land

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 17 June
World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought

1703 - Birth of John Wesley, English clergyman, co-founded Methodist movement

1867 - Birth of Henry Lawson, Australian poet and author (Freedom on the Wallaby)

1871 - Birth of James Weldon Johnson, American author, anthropologist and activist

1914 - Birth of John Hersey, US Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (Hiroshima)

1918 - Birth of Ajahn Chah, Thai Buddhist meditation master (Theravada Buddhism)

1951 - Birth of Starhawk (Miriam Simos), American writer and neopagan activist

1996 - Death of Thomas Kuhn, American physicist, historian and philosopher of science

Bro. Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World)
(arrived in New York this day in 1885)

As Masons, we cannot appropriate to ourselves alone the lessons which
this monument will teach. Not only to us, but to all men will it appeal

Deputy G.M., R.W. Bro. Lawrence
(Dedicating the site for the statue)

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 18 June
Coptic Orthodox Church: Celebration of the Tears of Isis (overflowing of the Nile)

1037 - Death of Avicenna, Persian philosopher, encyclopaedist and physician

1835 - Death of William Cobbett, English politician, agriculturist and pamphleteer

1902 - Death of Samuel Butler, British satirist (The Way of All Flesh)

1913 - Birth of Sylvia Field Porter, American economist and journalist

1942 - Birth of Sir Paul McCartney, English musician, singer, songwriter and composer

1962 - Birth of Lisa Randall, American theoretical physicist and cosmologist

2010 - Death of José Saramago, GcolSE, Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist

E.W. Scripps
American newspaper journalist, publisher and founder
(Born this day 1854)

The press of this country is now and always has been so thoroughly dominated
by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the
great mass of the people that correct information concerning political, econom-
ical, and social subjects which it is necessary that the mass of people shall have,
in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect them-
selves from the brutal force and the chicanery of the ruling and employing class