Today in History

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 19 June
Roman Empire: Feast day of Minerva, Goddess of Crafts and Trade Guilds

1623 - Birth of Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist and theologian (Pascal’s Wager)

1856 - Birth of Elbert Hubbard, US editor, publisher and author (Message to Garcia)

1937 - Death of Bro. Sir JM Barrie, Scottish author and playwright (Peter Pan)

1945 - Birth of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (1991)

1947 - Birth of Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, Kt, Indian-British novelist and essayist (Satanic Verses)

1947 - Birth of John Ralston Saul, Canadian author and philosopher (Voltaire's Bastards)

1993 - Death of Sir William Gerald Golding, CBE, English novelist (Nobel laureate 1983)

Eratosthenes of Cyrene
Greek mathematician, elegiac poet, athlete, geographer, astronomer, and music theorist
(Estimated the circumference of the Earth this day 240 BCE)

Eratosthenes declares that it is no longer necessary to inquire as to
the cause of the overflow of the Nile, since we know definitely that men
have come to the sources of the Nile and have observed the rains there

(Proclus)

[Tamrin]

Friday, 20 June
World Refugee Day

1723 - Birth of Adam Ferguson, Scottish moral philosopher and historian

1821 - The [ugl= www.la-mason.com/]Grand Lodge of Louisiana[/ugl] was instituted

1858 - Birth of Charles W. Chesnutt, African-American author, activist and lawyer

1881 - Death of Bro. Albert Mackey, Masonic author (Mackey’s Encyclopedia)

1910 - Birth of Josephine Johnson, American Pulitzer prize winning novelist and poet

1940 - Birth of Eugen Drewermann, German theologian, psychotherapist and activist

1995 - Death of Emile Cioran, Romanian philosopher and essayist

Bro. Audie Murphy
Most decorated US combat soldier of WWII, songwriter and actor
(Born this day 1924)

I never liked being called the 'most decorated' soldier. There were so many
guys who should have gotten medals and never did — guys who were killed

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 21 June
World Humanist Day
June Solstice

0546 - BCE - Death of Thales of Miletus, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

1839 - Birth of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Brazilian novelist (Helena)

1880 - Birth of Arnold Gesell, American psychologist and pediatrician

1892 - Birth of Reinhold Niebuhr, US theologian (Nature & Destiny of Man)

1905 - Birth of Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher (Nobel 1964, declined)

1929 - Death of Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, British politician and sociologist

1953 - Birth of Benazir Bhutto, 1st female leader of a Moslem nation (Pakistan)

Charles Thomas Jackson
American physician and scientist
(medicine, chemistry, mineralogy and geology)
(The Masonic Stone of Port Royal 1606)
(Born this day 1805)

Whether or not you agree that trimming and cooking are likely to lead on to down-
right forgery, there is little to support the argument that trimming and cooking are
less reprehensible and more forgivable. Whatever the rationalization is, in the last
analysis one can no more than be a bit dishonest than one can be a little bit pregnant.
Commit any of these three sins and your scientific career is in jeopardy and deserves to be

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 22 June
Feast Day of Saint Alban, 1st martyr of Britain (legendary founder of British Freemasonry)

1767 - Birth of Wilhelm von Humboldt, German diplomat and philosopher

1856 - Birth of Bro. Sir H. Rider Haggard, KBE, English author (She, King Solomon's Mines)

1887 - Birth of Sir Julian Huxley, FRS, English evolutionary biologist and philosopher

1907 - Birth of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, US aviator and author (Gift from the Sea)

1936 - Birth of Kris Kristofferson, US country music singer, songwriter, actor, Rhodes scholar

1949 - Elizabeth Warren, American Senator, attorney, educator and author

1964 - Birth of Dan Brown, American author (The Lost Symbol, The Da Vinci Code)

Judy Garland (Frances Ethel Gumm)
American actor and singer (Wizard of Oz)
(Died this day 1969)

Always be a first-rate version of yourself,
instead of a second-rate version of somebody else

[Tamrin]

Monday, 23 June
Old Midsummer Eve (St John’s Eve)
Babylon: Rites of Ishtar and Tammuz (Day one of two day festival):
Syria, Judea and Greece: Rites of Astarte and Baal, Asherah and Yahweh and Aphrodite and Adonis

1763 - Birth of Empress Joséphine of France, Grand Matraisse du Loge d'Adoption Sainte-Caroline

1780 - Bro. Wolfgang Goethe, German writer, was made a Mason in Amalia Lodge in Weimar

1889 - Birth of Anna Akhmatova, Russian anti-Soviet poet (Thinking of the Sun)

1894 - Birth of Alfred Kinsey, American entomologist, sexologist

1912 - Birth of Alan Turing, OBE, FRS, British mathematician and cryptographer (Turing Machine)

1936 - Birth of Richard Bach, American author (Jonathan Livingston Seagull)

1995 - Death of Jonas Salk, MD, US Medical researcher, author and inventor (Polio vaccine)

William Penn and Lenni Lenape tribe sign friendship treaty this day 1683
(only treaty "not sworn to, nor broken")

We are met on the path of mutual respect and fair dealing. No advantage will
be taken on either side, but there shall be openness and love. I will not call
you children, for even parents sometimes chide their children too severely;
not brothers, for even brothers sometimes differ. Our friendship I will not liken
to a chain, for that the rain might rust or a fallen tree might break. We are as if
one man's body were divided into two parts. We are one flesh and one blood

William Penn


While the sun shines, and the river runs we will keep peace with William Penn and his children

Lenni Lenapes’ reply

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 24 June
Europe: Old Midsummer's Day
Babylon: Rites of Ishtar and Tammuz (Day two of two day festival):
Syria, Judea and Greece: Rites of Astarte and Baal, Asherah and Yahweh and Aphrodite and Adonis
Rosicrucian: Feast Day of Rosa Mundi, (Rose of the World, Great Mother)

1314 - Battle of Bannockburn; Scotland regains independence from England

1717 - Establishment of the Premier Grand Lodge, London

1731 - First entry in account book of St. John’s Lodge in Philadelphia, of a Lodge meeting in the colonies that became the USA

1734 - MW Bro. Benjamin Franklin installed as Grand Master of what would be known as the ‘Moderns’ Grand Lodge in Pennsylvania

1791 - The African Grand Lodge of North America was instituted in Boston (later became the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts)

1797 - The second Grand Lodge for African Americans was instituted in Philadelphia

1820 - The Grand Lodge of Maine was instituted

Bro. Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener
KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, ADC, PC
British Field Marshall & colonial administrator
(Born this day 1850)

Don't talk to me about atrocities in war; all war is an atrocity

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 25 June
Copts: Feast day of Pontius Pilate

1822 - Death of E.T.A. Hoffmann, German author of horror and fantasy (The Nutcracker)

1900 - Birth of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG GCB OM GCSI GCIE GCVO DSO PC FRS

1903 - Birth of George Orwell, English author (Animal Farm, 1984)

1908 - Birth of Willard Van Orman Quine, American philosopher and logician

1933 - Birth of James Meredith, US civil rights activist

1958 - Death of Alfred Noyes, CBE, English poet (The Highwayman)

1984 - Death of Michel Foucault, French philosopher, social theorist and historian

Bro. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold
American military officer — General of the Army and later General of the Air Force
(the only Air Force general to hold five-star rank, and the only
person to hold a five-star rank in two different U.S. military services)
(Born this day 1886)

A modern, autonomous, and thoroughly trained Air Force in being at all times
will not alone be sufficient, but without it there can be no national security