Today in History

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 11 September
Lament: Tenth Anniversary of 9:11 Attacks in the U.S.A. (more than 2800 died)

1700 – Birth of Bro. James Thompson, Scottish poet who wrote 'Rule, Britannia'

1823 - Death of David Ricardo, English politician businessman and political economist

1862 - Birth of O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), American writer (Cabbages and Kings)

1885 - Birth of D.H. Lawrence, English novelist (Lady Chatterly's Lover)

1917 - Birth of Jessica Mitford, Anglo-American author (The American Way of Death)

1933 - Birth of Susan Sontag, American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist

1948 - Death of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan

Robert Service
English-born Canadian poet (The Cremation of Sam McGee)
(Died this day 1958)

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your
energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain
ahead that wears you out — it's the grain of sand in your shoe

[Tamrin]

Monday, 12 September
Babylon: Day of Bel and Beltis (Sun God and Love Goddess)
Ancient Greece: Feast day of Astraea (Star-maiden)

1570 - Birth of Henry Hudson, English explorer (discovered Hudson River this day 1609)

1825 - Initiation of Bro. Hamilton Hume, Australian explorer, in Leinster Marine Lodge, IC, NSW

1880 - Birth of Henry L Mencken, US newspaperman and critic (Prejudices)

1888 - Birth of Maurice Chevalier, French actor, singer and vaudeville entertainer

1921 - Birth of Stanislaw Lem, Polish science fiction writer (Solaris)

1943 - Birth of Michael Ondaatje, O.C., Sri-Lankan born Canadian author (The English Patient)

1977 - Death of Steven Biko, South African black student leader

Leonard Peltier
Native American activist and political prisoner
(Born this day 1944)

They still don't want to admit to the world that this isn't the best and the
fairest and most equal justice system. And that they are guilty of railroading
people into jail. They don't want to, or never will, admit these things

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 13 September
Ancient Rome: Festival of Lectisternium in honour of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva

1592 - Death of Michel de Montaigne, French writer and philosopher (Essays)

1876 - Birth of Sherwood Anderson, American novelist and short-story writer

1894 - Birth of J.B. Priestley, English writer (play: An Inspector Calls; novel: Angel Pavement)

1900 - “Soldiers of the Cross” premiered in Melbourne — arguably the world's first feature film

1903 - Birth of Claudette Colbert (Lily Claudette Chauchoin), French-born Hollywood actress

1916 - Birth of Roald Dahl, Welsh children’s author (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

1938 - Birth of Judith Martin ('Miss Manners'), American writer on etiquette

Bro. John Pershing ('Black Jack') GCB (Hon)
US General of the Armies
(Born this day 1860)

A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while
on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 14 September
Switzerland: Pilgrimage of the Black Madonna (first day)

1321 - Death of Dante Alighieri, Italian author (The Divine Comedy)

1769- Birth of Alexander von Humboldt, German traveller, naturalist and ecologist

1844 - The Grand Lodge of Michigan was instituted

1849 - Birth of Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist and psychologist

1851 - Death of James Fenimore Cooper, US author (The Last of the Mohicans)

1930 - Birth of Allan Bloom, American academic

1934 - Birth of Kate Millett, American feminist and author (Sexual Politics)

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
German esotericist, Renaissance alchemist;
secret agent; soldier; feminist; and physician
(Born this day 1486)

Magic is a faculty of wonderful virtue, full of most high mysteries,
containing the most profound contemplation of most secret things,
together with the nature, power, quality, substance and virtues
thereof, as also the knowledge of whole Nature, and it doth instruct
us concerning the differing and agreement of things amongst them-
selves, whence it produceth its wonderful effects, by uniting the
virtues of things through the application of them one to the other

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 15 September
Ancient Greece: Nativity feast of Pallas Athena (goddess of Wisdom, patron of Athens)

1613 - Birth of Francois duc de la Rochefoucald, French writer (Maxims & Memoires)

1620 - Mayflower departs from Plymouth, England with 102 pilgrims

1851 - The Grand Lodge of Oregon was instituted

1857 - Birth of Bro. William Taft, USA Supreme Court Justice and 27th President of the United States

1890 - Birth of Dame Agatha Christie, DBE, British mystery writer (Murder on the Orient Express)

1889 - Birth of Robert Benchley, American humorist and newspaper columnist

1890 - Birth of Claude McKay, Jamaican-born poet and writer

Marco Polo
Venetian trader and explorer (Il Milione)
(Born this day 1254)

I did not tell half of what I saw

[Tamrin]

Friday, 16 September
Papua-New Guinea: National Day (1975 independence)

1498 - Tomas de Torquemada, inquisitor who burned 10,000 people, dies (good riddance)

1672 - Death of Anne Bradstreet, first woman poet of the American colonies

1880 - Birth of Alfred Noyes, British poet (The Highwayman)

1893 - Birth of Albert von Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt, Hungarian-born resistance fighter and physiologist

1911 - Birth of Wilfred Burchett, Australian journalist

1935 - Birth of Breyten Breytenbach, South African poet, writer and painter

1946 - Death of Sir James H Jeans, FRS, British cosmologist and astrophysicist (Mysterious Universe)

Jean Arp
Alsatian, sculptor, painter and poet
(Born this day 1886)

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence.
Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and
distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 17 September
Feast Day of St Hildegard von Bingen (German abbess and composer, died this day 1179)

1802 - First Masonic document issued in Australia, (Captain Kemp’s certificate)

1864 - Death Walter Savage Landor, English writer and poet (Imaginary Conversations)

1869 - Birth of Christian Lous Lange, Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize recipient

1883 - Birth of William Carlos Williams, US physician and poet

1916 - Birth of Mary Stewart, English novelist (Merlin series)

1930 - Birth of Jim Rohn, American business philosopher

1994 - Death of Sir Karl Popper, FRS, Austrian-born British philosopher

Bee Miles
One of Australia’s favorite ratbags (eccentrics)
(Born this day 1902)

I am an atheist, a true thinker and speaker. I cannot stand or
endure the priggery, caddery, snobbery, smuggery, hypocrisy,
lies, flattery, compliments, praise, jealousy, envy, pretence,
conventional speech and behaviour upon which society is based

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 18 September
Laying of the US Capitol’s cornerstone (Masonic ceremony this day 1793)

1709 - Birth of Dr Samuel Johnson, English lexicographer and writer (Boswell's tour guide)

1783 - Death of Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist (imaginary numbers)

1830 – Death of William Hazlitt, radical English essayist and literary critic

1856 - The Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Indiana was instituted

1905 - Birth of Greta Garbo, Swedish-born Hollywood movie actor

1961 - Death of Dag Hammarskjold, UN Sect General (air crash over the Congo)

1970 - Death of Jimi Hendrix, American guitarist and singer-songwriter

Jean Bernard Léon Foucault
French physicist (pendulum proved rotation of Earth)
(Born this day 1819)

Any person, brought into the presence of this fact, stops for a few moments
and remains pensive and silent; and then generally leaves, carrying with
him forever a sharper, keener sense of our incessant motion through space

[Smithee]

Sept 18, 2011 7:32:35 GMT 10 Tamrin said:

Jean Bernard Léon Foucault
French physicist (pendulum proved rotation of Earth)
(Born this day 1819)

I recommend Umberto Eco's, Foucault's Pendulum, as required reading for every Freemason.

[Tamrin]

Monday, 19 September
Avast there ye scurvy lubbers, it be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Arrrh!

c470 - BCE - Birth of Hippocrates of Kos, Ancient Greek physician and scholar

1893 - New Zealand became the first nation to grant Women’s Suffrage

1894 - Birth of Rachel Field, American poet and novelist (Hitty, All This and Heaven Too)

1908 - Birth of Mika Waltari, Finnish novelist (The Egyptian)

1911 - Birth of Sir William Golding, England, novelist (Lord of the Flies-Nobel 1983)

1921 - Birth of Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator and theorist of education (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

1928 - Mickey Mouse's screen debut (Steamboat Willie at Colony Theater NYC)

Damon Knight
US science fiction writer (To Serve Man)
(Born this day 1922)

The popularity of conspiracy theories is explained by people's desire to
believe that there is some group of folks who know what they're doing