Today in History

[Tamrin]

Monday, 28 November 2011
Ancient Egypt: Feast of Hathor as Sekhmet

1628 - Birth of John Bunyan, English cleric and author (Pilgrim's Progress)

1660 - At Gresham College, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decided to found what was to become known as The Royal Society

1757 - Birth of William Blake, English poet and painter (Songs of Innocence & Experience)

1820 - Birth of Friedrich Engels, German social philosopher (Marx's collaborator)

1859 - Death of Washington Irving, American author (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle)

1884 - Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, the world’s premier research lodge was warranted, London

1908 - Birth of Claude Levi-Strauss, Belgium, social anthropologist

Alberto Moravia
Italian writer (Indifferent Ones)
(Born this day 1907)

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you
end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 29 November 2011
UN: International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

1314 - Death of Philip IV of France ('Philip the Fair'), betrayed the Knights Templar

1484 - The Spanish Inquisitors was established under Tomás de Torquemada

1811 - Birth of Wendell Phillips, US Human Rights advocate

1832 - Birth of Louisa May Alcott, US author (Little Women)

1872 - Death of Horace Greeley, American newspaperman

1898 - Birth of C.S. Lewis, Irish scholar and author (The Chronicles of Narnia)

2001 - Death of George Harrison, MBE, British musician (Beatles)

Petra Kelly
German parliamentarian and activist (German Green Party)
(Born this day 1947)

The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination
and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the
power to feel united on the spaceship Earth. ... In a world struggling in violence and
dishonesty, the further development of non-violence not only as a philosophy but as a
way of life, as a force on the streets, in the market squares, outside the missile bases,
inside the chemical plants and inside the war industry becomes one of the most urgent
priorities... The suffering people of this world must come together to take control of their
lives, to wrest political power from their present masters pushing them towards destruction.
The Earth has been mistreated and only by restoring a balance, only by living with
the Earth, only by emphasizing knowledge and expertise towards soft energies
and soft technology for people and for life, can we overcome the patriarchal ego

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 30 November
Death of Cleopatra VII, last of the Pharaohs, 30 BCE

0406 - BCE - Death of Euripides, Athenian tragic dramatist

1667 - Birth of Bro. Jonathan Swift, Irish-born English satirist and author

1835 - Birth of Bro. Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), US author (Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn)

1874 - Birth of Bro. Sir Winston Churchill, British PM (1940-45, 1951-55; Nobel 1953)

1874 - Birth of Lucy Maud Montgomery, Canadian author

1900 - Death of Bro. Oscar Wilde, Irish author

1936 - Birth of Abbie Hoffman aka Free, US Yippie, activist and author (Steal this Book)

Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones), US labor activist
(Died this day 1930)

I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword.
I will tell the truth wherever I please

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 1 December
Ancient Greece & Rome: Festival of Pallas Athena & Minerva

1886 – Birth of Rex Stout, US crime writer (Nero Wolfe)

1893 - Birth of Ernst Toller, left-wing German playwright

1935 – Birth of Woody Allen, professional New York neurotic

1942 - Birth of John Crowley, American author (fantasy, science fiction & mainstream)

1947 - Death of Aleister Crowley, English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician

1955 – Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger

1987 – Death of James Baldwin, US novelist, playwright, poet, and social critic

Anna Comnena, Byzantine historian
(Born this day 1083)

Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood
all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity

[Tamrin]

Friday, 2 December
International Day for the Abolition of Slavery

1547 - Death of Hernán Cortés, Spanish explorer and conqueror

1552 - Death of St Francis Xavier, Jesuit missionary to India and Japan

1804 - Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor Napoleon I of France

1814 - Death of Marquis de Sade (eponymous “sadist”), French aristocrat and writer (Justine)

1859 - Hanging of Bro. John Brown, US militant abolitionist (Harpers Ferry Raid)

1863 - Birth of Bro. Charles Ringling, American circus showman (Ringling Bros)

1995 - Death of William Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist, essayist and dramatist

Marty Feldman, English comedian
(Died this day 1982)

The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 3 December
Ancient Greece and Phrygia: Day of Cybele or Rhea (Great Mother)
Ancient Rome: Day of Bona Dea (the good goddess)
International Day of People with Disabilities

1823 - Death of [url=http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/belzoni_g/belzoni_g.html
]Bro. Giovanni Belzoni[/url][/b] (the Great Belzoni), monk, circus strongman and Egyptologist

1854 - Eureka Stockade: Australia’s brief but significant gold fields rebellion

1857 - Birth of Joseph Conrad, Polish novelist (Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness)

1894 - Death of Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish / Samoan writer (Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde)

1895 - Birth of Anna Freud, Austrian-English psychoanalyst (daughter of Sigmund Freud)

1984 - 3,800 die from poison gas emission in Bhopal, India (many thousands of more later)

1997 - Representatives from 121 countries signed a treaty prohibiting landmines

Mary Baker Eddy, US Christian Science founder
(Died this day 1910)

Reject hatred without hating

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 4 December
Commemoration of St Barbara, virgin-martyr (one of our Patron Saints)
México: Day of the Artisans

1679 - Death of Thomas Hobbes, early Enlightenment philosopher (Leviathan “Social Contract”)

1795 - Birth of Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist/historian (French Revolution)

1807 - Death of Prince Hall, Human Rights activist and Masonic leader

1835 - Birth of Samuel Butler, English satirical novelist (Erewhon; The Way of All Flesh)

1917 - Bro. Dr. Sir Earle Page, Australian PM, was made a Mason in Lodge Prince Leopold, NSW

1975 - Death of Hannah Arendt, German-US sociologist

1993 - Death of Frank Zappa, American musician

Edith Cavell, English nurse (WWI)
(Born this day 1865)

I realize that patriotism is not enough.
I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone

[Tamrin]

Monday, 5 December
Ancient Rome: Festival of Faunalia (for Faunus, the Roman version of Phaunos or Pan)

1791 - Death of Bro. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer

1830 - Birth of Christina Rossetti, English poet (Goblin Market)

1870 - Death of Bro. Alexandre Dumas, French writer (The Three Musketeers)

1886 - Birth of Rose Wilder Lane, American journalist, travel writer and political theorist

1901 - Birth of DeMolay Bro. Walter Elias Disney, US animator (Mickey Mouse)

1901 - Birth of Werner Heisenberg, German physicist (Nobel 1932)

1934 - Birth of Joan Didion, American journalist and novelist

Rosaleen Norton
New Zealand-born Sydney artist, known as 'the Witch of Kings Cross'
(Died this day 1979)

This figleaf morality expresses a very unhealthy attitude

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 6 December
Feast Day of Archbishop Nicholas of Myra (proto Santa Claus)

1823 - Birth of Friedrich Max Müller, German Orientalist

1875 - Birth of Evelyn Underhill, English mystic and poet

1882 - Death of Anthony Trollope, English writer

1892 - Birth Sir Osbert Sitwell, English author

1896 - Birth of Ira Gershwin, American lyricist

1898 - Birth of Gunnar Myrdal, Sweden, sociologist and economist

1955 - Birth of Steven Wright, American comedian

Joyce Kilmer
American journalist, poet, literary critic, lecturer and editor
(Born this day 1886)

Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett, McDonough and Hunt and
Pearse — see now why their hatred of tyrants was so insistently
fierce. Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp to cheat a poet's eye?
Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause in which to sing and to die!

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 7 December
USA: Pearl Harbor Day (1941)

0043 - BCE - Execution of Cicero, Roman philosopher and statesman

1817 - Death of Vice Admiral William Bligh, FRS, British naval officer (Bounty) and NSW Governor

1860 - Birth of Bro. Sir Joseph Cook, GCMG, 6th Prime Minister of Australia

1872 - Birth of Johan Huizinga, Dutch cultural historian (modern cultural history)

1889 - Birth of Honoré-Gabriel Marcel, French philosopher and playwright

1928 - Birth of Noam Chomsky, US linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist

1985 - Death of Robert Graves, English writer and poet (The White Goddess)

Joyce Cary
Anglo-Irish writer (House of Children)
(Born this day 1888)

It is a tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know
— the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything