Today in History

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 18 December
World: International Migrants’ Day

1786 - The Grand Lodge of New Jersey was instituted

1803 - Death of Bro. Johann G von Herder, German philosopher, theologian and poet

1843 - The Grand Lodge of Wisconsin was instituted

1865 - The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery throughout the USA

1870 - Birth of D T Suzuki, Kanazawa Japan, Zen Buddhist scholar (Zen in the Art of Archery)

1894 - Women in South Australia became the first in Australia to gain the right to vote

1969 - Great Britain abolished capital punishment, one of the last Western nations to do so

Christopher Fry
English poet and playwright
(Born this day 1907)

Between our birth and death we may touch understanding,
As a moth brushes a window with its wing

[Tamrin]

Monday, 19 December
Ancient Rome: Festival of Juventas, goddess of youth

1820 - Birth of Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, American author, reformer and women's suffrage leader

1848 - Death of Emily Brontë, English author (Wuthering Heights)

1875 - Birth of Carter G. Woodson, African-American historian, author, journalist

1910 - Birth of Jean Genet, French novelist (Our Lady of the Flowers; The Thief's Journal)

1915 - Birth of Edith Piaf (E Giovanna Gassion), French singer (Little Sparrow)

1940 - Birth of Phil Ochs, American protest singer

1960 - Birth of Derrick Jensen, American author and activist

Richard Leakey
Kenyan politician, paleoanthropologist and conservationist
(Born this day 1944)

An evolutionary perspective of our place in the history of the earth reminds us
that Homo sapiens sapiens has occupied the planet for the tiniest fraction of that
planet's four and a half thousand million years of existence. In many ways we
are a biological accident, the product of countless propitious circumstances. As
we peer back through the fossil record, through layer upon layer of long-extinct
species, many of which thrived far longer than the human species is ever likely to
do, we are reminded of our mortality as a species. There is no law that declares
the human animal to be different, as seen in this broad biological perspective, from
any other animal. There is no law that declares the human species to be immortal

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 20 December
Aztec: Day of Cozcacuauhtli (Vulture), protector of longevity, wisdom and mental equilibrium

1579 - Baptism of John Fletcher, English playwright (The Knight of Malta)

1894 - Birth of Bro. Robert Gordon Menzies, iconic “Liberal”, long-serving Australian PM

1902 - Birth of Sidney Hook, American philosopher (Pragmatism)

1968 - Death of John Steinbeck, US Pulitzer Prize-winning author

1984 - Death of Stanley Milgram, American social psychologist (Milgram Experiment)

1993 - Death of W Edwards Deming, US economist (helped Japan after WWII)

1996 - Death of Carl Sagan, US astronomer and novelist (Contact)

Charlotte Bühler
German psychologist (Developmental Psychology)
(Born this day 1893))

The main question that interested me was, 'what is human life about?' I thought that
psychology would give me the answer. I remember the sarcastic words of the psychology
teacher in my last year of high school, when she became aware of my excited interest
in psychology: 'What you think psychology is', she said 'it is not. It does not tell you about
life. It just tells you about sensory reactions to stimuli and about learning. I was terribly
disappointed, and I don't remember whether I just thought or murmured, well if it is not,
I will make it a study of human life. I thought, with psychology we should be able to
find out how to live life, what we are living for, and how to relate to other persons in life

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 21 December
Zoroastrian: Yaldâ Festival (Birth of Mithra)

1804 - Birth of Benjamin Disraeli, KG, PC, FRS, UK PM (1874 - 1880) and novelist

1879 - Birth of Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator, mass murderer

1889 - Death of Joseph Barber Lightfoot, English theologian and Bishop of Durham

1892 - Birth of Dame Rebecca West, English journalist and novelist (Meaning of Treason)

1940 - Death of F Scott Fitzgerald, US author (Great Gatsby, Zelda)

1940 - Birth of Frank Zappa, avant-garde American singer-songwriter

1945 - Death of George S Patton, US general (Sicily/Normandy)

Maud Gonne
Hermeticist (Golden Dawn), Irish nationalist (Irish Joan of Arc)
(Born this day 1865)

The English may batter us to pieces,
but they will never succeed in breaking our spirit

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 22 December
Solstice / Yule Sabbat
Ancient Egypt: Festival of Isis

1639 - Baptism of Jean-Baptiste Racine, French dramatist (Andromaque)

1753 - The Royal Arch degree was conferred in Fredericksburg Lodge in Virginia. This is the first unquestioned evidence of the conferral of this degree

1880 - Death of George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Victorian novelist (Silas Marner)

1905 - Birth of Kenneth Rexroth, American poet, translator and critical essayist

1940 - Death of Nathanael West, US author, screenwriter and satirist (The Day of the Locust)

1951 - Birth of Charles de Lint, Canadian fantasy author and Celtic folk musician

1989 - Death of Samuel Beckett, Irish/French writer (Waiting for Godot)

Bro. José Maria Morelos y Pavón
Roman Catholic priest and Mexican revolutionary
(Lodge Arquitectura Moral, now Bolivar No. 73)
(Executed this day 1815)

May slavery be banished forever together with the distinction between castes,
all remaining equal, so Americans may only be distinguished by vice or virtue

[Tamrin]

Friday, 23 December
Ancient Egypt: Day of Hathor
Celtic: The Secret of the Unhewn Stone (Rough Ashlar?)
Seinfeld: Festivus (a holiday for the rest of us)

1790 - Birth of Jean-François Champollion, French linguist (deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics)

1805 - Birth of Bro. Joseph Smith Jnr, American, founder of Mormon church

1812 - Birth of Samuel Smiles, English author (Self-Help; Thrift), reformer and biographer

1834 - Birth of Thomas R Malthus, English vicar and economist (moral restraint)

1896 - Birth of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Sicilian writer (Der Leopard)

1926 - Birth of Robert Bly, American poet and author (Iron John)

1948 - Hideki Tojo, Japan PM & 6 other Japanese hanged for war crimes by US

Sarah Breedlove (Madam CJ Walker)
African-American businesswoman and philanthropist
(Born this day 1867)

I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I
was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen.
And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair
goods and preparations... I have built my own factory on my own ground

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 24 December
Christmas Eve

1491 - Birth of Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish founder of the Jesuits (Counter Reformation)

1754 - Birth of George Crabbe, English poet and naturalist

1863 - Death of William Makepeace Thackeray, English writer

1907 - Birth of Isidore Feinstein Stone, US journalist (IF Stone's Weekly)

1910 - Birth of Fritz Leiber, German-American science fiction writer

1982 - Death of Louis Aragon, French poet, novelist and editor

1993 - Death of Norman Vincent Peale, US minister and author (The Power of Positive Thinking)

Mary Higgins Clark
American author (The Magical Christmas Horse)
(Born this day 1929)

Funny, when you finally faced reality, it was amazing how clearly you could see things

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 25 December
Christmas Day (traditional date, based on pre-Christian precedents)

0004 - BCE - Birth of Yeshua bar Yosef (Jesus the Nazorean), Jewish religious teacher

1642 - Birth of Sir Isaac Newton, FRS & PRS, English alchemist, mathematician and scientist

1876 - Birth of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah Karachi, founder of Pakistan

1908 - Birth of Quentin Crisp, English author (The Naked Civil Servant)

1924 - Birth of Rod Serling, American scriptwriter, The Twilight Zone

1931 - Birth of Carlos Castaneda, US plagiarist and fiction writer (The Teachings of Don Juan)

1938 - Death of Karel Capek, Czechoslovakian author and antifascist (Bílá Nemoc)

Angelus Silesius (Johann Scheffler)
German mystic (St Seelenlust)
(Born this day 1624)

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found,
by the will art thou free, captive, and bound

[Tamrin]

Monday, 26 December
Ancient Egypt: Feast day of Queen Nitocris (Rhodopis)
Feast of Stephen - First of the “Twelve Days of Christmas”
Boxing Day

1716 - Birth of Thomas Gray, English poet and letter-writer

1771 - Death of Bro. Claude Adrien Helvétius, French philosopher

1792 - Birth of Charles Babbage, English inventor (calculating machine) ‘father of the computer’

1891 - Birth of Henry Miller, US author (Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer, Sexus)

1893 - Birth of Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of China People's Republic, mass murderer

1913 - Disappearance (presumed death) of Ambrose Bierce, US journalist and satirist

1956 - Birth of David Sedaris, US humourist and essayist

René BazinFrench novelist (A Spot of Ink)
(Born this day 1853)

There is no need to go searching for a remedy for the evils of the time.
The remedy already exists — it is the gift of one's self to those who
have fallen so low that even hope fails them. Open wide your heart

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 27 December
Feast Day of St John the Evangelist (one of the Craft’s Patron Saints)

1571 - Birth of Johann Kepler, Württemberg Germany, astronomer (elliptical orbits)

1783 - The Grand Lodge of South Carolina was instituted

1813 - Union of Moderns' & Antients' Grand Lodges (=UGLE)

1813 - The Grand Lodge of Louisiana was instituted

1822 - Birth of Louis Pasteur, Dole France, bacteriologist (pasteurization)

1834 - Death of Charles Lamb, English essayist

1857 - Establishment of Provincial Grand Lodge, NSW, IC

Dian Fossey
American naturalist (Gorillas in the Mist)
(Found murdered this day 1985)

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what
is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future

(Last entry in her diary)