Today in History

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 17 January
Ancient Rome: Feast Day of Felicitas (goddess of good luck)

1706 - Birth of Bro. Benjamin Franklin, FRS, US statesman, wit and inventor

1820 - Birth of Anne Brontë, British author (Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall)

1865 - The Grand Lodge of Nevada was instituted

1872 - The Grand Lodge of Utah was instituted

1899 - Birth of Nevil Shute (N.S. Norway), English-Australian novelist (A Town Like Alice, On the Beach)

1942 - Birth of Muhammad Ali, American boxer and conscientious objector, (born Cassius Clay)

1964 - Death of Terence Hanbury (T.H.) White, novelist (The Once and Future King)

Charles Brockden Brown
"father of the American novel" (Wieland)
(Born this day 1771)

Of all the forms of injustice, that is the most egregious which makes
the circumstances of sex a reason for excluding one half of mankind
from all those paths which lead to usefulness and honor

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 18 January
Ancient Greece: Theogamia (women’s festival for the goddess Hêra)

1689 - Birth of Charles de Montesquieu, French philosopher and writer (Lettres Persanes)

1782 - Birth of Daniel Webster, US statesman and Senator (Massachusetts)

1882 - Birth of A.A. Milne, English author (Christopher Robin, Pooh)

1908 - Birth of Jacob Bronowski, British mathematician and cultural historian

1932 - Birth of Robert Anton Wilson, US polymath, philosopher and author

1936 - Death of Bro. Rudyard Kipling, author (Jungle Books, The Man Who Would be King)

1944 - Birth of Paul Keating, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Peter Roget, FRS
British physician, natural theologian and lexicographer (Roget's Thesaurus)
(Born this day 1779)

It is now nearly fifty years since I first projected a system of verbal classific-
ation similar to that on which the present work is founded. Conceiving that
such a compilation might help to supply my own deficiencies, I had, in the
year 1805, completed a classed catalogue of words on a small scale, but on the
same principle, and nearly in the same form, as the Thesaurus now published

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 19 January
Ethiopia: Timkat festival, procession of Tabots ("Arks of the Covenant")

0570 - Birth of Mohammed, Islamic prophet (Koran)

1200 - Birth of Dôgen Zenji, Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher (Soto school of Zen)

1729 – Death of William Congreve, English playwright and poet

1809 - Birth of Edgar Allan Poe, American writer, poet, editor and literary critic

1887 - Birth of Alexander Woollcott, American critic and commentator (The New Yorker)

1921 - Birth of Patricia Highsmith, American novelist and short-story writer

1990 - Death of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Indian guru

Robert E Lee, Confederate general
(Born this day 1807)

Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things.
You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less

[Tamrin]

Friday, 20 January
Commemoration of Miles Coverdale, Bible translator (Great Bible), died this day 1569

1807 - Napoleon convenes the great Sanhedrin in Paris

1866 - Birth of Richard Le Gallienne, English writer (Maker of Gainborg)

1896 – Birth of George Burns (born Nathan Birnbaum), US comedian, actor and writer

1900 – Death of John Ruskin, English writer, critic and commentator

1907 - Death of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, Russian chemist (Periodic table)

1920 - Birth of Federico Fellini, Italian film maker (Satyricon)

1936 - Death of George V, King of Great Britain and its dominions and Emperor of India

Johannes V. Jensen
Danish author, Nobel 1944 (The Fall of the King, The Long Journey)
(Born this day 1873)

During half a century of literary work, I have endeavoured to
introduce the philosophy of evolution into the sphere of liter-
ature, and to inspire my readers to think in evolutionary terms

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 21 January
Death of tyrants: Louis XVI (1793) & Lenin (1924)

1790 - Bro. Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin’s “guillotine” was demonstrated for the first time*

1793 - Death of Louis XVI, French king (1774-93), *guillotined by revolutionaries

1799 - Bro. Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccination is introduced

1870 - Death of Alexander Herzen, Russian anarchist

1928 - Birth of Gene Sharp, US academic and political scientist

1950 - Death of George Orwell (aka, Eric Arthur Blair), English author (Animal Farm, 1984)

1959 - Death of Bro. Cecil B. de Mille, American film director producer (The Ten Commandments)

John Batman
Australian grazier, businessman and explorer
(Born this day 1801)

This will be the place for a village
(i.e., Batmania, aka Melbourne)

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 22 January
Passing of Queen Victoria (1901)

1561 - Birth of Francis Bacon, English statesman and essayist (Novum Organum)

1729 - Birth of Bro. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, German critic and dramatist

1788 - Birth of Bro. Lord Byron, English romantic poet (Don Juan)

1814 - 1st Knights Templar grand encampment in US held, New York City NY

1858 - Birth of Beatrice Potter Webb, English economist, Fabian and labour historian

1891 - Birth of Antonio Gramsci, Italian philosopher and political theorist

1901 - Death of Queen Victoria, Monarch of Great Britain & its Dominions and Empress of India

Alfred Orage
British intellectual (Gurdjieff school)
(Born this day 1873)

To be aware that we are asleep is to be on the point of waking;
and to be aware that we are only partially awake is the first
condition of becoming and making ourselves more fully awake

[Tamrin]

Monday, 23 January
Chinese New Year
Ancient Egypt: Day of Hathor, goddess of love, beauty, music, motherhood and joy

1783 - Birth of Bro. Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), French writer

1806 - Death of William Pitt, the Younger, British Prime Minister

1869 - Birth of Herbert Croly, US political philosopher writer and editor

1870 - The Marias River Massacre (biggest slaughter of Indians by US troops)

1875 - Death of Charles Kingsley, English writer (Water Babies, Hypatia)

1930 - Birth of Derek Walcott, OBE, OCC, Saint Lucian writer and Nobel lauriet

1989 - Death of Salvador Dalí, Spanish Catalan surrealist painter

Bro. George McManus
American Cartoonist (Bringing Up Father)
(Born this day 1884)

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 24 January
Birth of Bro. Frederick the Great (1712) / Death of Bro. Sir Winston Churchill (1965)

1670 - Birth of William Congreve, English playwright and poet

1712 - Birth of Bro. Frederick the Great, King of Prussia

1776 - Birth of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, German writer, judge and composer (Undine)

1862 - Birth of Edith Wharton, American novelist, short story writer, and designer

1928 - Birth of Desmond Morris, English anthropologist and author (The Naked Ape)

1965 - Death of Bro. Sir Winston Churchill, PM of Britain (C) (1940-45, 51-55)

1986 - Death of L. Ron Hubbard, US science fiction author and founder of Scientology

Granny D (Doris Haddock), American activist
(Born this day 1910)

Aren't we privileged to live in a time when everything is at stake, and
when our efforts make a difference in the eternal contest between the
forces of light and shadow, between togetherness and division? Between
justice and exploitation? Oh, be joyful that you are a warrior in this great
time! Will we rise to this battle? If so, we cannot lose, for rising up to it is
our victory. If we represent love in the world, you see, we have already won

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 25 January
Scotland: Burns Day (commemorates Robbie Burns' birth 1759)

1640 – Death of Robert Burton, English scholar and essayist

1759 - Birth of Bro. Robert Burns, Alloway Scotland, poet (Auld Lang Syne)

1851 - Sojourner Truth addresses 1st Black Women's Rights Convention (Akron)

1874 - Birth of W. Somerset Maugham, English novelist, playwright & poet (Of Human Bondage)

1882 - Birth of Virginia Woolf, English author (Jacob's Room, To the Lighthouse)

1947 – Death of Al Capone, Chicago gangster

1950 – Gloria Naylor, African American novelist and educator

Robert Boyle
Irish physicist, chemist and author (experiments with color)
(Born this day 1627)

Divers of Hermetic Books have such involv'd Obscuritys that
they may justly be compar'd to Riddles written in Cyphers.
For after a Man has surmounted the difficulty of deciphering
the Words & Terms, he finds a new & greater difficulty
to discover ye meaning of the seemingly plain Expression

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 26 January
Australia Day, (Captain Arthur Phillip established an English penal colony at Sydney Cove, 1788)

1855 - Death of Gérard de Nerval (Gérard Labrunie), French Romantic poet

1866 - The Grand Lodge of Montana was instituted

1880 - Birth of Bro. Douglas MacArthur, American five-star general

1884 - Birth of Edward Sapir, German-born American anthropologist-linguist

1914 - The Vatican proscribed Maurice Maeterlinck’s Opera Omnia (Index Librorum Prohibitorum)

1944 - Birth of Prof. Angela Davis, American political activist, scholar and author

1990 - Death of Lewis Mumford, American historian, philosopher of technology and science

Seán MacBride
Irish politician and Nobel laureate (1974)
(Born this day 1904)

The big powers are traveling on the dangerous road of armament.
The signpost just ahead of us is 'Oblivion.' Can the march on this
road be stopped? Yes, if public opinion uses the power it now has