Today in History

[Tamrin]

Friday, 27 January
Bro. Mozart’s Birthday (1756)

1593 - Vatican opens 7 year trial against Giordano Bruno, Italian Dominican friar and philosopher

1699 - Death of Sir William Temple, English statesman and essayist

1814 - Death of Bro. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, German philosopher (German Idealism)

1851 - Death of John James Audubon, American conservationist (Audubon Society)

1903 - Birth of Sir John C. Eccles, FRS, Australian neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate

1912 - Birth of Lawrence Durrell, expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist and travel writer

1945 - Birth of Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, Irish peace activist

George Monbiot
US journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist
(Born this day 1963)

People don't riot for austerity; they riot because
they want more, not less. We have to riot for less

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 28 January
Feast day of St Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church and Confessor

0814 - Death of Charlemagne, Frankish-German-Roman Emperor (800-814)

1596 - Death of Sir Francis Drake, English Vice Admiral, privateer and navigator

1864 - Birth of Bro. Charles W. Nash, US founder of Nash Motors Co. (Buick)

1873 - Birth of "Sidonie Gabrielle" Colette, French novelist (Gigi)

1936 - Birth of Alan Alda, American actor, writer and director (MASH)

1939 - Death of William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and dramatist (Fr. Golden Dawn)

1996 - Death of Joseph Brodsky, Soviet-Russian-American poet and essayist

Bro. Charles George Gordon
English general, military hero (China, Khartoum)
(Born this day 1833)

If you tell the truth, you have infinite power supporting
you; but if not, you have infinite power against you

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 29 January
Ancient Rome: Concordia (celebrating the peace goddesses Pax and Irene)

1688 - Birth of Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish religious leader (Angelic Wisdom)

1737 - Birth of Thomas Paine, U.K.- U.S., political essayist (Origin of Free-Masonry)

1860 - Birth of Anton Chekhov, Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician

1880 - Birth of Bro. WC Fields, American comic actor (My Little Chickadee)

1927 - Birth of Edward Abbey, American author and environmentalist

1939 - Birth of Germaine Greer, Australian-British writer and academic (The Female Eunuch)

1956 - Death of H.L. Mencken, US essayist, critic and satirist (Smart Set)

Romain Rolland
French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic
(Born this day 1866)

Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow

[Tamrin]

Monday, 30 January
Commemoration of Charles I, British king (Beheaded this day 1649)
Lament for MV Wilhelm Gustloff sinking, 1945, 9,400 lives lost (worst maritime disaster)
Commemoration of Mohandas K. Gandhi, (Indian Mahatma, assassinated this day 1948)

1775 - Birth of Walter Savage Landor, English critic and writer (Imaginary Conversation)

1882 - Birth of Bro. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States (1933 - '45)

1909 - Birth of Saul Alinsky, American community organiser and writer (Rules for Radicals)

1912 - Birth of Barbara W Tuchman, American historian and author (The Guns of August)

1937 - Birth of Vanessa Redgrave, CBE, English actress and Human Rights activist

1939 - Birth of Eleanor Smeal, American feminist (president NOW)

1941 - Birth of Dick Cheney, US Vice President (2001 / 2009)

Richard Brautigan
American poet and novelist (Trout Fishing in America)
(Born this day 1935)

If you get hung up on everybody else's hang-ups,
then the whole world's going to be nothing more than one huge gallows

[Tamrin]

Tuesday 31 January
Ancient Greece: Feast day of Hecate, goddess of sorcery, as well as of crossroads

1872 - Birth of Zane Grey, American pulp fiction author, Westerns (Riders of the Purple Sage)

1893 - Birth of Dame Freya Stark, DBE, British travel writer (Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan)

1915 - Birth of Thomas Merton, Anglo-American Catholic writer (The Seven Storey Mountain)

1923 - Birth of Norman Mailer, American writer (An American Dream, The White Negro)

1933 - Death of John Galsworthy, OM, English novelist and playwright (The Forsyte Saga)

1949 - Birth of Ken Wilber, US author on philosophy, mysticism and spiritual evolution

1974 - Death of Samuel Goldwyn, American film producer (Paramount & Goldwin Pictures)

Rev. Bro. Benjamin Hooks
US head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(Born this day 1925)

Black men who have succeeded have an obligation to serve as role models for
young men entrapped by a vicious cycle of poverty, despair, and hopelessness

[Tamrin]

Wednesday 1 February
Pagan Irish: Imbolc (festival of the goddess Brigid)
Roman Catholic: Commemoration of St Brigid of Kildare, apocryphal Irish nun

1552 - Birth of Sir Edward Coke, English jurist & politician (defended common law)

1851 - Death of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, British novelist (Frankenstein)

1902 - Birth of Langston Hughes, US poet (& died this day 1967)

1945 - Death of Johan Huizinga, Dutch historian (modern cultural history)

1976 - Death of Werner C Heisenberg, German theoretical physicist

1986 - Death of Alva Myrdal, Swedish sociologist and politician

1997 - Death of Herb Caen, US Pulitzer Prize- winning columnist

Charles Lenox Remond
American orator, abolitionist and military organizer (Civil War)
(Born this day 1810)

Color is made to obscure the brightest endowments,
to degrade the fairest character, and to check
the highest and most praiseworthy aspirations

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 2 February
Candlemas (Groundhog Day)

1848 - Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: US acquires Texas, California, New Mexico & Arizona

1859 - Birth of Havelock Ellis, British-Australian physician and sexologist (Psychology of Sex)

1882 - Birth of James Joyce, Irish novelist & poet (Dubliners, Ulysses, Finnigan's Wake)

1882 - Birth of James Stephens, Irish novelist & poet (Irish myths and fairy tales)

1905 - Birth of Ayn Rand, Russian-US writer (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead)

1943 - Germans surrender at Battle of Stalingrad (turning point of WWII)

1970 - Death of Bertrand Russell, FRS, British philosopher and MP (Why I am Not a Christian)

Nell Gwyn
long-time mistress of Britain's King Charles
(Born this day 1650)

Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore

[Tamrin]

Friday, 3 February
Japan: Setsubun (Shinto spring festival of the sun goddess Amaterasu)
USA: Four Chaplains’ Day (sinking of USAT Dorchester, this day 1943)

1811 - Birth of Horace Greeley, US newspaper editor and political reformer

1826 - Birth of Walter Bagehot, English, economist and sociologist

1832 - Death of George Crabbe, British naturalist and writer (The Village, The Borough)

1874 - Birth of Gertrude Stein, US writer and public intellectual (The Making of Americans)

1907 - Birth of James A Michener, US author (Tales of the South Pacific)

1909 - Birth of Simone Weil, French philosopher, Christian mystic and activist

1924 -Death of Woodrow Wilson, 28th US President (1913-21)

Norman Rockwell
US artist/illustrator (Sat Evening Post covers)
(Born this day 1894)

Some folks think I painted Lincoln from life,
but I haven't been around that long. Not quite

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 4 February
Trinidad and Tobago: Limbo Festival

0362 - Roman Emperor Julian “the Apostate” promulgated an edict that recognized equal rights to all the religions in the Roman Empire

1819 - Birth of H.I.M. Bro. Norton I, Joshua Norton, "Emperor of the USA & Protector of Mexico"

1822 - Freed American Blacks settle Liberia, West Africa

1906 - Birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologist (Confessing Church)

1913 - Birth of Rosa Lee Parks (OES Sister), US civil rights activist (bus protester)

1921 - Birth of Betty Friedan, US feminist and author (The Feminine Mystique)

1978 - Death of Dr Bergen Evans, US lexicographer and academic

Giambattista Della Porta
Italian magus, physician, scientist and playwright
(Died this day 1615)

There are two sorts of Magick; the one is infamous, and unhappy, because
it has to do with foul Spirits, and consists of incantations and wicked curiosity; and
this is called Sorcery; an art which all learned and good men detest; neither is it able
to yield an truth of reason or nature, but stands merely upon fancies and imaginations,
such as vanish presently away, and leave nothing behind them; as Jamblicus writes
in his book concerning the mysteries of the Egyptians. The other Magick is natural;
which all excellent wise men do admit and embrace, and worship with great applause;
neither is there any thing more highly esteemed, or better thought of, by men of learning

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 5 February
Feast Day of the Patriarch Jacob (father of the “12 tribes of Israel”)

1866 - Birth of Arthur Keith, Scottish anatomist and anthropologist (A New Theory of Human Evolution)

1881 - Death of Thomas Carlyle, Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1900 - Birth of Adlai Stevenson, American politician and UN ambassador

1914 - Birth of William S Burroughs, US novelist, poet and essayist (Naked Lunch)

1928 - Birth of Andrew M Greeley, Rev. Andrew M Greeley, Irish-American Catholic priest

1948 - Initiation of Bro. Sir John Gorton, Australian PM (1968/71), Kerrange Lodge, Victoria

1972 - Death of Marianne Moore, American Modernist poet and writer

Joris-Karl Huysmans, French novelist
(Born this day 1848)

There are two ways of ridding ourselves of a thing which burdens us, casting it away
or letting it fall. To cast away requires an effort of which we may not be capable, to
let fall imposes no labour, is simpler, without peril, within reach of all. To cast away,
again, implies a certain interest, a certain animation, even a certain fear; to let fall is
absolute indifference, absolute contempt; believe me, use this method, and Satan will flee