Today in History

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 26 February
Ancient Egypt: Day of Mut (mother goddess)

1802 - Birth of Victor Hugo, France, author (Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables)

1846 - Birth of Bro. Buffalo Bill (William Cody), American Wild West showman (died 10 January 1917)

1848 - Marx & Engels publish "The Communist Manifesto"

1870 - Wyatt Outlaw, black leader of Union League in North Carolina, lynched

1954 - Death of William R Inge, English theologian and philosopher

1965 - Jimmie Lee Jackson, civil rights activist, dies of injuries

1984 - Robert Penn Warren, Pulitzer Prize winner, named 1st US poet laureate

Emile Coué, French psychotherapist
(Born this day 1857)

Tous les jours à tous points de vue je vais de mieux en mieux
(Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better)

[Tamrin]

Monday, 27 February
Ancient Greece: Day of Selene (moon goddess)

1784 - “Death” of Bro. Comte de St Germain ("Master Rakoczi"), considered by some to be the "Head Of All True Freemasons" (what does that make the rest of us?)

1807 - Birth of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, US poet (Hiawatha)

1902 - Birth of John Steinbeck (DeMolay Bro.), American Nobel Prize winning author (The Grapes of Wrath)

1912 - Birth of Lawrence Durrell, Indian-born English writer (Alexandria Quartet)

1934 - Birth of Ralph Nader, US consumer advocate (Unsafe at Any Speed)

1989 - Death of Konrad Lorenz, Austrian zoologist and ornithologist (Nobel 1973)

2002 - Death of Sir ‘Spike’ Milligan, KBE, Indian-born, Irish comedian and writer (Goon Show)

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker_Morant
]Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant

[/url][/b]
Australian poet and soldier (Boer War)
(Wrongfully executed this day 1902)

Shoot Straight, You Bastards!
(last words)[/center]

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 28 February
Finland: Kalevala (National Epic) Day

1533 - Birth of Michel de Montaigne, French essayist and philosopher

1893 - Birth of Ben Hecht, US screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist

1901 - Birth of Linus Pauling, American scientist, peace activist, author and educator

1909 - Birth of Sir Stephen Spender, CBE, English poet, novelist and essayist

1915 - Birth of Sir Peter Medawar, English zoologist, immunologist (Nobel 1953)

1916 - Death of Henry James, American-British writer (Bostonians)

1970 - Birth of Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), US author (A Series of Unfortunate Events)

Ernest Renan
French philosopher, historian and scholar of religion
(Not definitely a Freemason but a Parisian lodge is named after him)
(Born this day 1823)

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths
for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 29 February
Leap Day[/color]

1504 - Christopher Columbus uses his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Native Americans to provide him with supplies

1692 - Birth of John Byrom, FRS, English poet and hymnist

1736 - Birth of Ann Lee, American founder of Shakers

1744 - Death of M.W. Bro. John Theophilus Desaguliers, FRS, “Father of Modern Speculative Freemasonry”

1860 - Birth of Herman Hollerith, American statistician

1920 - Birth of Howard Nemerov, American poet

1960 - Birth of Tony Robbins, American motivational speaker

Rukmini Devi Arundale
Indian Theosophist, dancer and founder of Kalakshetra
(Born this day 1904)

Animals cannot speak, but can you and I not speak for them and represent them?
Let us all feel their silent cry of agony and let us all help that cry to be heard in the world

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 1 March
Ancient Rome: Matronalia (Feast of Juno)

1633 - Death of George Herbert, Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

1837 - Birth of William Dean Howells, US realist author and literary critic

1858 - Birth of Georg Simmel, German philosopher and sociologist

1880 - Birth of Giles Lytton Strachey, British writer (Eminent Victorians)

1904 - Birth of Bro. Glenn Miller, American bandleader (Swing)

1914 - Birth of Ralph Ellison, US novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

1927 - Birth of Harry Belafonte, Jamaican-American musician and actor

Robert Lowell IV, American poet
(Born this day 1917)

The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train

[Tamrin]

Friday, 2 March
Ancient Rome: Festival of Mars (god of war)

0055 - Birth of Juvenal, Roman poet (Satires)

1797 - Death of Horace Walpole, English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and politician

1904 - Birth of Dr Seuss (Theodor Geisel), US children's book author (Green Eggs and Ham)

1930 - Death of David H Lawrence, English poet and novelist (Lady Chatterley's Lover)

1931 - Birth of Tom Wolfe, US author and journalist (New Journalism)

1931 – Birth of Mikhail Gorbachev, USSR Premier

1942 - Birth of John Irving, US novelist and screenwriter

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Desmoulins
]Bro. Camille Desmoulins

[/url][/b]
French journalist, pamphleteer, revolutionary leader and Freemason
(Born this day 1760)

[On July 12, 1789 he leapt on a table outside one of the cafés in the garden of the
Palais Royal, and announced to the crowd the dismissal of the reformer [Jacques Necker]... he
addressed the passions of the public, calling them to "...take up arms and adopt cockades by
which we may know each other" and adding: "This dismissal is the tocsin of the St. Bartholomew
of the patriots!", claiming that a massacre of the partisans of reform was under preparation.]

Clemency is also a revolutionary measure[/center]

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 3 March
Tibet: Festival of Ârya Târâ, Buddhist Bodhisattva, “Mother of Liberation”

1606 - Birth of Edmund Waller, FRS, English poet (Penshust) and politician

1756 - Birth of William Godwin, British "father of philosophical anarchism"

1847 - Birth of Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-American inventor (telephone)

1863 - Birth of Arthur Machen, Welsh writer of supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction

1868 - Birth of Émile Chartier (Alain), French essayist and philosopher

1942 - Ten Japanese warplanes raid the town of Broome, Western Australia, killing more than 100 people

1983 - Suicide of Arthur Koestler (& wife, Cynthia), Hungarian-British writer

Robert Hooke, FRS
English scientific genius
(Died this day 1703)

For the members of the assembly having before their eyes so many fatal
instances of the errors and falsehoods, in which the greatest part of mankind
has so long wandered, because they rely'd upon the strength of humane
reason alone, have begun anew to correct all hypotheses by sense, as seamen
do their dead reckonings by celestial observations; and to this purpose it has
been their principal endeavour to enlarge and strengthen the senses by medicine,
and by such outward instruments as are proper for their particular works

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 4 March
Celts: Feast day of Rhiannon, Moon/Dawn Goddess

1394 - Birth of Prince Henry the Navigator, G.M., Knights of Christ (reformed Templars)

1778 - Birth of Robert Emmet, Irish nationalist, Republican, orator and rebel leader

1888 - Death of Amos Bronson Alcott, US teacher, writer, philosopher and reformer

1916 - Birth of Hans Eysenck, British-German psychologist (intelligence & personality)

1922 - Birth of Peter D Ouspensky, Russian philosopher (In Search of the Miraculous)

1934 - Birth of Jane van Lawick-Goodall, ethologist & chimp expert (1974 Walker Prize)

1963 - Death of William Carlos Williams, US physician and poet (Modernism & Imagism)

Saladin ('Salah Ad-din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub)
Muslim leader (Crusades)
(Died this day 1193)

When I am buried, carry my winding-sheet on the point of a spear,
and say these words: "Behold the spoils which Saladin carries with him!
Of all his victories, realms and riches, nothing remains to him but this"
(Last words)

[Tamrin]

Monday, 5 March
Ancient Egypt: Festival of Navigium Isis or “ship of Isis” (patron of navigation)

1737 - Bro. Frederick, Prince of Wales, initiated and passed, becoming the first English Royal Freemason

1770 - Boston Massacre, British troops kill Crispus Attucks and 4 others in large mob

1792 - The Grand Lodge of Massachusetts was instituted

1815 - Death of Bro. Franz Mesmer, popularizer of hypnotism

1871 - Birth of Rosa Luxemburg, Polish-born German Marxist, philosopher and revolutionary

1953 - Death of Josef V Stalin, soviet leader responsible for 11 million murders

1955 - Birth of Penn Jillette, American illusionist, juggler and comedian (Penn & Teller)

Bro. James I of England / VI of Scotland
monarch, poet & author
(Died this day 1625)

I can make a lord, but only God can make a gentleman

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 6 March
Commemoration of Bro. Prince Hall’s Masonic Initiation (1775, Boston)

1616 - Death of Francis Beaumont, English dramatist (The Knight of the Burning Pestle)

1806 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet (Sonnets)

1888 - Death of Louisa May Alcott, US novelist (Little Women)

1926 - Birth of Alan Greenspan, US economist/Presidential advisor (Federal Reserve Board)

1928 - Birth of Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian journalist, novelist and short story writer

1973 - Death of Pearl S. Buck (Sai Zhenzhu), US Pulitzer Prize winning author

1982 - Death of Ayn Rand, Russian / US author (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged)

Martin Niemöller
German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor
(Died this day 1984)

In Germany they came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up