Today in History

[Tamrin]

Monday, 11 March
Ancient Rome: Feast Day of Hecules
US: Johnny Appleseed Day (anniversary of John Chapman’s death in 1845)

1425 - BCE - Death of Thutmoses III, Egyptian pharaoh

1890 - Birth of Bro. Vannevar Bush, American electrical engineer (1st electronic analog computer)

1916 - Birth of Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

1931 - Birth of Rupert Murdoch, Australian-American publisher (New York Post), OGG, CEO (Fox)

1926 - Birth of Bro. Rev. Ralph Abernathy, civil rights leader

1952 - Birth of Douglas Adams, British author (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

1955 - Death of Bro. Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist (penicillin)

Geoffrey Blainey
Australian historian and author (The Tyranny of Distance)
(Born this day 1930)

To some extent my generation was reared on the Three Cheers view of history.
This patriotic view of our past had a long run. It saw Australian history as largely
a success. While the convict era was a source of shame or unease, nearly every-
thing that came after was believed to be pretty good. There is a rival view, which
I call the Black Armband view of history. In recent years it has assailed the
optimistic view of history. The black armbands were quietly worn in official
circles in 1988. The multicultural folk busily preached their message that until
they arrived much of Australian history was a disgrace. The past treatment of
Aborigines, of Chinese, of Kanakas, of non-British migrants, of women, the very
old, the very young, and the poor was singled out, sometimes legitimately, some-
times not... The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing
of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratu-
latory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 12 March
Egypt: Martyrdom of Hypatia, last head of the School, Museum & Library of Alexandria (415 CE)

1672 - Baptism of Sir Richard Steele, Anglo-Irish writer (The Tatler and The Spectator)

1685 - Birth of George Berkeley, Anglo-Irish philosopher and bishop of Cloyne

1891 - Birth of Michael Polanyi, FRS, Hungarian-English chemist, economist and sociologist

1922 - Birth of Jack Kerouac, American beat novelist and poet (The Dharma Bums)

1923 - Birth of Bro. Walter Marty Schirra, Jr., US astronaut (made a mason at sight)

1925 - Birth of Harry Harrison (H.M. Dempsey), US science fiction author (Stainless Steel Rat)

1932 - Birth of Bro. Rev. Andrew Young, US civil rights activist, politician, ambassador to the UN

Juliette Gordon Low, American youth leader
(Founded US Girl Guides this day in 1912)

Right is right, even if no one else does it

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 13 March
Ancient Greece: Day of Diotima of Mantinaea, instructress of Socrates

1683 - Birth of M.W. Bro. John Theophilus Desaguliers, “the father of modern, speculative Freemasonry”

1733 - Birth of Joseph Priestley, English clergyman and scientist (discovered oxygen)

1878 - Initiation of Bro. Sir Edmund Barton, Australia’s first PM (Australian Lodge of Harmony)

1906 - Death of Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist (National Woman Suffrage Association)

1907 - Birth of Mircea Eliade, Romanian -American historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

1938 - Death of Clarence S Darrow, US attorney and agnostic (Scopes Monkey Trial)

1977 - Death of Fannie Lou Hamer, American civil rights activist (Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party)

Hans-Georg Gadamer
German philosopher (Truth and Method)
(Died this day 2002)

In fact history does not belong to us but rather we to it. Long before we
understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand
ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which we live

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 14 March
Mathematicians: Pi Day (today's date in the American rendering being 3.14 is an approximation of Pi, celebrated at 1:59... am)

1471 - Death in prison of Sir Thomas Malory, British author (Le Morte d'Arthur)

1869 - Birth of Algernon Blackwood, CBE, English short story writer and novelist (The Willows)

1879 - Birth of Albert Einstein, German physicist (E=mc²/Theory of Relativity, Nobel 1921)

1883 - Death of Karl Marx, German philosopher and author (Das Kapital, Communist Manifesto)

1905 - Birth of Raymond Aron, French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist

1908 - Birth of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, French phenomenological philosopher

1989 - Death of Edward Abbey, American naturalist novelist (The Monkey Wrench Gang)

Eliphas Levi
French occult author and purported magician
(Made a Mason this day 1861, Lodge Rose du Parfait Silence,
Paris, GOdF: Dropped from the rolls 21 August the same year)

In his reception speech, Eliphas Levi, to the great astonishment of his auditors,
little inclined to paradoxes, made the following statement: "I come to bring you
your lost traditions, the exact knowledge of your signs and emblems, and in con-
sequence to show you the aim for the attainment of which your association has
been constituted." He then tried to demonstrate to his coreligionists that Masonic
Symbolism is borrowed from the Cabala. It was time wasted. No one believed him

M Caudet, the Venerable (Worshipful Master) of Lodge Rose du Parfait Silence, Paris, GOdF

[Tamrin]

Friday, 15 March
Greece & Rome: Day of Magna Mater (Great Mother), Rea, Cybele, etc. (chariot drawn by lions)

0044 - BCE - Assassination of Julius Cæsar (Ides of March)

1767 - Birth of M∴W∴ Bro. Andrew Jackson, 7th US President (1829-37)

1858 - Birth of Liberty Hyde Bailey, US botanist (Plantbreeding)

1934 - Birth of Richard Layard, Baron Layard, FBA, British economist (Welfare to Work)

1937 - Death of H. P. Lovecraft, American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction

1948 - Birth of Kate Bornstein, American author, playwright and gender theorist

1983 - Death of Rebecca West (aka Cecily Isabel Fairfield), Anglo-Irish feminist and author

Alice Cunningham Fletcher
US ethnologist and author (Indian Music)
(Born this day 1838)

The [Native American] woman owns her horses, dogs, and all the lodge equipments; children
own their own articles; and parents do not control the possessions of their children … A wife is
as independent as the most independent man in our midst. Combined with the fact that among
many tribes, female elders chose, advised, and could depose the male chief and signed treaties
with the U.S. government along with male leaders — and that women could divorce and con-
trolled their own fertility though a knowledge of herbs and timing — this caused indigenous
women to be seen as immoral and tribal systems to be ridiculed as “petticoat government”

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 16 March
Ancient Rome: Liberalia (From Liber, Thracian god of wine, or Liber Pater, a name of Bacchus)

1751 - Birth of James Madison, 4th President of the United States

1882 - Death of Charles R Darwin, English naturalist (Origin of Species)

1892 - Birth of César Vallejo, Peruvian poet (Los Heraldos Negros)

1906 - Birth of Henny Youngman, British-born American comedian and violinist

1908 - Birth of René Daumal, French writer, philosopher and poet (The Lie of the Truth)

1917 - Birth of Samuels Aun Weor, Colombian (Universal Christian Gnostic Movement)

1943 - Birth of Ursula Goodenough, American evolutionary biologist (Sacred Depths of Nature)

Amos Tversky
Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist (cognitive science)
(Born this day 1937)

Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a
slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that experts fall for

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 17 March
St Patrick's Day (died this 461)

0180 - Death of Roman Emperor Antonius Marcus Aurelius

1680 - Death of François Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French author

1780 - Birth of Bro. Thomas Chalmers, Scottish pastor, social reformer, author and scientist

1848 - The Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Washington DC was instituted

1856 - The Grand Lodge of Kansas was instituted

1871 - Death of Robert Chambers, FRSE FGS, Scottish geologist, evolutionist and author

2005 - Death of George Kennan (“the father of containment”), American foreign policy advisor

Margaret Bondfield
British Labour leader (1st woman UK cabinet member)
(Born this day 1873)

Broadly speaking, I learned to recognize sin as the refusal to live up to the
enlightenment we possess: to know the right order of values and deliberately
to choose the lower ones: to know that, however much these values may differ
with different people at different stages of spiritual growth, for one's self
there must be no compromise with that which one knows to be the lower value

[Tamrin]

Monday, 18 March
Ireland: Sheelah's Day (Sheelah-Na-Gig, Goddess of Fertility)

1314 - Execution of Jacques De Molay, the last Grand Master of Order of Knights Templar

1768 - Death of Laurence Sterne, writer (Sentimental Journey France & Italy)

1842 - Birth of Stéphane Mallarmé, French symbolist poet (The Afternoon of a Faun)

1901 - Birth of Bro. Manly P Hall, US mystic and author (Secret Teachings of All Ages)

1919 - Order of DeMolay is established in Kansas City

1980 - Death of Erich Fromm, German-American social psychologist and humanistic philosopher

1993 - Birth of Kenneth Boulding, American economist, systems scientist and philosopher

Jacques De Molay
Last Grand Master of the Knights Templar
(Treacherously executed this day 1314)

Let evil swiftly befall those who have wrongly condemned us — God will avenge us

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 19 March
Roman Empire: Festival of Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom

1721 - Baptism of Tobias Smollett, Scottish poet and author

1813 - Birth of Dr. David Livingstone, Scottish medical missionary and explorer

1821 - Birth of Bro. Sir Richard Burton, British explorer, translator, writer and soldier

1860 - Birth of Bro. William Jennings Bryan, American lawyer and politician, presidential candidate

1928 - Birth of Hans Küng, Swiss Catholic priest, theologian and author

1933 - Birth of Philip Roth, American novelist (Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint)

1950 - Death of Edgar Rice Burroughs, American sci-fi author (Tarzan of the Apes)

Bro. Wyatt Earp
American Marshall, fought in Gunfight at the OK Corral
(Born this day 1848)

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 20 March
Scandinavia: Festival of Iduna, Norse goddess of spring
Equinox

0043 - BCE - Birth of Ovid, Roman poet

1727 - Death of Sir Issac Newton, FRS, English physicist (“last of the magicians”)

1828 - Birth of Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright

1872 - Death of Bro. William Wentworth, Australian explorer, poet, journalist & politician

1904 - Birth of B.F. Skinner, US psychologist, Behaviourism pioneer (Skinner box)

1934 - Birth of David Malouf, Australian writer (Remembering Babylon)

1962 - Death of C Wright Mills, US sociologist (Power Elite)

F.W. Taylor
US mechanical engineer, “father of scientific management”
(Born this day 1856)

Hardly a competent workman can be found who does not devote
a considerable amount of time to studying just how slowly he can
work and still convince his employer that he is going at a good pace