Today in History

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 19 April
Ancient Greece: Mounichia, honouring Artemis and Iphegenia
Ancient Rome: Cerealia, for the goddess Ceres

1787 - The Grand Lodge of Maryland was instituted

1824 - Death of Lord Byron, British poet (Romanticism)

1850 - The Grand Lodge of California was instituted

1881 - Death of Benjamin Disraeli, British PM and novelist

1882 - Death of Charles Robert Darwin, FRS, British evolutionist (Origin of Species)

1914 - Death of Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher, chemist and polymath

1938 - Birth of Stanley Fish, American legal scholar and public intellectual

Eliot Ness
American Prohibition agent (The Untouchables)
(Born this day 1903)

Doubts raced through my mind as I considered the feasibility of
enforcing a law which the majority of honest citizens didn't seem to want

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 20 April
Southeast Asia: Feast Day of Matsu, Taoist goddess of the sea

1826 - Birth of Dinah Craik, English novelist and poet (A Woman's Thoughts About Women)

1871 - Birth of William Henry Davies, Welsh poet (Autobiography of a Super Tramp)

1884 - Pope Leo XIII issues the encyclical “Humanum Genus,” against Freemasonry

1889 - Birth of Adolf Hitler, Austrian-born German dictator (Nazis) and mass murderer

1912 - Death of Bram Stoker, Irish novelist (Dracula)

1966 - Birth of David Chalmers, Australian philosopher of mind and of language

1982 - Death of Archibald MacLeish, US lawyer and writer (Conquistador)

Philippe Pinel
French physician, "father of modern psychiatry"
(Born this day 1745)

People of great warmth of imagination, acuteness of sensibility and violence of passions,
are the most predisposed to insanity… I cannot here avoid giving my most decided suffrage
in favour of the moral qualities of maniacs. I have no where met, excepting in romances,
with fonder husbands, more affectionate parents, more impassioned lovers, more pure and
exulted patriots, than in the lunatic asylum, during their intervals of calmness and reason

[Tamrin]

Monday, 21 April
Ancient Egypt: Festival of Wadjet, cobra goddess (patron of Lower Egypt)

1792 - Death of Bro. Tiradentes (Joaquim José da Silva Xavier), Brazilian revolutionary leader

1821 - The Grand Lodge of Missouri was instituted

1856 - Stonemasons in Melbourne led one of the world's first eight-hour working day processions

1910 - Death of Bro. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), US author (Huckleberry Finn)

1921 - The United Grand Lodge of Queensland (& Papua/New Guinea) was instituted in Brisbane

1926 - Birth of Elizabeth II (Alexandra Mary Windsor), Queen of England

1973 - Death of Bro. Sir Arthur William Fadden, GCMG, 13th Prime Minister of Australia.

(famous lovers Heloïse and Abelard)

Peter Abelard
French theologian and philosopher
(Died this day 1142)

The key to wisdom is this — constant and frequent questioning ... for by
doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 22 April
International: Mother Earth Day

1616 - Death of Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright (Don Quixote)

1724 - Birth of Immanuel Kant, Konigsberg German philosopher (Critique of Pure Reason)

1766 - Birth of Madame de Stael, Swiss-French writer (An Extraordinary Woman)

1870 - Birth of Nikolai Lenin, Russian revolutionary and mass murderer (Red Terror)

1904 - Birth of J Robert Oppenheimer, US Physicist, Manhattan (A-bomb) Project

1909 - Birth of Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian neurologist (Nobel laureate) and politician (Senator for Life)

1986 - Death of Mircea Eliade, Romanian-American historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Colin Tudge
British science journalist, broadcaster and author
(Born this day 1943)

[The] food chain we have now is not designed to feed people. In line with the modern cure-
all — the allegedly free global market — it is designed to produce the maximum amount
of cash in the shortest time. Stated thus, our approach to our most important material
endeavour seems unbelievably crass — but that is how things are nonetheless. The global
free market might be good for some things (perhaps we get better computers and warships
that way) but for farming, and hence for humanity as a whole, it is disastrous. The simplistic
business rules that may (or may not) apply to other enterprises are fatal to Enlightened
Agriculture and so, since we depend on agriculture absolutely, they are proving fatal for us

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 23 April
Syria: Pyre Festival, to Goddess Astarte
Feast Day of Saint George, Syrian Martyr: Patron of England, Ethiopia, India, Iraq, etc., etc. (died this day 303)
England: Oder of the Garter, founded this day 1348 (England’s oldest and highest Order of Chivalry)
Turkey: National Sovereignty and Children’s Day (first Grand National Assembly 1920)

1616 - Death of William Shakespeare, English playwright, (died on his 52nd birthday)

1850 - Death of William Wordsworth, English Romantic poet (The Prelude)

1852 - Birth of Bro. Edwin Markham, US poet (1st winner of American Academy of Poets Award 1937)

1858 - Birth of Max Planck, German physicist (1918 Nobel laureate)

1902 - Birth of Halldór Laxness, Icelandic author (1955 Nobel laureate)

1954 - Birth of Michael Moore, Oscar winning American documentary film maker

1996 - Death of P.L. Travers, Australian-British author (Mary Poppins)

Bro. James Buchanan
15th President of the United States
(Born this day 1791)

The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity,
but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 24 April
Fall of Troy (traditional date, 1184 BCE)
Armenia: Genocide Remembrance Day (1915)

1731 - Death of Daniel Defoe, English novelist (Robinson Crusoe)

1769 - Birth of Bro. Arthur Wellesley, British General, Duke of Wellington

1815 - Birth of Bro. Anthony Trollope, English novelist and poet (Barchester Towers)

1905 - Birth of Robert Penn Warren, 1st US poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner

1940 - Birth of Sue Taylor Grafton, American author (detective novels)

1942 - Birth of Barbra Streisand, American entertainer (Funny Girl)

1954 - Birth of Mumia Abu-Jamal, American journalist, political activist and prisoner

Vincent de Paúl
French priest, Catholic saint
(Born this day 1576)

You will find out that Charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle
of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile.
It is not enough to give soup and bread. This the rich can do. You are the servant
of the poor, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters — terribly
sensitive and exacting masters you will see. And the uglier and the dirtier they
will be, the more unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them. It is
only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them

[Tamrin]

Friday, 25 April
ANZAC Day: Australia, Nauru, New Zealand, Solomon Is, Tonga, W Samoa (1915)

1599 - Birth of Oliver Cromwell, Puritan lord protector of England (1653-58)

1800 - Death of William Cowper, British poet (translated Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey)

1878 - Death of Anna Sewell, English novelist (Black Beauty)

1900 - Birth of Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Austrian physicist (Nobel 1945)

1926 - Death of Ellen Key, Swedish feminist and author (Century of the Child)

2006 - Death of Jane Jacobs, American-born Canadian urbanist, writer and activist

2010 - Death of Alan Sillitoe, English novelist (Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner)

Walter de la Mare
English novelist and poet
(Born this day 1873)

All day long the door of the sub-conscious remains just ajar; we slip
through to the other side, and return again, as easily and secretly as a cat

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 26 April
Belarus: Day of Remembrance of the Chernobyl tragedy (1986)

0121 - Birth of Marcus Aurelius, 16th Roman emperor (161-80), philosopher

1710 - Birth of Thomas Reid, Scottish Philosopher (Scottish School of Common Sense)

1711 - Birth of David Hume, Scottish philosopher (Treatise of Human Nature)

1888 - Birth of Anita Loos, US screenwriter, playwright and author (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)

1889 - Birth of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher (Tractatus)

1916 - Birth of Morris L. West, Australian novelist (Shoes of the Fisherman)

1938 - Death of Edmund Husserl, Austrian philosopher (Phenomenology)

John James Audubon
Haitian-American bird watcher and artist
(Born this day 1785)

A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world
is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 27 April
Catalonia: Montserrat's Day (renowned for its Black Virgin)

1737 - Birth of Bro. Edward Gibbon, English historian (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

1759 - Birth of Mary Wollstonecraft, English writer and feminist (Female Reader)

1820 - Birth of Herbert Spencer, English philosopher (Social Statistics)

1822 - Birth of Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant), 18th US President

1882 - Death of Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet (Representive Men)

1927 - Birth of Coretta Scott King, American Civil Rights leader

1937 - Death of Antonio Gramsci, Italian philosopher (The Prison Notebooks)

Ferdinand Magellan
Portuguese explorer (killed by Filipino natives)
(Died this day 1521)

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen
the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church

[Tamrin]

Monday, 28 April
Ancient Rome: Floralia, start of the six day festival honouring the goddess Flora

1738 - Pope Clement XII issued the first Papal Bull against Freemasonry: “Eminenti Apostolatus Specula”

1758 - Birth of Bro. James Monroe, fifth US President (Monroe Doctrine)

1795 - Birth of Charles Sturt, English-Australian explorer

1801 - Birth of Bro. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury

1840 - The Grand Lodge of Illinois was instituted

1874 - Birth of Karl Kraus, Austrian satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet

1926 - Birth of Harper Lee, US author (To Kill a Mockingbird)

Fletcher Christian
British naval officer and mutineer
(HMS Bounty under Bro. William Bligh)
(Mutinied this day 1789)

The women of Otaheite [Tahiti] are not only constitutionally votaries of Venus
but join to the charms of person such a happy cheerfulness of temper, and such
an engaging manner; that their allurements are perfectly irristible. In a very short
time, every man aboard was provided with his mistress and I cordially acknowledge
that I had my favourite as well as the rest. Indeed it is but justice to confess, that
our subsequent conspiracy in a great measure owed its rise to these connections