Today in History

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 10 May
Memorial Day of Blessed Damien of Moloka'i (patron of people with leprosy)

1696 - Death of Jean de La Bruyère, French essayist and moralist

1849 - Establishment of the Provincial Grand Lodge of NSW, EC

1886 - Birth of Karl Barth, Swiss Reformed pastor and theologian (Barmen Declaration)

1897 - Death of Bro. Andrés Bonifacio, "the father of the Philippine Revolution"

1911 - Birth of Bella "Bel" Kaufman, American teacher and author (Up the Down Staircase)

1933 - Birth of Barbara Taylor Bradford, OBE, English writer (A Woman of Substance)

1990 - Death of Walker Percy, American semiotic philosopher and author (The Moviegoer)

Sir Robert Bowden Madgwick, OBE
Australian educationist
(Born this day 1905)

Education should be an adventure, something that we undertake because it is interesting as
well as instructive. Democracy cannot survive if decisions are to be made by the people and
the people do not understand what they are asked to decide. To me the success of our scheme
will be measured by the number of men who become more tolerant of the other man's opinion

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 11 May
Rastafarian: Commemoration of Bob Marley (died this day 1981)
Mothers’ Day

1871 - Death of Sir John Herschel, 1st Baronet, KH, FRS English polymath

1895 - Birth of Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian spiritual philosopher (Songs of Life)

1904 - Birth of Salvador Dali, Spanish surrealist artist (Crucifixion)

1918 - Birth of Richard P Feynman, US physicist (Feynman-diagrams, 1965 Nobel Prize)

1933 - Birth of Louis Farrakhan, US minister (million man march)

1950 - Birth of Jeremy Paxman, English journalist, author and broadcaster (BBC)

2001 - Death of Douglas Adams, British science fiction author ("forty-two")

Bro. Major Frederick Russell Burnham, DSO
“The King of the Scouts” (Excelsior Lodge No. 195)
American scout and world traveling adventurer
(Born this day 1861)

I am more afraid of an army of a hundred sheep led by a lion
than an army of a hundred lions led by a sheep

[Tamrin]

Monday, 12 May
Ancient Rome: Ludi Martiales (festival of Mars, god of war)

1634 - Death of George Chapman, English dramatist and interpreter

1700 - Death of John Dryden ("Glorious John"), English Poet Laureate

1820 - Birth of Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC, Italian-born English nurse (Crimean War)

1907 - Birth of Katharine Hepburn, American actor (African Queen, On Golden Pond)

1921 - Birth of Farley Mowat, OC, Canadian author and environmentalist

1994 - Death of Erik Erikson, German-born American developmental psychologist

1999 - The Grand Lodge of D.C. voted to recognize the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of D.C.

Leslie Charteris
Chinese-English author (The Saint)
(Born this day 1907)

I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true,
the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe that, by the grace
of God, men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living
will return to a grey civilisation. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in
it, and fight for it, and fight in its name against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 13 May
Ancient Anatolia: Festival of Purulliyas (slaying of the dragon Illuyankas by Teshub)

1840 - Birth of Alphonse Daudet, French novelist (Tartarin de Tarascon)

1881 - Birth of Lima Barreto, Brazilian post-modernist satirical writer

1895 - Birth of Nandor Fodor, Hungarian-American psychologist, author and journalist

1903 - Death of Bro. Apolinario Mabini, Filipino revolutionary political philosopher (first Prime Minister)

1907 - Birth of Daphne du Maurier, DBE, English author and playwright

1940 - Birth of Bruce Chatwin, English novelist and travel writer (The Songlines)

1956 - Birth of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Indian spiritual (Art of Living Foundation)

Bro. Sir Arthur Sullivan, MVO
Irish-Italian-English composer (Gilbert and Sullivan)
(Born this day 1842)

One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for
inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not
sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to
the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 14 May
Ancient Egypt: Panegyric of Isis (recollects the joy of Isis upon finding Osiris)

1771 - Birth of Robert Owen, Welsh factory owner and socialist

1868 - Birth of Magnus Hirschfeld, German physician and sexologist

1912 - Death of August Strindberg, (Golden Dawn Frater) Swedish novelist

1925 - Death of Bro. Sir H. Rider Haggard, English writer (She, King Solomon’s Mines)

1940 - Death of Emma Goldman, US anarchist, feminist and author (Living My Life)

1984 - Birth of Mark Zuckerberg, American internet entrepreneur (Facebook)

1998 - Death of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, American feminist and environmentalist

Che Guevara
Argentinian-born Cuban & Bolivian revolutionary and mass murderer
(Born this day 1928)

Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy
that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of
gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being
for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 15 May
Ancient Rome: Mercuralia (festival in honour of Mercury)

1689 - Birth of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, English aristocrat and writer

1856 - Birth of L. Frank Baum, US Theosophist and author (Wizard of Oz)

1886 - Death of Emily Dickinson, American poet (Time and Eternity)

1891 - Birth of Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist (The Master and Margarita)

1904 - Birth of Clifton P. "Kip" Fadiman, US intellectual, author and media personality

1944 - Birth of Ulrich Beck, German sociologist (“risk society”)

1956 - Death of Austin Osman Spare, English artist author and occultist

“Abelard and Heloise Surprised by the Abbot Fulbert”
by Jean Vignaud, 1819

(Héloise died this day 1163)

I looked for no marriage bond, no marriage portion…The name of wife
may seem more sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always
be the word mistress, or, if you will permit me, that of concubine or whore

(From a letter to her lover, Peter Abelard)

[Tamrin]

Friday, 16 May
Feast Day of Feast day of St Brendan the Elder (aka, the Navigator, or Voyager)

1703 - Death of Charles Perrault, French author (Académie française)

1830 - Death of Baron Joseph Fourier, French mathematician and physicist

1914 - Birth of Edward T. Hall, Jr., US anthropologist & cross-cultural researcher

1929 - Birth of Adrienne Cecile Rich, US feminist and writer (Diamond Cutters)

1942 - Death of Bronislaw Malinowski, Polish-born British anthropologist

1944 - Death of Bro. George Ade, US novelist and playwright (Counsel Widow)

1979 - Death of Bro. Asa Philip Randolph, African-American labor leader and civil rights pioneer

Felicia Hemans, English poet
(Died this day 1835)

The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 17 May
International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (aka IDAHO)

1727 - Death of Catherine I (Catherine the Great, b. Marta Helena Skowroñska), Polish-born Empress of Russia

1794 - Birth of Anna Brownell Jameson, British writer (Sacred and Legendary Art)

1844 - Birth of Julius Wellhausen, German biblical scholar and orientalist

1909 - Birth of Professor Julius Sumner Miller, American science popularizer

1930 - Death of Herbert David Croly, US editor & founder (New Republic)

1987 - Death of Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish Nobel Laureate economist and sociologist

2007 - Death of Lloyd Chudley Alexander, US fantasy author (The Chronicles of Prydain)

Bro. Edward Jenner, FRS
English physician (discovered vaccination)
(Born this day 1749)

While the vaccine discovery was progressive, the joy I felt at the prospect before me
of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest
calamities [smallpox], blended with the fond hope of enjoying independence and
domestic peace and happiness, was often so excessive that, in pursuing my favourite
subject among the meadows, I have sometimes found myself in a kind of reverie

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 18 May
World Goodwill Day (1899)

1048 - Birth of Omar Khayyám, Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer

1692 – Death of Bro. Elias Ashmole, English antiquarian and Freemason

1692 - Birth of Joseph Butler, English bishop, theologian, apologist and philosopher

1872 - Birth of Lord Bertrand Russell, FRS, English mathematician and philosopher (Nobel 1950)

1891 - Birth of Rudolf Carnap, German-American philosopher (Logical Positivism)

1904 - Birth of Shunryu Suzuki, Japanese-American Zen master (Soto school)

1955 - Death of Mary McLeod Bethune, US educator & civil rights leader

Today's date, the eighteenth of May, should sometime become
an occasion of great international celebration, for on this day
ten years ago the first Peace Conference opened at The Hague

Fredrik Bajer

(Said this day 1909)

[Tamrin]

Monday, 19 May
Feast day of Blessed Alcuin of York, 'The schoolmaster of his age'

1762 - Birth of Bro. Johann G Fichte, German philosopher (Wissenschaftslehre)

1795 - Death of Bro. James Boswell, Scottish lawyer and biographer (Samuel Johnson)

1825 - Death of Comte de Saint-Simon, French aristocratic socialist

1864 - Death of Bro. Nathaniel Hawthorne, US writer (Scarlet Letter)

1881 - c. Birth of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, first President of Turkey (“Father of the Nation”)

1925 - Birth of Malcolm X, US civil rights leader (Black Muslims)

1935 - Death of Thomas E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), British officer (Arab Revolt)

Alcuin of York
English scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher
(Died this day 804)

Those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is
the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness