Today in History

[Tamrin]

3 May

1469 - Birth of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italy, politician/writer (The Prince)

1898 - Birth of Septima Poinsette Clark, civil rights activist/educator

1926 - British general strike-3 million workers support miners

1943 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Upton Sinclair (Dragon's Teeth)

1963 - Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I have a dream" speech

1971 - Nixon administration arrests 13,000 anti-war protesters in 3 days

1976 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Saul Bellow (Humboldt's Gift)

Septima Clark
(Born this day 1898)

I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos,
it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift

[Tamrin]

4 May
US: Student Memorial Day (1970)

1626 - Indians sell Manhattan Island for $24 in cloth & buttons

1796 - Birth of Horace Mann, US, educator/author/editor (pioneered public schools)

1825 - Birth of Thomas Henry Huxley, scientist/humanist/Darwinist

1929 - Birth of Audrey Hepburn [Edda Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston], Brussels Belgium

1941 - Birth of George F Will, political analyst (Night Line)

1942 - Food 1st rationed in US

1970 - Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer, William Schroeder, students at Kent State University killed by Ohio National Guard

George Will
(Born this day 1941)

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just
a choice between equally eligible "lifestyles" turns universities
into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind

[Tamrin]

5 May
Ethiopia: Victory Day

1813 - Birth of Søren Kierkegaard, Denmark, philosopher (founded Existentialism)

1818 - Birth of Karl Marx, philosopher (Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital)

1821 - Napoleon I Bonaparte, emperor France (1799-1815), dies in St Helena

1846 - Birth of Henryk Sienkiewicz, Poland, author (Quo Vadis, Nobel 1905)

1943 - Birth of Michael Palin, Sheffield Yorkshire England, comedian (Monty Python)

1969 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Norman Mailer (Armies of the Night)

1993 - Irving Howe, US writer/critic (Dissent), dies at 72

Irving Howe
(Died this day 1993)

Imagination is not something apart and hermetic,
not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality

[Tamrin]

6 May

1758 - Birth of Maximilien Robespierre, Arras Fr, French revolutionary/advocate (1781)

1787 - 1st Black Masonic Lodge (African #459) forms by Prince Hall, Boston

1856 - Birth of Sigmund Freud, Freiberg Moravia, cigar smoker, father of psycho-analysis

1861 - Birth of Radindranath Tagore, Hindu poet/mystic/composer (Nobel 1913)

1862 - Henry David Thoreau, US writer/pacifist (Walden Pond), dies at 44

1915 - Birth of Orson Welles, Kenosha WI, actor (Citizen Kane, War of the Worlds)

1919 - Lyman Frank Baum, [Theosophist] author (Wizard of Oz), dies at 62

L. Frank Baum
(Died this day 1919)

I can't give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma

[Tamrin]

7 May

1700 - William Penn began monthly meetings for Blacks advocating emancipation

1812 - Birth of Robert Browning, London England, poet (The Pied Piper)

1867 - Blacks stage ride-in to protest segregation in New Orleans

1913 - British House of Commons rejects woman's right to vote

1942 - Nazi decree orders all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed

1945 - WWII ends in Europe / SS open fire on crowd in Amsterdam, killing 22

1962 - US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island [Australian Territory]

Robert Browning
(Born this day 1812)

Take away love and our earth is a tomb

[Tamrin]

8 May
World: V-E Day, Victory in Europe (1945)

1794 - Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, chemist (identified oxygen), guillotined

1873 - John Stuart Mill great Empiricist philosopher, dies at 66

1876 - Truganini, "last" originating Tasmanian, dies

1891 - Helena Petrovina Blavatsky, Russian Theosophist, dies

1895 - Birth of Edmund Wilson, American critic/writer (Patriotic Gore)

1936 - Oswald Spengler, German philosopher (Underworld of Abendlandes), dies

1945 - V-E Day; Germany signs unconditional surrender, WWII ends in Europe

Oswald Spengler
(Died this day 1936)

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that
has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be
proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on

[Tamrin]

9 May
Mothers’ Day

1265 - Birth of Dante Alighieri, Italian poet (Divina Commedia)

1800 - Birth of John Brown, abolitionist; led attack on Harpers Ferry

1805 - Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, poet/playwright, dies at 45

1860 - Birth of Sir James Matthew Barrie, Scotland, novelist (Peter Pan)

1873 - Birth of Howard Carter, British archaeologist/Egyptologist (found King Tutankhamen's tomb)

1983 - John Paul II announced the reversal of the Catholic Church's 1633 condemnation of Galileo Galilei

1986 - Tenzing Norgay, Tibetan climber (Mount Everest 1953), dies at 71

Bro. John Brown
(Born this day 1800

In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, the design
on my part to free the slaves... That (refering to the bible in the court room)
teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should
do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds,
as bound with them."... I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have
always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong,
but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the
furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of
my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are
disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!

[Tamrin]

10 May

1559 - Scottish Protestants under John Knox rise up against queen-mother Mary

1818 - Paul Revere, Huguenot, Freemason and American patriot, dies

1857 - Indian Mutiny begins with revolt of Sepoys of Meerutkazerne, Delhi

1908 - 1st Mother's Day observed (Philadelphia)

1933 - Nazis stage public book burnings in Germany

1941 - Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland

1994 - Nelson Mandela sworn in as South Africa's 1st black president

Bro. Paul Revere
(Died this day 1818)

Town born, turn out!
(NOT “The British are Coming”)

[Tamrin]

11 May

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

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

1916 - Einstein's Theory of General Relativity presented

1918 - Birth of Richard P Feynman, physicist (Feynman-diagrams/Nobel prize 1965)

1920 - William D Howells, US author (A Woman's Reason), dies at 83

1933 - Birth of Louis Farrakhan, minister (black islam nation, million man march)

1981 - Bob Marley, reggae singer, dies of brain & lung cancer at 36

Bob Marley
(Died this day 1981)

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights.
Get up, stand up, Don't give up the fight

[Tamrin]

12 May
Buddhist-Burma: Buddha's Birthday

1310 - Fifty-four Knights Templars were burned at the stake as heretics in France

1634 - George Chapman, English dramatist/interpreter, dies

1812 - Birth of Edward Lear, England, landscape painter, (Complete Nonsense Book)

1820 - Birth of Florence Nightingale, Florence Italy, nurse (Crimean War)

1907 - Birth of Katharine Hepburn, Hartford CT, actress (African Queen, Adam's Rib, On Golden Pond)

1937 - Birth of George Carlin, Bronx NY, comedian (7 words you can't say on television, AM & FM, Carwash)

1985 - Amy Eilberg is ordained in New York as 1st woman Conservative rabbi

Edward Lear
(Born this day 1812)

How pleasant to know Mr Lear!'
Who has written such volumes of stuff !
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough