Today in History

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 11 August
Mayan New Year (3114 BCE to 2012 CE)

1833 – Birth of Robert Green Ingersoll, NY, author/politician/agnostic (Att Gen-R-Ill)

1868 - Thaddeus Stevens, architect of Radical Reconstruction, dies at 76

1897 – Birth of Louise Bogan, American poet

1914 – Birth of José Silva, American parapsychologist

1921 - Birth of Alex Haley, historian, novelist (Roots)

1933 – Birth of Jerry Falwell, hate-filled bigot

1978 - The American Indian Religious Freedom Act came into effect

Thaddeus Stevens
(Died this day 1868)

I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to
no deity however worshipped by professing Christians — however
dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is
the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the
resoundings of the tyrant’s lash, and the cries of his tortured victims

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 12 August
Ancient Egypt: Aset Webenut (Festival of Lights)
Ancient Greece: First day of Heraclia festival, honouring Hercules

0030 - BCE - Death of Cleopatra VII, last of the pharaohs

1820 - Australian Social Lodge No 260 IC met for the first time (1st warranted lodge resident in Australia)

1827 - Death of William Blake, visionary English poet and printmaker

1831 - Birth of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Co-founder of The Theosophical Society

1887 – Birth of Erwin Schrödinger, Austria, physicist (had a cat)

1898 - Hawaii formally annexed to US

1931 – Birth of William Golding, author (Lord of the Flies-Nobel 1983)

Erwin Schrödinger
(Born this day 1887)

Quantum physics... reveals a basic oneness of the universe

[Tamrin]

Friday, 13 August

1313 – Birth of Aradia di Toscano, Italian insurrectionist, teacher, and witch (Stregheria)

1422 – Birth of William Caxton, 1st English printer (Histories of Troy)

1815 – Birth of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, American author

1823 – Birth of Goldwin Smith, British-Canadian historian, journalist and anti-Semite

1818 – Birth of Lucy Stone, US abolitionist and pioneer of women's rights

1851 – Birth of Felix Adler, US Jewish rationalist intellectual (Society for Ethical Culture)

1899 – Birth of Alfred Hitchcock, London, director (Psycho, Birds, Rear Window)

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
(Born this day 1815)

What an immense power over the life is the power of possessing distinct aims.
The voice, the dress, the look, the very motion of a person,
define and alter when he or she begins to live for a reason

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 14 August

1040 - King Duncan I of Scotland was killed in battle against his cousin and successor Macbeth

1248 - Construction of Cologne Cathedral begun (completed this day 1880)

1867 - Birth of John Galsworthy, English novelist and playwright

1950 - Birth of Gary Larson, US cartoonist

1951 - William Randolph Hearst, newspaper publisher, dies in Beverly Hills

1958 - Mary Ritter Beard, American historian, dies at 82 (Woman as a Force in History)

1969 - British troops intervenes militarily in Northern Ireland

Mary Ritter Beard
(Died this day 1958)

Unless one's philosophy is all-inclusive, nothing can be understood

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 15 August

1096 - The armies of the First Crusade set out from Europe

1620 - Mayflower sets sail from Southampton with 102 Pilgrims

1769 - Birth of Napoleon Bonaparte, resident of Elba (emperor 1804-13, 1814-15)

1771 - Birth of Bro. Sir Walter Scott, Scotland, novelist/poet (Lady of Lake)

1872 - Birth of Sri Aurobindo, Indian/Hindu nationalist, scholar, poet, mystic

1935 - Wiley Post & Will Rogers killed in plane crash in Alaska

1969 - Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens in NY State (Max Yasgur's Dairy Farm)

Stanley Milgram, American psychologist
(Born this day 1933)

It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society.
But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness.
And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation

[Tamrin]

Monday, 16 August

1851 - The Grand Lodge of Oregon was instituted

1865 - Birth of Dame Mary Gilmore, Australian poet, utopian socialist

1888 - Birth of T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), UK soldier & author

1888 - United Grand Lodge of New South Wales instituted

1911 - Birth of EF Schumacher, progressive German economist

1920 - Birth of Charles Bukowski, American beat poet and author

1977 - Death (yes, really!) of Elvis Presley, American singer

Dame Mary Gilmore
(Born this day 1865

“From temptation, O Lord, deliver us,” men cry;
But I have prayed, “Give me the power to feel
temptation, lest I go empty to the grave”

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 17 August

1786 - Birth of Bro. Davy Crockett, US frontiersman/adventurer/politician

1882 – Birth of Samuel Goldwyn, US film producer, co-founder of MGM

1887 - Birth of Marcus Garvey, began back-to-Africa movement among US blacks

1892 - Birth of Mae West, Bkln, actress (Go up & see her sometime)

1921 – Birth of Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, German / British historian

1950 - Death of Black Elk, Medicine Man or Holy Man of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux)

1961 - Building of the Berlin Wall begins

Geoffrey Elton
(Born this day 1921)

Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and
indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is
the mess we call life reduced to some order. pattern and possibly purpose

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 18 August

1227 - Genghis Khan, Mongol conqueror, died

1563 - Death of Étienne de La Boétie, French judge and writer.

1587 - Birth of Virginia Dare, 1st American born of English parents

1778 - Birth of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellinghausen, 1st to circumnavigate Antarctica

1920 - Tennessee ratifies 19th Amendment, guarantees women voting right

1961 - Construction on Berlin Wall completed

1990 - B.F. Skinner, psychologist (Skinner Box), dies from Leukemia at 86

Étienne de La Boétie
(Died this day 1563)

It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls
into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused
to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and willingly that one is led to
say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 19 August
Roma (Gypsies): Feast day of St Sarah (Sara), Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France

1631 – Birth of John Dryden, 1st poet laureate of England (Absalom & Achitophel)

1662 – Death of Blaise Pascal, French philosopher, writer and mathematician

1878 – Birth of M.W. Bro. Manuel Luis Quezon, first President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines*

1883 – Birth of Coco Chanel, French fashion designer

1902 – Birth of Ogden Nash, American poet

1930 – Birth of Frank McCourt, Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize-winning author

1946 – Birth of Bill Clinton, 42nd US President. (Former Little Rock Attorney)

Gene Roddenberry, US author, producer (Star Trek)
(Born this day 1921)

A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on
and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away

---

* In the Philippines, MW Bro. Manuel Luis Quezon is considered to be the second President, after Bro. Gen. Emillio Aguinaldo

[Tamrin]

Friday, 20 August
Cistercian: Feast day of St Bernard of Clairvaux (Patron of Knights Templar)
Voudon (Voodoo): Feast day of Yemaya, (Patron of mothers and children)

1881 – Birth of Edgar Guest, American poet

1886 - Birth of Paul Tillich, German philosophical theologian

1890 – Birth of H.P. Lovecraft, US Gothic novelist (At the Mountains of Madness)

1901 – Birth of Salvatore Quasimodo, Italy, poet/critic/translator (Nobel 1959)

1912 – Death of William Booth, English founder of the Salvation Army

1940 - Leon Trotsky, assassinated in Mexico City by Stalinist agents, dies 8/21

1955 - Hundreds killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco & Algeria

Salvatore Quasimodo
(Born this day 1901)

Religious power, which, as I have already said, frequently identifies itself with political power,
has always been a protagonist of this bitter struggle, even when it seemingly was neutral