Today in History

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 14 November

1716- Death of Gottfried W. Leibniz, German philosopher, scientist and mathematician

1797 - Birth of Sir Charles Lyell, Scottish geologist (Principles of Geology)

1831 - Death of Georg W.F. Hegel, German philosopher

1889 - Birth of Jawaharlal Nehru, 1st Indian PM (1947-64)

1916 - Death of Saki (HH Munro), British writer

1940 - Coventry in England virtually destroyed by German bombers

1990 - Death of Malcolm Muggeridge, UK author, WW II spy for Britain

Charles, Prince of Wales, OGG
(Born this day 1948)

I think it's something that dawns on you with the most ghastly, inexorable sense.
I didn't suddenly wake up in my pram one day and say 'Yippee, I —', you know.
But I think it just dawns on you, you know, slowly, that people are interested in
one, and slowly you get the idea that you have a certain duty and responsibility

(Asked when he had first realised that he was heir to the throne,
in a Radio interview with Jack di Manio broadcast on 1 March 1969)

[Tamrin]

Monday, 15 November
Ancient Rome: Feast Day of Feronia — "Slaves believed she was a goddess of freedom… in the temple at Terracina, the slaves who had just been freed would go there and receive the pileus (a hat that symbolized their liberty), which they would wear on their shaved heads."

1630 - Death of Johann Kepler German astronomer

1731 - Birth of William Cowper, English poet and hymnist

1778 - Birth of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Belzoni
]Giovanni Battista Belzoni[/url][/b] (The Great Belzoni), strongman and Egyptologist

1838 - [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myall_Creek_massacre
]Myall Creek Massacre[/url][/b] of Kwiambal people (indigenous Australians)

1881 - Birth of Franklin P Adams, Chicago IL, columnist (Information Please)

1887 - Birth of Marianne Moore, American poet

1978 - Death of Margaret Mead, US anthropologist

William Herschel, German astronomer
(Born this day 1738)

And it is doubtless our paramount duty, in every state of society, to
alleviate the pressure of the purely evil part of this distribution, as much
as possible, and, by all the means we can devise, secure the lower links
in the chain of society from dragging in dishonor and wretchedness

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 16 November
Ancient Greece: Night of Hecate
International Day of Tolerance

1532 - Pizarro seizes Incan emperor Atahualpa after victory at Cajamarca

1894 - 6,000 Armenians massacred by Turks in Kurdistan [prelude to the genocide]

1896 - Bro. Sir George Reid, Australian P.M. (1904/5), made a Mason in Lodge Centennial, NSW

1930 - Birth of Chinua Achebe, Nigerian writer (Christmas in Biafra)

1935 - Birth of Elizabeth Drew, US political journalist (Politics & Money: The Road to Corruption)

1946 - Birth of Terence McKenna, theoretician of consciousness

1988 - Benazir Bhutto wins 1st free Pakistani elections in 11 years

John Bright, British Radical and Liberal statesman
(Born this day 1811)

If this phrase of the ''balance of power'' is to be always an argument for war,
the pretext for war will never be wanting, and peace can never be secure

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 17 November

0003 - BC - According to Clement of Alexandria, Jesus Christ was born on this date

1624 - Death of Jacob Böhme, Christian mystic, philosopher

1858 - Death of Robert Owen, Scottish socialist planner (New Lanark)

1866 - Birth of Voltairine de Cleyre, US anarchist

1875 - The Theosophical Society founded by Mme Blavatsky & Col Olcott

1887 - Birth of Bernard L Montgomery, British general (WW II-African campaign)

1913 - Panama Canal opens

Sheilah Graham, English / US gossip columnist
(Died this day 1988)

You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough.
You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts
through the skin and joins the energy that created the world

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 18 November
Ancient Persia: Day of Ardvi Sura, Mother of the Stars

1307 - William Tell, Swiss archer, is said to have shot an apple off his son's head

1497 - Bartolomeu Dias discovers Cape of Good Hope

1797 - Birth of Sojourner Truth, American abolitionist and women's rights activist

1832 - Birth of Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskjold, Sweden, Arctic explorer

1900 - Birth of Howard Thurman, US, theologian/author (Deep River, Deep in the Hunger)

1928 - Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse debuts in NY in "Steamboat Willie"

1978 - Leo J Ryan (Rep-Cal) & 4 killed in Jonestown, Guyana by members of Peoples Temple, followed by ritual mass suicide of 912 member

George Gallup, US statistician, pollster
(Born this day 1901)

Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion.
When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect,
paying attention to the views of the people. Any other interpretation is nonsense

[Tamrin]

Friday, 19 November
International Men’s Day

1600 - Birth of Charles I, king of England (1625-49); executed by Parliament

1833 – Birth of Wilhelm Dilthey, German historian, psychologist, sociologist and hermeneutic philosopher

1850 - Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was appointed Britain's poet laureate

1861 - Bro. James Garfield, US President (1881), was made a Mason in Magnolia Lodge No. 20, Columbus, Ohio (his 30th Birthday)

1863 - Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address ("4 score & 7 years...")

1887 – Death of Emma Lazarus, US poet ("Give us your tired & poor")

1915 – Execution of Joe Hill, Swedish-American folk singer & labor leader (IWW)

Hiram Bingham, US statesman and archaeologist (Machu Picchu)
(Born this day 1875)

In the variety of its charms and the power of its spell, I know of no place
in the world which can compare with it [Machu Picchu]. Not only has it
great snow peaks looming above the clouds more than two miles overhead,
gigantic precipices of many-colored granite rising sheer for thousands
of feet above the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids; it has also, in
striking contrast, orchids and tree ferns, the delectable beauty
of luxurious vegetation, and the mysterious witchery of the jungle

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 20 November
Ancient Greece and Rome: Feast day of Praetextatus and Paulina,
“pagan” activists, guardians of the Eleusinian Mysteries (364 CE)
World: Rights of the Child Day (1959)

1884 - Birth of Norman Thomas, American social reformer

1889 - Birth of Edwin Hubble, US astronomer (discoverer of galaxies, red shift)

1910 - Death of Leo Tolstoy Russia, author (Anna Karenina)

1923 - Birth of Nadine Gordimer, South African novelist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1992

1924 - Birth of Benoit Mandelbrot, Polish mathematician (proved Zipf's law)

1925 - The Freemasons and other secret societies were banned in Italy

1925 - Birth of Robert Kennedy, US Senator

Selma Lagerlöf
Swedish author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1909
(Born this day 1858)

For what is a man's soul but a flame? It flickers in and
around the body of a man as does the flame around a rough log

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 21 November
Mayan: Day of Quetzalcoatl

1694 - Birth of Bro. Voltaire, [Francois-Marie Arouet], France, thinker

1768 - Birth of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, German theologian, philosopher

1783 - Pilstre de Rozier & Marquis d'Arlandes make 1st free balloon flight

1838 - The Grand Lodge of Arkansas was instituted

1870 - Birth of Alexander Berkman, Russian / US writer and anarchist

1936 - Birth of Dr Victor Chang, Australian doctor, heart transplantation pioneer

1953 - "Pitdown Man," discovered in 1912, proved to be a hoax

Heinrich von Kleist, German writer
(Died this day 1811)

Misconceptions are unavoidable now that we've eaten of the
Tree of Knowledge. But Paradise is locked and bolted, and the
cherubim stands behind us. We have to go on and make the journey
round the world to see if it is perhaps open somewhere at the back

[Tamrin]

Monday, 22 November
Ancient Greece and Rome: Festival of Artemis

1819 - Birth of George Eliot, England, novelist (Silas Marner)

1869 - Birth of Andre Gide, France, novelist (Lafcadio's Adventures-Nobel 1947)

1916 - Death of Jack London, American socialist novelist

1963 - Death of C.S. Lewis, English novelist. ("The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.")

1963 - Death of Aldous Huxley, English novelist ("Brave New World")

1963 - Assassination of John F Kennedy, 35th U.S. President, shot dead in Dallas, Texas

1988 - Death of Raymond Dart, Australian anatomist and anthropologist

Anthony Burgess, British author (A Clockwork Orange)
(Died this day 1993)

is not, in my view, a very good
novel... but it sincerely presented my abhorrence of the
view that some people were criminal and others not

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 23 November
Japan: Shinto Harvest Festival (Kinro Kansha no Hi)

1170 - BCE - The first recorded strike, stonemasons and other Egyptian tomb makers ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_el-Medina
]Deir el-Medina[/url][/b])

1499 - Execution of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perkin_Warbeck
]Perkin Warbeck[/url][/b], controversial Pretender to the English throne

1924 - Birth of Colin Turnbull, Scottish-born US anthropologist (The Mountain people)

1926 - Birth of Sathya Sai Baba, fake fakir

1963 - Doctor Who, the world's longest-running sci-fi TV series, was shown for the first time

1976 - André Malraux, France, novelist/art historian/public office. ("The Voices of Silence"), dies at 75

1990 - Death of Roald Dahl, British short story writer

Colin Turnbull
Scottish-born US anthropologist (The Mountain people)
(Born this day 1924)

My hope that we who have been civilized into such empty beliefs as the essential
beauty and goodness of humanity may discover ourselves before it is too late