Today in History

[Tamrin]

Friday, 24 December
Christian: Christmas Eve
Pagan: Mothers’ Night
Judeo-Christian: Feast Day of Eve (first woman)

1754 – Birth of George Crabbe, English poet and naturalist

1822 – Birth of Matthew Arnold, English poet

1863 - Death of William Makepeace Thackeray, English writer

1907 - Birth of Isidore Feinstein Stone, US journalist (IF Stone's Weekly)

1982 – Death of Louis Aragon, French poet, novelist and editor

1993 – Death of Norman Vincent Peale, US minister and author (The Power of Positive Thinking)

1994 – Death of John James Osborne, English playwright, screenwriter and actor

Juan Ramón Jiménez
Spanish Nobel Prize winning poet
(Born this day 1881)

I am not I. I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk, and forgives, gently, when
I hate, who walks where I am not, who will remain standing when I die

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 25 December
Christmas Day

0004 - BCE - Birth of Yeshua bar Yosef (Jesus the Nazorean), Jewish religious teacher

1824 – Death of Barbara Krudener, mystic visionary who renounced nobility

1876 - Birth of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah Karachi, founder of Pakistan

1893 – Birth of Robert Ripley, American promoter of the extraordinary (Believe it or Not!)

1908 – Birth of Quentin Crisp, English writer

1931 – Birth of Carlos Castaneda, US plagiarist, fiction writer (The Teachings of Don Juan)

1938 – Death of Karel Capek, Czechoslovakian author/antifascist (Bílá Nemoc)

Angelus Silesius (Johann Scheffler)
German mystic (St Seelenlust)
(Born this day 1624)

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found,
by the will art thou free, captive, and bound

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 26 December
Boxing Day (first of the twelve days of Christmas)

1716 - Birth of Thomas Gray, English poet and letter-writer

1771 - Death of Bro. Claude Adrien Helvétius, French philosopher

1792 - Birth of Charles Babbage, English inventor (calculating machine) ‘father of the computer’

1891 - Birth of Henry Miller, US author (Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer, Sexus)

1893 - Birth of Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of China People's Republic, mass murderer

1956 - Birth of David Sedaris, US humourist and essayist

2004 - Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis

Donald Horne
Australian journalist, writer, social critic and academic (The Lucky Country)
(Born this day 1921)

Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck

[Tamrin]

Monday, 27 December
Feast Day of St John the Evangelist

1571 - Birth of Johann Kepler, Württemberg Germany, astronomer (elliptical orbits)

1783 - The Grand Lodge of South Carolina was instituted

1813 - Union of Moderns' & Antients' Grand Lodges (=UGLE)

1813 – The Grand Lodge of Louisiana was instituted

1822 - Birth of Louis Pasteur, Dole France, bacteriologist (pasteurization)

1834 - Death of Charles Lamb, English essayist

1857 - Establishment of Provincial Grand Lodge, NSW, IC

Johann Arndt, German Lutheran theologian
(Born this day 1555)

This truth is a remedy against spiritual pride, namely,
that none should account himself better before God than others,
though perhaps adorned with greater gifts, and endowments

[Tamrin]

Tuesday, 28 December
Childermas (Mass of the Holy Innocents)

1706 - Death of Pierre Bayle, French theologist (History of Criticism)

1859 - Death of Thomas Babington Macaulay, English essayist and historian

1882 - Birth of Arthur Eddington, English astrophysicist, cosmologist and mathematician

1902 - Birth of Mortimer Adler, US philosopher, educator and author

1903 - Death of George Gissing, English realist novelist

1932 - Birth of Manuel Puig, Argentine author (Kiss of the Spider Woman)

1989 - Newcastle Earthquake, Australia (5.6 magnitude)

Roy Hattersley
British journalist, Labour-parliament leader
(Born this day 1932)

Familiarity with evil breeds not contempt but acceptance

[Tamrin]

Wednesday, 29 December
Feast day of St Thomas à Becket

1170 - Thomas Beckett, archbishop, assassinated by 4 knights of King Henry II

1809 - Birth of Bro. Albert Pike, US frontiersman, attorney, soldier, writer and Freemason

1815 - Death of Saartjie Baartman, the "Hottentot Venus"

1890 - Big Foot, Sioux Indian chief, dies in the massacre at Wounded Knee

1916 – Murder of Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk and mystic

1926 – Death of Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian writer

1939 - Death of Bro. Madeleine Pelletier, French physician, psychiatrist and Freemason

Christina Rossetti, English poet
(Died this day 1894)

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend

[Tamrin]

Thursday, 30 December
Philippines: Rizal Day (celebrates the life of National Hero, Bro. José Rizal)

1837 – The Grand Lodge of Texas was instituted

1847 - Birth of John Peter Altgeld, German/US politician (Governor-IL)

1865 - Birth of Bro. Rudyard Kipling, Indian born British author (Jungle Book, Gunga Din)

1869 - Birth of Stephen Leacock, English born Canadian economist, writer and humorist

1879 - Birth of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Hindu philosopher/yogi (Maharshi Research Institute)

1894 - Death of Amelia Jenks Bloomer, US suffragist (Bloomers named for her)

1961 - Birth of Douglas Coupland, Canadian novelist

Bro. Dr. José Rizal
Philippines' national hero, doctor, painter, sculptor, poet, dramatist, novelist and Freemason
(Executed this day 1896)

It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal.
It is like a stone wasted on the field without becoming a part of any edifice

[Tamrin]

Friday, 31 December
New Year’s Eve

1384 - Death of John Wycliffe, English religious reformer and bible translator

1564 - Willem van Orange demands freedom of conscience/religion

1720 - Birth of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), pretender to the Scottish throne

1880 - Birth of Bro. George C Marshall, US 5 star General, eponymous Marshall Plan (Nobel 1953)

1908 - Birth of Simon Wiesenthal, concentration camp survivor, Nazi hunter

1980 - Death of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian cultural philosopher

1991 - The Soviet Union officially dissolved

Robert Boyle, FRS
Irish philosopher, physicist, and chemist (discovered Boyle's law)
(Died this day 1691)

And I might add the confidence with which distracted persons
do oftentimes, when they are awake, think, they see black fiends
in places, where there is no black object in sight without them

[Tamrin]

Saturday, 1 January
New Year’s Day

0404 - Last gladiator competition held in Rome

1810 - Bro. Lachlan Macquarie became Governor of NSW

1854 - Birth of Sir James Frazer, British anthropologist, author (The Golden Bough)

1863 - Birth of Pierre de Coubertin, French Baron (revived Olympic games)

1879 - Birth of E M Forster, English novelist (Howard’s End, A Passage to India)

1919 - Birth of J D Salinger, US author (Catcher in the Rye)

1992 - Death of Grace Hopper, US Admiral and computer scientist

Wilhelm Canaris
German Admiral, WWII head of military intelligence
(Born this day 1887)

I die for my fatherland. I have a clear conscience. I only did my duty
to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler

[Tamrin]

Sunday, 2 January
Spain: Granada Day
Sumeria: Birthday of Inanna, goddess of earth, queen of heaven
Ancient Egypt: Advent of Isis, celebrates her return to Egypt from Byblos, Phoenician city of the Giblimites (stone-squarers), with the remains of Osiris, found in an ashera (pillar of wood)

0017 - Death of Publius Ovidius Naso. Roman poet

1492 - Spain recaptures Granada from the Moors (Granada Day)

1866 - Birth of Gilbert Murray, Australian-born British classical scholar

1901 - Bro. Theodore Roosevelt, was made a Mason in Matincock Lodge #806, Oyster Bay, New York

1903 - President T Roosevelt shuts down post office in Indianola MI, for refusing to accept its appointed postmistress because she was black

1920 - Birth of Isaac Asimov, Russian-American scientist, author (I Robot, Foundation Trilogy)

1923 - Ku Klux Klan’s surprise destruction of [url=http://www.displaysforschools.com/history.html
]Rosewood, Florida[/url][/b], a black residential area

Clive of India (Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of Plassey)
(Clive’s forces recaptured Calcutta this day 1757)

It appears I am destined for something; I will live