|
Click stars for Universe today
Cafe
Diem!
For all my Yule needs
Highly recommended:
Folklore of World Holidays
by Margaret
Read MacDonald
Yule
Decking the Halls
Folklore &
traditions of Christmas plants
The Winter Solstice
The Fires of Yule
A Keltelven Guide for
Celebrating the Winter Solstice
Sabbat Entertaining
Thomas Carlyle
The French Revolution
John Stuart Mill
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History
Autobiography
John Stuart Mill
Thomas and Jane Carlyle
Sartor Resartus
Thomas Carlyle
Eight Sabbats for Witches
Lord of the Rings
To support this project
Search by keywords for books, music, computers, software, home and family
products and much more.
An Inconvenient Truth
By Al Gore; DVD &
book
The Permaculture Home Garden
By Linda Woodrow
The Corporation
Highly recommended DVD
How
to Kill a Country
Remotely
Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives and What We Can Do About
It
What
Would Jefferson Do?
By Thom
Hartmann
How
Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World
Pagan
Christianity
Hello Laziness!
By Corrine Maier
For
God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
By James Yee
Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate
Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
By Robert F Kennedy, Jr
The Price of Loyalty
The
Torture Debate in America
The
Culture of the New Capitalism
The God Who Wasn't There
A
Question of Torture
By Alfred McCoy
When Corporations Rule the World
Alternatives to Economic Globalization
Feminism Without Borders
Commercializat of Intimate Life
By Arlie Russell Hochschild
The Men Who Stare at
Goats
The Skeptic's Dictionary
Crimes Against Nature : How George W Bush and His Corporate
Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
By Robert F Kennedy, Jr
The
Men Who Stare at Goats
For
God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
By James Yee
Celebrate the Earth
A Year of Holidays in the Pagan
Tradition
Wheel of the Year
Be A Goddess
The Wiggles - Yule Be Wiggling
Daily Everything
Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
The Oxford Dictionary of Saints
The Book of Saints
The Encyclopedia of Saints
Rapunzel
Rapunzel
Lord of the Rings
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
365 Goddess
Adventures in a TV Nation
Michael
Moore
Drawing Down the Moon
Globalization/Anti-Globalization
Body Wisdom
More books, calendars, T-shirts, mugs, music, posters, etc at
Cafe Diem!
Celtic Daily Prayer
Dude, Where's My Country?
Photo of the day
Mother Earth Spirituality
Bushwhacked
Shamanism
The Mary Celeste
The Story of the "Mary Celeste"
Ghost Ship
The Mary Celeste
Click to promote
your blog or website
another excellent
way we do
|
Barbara,
Babel, barbarians and confusion
In the symbolism of
Barbara, we have lightning or fire, and a tower side by side. From
the very earliest printed Tarot cards, one card
shows a tower struck by lightning, with human beings falling from
it. Its title is 'The
Tower', although early on it was often called 'Fire',
'Lightning', 'Thunderbolt' or 'The House of the Devil',
or sometimes 'Hell'.
Psychologist Carl
Jung attached importance to the Tarot, regarding its cards as
representing archetypes, fundamental types of person or situation
embedded in the subconscious of all human beings. The similarity of
the Barbara legend and the symbolism of The Tower card (lightning
juxtaposed with a tower) is striking and seems to indicate more than
fortuitous association. Among numerous interpretations,
The Tower stands for catastrophic and irreversible change, and the
whole scene, including the falling bodies, suggests confusion and
even panic.
Twin Towers
If
the tower, fire from the sky, and
falling
people are indeed strong archetypes in the collective
unconscious, little wonder it is that the September 11,
2001, tragedy at the Twin Towers in New York resonated so deeply with
people around the world. Many people have wondered why, terrible
tragedy though it was, Americans
reacted so strongly to that event (far larger numbers of people are
dying around the world each day in situations as dramatic and
tragic), and it might be that the answer to this puzzle is not
simply that Americans value the lives of Americans more than those
of other peoples (often seen as 'barbarians'), and it is possible
that we might look further than the cynical uses to which
'America's Reichstag Fire'
was put by the US Administration and media. The 'tower-fire-people
falling' image's power might go much deeper than this.
The card's fire or
lightning shooting down from the heavens, indicates divine
punishment, bringing to mind thoughts of the Tower of Babel
and its destruction by God. According to a story in Genesis
Chapter 11, the Tower of Babel was a
tower
built by a united humanity in order to reach the heavens.
To prevent the project from succeeding, God
confused their languages so that each spoke a different one and the work could not proceed. After that time, people
moved away to different parts of the earth. The myth was used to
explain the existence of many different languages and races.
Babel has become a potent symbol of overambitious projects destined
to end in confusion. The word Babel
has several meanings. It is the name of a city, which translates to
'the gate to god', and in Hebrew there is a similar sounding
word, which means confusion. In English, the word 'babble' is
obviously similar.
One notes the similarity of 'Babel' to the name
'Barbara', she of the tower, and also the possible connection of both to the word
'barbarian'. This is a disparaging term for foreigner, one not
sharing a recognized culture or degree of sophistication with the
speaker or writer employing the term. The word derives from the Greek, and expresses with mocking
duplication ('bar-bar') alleged attempts by outsiders to speak a 'real' language. We note that since 9-11, Muslims have been
racistly portrayed as barbarians; it is now common for them to be
portrayed in American
cartoons as hook-nosed, evil archetypes, much as Jews
have been portrayed throughout Western history.
Advent (Nov 30 - Dec 25),
season of the coming of Jesus Christ
Feast day of St Ada
St Ada was a
7th-Century
nun and
abbess at Saint Julien-des-Prés abbey, Le
Mans, France.
Feast day of St Anno, Archbishop of Cologne, confessor
Feast day of St Bernardo
degli Uberti
Feast day of St Bertoara
Feast day of St Clement of
Alexandria
Feast day of St Cyran
Feast day
of St Felix of
Bologna
Feast day of St Francis
Galvez
Feast day of St Giovanni
Calabria
Feast day of St Jerome de
Angelis
Feast day of St John
Damascene (John of
Damascus),
Doctor of the Church
This Greek Church Father
(c.
676
-
December 5,
749), whose poems are still used in the Greek Orthodox
liturgy, was nicknamed Chrysorrhas,
or 'gold-pouring' ('the golden speaker'), because of his eloquence.
He was a
polymath with interests in law, theology,
philosophy and music. In
1883,
he was declared by the
Holy See a Doctor of the Church. A legend
of the 10th
Century has it that his hand was miraculously restored after
fervent prayer before an icon of the Virgin
Mary.
More
Feast day of St Maruthas, bishop and confessor
Feast day of St Melitus
Feast day of St Osmund, bishop
Feast day of St Peter Chrysologus, Archbishop
of Ravenna
(Barbadou gooseberry; Cactus pereshkia, is
today's
plant, dedicated to St
Peter Chrysologus, whose feast day this is.)
Feast day of St Simon Yempo
Feast day of St Siran, or Sigirannus,
abbot in Berry
Feast day
of St Theophanes
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Day of the Artisans, Mexico (to honour the
workers)
Hari Kugo; Daitosai, or Good-Luck Market, Omiya, Japan (Nov 30 - Dec 11)
Iyomante Matsuri, Kutcharo, Japan (Dec 1 - 15)
Kris Kringle's
Fair, Nuremberg, Germany
Source: The
Daily Bleed
Navy Day, India
Celebration day
for Chango, Voudon (Santeria/Yoruba/Voodoo) Source
In Yorůbá
mythology, Chango (Changó, Shango) is a God of lightning bolts, and the son of the deities Yemaya and
Orungan. He is perhaps the most popular Orisha;
he is a Sky
Father, god of thunder
and the ancestor of the Yoruba.
Shango
is worshipped in Haitian
Vodun,
as a god of thunder and weather; in Brazilian
Candomblé
Ketu (under the name Xangô); in Umbanda,
as the very powerful loa
Nago Shango; and in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Venezuela
– the equivalent
of St
Barbara, a traditional colonial disguise for the Deity known as
Chango.
International Hug
Day
See also:
January 21,
National Hugging Day.
The Sydney 'Free Hugs' video at Google Video
First day that rain is prayed for in the
Diaspora in
Judaism. It is notably the only Jewish day
which is tied to the civil calendar (Gregorian
calendar).
1383 Antipope Felix V
(Amadeus VIII of Savoy; d. November 7, 1451)
1585 John
Cotton (d. 1652), American Puritan leader 1777
Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaďde Récamier
(Madame Récamier; d. 1849),
writer
Carlyle Reading in the Drawing Room, by Helen Allingham, 1878
1795 Thomas Carlyle (d.
February 5,
1881),
'the Sage of Chelsea', Scottish historian and writer (History of the French Revolution).
Carlyle was no democrat. He believed that
government must be strong and paternalistic, and even propounded the
view that society should be a benevolent dictatorship. It was he who
coined the expression fourth
estate for the press, in
Heroes
and Hero Worship. He also gave the world the expression captains of industry.
His classic work on the French
Revolution was not published until 1837, having undergone a setback – the
accidental destruction of his manuscript – that left Carlyle both
impecunious and having to do a frantic rewrite. His friend and the
man who had suggested to Carlyle that he write the History,
John Stuart Mill, lent the
manuscript of Volume One to a Mrs Taylor, whose maid mistook
the precious sheaf of pages for kindling, and lit the fire with it.
When
Mill knocked at Carlyle's door
clutching a single charred piece of paper, practically all that remained of the
great manuscript, the Scottish historian was dumbfounded. However,
his character was of such stuff that his concern was more for the
feelings of Mill, who looked distraught, than for himself.
Carlyle received the news stoically and with
laudable magnanimity; he told his wife, Jane, afterward, "Mill,
poor fellow, is terribly cut up. We must endeavour to hide from him
how very serious this business is for us" ...
Read
more at the Carlyle/Mill
page in the Scriptorium
More on Carlyle
1802 Renier-Hubert-Ghislain Chalon
(d. February
23, 1889;
pictured), Belgian Bouillon
duchy descendant, military officer, prominent numismatist and sometime practical joker,
who was responsible for the famous
Fortsas Hoax
of 1840. In his
later years he was made honorary life President of La Société Royale de
Numismatique de Belge.
1835
Samuel
Butler (d. 1902), English satirical novelist (Erewhon;
The Way of All Flesh)
1849 Crazy Horse
(d. 1877),
Native American leader1859 John
Gotch, co-founder of the Gordon and Gotch company that dominated
periodical distribution in Australia for more than a century
1861 Lillian Russell
(d. 1922),
singer, actress
1862
Francis Mahony (d.
June 28,
1916), Australian
artist, member of the
Dawn and Dusk
Club. He illustrated
Henry Lawson's
While the Billy
Boils (1896)
and In the Days when
the World was Wide (1900).
Although christened Francis, Mahony later added 'Prout' and
generally signed his work 'Frank P Mahony'.
Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
More
1865 Edith Cavell
(d. October 12,
1915), English nurse who became a WWI war hero by helping British
officers to escape, and who herself was executed by the Germans
1866 Wassily
Kandinsky (d. 1944), Russian-born painter, a leader of the Blaue Reiter group1875 Rainer Maria
Rilke (d. 1926), Czech
lyrical poet
 1883
Katharine Susannah Prichard (Ashburton
Jim; Mrs Hugo Throssell; d. October 2, 1969), Fiji-born
Australian novelist (Working Bullocks; Coonardoo; Strangers; The Goldfields Trilogy),
playwright (Brumby Innes), autobiographer (Child of the
Hurricane) and short story writer (Kiss on the Lips), and
prominent Communist. Her main period of creativity was in the 1920s.
"Her major fiction was published from the early 1920s until almost the time of her death in 1968, and she was writing commentaries--essays, broadcasts, statements, letters and so on--some of which have been published, throughout that time. Her significance in Australian cultural life came from the increasing reputation she enjoyed during that time as one of Australia's most prominent writers of novels and short fiction (at the same time she wrote numerous plays, an autobiography, a fictionalised account of her childhood ..."
Source
"In 1908 she travelled to London, working as a freelance journalist for the Melbourne Herald and, on her return, worked as the social editor of the Herald's women's page. In 1912 she again left for England to pursue a career as a writer. During her four years in England she published two novels, The Pioneers (1915) and Windlestraws (1916), and met the Australian Victoria Cross winner, Captain Hugo Throssell. In 1919 she married Throssell and moved to Western Australia. By then she was a committed Communist and, in 1920, she became a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia. In 1922 she gave birth to her only son Ric Throssell. While she was on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1933 her husband committed suicide.
"From the 1920s until her death in 1969 she lived at Greenmount, Western Australia, earning her living as a writer of novels, short stories and plays. Her novels include Black Opal, 1921; Working Bullocks, 1926; The Wild Oats of Han, 1928; Coonardoo, 1928; Haxby's Circus, 1929; Intimate Stangers, 1939; and the goldfields trilogy The Roaring Nineties, 1946; Golden Miles, 1948; and Winged Seeds, 1950. Prichard remained a member of the Communist Party of Australia until her death, with her political concerns being reflected in most of her published work. Her novels were published throughout the world and translated into numerous languages. In 1951 her international stature was recognised when she was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature."
Source
'Why I am a Communist' by Katharine Susannah Prichard Portrait 1955
Katharine Susannah Prichard
Writers Centre Papers of
Katharine Susannah Prichard
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson More
1892 Francisco
Franco (d. 1975), Spanish dictator from
1939 -
'751892
Ross Smith
(Ross Macpherson Smith; d.
1968), Australian pioneer of aviation who, with his brother,
Keith
Smith, completed the first UK-Australia flight, on December 10,
1919
1893
Herbert Read,
MC,
DSO (d.
1968),
English
poet and
critic
of
literature and
art,
anarchist, political philosopher, man of letters, assistant conservator of
Victoria and Albert Museum of London, professor of fine arts in Edinburgh and various English universities.
Read
became an anarchist after reading a booklet, 'Non-Governmental Society' (1911),
by Edward
Carpenter. His huge collection of more than 1,000 published writings include:
Anarchy and Order; Poetry and Anarchism (1938); Philosophy of Anarchism (1940);
Education and Art (1943); Revolution and Reason (1953);
My Anarchism (1966). He was an early champion of
Surrealism,
Henry Moore,
Barbara
Hepworth and their ilk.
In 1953,
he accepted a knighthood recommended by
Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, which caused much consternation and ridicule among the anarchist movement.
Source: The Daily Bleed
"Herbert Read, in
'Chains of Freedom,' writes that we need a 'Black Market in culture, a determination to avoid the bankrupt academic institutions, the fixed values and standardized products of current art and literature; not to trade our spiritual goods through the recognized channels of Church, or State, or Press; rather to pass them
"under the counter."' If so, one of the first items to be passed
under the counter must surely be the literature that speaks, counter
to all the falsifications, about the ideas and imaginings of
anarchism."
Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader, p. 655
Herbert Read's Collected Works
More
1895 Fung
Yu-lan (d. 1990), Chinese philosopher1903 Cornell
Woolrich (d. September 24, 1968), crime writer, 'father of
film noir' 1908 Alfred Hershey (d. 1997),
American psychologist, Nobel winner
1969 1912 Pappy Boyington
(d. 1988),
American fighter pilot 1914
Rudolf
Hausner (d. 1995), painter and graphic artist 1916 Ely
Jacques Kahn, Jr (d. 1994), American magazine writer 1921 Deanna Durbin,
Oscar-winning Canadian actress and singer, a teenage star (Three Smart Girls;
One Hundred
Men and a Girl) 1922
Gérard Philipe
(d. 1959),
actor 1926
Lee
Dorsey,
Afro-American boxer
nicknamed 'Kid Chocolate'; also a
pop/R&B
singer , who had a hit record
with the song Ya Ya,
which was inspired by a group of
children chanting
nursery rhymes
1930
Ronnie Corbett,
OBE, diminutive British comedian,
best known as one of
The Two Ronnies
1932
Ian Channell, 'The Wizard'
"Described by one reviewer as
'politically, morally, aesthetically and intellectually
incorrect', the gloriously eccentric Ian Brackenbury Channell has been universally known as
'The Wizard' since 1969. He is famous in New Zealand as the country's only official Wizard, and he will be remembered by many Australian university students of the late
'60s and early '70s as the resident Wizard at the University of New South Wales and as a Living Work of Art of the National Gallery of Victoria. Although conventionally dismissed by his critics as a lunatic, The Wizard's career speaks for itself and he is remarkable for his imaginative pursuit of his own peculiar vision for an alternative lifestyle."
Source
1934
Victor French (d. 1989), actor1937 Max Baer, Jr, American
actor, screen writer, director, producer, best known for his part of Jethro Bodine in
the long-running American TV series,
The Beverly Hillbillies
1939
Stew Albert
(Steward Edward Albert; d.
January 30,
2006),
co-founder of the
Yippies, anti-Vietnam War political
activist, an important figure in the
New
Left movement of the 1960s, correspondent
for the
Berkeley Barb
Stew Albert's Yippie Reading Room
Stew Albert on Google Video
Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list
CounterCulture Wiki 1939 Freddy Cannon, American popular singer (Tallahassie Lassie; Way Down Yonder in New Orleans)1940 John
Cale, rock musician (The Velvet Underground) 1942 Gemma
Jones, British actress 1942 Roh Tae-woo,
President of South Korea
1944 Dennis Wilson,
American musician, member of the Beach Boys who
drowned on December
28, 1983
1945 Roberta Bondar,
astronaut and scientist
1949 Jeff Bridges, American actor (King
Kong;
The Fabulous Baker
Boys)
1949 Dr Pamela
Stephenson (Pamela Connolly, wife of Billy
Connolly), New
Zealand-born
Australian
actress, psychologist, researcher in the fields of human
sexuality and sex
therapy, author and comedienne
1957 Eric S Raymond,
open source advocate1964 Marisa Tomei,
actress 1969 Shawn Carter,
AKA 'Jay-Z,' singer 1973 Tyra
Banks, model
Phew!!
Have a rest before the big This
day in history section
Send
free e-cards to friends & family for celebrations & any
topic
Do you forget
birthdays and anniversaries? Schedule
your cards
to be sent during the coming year.
Varies
Full
Moon Day
Varies
Friday
the 13th
Varies
Buddhist
e-cards
Varies Christian
e-cards
Varies Hindu
e-cards
Varies
Jewish
e-cards
Varies
Muslim
e-cards
Varies
Pagan
e-cards
Varies
Peace
e-cards
Varies
Friendship
e-cards
Varies
Thanksgiving,
USA
Varies
Buy Nothing Day
Varies
Hanukkah
![Christmas [ Dec 25 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_edec_c_1_11.jpg)
December
3
Telescope Day
3
Flamenco Guitar Day
3
Christmas Parade (CA, USA)
4
Christmas Parade (NY, USA)
5
Blue Jeans Day
5
Sacher Torte Day
6
St Nicholas Day
6
International Bad Hair Day
6
Give A Secret Gift Day
7
Hang A Wreath Day
7
Pearl Harbor Day (USA)
7
Cotton Candy Day
7
Teacher Appreciation Day
7
Letter Writing Day
7
Christmas Parade (DE, USA)
8
Winter Flowers Day
8
Brownie Day
8
Feast Of The Immaculate Conception
9
Christmas Card Day
9
Homemade Gift Day
9
Weary Willie Day
9
Pastry Day
10
Sister-Friend Day
10
Human Rights Day
...
More
Events
Visit
the Blogmanac, where today's Almanac is 'live'
And
I hope you will sign my GuestMap
Your family and friends will get a
kick when they hear their own name being sung in 'Happy Birthday'!!
You can schedule your singing cards in advance, and even add your
own face to funny animations. (Pay cards)
 If you are enjoying this page, click to
receive similar items daily with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac
ezine
Webmaster,
webmasters free content, or else articles at very reasonable rates
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your website or publication, on
application. Further details
265 The last part of the wall around
Verona,
Italy,
was built.
765 Death of Jafar Sadiq, Shia Imam.
771 Death of Austrasian King Carloman,
leaving his brother Charlemagne king of the
now complete Frankish
kingdom.
1110 First
Crusade: The Crusaders
conquered Sidon.
1123
Death of Omar Khayyam
(b. 1048), Persian poet,
astronomer, mathematician and philosopher.1154 Nicholas Breakspeare became the first and only English
Pope (Adrian IV).
1214
Death of William I of Scotland.
1259
Kings
Louis IX of France and
Henry III of England agreed to the
Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounced his claims to
French-controlled
territory on continental
Europe
(including
Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for
English rebels.
1334 Death of Pope
John XXII.
1489 Battle of Baza. The (Christian)
Spanish army captured Baza,
Granada, from the (Muslim) Moors.
1534 The Turkish sultan Suleiman
I captured Baghdad.
1563
The final session of the Council of Trent was
held (it opened on December 13, 1545).
1576 Death of Rheticus,
mathematician.
1619 American colonies: Thirty-eight English colonists from
Berkeley Parish disembarked in Virginia. They gave thanks to God – generally
considered to be the first Thanksgiving
in the Americas.
Thanksgiving is a holiday
celebrated in North America, generally observed as an expression of
gratitude. The most common view of its origin is that it was to give thanks to God for the bounty of
the autumn harvest. In the United
States, the holiday is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. In Canada, where the
harvest generally ends earlier in the year, the holiday is celebrated on the
second Monday in October,
which is observed as Columbus Day in the United States.
Source: Wikipedia
1639
Jeremiah Horrocks made the first observation of a
transit of Venus. (November
24 under the
Julian calendar.)
1642 Death of Cardinal Richelieu
(b. 1585), French
statesman.
1674 Father Jacques
Marquette founded a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister
to the
Illinois
Indians (the mission would later grow into the city of Chicago,
Illinois).
1676
Battle of Lund: A Danish army under the command of King
Christian V of Denmark engaged the Swedish army commanded by
Field Marshal
Simon Grundel-Helmfelt.
1679
Death of Thomas Hobbes (b.
1588), political
philosopher.
1732
Death of John Gay, playwright.
1783 At Fraunces Tavern in New York
City, US General George Washington
formally bid his officers farewell.
1791 The first issue of The
Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, was published.
1798 Death of Luigi
Galvani, physicist.
1823
Surveyor John Oxley named the
Brisbane River, honouring Sir Thomas Brisbane, the
Governor of New South Wales.
1829
In the face of fierce opposition, British Lord William
Bentinck carried a regulation declaring that all who abetted suttee in India were guilty of
culpable homicide.1845 Death of Gregor
MacGregor, con artist. 1851 Telegraph was
first used in New South Wales, Australia.
1864
American Civil War: Sherman's March
to the Sea – At Waynesboro, Georgia,
forces under Union General,
Judson
Kilpatrick, prevented troops led by Confederate,
General Joseph Wheeler, from
interfering with Union General, William T Sherman's,
campaign of destroying a wide swath of the South on his march to the Gulf
of Mexico (however,
Union forces did suffer more than three times the casualties as
the Confederates).1867 USA: Former Minnesota
farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley
founded the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange Movement).
1867 Death of
Sophie (Fremiet) Rude, French
artist.
1871 James
'Philosopher'
Smith discovered the world's richest tin deposits at Mt Bischoff, Tasmania,
Australia.
The Mary Celeste, a 103 foot brigantine, set sail
from New York for Genoa on
November 7, 1872.
She was found abandoned at sea on
December 4, 1872 at 38"29'N, 17"15'W (590 miles west of Gibraltar) by
the Dei Gratia.
1872 The
Mary Celeste, an
American ship, was found adrift in the Atlantic between the Azores and Portugal,
by the British brig
Dei Gratia. The captain of the mystery ship, Benjamin S Briggs, and crew were all missing; the captain's table
was set for a meal that was never eaten. Its cargo was undisturbed and the
vessel had almost no damage. The mystery
of the Mary Celeste has never been
solved.
Arthur Conan Doyle popularized
this
true story in the fictional short tale
J Habakuk Jephson's Statement (1883).
" The real mystery
did not begin until 1884 when Arthur Conan Doyle writing under a pseudonym
published a story about a derelict ship called 'Marie Celeste'. This tale
recounted the actual events of the Mary Celeste with enough added fictional and
provocative detail to capture the public interest. Since then and to this day,
no two accounts of the story are the same."
Source
Another theory "suggested by Dr James H Kimble
and author Gersholm Bradford, was that the Celeste had hit a waterspout
… the crew and Briggs's family quickly got into the lifeboat and lowered
themselves into the water … Whether the lifeboat capsized and those inside
were drowned, or whether the lifeboat was cast away from the Celeste and
the inhabitants starved . . . the details can be left to the
imagination. But the result--and the irony--is the same. The crew of the Celeste
felt their ship was unsafe and got into the lifeboat, only to find the Celeste
was perfectly safe, but their lifeboat was doomed." Source
Clive Cussler,
best-selling novelist and adventurer, representing the National Underwater
& Marine Agency, (NUMA) and John Davis, president of ECO-NOVA Productions
of Canada, announced August 9th, 2001, that they had discovered the remains of
Mary Celeste on a reef off the coast of Haiti.
Source
Download a video of the discovery
of Mary Celeste
Mary
Celeste sites
1875 Having been sentenced on November 19, 1872, to
12 years prison, notorious New York City politician Boss Tweed
escaped from prison and fled to Cuba, then Spain.
1890 Funeral of King
Willem III of
the Netherlands.
1910 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent
of civil disobedience, paid memorial tribute to Tolstoy.
1912
Emmeline Pankhurst, the suffragette, was arrested in Plymouth, England.
1912 USA: The German fleet sank
American ships in Honolulu – war was declared between US and Germany.
"The general strike was the one great victory we American
socialists won. On 4 December the American minister was withdrawn from the
German capital. That night a German fleet made a dash on Honolulu, sinking three
American cruisers and a revenue cutter, and bombarding the city. Next day both
Germany and the United States declared war, and within an hour the socialists
called the general strike in both countries."
The fictional war, in Jack London's The
Iron Heel (Chapter
13, 'The General Strike'), was called off within a week because everyone
refused to fight.
Source: The Daily Bleed
1914 Emiliano Zapata met with
Pancho Villa and they
agreed to join forces to occupy Mexico City two days later.
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Emiliano Zapata
1915
The State of Georgia, USA, officially recognised the
Ku Klux Klan.
1916 W Somerset Maugham sailed for Pago Pago, American
Samoa. Fellow passengers included the prostitute and
the missionary who inspired his story 'Miss Thompson', upon which the play Rain is based.
1918 US President Woodrow Wilson sailed
for Versailles
for the World
War I peace talks, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in
office.1921 Due to a
hung jury, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, one of the most popular screen comics of his day,
was acquitted of the rape and manslaughter of Hollywood starlet Virginia
Rappe.1930 The Vatican approved the rhythm
method for birth
control.
1934
Australian aviation pioneer, Charles Ulm, a frequent flying comrade of Sir
Charles Kingsford-Smith, disappeared in flight near Hawaii.
1942
Holocaust:
In Warsaw, two Christian
women, Zophia
Kossak-Szczucka and
Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz, risked their lives by setting up the Council
for the Assistance of the Jews.1942
US bombers dropped bombs on Italy for the first time.
1943
World
War II: In Yugoslavia,
resistance leader Marshal Tito proclaimed a
provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile.1943 The Great Depression ended
in the United States: With
unemployment figures falling fast due to World War II-related
employment, US President Franklin D Roosevelt
closed the Works Progress
Administration.
1945 By a vote of 65 to 7,
the United States Senate
approved United States
participation in the United Nations (the UN
was established on October 24, 1945).
1948 In
the UK, the auto companies Austin, Morris, Ford, Standard and Vauxhall
standardised spare parts manufacture.
1952
Great Smog of 1952: A
'killer fog' lasting for three weeks and eventually killing
4,000 people descended on London ('smog' for 'smoke' and 'fog' became
a word).
1953
Oil was found near
Exmouth Gulf,
Western Australia.
1956 Jerry Lee Lewis was playing piano for a
Carl
Perkins recording session at the Sun Records studio. While Johnny Cash
stood by watching, Elvis Presley walked in and the impromptu jam session
was soon nicknamed the 'Million Dollar Quartet'.
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1958 Dahomey
(present-day Benin) became a self-governing country within the
French
Community.
1961
A Matisse painting was discovered hanging upside down in the
Museum of Modern
Art, New York.
1964
The Free Speech Movement at UCLA Berkeley began the sixties era of student
activism by staging a strike of 900 students after 796 were arrested at a
sit-in.
1965 Gemini 7 was launched, bearing American astronauts Frank Borman and
James Lovell.
1967
Vietnam
War: US and South
Vietnamese forces engaged Viet Cong troops in the Mekong
Delta (235 of the 300-strong Viet Cong battalion were killed).
1967 USA: Dr Martin Luther King, Jr announced a Poor People's Campaign in Washington
DC (to start late spring).
1968 Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman was admitted as emergency patient at
Albert Einstein Hospital, Bronx, New York with infectious hepatitis. He was
discharged on December 24.
1969 US President
Richard Nixon, Vice-President
Spiro T Agnew and 40 US
governors embarked on a magical mystery fact-finding mission to discover the
causes of the generation gap. They viewed films of simulated acid trips and
listened to hours of "anti-establishment rock music".
1969 Black Panther
members Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark were shot to death in their sleep during a raid by 14
Chicago
police officers.1969 American surfer
Greg Noll rode what many at the time believed to be the largest
wave ever surfed: a
65-foot-high
wave off the
North Shore of Oahu,
Hawaii.
1970 USA: César Chávez
(Cesar Chavez) was jailed for 20 days for refusing to call off a
United Farm Workers lettuce boycott,
Salinas,
California.
1973
USA: David Dellinger, Jerry
Rubin, and Abbie Hoffman of the
Chicago
Seven, and their attorney William
Kunstler, were found guilty of contempt
charges levied at them by Judge Julius
Hoffman, but given no further sentence. Rennie
Davis, Tom Hayden, and attorney Leonard Weinglass were acquitted of contempt
charges. Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1973
The original Fuller Brush Man died. Canadian businessman, Alfred Fuller, started his door-to-door
brush-selling company at the turn of the century and built it into a large
company that became a household name in the USA.
1974
Australia: Liberal opposition politician John Howard (later
Prime Minister) attacked the presence of
Junie Morosi on the staff of Deputy Prime Minister Dr Jim
Cairns, on account of
her alleged association with disreputable companies.
1975 Death of Hannah
Arendt, author, refugee, academic, critic of totalitarianism.
1977
Jean-Bédel Bokassa,
president of the Central African
Republic, crowned himself Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African
Empire, spending $22 million of the poor country's assets. The fun didn't
last long: Bokassa was overthrown on September 20, 1979, by
his cousin, David Dacko.
1977 A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 737
was hijacked and then blown up in mid-air over the
Straits
of Johor, killing 100. 1978 Following the November 27 murder of
Mayor George Moscone, Dianne
Feinstein became San Francisco,
California's first woman mayor (she served until January 8, 1988).
1979
Eleven people were trampled to death at a
The Who concert in
Cincinnati, USA.
1979 In a referendum, the
Iranian people confirmed the Ayatollah Khomeini as absolute ruler of their
country.
1980 The United Nations agreed to establish
the University for Peace, and shortwave radio station
Radio For Peace International, in Costa Rica.
That nation has no army, although it does have a National Guard. The army
was abolished on December
1, 1948 (qv) by President
José Figueres Ferrer
after a civil war.
1980 The first US patent was granted to developers of gene splicing method.
1981 South Africa granted
'homeland' Ciskei
independence (not recognized outside South Africa).
1981
In Alabama, USA, triple murderer Deuel Wilhelm Davies, was given a 10,000-year
sentence, a world record.
1981 USA: President Ronald Reagan authorized
CIA spying on
American citizens. The CIA charter originally banned domestic surveillance to prevent it from becoming a
Gestapo.
1982
The People's Republic
of China adopted its current constitution.
1982 USA: President Ronald Reagan returned home from his five-day trip to Latin America.
"Well, I learned a lot," he told reporters. "You'd be surprised. They're all
individual countries."
1984 Jerry
Falwell, American evangelist and 'moral majority' leader, testified at
his $45 million libel trial against Larry Flynt that he
"felt like weeping" when he saw a parody ad in Hustler quoting him as
claiming that he "always got sloshed" before preaching, and that he'd lost
his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. Interrogating Flynt in a videotaped
deposition, Falwell's lawyer, Norman R Grutman, asked if he intended to harm
his client's integrity. Replied Flynt, "To assassinate it".
On February
24, 1988, the Supreme Court
of the United States sided with Hustler magazine by overturning a lower
court decision to award Jerry Falwell $200,000 for defamation.
Sources: The Daily Bleed et al
1986
Australia: A Perth,
Western Australia, court awarded $730,000 to a man who had contracted
AIDS from a blood
transfusion.
1989
East Germany's head of state, Egon Krenz, was forced to resign amid mounting
dissatisfaction with the Communist regime.
1991
Associated Press journalist Terry Anderson was
released after seven years' captivity as a hostage in Beirut (he was the last and
longest-held American hostage in Lebanon).
1991 Pan Am Airlines
ended operations.
1992 President George
HW Bush ordered 28,000 US troops to Somalia.
1993 A truce was concluded
between the government of Angola and UNITA rebels.
1993 American musician, Frank Zappa, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 52.
Shop
Zappa
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
2002 A total eclipse of the Sun
was seen in the Southern Hemisphere.
2005
Tens of thousands of people in
Hong Kong
protested for democracy and called on the
Government to allow
universal and equal suffrage.
Tomorrow: Mozart's mystery 'Grim Reaper'
Main calendar
| Yesterday |
Tomorrow | Search
1. Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
2. One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor ...
3. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
4. If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?
5. I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
6. What if there were no hypothetical questions?
7. Is there another word for synonym?
8. Where do forest rangers go to 'get away from it all?'
9. If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?
10. Would a fly without wings be called a walk?
11. If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?
12. What was the best thing before sliced bread?
13. One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
14. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
15. How is it possible to have a civil war?
16. If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown, too?
17. If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?
18. Whose cruel idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have 'S' in it?
19. Why are haemorrhoids called 'haemorrhoids' instead of 'asteroids'?
20. Why is there an expiry date on sour cream?
21. If you spin an oriental man in a circle three times does he become disoriented?
22. Can an atheist get insurance against acts of God?
Wikipedia
and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed
are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft'
and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright
policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.
Read more about today at Wilson's
Blogmanac
|
reetings from Australia.
How it works
During many years in the
tower, Barbara obtained her food and laundry by way of a basket on a rope.
One day, a stranger put a book in the basket from which Barbara learned
about the new religion. Barbara so longed to know more about Christianity
that she grew ill and her father sent for a doctor but the doctor turned
out to be, in fact, a priest, and Barbara was baptised.
