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reetings from Australia.
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Pretending to be
disgusted by the drab old buildings and narrow, winding streets of
Rome, he [Nero] brazenly set fire to the City; and though a group of
ex-consuls caught his attendants, armed with oakum and blazing
torches, trespassing on their property, they dared not interfere. He also coveted the
sites of several granaries, solidly built in stone, near the Golden
House [Nero's palace]; having knocked down their walls with
siege-engines, he set the interiors ablaze. This terror lasted for
six days and seven nights, causing many people to take shelter in the
tombs ... Nero watched the conflagration from the Tower of Maecenas,
enraptured by what he called "the beauty of the flames"; then put
on his tragedian's costume and sang 'The Fall of Ilium' from
beginning to end. Suetonius, Lives
of theTwelve Caesars, on the Great Fire of
Rome, July 18,
64; it is from this
that we get the phrase "fiddling while Rome burns." This
account is disputed by many historians. Nero himself blamed the
Christians (who declared that the world would end in fire) and
persecuted them without mercy.
A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies,
but a handsome fool is irresistible. William Makepeace
Thackeray, English writer born on July 18, 1811
We
were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs
began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit
lightheaded; maybe you should drive ..." And suddenly there was a
terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like
huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car,
which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las
Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn
animals?"
John Dee visited by
Emperor Rudolf II of Bohemia (detail)
Then it was quiet again. My
attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to
facilitate the tanning process. "What the hell are you yelling
about?" he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and
covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. "Never mind," I said. "It's your turn to drive." I hit the brakes and aimed the Great
Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning
those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough. Hunter
S Thompson, American writer, born on July 18, 1939; Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas
In a real sense, people who have read good literature have
lived more than people who cannot or will not read ... It is not true
that we have only one life to live, we can live as many more lives and
as many kinds of lives as we wish. SI Hayakawa, Canadian academic, born on July
18, 1906
"The Esala
Perahera is held in the lunar month of July-August. On the day
following the new moon in July, an Esala tree is cut and kap planted
as a vow that the perahera will be held. Owing to an overlay of
Hindu influences, the processions now are confined for five days
within the precincts of the four Hindu devales, or temples. On the
fifth night, the four peraheras emerge into the street and combine
with the Maligawa Perahera at the entrance to the Mahgawa. The
Randoli Perahera, which is the main one, is named after the randoli,
the golden palanquins in which the queen and the monarch's
concubines formerly brought up the rear, adding lustre to the
pageant. The four golden palanquins now represent the four devales."Source
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Alliensis,
Roman Empire This
day commemorated the disastrous defeat of the Roman army by the
Gauls at the River Allia in 390 BCE. A day of bad omens.
"Rudolf II, patron of Kepler and briefly Brahe was
fascinated by alchemy, astrology, and other ways in which human art
interfered in or perfected nature. Here
one of his court painters has, through art, depicted Rudolf as an
assemblage of natural objects: fruits, vegetables, grains, and
flowers." Source
1811William Makepeace Thackeray
(d. 1863), writer (Vanity
Fair), born in Calcutta, India. Among the pen-names he used
were MA Titmarsh, CH Yellowplush, GS Fitzboodle, and Théophile
Wagstaff.
In 1961, Nelson Mandela became the leader of the
ANC's armed wing
and terrorist organization,
Umkhonto
we Sizwe (translated as Spear of the Nation, also abbreviated as
MK), which he co-founded. Mandela also
raised funds for MK abroad, and arranged for paramilitary training,
visiting various African governments and forming alliances with
Communist parties worldwide. He was arrested with a number of
colleagues and sentenced to prison, convicted of about 200 charges
of terrorism and sabotage. Mandela had personally approved the
Church
Street Massacre.
When Mandela was put on
trial, approximately 90 pages of documents in his own handwriting
were presented as evidence against him. One was the famous 'How
to be a Good Communist', by Chinese Communist theoretician,
Liu Shaoqi.
Others included handwritten summaries of texts by Communists
Mao Zedong
(Strategic Problems of China's Revolutionary War) and
Che Guevara
(Guerrilla Warfare).
While in prison, Mandela was repeatedly offered his freedom by South African
President PW Botha if he would renounce the use of terrorism, but
Mandela refused to do so. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when
South Africa's place in Cold War geo-strategy had changed, and after
Aparthaid was ended, Mandela was allowed to go free from his
comfortable, if not luxurious, house on Robben Island.
Mother, let me congratulate you on
the birthday of your son.
You worry so much about him. Here he lies,
he earns little, his marriage was unwise,
he's long, he's getting thin, he hasn't shaved.
Oh, what a miserable loving gaze!
I should congratulate you if I may
mother on your worry's birthday.
It was from you he inherited
devotion without pity to this age
and arrogant and awkward in his faith
from you he took his faith, the Revolution.
You didn't make him prosperous or famous,
and fearlessness is his only talent.
Open up his windows,
let in the twittering in the leafy branches,
kiss his eyes open.
Give him his notebook and his ink bottle,
give him a drink of milk and watch him go.
from Selected Poems (Penguin)
1935 Don Lane,
corrupt Queensland, Australia police commissioner
1939 Dion (Dion
DiMucci), American rock 'n' roll singer, performed with The
Belmonts (A Teenager in Love)
then had a successful solo career (hits: Runaround Sue; The Wanderer); inducted into
the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989
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kick when they hear their own name being sung in 'Happy Birthday'!!
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390 BCEBattle
of the Allia: A Roman army was defeated by raiding Gauls,
leading to the subsequent sacking of Rome.
64Great fire of Rome: A fire began in the merchant
area of Rome and
soon burned completely out of control, while Emperor Nero reportedly played
his lyre and sang
while watching the blaze from a safe distance.
History records that Rome burned for six days and that threatening groups
of men who claimed to be "acting under orders" prevented people from
extinguishing the tragic blaze. We don't know whether Nero 'fiddled', or
played the lyre as he watched; he might actually have set the blaze for his own
amusement or as an excuse to expand his palace.
1689At the church of Saint-Sauveur
at Ligny, France, when lightning struck the high altar, strange phenomena were
recorded by Father Lamy, a visiting priest who later wrote a booklet on the
event. The congregation saw the statue of Jesus
Christ levitate while its stand was
shattered. The words of a printed text which lay face down on the altar cloth
were reproduced, reversed and magnified, on the cloth.
In 1789 Flinders had entered the Royal
Navy and in 1791 joined HMS Providence
as a midshipman, serving under William Bligh
on his second 'breadfruit voyage' to Tahiti.
In 1798 he
circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania,
Australia's southernmost state)
aboard The Norfolk, therefore proving it to be an island.
The Flinders story has a
tragic turn to it. In 1803,
while attempting to return to England aboard The Cumberland, he was
forced to put in at Mauritius for repairs on December 17. Unbeknown
to Flinders, England was at war with France, and the French governor, General De
Caen, had Flinders detained as a spy. He would be imprisoned on Mauritius for
almost seven years.
Flinders finally returned to
England in October 1810, where he immediately began work on preparing A
Voyage to Terra Australia for publication. On July 18, 1814, the book
was published, introducing the name 'Australia' (although Sir Joseph Banks did not approve of the name), which
slowly replaced 'Terra Australis' and 'New
Holland
1851 John Green, an early
farmer and explorer in the Southeast Queensland region of Australia, recorded in
his journal that his Aboriginal companions Dara and David lit five fireplaces
around their campsite in order to protect the camp from the bush creature known
as Wupbi-Wupbi. This creature might have been a Yowie, a
mysterious and unproved animal like the Yeti and
Bigfoot.
Dara has so informed me that Wupbi-Wupbi is not far away ... We
have reached the stream and plain called Wupbi/Ubi/Oobi and as it is not yet
established, I have taken the meaning to reflect upon a place of an evil jungle
spirit. I do believe it is an abbreviated word from from Wubpikgan/Woo-bpik-gan/Woo-big-gan
or Ubpikgan/Oob-pik-gan/Oob-big-gan. The word Wubpi/Woobpi or Oobpi is a male
evil spirit ... The Wubpikgan is his partner. She is a female evil spirit who
guards the jungle places and also does bad things. It is late and there is a
cold chill in the air. Dara and David have arranged five fireplaces surrounding
our campsite ... I ask of Dara why so many fires. I should have taken note of
their superstitions for he replies that they are to keep the Wubpi/Oobpi away.
The two of them indicate they will share time during the night to keep the fires
aflame. John Green,July 18, 1851, in the Kenilworth region of SE Qld
Other
Names
"Ngaut-Ngaut,
the blood sucking hairy man of Western Victoria, was said to kill and eat any
Aborigines that strayed into his domain. These average human height beings
were called Dyirri-Dyirritch by the Swan Hill district tribespeople, who said
these cannibals preyed upon the Aborigines throughout the Murray River region
of New South Wales/Victoria.
"The
Dyirri-Dyirritch would dig a deep trench in which he placed an upright spear,
then camouflage the top with bracken. Any Aborigine falling in would be
impaled on the spear, Dyirri-Dyirritch then roasted and ate his victim.
"The Wallanthagang hairy manbeasts of the far south coastal
tribes were described as small human-like creatures that inhabited the
tea-tree scrub and forest of the Cambewarra Mountain area, which lies
slightly north of the Shoalhaven River, at the southern end of the Kangaroo
Valley …"Source
1901British aristocrat Earl
Russell was found by the House of Lords to be guilty of bigamy and sentenced
to three months' imprisonment in Holloway Gaol. This was in spite of his claim
that he believed his divorce and remarriage in Nevada, USA, were valid. Russell
had divorced his wife and married Mollie Cooke in the USA the previous year, but
the stodgy British courts would not accept the validity of his divorce. Friends
and supporters petitioned the Crown, but to no avail, and the Earl served his
three months.
1913 Turkish forces recaptured
Adrianople from the Bulgarians who had seized it four months previously.
1919 French actress Elise Deroche,
the first woman to hold a pilot's licence, committed suicide while flying over
Crotoy. More on Deroche at October 22, 1909.
1986 Australia: Construction
began on Sydney's monorail system.
1989 President Daniel
arap Moi
of Kenya incinerated 12 tonnes of elephant tusks worth approx. $US3 million, as
part of the campaign to destroy the international ivory trade.
1990
Elizabeth Howell Boykins, 25, returned to her apartment in Charleston, South
Carolina, USA, after a weekend trip, only to find another woman living in her
home and wearing her clothes. The interloper greeted Ms Boykins and took her
luggage, then slammed the door in her face.
"I
thought I was going crazy," said Ms Boykins. "The woman took all of my paintings
off the walls, and bought a new lamp and a shower curtain and rug for the
bathroom."
Even after the arrival of police, the stranger insisted it was
her apartment. However, when she mentioned that
John Wayne was taking her to
dinner, she was detained for psychiatric evaluation.
1990 Talks began in Washington
between the US and Vietnam over the future of Cambodia.
1994In Buenos
Aires, an explosion destroyed a building housing several Jewish organisations,
killing 96 and injuring many more.
1995On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the Soufriere Hills volcano erupted. Over the
course of several years, it devastated the island, destroying the capital and
forcing most of the population to flee.
1996 In an event very similar to the Oklahoma
tornado that would occur 3 years later, a tornado ranking as an F5 hit the town of Oakfield, Wisconsin,
USA.
1997 About 8,000 low-caste Indians rioted in
Mumbai following a
funeral for 10 children who had been killed by police.
2001 In Baltimore, Maryland, USA, a 60-car train
derailment occurred in a tunnel, sparking a fire that lasted days and virtually
shut down downtown Baltimore.
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