|
National Reconciliation Week,
Australia (May 27 - Jun 3)
National Reconciliation Week (NRW),
which was first celebrated in 1996, aims to give people across
Australia the opportunity to focus on reconciliation between
indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. It is a time to 'reflect
on achievements so far and on what must still be done to achieve
reconciliation' (Reconciliation
Australia).
National Reconciliation Week (NRW) falls between May
27 and June 3 - two significant dates in the relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians:
May 27: anniversary of referendum
May 27 is the anniversary of the 1967 referendum in which 90% of Australians voted to remove clauses in the Australian Constitution which discriminated against indigenous Australians. The referendum also gave the Australian Federal Government the power to make laws on behalf of indigenous Australians.
June 3: High Court and Eddie Mabo
June 3 is the date the High Court of Australia handed down its judgement on the
1992 Mabo case. Eddie Mabo was from Mer, one of the Murray Islands off the coast of Northern Australia. He argued in the High Court that Murray Islanders' rights to their land were not extinguished by the annexation of the islands by the State of Queensland, or by subsequent Queensland or federal governments' legislation. The High Court agreed with this view and the idea of
'terra nullius' – that Australia had been empty of people when settled by the British
– was abandoned and the pre-existing rights of indigenous Australians acknowledged.
Source
Australian
Aboriginal chronologies
Children's Day, Nigeria
Honouring children of the more
than 100 distinct tribal communities of the Federation of Nigeria.
"Children's
Day is a day set aside to remember the importance of children and
their role as the leaders of tomorrow, celebrated annually in
Rivers state (Port Harcourt) and Lagos state.
"The day
sees pupils heading for the parade ground of their respective
states and marching past the governor, who greets them with a
salute. The state police band provides music, and later in the
afternoon there are cultural dances, acrobatic displays and
speeches by government officials. One of the highlights of the
ceremony is the presentation of gifts to deserving children who
have shown exceptional talents in various fields of endeavour.
"The day ends
with a friendly football match." Source
Feast day of St Augustine of
Canterbury (Roman Catholic)
Feast day of St Bede
(Venerable Bede) (Roman Catholic)
Feast day of St Bruno
Born c. 1030
- October 6, 1101, the
founder of the Carthusian Order.
Feast day also October
6. In art, Saint Bruno can be recognized by a skull that he holds
and contemplates, with a book and a cross. He may be crowned with a
halo of seven stars.
Feast day of St Eutropius
Feast day of St Frederick
Feast day of St James of
Nocera
Feast day of St John, pope, martyr
(Buttercup; Ranunculus acris
is
today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Pope
from 523
to 526.
He was a native of Tuscany; died in Italy, imprisoned by
Theodoric the
Great, King of the Ostrogoths. He
was imprisoned at Ravenna,
where he died of neglect and ill treatment. His body was transported
to Rome and buried
in the Basilica
of St Peter.
John I is depicted in art as looking through the bars of a prison or
imprisoned with a deacon and a subdeacon.
He is venerated at Ravenna and in Tuscany. Some sources give May
18 as his feast day.
Feast day of St Hildebert (Hydalbert;
Gildebert; Aldebert)
French
writer and ecclesiastic (c. 1055 - December 18,
1133).
Feast day of St Julius the
Veteran
Feast day of St Melangell
Feast day of St Ranulphus
Feast day of St Restituta of Sora
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days Shop saints
Independence
Day, Afghanistan
National
Holiday, Turkey (from 1960 -
'80)
Mothers'
Day, Bolivia
(Día de la Madre)Children's
Day, Nigeria
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
1265 Dante Alighieri (d. September 14,
1321), Italian poet (Divine
Comedy)
Digital Dante Dante Asteroid
Take Dante's Inferno Test - Impurity,
Sin ... and Damnation
1738 Nathaniel Gorham (d. 1796), American politician
1794 Cornelius Vanderbilt (d. 1877), American
zillionaire
 1815 Sir Henry Parkes
(d. April 27,
1896), Australian
politician
(Free Trade
Party, or Anti-Socialist Party), sometimes called the 'Father of
Federation'
and at least considered the most prominent among the Australian 'Founding
Fathers'. Parkes was described during his lifetime by The
Times as "the most commanding figure in Australian politics".
He was first
elected to the New
South Wales Parliament in 1854 and was a strong
supporter of free trade,
immigration programmes and education reforms. He introduced laws
that gave the Government the power to employ teachers and create
public schools, abolished government funding to religious
schools and improved prisons. He was
premier of New South Wales
five times between 1872 and 1891 and
was knighted
in 1877.
On October 24,
1889,
at the Tenterfield
School of Arts, Parkes delivered the Tenterfield
Oration. The oration was seen as a clarion call to federalists
and he called for a convention "to devise the constitution
which would be necessary for bringing into existence a federal
government with a federal parliament for the conduct of national
undertaking".
His image appears on the Australian $5
note. The suburb of Parkes
in Canberra
is named after him as well as the town of Parkes
in central New South Wales.
On April
4, 1888, The Republican , edited by Henry Lawson,
printed Lawson's castigation of Parkes's recent speech at Liverpool,
outside Sydney, in which Parkes had referred to the opposition as
"native dogs and opossums", "inferior animals",
"precursors of anarchy", "crimps, thieves and
blacklegs", "withered tarantulas", "miserable
poodle-headed creatures", "blacklegs, fools and
anarchists". (!)
In 1895 on his 80th
birthday, Parkes attributed his longevity to abstinence, advising
other Australians to avoid alcohol as well. "This is the same
gentleman who takes wine for his stomach's sake every day of his
life", laughed the Bulletin.
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
Parkes
Shire Council: About: Sir Henry Parkes More on
Parkes
1818 Amelia Bloomer
(Amelia Jenks Bloomer; d. December 30,
1894), American women's rights
and temperance
advocate who invented the loose leggings that took her name
A
world chronology of women's electoral rights
 1819 Julia Ward Howe
(d. October 17, 1910),
prominent United States abolitionist, social activist, pacifist and poet.
Howe was the author of 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' which was first published in
the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 and
quickly became one of the most popular songs for the Union during
the American Civil War.
Despite
the bloodthirstiness of 'Battle Hymn', after the war Howe focused her activities on the
causes of pacifism and women's suffrage. In 1870, she
was the first to proclaim Mothers' Day, which was originally an occasion specifically for strenuous
and organized opposition to war.
She was the wife of Samuel Gridley Howe
(1801
- '76),
prominent
physician,
abolitionist and advocate of education for
the
blind. Julia Ward Howe was the mother of
Pulitzer prize-winning writers
Laura E Richards and
Maud Howe Elliott.
Early
progressives in the Book of Days
A
world chronology of women's suffrage
US
chronology Louisa
Lawson, Australian suffragette
 1837 James 'Wild
Bill' Hickok (d.
August 2,
1876), American frontiersman and marshal
"Physically, he was a
delight to look upon. Tall, lithe, and free in every motion, he
rode and walked as if every muscle was perfection, and the
careless swing of his body as he moved seemed perfectly in keeping
with the man, the country, the time in which he lived. I do not
recall anything finer in the way of physical perfection than Wild
Bill when he swung himself lightly from his saddle, and with
graceful, swaying step, squarely set shoulders and well poised
head, approached our tent for orders. He was rather fantastically
clad, of course, but all seemed perfectly in keeping with the time
and place. He did not make an armory of his waist, but carried two
pistols. He wore top-boots, riding breeches, and dark blue flannel
shirt, with scarlet set in front. A loose neck handkerchief left
his fine firm throat free. I do not all remember his features, but
the frank, manly expression of his fearless eyes and his courteous
manner gave one a feeling of confidence in his word and in his
undaunted courage."
George Armstrong Custer's wife, Libbie (Following the Guidon,
1890)
More
The
Dead Man's Hand
On
August 2,
1876, while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota,
Hickok was shot and
killed by Jack McCall who was later tried and hanged on March 1,
1877. The hand that
Hickok held at the time he was shot was a pair of eights and a pair
of aces. The hand later became known as the 'dead man's hand'.
1867 Arnold Bennett, English novelist (The Old Wives' Tale)
1884 Max
Brod (d. 1968), author
1888 Louis
Durey
(d. 1979), composer, member of Les Six
1894 Dashiell Hammett (d.
1961), author of detective
novels
1877 Isadora Duncan (d.
September 14, 1927),
free-form and interpretative dancer
1894
(Samuel) Dashiell
Hammett (d. January
10, 1961),
American author of detective
novels and short stories. Among the enduring characters he
created are Sam
Spade (The
Maltese Falcon), Nick
and Nora Charles (The
Thin Man).
1907 Rachel Carson (d. 1964), American ecologist
and author whose Silent
Spring alerted the
world to environmental pollution in the 1960s.
"Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical
pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her
focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of
misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the
practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and
called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural
world."
Source
"The book Silent Spring, which
showed how modern society has been poisoning the earth on a
worldwide scale, was violently attacked by the agricultural
chemical industry. However, the book was officially endorsed by
President John F Kennedy's Science Advisory Commitee.
"'A few thousand words from her,' wrote a
newspaper editor, 'and the world took on a new direction.'
Rachel Carson was a widely respected conservationalist [sic]
when she died on April 14, 1964, and her legacy continues to
live on through the environmental movement she helped to
progress."
Source
1911 Vincent Price (d. 1993), actor
1911 Hubert H Humphrey (d. 1978), former Vice President of the
United States
1912 John Cheever (d. 1982), author
1915 Herman
Wouk, writer
1917 Yasuhiro Nakasone, former Prime Minister of Japan
1922
Christopher Lee, British actor
who became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a
string of Hammer Horror
films. He is a cousin of James Bond writer Ian Fleming
(1908 - '64), who wanted Lee
to play the original movie Dr No. Lee is more recently noted
for his role of
Saruman in the Academy Award-winning
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
1923 Henry Kissinger, American diplomat and
co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in peace, 1973
1923 Sumner Redstone, entrepreneur
1925 Tony Hillerman, mystery writer
1934 Harlan Ellison, science fiction author
1943 Cilla
Black, singer
1945 Bruce Cockburn, musician
1955 Eric Bischoff, WWE performer
1957 Siouxsie Sioux, musician (Siouxsie and the Banshees)
1958 Neil
Finn, New Zealand singer and songwriter
1961 Peri
Gilpin, actress
1970 Joseph Fiennes, actor
1971 Lisa
'Left Eye' Lopes (d. 2002), singer
1975 Jamie Oliver, British celebrity chef and TV personality (The Naked Chef)
Phew!!
Have a rest before the big This
day in history section
Send
a free e-card greeting for today's celebrations to a loved one
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
Hindu
holidays
Varies Buddha
Purnima
Varies Memorial
Day (USA)
Varies
Dragon
Boat Festival (China)
Varies Pentecost
![Memorial Day [ May 29 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_memorial_day_1.gif)
![Graduation [ May - June ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_graduation_1.gif) ![Best Friends Day [ June 8 ]](http://img.123greetings.com/homeimages/side_bestfrnd_day_1.gif)
May
27 International
Jazz Day
27 Bridge
Day
28 Whale
Day
29
Mount
Everest Day
29 Wisconsin
Day
30 Compact
Disc Day
31 Poetry
Day
31 World
No Tobacco Day
June
1 Children's
Day (China)
3 Love
Conquers All Day
3 Egg
Day
3 Family
Day
3 Tattoo
Day
3 Repeat
Day
3 Strawberry
Festival (New Jersey, USA)
3 Blueberry
Festival (Florida, USA)
4 Cheese
Day
5 World
Environment Day
6 Applesauce
Cake Day
6 D-Day
Anniversary
7 Boone
Day
8 Best
Friends Day
8 Ice
Cream Day
8 World
Ocean Day
9 Cuddle
Up Day
9 Profess
Your Love Day
10 Iced
Tea Day
10 Great
Turtle Races Day
10 Strawberry
Festival (West Virginia, USA)
10 | reetings from Australia.
How it works
