Happy birthday to Shakespeare's Juliet

1578 Birth of Juliet Capulet, ill-fated fictional lover of Romeo Montague in Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet.

How do we know this was Juliet’s birthday?

"Come Lammas eve at night shall she be fourteen. That shall she, marry; I remember it well. ’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years, an’ she was weaned."

Shakespeare’s characters spoke as if they were English people living in his own times; London had an earthquake in 1580. She would have been two when weaned. Tomorrow, August 1, is the ancient Celtic pagan festival of Lammas, and today is Lammas Eve. These clues can make us confident that we may wish Juliet a happy birthday today.

[This item was erroneously posted here on July 26. My apologies.]

Smedley Butler, US general and peace activist

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

1881 General Smedley Butler (d. June 21, 1940), peace activist best remembered for his book War is a Racket, one of the first works exposing the military-industrial complex.

Butler was a Major General in the US Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated marine in US history. He was twice awarded the Medal of Honor ...

Categories: usa, biography, war, peace, military, activism, progressive

Bully Bush makes Angela and the world cringe

YouTube has a short video of George Bush giving the Chancellor of Germany a disgraceful and unwanted backrub.

"George tried to give German Chancellor Angela Merkel a back massage while she was speaking to someone at the summit table. He sidled up behind her and just started rubbing. Merkel's reaction was instantaneous and dramatic: she flinched, flailed her arms up and basically waved the president of the United States away from her. Her reaction would have been no different if Bush had dropped a live catfish down the back of her shirt."
William Rivers Pitt: 'The Ballad of Dumb George'

See also Bush's obsession with a pig at a press conference with Chancellor Merkel -- on Jon Stewart's show.

Nora from Extra!Extra gets a lid dip for the tip.

Tagged: bush, dubya, humor, humour, video

Survey request from a reader

Dear Pip

I'm writing to you to ask for some assistance. I was hoping that you might complete my short online survey and place links to it on your blogs and ezines.

It can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/m2rml

Essentially I am trying to recruit 1000 individuals from across the globe to complete online my short survey. I would very much like to include as many Aussies as possible, (being an Aussie myself) and am currently struggling to recruit them for my sample.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain how individuals in different countries use their work computers and/or laptop computers. It also asks how they protect their work computers and/or laptops from security risks.

I'm looking for individuals 18 years or over and currently live and work (full time/part time or casually) in Australia, the Netherlands, Singapore, the UK, or USA, you are invited to fill out this survey. Only people who use a computer and/or laptop at work are invited to complete this survey (although you don't need to use one regularly).

Monica Whitty
Belfast, Ireland

In memoriam

There will be no Almanac activity of any kind today, including the blog and ezine , in memoriam for an old friend who passed away this morning.

Ólavsøka Eve, Faroe Islands

Held at Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, the smallest capital in the world.

Ólavsøka, or Olsok, on July 29 is the national holiday of the Faroe Islands, and today is its eve, featuring a cavalcade and boat races. Tomorrow is the day that the Faroese Parliament (Løgting) opens its session.

The literal meaning is 'St Olaf's Wake' or vigilia sancti Olavi in Latin, from St Olav's death at Stiklestad in 1030. But the Løgting is certainly older than that. Like several other Faroese holidays, the celebration begins the evening before. So Ólavsøka always starts on July 28, and this afternoon there will traditionally be a cavalcade and boat races ...

Tagged: calendar-customs, saint

Stephen Colbert roasts Dubya, full version

Here is an expanded version of the video of Stephen Colbert making fun of George W Bush, while the shrub was seated at the same table. This one has much more material than the version we posted some weeks ago. Very fun, well worth watching.

Larry Petrie and Australian terrorism

1893 Australia: Next door to William McNamara's first bookshop at 238 Castlereagh St, Sydney, Larry Petrie ran a Labour Bureau to help unemployed men find work. After telling Ernie Lane he was off to blow up a non-union ship, the American anarchist booked a passage on the SS Aramac.

On board at midnight on Thursday, July 27 near the entrance to Moreton Bay, Queensland, about seven nautical miles south of Point Lookout, there was a tremendous explosion in the forecabin.

“The funny thing was” said Petrie some years later, “that the moment the bomb went off my first and only thought was to save people’s lives.” ...

Some of the significance of this explosion can be seen from the uses to which it was put. The Sydney Morning Herald editorialised on August 4, 1893 that:

"… The Aramac explosion makes the eighth trouble on board ship within almost as many days. The Burrumbeet and the Sydney dynamite incidents … then came an extra-ordinary accident between the Ellingamite and the Guiding Star, the latter vessel foundering … Next the wreck … of the steamer Hilda … and the blow up of the barque Argo in Sydney Harbour ..."

Scottish-born Larry Petrie (1859 - March, 1901) was a ... co-founder of the Melbourne Anarchist Club in 1886 and the Social Democratic League in 1889. He also tried to get a Six-Hours Movement going to demand a six-hour working day, and formed a small branch of the American organisation, Knights of Labor ...

Petrie's bombing attempt at Sydney's main docks
In her old age, poet Dame Mary Gilmore told the National Times, May 6 - 11, 1974 of an earlier unsuccessful attempt of Petrie's to blow up Circular Quay, the main dock area of Sydney. No date is given, but it’s probably 1892.

Petrie had left a bomb is a drain at the Quay, and some of his associates decided to remove it. While Mary Cameron (as she was before marrying William Gilmore) watched out for police, with great trepidation the diminutive Member of NSW Parliament Arthur Rae (1860 - 1943) crawled up the drain and removed the bomb, having volunteered to do so because at 5 feet tall he was the smallest person in the clandestine operation. Rae was Vice President of the AWU and one of the founders of the Australian Labor Party. In 1891 he was one of the first 36 Labor members elected to Parliament; he was later a Senator in the Australian Parliament (1910 - 1914, 1918 - 1935). Alongside Artie Rae and Mary at this extraordinary occurrence was Chris Watson (1867 - 1941), third Prime Minister of Australia and the first Labor PM ...

Tagged: terrorism, australia, labor+history, radical+history, history

Vote Michael Mori for Supreme Deity

Major Michael Mori is not only a dedicated legal defender of Australian Guantanamo victim David Hicks, he is also obviously a very brave man of integrity.

His vocal support for Hicks is all the more remarkable when one remembers that he is the US military-appointed lawyer for this Australian man who has been held for years without trial in cruel and unusual conditions by the Bush regime. Mori seems fearless of his employers.

This week he wrote an important document about his client, at GetUp, the excellent Australian issues-based website:

"Unfortunately, politics have replaced justice in the case of David Hicks.

"David has been detained for four and a half years without trial, and has been in isolation for the past four months. He sits in a concrete room for 23 hours a day. He is allowed one book per week and one hour outside his cell for exercise in what best could be described as a large dog kennel, and to shower.

"I will visit him shortly to see if there is any improvement in his living conditions since the recent announcement that part of the Geneva Conventions will apply to David. We have tried in the past to get David working on his high school certificate which is something that David has put his heart into. The conditions that he is kept in make this difficult to accomplish.

"The four and half year delay, so far, in bringing David to trial is due to the fact that David did not violate any international law so the US had to make up charges and an unfair system that would rubber stamp the charges without question ...

"The recent ruling by the US Supreme Court finding military commissions illegal vindicates everything the legal experts in Australia have been saying for the past four years. It highlights the fact that the Australian government must have blindly followed the US Department of Defense without receiving any internal advice on the legality of the commission and chose to ignore advice that the commissions were illegal such as Lex Lasry's report for the Law Council of Australia in 2004 ...

"It may take another year before David sees the inside of a courtroom. This will be five and half years from the start of David's detention in Guantanamo.

"Clearly, a case of justice delayed is justice denied."
Source

Fair Go for David (Seeks to publicise human rights concerns of Hicks' detainment. Collection of media references and commentary.)
ForeignPrisoners.com (Seeks to publicise human rights concerns of detained persons)
The President Versus David Hicks (Website of documentary film about Hicks' case)


Tagged: david+hicks, usa, torture, guantanamo, human+rights, law, legal, civil+rights, army, military, war+on+terror

The Pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostela

At Galicia, Spain, probably the world's greatest pilgrimage

The city of Santiago de Compostela became the seat of St James the Great (whose feast day this is), from the legend of his body having been miraculously translated there.

When his relics were being conveyed from Jerusalem, where he died, to Spain, in a ship of marble, the horse of a Portuguese knight plunged into the sea with its rider. When rescued, the knight's clothes were found to be covered with scallop shells.

It might be that the use of the scallop device derives from the pilgrims' using shells as primitive cups and spoons, or it might derive from the earlier Roman festival of the sea god and goddess, Neptune and Salacia (July 23, qv). Pilgrims to the shrine wore, and often still wear, a scallop shell on cloak or hat ...

The pilgrimage to Compostela became almost as popular and important in medieval Europe as that to Jerusalem. Because of this, seventeen English peers and eight baronets have scallop shells in their arms as heraldic charges. Note that it is not only in Europe that scallops and pilgrimages go together. In 19th-Century Japan, too, certain pilgrims adorned themselves with scallop shells.

The pilgrimage, known as the Camino (Camino de Santiago or Way of St James), is as popular today as it was in the Middle Ages. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world, not all of them Roman Catholic, make the journey on foot. The pilgrimage, probably the most famous on the planet, goes for about 900 kilometres, from France to Spain, and takes about a month ...

Categories: saint, calendar-customs, spain, pilgrimage

It was a dark and stormy contest

Retired mechanical designer Jim Guigli of Sacramento, California has won the prestigious first prize of the 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges contestants to submit the worst possible opening sentence of an imaginary novel.

Guigli’s winning entry reads: “Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.”

Guigli, a resident of the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, showed his versatility and determination by submitting 60 entries to the 2006 contest. “My motivation for entering the contest,” he quipped, “was to find a constructive outlet for my dementia.”

An international literary parody contest, the competition honours the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), best known for The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), organisers say.

Bulwer-Lytton opened his 1830 novel Paul Clifford with the immortal words that Snoopy from Peanuts frequently plagiarised: “It was a dark and stormy night”.

Runner-up, Scotsman Stuart Vasepuru, found inspiration in the Clint Eastwood movie Dirty Harry:

“I know what you’re thinking, punk,” hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, “you’re thinking, ‘Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?’ – and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel loquacious?’ – well do you, punk?”

Tagged: books, humor, humour

Jekaupa Diena (Jekaba Diena), ancient Latvia

In ancient Latvia, Jekaupa Diena ('Jacob's day') was a festival held on July 24 – the Eve of St James (July 25), also known as Jacob. At the start of the harvesting season the townsfolk held feasts from their freshly harvested grain and gave neighbours gifts of bread.

Weddings held on this day were judged to be lucky. A bright sun was also lucky; a cloudy day was a portent of snow; rain caused a low harvest yield. Unless it was a new moon, old seeds had to be sown. It was unlucky to walk through cabbage fields; if the cabbage heads hadn’t appeared yet, they would not ...

Categories: latvia, calendar-customs, saint

Beirut bombing 'violates humanitarian law'

"United Nations (UN) relief coordinator Jan Egeland says the extent of the destruction in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital amounts to a violation of humanitarian law.

"Mr Egeland has been touring the bombed-out area of Beirut that has been targeted by Israel as a stronghold of militant group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon and supported by Iran and Syria.

"He says it is horrific, with block after block of houses destroyed.

"'It's bigger, it's more extensive than I even could imagine,' he said."
ABC

Electronic Lebanon, a project from the Electronic Intifada, offers commentary, analysis, human rights and development information, and voices from on the ground.


Tagged: israel, lebanon, law, legal, war, military, united+nations

Kucinich bill for Israel-Lebanon cease-fire

"A bill we can support!

"Finally, we have a bill in the House of Representatives that we need to support. Brought by Dennis Kucinich and with 23 co-sponsors, H. Con. Res. 450 calls for an immediate cease-fire, multi-party negotiations and an international peacekeeping force. Click here to read the text of the bill.

"The bill we told you about earlier, H. Res. 921 passed very quickly through the House. 410 representatives voted for the bill, only 8 against, with 10 not voting and 4 voting "present", which is essentially an abstention. You can see who voted how by clicking here.

"If your representative did not vote for the bill, call her or him to thank them. AIPAC will surely be contacting them to criticize their position. They'll need our support."
Jewish Voice for Peace with lid dip to Maryannaville

Tagged: israel, lebanon, war, peace

ISP problems

Apologies: Wilson's Almanac has been offline for several hours already, due to a problem at the host, iPowerweb, which reports: "Most of the customer services have been restored but we are still experiencing some network issues."

The FeelGood Manual

The FeelGood Manual (click image to enlarge cover) which is free online here is now a book available here.

"Pip, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing and passing along tools I will carry with me as long as I live. There was a time in which I didn’t want to live. Now I have a life, and I cherish the fact that I have the opportunity and the will to reach out for my goals."
A reader

Other unsolicited comments (names withheld for privacy)
* I’m loving this manual. I’ve sent the link to folks and put it on my blog. I’m learning the happiness skills every day. I already knew some of this stuff, but I keep learning more.

* There just aren’t enough words to describe my feelings about the manual. I’m feeling happier. Thanks a million Pip.

* There just isn’t enough thanks in the whole world to give you for this manual. Thanks for being a part of my life. When I count my blessings I count you twice.

* I just want you to know how helpful your manual has been. I suffer from bipolar disorder and I shared creation with my friends of which I chat with at Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. Thank you! Keep up the good work.

* Do everyone you know a favor. Email them the link to the manual. This stuff is PHENOMENAL!!! It’s changed my life.

* I look forward to every chapter. I have a better time being alive and your The FeelGood Manual has contributed to that. I am looking forward to working through the whole book again when "we" get to the end. I think it will help me over and over. Thank you Pip.

Read more unsolicited testimonials

Tagged: books, depression, mental+health, happiness

Sun enters Leo, 5th sign of the Zodiac

Lion's Head Fountains
We often see in fountains the water flowing from a lion’s mouth. This ancient custom originates with the Egyptians who used this device to symbolise the inundation of the Nile, which happens when the Sun is in Leo. The Greeks and Romans adopted the style for their fountains, and it was passed through the European nations.

Categories: calendar-customs

Zimmy on the wireless

So, Baz le Tuff tells me that Bob Dylan's now got a radio show, and it sounds great. Here's a review.

Tagged: music

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

1376 The Pied Piper came to Hamelin (Hameln), a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and led the children out of town.

The story of the Pied Piper (Rattenfänger) of Hamelin was popularised in German by the Brothers Grimm and in English by the poet Robert Browning (1812 - 1889) in his narrative poem of that name.

It comes from an old German legend translated into English in 1605 by Richard Verstegan, English publisher and antiquarian (c. 1548 - c. 1636), who gave this as the date in A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence. (A 14th-Century account gives the date as June 26, 1284.) The oldest remaining source is a note in Latin prose, made one and a half centuries later (1430 - 1450) as an addition to a 14th-Century manuscript from Lüneburg ...

Tagged: germany, legend

Reagan deputy doubts official 9/11 story

"The former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under the Reagan Administration and a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and Colonel has gone on the record to voice his doubts about the official story of 9/11 - calling it 'the dog that doesn't hunt.'

"... The Colonel detailed historical examples of the use of false flag operations carried out by the US government ...

"'I'm astounded that the conspiracy theory advanced by the administration could in fact be true and the evidence does not seem to suggest that's accurate,' [Colonel Ronald D Ray] said.

"Ray highlighted the existence of Project Bojinka and the fact that Bush administration officials claimed ignorance of a plot to attack the World Trade Center with planes despite limitless precursors to suggest otherwise.

"Ray dismised the validity of the assertion that the Bush administration is fighting a genuine war on terror ..."
Source

Tagged: 9/11, bush, disinfo, disinformation

One small step for man

1969 Apollo Program: Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to walk on its surface.

[From the vantage point of Australia, where this almanac is produced, Apollo 11 landed on this day, although it was still July 20 in some other parts of the world. In fact, in UT (Universal Time), it was July 21. This raises the conundrum: If we in Oz saw it on the 21st, did we see it before the Americans, Africans and Europeans, who saw it on the 20th, or after them? I’ll leave you to figure that one out, as it’s way too hard for your almanackist.]

What did Armstrong really say?
"That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

These are some of the most famous, and most eloquent, words ever uttered, indelibly engraved on the global consciousness by Neil Armstrong on that day in July 1969. And yet, if he said "… one small step for man", leaving out the indefinite article, the sentence doesn’t make much sense. What did he really say, and were his words scripted for him by PR suits at NASA ...

Wilson's Almanac Universe page (space news)

Tagged: usa, history, space, moon

'Extinct Greenland whale re-appears

"Suddenly the 'extinct' greenland whale came up from the sea near Longyearbyen.

"No one has captured a greenland whale since 1911, and the word 'sensation' hardly covers the visit Svalbard had yesterday, experts say ...

"The first greenland whale was shot in 1611, at that time the sea was filled with them. The last one was shot in 1911, since then the Greenland whale has been presumed extinct, Gjertz says."
Source (translation)

[Thanks Aussie Almaniac Janette B for sending this.]

Tagged: environment, extinction, whales

Eyes wide shut on the issue of the century

"Climate change has even US conservatives worried, but here the hip pocket still rules, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.

"Australia is unusual among First World countries in combining a relatively educated populace, an extraordinarily fragile environment and a crude mining mentality. It's not a good mix. Indeed, as Jared Diamond pointed out in Collapse, our ruthless extension of the mining mind-set from minerals to renewable resources such as soil, fisheries and forests has only intensified our continental fragility.

"Yet we go on exploiting our land rather than our intelligence, global warming or no, and choosing our leaders accordingly.

"This is the mystery. Polls show we worry about climate change, but we vote from the hip pocket. John Howard, the polls tell us, makes us feel safe. But we blind ourselves to the yawning chasm between feeling safe and being safe. Ask the ostrich ..."
Sydney Morning Herald

Latest news on global warming

Tagged: environment, climate+change, global+warming, australia

Civilian death toll in Iraq continues to soar

"Almost 6000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the past two months as casualties rise.

"The estimate was compiled with data from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry, and is the latest attempt by the United Nations to give some statistical expression to the daily bloodshed in Iraq. It was part of a bi-monthly UN report on human rights in Iraq ..."
Sydney Morning Herald

Tagged: war, peace, progressive, military, army, iraq, war+on+terror

Feast day of St Wilgefortis, or Uncumber

Wilgefortis (Comera; Cumerana; Dignefortis; Eutropia; Hulfe; Komina; Kummernis; Kümmernis; Liberata; Librada; Lisvrade; Livrade; Ontcommene; Ontcommer; Ontkommena; Reginfledis; Uncumber; Virgo-Fortis), daughter of the King of Portugal, made a vow of chastity. When her father tried to make her marry she prayed for deliverance and immediately grew a copious beard. Her suitors fled and her father had her crucified.

Known in England as Uncumber or Liberata, she was invoked by women who wanted to 'uncumber' themselves of suitors or troublesome husbands. In German lands she was known as St Kümmernis (where her name means 'grief' or 'anxiety'). She was known as St Liberata in France, and Saint Librada in Spain.

Linda Ours Rago (The Herbal Almanac, Starweed Publishing, Washington DC, USA, 1992) says you can achieve the same thing by picking parsley at dawn and wishing aloud for release. Other authorities recommend self-reliance.

The story and feast day of St Uncumber might derive from the stories of the Corinthian Aphrodite who grew a beard and impregnated women ...

Categories: saint, folklore, calendar-customs

The Oz Magazine Trial

1971 British comedian Marty Feldman appeared for the defence in the OZ Trial at the sombre London criminal court, the Old Bailey, calling the judge "a boring old fart".

The OZ case was the longest obscenity trial in British legal history. The original sentences of up to 15 months for Richard Neville and the other defendants sparked a wave of protest from many, including John Lennon. With Yoko Ono, Lennon joined the protest march against the prosecution and organised the recording of 'God Save OZ' by the Elastic Oz Band, released on Apple Records.

At the time in Britain, conspiracy to pervert the course of public morals carried a life sentence and the defence of the OZ magazine defendants was an important libertarian cause ...

Tagged: law, legal, crime, hippie, uk

Bird flu radio documentary

"Scientists, lawyers, politicians, security forces—everyone's walking a fine line with avian flu, between the rights of the individual and the rights of the wider public. When a pandemic happens each of us will be on our own, as the authorities look at the big picture."
Listen

"Not since World War Two have Australians had to cope with very large numbers of premature deaths. Australians are unused to contemplating the possibility of death on a massive scale, especially from 'natural causes'. The competing temptations are 'it won't happen here' complacency, 'there's nothing we can do' fatalism, or 'no precaution is too great' alarmism."
The Hon Tony Abbott, Minister for Health and Ageing. Speech notes for Infectious Disease Conference, Pandemic Preparedness

Tagged: avian+flu, bird+flu, australia, pandemic

The interloper

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.

OM McAdoo and the tale of the 'Wimoweh' song

1900 Death in Sydney, Australia of Orpheus Myron McAdoo (Bill McAdoo; b. 1858), African-American 'black minstrel' singer who toured Europe, South Africa and Australia with McAdoo's American Minstrels and McAdoo's Alabama Cakewalkers.

In 1876 McAdoo graduated from Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (founded in 1868 at Hampton, Virginia by Northern philanthropists, notably General Samuel Chapman Armstrong) and taught in Virginia schools before returning to teach at his alma mater. In 1881 he took the place of his fellow student, African American educator and author Booker T Washington (1856 - 1915), in charge of the Native American boy students' dormitory.

Before commencing his own theatrical company in 1890 (mostly composed of fellow Hampton graduates - see Booker T Washington's papers), he had been one of the troupe of the eminent bass singer Frederick J Loudin and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who first arrived in Australia at Melbourne on May 14, 1886. The Fisk style of music included cakewalks and spirituals ...

Like his Sydney contemporaries Henry Lawson, Henry Kendall, Dorothea Mackellar, JF Archibald and Victor Daley and numerous other Australian celebrities, McAdoo's grave is in Waverley Cemetery at Bronte, a suburb of Sydney ...

McAdoo, Solomon Linda and 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'
Before McAdoo's death the McAdoo Jubilee Singers had extensive tours in South Africa until hostilities began in the Boer War. McAdoo was shocked by the racism he saw and wrote to the Hampton Institute:

"There is no country in the world where prejudice is so strong as here in Africa. The native today is treated as badly as ever the slave was treated in Georgia. Here in Africa the native laws are most unjust; such as the Christian people would be ashamed of. Do you credit a law in a civilized community compelling every man of dark skin, even though he is a citizen of another country to be in his house by 9 o' clock at night, or he is arrested? Before I go into parts of Africa, I had to get a passport and a special letter from the governors and presidents of the transvall [sic] and the Orange Free States, or we would have all been arrested. Black people who are seen out after 9 o' clock must have passes from their masters, indeed, it is so strict that natives have to get passes for day travel…. I met a few colored men, Americans, living here. One opened a business in Johannesburg and before he could open, he had to get a white man to allow him to use his name, because no Negro is allowed to have his own business."

Many indigenous Africans were no doubt influenced and inspired by the visitors as role model, as they had not long ago been slaves themselves. Orpheus Myron McAdoo's legacy in Africa and the world is far reaching for in the 1890s it was his singers who popularised African American spirituals in South Africa through their widespread touring – two separate tours totalling eight years.

McAdoo's syncopations and American styles reached deep into South Africa, in mining towns and bush villages. It reached as far as Gordon Memorial School, above a valley called Msinga, in Zulu country about 300 miles southeast of Johannesburg. A generation later, the sounds influenced a pupil of that school, Solomon Linda, who formed a group called Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds.

Solomon Linda wrote a song called 'Mbube', Zulu for 'the lion', and recorded it in the Evening Birds' second session, in Johannesburg in 1939 after they had been 'discovered' by a talent scout. The song's lyrics told the tale of a group of men hunting a sleeping lion; the song was a South African hit, selling about 100,000 copies during the 1940s. Pete Seeger, the American folk musician, heard the compelling song in 1949 ...

[Today in the BoD we have an hilarious animated version of the 'Wimoweh' song, featuring a hippo and a dog.]

Categories: australia, usa, biography, history, australian-history, music

The Sam Sheppard murder case

Can you go the distance?

Here is a fascinating reportage of the Sam Sheppard murder case of 1954, one which was in the courts for approximately half a century. It's been said to be the murder case that inspired the story of 'The Fugitive'. Warning: it's a very long and complex story.

Tagged: law, legal, usa, crime

FBI plans new Net-tapping push

"The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned ..."
GlobalResearch

Tagged: fbi, internet, civil+rights, privacy

The Innocence Project

So far exonerated: 182 people.

"The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, founded by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld in 1992, is a non-profit legal clinic and criminal justice resource center. We work to exonerate the wrongfully convicted through postconviction DNA testing; and develop and implement reforms to prevent wrongful convictions. This Project only handles cases where postconviction DNA testing can yield conclusive proof of innocence."

The Innocence Project

Tagged: usa, law, legal, crime

Voudon pilgrimage of Saut D'Eau, Haiti

Today, thousands of Voudon (Voodoo) believers from Haiti and abroad will make a pilgrimage to the sacred waters of Saut D'Eau, a waterfall where Erzulie Freda – the Voudon spirit of love, art, romance and sex – appeared twice in the 19th Century.

Freda (her veve, or symbol, is pictured) is a beautiful, wealthy white woman, a promiscuous love goddess-seductress, difficult and demanding, who loves luxurious items such as perfume, champagne and gold. She wears three wedding bands, one for each husband: Damballa, Agwe and Ogoun.

Her sister, the dark-skinned Erzulie Dantor, is the spirit of motherly love, cognate of Saint Barbara Africana in the Roman Catholic Church. Dantor is heterosexual in the sense that she has a child, but she is also the patron loa, or saint, of lesbians. Her Roman Catholic counterparts are the aspects of Mary, Our Lady of Czestochowa and Our Lady of Mount Carmel ...

Categories: voodoo, calendar-customs, religion, haiti

Could Bush be prosecuted for war crimes?

"A Nuremberg chief prosecutor says there is a case for trying Bush for the 'supreme crime against humanity, an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.'

"The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.
While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.

"From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our 'inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.' ..."
AlterNet

Allergies and global warming

Allergies on the Rise

Experiments on plants show that more carbon dioxide in the air will mean more pollen, too.

Earthwatch Radio

Tagged: health, science, podcast, global+warming, climate+change

DIY solar solutions for the poor world

"What do you get when you combine an engineer-geek father with a development economist son? Answer: articles about non-photovoltaic, DIY solar systems in the developing world."
WorldChanging

Tagged: appropriate+technology, solar

Come back, Ariel, all is forgiven

I never thought I'd live to say this.

With the way Israel's Prime Minister, the nutter Ehud Olmert, is behaving, it'd almost be a good thing if Ariel Sharon were still in charge of that crazy place.

Baz le Tuff -- always quick with an apposite remark -- says the Lebanon-Israel conflict is two bald men fighting over a comb. That's very good, but it occurred to me it's two hairy men fighting over a comb with no teeth.

Global outcry at bombing :: Gush Shalon: Stop the war madness!
Editorial: Washington fiddles, Lebanon burns
A disaster for the Lebanese :: UN quiet on Lebanese ceasefire calls
Bush's indifference drives conflict :: Israel's monstrous legacy brings tumult a step closer
Israel operation in Lebanon denounced internationally

Tagged: usa, bush, israel, lebanon

St Swithuns Day, if thou dost rain ...

Feast day of St Swithin (Swithun), England, confessor, patron of Winchester

(Small Cape marigold, Calendula pluvialis, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint. The esoteric meaning of this plant is 'omen; sign'.)

St Swithuns Day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days, it will remain:
St Swithun's Day, if thou be fair,
For forty days ‘twill rain nae mair.

An English weather prognostication day

According to tradition, the weather today will be replicated for the next forty days.

Our story today takes us back more than a millennium, to the days when the British Isles were beset by Viking raids and Charlemagne’s empire ruled supreme in Europe. St Swithin (or Swithun) was Bishop of Winchester, England, and adviser to King Egbert of Wessex (d. 839) and probably tutor to his son Ethelwulf. He was called the 'drunken saint', but no such behaviour is recorded of him ...

Categories: saint, uk, england, calendar-customs, weather

Contemporary Australian indigenous music

There's a lot of Aboriginal music I like listening to. I really enjoyed tuning into the Live Music Special, which was recorded at at festivals like Stompem Ground in Broome, Yeperenye in Alice Springs and the 1995 Survival Day in Sydney. Featured performers include Archie Roach, The Pigram Brothers, Alice Haines, Christine Anu, Jimmy Little, Leah Purcell, Kev Carmody and Yothu Yindi.

Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody do a live version of one of my favourite songs, 'From Little Things Big Things Grow', which tells the story of Vincent Lingiarri and the struggle of the Gurindji mob to get justice and land rights, while being opposed by politicians and the transnational pastoral corporation, Vestey's -- here are the lyrics to this stirring song. The "tall stranger" in the song is Gough Whitlam, former Prime Minister of Australia, who turned 90 this week. Happy birthday, Gough!

Tagged: aboriginal, indigenous, australia, music

Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette

1858 Emmeline Pankhurst (d. June 14, 1928), most influential and famous of the British suffragettes, mother of Christabel, Sylvia and Adela.

She was born Emmeline Goulden in Manchester, England to abolitionist parents, and married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister, in 1879. Dr Pankhurst was already a supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and had been the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882.

In 1889, Mrs Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, but her campaign was interrupted by her husband's death in 1898. In 1903 she founded the better-known Women's Social and Political Union, an organization most famous for its militancy which began in 1905. Its members included the notorious Annie Kenney, the suffragette 'martyr', Emily Davison and the composer, Dame Ethel Smyth ...

Categories: biography, feminist, history, suffragette

Researchers confirm claims that China kills for organs

"A human rights lawyer and a former member of the Canadian cabinet have accused prison authorities in China of killing Falungong dissidents for their organs. Lawyer David Matas and Canada's former secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, David Kilgour, spent two months investigating the claims. The Chinese government has denied similar allegations in the past, pointing to a new law prohibiting the buying and selling of human organs, with a proviso also that written consent must be given by donors. "
Source

Listen :: Audio Help

"We have concluded that the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centres and 'people's courts', since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas, were virtually simultaneously seized involuntarily for sale at high prices ... "

Read the report in PDF

Google News on this subject :: Harvesting Chinese organs
Organ Transplants in China—the Numbers Tell the Truth
Harvesting and Trading in Human Organs Is a Nation's Shame
Secret Chinese Concentration Camp Revealed

Why are the media not making this a major story? Is it because China is the big new market for capitalism?

An Open Letter to Our Colleagues in the Media

Tagged: china, capital+punishment, human+rights, falun+gong

Letter from a reader on patriarchal crud

----- Original Message -----
From: COLLEEN C------
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 3:19 AM

Hello! You are undoubtedly a wonderful and positively influential resident of planet Earth. I think that it would be a good suggestion, however, to get some gender balance in your almanac. If you don't want to I don't blame you, after all you are a man. Just depends on what audience you want. All that dead white guy stuff is way too much. Even women quoted are 'so-and-so's wife' and all that patriarchal crud. Colleen

My reply

Dear Colleen,

Thank you for your kind comments.

I have long worked hard to do as you suggest. I constantly go out of my way to do so. The achievements of hundreds or thousands of women are recorded in the Almanac. I have sympathetic biographies of dozens of feminist activists. I have a page dedicated to a chronology of the history women's suffrage.

If you compared the Almanac with any similar online project (except specifically women's projects, such as Today in Women's History) I'm confident you would see that it has more of a skewing towards the kind of material that you suggest than most. You have to take into account how difficult it is to get female representation on the sorts of things that the Almanac covers. For example, I do as much as I can (in the time available to me) to recount the achievements of women inventors, scientists, poets, political leaders and so on. The plain fact is that, for example, most inventions have been made by men -- I can't fabricate material for inclusion, but you can send it to me. I'm always happy if readers such as yourself provide me with good items for consideration as Almanac inclusions.

You might like to use the search engine at www.wilsonsalmanac.com/search.html and let me know what women who you think should be listed, are not listed.

Regarding "dead white guy stuff": As to the matter of race, the same applies as to women. I think the Almanac is markedly multicultural, not by accident but by design. I sincerely would be interested to see an 'On This Day' website which is more multicultural, so I might learn from it. Of course, I can continue improving that.

Regarding people who are now dead, the Almanac has a strong historical bent so naturally many of the people in it are no longer alive. As to "so and so's wife" -- I would hope that I never wrote that unless it were relevant. For example, Mary Shelley -- an important English writer, and the wife of an important English poet. Nancy Reagan -- an actress and the wife of a US President. If I have failed to apply this convention in any case, it is an oversight and I am always pleased to be shown my error.

Regards,

Pip

[Note: Today's 'On This Day' in the Blogmanac will be feminist Emmeline Pankhurst. This choice was made independently of receipt of the above letter. I just got sick of doing Bastille Day year after year. Please, no letters of complaint from our French readers! Merci, and have a wonderful day.]

Tagged: feminism, history, biography

Not another blonde joke!

Thanks, non-blondesque Maryannaville. :)