1613 The Globe Theatre in London burnt down as a cannon was fired for a scene in Shakespeare's Henry VIII.
Very shortly after the blaze, Shakespeare retired back to Stratford. The play being performed at the time was also called All This is True, supposed to be a revival of King Henry the Eighth – this we know from the contemporary ballad, 'On the Pitiful Burning of the Globe Play-house' ...
1880 Dressed in home-made armour and with revolver blazing, Australian bushranger Ned Kelly burst out of the Glenrowan Inn, which was surrounded by about 30 State troopers.
The most wanted outlaws the country has ever known, the four-member Kelly Gang, had £8,000 on their heads, at a time when a labouring man's wages were about 15 shillings a week. Their crime, among many others, was the murder of three policemen at Stringybark Creek.
At first the dumbfounded police could not understand why their bullets did not stop him. Even in the dawn light, they could see the helmet he was wearing, but when they aimed at his torso, nothing happened. Then they realized that under his long overcoat must be more armour, so they began firing at his legs ...
Swapcove http://swapcove.com is a website where you can exchange anything you want. Thank you, Melodi Cowan, one of the people working on the site, for the tip-off.
Check out http://tinyurl.com/6nnehk for a beautiful panorama of one of the legendary rooms of the world. Don't forget Michelangelo's ceiling. Thanks, Lynn Fux for this link.
Update: I've been told that it's not the Sistine Chapel, but neither my informant nor I know what church it is.
At http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSCebiOCs9A, John Seed, founder of the Rainforest Information Centre, makes an appeal for the largest population of Asian Elephants whose survival in the wild is in trouble.
The elephants face two separate threats in the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu in India. Take action now -- please visit www.rainforestinfo.org.au.
1869Emma Goldman (d. May 14, 1940), Lithuanian-born American anarchist-feminist writer, pioneer advocate of free love and contraception, and activist, who was deported to the Soviet Union for inciting World War I draft riots in New York.
In 1907, according to Goldman's autobiography, Living My Life, Melbourne anarchist Chummy Fleming (1863 - 1950) invited her to tour Australia and Australian anarchists had raised money for her fare. In 1908 she made preparations to go (she was to embark on the Makura at Vancouver on March 26, 1909), and 1,500 pounds of literature was despatched ahead. In April, Fleming wrote in the Melbourne Socialist that she had embarked, believing it to be so, but events had intervened, including police harassment and the US immigration department organising her deportation, but also a fit of jealousy over her lover, Dr Ben Reitman, whose promiscuity, despite her ideology, she was finding a challenge ...
Indian journalists visit Australia to probe attacks on students
"Indian journalists, visiting Australia to investigate recent attacks on Indian students here, say they don't believe the race issue was a motivating factor in the violence." Source
1959 In perhaps the best documented and most celebrated UFO experience of all time, Australian missionary Father William Booth Gill and the entire staff and clients of an Anglican Mission at Boianai, in the former Australian colony of Papua-Niugini (Papua-New Guinea), saw an aerial disc-shaped object and exchanged waves with four passengers on board. The 'close encounters' carried over into the next two days.
For some time, a spate of alleged UFO sightings had been reported by numerous people around the mission, and Gill’s colleague Rev. Norman EG Cruttwell had been keeping records and interviewing witnesses, while Father Gill himself had been dubious. Even a sighting by his assistant, Stephen Gill Moi, who claimed to have seen an "inverted saucer" above the mission at 1 am on June 21, had left Gill sceptical, but the priest's doubt was not to last ...
This new sighting, with Gill present (though why the missionary's testimony should carry more weight than those of the other witnesses is rather telling) began at around 6.45 pm on June 26 and lasted several hours, with Gill later estimating that length of the craft was similar to five full moons lined up end to end. The priest and at least 38 of his fellow-villagers saw four human-like figures moving about on the top of the object, occasionally disappearing below, and reappearing soon after. Later, Father Gill wrote:
"As we watched it 'men' came out from the object and appeared on what seemed to be a deck on top of the huge disc. There were four figures in all, but only occasionally were all on view at once." ...
"Spotted via tweets from friends in Tibet and China last night: news that China's government blocked access to Google (and related apps like Google Calendar and Gmail). The broad display of censorship capabilities lasted from one hour to more than a day, depending on who you ask in China and what ISP they're using. Some are reporting that the delay is still ongoing ..." BoingBoing
"Nora Roberts, a romance novelist who also writes futuristic police procedurals under the name J.D. Robb, has published a hundred and eighty-two novels. In a typical year, she publishes five 'new Noras': two installments of a paperback original trilogy; two J.D. Robb books; and each summer, the 'big Nora' — a hardcover standalone romance novel. Twenty-seven Nora Roberts books are sold every minute. Roberts grosses sixty million dollars a year, Forbes estimated in 2004, more than John Grisham or Stephen King ..." Source
"According to the R.W.A., romance generated nearly $1.4 billion in sales in 2007, more than science fiction and fantasy combined (seven hundred million dollars), mystery (six hundred and fifty million) or literary fiction (four hundred and sixty-six million). Of people who read books, one in five read romance." Source
1967 Our World was broadcast globally, the first live international satellite television production and a significant event in the world's unfolding sense of globality.
Performers in twenty-six nations were invited to perform in separate segments featuring their country, and the six-hour event had the largest television audience ever up to that point: 400 million people around the globe were watching live, your almanackist included.
Today, it is most famous for the British segment which starred The Beatles. They wanted to spread a message of peace to the world, so they broadcast a live set singing 'All You Need Is Love' which had been written especially for the occasion. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Moon and Graham Nash, among others, showed up and sang along. The performance was done after one take in rehearsal.
The equator was crossed for the first time in the program when it switched to the Australian contribution, which was at 5:22 am Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT). This was the most technically complicated point in the broadcast, as both the Japanese and Australian satellite ground stations had to reverse their actions: Tokyo had to go from transmit mode to receive mode, while Melbourne had to switch from receive to transmit mode. The segment dealt with trams leaving the Hammer Street Depot in Melbourne with Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Brian King explaining that sunrise was many hours away as it was winter in Australia ...
See the colourized video of The Beatles recording 'All You Need is Love', today in the Book of Days.
"A study of psychology students in Canada has found affirmations can leave some people feeling worse instead of boosting their confidence.
"It seems that positive statements can magnify negative self-perceptions in people with low self-esteem, as Professor Joanne Wood from the University of Waterloo in Ontario explains ..." Source
http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/book/jul24.html 1216 Death in Kyoto, Japan, of Kamo no Chōmei (b. 1155), Japanese author, poet (waka) and essayist, critic of Japanese vernacular poetry and major figure of Japanese poetics. Born Kamo no Nagaakira born into a family of Shinto priests in Kyoto, he began his career as a poet at the imperial court poet. In the closing years of his life, having seen Kyoto devastated by earthquake and fire, he attempted a reclusive lifestyle, writing, among other works, Hojoki, a description of his life in a hut, rather in the manner of Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
"Now the moon of my life has reached its last phase and my remaining years draw near to their close. When I soon approach the Three Ways of the Hereafter what shall I have to regret? The law of Buddha teaches that we should shun all clinging to the world of phenomena, so that the affection I have for this thatched hut is in some sort a sin, and my attachment to this solitary life may be a hindrance to enlightenment. Thus I have been babbling, it may be, of useless pleasures, and spending my precious hours in vain.
"In the still hours of the dawn I think of these things, and to myself I put these questions: Thus to forsake the world and dwell in the woods, has it been to discipline my mind and practise the law of Buddha or not? Have I put on the form of a recluse while yet my heart has remained impure? … Is this poverty of mine but the retribution for the offences of a past existence, and do the desires of an impure heart still arise to hinder my enlightenment? And in my heart there is no answer. The most I can do is to murmur two or three times a perchance unavailing invocation to Buddha." Kamo no Chōmei, Japanese poet, died on July 24, 1216
1348 The exact day is not known, but some time between this day and August 6, King Edward III of England (1312 - '77) instituted the Order of the Garter, with St George as the patron.
During a festival at court, a lady happened to drop her garter. King Edward picked it up, and noticed that the others were giggling. He said, with displeasure, "Honi soit qui mal y pense" – "Shame to him who thinks ill of it". In the spirit of gallantry, perhaps to prevent any further impertinence, he put the garter around his own knee. Or, so it is said.
Traditionally, the lady was the Countess of Salisbury. The garter was an object of note in the year preceding June 24, 1348. Garters with the motto embroidered on were common, as were banners and couches with the motif, and a surcoat provided to the king in 1348 was covered with garters.
The Australian folklorist, Rabbi Dr Rudolph Brasch, says the story is hardly convincing. "Fourteenth-century ladies, even those attending royal functions, were not so finicky or modest that the mere loss of a garter would have caused them to blush or feel uncomfortable," he writes.
The choice of the garter may also owe something to the princess's girdle in the article on St George in The Golden Legend (Aurea Legenda, 1275), compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, which she used to lead the monster once St George had speared it with his lance.
British anthropologist and folklorist, Margaret Murray (1863 - 1963), advanced a different theory. In the 14th Century the garter symbolized witches. To lose it was to give away her allegiance to Satan and was an acute danger ...
The English translation of 'Negro Y Azul' from Wikiquote:
The city's called Duke, The state's called New Mexico. Among gangsters, The gringo's fame is inflated 'Cause of the new drug they created. The say the color is blue And the quality pure. The potent drug's runnin' Through the city, And no one could stop it If they wanted to. The cartel's runnin' hot because They weren't getting respect. Talkin' about some "Heisenberg" Who owns the market now. No one knows the man since They've never seen his face. The cartel's 'bout respect And they ain't forgiving. But that homie's dead, He just doesn't know it yet. Heisenberg's fame has got Down to Michoacan. From way far away They want to taste that meth. That blue stuff crossed the border, Now New Mexico's livin' up to its name. Looks like Mexico In all the drugs it's hiding. Except there's a gringo boss And he's known as "Heisenberg". The cartel's runnin' hot because They weren't getting respect, Talkin' 'bout some "Heisenberg" Who owns the market now. No one knows the man since They've never seen his face. The fury of the cartel Ain't no one escaped it yet. But that homie's dead, He just doesn't know it yet.
The Spanish lyrics: La ciudad se llama "Duke", Nuevo Mexico el estado, Entre la gente mafiosa Su fama se ha propagado, Causa de una nueva droga Que los gringos han creado.
Dicen que es color azul Y que es pura calidad, Esa droga poderosa Que circula en la ciudad, Y los duenos de la plaza No lo pudieron parar.
Anda caliente el cartel, Al respeto le faltaron, Hablando del "Heisenberg" Que ahora controla el mercado, Nadie sabe nada de el Porque nunca lo han mirado, El cartel es de respeto Y jamas a perdonado, Eso compa ya esta muerto, No mas no lo han avisado Y asi suenan los cuates de Sinaloa, mi compa! La fama de "Heisenberg" Ya llego hasta a Michoacan, Desde alla quieren venir A probar esa cristal, Esa materia azul ya se hizo internacional.
Ahora si le quedo bien A Nuevo Mexico el nombre, A Mexico se parece En tanto droga que esconde Solo que hay un capo gringo, Por "Heisenberg" lo conocen. Anda caliente el cartel, Al respeto le faltado, Hablando del "Heisenberg" Que ahora controla el mercado, Nadie sabe nada de el, Porque nunca lo han mirado, A la furia del cartel, Nadie jamas escapado, Eso compa ya esta muerto, No mas no lo han avisado.
"It would be hard to find a film as iconic as Kodachrome. Imagine another emulsion that that garnered so much emotion that songs were written about it. Sadly, the film is no more, retired by Kodak after 74 years of service ..." Source
Many people who lived in Sydney in the early 1980s will remember Brian Westlake graffiti. Google those words and you'll see just a few websites that mention Brian Westlake. Some examples:
Brian Westlake spoke with French girls, who say they know him well Brian Westlake is the alphabet Brian Westlake eats his greens Brian Westlake isn't sure about Presbyterianism Brian Westlake's dingo did it Brian Westlake is innocent Brian Westlake cares Brian Westlake is the one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with Brian Westlake admits that the waters around him have grown Brian Westlake drops frozen turds Brian Westlake roams the slopes with one stock waving free
The person, or some of the persons, unknown, almost certainly had an affection for Bob Dylan. I've highlighted in red certain phrases appropriated from Dylan songs.
It's been a long time since I've seen Brian Westlake graffiti in Sydney, or "MASONS OUT NOW" (with Masonic symbol, in black Texta Colour), which seemed to be in most coastal public toilets from the suburbs of Sydney to at least the Queensland border (nearly 1,000 kilometres of obscurantist crankiness) for 25 years or more. And DIK. Who was DIK? I knew a bloke who signed his name with the same tag -- I wonder if it was him or if he borrowed it from the energetic graffitist. All are sadly missed. Of course, none as much as Arthur Stace, Mister Eternity, still the indisputable doyen of the world's graffitists.
Brian Westlake, the fatted calf awaits -- no, fears -- your belated return from prodigality.
Feast day of St Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, confessor
(Canterbury bells, Campanula medium, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)
In the town of Nola, near Naples, Italy, people commemorate their famous son, Paulinus, today. He had a miraculous dream while in Africa, where Vandals had taken him as a slave. The king, impressed by this dream, sent Paulinus home, where he and his companions were met by the people of Nola bearing lilies. Ever since, today has been called the Day of the Dance of the Lily (Giglio) ...
http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/book/jun21.html The wheel of the year has rolled a little further through the seasons and now we find ourselves at one of the four main stations of the year, Summer Solstice (Northern Hemisphere) and Winter Solstice (Southern Hemisphere).
The four main stations ('grand sabbats' in the Neopagan tradition) are the two equinoxes and two solstices. Halfway between each of these are the other significant days, sometimes known as the 'lesser sabbats' ...
Make a sundial for your ceiling
Check out the article, How to make a sundial for your ceiling. Summer or Winter Solstices are great days to begin your 'spotdial'. All it takes is a small birdcage mirror worth a buck or two. When you have a working spotdial on your ceiling, why not send me a pic or two and we can share it with the Almaniacs ...
America and torture have a long and painful history
"Perhaps we protest too much. Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. We were waterboarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of 'the old Filipino method' ..." Source
Synesthesia has never been a problem for me. I first came to realise I was a synesthete -- that I had synaesthesia, or synesthesia ("a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway" - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) -- in 1970, when I was 17, about 25 years before I knew there was a word for it. I still have a poem I wrote about it the same year, called 'Jack is Orange', in which I was attempting to communicate how I see words and letters as colours. The word 'jack' is still orange to me. Most, if not all, words have colours for me. For decades I thought they did for everybody.
All in The Mindhttp://tinyurl.com/ktkyc8 has an interesting interview this week with David Eagleman, "a leading researcher in synesthesia, studying people who taste sounds, hear colours, and live in a remarkable world of sensory cross-talk".
Eagleman says, "it's not that they're being silly, or metaphorical, or artistic"; "it's really quite common, at least one per cent of the population"; "most synesthetes will go through their life not realising that other people don't see the world as they do".
I can vouch for the fact that it took me until I was well into middle age to discover that not everybody was like me in this regard. I don't count it as a curse or a blessing. I'm an artist (writer), but I don't see synesthesia as arty-farty, although I think it has influenced my writing. It just is. I can imagine that for some people it could be a curse.
The radio program, with audio and transcript on the website, is very interesting -- at least to a synesthetic person like me. Worth listening to.
On June 20, thanks to that magnificent organization, UNHCR, we salute the indomitable spirit and courage of the world's refugees, giving them the encouragement, support and respect they deserve.
Every refugee story is different, every loss is a personal one. But around the world different crises affect different groups. Some conflicts are almost resolved. Others are new, with fresh refugee problems. And still others are shadowy, long-running guerrilla wars whose victims are often the ordinary people the revolutionaries claim to represent ...
Obama Vs Obama http://tinyurl.com/mva9p9 is an incisive Mark Fiore animation on Obama's duplicity. Found at Daily Planet News wilsonsalmanac.com/news.html, 650+ latest headlines sourced from 200+ global newsfeeds, updating by the minute.
Write 64 words for Aung San Suu Kyi's 64th birthday
Shorter than a Twitter tweet. Write 64 words for Aung San Suu Kyi at http://www.64forsuu.org/. Free Burma. Free this remarkable Nobel prizewinner from house arrest. Paul McCartney, Bono and Yoko Ono wrote 64 words. Women Nobel Peace Laureates, Mairead Maguire (1976), Betty Williams (1976), Rigoberta Menchú Tum (1992), Jody Williams (1997), Shirin Ebadi (2003), and Wangari Maathai (2004) also wrote 64 words.
Single mum downloads 24 songs, fined US$1.9 million
USA: "A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs." CNN
1885 Adela Pankhurst (d. 1961), feminist and pacifist, Communist, then fervent anti-Communist, daughter of Britain's most prominent suffragist, Emmeline Pankhurst, with whom she became estranged, mainly because of Adela's political positions on many issues, which were further to the left than those of her mother. She was sister of Sylvia Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst, who, with mother Emmeline, edged Adela out of their movement.
Pankhurst moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1914 partly for reasons of her health, and joined the Victorian Socialist Party (VSP), editing its children's magazine. There she worked with Vida Goldstein and the Women's Political Association, campaigning on the 'No' side of the WWI military conscription controversy, particularly with the Women's Peace Army. By war's end she was living in Sydney. In 1917 Adela married the Irish seaman's unionist Tom Walsh of the Federated Seamen’s Union of Australasia, a widower with three daughters; they had a further five children. In 1920 she and Walsh became founding members of the Communist Party of Australia, from which she was later expelled. Sometime between the wars, her politics shifted from left to right, and in 1941, she formed the Australia First Movement, a conservative, nationalist, quasi-fascist organization ...
See what Western greed for Central Asian natural gas has been doing in Afghanistan for longer than World War II (and meanwhile, Obama is increasing the military assault on that country).
"The footage you are about to see is poignant, heart-wrenching, and often a direct result of U.S. foreign policy ..."
Australia: "A Reserve Bank report into banks' interest margins has found that they have grown during the global financial crisis.
"Australian banks increased their interest margin (the gap between the rate they borrow for and the rate they lend at) by an average of 9 basis points (0.09 percentage points) during the peak of the global financial crisis in the six months to March this year." Source
October 2-10, 2009 - Entries close Friday August 28 - At the Memorial Hall, Hyde St, Bellingen, NSW. Gala Opening Night & Presentation Friday 2 October at 5.30pm - entry $10 - GRAND PRIZE $5000 OTHER PRIZES TOTAL OVER $5000 - Categories: Works on paper, Painting, 3D, Photographic & Digital, Members Prize, People's Choice ;Entry forms from: Nexus Gallery, Bellingen, Dorrigo & Urunga libraries, www.bellingen.com/artscouncil Organized by Bellingen Community Arts Council - Enquiries: Nexus Community Art Gallery, Bellingen Ph: 02 6655 9222. Info courtesy Malcolm McLeod Cultural Development Officer, Coffs Harbour City Council Ph: 02 66484840 -- free monthly 'What's On' newsletter by email.
Bellingen friends might be interested in this grant: "Seeds of Renewal is a small grants program providing funding of up to $10,000 to small, rural not-for-profit organisations for projects and activities to aid the growth of their community. Independently administered by the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR) and proudly supported by ANZ, the program aims to assist small rural and regional communities working towards a more sustainable future. Preference will be given to applications that contribute to the development of communities in one or more of the following ways: Creating community well-being; Supporting volunteer initiatives at a local community level; Diversifies local economies." Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR) Postal: PO Box 41 BENDIGO Vic 3552 Phone: 1800 170 020. Visit http://www.frrr.org.au:80/programsDetail.asp?ProgramID=1
1730 Seven Cherokee representatives led by Chief or Head King Oconostota, Oukah-ulah, and Attakullaculla (Atta-culla-culla; Attakullakulla), arrived at the court of King George II of Great Britain at Windsor Castle in London, meeting the king on June 22.
The native Americans (three of whom are pictured above), were escorted to England by Sir Alexander Cuming, Baronet of Culter, and acknowledged the monarch as the sovereign of the Cherokee people. They also signed articles of friendship and commerce with representatives of the British Crown ...
"In June 2007 Jenny McCarthy began promoting anti-vaccination rhetoric. Because of her celebrity status she has appeared on several television shows and has published multiple books advising parents not to vaccinate their children. This has led to an increase in the number of vaccine preventable illnesses as well as an increase in the number of vaccine preventable deaths." http://www.jennymccarthybodycount.com/ See also http://www.stopjenny.com/
CORRECTION, June 20: I just checked http://tinyurl.com/lbhk5x and I've been misled by articles I've read. McCarthy clearly states she is not against vaccination but against the scheduling - the quantity. However, what she does advocate goes against global scientific consensus (see http://tinyurl.com/ysltla ) and she's way out of her depth.
Give me a pound a column, and a drop to clear my throat, An' I will write the reddest song as ever poet wrote.
1867 Henry Lawson (d. September 2, 1922), Australian's best-known writer of short stories and verse, noted for his realistic portrayals of bush life and the revolutionary politics of his earlier writing.
Henry Lawson was born dirt-poor in a bark hut on the goldfields at Grenfell, New South Wales. Likewise, he died in abject poverty, under a tree in his garden, and Prime Minister William Morris Hughes ordered one of the grandest State funerals ever seen in Australia, and the first for a writer, which was attended by many thousands in St Andrew's Cathedral and out on the streets of Sydney (picture of funeral).
Years later, his face was on Australia's $10 note, only to be removed and replaced with that of his conservative friend and The Bulletin magazine poetic sparring partner, Banjo Paterson. On the reverse of today's $10 note is one-time Communist Mary Gilmore, who Lawson once asked to marry him, but was refused. She changed her mind soon after she had sailed to Paraguay to live on the William Lane-led radical communal experiment, New Australia, but by then it was too late as Lawson had married the daughter of two of Australia's most famous fiery radicals, William and Bertha McNamara.
Henry Lawson's mother was the pioneer feminist and 'Mother of Women's Suffrage', Louisa Lawson (1848 - 1920), publisher/editor of the progressive women's journal, Dawn (a “paper in which women may express their own opinions on political and social questions”), which Henry Lawson printed in its earliest editions. His brother-in-law was another fiery labor man, Jack Lang, who became Premier of New South Wales in 1925.
When female Australian British subjects (with the glaring exception of Asians, Aborigines and Africans) won the vote with the Uniform Franchise Act (June 16, 1902), Louisa Lawson was hailed by her political sisters as "The Mother of Womanhood Suffrage", in the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote and stand for election. Unlike many suffragists and feminists of her day, she did not come from a privileged background but from the shanties of rural Australia. Dawn was a monthly journal that lasted for 17 years, employed a staff of ten and mostly published the writings of Henry Lawson’s remarkable mother.
Henry Lawson lived much of his life in poverty and alcoholic despair, but even during his lifetime he was acknowledged as a poetic genius, much-loved by the Australian people who until recently had a strong poetic culture. In his lifetime, he was probably Australia's most famous person. With Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson (1864 - 1941), he is Australia's national poet and the two names are often said together. His poetry, however, like his short stories (he was prolific in both genres), has much more of a radical bent than that of Banjo. The two men were friendly rivals and a famous poetic duel ('Up the Country'), was fought publicly between them in The Bulletin. Paterson's poem romanticised the Aussie outback; Henry Lawson, ever the cynic-realist, answered decrying its harshness, poverty and social injustice ...
My novel is 'Faces in the Street'. My novel's two central characters are Henry Lawson and his suffragette mother, Louisa Lawson ("Mother of Women's Suffrage"). It also fictionally covers many of the famous and remarkable people the Lawsons really did associate with. It's being well received -- you can read the reviews here. It will make a good gift for people who like to read historical fiction.
1816 On this day, the road was completed to Mrs Macquarie's Chair on Sydney Harbour. It was named for the wife of Major-General Lachlan Macquarie (1762 - 1824), Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821; the name applies to a carved seat in the rocks, and often also to Mrs Macquarie's Point, the peninsula on which it was carved; both are commonly and mistakenly referred to as 'Lady Macquarie's Chair'. This photograph of Mrs Macquarie's Chair shows the date June 13, 1816 carved on the sandstone.
Folklore has it that Elizabeth Macquarie (née Elizabeth Henrietta Campbell, 1778 - 1835) used to sit on the rock and watch for ships from England sailing into Port Jackson (now usually known as Sydney Harbour) ...
1967 The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declared all US state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. The case centred around Mildred Jeter (a black woman) and Richard Perry Loving (a white man), who were sentenced to imprisonment in the State of Virginia on the grounds that they had married.
The trial judge in the original case, Leon Bazile, had proclaimed that "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
Anyone who believes all of Alex Jones's rants is clearly deluded, but The Obama Deceptionhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw makes some very valid points, in my opinion. I don't agree with all of it, but I recommend it. I wouldn't trust Barack Obama II as far as I can kick him. He's already broken too many promises. He's increased US military strength, is scary on the environment, has sent more soldiers to Afghanistan, is creating a huge militia, and endorses the so-called "Patriot Act" which is a violation of all good things American. His cabinet and inner circle are stacked with Wall St squillionaire manipulators just as George W Bush's was stacked with oil guys -- plus that nasty, nasty warmonger, Henry Kissinger. Obama's mates are almost all members of the Bilderberg group, the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Barack's slicker than Slick Willy Clinton (who talked from the Left but ruled from the Right, as Michael Moore's book, Stupid White Men, so pungently elucidates), but almost everyone, so far, seems to be in love with him. Not me -- I supported him over McCain, but because my stance was ABM: Anybody But McCain. Get a grip, Obamists. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss -- maybe even worse.
Humphrey Bogart, Hubert H Humphrey and Barry Humphries – all have a name derived from this hermit saint (Humphrey; Onofre; Onofrio; Onophry; Onouphrius; Onuphrius of Egypt; Onuphrius the Great). Onuphrius was a hermit Christian monk who lived in a cave near Thebes in Egypt and wore only a loincloth of leaves, subsisting merely on dates.
Onuphrius died c. 400. At his death, an abbot named Paphnutius buried him in a hole in the mountainside, and the site immediately disappeared, as if to tell the abbot that Onuphrius was not to remain there. Or, so it is said.
Traditionally, Greeks do not harvest today because the saint, who they nickname Rufnis, will eat anything they harvest. Girls in Catalonia traditionally pray to St Onuphrius to help them find a rich husband ...
1887 'The Republican Riot' at Sydney Town Hall: Hundreds of republicans with forged tickets (arranged by republican activist and criminal, John Norton) crashed a Queen VictoriaGolden Jubilee meeting called by the Mayor of Sydney, Alban Joseph Riley following the debacle of June 3 [qv].
The event was a significant in the milestone of Australia's national poet. Henry Lawson, then just a week shy of his 20th birthday, was fired up on reading the Sydney Morning Herald reports of the riot and sent to Sydney's prominent Bulletin magazine a poem under pseudonym 'Youth'. 'The Hymn of the Socialists' was published on June 18 and in the 'Correspondence' column of July 23 was a note "'H.A.L.' Will publish your 'Sons of the South'. You have in you good grit". The poem 'Sons of the South' is now known as 'Song of the Republic' ...
Australia: On Saturday, June 9, 1838 (some sources say June 10), twelve European stockmen rounded up approximately 28 of about 40 Kwiambal people squatting at Henry Dangar's station at Myall Creek (a branch of the Gwydir River, near Bingara, NSW), and killed them with knives and guns.
Later they killed another three. The stockmen, who had accused the Aboriginal people of pilfering, were acquitted at a trial on November 15, but faced trial again on November 26 and were found guilty (see court transcript). Seven of the twelve murderers were executed under Governor Sir George Gipps’s authority ...
Ray recanted his confession within three days after his conviction for the April 4, 1968 assassination, claiming that a person with the alias 'Raoul' was involved, as was his brother Johnny, but not himself. He spent the remainder of his life attempting (unsuccessfully) to withdraw his guilty plea, presenting his case for a conspiracy in the book, Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr? (foreword by Rev. Jesse Jackson). It was Ray's contention that he had been a patsy, set up by 'Raoul' and others to purchase a rifle, believing he was actually taking part in a gun-running crime. He also contended that his lawyer, Percy Foreman, had inveigled him into a guilty plea in order to profit from a multi-thousand-dollar deal Foreman had done with a journalist ...
In 1997 Martin Luther King's son Dexter King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a retrial ...
Wilson's Blogmanac, founded on April 26, 2003. Dedicated to the 353 victims of Australia's shame, the SIEVX disaster,
and casualties of poverty and authority worldwide. Public Domain (an explanation is at Wikipedia), Pip Wilson, 2003-2011. But kindly email if you republish. I'm currently launching and promoting the free e-book, 'Microminibliss', for
those interested in my new links directory, Bellingen (Australia), and my Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). (Use Search for that.) So, kindly Google the word 'Microminibliss', and some links will come up, not 25 million in the usual Google manner.
1613 The Globe Theatre in London burnt down as a cannon was fired for a scene in Shakespeare's Henry VIII. 
1869 Emma Goldman (d. 
1959 In perhaps the best documented and most celebrated UFO experience of all time, Australian missionary Father William Booth Gill and the entire staff and clients of an Anglican Mission at Boianai, in the former Australian colony of Papua-Niugini (Papua-New Guinea), saw an aerial disc-shaped object and exchanged waves with four passengers on board. The 'close encounters' carried over into the next two days.
1968 On this day, Dr 
