What's happening with Pip and the Almanac?

 I'll be gone from the daily Almanac, Facebook, the Blogmanac, and so on, for about a week. But I hope you'll read http://www.www.wilsonsalmanac.com/aboutpip.html and get to know me better. Australian Slang - part of a variety of new pages.

July 13: Feast of the Miracles

Feast of the Miracles, Brussels, Belgium

The 19^th-Century English folklorist, Robert Chambers*, told of a quaint annual celebration in Brussels.

If a Sunday, the fiesta started on July 13, or the first Sunday after the 13^th, and it went for 15 days. On the first day, there was a procession of the Holy Sacrament of the Miracles. This consisted of three consecrated wafers, with a miraculous, albeit anti-Semitic, story behind them.

In 1369, there lived at Enghein, in Hainault, Belgium, a rich Jew named Jonathan, who paid another Jew, a poor man named Jean de Louvain, to steal some wafers from the Church of St Catherine in Brussels, for the purpose of using them in an anti-Christian ceremony. For his sins, Jonathan died soon after the theft, murdered by person or persons unknown. His widow gave the wafers to a group of Jews who used them in a defiling ceremony on Good Friday, 1370 ...

July 12: Festival of the Ludi Apollinares

Festival of the Ludi Apollinares, ancient Rome (Jul 6 - 13)

July 11, 1450 Jack Cade and a peasant rebellion

1450 Jack Cade, leader of a peasant rebellion was killed near Lewes, England, and his head left on a pike on London Bridge (along with those of other leaders of the rebellion).

Jack Cade (possibly named John Mortimer) was the leader of a popular revolt in late medieval Europe in the 1450 Kent rebellion which took place in the time of England's King Henry VI. Cade and his 20,000 comrades had issued The Complaint of the Poor Commons of Kent, a manifesto listing grievances against the government.

Cade appears as a character William Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part 2. It is one of Cade's followers, in discussion with Cade himself, who has the well-known line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers".

Related: Wat Tyler's Rebellion, 1381    Ket's Rebellion, 1549    More

July 9: Our Lady of Chiquinquira; Tesla; Charles Bridge, Prague

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Feast day of Our Lady of Chiquinquira

"In the mid-16th century the Spanish painter Alonso de Narvaez created a portrait of the Virgin of the Rosary. He painted in pigments from the soil, herbs and flowers of the region of modern Colombia, and his canvas was a rough 44" * 49" cloth woven by Indians. The image of Mary is about a meter high, and stands about a half moon ...

1856 Tesla: almost-forgotten genius

Nikola Tesla (d. January 7, 1943), the Serb-American electrical engineer, inventor of the alternating current (AC) motor, was born on this day at Smiljan, Lika, "at the stroke of midnight" with lightning striking during a summer storm. The midwife commented, "He'll be a child of the storm," to which his mother replied, "No, of light."

He was a great genius whose luck was not as great as his abilities, and for many years his name was almost completely lost to public knowledge.

The unit of magnetic flux in the metric system is the 'tesla', as another unit is the 'faraday'. His Tesla Coil supplies the high voltage for the computer monitor you are looking at. The electricity for your computer comes from a Tesla-designed AC generator, is sent through a Tesla-invented transformer, and gets to your house through 3-phase Tesla power. The electric power of Niagara was harnessed through his inventions.

During Tesla's lifetime, the US Patent Office recorded 111 utility patents, one reissued patent, two utility patent corrections and one utility patent disclaimer. US patent number 613,809 described the first device anywhere for wireless remote control. "You do not see there a wireless torpedo," he angrily corrected a newspaper reporter, "you see there the first of a race of robots, mechanical men which will do the laborious work of the human race."

"When wireless is fully applied the earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts," Tesla told Morgan.

Tesla's plan for an international wireless communications system was funded for a time by the squillionaire, JP Morgan, but Morgan prematurely lost faith in the inventor and pulled the plug on the money bin – perhaps one of the worst financial decisions of the 20^th century. Tesla had to abandon his ambitious project forever. The newspapers called it, "Tesla's million dollar folly." Humiliated and defeated, Tesla suffered a nervous breakdown.
By 1890 Nikola Tesla was generating fields that would light up, without any wires, phosphorescent tubes across his laboratory. Yet for all this, his name was forgotten for decades, until recently when at long last the public has come to know of one of history's great geniuses.
The brilliant inventor who had been so far ahead of his time died penniless on January 7, 1943 in New York City at the age of 86. Nikola Tesla was living in the dilapidated Hotel New Yorker in a room that he shared with a flock of pigeons, which he considered his only friends (he had been friends with Mark Twain, now long dead). The great inventor's ashes are now stored in a golden sphere at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
It has been suggested that Tesla might have been responsible for the Tunguska Event of June 30, 1908 (more).

"Even today, many texts still credit Marconi with the invention of radio, despite the Supreme Court decision which overruled the Marconi patent, awarding it to Tesla. In many parts of this country, people still refer to the electric utility as the 'Edison Company', even though they use the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating current system, NOT Edison's direct current. At the Niagra Falls power generating station, a small statue of Tesla is purposely left unilluminated at night. It has been said that Tesla is the Forgotten Father of Technology. Tesla himself once commented '... The present is theirs. (skeptics of the day) The future, for which I really worked, is mine.'"    Source

Serbian poetry

"Another anecdote about the inventor is told by the Reverend Stijacic. On his first trip to America as a young writer for the Serbian Federation, Stijacic had been surprised to find in the Chicago Public Library, a book of poems, the author of which was the popular Serbian poet, Zmaj-Jovan. The translator was Nikola Tesla. Later, when Stijacic was taken by Dr. Rado to meet the inventor in his offices on the twentieth floor of the Metropolitan Tower, he said, 'Mr. Tesla, I did not know that you were interested in poetry.'
"A look of wry amusement shone in the inventor's eyes. 'There are many of us Serbs who sing,' he said, 'but there is nobody to listen to us.'"
Adopted from "Tesla: man out of time", by Margaret Cheney, 1981   Source

A bronze statue of Nikola Tesla at Niagara Falls was produced some time in the mid 70's to honor Tesla and the work he did for Westinghouse in building the turbines which converted the power of the Falls into electricity. The original statue is in front of the Electrical Engineering building of the University of Belgrade in Belgrade, Serbia.  

"Cyberspace as described by William Gibson in Neuromancer  (1984) was prefigured in Nikola Tesla's 1901 plan for a world system of totally interconnected, planetary communications. He believed he could engineer a globe unified by the universal regulation of time and fully traversed by flows of language, images, and money-all reduced to an undifferentiated flux of electrical energy."
Source

Mark Twain at the lab of his long-time friend, Nikola Tesla

 

1357 5:31 am, Saturday: Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor assisted laying the foundation stone of Charles Bridge in Prague.

How do we know the precise time? Because the palindromic number 135797531, carved on the Old Town bridge tower, was chosen by the royal astrologers and numerologists as the best time for starting the bridge construction.

 

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Charles Bridge, Prague, Czechoslovakia

July 8: Vitulatio, Day of Joy

Vitulatio, Day of Joy, Roman Empire (Jul 8 - 9)

Today's festival honoured Vitula, the personified goddess of joy, exaltation, mirth and victory. It is believed this day celebrates the victory of the Romans over the Etruscans, the calamities preceding the Populifugia ('Flight of the People', July 5). 

Chanting and singing for joy and the fruits of the Earth were offered by the pontifices (priests) to the goddess, who might be a tutelary Goddess of life (vita). However, Macrobius refers also to the calf (vitula) which Virgil (October 15, 70 - 19 BCE) says were to be offered "pro frugibus" (for the fruits). Sacrifices were offered to Jupiter as well, and games were held.

It is likely that the words 'violin' and 'fiddle' derive from the Latin vitularia, 'celebrate joyfully', which in turn derives from the name and character of the goddess. Prehistoric West and North German borrowed it as 'fithulon', and thus the German word 'fiedel', the Dutch 'vedel', and the English 'fiddle'. Roman festivals and notable days in the Book of Days    Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days

July 7: Nonae Caprotinae

Nonae Caprotinae (the Caprotine Nones, or Caprotinia), Latium, Roman Empire (Jul 7- 8)
This was the Fig Festival, and Festival of Handmaids – the maids' day off. Wild fig trees (caprificus) were venerated today, with feasting beneath them in honour of Caprotina, an aspect of Juno (warrior goddess), to whom they made offerings. Maids had a sham fight with stones and abused each other. The festival might have earlier been a fertility rite. The next day a thanksgiving, celebrated by the pontifices, or priests

July 6, 1957: Lennon and McCartney first met

1957 John Lennon and Paul McCartney (The Beatles) first met.

A tape recording exists of the Quarry Men playing that same gig:
"'It's a unique slice of history'. That's how EMI's David Richards described a small reel-to-reel tape put up for auction at Sotheby's on September 15 1994 (Reuters, Sept 15 '94). On the tape is the unmistakeable voice of John Lennon, singing Elvis Presley's 'Baby, Let's Play House' and the British skiffle song 'Puttin' On The Style.' ... (more on July 6 at the Almanac)

Beatles in the news ... (Javascript on page)

Childhood recollections of John Lennon, by David Ahston, who was there on that day

July 5: Tynwald Day

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Tynwald Day, Isle of Man

Today they will be partying off the coast of Ireland … or is it off the coast of England … or of Scotland? In the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland lies the Isle of Man, where men are Manx and proud of it (and so are the women). Man (or Mann) is famous for Manx cats and Grand Prix motor sports, and it is a small island with a big history.

The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, but a Crown Dependency. Queen Elizabeth II is acknowledged as Lord of Mann, and in 1979 she presided over the millennial celebrations of the Tynwald, the Manx parliament, which is commemorated each year on July 5.

The High Court of Tynwald, as the parliament is known, is of Norse (Viking) origin and at over 1,000 years old is thus the oldest parliament in the world to enjoy an unbroken existence. (Iceland's Althing was founded earlier but its existence was interrupted.) Tynwald has two branches, the Legislative Council and the House of Keys.

The Legislative Council is the upper branch of Tynwald and its eleven members are either indirectly elected or sit ex officio. The principal function of the Council is the consideration of legislation. The House of Keys is the lower, directly elected branch of Tynwald and originally had 32 members but since about 1156 it has seated a constant membership of 24 'Keys' with a varying size and distribution of constituencies.

The Chronicles of the Kings of Mann and the Isles (held by the British Library despite the requests of the Manx people for their return) tell us that Godred Crovan (who helped Harold invade Britain in 1066) was successful in 1079, on his third attempt, in his invasion of the Isle of Man, and ruled it for 16 years. It is believed that the institution of Tynwald was finally and permanently established during his reign ...

Read on at the Tynwald Day page in the Scriptorium

National symbol: the 3-in-1
The national flag of Man is a plain red field with the triskel (triskell, triskelion or trinacria) emblem at its centre. This symbol dates back to the 13^th Century and is believed to be connected with Sicily, where a similar image was used during the Norman period. In Emblemes et symboles des Bretons et des Celtes (Coop Breizh, 1998), Divy Kervella suggests the triskell is a pagan Celtic symbol of triplicity in unity, and probably originally a solar symbol. Other Celtic examples of the three-in-one include the shamrock; the staff of the Celtic pantheon: Lugh, Daghda (Taran) and Ogme; the triune goddess of three aspects: daughter, wife, and mother; and the three dynamic elements: water, air, and fire.

The triskell is similar to the hevoud, another Celtic symbol, and the Basque lauburu, and might even precede Celtic origins (for instance on the cairn of Bru na Boinne in Ireland) ...
Read on at the Tynwald Day page in the Scriptorium