*Ø* Blogmanac February 29 | Leap Year Day
Sadie Hawkins Day is actually in November
There is a tradition that women may make a proposal of marriage to men only on February 29; this is a tightening of an older tradition that such proposals may only occur on leap years. In 1288 the Scottish parliament legislated that any woman could propose in Leap Year. The man may, of course, refuse but, by tradition, he should soften the blow by providing a kiss, one pound currency and a pair of gloves (some later sources say a silk gown). This law was adopted in France, Switzerland and Italy and the tradition was carried to America.
In Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner, a similar custom called ‘Sadie Hawkins Day’ was commemorated on or around November 9 each year. On Sadie Hawkins Day, in the hillbilly town of Dogpatch, a race was held for spinsters, in pursuit of all the local bachelors who must marry if caught. 'Sadie Hawkin's Day' functions are still held in some places, and by association with the older tradition, sometimes now occur on or around February 29.
I have no idea what the custom is if either the spinster or bachelor should happen to be bissextile.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Sadie Hawkins Day is actually in November There is a tradition that women may make a proposal of marriage to men only on February 29; this is a tightening of an older tradition that such proposals may only occur on leap years. In 1288 the Scottish parliament legislated that any woman could propose in Leap Year. The man may, of course, refuse but, by tradition, he should soften the blow by providing a kiss, one pound currency and a pair of gloves (some later sources say a silk gown). This law was adopted in France, Switzerland and Italy and the tradition was carried to America.
In Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner, a similar custom called ‘Sadie Hawkins Day’ was commemorated on or around November 9 each year. On Sadie Hawkins Day, in the hillbilly town of Dogpatch, a race was held for spinsters, in pursuit of all the local bachelors who must marry if caught. 'Sadie Hawkin's Day' functions are still held in some places, and by association with the older tradition, sometimes now occur on or around February 29.
I have no idea what the custom is if either the spinster or bachelor should happen to be bissextile.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
1874 Arthur Orton, the false claimant to the Tichborne fortune, was found guilty of perjury. 
"The British or US intelligence services monitored former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix's mobile phone whenever he was in Iraq, sources have told the ABC.
"United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan says any attempts to spy on his office would be illegal and should cease immediately ...
"LONDON (Reuters) - Former government minister Clare Short said on Thursday that Britain conducted spying operations on United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the run-up to last year's war on Iraq. 
La Boissière d'Ans, five hours south of Paris. The American flag billows on my monitor, as the fleeting words flash by: "Dow Jones … Cocaine … Noam Chomsky … Botox … Guantanamo." Even here in deepest France, tucked away in the green hills and hollows of historic Dordogne, I cannot escape "les mots de l'Amérique," the American words and names that the prestigious Le Monde thinks its online readers need to know.
Unknown to journalists, in the last two days before the cease-fire, American armoured bulldozers were ruthlessly deployed, mostly at night, burying Iraqis alive in their trenches, including the wounded. Six months later New York Newsday disclosed that three brigades of the 1st Mechanised Infantry Division – ‘The Big Red One’ – used snow plows mounted on tanks and combat earth movers to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers – some alive – in more than 70 miles of trenches.
"According to Jo, no one knows if the art of incising living human bones was practised in Australia before she had the first, when her femur was ‘scrimmed’"
"GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun demanded an explanation today after the case against her of disclosing information and breaking the Official Secrets Act collapsed after the prosecution offered no evidence ... 
As a consequence, American states, towns and cities, farms, forests and city blocks, are based on this archaic measurement and you can see it from a plane, squares stretching as far as the eye can see, all based on the chain, a measurement that, like all measurements so far invented, pays no heed to trifles such as bioregion, watercourse, hill or dale. So, too, as already mentioned, is the humble cricket pitch, and, in Australia, the distance between telegraph poles (which is what Australians still call power poles although no one has used a telegraph since Ned Kelly was in short pants, or dingo mating season, 1902, I can't remember which)..jpg)
"For those still puzzling over why the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, two key players offered important, but curiously unnoticed, clues this week. 
"Michael Shrimpton, a British National Security Lawyer with numerous contacts in intelligence on both sides of the Atlantic, appeared on the US Alex Jones Radio Show yesterday evening (morning, US time), and asserted that Dr David Kelly, who was found 'dead in the woods' last July, did not commit suicide as claimed in the Hutton Report, but was taken out by a team of assassins brought in from abroad ...
1996 Oscar winner Dr Haing S Ngor (b. March 22, 1950) (The Killing Fields, 1984) was murdered in Los Angeles, USA. 
"As civil war encroaches, civil society implodes and civil political discourse evaporates, one of the few things all Haitians can agree on is their pride in Toussaint L'Ouverture, who lead the slave rebellion in Haiti that established the world's first black republic ...
Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day)
I can't help but love this bloke. 
The flying magistrate has an inspiring and remarkable personal story, from a boyhood of privation, working in a coalmine under the Nazis, to service as a US paratrooper (he found himself in the USA and, with little English language, thought he was signing up to be a pilot when they put a parachute on his back). A successful career as a stockbroker in Australia didn't satisfy, so he studied law at night, ended up a magistrate, and answered an ad for a job in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions, which constitute a vast, wild and remote bit about the size of Texas, in the north-west of the Australian continent. A big office.
"Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.. 
No need for readers to support the Almanac by 
From the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Collop Monday, or Shrove Monday (
1290s BCE Egypt: The coronation of Ramses II, on whose face the sun's rays fall each year in Abu Simbel temple. 
Reporter: Hamish Fitzsimmons
Language Martyrs' Day, Bangladesh 
Move over, God, it's time to make room for a real power
1847 The first rescue party reached the Donner Party. 
Dublin (Reuters) - "An elderly Irishwoman shared a room with her sister's corpse for up to a year and sometimes slept with it in the same bed, newspapers reported Tuesday.
"Who supplied the faulty intelligence I asked for?"
“ … due reverence for the divine, verecundia, spoken of as daughter of Ormazd and regarded as having her abode upon the earth.” Wikipedia 
1934 Barry Humphries, Australian comedian and poet, best known for his characters, Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson.
Dame Edna Everage housewife, megastar, investigative journalist, social anthropologist, children's book illustrator, diseuse, chanteuse, swami, monstre sacré, polymath, adviser to British royalty, grief counsellor, spin doctor and icon is arguably the most popular and gifted woman in the world today ...
3102 BCE It is a Hindu belief that the Kali Yuga, or Evil Age, began on this day, which was established by the Indian astronomer Aryabhata of Kusumpara. It is remarkable that Aryabhata lived in the 6th century CE concurrently with the Roman Dionysius (or, Dennis) Exiguus, the creator of the calendar we use today in the West. Kali Yuga is considered the last and most sinful of the four ages of man and is supposed to continue for 432,000 years. Then the world is supposed be destroyed by the goddess Kali. The cycle then begins again with Krita Yuga, the Golden Age of Truth.
1748 Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher who pioneered utilitarianism and extolled the philosophical tenet of “the greatest good to the greatest number” 
""Australians are likely to face legal action from multinational media companies according to from [sic] the intellectual property clauses of the recently announced US-Australia free trade agreement, Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) said today. 
This year for Valentine's Day, why not dump the sentimental cards and the dozen red roses, and do something really traditional, something that harks back to the origins of this ancient commemoration?
Yes, the modern practice of celebrating Valentine's Day most likely has its roots in the ancient Roman celebration of the Lupercalia, when all these weird customs were indulged in. The ceremonies started in the cave where it was said Romulus and Remus, the legendary twin founders of Rome, were suckled by a she-wolf. Scholars are uncertain, but it could be from the Latin word for wolf, lupus, that the festival got its name ...
"Last Sunday, between commercials selling erection-enhancing medication, beer, horse farts and other glories of capitalism, a tit was shown. Between Vaseline-smeared, sparkling cheerleaders, orgies of celebrity and a game brutally violent, sadomasochistic and testosterone-laden, a bare black breast managed to sneak out from a bustier. And it is the scandal of January.
"'Ulysses could have done with a good editor'. A neat put-down, Mr Doyle, but less memorable than that of Mrs Joyce, the author's (very cut-him-down-to-size) wife: 'I guess the man's a genius, but what a 'dirty' mind he has, hasn't he?'
London (Reuters) -- "The Three Wise Men who followed the star to Bethlehem bearing gifts for the baby Jesus may not have been all that wise -- or even men. The traditional infant Nativity play scene could be in for a drastic rewrite after the Church of England indulged in some academic gender-swapping over the three Magi at its General Synod in London this week. 
1890 Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (d. 1960), Russian poet whose novel Doctor Zhivago helped win him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958 but aroused so much opposition in the Soviet Union that he declined the honour. He died on May 30, 1960, quite possibly starved to death because of having been banned by the state from working.
New research on the 
Prešeren Day, is the Republic of Slovenia’s national cultural holiday that commemorates the death of the national poet, France Prešeren. Today is a public holiday, and there will be plays, poetry recitations and other commemorative cultural events.
"Ten thousand years ago years ago Stone Age people painted half-human/half-animal monsters on cave walls. Flash forward 100 centuries and filmmakers continue to scare the pants off viewers with images of gore and ghouls. But in the last five years the general audience's appetite for terror has increased exponentially. 
In what the Times describes as a 'complete u-turn', the UK prime minister has caved in and agreed to hold an inquiry into why no WMDs have been found in Iraq. It seems he was taken aback by the speed with which George Bush acceded to demands for a similar inquiry.
1967 Ronald Ryan was executed at Pentridge Prison, Victoria, Australia and his body buried in an unmarked grave. The killing of Ryan caused such outrage in the land that no one has been killed by Australian lawyers or politicians since, not that we know of, anyway.
Imbolc is the ancient pagan fire festival between Yule (later, Christmas) and the vernal (spring) equinox. That is, midway between December 22 and March 22. It is one of the four midway or cross-quarter festivals, or Greater Sabbats: Imbolc, Beltane/May Day, Lammas, Samhain/Halloween, each one halfway between an equinox and a solstice. The four Lesser Sabbats consist of the two solstices (Yule and Litha) and the two Equinoxes (Ostara and Mabon). Thus there are eight sabbats, or stations of the Wheel of the Year.
1709 Alexander Selkirk, the model for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, was rescued by the ship Duke, after four years on a deserted island four hundred miles west of Valparaiso, Chile, by Captain Woodes Rogers and William Dampier (1652-1715), the pirate and early explorer of Australia. 
Operator: "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut. May I have your national ID number?"
