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323 BCE: Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic (the guy who went around with a lantern looking for an honest man), dies. 1519: Cortes lands at Veracruz, Mexico. (See The Discovery of America and Other Myths [Chronicle Books], if you can find it.) 1894: George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man opens to cheers, with the sole exception of one who boos. Shaw bows to his detractor: "I quite agree with you, sir, but what can two do against so many?" 1910: Mark Twain dies in Redding, Connecticut, upon the reappearance of Halley's Comet, which had last shone the year he was born.
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1707: Henry Fielding is born. 1724: Immanuel Kant is born. 1864: "In God We Trust" is approved as a motto on US coins. In times of war, some folks get religion. Apparently the inspiration for the motto on U.S. coins came from a letter sent from Rev. M. R. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, Pennsylvania, to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Watkinson wrote:
Following Congress's act on this day, the motto will be applied to the one-cent and two-cent coins in 1964. Between 1883 and 1938 its usage will begin to fade; after 1938 all coins will bear the motto. This will be institutionalized by a law passed by Congress and approved by the President in 1955. 1870: V.I. Lenin is born. 1899: Kate Chopin's The Awakening is published.
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1564, 1616: William Shakespeare is born, according to traditional reckoning (his baptism will be recorded in the annals of Holy Trinity Parish in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26). He will die on the same date of April 23, in 1616. Miguel de Cervantes also dies on that date--but not on that day, because England, unlike Spain, has not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar.
1696: William Caslon, typographer, is born.
1849: Marx writes to Engels: "Keep your chin up. Les choses marcheront." 1899: Vladimir Nabokov is born in St. Petersburg.
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1792: "La Marseillaise," is composed by Captain Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle on the occasion of France's declaration of war on Austria. (He performs the song for the first time on the 25th.) Ironically, although De Lisle supported the monarchy, the song would be taken up by the revolutionary movement.
1800: The US Library of Congress is established by Congress. 1849: French troops land at Cività Vecchia to restore Pius IX. 1898: Spain rejects an ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba and declares war on the US. 1915: Mass deportation of Armenians from Turkey begins. 1970: Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane is invited to a White House party by Tricia Nixon. She shows up with Abbie Hoffman, who is on trial for conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hoffman is turned away, and Slick leaves with him.
1970: The People's Republic of China launches a satellite transmitting the song "The East is Red."
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1324: An entry in the Jornal de la Chambre of King Edward II shows a pence a day paid to one "Robyn Hod" for service to the King. Shown is a detail from "Robin and the Tinker at the Blue Boar Inn" by Howard Pyle, from his The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown, in Nottinghamshire (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1883). 1599: Oliver Cromwell is born. 1846: A scouting party of US soldiers under the command of Captain Seth Thornton is attacked at el Rancho de Carricitos, about twenty miles from Fort Texas (later Brownsville). US President Polk takes advantage of this incident to declare war on Mexico. See The US-Mexican War, also April 11. 1898: April 25 is a great day for declaring war. This time war is declared on Spain.
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1564: William Shakespeare is baptized in the parish church at Stratford-On-Avon. 1731: Daniel Defoe dies in London, where he is hiding from creditors. 1865: John Wilkes Booth is shot dead near Bowling Green, Virginia. 1877: Minnesota declares a day of prayer for deliverance from the grasshopper. 1848: Alfred Russell Wallace and Henry Walter Bates sail from Liverpool for the Amazon. Over years of research there they would indepedently of Darwin develop a theory of natural selection, 1986: In Pripet, Russia, the Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes, causing the death of untold numbers of people. How many people have really been killed by Chernobyl? (Mary Mycio in Slate.com)
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1174:
According to Andreas Capellanus's treatise on courtley love, De
Amore (one of Chaucer's sources for the Canterbury Tales), Marie
de Champagne was asked to arbitrate questions of love, notably whether romantic
love is possible between a man and wife. On this date, she sends her reply
in a formal letter: "No."
1.
Marriage is no excuse for not loving. 1882: Ralph Waldo Emerson dies from the effects of a cold caught when he attended the funeral of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 193: Hart Crane jumps overboard, a suicide at 34, while returning by ship from Mexico.
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1770: James Cook "discovers" Botany Bay in Australia. 1789: Fletcher Christian leads a group of mutineers against Captain William Bligh aboard the HMS Bounty. 1945: Around midnight Adolf Hitler weds Eva Braun (in a Berlin bunker). A day or two later (April 30) they commit suicide. 1953: After engineering the overthrow of the democratically elected government, the CIA installs the Shah in Iran, beginning his 25-year dictatorship. 1967: Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the army during the Vietnam War, is stripped of his championship title by the World Boxing Association. On June 20th, a federal court convicts Ali for violating the Selective Service Act, handing him a fine and a five-year prison sentence. In 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously overturns the conviction. Ali regained his title in 1974, defeating George Foreman in Zaire. 1977: The Mothers of the Disappeared hold their first rally at Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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FESTIVAL OF FLORA: The Roman goddess of flowers and gardens, known to the Greeks as Chloris, was a licentious celebration involving public sexual exhibitions. 1429: Jean d'Arc leads Orleans, France, to victory over the English. 1899: Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington is born. 1990: Demolition of the Berlin Wall begins near Brandenburg Gate.
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BELTANE:
Also known as Roodmas, Walpurgisnacht, and May Day, Beltane is one of
the two major sabbats in the wiccan year (the other is halloween, to which
Beltane is the calendrical opposite). The Celtic name Beltane derives
from the Irish Gaelic "Bealtaine" or the Scottish Gaelic "Bealtuinn,"
meaning "Bel-fire," that is, the fire of the Celtic god of light, Bel,
who may be traced to the Middle Eastern god Baal. By Celtic reckoning,
Beltane begins on sundown of the preceding day (so that "May Day" may
be said to occur in April according to the current calendar), because
the Celts figured their days from sundown to sundown. At sundown, Druids
would kindle great Bel-fires on hilltops. The fires were considered to
have healing properties, and witches would jump through the flames to
ensure protection. Beltane celebrations had a strong sexual element, which
is why Puritans made the scandalously (to them at least) suggestive maypoles
(wink wink nudge nudge say no more) illegal in 1644.
As the cross-quarter between the equinox and the solstice, Beltane represents the final defeat of winter. Before departing, however, the witches have one last fling. In Germany, Walpurgisnacht celebrations were similar to those of Halloween, featuring witches, goblins, and pranks. It was popularized internationally by the famous scene in Goethe's Faust in which in which Mephistopheles takes Faust to revel with the witches:
1844: More fire in the woods: Thoreau accidentally burns 300 acres of forest near Concord, Massachusetts, during a fishing trip, causing $2,000 in damages. |
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