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What an appropriate juxtaposition of pictures, one the latest in Obama iconic art now on sale from Team Obama, another showing the impact of Obama policies as wounded Americans were dragged to their deaths in Benghazi . . .
From Gateway Pundit, via Instapundit
The Forgotten Man, a painting by artist Jon McNaughton, shows Obama treading on the Constitution, surrounded by all other Presidents who are either cheering him on (FDR, Clinton, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson) or reacting in horror (Madison, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Reagan, Lincoln). Nearby sits a man representing the people in America.
I hadn't seen this before today. It was released in 2010 and resurfaced recently on MSNBC. Apparently, the left, for some reason unbeknownst to me, considers this "controversial." Looks pretty accurate to me.
This from McNaughton explains the background of his painting.
. . . Christmas is an epiphany – the appearing of God and of his great light in a child that is born for us. Born in a stable in Bethlehem, not in the palaces of kings. In 1223, when Saint Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas in Greccio with an ox and an ass and a manger full of hay, a new dimension of the mystery of Christmas came to light. Saint Francis of Assisi called Christmas “the feast of feasts” – above all other feasts – and he celebrated it with “unutterable devotion” (2 Celano 199; Fonti Francescane, 787). He kissed images of the Christ-child with great devotion and he stammered tender words such as children say, so Thomas of Celano tells us (ibid.).
For the early Church, the feast of feasts was Easter: in the Resurrection Christ had flung open the doors of death and in so doing had radically changed the world: he had made a place for man in God himself. Now, Francis neither changed nor intended to change this objective order of precedence among the feasts, the inner structure of the faith centered on the Paschal Mystery. And yet through him and the character of his faith, something new took place: Francis discovered Jesus’ humanity in an entirely new depth. This human existence of God became most visible to him at the moment when God’s Son, born of the Virgin Mary, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.
The Resurrection presupposes the Incarnation. For God’s Son to take the form of a child, a truly human child, made a profound impression on the heart of the Saint of Assisi, transforming faith into love. “The kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed” – this phrase of Saint Paul now acquired an entirely new depth. In the child born in the stable at Bethlehem, we can as it were touch and caress God. And so the liturgical year acquired a second focus in a feast that is above all a feast of the heart.
. . . Francis loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this childish estate that God’s humility shone forth. God became poor. His Son was born in the poverty of the stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself dependent, in need of human love, he put himself in the position of asking for human love – our love. Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.
Francis arranged for Mass to be celebrated on the manger that stood between the ox and the ass (cf. 1 Celano 85; Fonti 469). Later, an altar was built over this manger, so that where animals had once fed on hay, men could now receive the flesh of the spotless lamb Jesus Christ, for the salvation of soul and body, as Thomas of Celano tells us (cf. 1 Celano 87; Fonti 471). Francis himself, as a deacon, had sung the Christmas Gospel on the holy night in Greccio with resounding voice. Through the friars’ radiant Christmas singing, the whole celebration seemed to be a great outburst of joy (1 Celano 85.86; Fonti 469, 470). It was the encounter with God’s humility that caused this joy – his goodness creates the true feast.
Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half metres has remained. The intention was probably to provide the church with better protection from attack, but above all to prevent people from entering God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’ birth has to bend down. It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognizing God’s closeness. We must follow the interior path of Saint Francis – the path leading to that ultimate outward and inward simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions – the God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby. In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart. And let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they – and we – may be touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the birth of his Son in a stable. Amen.
Man's fascination with the stars began with the dawn of our species - and has been with us ever since.
The Astronomer, Vermeer, 1668
As Henry Van Dyke makes clear in the great poem below, our fascination has been for reasons religious, artistic and practical.
Stars and the Soul
by Henry Van Dyke
To Charles A. Young, Astronomer
"Two things," the wise man said, "fill me with awe:
The starry heavens and the moral law."
Nay, add another wonder to thy roll, --
The living marvel of the human soul!
Born in the dust and cradled in the dark,
It feels the fire of an immortal spark,
And learns to read, with patient, searching eyes,
The splendid secret of the unconscious skies.
For God thought Light before He spoke the word;
The darkness understood not, though it heard:
But man looks up to where the planets swim,
And thinks God's thoughts of glory after Him.
What knows the star that guides the sailor's way,
Or lights the lover's bower with liquid ray,
Of toil and passion, danger and distress,
Brave hope, true love, and utter faithfulness?
But human hearts that suffer good and ill,
And hold to virtue with a loyal will,
Adorn the law that rules our mortal strife
With star-surpassing victories of life.
So take our thanks, dear reader of the skies,
Devout astronomer, most humbly wise,
For lessons brighter than the stars can give,
And inward light that helps us all to live.
The world has brought the laurel-leaves to crown
The star-discoverer's name with high renown;
Accept the flower of love we lay with these
For influence sweeter than the Pleiades!
Perhaps the greatest work of pre-history, Stonehenge, was a carefully crafted observatory designed to mark the solstice. It was built of supreme effort by a people who had not yet mastered the written word.
And the night sky, in its beauty, has given given birth to countless paens in art and literature.
Starry Night, van Gogh, 1889
Stars
by Emily Bronte
Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored our Earth to joy,
Have you departed, every one,
And left a desert sky?
All through the night, your glorious eyes
Were gazing down in mine,
And, with a full heart's thankful sighs,
I blessed that watch divine.
I was at peace, and drank your beams
As they were life to me;
And revelled in my changeful dreams,
Like petrel on the sea.
Thought followed thought, star followed star
Through boundless regions on;
While one sweet influence, near and far,
Thrilled through, and proved us one!
Why did the morning dawn to break
So great, so pure a spell;
And scorch with fire the tranquil cheek,
Where your cool radiance fell?
Blood-red, he rose, and arrow-straight,
His fierce beams struck my brow;
The soul of nature sprang, elate,
But mine sank sad and low.
My lids closed down, yet through their veil
I saw him, blazinig, still,
And steep in gold the misty dale,
And flash upon the hill.
I turned me to the pillow, then,
To call back night, and see
Your words of solemn light, again,
Throb with my heart, and me!
It would not do - the pillow glowed,
And glowed both roof and floor;
And birds sang loudly in the wood,
And fresh winds shook the door;
The curtains waved, the wakened flies
Were murmuring round my room,
Imprisoned there, till I should rise,
And give them leave to roam.
O stars, and dreams, and gentle night;
O night and stars, return!
And hide me from the hostile light
That does not warm, but burn;
That drains the blood of suffering men;
Drinks tears, instead of dew;
Let me sleep through his blinding reign,
And only wake with you!
The stars point towards the future of humanity. Is there anyone that doubts, a millenium from now, that we will have broken the bonds of our planet, our solar system, and perhaps even our universe.
Puppy Love, Norman Rockwell, 1926
Norman Rockwell is the most iconic of American painters. With a carreer spanning almost six decades and including over 4,000 original works, he was also one of the most prolific. He explained his philosophy of art thusly: "My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a story teller." And that he was, with every one of his works seeming to capture a little piece of the best of life in America. Thus it is not surprising that his work was utterly panned by much of the left wing art world. But as for the rest of us, Rockwell was and is a national treasure. The above painting, Puppy Love, debuted as the cover of a 1926 edition of the Saturday Evening Post.
As to this week's poetry, in line with Rockwell's theme, there is this great poem from Yeats
He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Yeats is the greatest of 20th century Irish poets. Like Rockwell, incredibly prolific over a period of decades, Yeat's work was much more varied, ranging from romantic poetry in his early years to striking dark, occult imagery in his latter, post WWI works.
Art: Sappho
Auguste Charles Mengin
Auguste Mengin, born in Paris in 1833, was not an overly prolific painter. His most famous work, Sappho, today hangs in the Manchester Art Gallery.
Sappho, one of the most famous women of antiquity, was born on the Isle of Lesbos in about 630 B.C.:
[Sappho is] one of the great Greek lyrists and few known female poets of the ancient world . . . She was an aristocrat who married a prosperous merchant, and she had a daughter named Cleis. Her wealth afforded her with the opportunity to live her life as she chose, and she chose to spend it studying the arts on the isle of Lesbos.
In the seventh century BC, Lesbos was a cultural center. Sappho spent most her time on the island, though she also traveled widely throughout Greece. She was exiled for a time because of political activities in her family, and she spent this time in Sicily. By this time she was known as a poet, and the residents of Syracuse were so honored by her visit that they erected a statue to her.
Sappho was called a lyrist because, as was the custom of the time, she wrote her poems to be performed with the accompaniment of a lyre. Sappho composed her own music and refined the prevailing lyric meter to a point that it is now known as sapphic meter. She innovated lyric poetry both in technique and style, becoming part of a new wave of Greek lyrists who moved from writing poetry from the point of view of gods and muses to the personal vantage point of the individual. She was one of the first poets to write from the first person, describing love and loss as it affected her personally.
Her style was sensual and melodic; primarily songs of love, yearning, and reflection. Most commonly the target of her affections was female, often one of the many women sent to her for education in the arts. She nurtured these women, wrote poems of love and adoration to them, and when they eventually left the island to be married, she composed their wedding songs. That Sappho's poetry was not condemned in her time for its homoerotic content (though it was disparaged by scholars in later centuries) suggests that perhaps love between women was not persecuted then as it has been in more recent times. Especially in the last century, Sappho has become so synonymous with woman-love that two of the most popular words to describe female homosexuality--lesbian and sapphic have derived from her.
How well was Sappho honored in ancient times? Plato elevated her from the status of great lyric poet to one of the muses. Upon hearing one of her songs, Solon, an Athenian ruler, lawyer, and a poet himself, asked that he be taught the song "Because I want to learn it and die."
In more modern times, many poets have been inspired by her works. Michael Field, Pierre Louys, Renée Vivien, Marie-Madeleine, Amy Lowell, and H.D. all cited Sappho as a strong influence on their work.
Given the fame that her work has enjoyed, it is somewhat surprising to learn that only one of Sappho's poems is available in its entirety--all of the rest exist as fragments of her original work. At one time, there were perhaps nine complete volumes of her poetry, but over the centuries, from neglect, natural disasters, and possibly some censorship by close-minded scholars, her work was lost. Late in the 19th century, however, manuscripts dating back to the eighth century AD were discovered in the Nile Valley, and some of these manuscripts proved to contained Sappho's work. Excavations that followed in ancient Egyptian refuse heaps unearthed a quantity of papyruses from the first century BC to the 10th century AD. Here, strips of papyrus--some containing her poetry--were found in number. These strips had been used to wrap mummies, stuff sacred animals, and wrap coffins. The work to piece these together and identify them has continued into the twentieth century. . . .
Below is one of the snippets of Sappho's prose that has come down to us.
Please
Please
Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight,
You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired.
Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess,
Whom I now beseech
Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish to see.
- Sappho
Eroticism teases and promises, hinting at what is to come. It is, in the painting below, a beautiful woman half clad, or in the poems below, hinting at passionate sex. In the words of one critic, "the very word "erotic" implies superior value, fine art, an aesthetic which elevates the mind and incidentally stimulates the body."
"Kora" by Yuki Wang
Yuki Wang is my one of my favorite contemporary artists. He trained in China and is today living in New York. You can find his biography and a gallery of his work here. "Kora" is by far his most alluring nude.
Two pieces of poetry that speak of passionate, physical love come from surprising sources. The first is a poem by Emily Dickinson, one of the most famous and prolific of 19th century American poets - though only a handful of her poems were published during her lifetime. She was famously introverted and, later in life, reclusive to the point of agorophobia, but at least one of her poems showed a steamy side:
Wild Nights
Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile--the Winds--
To a Heart in port--
Done with the Compass--
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor--Tonight--
In Thee!
by Emily Dickenson
The second piece for today is one of the great works of erotic literature of the ancient world. It comes from . . . the Bible. It is the Song of Songs, a poetic work of two people in love, from courtship through marriage and consumation. This from Chapter 7:
He:
How beautiful your sandaled feet,
O prince’s daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of an artist’s hands.
Your navel is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat
encircled by lilies.
Your breasts are like two fawns,
like twin fawns of a gazelle. . . .
How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
my love, with your delights!
Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
I said, “I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit.”
May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,
and your mouth like the best wine.
She
May the wine go straight to my beloved,
flowing gently over lips and teeth.
I belong to my beloved,
and his desire is for me.
Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside,
let us spend the night in the villages.
Let us go early to the vineyards
to see if the vines have budded,
if their blossoms have opened,
and if the pomegranates are in bloom—
there I will give you my love.
The mandrakes send out their fragrance,
and at our door is every delicacy,
both new and old,
that I have stored up for you, my beloved.
Note that the Song of Songs is actually more graphic than modern translations indicate. In translating this from ancient Hebrew, most modern bibles have opted to use the alternative literal translation of certain terms, in particular the term "navel," as used in the poem refers to the woman's vagina.
Bloggers Note: As an alternative to all current events, all the time, I am going to begin doing a series of posts on Saturdays aimed at the arts and philosophy. I do hope you find them enjoyable. Most of the posts will be thematic, and since Valentine's Day falls in February, the themes for the month will be romance, courtship, and eroticism. And with that preamble, here is the inaugural Saturday post:
________________________________________
Art: Lovers In A Wood
1873, John Grimshaw
Grimshaw, who lived in 19th century Britain, is one of the few landscape artists whose paintings invariably give the ambiance of romance. You can find much of his work here.
________________________________________
Good romance poems distill passion and desire into a few well chosen words. Part of their allure, for me at least, is that they also have practical value. If you can memorize the lines from some good romantic poetry and then trot them out at just the right moment, your chance of bedding down the object of your desire increases significantly. The number of good romantic poems are near infinite. Two of my favorites are from the medieval Italian poet, Dante Alligheri - a poet more associated with his guide map to hell than to the bedroom - and from Lord Byron, one of the great poets of the Romantic era:
From La Vita Nuova
In that book which is
My memory . . .
On the first page
That is the chapter when
I first met you
Appear the words . . .
Here begins a new life
- Dante, 1293
She walks in beauty
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
- Lord Byron
Art: Le Guepier, William Bouguereau
451 – This day began with "the whole fate of western civilization hanging in the balance." Attila the Hun threatened to overrun Rome and establish a pagan empire in the West. He was met on the field of battle by a Christian army composed of Visigoths under Theodoric I and Romans led by Flavius Aetius. In the end, they defeated Attilla at the Battle of Chalons.
1214 – In a critical development during the medieval period, the University of Oxford received its charter from King Edward III, bcoming the first, and today, the oldest university in the English speaking world. By 1209, it boasted over 3,000 students.
1631 – Muslim pirates sack the Irish village of Baltimore, carrying off 108 Christian men, women and children as slaves. Some are made galley slaves, others sex slaves in harems, with only two ever making it back to Ireland.
1756 – Indian rebels who captured a British garrison then imprisoned the men in what became infamously known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. It was actually the guard room in the old Fort William, Calcutta, India. Conditions were so cramped and the heat so great that within a day, of the 146 imprisoned there, 123 men died.
1782 – The U.S. Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States. Obama later adopted it during his campaign.
1789 – Deputies of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, it being one of the final events leading to the French Revolution.
1791 – King Louis XVI of France and his immediate family begin the Flight to Varennes disguised as the servants of a Russian baroness during The French Revolution. This attempt at escape was ultimately unsuccessful. They were captured, returned to Paris under guard, and would loose their heads with two years.
1819 – The SS Savannah arrives at Liverpool, UK. She is the first steam-propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic, although most of the journey was made under sail.
1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne. She would rule Britain for over 67 years, overseeing the growth of Britain into the superpower of the era.
1840 – Samuel Morse received a patent for the telegraph.
1877 – Alexander Graham Bell installed the world's first commercial telephone service in Canada.
1893 – Lizzie Borden, accused of axe murdering her family, was acquitted by a Massachusetts court. The crime of which she was accused has never been solded.
1944 – The Japanese air and naval forces, decimated at Guadalcanal and replaced by inexperienced troops, suffered an overwhelming defeat at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, also known as the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”.
1963 – The "red telephone" is established between the Soviet Union and the United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1991 – Following the reunification with East Germany, the German parliament decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.
Births
236 BC – Scipio Africanus, the finest Roman general of his era. He would finally defeat Rome's mortal enemy, Hannibal at the battle of Zama, bringing an end to the Second Punic War.
1005 – Ali az-Zahir, Seventh Caliph of the Egyptian Fatimid dynasty. He would try to repair some of the damage done to relations with Christians by his predecesor who had destroyed Christianity's holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But it was too little, too late, and Pope Urban II would eventually call for the first Crusade to liberate Jerusalem.
1924 – Audie Murphy, American actor and war hero. He lied about his age and enlisted in the Army in 1942 at the age of 16. In 27 months of combat action, Murphy became one of the most highly decorated United States soldiers of World War II. He received the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military's highest award for valor, along with 32 additional U.S. and foreign medals and citations.
1950 – Nouri Al-Maliki, the current Prime Minister of Iraq. He was origninally challenged as weak and as a tool of Iran, not given any chance of succeeding in leading Iraq to peace and stability. But when the "surge" began, Maliki threw his entire weight behind it, turning on Iranian interests. He has already earned a place in Iraqi history, and that place will be high in the pantheon indeed if he is able to finally unify Iraq and strengthen its democracy.
Deaths
451 – Theodorid, King of the Visigoths, died defending Western Civilization against the mortal threat of Attilla the Hun.
Holidays and observances
Today is the feast day for the tenth century Saint, Adalbert of Magdeburg. He was the first Archbishop of Magdeburg from 968 and a successful missionary to the Slavic peoples to the east of Germany.
Art: The Death Of General Warren At The Battle of Bunker Hill, John Trumbull
1462 – Vlad Drăcula, also known as Vlad the Impaler, was the Wallachian Prince that served as the model for author Bram Stoker's famous character, Dracula. Vlad lived in an era when his country was under constant threat from the expanding Ottoman Turks. In 1462, Sultan Mehmed II, the recent conqueror of Constantinople, raised an army of 90,000 soldiers and marched on Wallachia. Vlad, unable to stop the advancing army with his much smaller force, began a guerrilla campaign. The most famous of his engagements, in what became known as "The Night Attack," came on the night of 16-17 June when, dressed as Ottomans, his forces infiltrated the camp of Mehmed in an attempt to assassinate the Sultan. They did not succeed, but Mehmed would later withdraw from Wallachia when, according to legend, he came upon the capitol Târgovişte and there saw a forest of corpses - some 20,000 people Vlad had impaled and then left to a slow and gruesome death. Many of the victims were Turkish prisoners of war Vlad had previously captured during the Turkish invasion. The total Turkish casualty toll in this battle reached over 40,000.
1497 – The people of Cornwall rose in revolt of taxes levied by King Henry VII to fund his Scottish Wars. Henry marched on the rebels, engaging them at the Battle of Deptford Bridge on his "lucky day," June 17. Poorly led and lacking in cavalry, the rebels fought a brave but losing battle. The leaders were sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. Henry had their heads displayed on pikes at London Bridge.
1579 – Sir Francis Drake landed in present day California and claimed the land for England, calling it Nova Albion. His territorial claims would became important during the negotiations that ended the Mexican-American War between the United States and Mexico.
1631 – Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, would spend the next 20 years building her tomb, the Taj Mahal.
1775 – Battle of Bunker Hill was one of the early battles of the Revolutionary War. The battle actually took place on Breeds Hill, occupied by colonials on the night of 16 June as part of the siege of Boston. Given the famous order "don't fire til you see the whites of their eyes," the colonials put up a determined defense. The British made three charges on the hill before capturing it when the defenders ran out of ammunition and were forced to retreat. Although the British took the hill, they suffered their heaviest losses of the war - over 800 wounded and 226 killed, including a large number of officers. The aftermath of the battle was three fold. It gave confidence to the colonials that they could stand against the British regulars. For the same reason, it gave the British pause and led to a rethinking of strategy. And lastly, it so teed off the King that it likely played a pivotal role in his refusal to entertain any more peace initiatives from the colonials to avert the war.
1789 – In France, the Third Estate - i.e., the bourgeoisie class of monarchial France - declared itself the National Assembly.
1876 – In the Battle of the Rosebud, 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse beat back General George Crook's forces at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory.
1877 – In the Battle of White Bird Canyon, the Nez Perce tribe defeated the US Cavalry at White Bird Canyon in the Idaho Territory.
1930 – President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law. This was an effort to protect American jobs during the Great Depression. It backfired, setting off a global trade war that extended and deepened the depression. Unemployment in the U.S. was at 7.8% in 1930 when the Smoot-Hawley tariff was passed, but it jumped to 16.3% in 1931, 24.9% in 1932, and 25.1% in 1933
1939 – Last public guillotining was carried out in France when Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, was guillotined in Versailles outside the prison Saint-Pierre.
1944 – Iceland declared independence from Denmark and became a republic.
1963 – The United States Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against allowing the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools. This was an act of pure judicial activisim and part of the left's war on religion that has been ongoing since the time of the French Revolution.
1972 – Watergate scandal unfolds as five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition.
1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase , O.J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman
Births
1239 – Edward Longshanks, English king (d. 1307). He conquered most of Wales and much of Scotland during his long reign. He was recently made famous as the villain in Mel Gibson's loosely factual Braveheart.
1882 – Igor Stravinsky, the great Russian composer
1888 – Heinz Guderian, German general and one of the great tacticians of his age. He is the father of "blitzkrieg" warfare.
1943 – Newt Gingrich, politician, author, philanderer, House Speaker, what's next?
1945 – Tommy Franks, American General who led the successful invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
1945 – Ken Livingstone, - Red Ken, the communist multi-term Mayor of London who, thankfully, was voted out of office last year.
Deaths
900 – Fulk the Venerable, Archbishop of Rheims during the ninth century world of byzantine politics in the Holy Roman Empire. He attached his star to one of the claimants, Charles the Simple, but Fulk was soon thereafter assassinated by Count Baldwin II of Flanders.
1025 – Bolesław I the Brave, first king of Poland and one of the most remarkable politician, strategist and statesman of his age. He made a kingdom of Poland and turned it into a power in Eastern Europe.
1696 – John III Sobieski, King of Poland, the Lion of Lechistan. Western civilization and Christianity owe him a great debt. It was his strategy and leadership that led to victory over the Muslim Turks in the 1683 Battle of Vienna. Loss of that battle would have opened continental Europe to Muslim conquest.
Holidays and observances
Today is the feast day of Saint Rainier, the patron saint of Pisa and of travellers. And it is the feast day of Saint Botolph, a 7th century English abbot who is the patron saint of farming.
Art: Romantic Landscape With Ruined Tower, Thomas Cole, 1836
1215 – King John of England met with his barons at Runnymede and there, affixed his seal to the Magna Carta. John was a highly unpopular king who heavily taxed his subjects, engaged in disastrous wars and was excommunicated by the Pope. When his barons had finally had enough and were near open revolt, they instead agreed with John to the terms set forth in the Magna Carta. A millennium later, Churchill would dryly observe, "When the long tally is added, it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owe far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns."
The Magna Carta is one of the most famous and important documents in our history. The U.S. Constitution, with but a few notable differences, is largely an amalgam of the rights of Englishmen as existed in common law and by solemn compact with the crown in 1776. One of the first of those compacts was the Magna Carta and indeed, many of the rights set out therein are found directly in our Constitution and Bill of Rights today. The fine blog Brits At Their Best lists them, and I have, in brackets, annotated where they exist in our founding documents:
THE MOST IMPORTANT RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES OF MAGNA CARTA
- The right to trial by jury. [6th Amendment]
- The right to habeas corpus. —We cannot be arrested and kept in prison without trial. [Const. Art. I, Sec. 9]
- The right to own property, which cannot be taken from us without due payment or process of law. [5th Amendment]
- The right not to be fined so heavily as to have our livelihood destroyed. [8th Amendment]
- The right to reasonable taxation levied only with the general consent of the kingdom. [Const. Art. I, Sec. 7-8] . . .
- The right to travel freely in and out of the country except during war. (recognized at common law)
- These rights to be observed not only by the king but by all men.
The version agreed to by John included the right to redress through an advisory council to the king and planted the seed of representative government. [In Britain, it would grow into Parliament; in the U.S., to our bi-cameral legislature]
You can find the Magna Carta here. Brits At Their Best has much more on the events leading up to the signing of this document and its historic significance.
1389 – An Ottoman army won a close but critical victory over a combined force of Serbs and Bosnians at the Battle of Kosovo. Though a loss, the battle did succeed in stopping the Ottoman advance into Europe for a period. As a result of the battle, Serbia was reduced to a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and Christianity repressed. Serbia remained under Ottoman rule until revolution in 1817.
1667 – The first blood transfusion to a human is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys, personal physician to the French King. Denys gave a transfusion of lambs blood to a sick child who later died of his illness.
1752 – Ben Franklin famously flew his kite in a thuderstorm to prove that lightning is electricity.
1775 – George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
1804 – New Hampshire approved the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratifying the document.
1836 – Arkansas was admitted as the 25th U.S. state.
1844 – Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber.
1864 – Arlington National Cemetery was established when 200 acres around Arlington Mansion, formerly owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee, were officially set aside as a military cemetery.
1888 – Crown Prince Wilhelm became Kaiser Wilhelm II - and is the last emperor of the German Empire. He led Germany into the disaster of World War I. He abdicated the crown in 1918 following a mutiny against his rule.
1911 – IBM is incorporated.
1916 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, making them the only American youth organization with a federal charter.
1934 – The U.S. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is founded.
1985 – Rembrandt's painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.
1992 – The United States Supreme Court rules in United States v. Álvarez-Machaín that it is permissible for the USA to forcibly extradite suspects in foreign countries and bring them to the USA for trial, without approval from those other countries.
1994 – Israel and Vatican City establish full diplomatic relations.
1996 – In Manchester, UK, an IRA bomb injures over 200 people and devastates a large part of the city centre.
Births
1330 – Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales (d. 1376)
1519 – Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset, illegitimate son of King Henry VIII of England (d. 1536)
Deaths
923 – Robert I of France (b. 866)
2002 – Choi Hong Hi, founder of Taekwon-Do (b. 1918). The precursors to Tae Kwon Do stretch far back into Korea's history. Choi consolidated the various strands of this martial art and turned it into the TKD that we know today. It is the national sport of South Korea.
Holidays and observances
Today was ninth and final day of the ancient Roman celebration of Vestalia in honor of Vesta.
Several Eastern Orthodox Churches celebrate a feast for St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine, a 5th Century ascetic, did more to stigmatize sex within Christianity than any other Christian thinker.
Art: The Bard, John Martin, 1817
1525 – Martin Luther married Katharina von Bora against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns. Luther, a critical figure in the history of Western Civilization, gave birth to the Reformation. One of Luther's deepest criticisms was against the Catholic Church's then practice of selling indulgences as a means of forgiveness of sin. In 1517, Luther nailed his famous criticism of the Catholic Church, 95 Theses, to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg on the 31st of October, 1517. It kicked off a firestorm that resulted in his excommunication by the pope in 1521.
1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain's North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves.
1777 – Marquis de Lafayette landed near Charleston, South Carolina. He came to the U.S. in order to help the Continental Congress to train its army. He would play a pivotal role in helping the U.S. during our Revolutionary War, leading troops in several major engagements, not the least of which was Yorktown.
1893 – Grover Cleveland undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; operation not revealed to US public until 1917, nine years after the president's death. All that is not too notable. What is notable is that the portion of his jaw that was removed is on display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Mutter is sort of the night of the living dead of the museum world.
1927 – Aviator Charles Lindbergh receives a ticker-tape parade down 5th Avenue in New York City in celebration of his solo non-stop flight from Long Island to Paris in the single-seat, single-engine monoplane the Spirit of St. Louis.
1934 – Adolf Hitler and Mussolini meet in Venice, Italy; Mussolini later described Hitler as "a silly little monkey".
1942 – The United States established the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to our modern Central Intelligence Agency.
1944 – Germany launched a V1 Rocket attack on England. Only four of the eleven bombs actually hit their targets. Interestingly, many of the German scientists who worked on Hitler's rocket program would be spirited to the U.S. after the war to work on our own space program. I had the unique opportunity to grow up next door to one of these scientists. A fascinating man.
1966 – The United States Supreme Court rules, in Miranda v. Arizona, that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
1970 – "The Long and Winding Road" becomes the Beatles' last Number 1 song.
1971 – The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers. I did my senior thesis at college on the Pentagon Papers and how we went from WWII to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. I still don't understand why Nixon fought the publication of these documents. There was little if anything in there that was of intelligence value by 1971, and the story it told of how we stumbled into Vietnam was mainly a story of missteps by JFK and LBJ.
1978 – Israeli Defense Forces withdraw from Lebanon.
2000 – South Korean President Kim Dae Jung meets North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong-il, for the beginning of the first ever inter-Korea summit, in the northern capital of Pyongyang.
2000 – Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981. Agca recently convert to Catholicism.
2002 – Bush withdraws the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
2005 – A jury in Santa Maria, California acquits pop singer Michael Jackson of molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo at his Neverland Ranch.
2007 – Al Qaeda - or Iran - does a second bombing of the Al Askari Mosque, one of Shia Islam's holiest sites in Iraq. The first bombing in 2006 brought the country to the brink of civil war. The second bombing, coming in the midst of the surge, had little if any impact.
Births
823 – Charles the Bald, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the West Franks - essentially the area today corresponding to France.
1752 – Fanny Burney, English novelist and diarist. Her novels were satirical peeks into the lives of English aristocrats. My favorite is Camilla published in 1796.
1786 – Winfield Scott was one of the greatest and most successful Generals ever to serve our nation. He served on active duty as a general longer than any other man in American history. Over the course of his fifty-year career, he commanded forces in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Black Hawk War, the Second Seminole War, and, briefly, the American Civil War, conceiving the Union strategy known as the Anaconda Plan that would be used to defeat the Confederacy.
1865 – William Butler Yeats, Irish writer and my favorite poet. Some of his poetry is of incredible beauty. But his most famous work, The Second Coming, written shortly after the end of WWI, is a poem famous for its disturbing vision.
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
1892 – Basil Rathbone, English actor who is perhaps most famous for his role as Sherlock Holmes in a series of movies.
Deaths
1645 – Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's most celebrated Samauri swordsman. He became famous for his numerous duels - over sixty of them without a loss. He was the founder of the Hyōhō Niten Ichi-ryū of swordsmanship and the author of The Book of Five Rings a book on strategy, tactics, and philosophy.
1918 – Tsar Mikhail Alexandrovitch Romanov was first of the Romanovs murdered. His execution was ordered by Lenin.
2008 – Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, died of a sudden heart attack.
Holidays and observances
In ancient Rome, today was the fesival of Quinquatrus Minusculae held in honor of the goddess Minerva, the virgin goddess of warriors, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, and the inventor of music. She is often depicted with an owl and came to symbolize wisdom.
In the Catholic pantheon of saints, today is the feast of Saint Cetteus and Saint Leo III.
Art: Anne-Louis Girodet De Roucy-Trioson, Ossian Receiving the Ghosts of French Heroes, 1802
1190 – The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa was one of the great figures of the Medieval Age. He fought in many campaigns throughout Europe, with the campaign to capture Milan seeing him excommunicated by Pope Alexander III in 1160. Their schism would end with the Peace of Venice in 1177 when Frederick, having failed to defeat the Lombard League in his Italian campaign, sued for peace. Frederick would answer the Pope's call in 1190 for the Third Crusade, but then drowned in the river Saleph on this date while leading an army to Jerusalem.
1619 – During the incredibly costly Thirty Years' War, on this date a Roman Catholic army of Karel Bonaventura Buquoy defeated a Protestant army of Ernst von Mansfeld at the Battle of Záblatí, marking a turning point in the Bohemian Revolt.
1692 – The Salem Witch Trials claims its first victim when Sixty year old Bridget Bishop is executed by hanging at Gallows Hill near Salem, Massachusetts, for "certaine Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries."
1719 – Jacobite Rising - Jacobites, i.e., those who supported James VII, the last Catholic King of England, attempted several uprisings from about 1688 and 1746. One such uprising involved an alliance of Jacobite rebels and Spanish forces that was defeated by the English forces at the Battle of Glen Shiel on this day.
1770 – British explorer Captain James Cook, discovered Australia - or at least came close to it - when on this date he ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef.
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1793 – The Jardin des Plantes museum opens in Paris. A year later, it becomes the first public zoo.
1793 – Socialism, long tended in the womb by philosophers, was born on this day as part of the French Revolution when, following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gained control of the Committee of Public Safety and installed a revolutionary dictatorship. They became infamous for their the Reign of Terror and their war on the Church.
1805 – America's first war, the First Barbary War, begun in 1801, came to an end when the Bashaw of Tripoli, Yussif Karamanli, signed a treaty ending hostilities with the United States. He had warred against the U.S. because our ships made easy targets without naval escort and because, as the ambassador from the Barbary states said, "written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave.” That is a precept still being taught in Saudi schools and Madrassas around the world.
1871 – Sinmiyangyo refers to a first diplomatic attempt to establish trade with Korea that, through a series of misunderstandings, developed into a minor military conflict, one of whose battles took place on this date when Captain McLane Tilton led 109 Marines in naval attack on Han River forts on Kanghwa Island, Korea.
1898 – U.S. Marines land on the island of Cuba as part of the Spanish-American War. By August, 1998, a combined arms force of Marines and Army soldiers secured the island.
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1935 – Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink, and Alcoholics Anonymous is founded..
1940 – Italy's facist dictator Il Duce declared war on France and the UK. FDR denounced Italy's actions with his "Stab in the Back" speech at the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia while Canada declared war on Italy. Also on this day, German forces, under General Erwin Rommel, reach the English Channel and Norway surrendered to Germany.
1942 – Nazis burn the Czech village of Lidice in reprisal for the killing of Reinhard Heydrich.
1944 – 642 men, women and children are killed in the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre in France while in Distomo, Boeotia Prefecture, Greece 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.
1967 – Six-Day War ends as Israel and Syria agree to a cease-fire.
1973 – John Paul Getty III, grandson of billionaire J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped in Rome, Italy. His kidnappers demanded ransom and sent the boy's ear and some hair to his father, who finally agreed to pay $3 million. Getty was released and his kidnappers never found.
1999 - NATO suspends air strikes on Serbia after Milošević agrees to withdraw Serbian forces from Kosovo.
2001 – Pope John Paul II canonizes Lebanon's first female saint Saint Rafqa
2002 – The first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom.
2003 – The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission.
Births
1933 – F. Lee Bailey, American attorney
1967 – John Yoo, American attorney and target of some serious left wing angst.
Deaths
323 BC – Alexander the Great, Macedonian king and conqueror of much of the known world. A student of Aristotle, he began his military career at age 16 when he led a force to crush the revolt of the Thracian Maedi. His campaigns finally came to an end when he died at age 32 in palace of Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon.
1190 – Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1122)
1967 – Spencer Tracy, American actor (b. 1900)
1973 – Erich von Manstein, German military commander (b. 1887)
1988 – Louis L'Amour, American author (b. 1908)
2002 – John Gotti, American gangster (b. 1940)
2004 – Ray Charles, American musician (b. 1930)
Holidays and observances
In the Roman Catholic Church, today is the feast day of St. Margaret, queen of Scotland. She was the wife of Malcolm III, King of Scots. Dying in 1093, Saint Margaret was canonised in the year 1250 by Pope Innocent IV in recognition of her personal holiness, fidelity to the Church, work for religious reform, and charity. She attended to charitable works, and personally served orphans and the poor every day before she ate. She rose at midnight to attend church services every night. She was known for her work for religious reform. She was considered to be an exemplar of the "just ruler", and also influenced her husband and children to be just and holy rulers.
And see Rougeclassicism's This Day In Ancient History.
