| Friday, December 23, 2005 |
| BOOK OF DAYS |
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---------- SUMMER -------------
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------- JUNE ------
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1)**** Ovid claims June was named after Juno, the goddess of love and marriage, but the month was apparently named after the Juniores, the minor house of the Roman legislature.
2)**** Day of St. Erasmus, patron saint of sailors; also known as St. Elmos' Day.
4)*** The custom in Europe is to plant a tree upon the birth of a baby; an apple tree for a boy, a pear tree for a girl.
6)*** The first public museum, the Ashmolean, opens in Oxford, England, in 1683. Stuffed animals on exhibit includes a dodo bird and patrons are charged addording to how long they stay in the museum.
7)*** A great battle between two swarms of bees in Cumberland, 1827. Some bee beliefs: Bees will not thrive if your quarrell over them. An unclaimed swarm settling on your property is bad luch. Bees should be informed when a death occurs and be invited to the funeral; crepe should hung on the hive.
10)** Time-observance Day in Japan, when people are supposed to be especially conscious of the importance of being punctual.
12)** Baseball invented by Abner Doubleday in 1839.
14)** In 1777, the Continental Congress adopts the American flag.
15)** The rising of the Nile, originally believed to have its source in Paradise, usually takes place on this day. If it was late, a beautiful young girl was thrown in the waters to appease the gods. To Egyptians, Nile water once was to ordinary water what champagne is to wine; sacred bulls were not given it lest they grow too fat. When the Pasha of Egypt visited England in teh 19th century, he brought his personal supply of NIle water for drinking.
*** Benjamin Franklin flies a kite in a storm in 1752 to prove that lightning is attracted to metal.
17)** Postage stamps are introduced in Belgium, 1849.
*** An old Danish custom required the actuala tying of a knot at a wedding, with two pieces of string or ribbon. This tradition spread to England and other parts of Europe and is the origin of the expression "to tie the knot".
18)** In the Australian bush, weddings used to be occasions for "Tin kettling", young men would make a racket with kerosene tins and fencing wire until the bride and groom invited them in for supper.
*** Old American wedding customs included the shivaree, a mock serenade with a raucous racket of pots and pans, cowbells, and shotgun fire outside the newlyweds window.
*** Romans considered June the most auspicious month for weddings, especially at a full moon or at conjunction of the sun and moon.
*** The custom of giving guests pieces of wedding cake to take home from an ancient Roman practice of breaking a cake over the bride's head for luck. People picked up the pieces for their own good luck.
*** If a medieval bridaya party came across a monk, priest, hare, dog, cat,lizard or serpent on the way to the church, it was an inauspicious sign for the marriage.
*** Harming a robin is extremely bad luck. If you take their eggs, your legs will break. If you are holding one, when it dies, your hand will always shake.
19)** Alexander L. Hamehameha IV, king of the Hawaiian islands, marries Emma Rooke, the daughter of an English physician, in Honolulu, 1856.
20)** A Command Performance by Buffalo Bill for Queen Victoria and her guests during her Golden Jubilee, in 1887. Four kings board the Deadwood coach, driven by Buffalo Bill.
21)** Wedding rings go on the fourth finger because the ancients believed it contained a nerve going straight to the heart.
June 21- 22 is the time of the summer solstice, the LOngest Day.
*** The sun enters the fourth zidiac sign of the year, Cancer.
23)** The biggest lighting holiday oof Europe is celebrated on the eve of the longest day in the year. The bonfires orginally represented the sun. Mid-summer're Eve bonfires are called St. John's Fires in honor of St. John's Day which follows. The Irish believe that on Midsummer's Eve one's soul wanders from the body to the eventual place of death.
24)** Midsummer's Day, also St. John's the Baptist's Day. There is an old belief that the sun spins in the sky on this day in Cornwall, a Midsummer's Day bonfire is crowned with a witch's broom and hat and set on a hill to warn witches to stay away for a year. To break witche's spells, forty kinds of herbs are thrown into the fire.
25)** Orange blossoms have been worn at weddings for a very long time. The orange tree, which stays green all year, symbolized eternal love.
*** It was a custom i the United States until at least 1783 for a group of young men, usually rejected suitors, to steak the bride after a wedding ceremony and return her to the groom only after a ransom of a supper for all had been paid.
*** In the Scottish custom of "Creeling", a newly married man had to run with a basket of stones on his back until his wafe caught up with him and gave him a kiss before the amused onlookers. The duration of the run depended upon the wife's physical condition, shyness, and sense of sport.
27)** The custom of carrying a bride over the threshold is probably left over from the days when men got their brides by capturing them.
*** It was a medieval custom for friends to accompany the bridal pair when they bathed on their wedding night. A Regensburg ordinance of 1320 procalimed that no more than 24 males and 8 females were permitted to attend on such occasions.
*** The cuckoo clock may have its origin in the medieval belief that the cuckoo -- revered as the herald of spring -- had supernatural powers that cnabled it to tell how long one would live, in how many years one would marry, and so on, by uttering its call the appropriate number of times.
The ancient applied the term cuckoo to a wife's paramount; this referred to the cuckoo's habit of laying its eggs in other bird's nests to be hatched.
28)** Bridemaids are usually dressed alike. The ancient custom required the bride and several attendants to dress alike to confuse the evil spirits which had come to spoil the wedding.
*** The term "Best Man" is derived from old Scandinavian marriage customs. It was considered beneath a warrior's dignity to court a lady, so he would kidnap a bride on her way to her wedding. To guad against this, the groom sent his "Best Man" as an escort.
*** The bride should nor wear pearls at her wedding.Pearls symbolizes tears.
29)** Day pf St. Peter, patron saint of Fishermen. The fishing fleet at Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the fishermen are of Italian and Portuguese descent, is blessed on St. Peter's Day.
*** To celeberate the coronation of Queen Victoria, in 1838, the entire issue of the London Newspaper, The Sun is printed in gold ink.
30)** Most early American remedies for baby ailments seem to be made of snails. One recipe calls for snails, earthworms, rosemary, bear's foot, agrimony, dock, barberries, wood sorrel, and rue.
*** A 971 1/2 carat diamond is found in 1893 in the Orange Freestate. The finder is rewarded with 500 pounds plus a horse with bridle and saddle.
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-------- July ---------
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July was named in 44 B.C. for Julius Caesar. Before that the month was called Quintilius -- the "Fifth Month". March being the first month.
1)** A women's swimming club is founded in Munich in 1903. One newspaper warned, presumably on behalf of the male population: "We are not yet so unnerved that we can be caught by such sensual bait".
*** G.W. Wallis of Sydney, Australia, leanred the Aborigine Sidestroke from an aborigine at Woolooware Bay. In 1885 he took it to England where H. Gardiner used it to become the British swimming champion.
***Dominion Day in Canada. The provinces were united in 1867.
*** The first United States postage stamps are issued, 1847.
2)** July is berry month.
3)** Daisies were originally known as "day's eyes".
04)** American Independence Day. The day was traditionally miserable day of the year for the horses, tormented by all the noise and by boys who threw firecrackers at them.
*** The old Midsummer's Ever before the calendar changed.
*** The day St. Martin's remians were transferred to the cathedral of Tours. If it rains on this day, it is believed throughout Europe that there will rain for the next twenty days.
*** Ths Statue of Liberty is presented to the United States by France in 1884.
5)** The first professional lion tamer was a man called "Manchester Jack". At his first performance, in 1835, he sdat on the back of a very old lion and pried open the ancient beast's jaws.
6)** Tennis originated in France in the middle ages. It was played indoors. Players hit a ball, made of leather stuffed with dogs hair, with either a racquet or their bare hands.
*** The first photogrpah of lightning is taken in Bohemia by Robert Haensel, 1883.
*** On this date in 1865, the Matterhorn is first climbed.
7)** Known as "the eyar without a summer" in the Northeastern United States, in 1816 there was snow and a killing frost in every month and people had to wear heavy overcoast in July. People moved away for fear of starvation. There is no certain explanation for this phenomenon, but according to Professor Henry Stommerl the probable cause was the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tamboara. It is theorized that all the ash in the air obscured the sun's rays. The summer was extremely cold in Europe also.
8)** The Liberty Bell carcks, 1835.
09)** In 1969 on this day a rhinocerous was born in Ireland for the first time.
*** Before the 19th century "July" was promunced to rhyme with "Truly".
10)** Perhaps the first shooting competition with firearm took place in South Germany in 1427. The prize for the best marksman was fifteen pairs of pants.
13)** Bicycling through the country is a popular summer sports. The bicyle was invented by Kirkpatrick MacMilan, a Scottish blackmsith, in 1839. The first bicyle had a wooden frame with a carved horse's head on the front.
16)** The Muslim Era begins, 622.
*** The game marbles is descended from a Roman game played with nuts. In early America, marbles were made of baked clay.
19)** In the Northern Hemishphere, July is considered the warmest month of the year. The Romans supposed that various phenomena associated with the heat could be attributed to the rising and setting of Sirius -- the Dog Star -- in conjunction with the sun. Thus the period between early July and late August is known as the "dog days" even though the astronomical phenomenon with which it is associated occurs at various times of the year in different latitudes.
22)** This is the day in 1284 when a musician dressed in apatched, multicolored coat -- thus known as the Pied Piper -- appeared in the town of Hamel, in Brunswick, struck his bargain, and exacted his famous revenge when the burghers reneged.
23)** King Ludwig I of Bavaria so loved to look at pretty faces that he complained bitterly of the fashion of wearing veils that prevailed at the time. This was well known by the women of the region. who would quickly raise their veils when they say him coming.
24)** The sun enters the fifth zodiac sing of the year, Leo.
26)** The first ocean cruise offered for pleasure, travelling begins at Southampton, England. Wulliam Makepeace Thackeray was a passenger on this four month tour of the Mediterranean in 1844.
27)** The Festival of the Seven Sleepers. Seven young men, who did not wish to worship a statue set up by th Emperor Decius, fled to the caverns of Mount Coelius. Decius thereupon had all the caverns walled up. In 479, more than 200 years later, the seven were discoverd by someone digging foundations for a stable. They were all alive, and believed they had slept only one night.
29)** Olsok Eve Festival in Norway. Bonfires are lit to commemorate St. Olaf, the king who brought Christianity to Norway in the 11th century.
30)** In 1760, three of London's city gates are sold as scrap, amrking the end of London as a walled city. Newgate, the last one, was burned down twenty years later by a mob.
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-----------AUGUST -----------
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1)*** In the old Roman Calendar, this , the sixth month, was named Sextilis. Because of the auspicious events that occurred during it. Augusuts chpse to confer his name upon this month instead of his birth month.
*** Known in Britain and in early colonial times as Lammas Day. This was the end of the farming season in Britain, where the harvest starts earlier than it does in the United States. It was the farmers thansgiving time, and it was the American Thanksgiving time until 1863.
American families would take the first loaf of bread from the new grain to church to be blessed by the minister. The word "Lammas" was originally "Loaf Mass".
*** Institution in 1469 of the French order of knighthood -- the Order of St. Michael. The thirty six knights could be degraded only for heresy, treason or cowardice.
*** New London Bridge opened by King William IV and Queen Adelaide in 1831. Old London Bridge had been built in 1209 and carried a nearly continous row of four story buildings, interrupted only by an open area used for jousting in medieval times.
*** Swiss Confederation Day. Commemorates creation of the Swiss confederation in 1291 for defense agains the Austrians.
2)*** London, 1865, Publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll; onky forty eight copies were sold.
*** The first street letter boxes in the United States are installed in 1858 in Boston and New York.
5)*** A feast in Rome, that includes a shower of blossoms, commemorates a snow shower on this day in the 3rd century that outlined the shape of a basilica. The Day of Our Lady of the Snowa.
12)** The quagga in Amsterdam's ZXoo Artis dies in 1883. This was the last quagtga, a zebra like animal in the world.
*** The Saxons name for August was Weed Monath, which means "weed-month"
*** Before dandelions became weeds, they were cultivated on purpose. People ate the leaves as a vegetables and ground the roots for a coffee like drink.
14)** Bourbob, a corn whiskey, is an American invention. Legend has it that the idea of flavoring whiskey by storing it in smoked wood was discovered by accident when an oaken whiskey barrel was strcuk by lightning.
15)** Assumption Day. Amajor holiday in Roman Catholic countries and the beginning of sumer holidays for many people in Europe.
*** Tivoli, the pleasure gardens of Copenhagen, opens, 1843.
16)** The Alaskan gold rush starts on this date in 1896.
*** The U.S. Weather Bureau has three sets of people's name for hurricanes originating in each year. Every four years they start over again with the first set of names, except in the Atlantic where the cycle is ten years. The names of major hurricane are not used again for at least ten years. Now they both used male and female names.
In the 19th century, people bought "Snake balls" pieces of sotne or bone that were supposed to draw out the poison when placed on a snakebite.
18)** American platn patent #1 is granted in q931 to Henry F. Bosenberg of New Brunswick, New Jersey, for New Dawn, a rose that blooms repeatedly instead of only once.
19)** In Germancy it is said: men who hate cats will never get a wife. This derives from the old Germanic folk belief that the wildcat was the favorite animal of Freya, the goddess of love and marriage.
20)** Until the 17th century, the country people of Europe usually made weekly visits to the bathouses in the nearby towns. With the advent of flax-growing and the use of washable linen underwear, the frequency of these visits diminished drastically.
21)** Veal, mutton, beef, or venison may be kept for nine or ten days perfectly sweet and good, in the heat of sumer, by lightly covering the same with bran, and hanging it in a high and windy room; or a wire safe, so as the wind may have a passage through, is reommended ot be palced in such a room, to keep away the flies.
23)** An old almanac list the following as fertilizers: bones, woolen rags, fish, leather, brine, lime, mud from the swamps and ponds, straw, ferns, rotten wood, shells and ashes.
24)** On the fourth Sunday on August dairymen of Vissoie, Switzerland, return from the Alpine partures, where they have spent the summer with their cattle, and presen their priest with the first cheese of the season.
*** The sun enters the sixth zodiac sign of the year, VIRGO.
25)** British Summer Holiday.
26)** The typewriter is patented in 1843.
27)** In 1890 Miss Zee Gayton set out to walk from San Francisco to New York, which she did in 226 days.
28)** The first motor tour was made in Germany in 1888 by Bertha Benz, who took her children to visit relatives. Her husband was the inventor of the car she was driving. Drinkers at an inn where they stopped in the Black Forest quarreled about whether the automobile was powered by clockwork or by a supernatural source.
30)** The Day of St. Fiarce. Horse drawn cabs in France are called Fiacres to this day because of a taxi business started in Paris at the Hotel St. Fiacre.
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-------- SEPTEMBER --------
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1)*** Emma Nutt, the first female telephone operator, begins work in Boston in 1878.
*** This is the beginning of the oyster seasn. At Colchester in England, a toast is traditionally drunk to the Queen in a thimbleful of gin and a "pinch of gingerbread" is served.
*** Oysters should be eaten only in months that have the letter "R" in their names, which excludes the warm months. Septembner is the first oyster month after the "no-R" summer months.
In the 19th century, people could ship each other barrels of oysters as presents, even if they lived as far as a month's journey away. Oysters were packed in barrels of salt water, which was changed every day, and cornmeal was scattered through the barrel.
2)*** Belgium's most famous bell, Klokke Roelant, is consecrated in 1660 in Ghent. It weighs 13, 310 pounds (6,050 kg)
*** Yhe Great Fire of London, 1666.
3)*** The founding of Los Angeles, 1781.
5)*** Born this day in 1638, the future Louis XIV of France -- with two lower front teeth.
7)*** Elizabeth I born, 1533.
8)*** The first Monday in September is American Labor Day.
14)** Daredevil Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls in 1860 walking on stilts along a rope. Tound Edward, Prince of Wales, watches.
16)** In 1620 the Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England.
*** The American Pie is perhaps the most ridicules of all dishes. It has, however, great popularity and undoubted merits. Were the crust, especially the under one, always right, it would remove the most salient point of criticism. The tart pies, made with puffpaste, are a atemptation to the most fastitdious taste. The mince pie, probably the most indigestible of all, is the one universally accepted as a treat, and seldom refused by the scoffer. Pies have their seasons, like other good things, the apple pie being the only one served all year round. The berries and fruits, each one in their time, make most acceptable and delicions pies and tarts, while rhubarb introduces the spring, and pumpkin announces the autumn. In this day canned and dried fruits the seasin needs not to be so strictly observed, nut fresh fruits will always be preferable to preserved ones.
19)** At Versailles, 1783, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette watch the ascent of the Montgolfier brothers first hot air balloon. It carried a sheep, a duck and a rooster, the first "manned" flight.
*** The first appearance of Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, in 1928.
*** The sun enters the seventh zodiac sign of the year, LIBRA.
21)** The first issue of a daily newspaper in America, The Pennsylvania Evenign Post and Daily Advertiser Philadelphia, 1793.
*** If geese appear early in the South, a hard winter is coming in the North.
*** The full moon in September narest the autumn equinox is known as the harvest moon. Because of its position in relation to Earth, it seems to be very big and to rise very slowly.
*** Ceres, the Roman grain goddess, was worshipped at this time of the year. She was known in ancient Britain variously as :
The Harvest Queen
The Kern Baby
The Corn Baby
The Kern Doll
The Ivy Girl
The Neck
The Mare.
(Source: Book fo Days by: Kay & Marshall Lee) |
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