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She was called Phillis, because that was the name of the ship that brought her, and Wheatley, which was the name of the merchant who bought her. She was born in Senegal. In Boston, the slave traders put her up for sale:
-she’s seven years old! She will be a good mare!
She was felt, naked, by many hands.
At thirteen, she was already writing poems in a language that was not her own. No one believed that she was the author. At the age of twenty, Phillis was questioned by a court of eighteen enlightened men in robes and wigs.
She had to recite texts from Virgil and Milton and some messages from the Bible, and she also had to swear that the poems she had written were not plagiarized. From a chair, she gave her long examination, until the court accepted her: she was a woman, she was black, she was a slave, but she was a poet. ”
Phillis Wheatley, was the first African-American writer to publish a book in the United States.
The only Nazi occupied European country whose inhabitants were able to successfully resist the Holocaust was Denmark.
When the Nazis ordered Danish Jews to wear the star of David sewn on their clothes, the next day almost all Danes took to the streets with exactly the same stars.
After this event, the order “about the stars” was canceled.Later, after learning of the Nazis ‘ plans to exterminate the Jews, members of the Danish resistance organized their transportation by sea to Sweden.
Only 120 Danish Jews died during the war.
Hundreds or even thousands of times less than in other European countries.
In the photo – king Christian X with his wife with the stars of David sewn on their clothes.
“Bear one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ.”
(Gal.6:2)The USA Government Literally Poisoned Alcohol During Prohibition
During Prohibition in the United States, the U.S. government literally poisoned alcohol. When people continued to consume alcohol despite its banning, law officials got frustrated and decided to try a different kind of deterrent—death. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the U.S., which were products regularly stolen bootleggers. By the end of Prohibition in 1933, the federal poisoning program is estimated to have killed at least 10,000 people.
Using Forks Used to Be Seen as Sacrilegious
What the fork? Forks, the widely used eating utensils, were once seen as blasphemous. They were first introduced in Italy in the 11th Century. These spiked spaghetti-twirling instruments were seen as an offense to God. And why, do you ask? Because they were “artificial hands” and as such was considered to be sacrilegious.
Franz Reichelt—AKA “The Flying Tailor”—was an Austrian-born tailor living in France during the early 1900s, and is credited with pioneering an entirely wearable parachute suit that looked less like a parachute and more like a… well, a bedsheet held up with wires. I mean, just look at this thing. It’s not really a device that screams “sturdy,” but that didn’t stop Reichelt from testing it out in an inaugural jump off the Eiffel Tower in early February of 1912. In fact, he was so confident in that jump that he actually called the local press over to film his invention in action. Needless to say, it didn’t go as planned: Reichelt plummeted from the tower, suit and all, and crushed his skull, spine, and a few other major bones when he hit the ground, dying almost instantly. The entire event was captured on film and, if you’re not faint of heart, you can see the entire debacle for yourself here.
^^^^OMG^^^^ I know you shouldn’t laugh. But a little giggle came out. Sorry I’m a Monster. 👹
Anyway. Just found this. A news paper clipping from 1953.
Weihnachten 1961
December 1961: The Berlin Wall had been standing for four months, and for the first time many families would be separated at Christmas.
A divided city. Then came the ‘Light on the Wall’ campaign, a sign of the solidarity between West Berlin and the people in the GDR. In West Berlin illuminated Christmas trees along the Berlin Wall were to shine through December, to show East Berliners they had not been forgotten.
And, on the afternoon of 17 December 1961, West Berliners lit candles on more than a thousand Christmas trees along the inner-city wall.
An appeal for donations had been sent out and Christmas tree decorations had even arrived from Japan, while trees sent from Franconia, and transported along a transit route to West Berlin that passed through the DDR, were allowed by the East German government.
Foto: Polizeihistorische Sammlung des Polizeipräsidenten in Berlin
December 14, 1861 – Death of Albert Prince Consort, the German born husband of Britain’s Queen Victoria. He had introduced many of Germany’s Christmas traditions to the country, and popularised the German Christmas tree tradition among the British.
An intelligent educated man with an active interest in science, trade, industry and the arts, he had not had an easy time in Britain, but his positive influence on the Queen included a greater concern for social welfare, with the child labor common in the country at the time as just one example.
In the autumn of 1861, only months before he died, his intervention in a diplomatic row between Britain and the United States probably helped to prevent a war between the two countries.
It was his idea that profits from 1851’s Great Exhibition, which he helped organize to celebrate advances of the British industrial age and the empire’s expansion, were to be used towards establishing London’s South Kensington museum complex.
They are now the Victoria and Albert Museum, Natural History Museum and Science Museum.
Queen Victoria never recovered from his death and wore mourning black for the rest of her life. Prince Albert was accepted with more than a little grudging consent only after many years by the British public, however Victoria had relied heavily on him for support and advice, and he had been King in all but name for most of her reign until his death.
Albert Prince Consort, born in Bavaria as Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on August 26, 1819 – died December 14, 1861 at Windsor Castle at the age of 42.
Illustration of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria with their family and a Christmas tree, at Windsor Castle. First published in The Illustrated London News 1848.
WWII DUTCH RESISTANCE FIGHTER WHO HELPED DOWNED ALLIED PILOTS….AUDREY HEPBURN.
Most people know her as a film actress, but she worked with Dutch resistance groups during the war to defeat the Nazis. The 15-year-old Hepburn delivered a Dutch resistance newspaper. “I stuffed them in my woolen socks in my wooden shoes, got on my bike and delivered them,” she said. Paper was in short supply, you see, so each edition was printed on paper smaller than a napkin. Hepburn’s age and ability to speak English made her uniquely qualified to avoid suspicion. So the 15-year-old future star could slip into an area of downed Allied pilots to pass messages and bear food packages. If she had been caught, though, it would have been disastrous.New Year Tradition – First Foot
There’s a few variations across the UK but the base tradition is always the same
Traditionally, just after midnight, people open the back door (to let the old year out) and ask a dark haired man (First Foot) to come through the front door carrying salt, coal and bread. This means that the following year everyone in the house will have enough to eat (bread), enough money (salt) and be warm enough (coal).
Whatever you believe or practice, may your New Year be plentiful of health, wealth, warmth, food and friendship.
The New Year Blessing
A merry Christmas on ye, and a very good year,
Long life and health to the whole household.
Your life and mirth living together,
Peace and love between women and men.
Goods and wealth, stock and store,
Plenty potatoes and enough herring.
Bread and cheese, butter and beef,
Death, like a mouse, in the stackyard of the barn.
Sleeping safely when you lie,
and the flea’s tooth, may it not be well. (So it wont bite and spread disease)
February 13, 1542
Henry VIII beheaded his fifth wife two months after he discovered her adulterous (pre-adulterous?) relationship with Thomas Culpeper, and two weeks after Parliament passed the Act of Attainder that convicted her without a trial.
Catherine Howard was given only a single day to prepare herself for this moment, but she used it intentionally. Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys reported to Charles V that “she asked to have the block brought in to her, that she might know how to place herself; which was done, and she made trial of it.”
This is the macabre image we are left with: this poor young woman, not yet twenty, spending hours rehearsing her death over and over again. Was it to make the process seem less terrible and foreign? Or was it to ensure that she would fulfill her last public act with all the dignity expected of the Queen of England (even though she was stripped of that rank on November 23rd)? Likely both.
Either way, she succeeded: an eyewitness to the execution confirmed that she had made “the most godly and Christian end.” And the French Ambassador Charles de Marillac’s letter to Francis I, gives us this description:
“…about nine o’clock in the morning, this Queen first, and afterwards the lady of Rochefort, within the Tower, had their heads cut off with an axe, after the manner of the country. The Queen was so weak that she could hardly speak, but confessed in few words that she had merited a hundred deaths for so offending the King who had so graciously treated her. The lady of Rochefort said as much in a long discourse of several faults which she had committed in her life. It is not yet said who will be Queen; but the common voice is that this King will not be long without a wife, for the great desire he has to have further issue.”
Judy, a purebred pointer, was the mascot of several ships in the Pacific, and was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and taken to a prison camp. There she met Aircraftsman Frank Williams, who shared his small portion of rice with her.
Judy raised morale in the POW camp, and also barked when poisonous snakes, crocodiles or even tigers approached the prisoners. When the prisoners were shipped back to Singapore, she was smuggled out in a rice sack, never whimpering or betraying her presence to the guards.
The next day, that ship was torpedoed. Williams pushed Judy out of a porthole in an attempt to save her life, even though there was a 15-foot drop to the sea. He made his own escape from the ship, but was then recaptured and sent to a new POW camp.
He didn’t know if Judy had survived, but soon he began hearing stories about a dog helping drowning men reach pieces of debris after the shipwreck. And when Williams arrived at the new camp, he said: “I couldn’t believe my eyes! As I walked through the gate, a scraggly dog hit me square between the shoulders and knocked me over. I’d never been so glad to see the old girl!”
They spent a year together at that camp in Sumatra. “Judy saved my life in so many ways,” said Williams. “But the greatest of all was giving me a reason to live. All I had to do was look into those weary, bloodshot eyes and ask myself: ‘What would happen to her if I died?’ I had to keep going.”
Once hostilities ceased, Judy was then smuggled aboard a troopship heading back to Liverpool. In England, she was awarded the Dickin Medal (the “Victoria Cross” for animals) in May 1946. Her citation reads: “For magnificent courage and endurance in Japanese prison camps, which helped to maintain morale among her fellow prisoners, and also for saving many lives through her intelligence and watchfulness”.
At the same time, Frank Williams was awarded the PDSA’s White Cross of St. Giles for his devotion to Judy. Frank and Judy spent a year after the war visiting the relatives of English POWs who had not survived, and Frank said that Judy “always provided a comforting presence to the families.”
When Judy finally died at the age of 13, Frank spent two months building a granite and marble memorial in her memory, which included a plaque describing her life story.
On Halloween weekend 1966, seemingly overnight there appeared on the sheer cliff wall above the Malibu Canyon tunnel a 60-foot-tall painting of a nude woman gamboling freely with her black hair flowing behind her and a fistful of yellow lilies.
No one knew who had created this guerrilla artwork, but scandalized Los Angeles County officials — fearing traffic congestion and looky-loo accidents — decided she couldn’t stay.
As newspapers and art lovers from all over the world fell head over heels with the Pink Lady of Malibu, the county sent up fire fighters to remove the offending goddess. But that was easier said than done. They appealed to the anonymous artist, “whoever he might be,” to come forward.
Who “he” turned out to be was 31-year-old Lynne Westmore Bloom (then known as Lynne Seemayer), a San Fernando Valley mother of two, who had planned the daring escapade over the previous six months, timing her final foray on the cliff to coincide with the full moon.
She had used house paint and a giant stencil to accomplish the artwork, and the paint had soaked into the porous rock. Finding it impossible to remove her, the county ended up covering the Pink Lady in beige paint. Though her life span was less than a week, the Pink Lady of Malibu was a glorious sight, never to be forgotten by anyone who was lucky enough to see her.
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