Whose day is it today anyway?

31 August 2004

On this day, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash (1997); Jack the Ripper murdered his first victim (1888); the future Roman emperor, Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula, was born (12AD); Henry V died of dysentry in France (1422); Malaysia (1957), Trinidad and Tobago (1962) and Kyrgyzstan (1991) obtained independence. And the first radio news bulletin was broadcast from Detroit in 1920 – on the same day that Belgium started paying old age pensions.

I can't trace what was reported on that first broadcast (it's a fair bet that Belgian pensions didn't comprise the lead story), but I do know that the radio station had opened 11 days earlier with the words 'This is 8MK calling.' The announcement was followed by a broadcast of recorded music from the Detroit News newspaper HQ in the city. The station changed its name twice in the next year or so, finally settling on WWJ, which it retains to this day.

As well as broadcasting the first radio news bulletin, WWJ also claims responsibility for the first election returns broadcast (also on 31 August 1920), the first live sports broadcast, the first full symphony performed on radio and the first regular religious programming.

The BBC, incidentally, started regular broadcasting in 1922. Its coverage of the 1953 coronation is still thought to have achieved probably the biggest radio audience of all time.

30 August 1976

Sticking to the music/festival theme, it's 40 years this weekend since the first Notting Hill Carnival in London. It's also 28 years ago today that the tenth carnival (they have taken place in most but not every year since 1964) ended in a riot. There have been other disturbances and even deaths (including two in 2000) at Carnival since then, and many attempt have been made to close it down or change its route or venue.

But nothing that has occurred at Casrival during the past three decades has attracted quite so much attention as that first serious outbreak of trouble. It foreshadowed the much more serious inner city riots of the 1980s and led to a militarisation of British police training, tactics and eqipment that had not previously been considered necessary. Yet that very militarisation played its part in increasing the hostility towards the police in inner city areas, and therefore played its part in increasing the severity of the disturbances that took place in later years. Tackling issues such as racism and community policing in order to prevent riots breaking out in the first place was to take a lot longer than training and eqipping the police to deal with them once they had started.

29 August 2004

The dancing feet are sore, the legs ache, the eyes long only for sleep, but the first-ever Cross Central Festival in the old goods yards at King's Cross Station was a 39-hour party and a half. I counted at least six indoors, stages, two outdoors, a cinema, 40-odd live acts and 70-odd DJs. Courtney Pine and his band get my vote for sheer musical excellence and the new four-piece Spectrum get it for innovation. The KillAllHippies club area was also a lot friendlier and gentle on the ear than it might sound. Anyway, I don't think that even Primal Scream want the hippies dead these day.

In the circumstances, this seems like an appropriate occasion to mark the 30th anniversary of the last Windsor Great Park free festival. The third in an increasingly successful run of events, this one was broken on 29 August 1974 by more than 600 police officers, who moved in early that morning. Several hundred people were arrested, few of who were ever charged, in scenes that were to be repeated many times over the next two decades – including, most notoriously, as the Battle of the Beanfield in 1984.

The free festival scene attracted a disproportionate amount of attention from the authorities. At its height it attracted tens of thousands of people to a summer circuit of festivals that spanned the length and breadth of Britain. Many who went on to become successful musicians and other performers cut their teeth at these events, which also provided an alternative source of income or subsistence to several thousands of people.

Today's highly organised (and almost entirely commercial) festival circuit in the UK is one of the legacies of the free festivals of the past, which still take place each year from time to time. Indeed, it can argued that club culture as a whole originated from the free festivals and, more specifically, the 'raves' that they inspired. This weekend's event at King's Cross certainly made no attempt to disguise its heritage.

28 August 2004

Martin Luther King had a dream of racial equality on this day in 1963, the same day on which slavery was abolished in the British Empire 130 years earlier. Sunday trading was legalised in the UK on this day in 1994. The borough of Liverpool was created by King John on this day in 1207. Nephthys, the Egyptian goddess of the underworld (and childbirth), was born on this day a few thousand years ago. And it's Software Freedom Day in 2004.

There's also a rather good all-day-and-nighter on in London today, which is where I'm off to now.

27 August 2004

The Beatles were two weeks into their second US tour on 27 August 1965, when they were invited to meet Elvis Presley at his home in Beverly Hills. It was the first and only time that the two greatest icons of 20th-century music got together. John Lennon, who said Elvis was 'the guy we had all idolised for years from way back when we were first stating out', described the meeting in an interview later.

After they'd been introduced, an embarrassed silence descended on the room, which was eventually broken by Elvis. 'Listen guys,' he said, 'if you're just going to sit there and stare at me, I'm going to bed. Let's talk a bit, huh? And then maybe play and sing a bit?' Several guitars were produced and Elvis and the moptops got into an impromptu rendition. They started with a Cilla Black song, 'You're My World'.

None of the Beatles ever met Elvis again – which is probably just as well because he didn't hold them in high regard. In fact, in 1970, he wrote to US president Richard Nixon expressing a strong desire to join him in fighting 'the drug culture, hippies, the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society, one of the leading anti-Vietnam war organisations], and the Blank Panthers'. Elvis and Nixon met at the White House to discuss these issues in December of that year.

According to the White House memorandum recording what was said at their meeting: 'Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. He said that the Beatles came to this country, made their money, and then returned to England, where they promoted an anti-American theme.' Presley told Nixon he was 'on your side' and 'kept repeating that he wanted to be helpful, that he wanted to restore respect for the flag which was being lost . . . He also mentioned that he is studying Communist brainwashing and the drug culture for over ten years.' Sociologists call it participant observation.

26 August 2004

Zola Budd clipped ten seconds off the women's world 5,000 metres record on this day in 1985. The former record holder, Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway, also broke the world record, but came in nine seconds behind Budd.

Budd, a white South African, got around the anti-apartheid boycott of South African athletics by obtaining British citizenship in 1984, just in time to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics. She finished seventh in that year's 3,000 metres race after colliding with the favourite, US runner Mary Decker, who was left sprawling on the track.

Budd returned to South Africa four years later and was eventually able to compete again internationally after the abolition apartheid in 1992. She never repeated her earlier achievements, however, and never really overcame the consequences of her refusal as a young athlete to condemn the apartheid system.

Her complicity with apartheid means that she'll probably never be fully acknowledged in South African or Olympic athletics. A pity, because she could have taken her place in a multi-racial tradition that began 100 years ago, when South Africa's first ever three entrants participated in the St Louis marathon. Two of those three runners were Zulus, whose names were recorded as Lenthauw and Yamasani and who were thought be members of a dancing troupe that was in St Louis at the time.

25 August 2004

It's 60 years since the liberation of Paris from the Nazis and a friend has flown over for the occasion on a pre-booked cheap-flights deal that is costing him and his partner just £19 apiece. Coincidentally, today is also the anniversary of the first daily commercial scheduled international air passenger service, which started between London and Paris in 1919. A single fare on the service cost £21. How many other examples can you find of things that cost less today than they did in 1919?

Today also marks the anniversary of two other significant events in air travel. It's the 220th anniversary of the first manned balloon flight in Britain; and it's the 72nd anniversary of Amelia Earhart becoming the first woman to fly non-stop across the United States. She'd become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic earlier that same year, although problems with the weather and her place meant that she only reached Ireland and not Paris as originally intended.

24 August 2004

' . . . It seemed as though the sea was being sucked backwards, as if it were being pushed back by the shaking of the land. Certainly the shoreline moved outwards, and many sea creatures were left on dry sand. Behind us were frightening dark clouds, rent by lightning twisted and hurled, opening to reveal huge figures of flame. These were like lightning, but bigger . . . It wasn't long thereafter that the cloud stretched down to the ground and covered the sea.

' . . . Now came the dust, though still thinly. I look back: a dense cloud looms behind us, following us like a flood poured across the land. "Let us turn aside while we can still see, lest we be knocked over in the street and crushed by the crowd of our companions." We had scarcely sat down when a darkness came that was not like a moonless or cloudy night, but more like the black of closed and unlighted rooms.

'You could hear women lamenting, children crying, men shouting. Some were calling for parents, others for children or spouses; they could only recognize them by their voices. Some bemoaned their own lot, others that of their near and dear. There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death. Many raised their hands to the gods, and even more believed that there were no gods any longer and that this was one last unending night for the world.

' . . . It grew lighter, though that seemed not a return of day, but a sign that the fire was approaching. The fire itself actually stopped some distance away, but darkness and ashes came again, a great weight of them. We stood up and shook the ash off again and again, otherwise we would have been covered with it and crushed by the weight. I might boast that no groan escaped me in such perils, no cowardly word, but that I believed that I was perishing with the world, and the world with me, which was a great consolation for death.'

Pliny the Younger's first-hand account of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, when it destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum, paints an evocative picture of a terrifying event in which many thousands of people died. Vesuvius erupted at about noon on 24 August, burying Pompeii under a layer of ash about four metres deep. Stabiae and Herculaneum were buried beneath mud and volcanic debris. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, was killed in the eruption, choked by the ash and fumes. Vesuvius is still active – and due for another eruption. More than four million people live in the area today.

23 August 2004

Sixty five years ago today, the world was stunned by the signing of one of the most cynical treaties in history. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression treaty signed by foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop on behalf of the former arch-enemies of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. A secret additional protocol agreed the respective spheres of influence of the German Reich and the USSR in eastern Europe.

Finland, Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere, together with Poland as far as the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. The Germans were freed to seize the rest of Poland and carve up the Baltic, which they did so barely a week after signing the treaty, invading Poland on 1 September 1939. The Soviets invaded Poland from the east on 17 September.

The Soviet leader, Stalin, had been preparing the ground for this treaty with his greatest enemy for some time. In April, for example, he had replaced his Jewish foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov, a supporter of an alliance with the western democracies, with Molotov, who was in favour of provoking war between Germany and the west.

Apologists for Stalin, then and now, maintain that the Soviet Union had no choice but to buy time through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact when the west failed to join the USSR to fight the advance of fascism in Spain, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Few nations come out of the run-up to the second world war with clear consciences, but David Low's famous cartoon of 20 September 1939, provides a biting assessment of the cynical Realpolitic of this particular episode. The two dictators, Hitler and Stalin, bow to each other over the corpse of Poland. 'The scum of the earth, I believe?' says Hitler. 'The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?' replies Stalin.

22 August 2004

The ghosts of Vietnam return to haunt American politics from time to time, and never more so than right now over the Iraq war and the Bush presidency. In a nation divided over the past as well as the present, the war record (or non-record) of the two presidential hopefuls has become a central issue. And old events and anniversaries have taken on fresh importance in the light of another American war that isn't being won.

Words such as 'traitor' are being bandied about with little respect for their real meaning or application. So today, 32 years to the day after one of the events from the Vietnam war that was regarded by the pro-war lobby as among the most traitorous of all, it's worth remembering actress Jane Fonda's radio broadcast from Hanoi, in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Was this really the unforgivable act of a traitor, as Fonda's critics insist to this day? Make up your own minds: this is the full text of her broadcast.

'This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life – workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

'I visited the [Dam Xuac] agricultural co-op, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

'In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me--the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

'I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam – these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

'I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

'As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly--and I pressed my cheek against hers--I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

'One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

'I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

'But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created – being committed against them by Richard Nixon – these people own their own land, build their own schools, the children learning, literacy – illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

'And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders – and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism – don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.'

22 August 2004

The ghosts of Vietnam return to haunt American politics from time to time, and never more so than right now over the Iraq war and the Bush presidency. In a nation divided over the past as well as the present, the war record (or non-record) of the two presidential hopefuls has become a central issue. And old events and anniversaries have taken on fresh importance in the light of another American war that isn't being won.

Words such as 'traitor' are being bandied about with little respect for their real meaning or application. So today, 32 years to the day after one of the events from the Vietnam war that was regarded by the pro-war lobby as among the most traitorous of all, it's worth remembering actress Jane Fonda's radio broadcast from Hanoi, in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Was this really the unforgivable act of a traitor, as Fonda's critics insist to this day? Make up your own minds: this is the full text of her broadcast.

'This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life – workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

'I visited the [Dam Xuac] agricultural co-op, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

'In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me--the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

'I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam – these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

'I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

'As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly--and I pressed my cheek against hers--I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

'One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

'I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

'But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created – being committed against them by Richard Nixon – these people own their own land, build their own schools, the children learning, literacy – illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

'And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders – and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism – don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.'

21 August 2004

It's a little over 200 years since President Jefferson secured what must be one of the best bargains in world history. With Napoleon's France short of funds for its war with England, Jefferson reached an agreement to buy what was then called Lousiana from the French for three cents an acre. The whole Louisiana Purchase cost $15 million and as well as more than doubling the size of the United States at that time, it opened up the west of North America for further expansion.

As soon as the purchase was complete, Jefferson organised an expedition under the leadership of Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find a navigable river route to the west coast. By 21 August 1804, it had reached the area of the Sioux River.

In their expedition journal, which Jefferson had insisted they must keep, Lewis and Clark detailed their various travels between 14 May 1804 and 26 September 1806. Two hundred years ago today, their entry refers to the Pipestone Creek quarries, Minnesota, which they recorded as 'a place of Peace with all nations'.

The quarries were – and still are – a sacred site for Native Americans. Tribes travelled across North America to quarry red pipestone here in order to make pipes and effigies from the soft stone. It was known as a place of peace because of an ancient tradition that whatever wars or violence were occurring elsewhere, a permanent truce was in place in the quarries themselves.

You can read the whole of Lewis and Clark's journal, with accompanying notes and other information here:

http://lewisandclarktrail.com/index.html

20 August 2004

The English Civil War, between parliamentarians and monarchists, began on this day in 1642. Today the greatest supporters of our monarchy are American tourists, gay Palace servants with a story to tell and tabloid newspaper editors who want to publish it. No one worth going to war with, in other words.

19 August 2004

The ancient Greek athletic contests at Olympia took place every four years between 6 August and 19 September. You have to go back to 1920, however, for a modern Olympics taking place at the current time of year.

Then it was 'plucky little Belgium', who got to host the Olympics as a reward for its people's bravery during the first world war. Almost 2,700 athletes took part from 29 countries (one more than took part in the war). Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria were all barred.

As well as introducing the Olympic flag, oath and ice hockey, the 1920 Olympics also said goodbye to certain events, including the tug-of-war. The undoubted star of the occasion was the distance runner, Paavo Nurmi, who won three medals for Finland. One of the Great Britain team's successes was in the 1500 metres race, where Philip Noel-Baker, a future Nobel Peace Prize winner, took the silver medal.

There were just 77 women competitors in 1920. The founder of the modern Olympic movement, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, opposed their inclusion altogether, considering it 'impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect'. The International Olympic Committee did allow 11 women to participate in lawn tennis and golf at Paris in 1900; and women swimmers were allowed to enter the 1912 Stockholm games (although not from America, which prohibited female athletes from taking part unless they were wearing long skirts). But female competitors were not permitted in track and field events until 1928, when so many collapsed at the end of the 800 metres race that this event was then banned for the next 32 years.

18 August 2004

Apart from the tests that lead to the bans – and even they are often avoided – there is little that is positive to be found in the modern Olympic movement's need to bar athletes for drug taking. Forty years ago today, however, the International Olympic Committee took one of the proudest decisions in its history by banning not individual athletes but an entire country from the Tokyo Olympics.

The country was South Africa; the reason was apartheid. In instituting the ban the IOC took one of the first major steps in a worldwide sporting boycott that was to last, in the case of the Olympics, until Barcelona in 1992, when South Africa was readmitted following the repeal of its apartheid laws a year previously.

The apartheid regime, having taken the political decision that men and women of different races could not participate in sport together on equal terms, accused its opponents of 'bringing politics into sport'. Over the years, it even found occasional allies in the world of sport. Men such as England cricket captain Mike Gatting, they were usually drawn by cash more than conviction, and they comprised a small and ever-declining minority.

For most sportsmen and women, the boycott of South Africa involved little or no personal cost. For some, however, not least the South Africans themselves, it meant missed opportunities and sometimes lost careers. Those that willingly put their own sporting ambitions to one side merit medals better than gold. Salute them all, then, today on the winners' podium of the fight against apartheid.

17 August 2004

I spent the night when Elvis Presley died, on 17 August 1977, camped on a north Wales clifftop near to the architect Clough Williams-Ellis's fantasy village of Portmeirion. Williams-Ellis called Portmeirion, which was the setting for the 1960s cult TV classic 'The Prisoner', a home for abandoned buildings. He brought all sorts of architectural gems, salvaged from demolition, to his village, which he opened to the public in 1926, leading a correspondent for Country Life magazine, writing in 1930, to describe it as 'a glorious medley of Italy, Wales, a pirate's lair, Cornwall, baroque, reason and romance'.

I'd spent the previous few days there at the time of Elvis's death, sneaking backing in again to savour it all the better when it closed each evening to all but residents. Then, when tiredness took over in the early hours, I'd retreated back to the tent a couple of miles away on the cliffs.

I heard that Elvis had died because that particular night saw a helicopter land virtually on top of my tent. It turned out to be engaged on an air-sea rescue operation, and the place I'd chosen to pitch camp was the only piece of clear, flat land close to the cliff edge in the area. Opening your tent flap to dazzling spotlights, thundering chopper blades and their fierce down-draught is not the sort of alarm call I'd recommend.

It did mean, however, that having been woken up in such dramatic fashion, I decided to forget about sleep – at least until the rescue operation was over – and turned on the radio instead. In this way, I got to learn the details of Elvis's death as news came in – from Radio Luxembourg, as it happened, which stayed on air all night long to console Elvis's distraught fans.

Clough Williams-Ellis lasted less than a year longer than Elvis, though he lived twice as long, being 94 when he died. He once boasted that: 'I never built a block of flats or offices, or a shop, nor a factory or a cinema anywhere – nor wanted to.' Not quite true because his Portmeirion includes many flats for holiday visitors, shops to service them, the occasional office and even a cinema. Elvis never performed there, though, more's the pity.

16 August 2004

He's the patron saint of pestilence, plague, epidemics, rashes, skin diseases, cholera, surgeons, invalids, diseased cattle – and bachelors, tile makers and dogs. San Rocco, or St Roch, is one of a small number of saints who are represented as anything less than perfect: images show him displaying a plague sore on his leg, often with a dog licking it.

The connection with disease – and dogs – comes from Rocco's experiences during the plagues of medieval Europe. Born into a noble family around 1340 in Montpelier, France, Rocco gave away all his possessions, took a vow of poverty and embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome. There he spent his time treating (and supposedly miraculously curing) many of the victims of a particularly virulent plague that had swept across Italy.

Unfortunately, Rocco's efforts led to him contracting the plague himself and he was banished from the city. He found shelter in a cave in a forest and survived for a while on leaves and water. He would certainly have died, however, had it not been for a dog, which fed him with food from its master's house.

One day, the owner of the dog followed it into the forest, where he found Rocco and had him brought to his home. Rocco duly recovered from the plague but on his return to France he was imprisoned as a spy by the people of his home town. He died in prison on 16 August 1378. Amazingly, shortly before his death, his canine friend turned up in his prison cell and asked him how he felt. 'Ruff,' Rocco replied.

15 August 2004

This is the Holy Day of Obligation, feast day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, when her body is said to have entered into heaven and been reunited with her soul.

It's also the day on which India became an independent nation in 1947 – an occasion that the author, Salman Rushdie, chose for the birth of his narrator, Saleem Sinai, in his 1980 Booker Prize-winning novel, Midnight's Children. 'I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time,' Saleem tells us at the beginning of the book. 'No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night . . . On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact.'

Sadly, the Muslim-Hindu divisions that tore the subcontinent apart at the time of independence continue today. Symbolic of those divisions is the fact that India and Pakistan couldn't even bring themselves to share the same Independence Day. India celebrates it today, while Pakistan celebrated it yesterday.

14 August 2004

Today I offer you the memory of Maximilian Kolbe, a 20th-century saint and martyr. Kolbe joined the Franciscan Order when he was 13 and after serving as a parish priest he later became the director of one of the biggest Catholic publishers in Poland.

At the outbreak of the second world war, Kolbe became involved in helping Jewish refugees – an activity for which he was arrested and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941. While he was there a prisoner escaped and the Germans retaliated by selecting ten inmates who were to be starved to death.

One of those chosen was a Polish army sergeant, Franciszek Gajowniczek. To the astonishment of the camp commandant, Kolbe offered up himself in Gajowniczek's place. The offer was accepted and Kolbe was taken away to die with his nine companions. He supported the others through their ordeal, being the last to die on 14 August.

13 August 2004

Which side of the big divide do you fall on: right or left? Well today's the day to fight for your right to be left – left-handed, that is – because this is Left-Handers Day. Aims include to 'celebrate the strengths and advantages left-handers possess, and dispel many of the superstitions and fiction that have surrounded left-handedness in many cultures for hundreds of years, and which still create prejudice today'.

Those superstitions include an association of the devil with the left hand that goes back thousands of years. There are at least 100 favourable references to the right hand and 25 unfavourable ones to the left hand in the bible. The devil and evil spirits have long been thought to lurk over the left shoulder. Wearing wedding rings on the left hand originated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, who wore them to fend off the evil associated with that hand. Even our language makes the connection, with the word 'sinister', for example, coming from the Latin for on the left.

It's obviously all untrue, of course. Leonardo da Vinci, Jimi Hendrix and four of the five designers of the original Macintosh computer were left-handed. Bill Gates, on the other hand . . . has four fingers.

12 August 2004

It's one of the most rousing pieces of music and verse of all time and should almost certainly be the English national anthem. Instead, we are forced to grit our teeth through either a monarchist dirge (God Save the Queen) for Britain as a whole or an imperialist war cry (Land of Hope and Glory) for England.

Jerusalem, the words to which form the prologue to William Blake's poem 'Milton', is 200 years old this year. Today is the anniversary of its author's death in 1827.

An artist, a poet, a political activist and a passionate pupil of life ('Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained,' he wrote), Blake is one of those rare people who gives patriotism a good name. His love of country was rooted in love of freedom for all humanity and hatred of oppression, imperalism, war and untrammelled industry and commerce. 'It is easier to forigve an enemy than to forgive a friend,' he once remarked wisely – which may be why he came down so hard on the ills of his own country.

He never lost faith in humanity's capacity for improvement, however, and our ability to build that New Jerusalem. 'When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!' he urged.

'Jerusalem' was put to music by the English composer, Hubert Parry, in 1916, and first performed at a Votes for Women concert that same year. It was orchestrated by Sir Edward Elgar in 1922.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills? A
nd was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of Fire!
I will not cease from mental fight;
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

11 August 2004

Not realising that the sound was on, my old pal, Ronald Reagan, announced during a radio voice test 20 years ago today that he had 'signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.' The Soviet Union chose the same day to carry out an underground nuclear test. The rest of world was not laughing.

10 August 2004

'This side enough is toasted, so turn me, tyrant, eat,
And see whether raw or roasted I make the better meat.'

In August 258, the Roman emperor, Valerian, issued an edict that all bishops, priests and deacons in the Christian church should be put to death. Lawrence, the archdeacon of Rome, was commanded to surrender the treasures of the church, to which he responded by offering up the poor of the city, declaring: 'These are the church's treasures.'

The authorities didn't appreciate his comment and on 10 August he was martyred by roasting on a gridiron. Before he died, legend has it that he mocked his tormentors with remarks such as the one above, asking to be turned over. Eventually he is reputed to have said of his burning flesh: 'It is cooked enough. You may eat.'

Lawrence's tears are said to be represented by the Perseid meteor shower associated with the Swift-Tuttle comet, which can be seen most clearly around this time of the year. He is the patron saint of, among others, butchers, cooks, restauranteurs and comedians.

9 August 2004

Beware the Ides of March – and the second Monday in August. For this is an 'unlucky day' in English folklore, the day on which Sodom and Gomorrah were supposed to have been destroyed.

Mind you, there's no shortage of unlucky days to choose from for the English. Almost any day when the national football team is playing in a competitive match falls into this category. And there are plenty of other biblically-inspired unlucky days too, not the least of which is the first Monday in April, which is the day on which Cain was said to have killed his brother Abel.

One 15th-century calendar listed no fewer than 32 unlucky days in all: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10 and 15 January; 6, 7 and 18 February; 1, 6 and 8 March; 6 and 11 April; 5, 6 and 7 May; 7 and 15 June; 5 and 19 July; 15 and 19 August; 6 and 7 September; 6 October; 15 and 16 November; 15, 16 and 17 December. If you also happened to be superstitious about the thirteenth day of the month, this would take you up to 44 days in the year when it was best to stay in bed.

8 August 2004

Nothing illustrates the arrogance of power so well as the way in which those who abuse it often record their abuses in the most intimate detail. Thus the Nazis, for example, catalogued their crimes against humanity in a painstaking system of record-keeping. Secret service files of organisations the world over condemn their authors in their own hand, as too do minutes, memos, emails and innumerable other records kept by bodies ranging from big business to local government.

The intoxication of power is such that those who hold and abuse it never expect to be called to account for their crimes. If that is the case, why bother to worry about incriminating yourself in your own records?

And so it was with Richard Nixon, who resigned 30 years ago today as a result of his complicity in the 1972 break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Nixon was hoist by his own pétard* in the form of the White House tapes – recordings of his conversations, which proved beyond doubt that he knew about and authorised the break-in.

Nixon managed to avoid the criminal proceedings that saw the five Watergate burglars and two White House staff jailed. Altogether, 40 government officials were indicted, while Nixon got away with an unconditional pardon.

• Etymological note. The word pétard derives from the French noun 'pet', or fart, and means 'a loud discharge of intestinal gas', or a particularly explosive fart. It was applied in medieval France to a kind of siege engine that was used for breaking down the gates of a city. In English, to be hoist by your own petard means to blow yourself up with your own weapon – to be undone by your own devices. There is something especially apt about the expression in the case of the notoriously foul-mouthed Nixon.

7 August 2004

Why was anyone surprised by the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington? After all, Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organisation had given plenty of notice of their murderous intent. On 7 August 1998, for example, two simultaneous attacks were carried out by the group on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. More than 200 people were killed and over 4,000 injured in the busy east African cities of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Virtually all of them were civilians, including the passengers on two buses and the occupants of a five-storey office block demolished by the blast in Nairobi.

US president Bill Clinton described the bombings as 'abhorrent' and said that he would 'use all the means at our disposal to bring those responsible to justice'. At the trial of four men accused of the bombings, a former aide to Osama bin Laden testified that he had warned US officials of a likely attack on their embassies two years previously. Sue Bartley, who lost her husband and son in the Kenya bombing, commented: 'That information had not been dispensed to our families.' Nor, it seems, had anything been done about it.

6 August 2004

Hiroshima. The biggest single incident of civilian murder in history. Japanese figures at the time put the death toll at 118, 661. Radiation poisoning subsequently killed more than 20,000 others.

5 August 2004

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old, age shall not wither them northe years condemn . . .

The first world war began, for Britain at any rate, 90 years ago yesterday with Germany's invasion of Belgium and Britain's declaration of war on Germany. Over the next four years the lives of the young men of Europe were to be squandered on a scale never before seen in history.

But it's not just slaughtered soldiers whose memory is preserved in the aspic of everlasting youth. Increasingly, it's the images of celebrities who have died young that have become iconic in western culture. It took Hollywood just four years after the second world war to coin the phrase 'Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse' for the pretty-boy delinquent, John Derek, in Knock On Any Door.

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the death of someone whose corpse was as good-looking as they get. Marilyn Monroe, who was found dead in bed in Los Angeles at the age of 36, is among the most iconic of all icons. The reverence accorded to a pre-auction display of some of her clothes a few years ago led to comparisons with the exhibition of saint's relics. 'St Marilyn' was shown to have as large and devoted a following as any saint. The Jean Louis dress she wore at John Kennedy's birthday tribute in 1962, when she famously sang 'Happy Birthday', went for more than a million dollars. It was regarded as a bargain at the time and would almost certainly sell for several times more than that today.

Trivia quiz question (answer tomorrow): Who said kissing Marilyn Monroe was 'like kissing Hitler'?

4 August 2004

Ninety-nine per cent of the 18,000 voters in Gibraltar opposed plans to negotiate joint sovereignty between Britain and Spain in a referendum in 2002. Gibraltar has been British for 300 years and its 35,000 residents want to keep it that way.

Spain views things rather differently. Today is the anniversary of the Anglo-Dutch seizure of the port in 1704, which resulted in the expulsion of the Spanish population and has deprived that part of Spain of an outlet for trade and business ever since.

There was bound to be some sensitivity around the anniversary. So Britain decided that it wasn't averse to a touch of 21st-century gunboat diplomacy by deploying HMS Grafton to perform the fire a 21-gun salute in Gibraltar's harbour for the first time in more than half a century. Rumours that this had anything to do with snubbing the new Spanish government because of its recent withdrawal from Iraq can of course be discounted.

3 August 2004

I'm called Stephen because my mum wouldn't have me called John, as her mum wanted, after my grandad. Instead, I got named after a saint, whose feast day is held on the day my mum and dad got married: Boxing Day, 26 December. For some strange reason, which is probably rooted deep in the family psychology, I subsequently spent most of my primary school years pretending to be named John. Even today, no one except my mum calls me Stephen; it's always Steve, or something else less pleasant. If someone I've only just met uses the full, double-syllabled version of my name, it sends a shiver through me. The whole world trebles in size, I revert to being a four-year-old again and start worrying about why I'm in trouble.

Before I lock myself in the cupboard under the stairs, I just want to say that this recollection is not unrelated to the present date of 3 August. This is because, in addition to St Stephen having a feast day on 26 December (27 December in the east), there is also a feast of the Invention of St Stephen, which takes place today. This feast marks the discovery of Stephen's relics, or bones, in the early fifth century, when a priest named Lucian learned by revelation where his body was and had it exhumed.

2 August 2004

Psychic Week starts today, a day after Simplify Your Life Week and six days before Scrabble Week. Not that any of the psychics that I know of have had advance notice of it. In fact, it seems not to have been foreseen by any of them.

The week was devised by the Hollywood press agent, Richard R Falk, in 1965, apparently, but no one knows why – and Falk is no longer around to tell us. It was probably a publicity stunt of some description for one of his clients, since Falk was a master manipulator of the media. He once had the task of promoting a flea circus on its arrival in New York, for which purpose he booked the star attraction, a flea named 'The Great Herman', into the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. He skipped on the transport arrangements, though – the fleas had to itch-hike everywhere . . .

1 August 2004

Happy birthday, Charlotte Marion (Milburn) Hughes, born on this day in 1877 and the longest-lived person ever documented in Britain by the time of her death on 17 March 1993.

I have a special soft spot for this old lady because on her 108th birthday, when she was invited to tea with the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, she told Mrs T that she didn't want a hug from her because she was a Labour supporter. 'I told her I was Labour when she cuddled up to me in Downing Street,' said Mrs Hughes. 'I said "Don't cuddle me I'm Labour." She said, "Never mind, come and let us have a cup of tea."'

Mrs Hughes remained fit and mentally alert well into her old age. She didn't marry her husband, Noel, until after she retired as a school teacher, when he was 63. They still managed 40 years of married life together, though, before he died at the age of 103. She celebrated her 110th birthday with a trip to New York on Concorde, making her the oldest person ever to have flown in an aircraft.