This Day in History: One of the most famous female pirates of all time, Anne Bonny, was born on this day in 1697. She worked alongside Calico Jack Rackham who became her pirate partner and lover. She was captured with Rackham and Mary Read in October 1720. All three were sentenced to death, but Bonny and Read had their executions stayed because both of them were pregnant.
There were quite a few female pirates in history, such as Lady Mary Killigrew, Lady Elizabeth Killigrew, Elizabetha Patrickson, Christina Anna Skytte (Swedish), Maria Lindsey, Maria Cobham, Ingela Gathenhielm (also Swedish), Mary Farley (Carolina coast), Mary Crickett (Virginia), Flora Burn, Rachel Wall, Charlotte de Berry, Ching Shih, Charlotte Badger (aka Catherine Hagerty, the first Australian female pirate), Margaret Croke (aka Margaret Jordan, a Canadian), Johanna Hård, and Sadie the Goat. All of the 20th century female pirates that I know about were Chinese. There were also quite a few female pirates during the Viking Age.
This Day in History: Aristotle died on this day in 322 BC, and Thomas Aquinas died on this day in 1274, however both are linked together. The Dark Ages began to see light again when Aquinas discovered Aristotle's writings which were translated into Latin in his time. Plato was the dominant philosopher in the early Church while Aristotle was rejected. As one writer put it: "Abandoning Aristotelianism was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought." - Edward Feser
The writings of Aristotle, their errors notwithstanding, preserved a huge intellectual storehouse of knowledge and argument in Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, Biology, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics, and so on, to give the western world a firm basis to re-establish itself, and put certain key ideas at the forefront of that re-birth, particularly the emphasis on Reason.
According to the philosopher Bryan Magee, "it is doubtful whether any human being has ever known as much as he did". Taneli Kukkonen, writing in The Classical Tradition, observes that his achievement in founding two sciences is unmatched, and his reach in influencing "every branch of intellectual enterprise" including Western ethical and political theory, theology, rhetoric and literary analysis is equally long. As a result, Kukkonen argues, any analysis of reality today "will almost certainly carry Aristotelian overtones ... evidence of an exceptionally forceful mind." Jonathan Barnes wrote that "an account of Aristotle's intellectual afterlife would be little less than a history of European thought".
Aquinas brought Aristotle’s genius to Christendom and to the Western World which would eventually lead to Western enlightenment.
This Day in History: Socialist Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin died on this day in 1953. This murderous tyrant who killed more people than Hitler was actually nicknamed "Uncle Joe" by leaders in the West. This started with Franklin Delano Roosevelt who went to great lengths to warm the image of Stalin and the Soviet Union in the eyes of the public. FDR purposefully claimed that the Katyn massacre was committed by Germans, despite knowing that Stalin was behind this mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish officers.
I remember this quote from A.J. Jacob's 2005 book _The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World_: "If there’s one ironclad rule I’ve learned about government, it’s this: never trust a politician with the nickname 'Uncle.' You’ve got Uncle Joe Stalin … Ho Chi Minh, whose nickname was Uncle Ho. And for the trifecta, you’ve got [“Uncle”] Paul Kruger, the founder of South Africa’s nefarious Afrikaaner nation… So if you see an uncle on the ballot, do not be tempted to vote for him. He is not actually your uncle. He will not tell you funny jokes and pull nickels out of your ear. Instead, he may try to have you purged. Just to be safe, stay away from politicians named Papa as well."
We now have an Uncle Joe as president.
*FDR also admired Fascist Leader Benito Mussolini.
This Day in History: George Washington was inaugurated for the second time as President on this day in 1793 and gives the shortest speech...only 133 words. William Henry Harrison was inaugurated as President on this day in 1841 and gave the longest speech (8,443 words) which took him 2 hours to read on a cold and wet day. He died as a result 31 days later.
See also: American History & Mysteries, Over 200 PDF Books on DVDrom
This Day in History: English Runner Roger Bannister died on this day in 2018. Bannister was the first person to run a mile in under 4 minutes in 1954. Since the 1880's runners have been trying to complete a run of the mile in under 4 minutes. “For years milers had been striving against the clock, but the elusive four minutes had always beaten them...It had become as much a psychological barrier as a physical one. And like an unconquerable mountain, the closer it was approached, the more daunting it seemed.” John Bryant
Once that barrier was broken, others started to complete the mile in under 4 minutes. Just 46 days after Bannister ran the mile in under 4 minutes, an Australian runner named John Landy beat Bannister's record. Then, just a year later, three other runners broke the four-minute barrier in a single race. Over the last half century, more than a thousand runners have conquered a feat that had once been considered impossible.
This Day in History: Economist Murray Rothbard was born on this day in 1926. Wikipedia describes him as a heterodox economist of the Austrian School. Heterodox economics is any economic thought or theory that contrasts with orthodox schools of economic thought. However, the mainstream (orthodox) economic thought presently advocates for endless money printing (stimulus), so we may need some heterodox thinking in this field.
Rothbard had no regard for Government, and he argued that all services provided by the "monopoly system of the corporate state" could be provided more efficiently by the private sector and wrote that the state is "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large". He called fractional-reserve banking a form of fraud and opposed central banking. He categorically opposed all military, political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations. Rothbard expanded on his view of Government, especially in his "For a New Liberty" (1973), "Anatomy of the State" (1974), and "The Ethics of Liberty" (1982). Rothbard showed how “the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large…”
Though he authored many books, Rothbard considered Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged "an infinite treasure house" and "not merely the greatest novel ever written, [but] one of the very greatest books ever written, fiction or nonfiction". It should be noted that he did not often get along with Rand.
Here are some quotes from Murray Rothbard:
“The State says that citizens may not take from another by force and against his will that which belongs to another. And yet the State…does just that.”
“The State is an inherently illegitimate institution of organized aggression, of organized and regularized crime against the persons and properties of its subjects… a profoundly antisocial institution which lives parasitically off of the productive activities of private citizens.”
“Since the State necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the state is profoundly and inherently anti-capitalist.”
“We must, therefore, emphasize that ‘we’ are not the government; the government is not ‘us.’ The government does not in any accurate sense ‘represent’ the majority of the people.”
“The State uses its coerced revenue, not merely to monopolize and provide genuine services inefficiently to the public, but also to build up its own power at the expense of its exploited and harassed subjects.”
“The State is a coercive criminal organization that subsists by a regularized large-scale system of taxation-theft.”
“The wry coupling of the twin certainties in the popular motto ‘death and taxes’ demonstrates that the public has resigned itself to the existence of the State as an evil but inescapable force of nature to which there is no alternative.”
“There is no reason to assume that a compulsory monopoly of violence, once acquired…by any State rulers, will remain ‘limited’ to protection of person and property. Certainly, historically no government has long remained ‘limited’ in this way.”
“Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes.”
“It is easy to be conspicuously ‘compassionate’ if others are being forced to pay the cost.”
“If mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal?...But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made ‘equal’ to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap?”
I often wonder what the great libertarian minds of the past would think of today's tech giants and their repressive actions?
Today is National Pig Day. While mostly celebrated in the Midwest, National Pig Day as started in 1972 by sisters Ellen Stanley, a teacher in Lubbock, Texas, and Mary Lynne Rave of Beaufort, North Carolina. According to Rave the purpose of the National Pig Day is "to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place" as one of the most intelligent domesticated animals. It is an open question whether the holiday is a time to honor pigs by "giving them a break" or to appreciate their offerings (spare ribs, bacon and ham).
Pigs have held prominent places in our culture, literature and film. Porky Pig and Miss Piggy come immediately to mind, but who can forget Babe the pig, Napoleon Old Major, Snowball and Squealer from Animal Farm, Piglet from Winnie the Pooh, Wilbur from Charlotte's Web, Peppa Pig, The Three Little Pigs, Treat Heart Pig from the Care Bears, Gordy, This Little Piggy, The Oinker Sisters, Professor Strangepork and Hen Wen?
Many places are named for pigs. In England such place-names include Grizedale ("Pig valley", from Old Scandinavian griss, young pig, and dalr, valley), Swilland ("Pig land", from Old English swin and land), Swindon ("Pig hill"), and Swineford ("Pig ford"). In Scandinavia there are names such as Svinbergen ("Pig hill"), Svindal ("Pig valley"), Svingrund ("Pig ground"), Svinhagen ("Pig hedge"), Svinkärr ("Pig marsh"), Svinvik ("Pig bay"), Svinholm ("Pig islet"), Svinskär ("Pig skerry"), Svintorget ("Pig market"), and Svinö ("Pig island").
Pigs play an interesting part in religion. Pig meat is unacceptable to some world religions. In Islam and Judaism the consumption of pork is forbidden. There will be no National Pig Day in the Middle East today. In Buddhism, the pig symbolizes delusion, one of the three poisons. Pigs have also been sacred in several religions, including the Druids of Ireland, whose priests were called "swine". In Hinduism, the boar-headed Varaha is venerated as an avatar of the god Vishnu. The sow was sacred to the Egyptian goddess Isis and used in sacrifice to Osiris.
There is a town in the UK called Swindon whose name comes from Swine, and the Beast of Dean is an abnormally large wild boar said to have lived in the Forest of Dean.
Pigs have made it into mythology as well. The Erymanthian Boar was to be captured as one of the Twelve Labours of Hercules and Calydonian Boar is another boar which features strongly in Greek mythology. Gullinbursti was a boar in Norse mythology, and the Chinese have their Year of the Pig.
