Later today I’ll send you something more cheerful (about the new Astronomical Calendar). But it’s November 5, so we’ve got to mention Bonfire Night. Fireworks will be going up into this London sky.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
England made a festival out of the excruciating death, four centuries ago, of my namesake Guy Fawkes. “Remember, remember the Fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot.” To quote from my fuller description in 2016, “The sects and the monarchs, the merciless justice, they all might be better forgot.”
My passion from the age of ten was history. But the books I read back then didn’t mention history’s most horrifying moments. There is a saying that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. I’m sometimes inclined to think that we are better off not reading it, because someone will get ideas about repeating it. Copycat torture.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image” or “Open image in new tab”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
As you wish.
My ancestor, Jacob Anckerstrom, succeeded in his conspiracy/assassination of Gustav III of Sweden; some 230 years ago. At the time, a large number of Swedes considered the King to be behaving traitorously – and an as large number were also loyal. Anckerstrom would not give up the names of his co-conspirators (though they were discovered), was flogged in public for three days, then beheaded. His family title, name and properties were terminated – so my great grandmothers’s name was Lowenstrom instead. Strangely, another line in my lineage goes to the Princess Luisa Ulrika, mother of Gustav III.
Re: the Time Warp. I vote that we take the Hippocratic route of “first, do no harm”. The sun’s crossing of the meridian is a simple fact of nature. “Mean” time is enough meddling for the sake of precious regularization. Any more fiddling with time habits should be independent of time meters. In the fall, 40F is chilly; in the spring, 40F is t-shirt weather – do we adjust thermometers for this? No we do not. (Yet).
Good point about perception of temperature being relative to season. I’m sure it’s also relative to climate. A study could be made (may well have been made) as to the temperature at which an Alaskan feels comfortable, or too hot, as compared with the same for a Nigerian. It corroborates our case that habits, not clocks, should be time-adjusted for season.
Our fireworks night has always been held on the Saturday night of the Queen’s birthday long weekend in June. Now, of course, it will be the King’s birthday long weekend.
Guy Fawkes (/fɔːks/; 13 April 1570 – 31 January 1606),[a] also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born and educated in York; his father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic.
Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for mainland Europe, where he fought for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years’ War against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Low Countries. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England without success. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England. Wintour introduced him to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords; Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder that they stockpiled there. The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords.
Fawkes was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. However, at his execution on 31 January, he died when his neck was broken as he was hanged, with some sources claiming that he deliberately jumped to make this happen; he thus avoided the agony of his sentence. He became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in the UK as Guy Fawkes Night since 5 November 1605, when his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by fireworks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes
I would prefer that large pieces not be copied out of Wikipedia.
Guy Fawkes Day – abrogation of an assassination plot. Well, here’s another abrogation just come about … https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/clock-runs-efforts-daylight-saving-115540491.html.
I think that Guy Faulkes was dead then they burnt him?I seem to remember that he was shot but was certainly tortured before.A lot of religious strife at the time with Catholics and Protestants(assuming that one holds Anglicans to be Protestant which technically they are not)at each others throats.Luckily they seem to get on fine now,in England at least having found bigger monotheistic fish to fry in the east.Some claim that Guy Faulkes Night is a modified version of the pre Christian festival of Samhain which was Christianised into All Hallows or Hallowmass.True or false I know not.