On the thirteenth of June, in ancient Rome there was the celebration of the festival Quinquatrus Minusculae or Minores to honour the goddess Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and the arts. It was held on the Ides of June, while another Quinquatria was a festival celebrated on the 19th of March, so called because… Read More June 13th: Quinquatria
ANNE FRANK: THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms behind her father’s office, before being discovered by the Gestapo two years later and taken to Auschwitz. The… Read More June 12, 1942: The Birthday Present
On 10 June 1745, Pope Benedict XIV issued the encyclical “Libentissime Quidem” in which he recalled two of his previous documents on fasting and underlined the duty to respect or restore the discipline of fasting. The Christian tradition of fasts and abstinence developed from Old Testament practices, and was an integral part of the early… Read More June 10, 1745: Libentissime Quidem
On 9 June 1537 Pope Paul III unequivocally declared that Native Americans were rational beings with souls, “truly men” with the qualities and faults of other humans, and not beasts, therefore they should not be reduced to slavery (papal bull Sublimis Deus =The Sublime God)
June 8, 1949: George Orwell’s 1984 On 8th June 1949 George Orwell published his dystopian novel ‘1984’, whose title is a permutation of 1948, the year of composition. An article in “The Nation” of 1984 stated it is “ Orwell’s picture of the way the world ends: actually it does not end at all, physically… Read More June 8, 1949: George Orwell’s 1984
IF I HAD A HAMMER If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning I’d hammer in the evening, All over this land. I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out a warning, I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters, All over this land. If I had a bell, I’d… Read More IF I HAD A HAMMER
This Land Is Your Land This land is your land This land is my land From California to the New York island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and Me. As I was walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway:… Read More THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
A WEEK IN SARDINIA Hello! I am back from the south-western part of Sardinia, where a Geomineral, Historical and Environmental park is situated, whose historic mines have recently been declared by UNESCO to be World Heritage Sites.
June 3, 1140 : the French scholar Peter Abelard was found guilty of heresy. Abelard was a medieval scholastic philosopher and theologian, whose love for Héloïse d’Argenteuil have become legendary. She was a nun, writer, scholar, and abbess, and their nine-hundred-year-old love affair has proved immensely popular in modern European culture She was his student… Read More 3 June, 1140: Peter Abelard
June 2 : in Italy we celebrate “Festa della Repubblica” (Republic Day) our Italian National Day . It commemorates the day when Italians voted to abolish the monarchy in 1946, following the Second World War and the fall of Fascism. At that timer the public was hostile to the monarchy, which had supported Benito Mussolini’s rule
