Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News The RoundTable Round Table for Sunday March 7, 2010

Welcome to the Round Table for Sunday, March 7, 2010. Winter begins to release its grip and the first signs of Spring arrive.






Events on this date

* 321 – Roman Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire.
* 1277 – Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, condemns 219 philosophical and theological theses.
* 1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives.
* 1814 – Napoleon I of France wins the Battle of Craonne.
* 1827 – Brazil marines unsuccessfully attack the temporary naval base of Carmen de Patagones, Argentina.
* 1827 – Shrigley Abduction: Ellen Turner is abducted by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a future politician in colonial New Zealand.
* 1850 – Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech endorsing the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.
* 1862 – American Civil War: Union forces defeat Confederate troops at Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas.
* 1876 – Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone beating Antonio Meucci by just 4 hours.
* 1887 – North Carolina State University is founded by the North Carolina General Assembly.
* 1912 – Roald Amundsen announces that his expedition had reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911.
* 1914 – Prince William of Wied arrives in Albania to begin his reign.
* 1936 – World War II (Prelude to): In violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.
* 1945 – World War II: American troops seize the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen.
* 1950 – Cold War: The Soviet Union issues a statement denying that Klaus Fuchs served as a Soviet spy.
* 1951 – Korean War: Operation Ripper – United Nations troops led by General Matthew Ridgeway begin an assault against Chinese forces.
* 1965 – Bloody Sunday: A group of 600 civil rights marchers are forcefully broken up in Selma, Alabama.
* 1971 – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman delivers his historic "This time the struggle is for our freedom" speech at Ramna Race Course, calling upon the Bengali people to prepare for the freedom struggle ahead.
* 1985 – The song We Are the World had its international release.
* 1986 – Challenger Disaster: Divers from the USS Preserver locate the crew cabin of Challenger on the ocean floor.
* 1989 – Iran and the United Kingdom break diplomatic relations after a row over Salman Rushdie and his controversial novel.
* 1994 – Copyright Law: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that parodies of an original work are generally covered by the doctrine of fair use.
* 2007 – British House of Commons votes to make the upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected.




Embrace today as being just right, perfect beyond the circumstances thrown your way, and rejoice in being alive.

What a nice intro, Phil~I love the picture with the fower and the bee!

It's about time! It's supposed to be 68 today here in the FL Panhandle and get up in the low 70's the rest of the week. It's been colder than usual here.

Oh how beautiful, Phil!
Thank you.
I hope spring is soon. This has been one long cold winter. It's 28 still here. Way wrong for this time of year.

Morning all.
Coffee first. I'll be back.

Thanks, Phil.

I've been away for a bit -- in Chicago the past week -- and I am SO grateful to be home and where it is warmer. Had a wonderful visit with John and also attended the Comparative and International Education Society annual meeting. Great sessions and an opportunity to meet many of the scholars whom I've been reading.

What's up with CHB? I checked in a couple of times but couldn't find reader rant. Have had to resort to Google search because I'm not seeing a link from the CHB page. I'm sure I missed discussion about it.

We had ice in the bird baths and on the windshields this morning, but we'll be opening windows soon.

Have a wonderful day everyone!

EmmaG

Ah, yes, the worship of the "Unconquerable Sun" [Sol Invictus] was the stiffest competitor that Christianity had in the early 4th century AD. "Saint" Constantine (murderer of several of his family) gave about equal patronage to the Unconquerable Sun and to Christianity. Perhaps he planned to blend the two into one state religion, but he did not live long enough to do so.

Something similar had happened earlier in Egypt, when the alien Greek Ptolemaic dynasty (Cleopatra was, of course, a pure-blooded Greek, not an Egyptian!) blended the Greek and Egyptian religions into the synthetic deity Serapis.

This completely manufactured and politically motivated deity eventually won a considerable following even among the Greeks, as can be seen in this text quoting Eunapius, who was bemoaning the alien irruption of Christianity into the Greek world [my own translation from the original Greek]:

(By this time the implacable and tyrannical Christians had ransacked and destroyed the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria)

No longer shall what is sacred survive, and even the mighty and holy shrine of Serapis will give way before the shapeless gloom [of Christianity] and be destroyed, and a fabulous, formless darkness will crush the most beautiful things of the earth.

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Email of the day:

Sunday moves far afield.m

The principal wasn't the only one to get them wrong.