June 16th

It is the Feast Day of St.Benno, a Bishop of Meissen in Germany. Little is known of Benno so we shall move on.
                    


Also Bloomsday in Dublin. Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce during which the events of his novel Ulysses, (which is set on 16 June 1904), are relived. It is observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere. Joyce chose the date as it was the date of his first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle; they walked to the Dublin suburb of Ringsend. The name is derived from Leopold Bloom, the Ulyssean protagonist.

      
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead , bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

-- Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:
-- Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful Jesuit.
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.



1801 – Julius Plücker, German mathematician and physicist is born at Elberfeld in Germany. I believe he was not a pheasant plucker, he was a pheasant plucker's son
        He was only plucking pheasants 'till the pheasant plucker comes.

   

1806 – Edward Davy, English physician and chemist who played a prominent role in the development of telegraphy  is born at Ottery St Mary, Devon.



1815   Battle of Ligny and Battle of Quatre Bras, two days before the Battle of Waterloo. The Battle of Ligny was the last victory of the military career of Napoleon I, whilst the Battle of Quatre Bras was fought  between Wellington's Anglo-Dutch army and the left wing of the Armée du Nord under Marshal Michel Ney, was fought near the strategic crossroads of Quatre Bras, finishing  in
a tactical draw.

   

1816 – Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, and inspires his challenge that each guest write a ghost story, which culminated in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.



1821 Scottish golfer Old Tom Morris was born, fittingly enough, at St. Andrews, Fife. He won the British Open Championship upon four occasions in 1861, 1862, 1864, 1867.



1829 American tribal leader Geronimo was born at Gila River, Bedonkoheland. Geronimo meaning "one who yawns" was the name given to him during a battle with Mexican soldiers. After a Mexican attack on his tribe, where soldiers killed his mother, wife, and his three children in 1851, Geronimo joined a number of revenge attacks against the Mexicans. In 1886, after a lengthy pursuit, Geronimo surrendered to Texan faux-gubernatorial authorities as a prisoner of war. At an old age, he became a celebrity; appearing in fairs but was never allowed to return to the land of his birth. Geronimo died in 1909 from complications of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.



1890 English-American actor, singer, director, and screenwriter Stan Laurel was born as Arthur Stanley Jefferson at Ulverston, Cumbria.



1927 English cricketer Tom Graveney was born at Riding Mill, Hexham, he played in 79 Test Matches for England scoring 4,882 runs at an average of 44.38.



1927 – English actor Brian Wilde, best known for playing Prison Warden Mr. Barrowclough in Porridge and Foggy Dewhurst in Last of the Summer Wine was born at Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire.

     


1959 American wrestler The Ultimate Warrior was born as James Brian Hellwig at Crawfordsville, Indiana.



1959 American actor and director George Reeves died of a gunshot wound to his head in the upstairs bedroom at his home in Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills. Reeves gained fame as Superman in the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman, a role he played in 104 episodes.



1961 Russian Ballet Dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.



1999 English Singer and self styled Leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party David Edward Sutch or as he was better known "Screaming Lord Sutch" committed suicide by hanging following the death of his mother the previous year. At the inquest, his fiancée said he had "manic depression".



2010 English cinematographer, director, producer, and screenwriter Ronald Elwin Neame after suffering complications from a broken leg suffered in a fall at his home in Los Angeles, California aged 99yo.  During a partnership with director David Lean, he produced Brief Encounter (1945), Great Expectations (1946), and Oliver Twist (1948), receiving two Academy Award nominations for writing. Neame then moved into directing, and some notable films included, I Could Go On Singing (1963), Judy Garland's last film, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), which won Maggie Smith her first Oscar, Scrooge (1970), starring Albert Finney and Alec Guinness, and the action-adventure disaster film The Poseidon Adventure (1972).

   

Newsnight: It has been reported that Ed Miliband is to star as Wallis in a live action version of the popular animated duo. There has been no announcement yet about who is to play Gromit. Producers say that after watching the Labour Party leader demolish a bacon butty they did not have to look any further.