June 1

1310: Marguerite Porete condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake in Paris for refusing to remove her book "The Mirror of Simple Souls" from circulation or to recant her views - more on her and her fellow-Beguines on Feb 24


Amber pages




1533: Anne Boleyn crowned Queen of England (the painting is imaginary not historic, created by James Stephanoff in 1832)


1899: William Gilbert Grace started his 22nd and final Test against Australia today, at Trent Bridge in Nottingham (this is in a very soft green, as close as I can get to the condition of the wicket on that first morning; Wilfred Rhodes debuted in the same match, and this colour is what the outfield looked like by day 5)



1958: Charles de Gaulle elected Premier of France



1964: Kenya became a Republic with Jomo Kenyatta as its 1st President (see my page at TheWorldHourglass)



1979: The first black-led government of what had been Rhodesia but was now Zimbabwe, under the sadly unwatchful eye of Bishop Abel Muzorewa (had he been even a touch more watchful, the ghastly Mugabe might have been prevented from ruining the country even worse than the Brits had done - again, see my page at TheWorldHourglass)



The 1555 Dutch edition, survivor of the autos-da-fé


And finally, probably today in 1543, the Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius published his masterpiece "De humani corporis fabrica", "Of the Structure of the Human Body"... a major event in the annals of Christianity's determination to prevent and prohibit any form of science that might challenge the Biblical view of the anatomy of the universe; but I have told this tale in my novel "The Plausible Tragedy of Roderigo Lopes" and shall not increase my blood-pressure, nor cause my psoriasis to worsen through stress, by telling it again here.


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The Argaman Press


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