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 Jan 26


Amber pages




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


1899 W. G. Grace started his 22nd and final Test against Australia today, at Trent Bridge in Nottingham; Wilfred Rhodes debuted in the same match (this is in a very soft green, as close as I can get to the condition of the wicket on that first morning)



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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