Born in 1946 – Kate McGarrigle, Canadian musician and singer-songwriter.

Listen to Kate and her sister Anna perform Kate’s song Talk to Me of Mendocino

In 1852, The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, opened to the public.

Above: Stills from Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 film Russian Ark.

In 1703 The revenge of the forty-seven rōnin (also known as the Akō incident) in which a band of rōnin avenged the death of their master. In Edo (now Tokyo), all but one of the Forty-seven Ronin committed seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master’s death.

Above, Kunisada, Chushingura Act XI – The Night Attack, a 19th century depiction of a dramatic reenactment of the incident.

Also: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Rosa Parks

Born in 1939 – Michael Cimino, American director, producer, and screenwriter.

Above: Stills from Cimino’s 1978 film, The Deer Hunter.

Previously: Carl Theodor Dreyer, here and here.

In 1971, a week after toppling the regime of Ugandan leader Milton Obote, Major General Idi Amin declared himself president of Uganda and chief of the armed forces.

Born in 1902 – Langston Hughes, American poet.

“Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.”

Born in 1915 – Thomas Merton, American monk and author.

“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”

Also: Philip Glass

Born in 1888 – Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, American folk/blues musician and songwriter.

“One of the songs I’m gonna sing is We all in the same boat brother. You rock it too far to the right you fall in the waddah, rock it too far to the left you fall in the same waddah, and it’s just as wet on both sides.”

Previously: “Washington, D.C. Lord, it’s a bourgeois town.”

Born in 1914 – William Stafford, American poet and author.

The Way it is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Previously: Stafford

Born in 1929 – Alasdair MacIntyre, Scottish-American philosopher and academic.

In 1981 MacIntyre said, “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without ground for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.”