Please stop hitting your sibling with the palm fronds

For those of you in the Paschally inclined - Happy Palm Sunday



And in keeping in the Holy Week vein -
March 28, 0 -
According to Des Pascha Comutus, written in 243 CE, Jesus Christ's birthday was March 28. It later became the familiar December 25 after the Catholic Church changed it in 336.



So Merry Christmas everybody.


March 28, 1942 -
Another fine Looney Tunes cartoon, The Wabbit Who Came to Dinner, was released on this date.



Notice the pudgy Elmer.


Today in History
March 28, 193-
The Roman ruler Pertinax was at his palace when a contingent of some three hundred soldiers rushed the gates. Pertinax was somewhat distracted. Ancient sources suggest that the soldiers had received only half their promised donativum (pay or bribe money not to kill him). Pertinax had only been emperor for 86 days and didn't have enough time to sell off the previous Emperor Commodus' property (including the concubines and youths Commodus kept for his sexual pleasures) in the giant fire sale he was having.

Neither the guards on duty nor the palace officials chose to resist them. Pertinax, although advised to flee, attempted to reason with them (never try to reason with unpaid Roman soldiers on a rampage), and was almost successful before being struck down by a member of the Praetorian Guard. There being no obvious successor and no Senatorial volunteers, the Guard auctions off the emperorship. The high bidder is Senator Didius Julianus, for 300 million sesterces. After hearing of this, Roman general Septimus Severus in Dalmatia marched on Rome, beheading the new emperor upon arrival.





Both films, The Fall of the Roman Empire and Gladiator both take the same historical event as a starting point.


March 28, 1515 -
Theresa of Avila (Teresa de Jesus), Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic writer and one of my favorite saints (remember, she's the one who was repeated pierced with God's 'golden shaft' of light) was born on this date. She co-founded with John of the Cross, the Order of Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites.

"To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly."


March 28, 1921 -
Dirk Bogarde (Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde), actor and the epitome of coolness, was born on this date.




March 28, 1930 -
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.



I can't help myself - I just love this song (Constantinople and Angora change their names to Istanbul and Ankara on this date.)


March 28, 1941-
Virginia Woolf drowns herself by weighing her pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse near her home because she a dream that Nicole Kidman would portray her in a film with a truly horrifying fake nose.



Lesser writers would have done the same.


March 28, 1964 -
First pirate radio station began to broadcast off the coast of England. Radio Caroline debuted with a combination of rock music and lively disk jockey who's patter played to a huge audience in Great Britain.



British authorities, tried unsuccessfully, to shut down the radio station ship. Radio Caroline had become competition to the staid and usually dull British Broadcasting Corporation.


March 28, 1979 -
The Unit 2 nuclear power plant (a pressurized water reactor manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox) on the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg suffered a partial core meltdown.



The Three Mile Island accident was the worst accident in American commercial nuclear power generating history, even though it led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community.



And so it goes.