July 19– AMADOU BAMBA
Senegalese mystic, pacifist, anti-colonialist, Sufi poet.
JULY 19, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Dunmore Piory, England. Flitch Day. Beginning in 15th century, the monks offered a flitch of bacon as prize for any married couple who could prove to a jury of bachelors and maidens that they had lived together in harmony and fidelity for the past year. Very few took home the bacon.
*Ancient Egypt: New Year. Season of the Nile’s rising, season of inundation.
*Nicaragua: Revolution Day.
*Festival of Sirius.
ALSO ON JULY 19 IN HISTORY…
1500 — Hailstorm brings down ceilings of the Papal Palace, Rome.
1692 — Five women hanged as witches in Salem, Massachusetts.
1898 — New Left Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse born, Berlin, Germany.
1927 — Senegalese Sufi poet, mystic Amadou Bamba dies, Touba, Senegal.
1979 — Sandinista rebels overthrow Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza.
Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective