October 29 marks the death anniversaries of French mathematician Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1783), and American publisher Joseph Pulitzer (1911) for whom the eponymous literary prize is named.
Famed English sea captain, poet and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh, came to a sad end on this day in 1618. Reviled by the Spanish as a pirate for his depredations on Spanish merchantmen in the Caribbean and exploration of Venezuela and Guiana, the aristocratic Raleigh also participated in massacres in Ireland where he occupied lands seized from local Catholic nobles. He was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I and rumored to be her lover. Once his Ole Bess passed on to her Maker, Raleigh’s fortunes began to change. Finally, he was charged with treason by King James I. Making his way to the scaffold in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster, Raleigh appeared calm and unaffected. At the chopping block, the executioner asked which way he should like to lay his head when addressed by the axe. With aplomb and bit of humour, the stalwart English replied, “So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies.” His last words are said to have been “Strike, man, strike!”.
Born on this date in 1740 was James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck and biographer of Samuel Johnson. On October 29, 1897 was born Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s mastermind of Nazi propaganda who was to murder his own children and take his own life at Berlin in 1945 before the advancing Soviet troops could capture him and his Fuehrer.
On this day the Christian Church commemorates Abraham of Rostov, who was born in the 12th century in Galich, Russia. Born of pagan parents, he is said to have experienced a conversion as a young man when he called upon God to heal him of an affliction. Following baptism, he became a monk. In Russia he preached the Gospel and founded the Monastery of the Theophany of which he became abbot and where he founded two churches. Active and effective in converting pagans, he is said to have destroyed an idol of the Slavic god Veles or Volos – a deity of earth, waters, and the underworld that was imagined as a serpent-like beast that also sported goatlike horns and a beard.
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