Comments on: The Wonders of St. John’s Day

By: Jeremy_Wells

Jeremy_Wells — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:22:50 +0000

We can add to this list “virus destroys writer’s OS, nearly destroying life’s work and resulting in mad dash to salvage contents of hard drive…”

By: Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:29:50 +0000

Fire blocks Grand Canyon exits

From Chricago Tribune news services
Published June 25, 2006

SEDONA, ARIZONA — A 15,500-acre wildfire in Grand Canyon National Park prompted officials to close several roads, blocking the exits for an unknown number of tourists on the North Rim on Saturday (June 24, 2006) as crews worked on a plan to escort visitors out of the park as soon as possible.
The blaze, which had not threatened any property, was allowed to burn since it was discovered June 8 in the Kaibab National Forest after a series of lightning strikes.
But strong winds pushed the flames into areas without fire lines and forced the roads closed Saturday morning, said a spokesman with the team fighting the fire.
Near Sedona, dozens of residents who were evacuated from scenic Oak Creek Canyon a week ago returned to their homes Saturday.

By: Jos Gagné

Jos Gagné — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 18:05:33 +0000

Saint Jean Baptiste day rocks. How’s millions of French Canadians partying sound like? Gotta love our national holiday. Nothing weird to report on my side though, except that I celebrated a French Canadian holiday in an Irish pub lol.

By: tpeter

tpeter — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 21:11:50 +0000

Dear Loren,
St. John’s Day (”Jaanipäev”) is a major traditional holiday in Estonia where I was born, celebrated by singing around bonfires, in Estonian communities in the United States and Canada as well as in Estonia itself. The glow-worm, because it usually starts appearing around St. John’s Day, is called “Jaaniuss”–”St. John’s Worm”–in Estonian.
It’s interesting that Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting of nine flying whatisits over Mt. Rainier should have taken place on St. John’s Day–though I never noticed the connection before. What might be significant is not the mere fact of Arnold seeing them that day–there were UFO sightings all over the West Coast throughout June and early July that Summer, as well as the Roswell crash–but rather the fact that Arnold’s sighting, on that date, was the one that for some reason catalyzed public interest the way none of its recent predecessors had–and moreover gripped the general public imagination, not just the small minority of readers of Charles Fort or science-fiction. Fort had “scooped” Arnold and Palmer–a golf name-game there, too?:=)–by two and a half decades with _The Book of the Damned_ in 1919–but had not galvanized the general public the way Kenneth Arnold did on St. John’s Day, 1947.
It’s also very curious how a number of UFO witnesses or researchers died on or very close to St. John’s Day, as you pointed out–Frank Scully, June 24, 1964; Frank Edwards, near midnight on June 23, 1967; Arthur Bryant, June 24, 1967.I believe John A. Keel might have been one of the first to point this out, in _The Mothman Prophecies_.
As for the Masonic connections of St. John’s Day–would anybody happen to know if Kenneth Arnold, Ray Palmer, Richard Shaver, Donald Keyhoe, or George Adamski were Masons?
Cheers,
T. Peter

By: twblack

twblack — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:03:51 +0000

What A Strange Day!!

By: SaruOtoko

SaruOtoko — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 23:06:29 +0000

I want a Lemur. Throwing that into the mix is a bit odd eh? oh well.

By: nshumate

nshumate — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:10:26 +0000

Well, it’ll be my 35th birthday, so I’ll be eligible for the presidency of the United States. That’s pretty bizarre.

By: Batgirl

Batgirl — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:43:36 +0000

Ambrose Bierce rules!!!

(I had to say something.)

By: Mnynames

Mnynames — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 16:02:32 +0000

Here’s a few of the more Fortean entries in my odd collection of events I call a calendar-

European Day of Fors Fortuna (Lady Luck).

Mariner’s Blessing in Atlantic City, New Jersey. (Sadly unobserved anymore).

Celebration Of The Senses.

2 Eskimos kill a huge, yellow-furred bear similar to Arctodus Simus that died out in the Pleistocene Era at Rendezvous Lake, Barren ground, Canada. It is later given the scientific name Vetularctos inopinatus, 1864.

Pieces of ice “so large that they could not be grasped in one hand” are strewn about by a tornado in Colorado, 1877.

The ground in Eton, England is found covered by masses of jelly the size of peas, believed by some to be the larval eggs of some kind of worm or insect, 1911.

Birth of Astronomer, Science Fiction Author, and Scientific Gadfly Sir Fred Hoyle in Bingley, England, 1915.

6 men seeking shelter in a shack from a thunderstorm die when a nearby lightning blast sets off a charge of dynamite inside in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1924.

Maria Goretti canonized as a Saint by Pope Pius XII in a ceremony attended by her mother and her murderer (The first known case of either). The 12-year-old had died in 1902 2 days after fending off a violent attempted rape by 18-year-old Alexander Serenelli. Before she died, she pardoned him for his sins and hoped that he might one day join her in heaven. He, apparently, had a vivid dream while in jail at about this time in which she offered him flowers that glowed with white flame, 1950.

116th Graduation at the Albany Avenue Atlantic City High School, the last class to do so, 1994. (It’s not very Fortean, but it’s where I went to school. It was a cool, gothic cathedral of a building that sadly, is nothing more than a casino parking lot now).

USAF releases the Roswell Report, purporting that alien bodies seen by witnesses were test dummies, 1997.

Crop circles discovered in Latty Township, Ohio, 1998.