Anniversaries for 6th December - my pick.

[philipstorry]

Of late, a few people I know have been doing memes that are designed to make them write diary/journal/blog entries more frequently.

So I figured I'd join in, but with my own. Every day, I'm going to pull up the Wikipedia page for that day of the month and pick what I think are the best and worst thing on the list.

December 6thThere's some

Comments

[ruthytoothy]

oooooh, this was v interesting to read, thanks!! One request - please could you put in the years for each of the events (you started off doing this, but dropped it for the commiserations) to save the lazybones amongst us from needing to click through to look em up? Or maybe that was your intention - to get us to read the links, and therefore actually learn a bit more about the events?

Aaaaanyway, I definitely agree with your highlight and lowlight, and am ashamed to admit I'd never heard of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, even tho I was a teenager at the time :(

[philipstorry]

I purposefully left some of the dates off, with the idea that people could click on the date heading itself (which is a link) and look them up.

The idea behind it was to drive clicks to the page, so that those who are EXCEPTIONALLY bored can editorialise themselves, or disagree in the comments - which I would welcome!

With regards to the taxicabs and Finland facts which weren't linked, they're the day's article at Wikipedia but didn't seem clear or evident in the current text of the articles (a common problem!), so I felt linking to them was a bit off. In particular, the Finland fact led you to a generic WW2 portal/overview page, which then links to loads of others, so I was very reluctant to link as I didn't feel it was a satisfying destination...

The two IRA items should have had dates, certainly. Whoops. I shall do better tomorrow!

It's early. I plan to do this until at least December 5th next year, so I've got plenty of time in which to experiment. So tomorrow, you get what you wish for! *grins*

[philipstorry]

As for Babri Masjid - yeah, wow.

A large group of people tore down a mosque by hand, and then caused rioting and (mutual, ongoing) reprisals for months afterwards.

And I was a teenager, and hadn't heard of it. I mean, not hearing about the Halifax or the Anglo-Irish Treaty, that's understandable. But I was alive at the time, and this seems like a big deal. Big enough for it to have resulted in lots of deaths and animosity.

That fact, and the ramifications of it as I thought about it, just had me really re-evaluating my memory of the time.

That was what made me think that doing this daily is worthwhile. Even if just once a week I find something new, this is a good project. :-)

No shame in not knowing it though - it probably wasn't obvious at the time that it would escalate into months of riots, and frankly in the West it was probably just a one minute note in the night's headlines.

Although what that says about our news is worthy of thought. Some clueless celebrity probably got more airtime, after all... :-(

[albatros]

I'm reading LJ for the first time in a while (again). I liked your post :o) And I didn't find myself disagreeing with your editorial [yes, the bits that distinguish syndicated recycling from journalism].

I'll echo R about not knowing about the mosque. That subject does raise an interesting question, about various views on the right to practice faith. Is there a point where exercising the right to practice faith becomes an infringement on other people's rights? I'm referring to possible examples on the borderline of acceptability, rather than the obvious extremism where people are skewing the context of formal traditional teachings and principles, acting 'in the name of' their faith.

Admittedly, the Halifax explosion didn't ring any bells with me either. :o(

[philipstorry]

If I don't add opinion, then it's just a link. I may as well use Twitter then