Millennium '73 was a free three-day festival held in November 1973 at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas by the Divine Light Mission. It featured Prem Rawat, then known as Guru Maharaj Ji, a 15-year-old guru and the leader of a fast-growing Western religious movement. Organizers billed the festival as the most significant event in human history which would usher in a thousand years of peace. The festival's official schedule described the three evening addresses by Guru Maharaj Ji as the highlights of the event. Big-band music, rock bands, religious songs, choral works, a dance performance and speeches by other DLM leaders filled the program from noon to 10 pm. Media events included press conferences and an impromptu debate. Millennium '73 received wide publicity. Rennie Davis, a prominent anti-war activist and member of the Chicago Seven, helped draw attention to the event as a spokesman for the DLM. Notable journalists attended, some of them acquaintances of Davis from the New Left. It was later described by scholars and journalists as among the major events of 1973 and the 1970s, the high point of Guru Maharaj Ji's popularity, and the most important development in the American DLM's history. Attendance was estimated from 10,000 to 35,000, compared to the projected 100,000. Scholars and journalists generally depicted the event as a disappointment. That, along with other factors including a large debt, led to changes in the DLM's structure, management and message. The following year the movement split into branches headed by Maharaj Ji in the West, and his mother and brother Bal Bhagwan Ji in India.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1775:

The United States Marine Corps was founded as the Continental Marines by a resolution of the Second Continental Congress during the American Revolutionary War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps

1871:

"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?": Journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley located missing missionary and explorer David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morton_Stanley

1945:

Indonesian National Revolution: Following the killing of the British officer Brigadier Mallaby a few weeks prior, British forces began their retaliation by attacking Surabaya, Indonesia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Surabaya

1969:

The first episode of Sesame Street was broadcast , pioneering contemporary standards of educational television, and eventually becoming the longest running children's television series in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sesame_Street

2007:

At the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, King Juan Carlos I of Spain famously asked President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez "¿Por qué no te callas?" after Chávez was repeatedly interrupting a speech by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%BFPor_qu%C3%A9_no_te_callas%3F

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

opine (v): To hold or state as an opinion http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/opine

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The dignity of mankind is in your hands; protect it!

It sinks with you! With you it will ascend. --Friedrich Schiller http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schiller