The Bal des Ardents was a masquerade ball held on 28 January 1393 at which Charles VI of France performed in a dance with five members of the French nobility. Four of the dancers were killed in a fire caused by a torch brought in by a spectator, Charles' brother Louis, Duke of Orléans—Charles and another of the dancers survived. The ball was one of a number of events intended to entertain the young king, who the previous summer had suffered the first in a series of lifelong attacks of insanity. The event undermined confidence in Charles' capacity to rule; Parisians considered it proof of courtly decadence and threatened to rebel against the more powerful members of the nobility. The public's outrage forced the king and his brother Orléans—whom at least one contemporary chronicler accused of attempted regicide and sorcery—into offering penance for the event. Charles' wife Queen Isabeau held the ball to honor the remarriage of a lady-in-waiting; scholars believe it may have been a traditional charivari, with the dancers disguised as wild men. The myth of wild men, often associated with demonology, was common in medieval Europe and documented in revels of Tudor England.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bal_des_Ardents

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1798:

The Sedition Act became United States law, making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S. government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts

1933:

With the enactment of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, the Nazi Party began its eugenics program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Prevention_of_Hereditarily_Diseased_Offspring

1957:

Rawya Ateya took her seat in the National Assembly of Egypt to become the first female parliamentarian in the Arab world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawya_Ateya

1995:

The MP3 digital audio encoding format was named. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3

2003:

In an effort to discredit U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had written an article critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak revealed that Wilson's wife Valerie Plame was a CIA "operative". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

hapless: Very unlucky; ill-fated. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hapless

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. --Woody Guthrie https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie