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>
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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>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
hapless:
Very unlucky; ill-fated.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hapless>
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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>
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