Virginia became the tenth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, on June 25, 1788. Other events on the 25th of June include Custer dying at the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876); Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird debuting (1910), with the composer becoming an instant celebrity; and Civil War veterans began arriving at the Great Reunion of 1913 at Gettysburg.
Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written.
Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore (1623), as translated in The Philosophy of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966), by Richard Henry Popkin, p. 65.
June 24 birthdays include Henry Ward Beecher, clergyman and reformer (1813); Ambrose Bierce [pictured], author of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and The Devil’s Dictionary — his dark, cynical wit earned him the epithet “Bitter Bierce” (1842); Karin Pilsäter, Swedish politician of the Liberal People’s Party (1960).
It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1792), English edition The Sphere and Duties of Government, as translated by Joseph Coulthard (1854).
Today is Estonia’s Victory Day, which has been celebrated on June 23 every year since 1934. The date recalls the victory in the 1919 Battle of Vonnu of the Estonian military forces (and Latvian North brigade) and their allies over German forces (Baltische Landeswehr) who sought to re-assert Baltic-German control over the region. The battle was part of the 1918-1920 Estonian War of Independence, where the main adversary of the newly independent Estonia was Communist Russia.
Today, Victory Day also marks the contributions of all Estonians in their fight to regain and retain their independence. Estonian celebration of June 23 is ceremonially tied to the following Midsummer Day celebrations on June 24.
According to Estonian laws, the state flags are not to be lowered during the night between days.
Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1792), English edition The Sphere and Duties of Government, as translated by Joseph Coulthard (1854).
On June 22, 1633, astronomer Galileo Galilei recanted his belief in heliocentrism, the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. He didn’t do this based on scientific research, but under pressure from the Holy Office in Rome.
Three hundred forty-five years later, to the date, American astronomer James W. Christy discovered Charon, a moon for what was then called “the ninth planet,” Pluto. This put Christy in an august company of satellite discovers, including Galileo, who had discovered four of Jupiter’s moons in 1610.
When Pluto was later “demoted” to “dwarf planet” status, in 2006, no one was put under house arrest for objecting, or for not changing his or her mind, as had Galileo been centuries before.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615).
“Anything whatever can be made ridiculous; to see this side of it, and nothing more, is to become the mere jester, whose claim to be regarded as the ideal moralist is cer tainly very slight. But between a too solemn sense of high importance, and that conviction of the intrinsic smallness of everything in particular which some of our satirists have displayed, there is a middle ground.”
Arthur Kenyon Rogers, The Theory of Ethics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922).
On June 21, 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens. In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court found “grandfather clauses” in effect in several formerly slave states to be little more than sneaky ways of allowing illiterate white folks to vote while disallowing illiterate black folks.