Various events related to writing occurred on the 31st
May.
Samuel
Pepys last entry in his diary is dated the 31st
May 1669.
Up
very betimes, and so continued all the morning with W. Hewer,
upon
examining and stating my accounts, in order to the fitting myself to
go abroad beyond sea, which the ill condition of my eyes, and my neglect
for a year or two, hath kept me behindhand in, and so as to render
it very difficult now, and troublesome to my mind to do it; but I this
day made a satisfactory entrance therein. Dined at home, and in the afternoon
by water to White Hall, calling by the way at Michell's, where I
have not been many a day till just the other day, and now I met her mother
there and knew her husband to be out of town. And here je did baiser
elle, but had not opportunity para hazer some with her as I would have
offered if je had had it. And thence had another meeting with the
Duke of York, at White Hall, on yesterday's work, and made a good advance:
and so, being called by my wife, we to the Park, Mary Batelier, and
a Dutch gentleman, a friend of hers, being with us. Thence to "The World's
End," a drinking-house by the Park; and there merry, and so home late. And
thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes
in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having
done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a
pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and,
therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people
in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more
than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be any thing,
which cannot be much, now my amours to Deb. are past, and my eyes hindering
me in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a
margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in short-hand with
my own hand. And
so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself
go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany
my being blind, the good God prepare me!
On Sunday 31st May, 1981, the Tamil United Liberation
Front (TULF), a regionally popular democratic party, held a rally in which
three majority Sinhalese policeman were shot and two killed. That night police
and paramilitaries began a pogrom that lasted for three days. The head office
of TULF party was destroyed. The office of the Eelanaadu, a local
newspaper, was also destroyed. Statues of Tamil cultural and religious figures
were destroyed or defaced.
Four people were pulled from
their homes and killed at random. Many business establishments and a local
Hindu temple were also deliberately destroyed.
It was on that same night of
the 31st May, according to many
eyewitnesses, police and government-sponsored paramilitias set fire to the
Jaffna public library and destroyed it completely. Over
97,000 volumes of books along with numerous culturally important and
irreplaceable manuscripts were destroyed. Among the destroyed items were
scrolls of historical value and the works and manuscripts of philosopher,
artist and author Ananda Coomaraawamy and prominent intellectual Prof. Dr. Isaac
Thambiah. The destroyed articles included memoirs and works of writers and
dramatists who made a significant contribution toward the sustenance of the
Tamil culture and those of locally reputed physicians and politicians.
 |
| Mark Felt |
On 31st
May 2005, Vanity Fair magazine revealed that William Mark Felt was Deep
Throat, when it published an article (eventually appearing in the July issue)
on its website by John D. O'Connor, an attorney acting on Felt's behalf, in
which Felt reportedly said, "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat."
After the Vanity Fair story broke, Woodward, Bernstein, and Benjamin C.
Bradlee, the Post's executive editor during Watergate, confirmed Felt's
claim to be Deep Throat. L. Patrick Gray, former acting Director of the FBI and
Felt's boss, disputes Felt's claim to be the sole source in Gray's book, In Nixon’s Web, written with his son Ed
Gray. Instead, Gray and others have continued to argue that Deep Throat was a
compilation of sources combined into one character in order to improve sales of
the book and movie. Woodward and Bernstein, however, defended Felt's claims and
detailed their relationship with Felt in Woodward's book The Secret Man: The
Story of Watergate's Deep Throat.
The first talking cartoon of Mickey
Mouse, “The Karnival Kid” ", is released on 31st May 1929.
