FATIMA, MINERS, STADIUMS, QIGONG AND OPERATION ABOLITION

A very mixed bag for the 13^th  May

On 13^th May 1917 three children report the first apparition of Our Lady of Fátima is in Fátima, Portugal. Our Lady of Fátima is a famous title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary as she appeared in apparitions reported by three shepherd children at Fátima in Portugal. These occurred on the 13th day of six consecutive months in 1917, starting on 13^th May. The three children were Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto.

The 1926 general strike in the United Kingdom was a general strike that lasted nine days, from 4^th  May 1926 to 13th May 1926. It was called by the general council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an unsuccessful attempt to force the British government to act to prevent wage reduction and worsening conditions for coal miners.

On 12^th May 1926, the TUC General Council visited 10 Downing Street to announce their decision to call off the strike, provided that the proposals worked out by the Samuel Commission were adhered to and that the Government offered a guarantee that there would be no victimization of strikers. The Government stated that it had "no power to compel employers to take back every man who had been on strike." Thus the TUC agreed to end the dispute without such an agreement.

On the 13^th May 1951 the 400th anniversary of the founding of the National University of San Marcos is commemorated by the opening of the first large-capacity stadium in Peru. The Estadio Universidad Nacional Mayor San Marcos is a multi-purpose stadium located in Lima, Peru, belonging to the National University of San Marcos. It was inaugurated on 13^th May, 1951, with a seating capacity of 70,000 and covers an area of 48,782 m².

On the 13^th May 1960 hundreds of University of California, Berkeley students congregate for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Thirty-one students are arrested, and the Free Speech Movement is born.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) or House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) (1947–1975) was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security". When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee. In May 1960, the committee held hearings in San Francisco City Hall that led to the infamous "riot" on 13^th May when city police officers fire-hosed protesting students from UC Berkeley, Stanford, and other local colleges and dragged them down the marble steps beneath the rotunda, leaving some seriously injured. Soviet affairs expert William Mandel, who had been subpoenaed to testify, angrily denounced the committee and the police in a blistering statement which was aired repeatedly for years thereafter on Pacifica Radio station KPFA in Berkeley. The following video from You tube is well worth watching.

On 13^th May 1992 Li Hongzhi gives the first public lecture on Falun Gong in Changchun, People’s Republic of China.

On this day, Li Hongzhi gave his first public seminar on Falun Gong (alternately called Falun Dafa) in the northeastern city of Changchun. In his hagiographic spiritual biography Li Hongzhi is said to have been taught ways of "cultivation practice" by several masters of the Buddhist and Daoist traditions, including Quan Jue, the 10th Heir to the Great Law of the Buddha School, a Taoist master from age eight to twelve, and a master of the Great Way School with the Taoist alias of True Taoist from the Changbai Mountains. Falun Dafa is said to be the result of his reorganizing and writing down the teachings that were passed to him.

Falun Gong or Falun Dafa (literally means "Law Wheel Practice") is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 through public lectures by its founder, Li Hongzhi. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with a moral philosophy. Falun Gong emphasises morality and the cultivation of virtue in its central tenets of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance (Chinese: 真、善、忍), and identifies as a qigong practice of the Buddhist school, though its teachings also incorporate elements drawn from Taoist traditions. Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to better health and, ultimately, spiritual enlightenment.