Out of This World on November 7th?

Events have happened on November 7ths in the past and incidents will occur on November 7, 2014. Watch out. What those are remain to be seen. We may wish to look to the skies for their origins. Or closer to home. Let me explain.

As George Santayana (1863-1952) is often quoted to have said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I should add, those who ignore the signs and symbols from the past may be surprised when current experiences are mirrors of earlier times.

Something significant is in the wings for Friday, November 7, 2014. Is there a pattern of events that have taken place in the past? Let's have a look.

Is there any similarity to historic incidents that have been registered on November 7ths?

How about topics defined as...

Battles/Assassinations/Deaths/Bombings/Violence

1811 - Tecumseh's War: The Battle of Tippecanoe was fought near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana, United States. The Shawnee Indians and Chief Tecumseh were defeated by William Henry Harrison.
1837 - In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot dead by a mob while attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time.
1893 - In Barcelona, Spain, 23 people including 9 women, were killed at Liceo Opera House by a bomb thrown by anarchist Salvador Franch.
1908 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are reportedly killed in San Vicente, Bolivia.
1940 - The middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state collapsed during a windstorm. The suspension bridge had opened to traffic on July 1, 1940.
1983 - A bomb exploded inside the United States Capitol. No one is injured, but an estimated $250,000 in damage is caused. A caller said the bomb was an action against US aggression in Grenada and Lebanon.
1996 - In Nigeria Flight 086, a Boeing 727 belonging to the Aviation Development Corp., crashed near Epe east of Lagos and 141 [142] people died.
2007 - Jokela school shooting occurred in Tuusula, Finland, resulting in the death of nine people.
2012 - In California, Lawrence Jones, 42, a discharged parolee, shot four coworkers before shooting himself at Valley Protein, a poultry processing plant.
2012 - In China, four self-immolations took place. Three Tibetan teenage monks, aged 15-16, set themselves on fire outside a police office in southwest Sichuan province. At least one died. A 23-year-old Tibetan nomadic woman, Tamdin Tso, died after self-immolating in western Qinghai province.

Is there anything there that we might observe repeated?

Spying a little deeper, one event appears to have created ripples through time related to what first happened back in 1917. Those would be the temporal outcomes from...

The October or Russian or Bolshevik Revolution

1917 - The Gregorian calendar date is of the October Revolution, which gets its name from the Julian calendar date of 25 October. On this date in 1917, the Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace.
1919 - The first Palmer Raid is conducted on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists are arrested in 23 different United States cities.
1931 - The Chinese Soviet Republic was proclaimed on the anniversary of the October Revolution, by Mao Tse Tung.
1941 - Russians paraded across Red Square commemorating the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and afterward went directly to the front to defend Moscow from the approaching Nazi forces.
1991 - Pro- and anti-Communists rallies took place in Moscow on the 74th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
1992 - Alexander Dubcek, 70, former Czechoslovak leader (1968-1969), died in a car crash. His 1968 failed attempt to loosen the Communist grip became known as the Prague Spring.
1992 - Richard Yates, 66, US author of Revolutionary Road (1961), died in Birmingham, Alabama.
2008 - Mieczyslaw Rakowski, 81, Poland's last communist-era party chairman and prime minister, died. Rakowski, a historian and journalist, was chairman of the communist Polish United Workers' Party from July 1989 until the party was dissolved at its January 1990 Congress during the country's bloodless transition to democracy.

Can we expect something from the new Russia? Or accounts related to the old October Revolution? There does seem to be a self-generating human factor here that keeps coming to the surface for Russians, even beyond the Communist era. The anniversary syndrome with deaths also seems to be strong with this date and a "revolutionary" background. This is worth watching.

What I found, more importantly, however, was a common denominator in a specific series of activities, actions, and announcements. My research revealed, in an overwhelming fashion, a thread that kept surfacing. That theme was one linked to space, to astronomy, to rocketry.

Here is an overview of past November 7ths'...

Astroevents

1492 - The Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, struck the earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France. Emperor Maximilian visited Ensisheim 15 days after the fall and ordered that the Ensisheim meteorite be preserved in the local church.

1918 - Robert Goddard demonstrated tube-launched solid propellant rockets.

1932 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was broadcast for the first time on CBS Radio.

1936: Wernher von Braun's team tested the first clustered liquid-fueled rocket.
1966 - Lunar Orbiter 2 launched by US.
1967 - Surveyor 6 launched for soft landing on Moon.
1984 - The Space Shuttle Discovery STS-51-A launch was scrubbed at T-minus 20 minutes due to high shear winds in the upper atmosphere. Discovery launched successfully the next day.
1996 - NASA's Mars Global Surveyor blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to map the surface of the Red Planet. It went into orbit around Mars in 2001.
1998 - The Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-95) landed in Cape Canaveral, Florida. After 9 days in space, John Glenn, 77, returned to Earth aboard the Discovery, visibly weak but elated after the mission. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew the Friendship 7 mission and became the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn is the last surviving member of the Mercury 7. A Freemason, Glenn is a member of Concord Lodge # 688 New Concord, Ohio, and DeMolay International, the Masonic youth organization. Lots of 7, as you see.
2000 - The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovered one of the country's largest LSD labs inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego (means "clear of springs"), Kansas.
2007 - The Space Shuttle Discovery returned to the Kennedy Space Center after a 15-day mission building and repairing the International Space Station.

All of these space-related incidents clustered, remarkably, on November 7ths.

What do we know is going to take place on November 7, 2014? In a word, Interstellar. The film, directed by Christopher Nolan, is set to go into wide release in the USA on November 7, 2014. A perfect date for such an event, it seems.

Anne Hathaway is in The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar.

What was the last big event that created a massive emotional quake from a Christopher Nolan-directed film? That would be the Aurora shooting at the opening of The Dark Knight Rises on July 20, 2012. Will Interstellar's opening be linked to a more hopeful, celestial incident??

More on Interstellar, its ties to 2001, and more, in the coming week.

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HALLOWEEN UPDATE:

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo experienced "an in-flight anomaly" during a test flight on October 31, 2014, the company said on Twitter. Details about the anomaly weren't immediately released.

On its website, Virgin Galactic describes SpaceShipTwo as having a cabin similar in size to an executive jet and capable of carrying two pilots and six passengers.

"The spaceship can be thought of as an air launched glider with a rocket motor and a couple of extra systems for spaceflight," the website says.

One of the two pilots was found dead, and the other one is critically injured.

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James Holmes' Evolving Appearance

Today is the second anniversary of the The Dark Knight Rises shooting on July 20, 2012. That mayhem took place in Theater 9 at the Century 16, in Aurora, Colorado, and left 12 people dead, 70 injured. 

At top is James Holmes, during a March 2013 court appearance, showing his "new look." The photograph below is from a June 2013 court session.

Holmes reportedly converted to Islam and prays five times a day, noted 2013 news items.

Holmes' presentation of self has evolved since his arrest. 

(July 2012 left, September 2012 right).

On July 17, 2014, Circa wrote:

Witnesses at a pre-trial hearing discussing evidence told the court in Oct. 2013, that when James Holmes' bedroom was searched after the July 20, 2012, theater shooting, police found that his calendar had the date of the shooting marked "with a unique symbol."

Thomas McGrath of Dangerous Minds wrote an article, "The Copycat Effect: Meet the Man Who Predicted the Aurora Shooting," which captures well my experience of the event.

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Aurora Name Game & FedEx

Aurora, again?

The Rambo-style shooting at a FedEx facility in Kennesaw, Georgia, Cobb County, made news on April 29, 2014, leaving one dead and six injured.

That called forth this summary from correspondent Robert Sullivan:

March 21st, a FedEx triple tractor trailer seemingly loses control and crashes. Killing 2 people.
7 days later, March 28th a FedEx employee in Nevada, is fatally shot making deliveries.
13 days later, April 10th a FedEx tractor trailer seemingly loses control and crashes into a bus full of high school seniors, killing 10 people.
19 days later, April 29th 19 year old package handler at FedEx arms himself "like Rambo" and shoots 6 people. Injuring 2 critically.

39 days, 13 deaths, one company, FedEx.

The Christian Science Monitor also noted, when the California bus was hit by the FedEx truck, that...

In mid-February, a FedEx truck making a pick up in Sweetwater, Texas, caught fire. Later that month, a FedEx tractor trailer caught fire and was totally destroyed along I-81 near Roanoke, Virginia. In March, a FedEx truck fire shut down a portion of I-80 near Park City, Utah.

Now comes another one for the FedEx file from RS:

On Wednesday morning, April 30, 2014, two Oklahomans were identified as those killed in a traffic accident that involved a FedEx semi-trailer truck (pictured at top) a mile west of Greensburg.

Aurora Diane Balch, 35, and Donald Anthony Barrs, 27, both of Weatherford, Oklahoma, were killed in an accident shortly after 3:30 a.m. at the intersection of U.S. 54 and U.S. 183 in Kiowa County, according to a Kansas Highway Patrol report.

Balch was driving a 2006 Chrysler north on U.S. 183 when she failed to yield the right of way at the intersection. There is a sign at that location that requires U.S. 183 traffic to stop.

The westbound semi struck the Chrysler on the passenger side, where Barrs was sitting. The impact sent both vehicles in a ditch north of U.S. 54.

The semi was operated by FedEx, a highway patrol dispatcher said. The FedEx driver, Anibal Ruiz-Figueroa, 58, of Stratford, Texas, had "possible injuries."

Please note that the driver killed was yet another Aurora. I have written extensively about the moniker Aurora, see, for example, another 2014 incident and from 2012, "Understanding Aurora." The Aurora twilight name game has been on many of our minds since The Dark Knight Rises killings at Aurora, Colorado.

Kiowa County was named after the group of individuals who used the name as a self-referencing term Ka'igwu, meaning "Principal People." Another explanation of their name "Kiowa" originated after their migration through what the Kiowa refer to as "The Mountains of the Kiowa" (Kaui-kope) in the present eastern edge of Glacier National Park, Montana. In Oklahoma, in 1892, the Jerome Commission began enrolling the Kiowas, Comanches and Apaches to prepare for the opening of their reservation to settlement by whites. Kiowa County was formed in 1907. The name shows up, in good twilight lexilinking fashion, via Kiowa Gordon, an actor in three of The Twilight Saga movies.

The City of Aurora, Colorado, is in Arapahoe County, and the suspect, James Holmes, was held in the Arapahoe County detention center.

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FedEx trucks and planes are involved in several relatively 

underpublicized crashes, of course.

This FedEx semi truck caught fire after a crash August 29, 2012, in Aurora, Indiana. The crash occurred just after 11 a.m. in front of the Taco Bell on U.S. 50. The Taco Bell was briefly evacuated while crews put out the semi truck fire. (This is not the first time we've seen this combination of names. See "La Belle Aurore: Casablanca & Looper.")

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On Tuesday, May 6, 2014, a FedEx employee riding a golf cart in the FedEx facility at Shawnee, Kansas, died when he fell off the cart.

Tuesday's accident is the third fatal incident at this same FedEx Ground sorting facility since March 2013. Links to previous reports can be found below.

March 23, 2013 - Tractor trailer kills FedEx security guard in Shawnee
Nov. 20, 2013 - FedEx employee killed after being pinned between loading dock and trailer

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Aurora Name Game Surfaces In Overland Park Shootings

Aurora. Aurora. Aurora.

The goddess of the dawn. 

The name is back to haunt us, now in connection to the Overland Park shootings.

As I detailed after the The Dark Knight Rises deaths in Aurora, Colorado, a new red dawn appeared to be in evidence.

Now, hidden in the name game and lexilinks of the Overland Park, Kansas events, Aurora dawns again.

The shootings at the Jewish-related sites on Palm Sunday, April 13, 2014, resulted in three deaths.

Authorities announced Sunday night that in custody was none other than Frazier Glenn Cross, Jr., 73, who is suspected of fatally shooting a 14-year-old Methodist Eagle Scout and his grandfather in the parking lot at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City campus in Overland Park then gunning down a woman at Village Shalom, a retirement community.

The two identified victims are Dr. William Lewis Corporon and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, both members of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood.

Also known as Frazier Glenn Miller or simply Glenn Miller, he lives in Aurora, Missouri.

The population of the town is about 7500, and it lies in Lawrence County. Between 1911 and 1920, the virulently anti-Catholic newspaper The Menace was published in Aurora by W. F. Phelps and Earl McClure. It achieved a national circulation of over one million, according to the March 1932 issue of American Mercury.

Miller has a long track record of racist and anti-Semitic activities.

Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr. (b. Nov 23, 1940),...is the former leader of the defunct North Carolina-based White Patriot Party (formerly known as the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan). Convicted of criminal charges related to weapons and violation of an injunction against paramilitary activity, he is a perennial candidate for public office. He is an advocate of white nationalism, white separatism, and anti-Semitic theories; and a critic of homosexuality and Third World immigration into historically White nations.
As a member of the racist hate group, “The Order,” which advocated violence against Jews and African-Americans, Miller was involved in the assassination of Denver, Colorado radio talk show host, Alan Berg, in 1984:
"Ten members of The Order were tried and convicted under Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statutes, and with the help of the testimony of Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., who testified against Order members in order to have his own sentence reduced.”
...
In 1980 Miller founded the White Patriot Party, which developed from the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a local chapter. It was a paramilitary organization with an ideology influenced by the Christian Identity theology. Miller was the leader and principal spokesman for the organization until his arrest in 1987, after which the organization soon dissolved.
After the Southern Poverty Law Center surreptitiously accessed the WPP computer systems, it presented evidence in court indicating the WPP leadership was planning the assassination of SPLC leader Morris Dees. The court issued an injunction barring the WPP, and Miller specifically, from engaging in paramilitary activity. The WPP was avowedly pro-Apartheid, and openly advocated the establishment of an all-White ethnostate in the territory of the American South.
During his time as leader of the WPP, Miller unsuccessfully sought both the Democratic Party's 1984 nomination for Governor of North Carolina, and the 1986 Republican Party's nomination for a seat in the United States Senate.
After going underground, Miller was arrested on April 30, 1987, on numerous Federal criminal charges in the company of three other men (Tony Wydra, Robert "Jack" Jackson, and Douglas Sheets), who were also taken into Federal custody. After his arrest, Miller agreed to testify against several other defendants in a major Federal sedition trial in Arkansas. He served three years (1987-1990) in Federal prison, following his conviction for weapons violations, as well as for violating the injunction proscribing him from engaging in paramilitary activities.

After his release from prison, Miller wrote an autobiography, A White Man Speaks Out, which was privately published in 1999. By 2002 he had moved to Aurora, Missouri. Miller has since become affiliated with the Vanguard News Network of Alex Linder, which is an anti-Semitic, white nationalist website....Miller's [was] interviewed on The Alan Colmes Show and by phone on The Howard Stern Show. Source.

Miller was involved in the rally and leadership which resulted in the The Greensboro massacre, which occurred on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. Five protest marchers were shot and killed, allegedly, by members of either Miller's group, the American Nazi Party, and/or the KKK. While eyewitnesses stated it was a klansman who fired the first shot, Frazier Glenn Miller said the first shots were fired from a handgun by an anti-Klan demonstrator.

But what is the reality behind this man? As Michael Hoffman notes elsewhere and summarizes in the comments section, "Frazier Glenn Miller, the accused shooter, is a former informant for the Federal government having testified for the prosecution in a landmark 1989 'sedition' trial of militiamen, Klansmen and 'Order' members at Ft. Smith, Arkansas."

After Miller moved to Aurora in 2002, he began publishing his paper, The White Patriot Leader. It included articles by Miller, and former KKK leader David Duke, as well as a recommended reading list which included Mein Kampf, and The Turner Diaries, a racist novel that supposedly inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. 

In 2008, Miller's son, Jesse, was killed in a shootout.

Frazier Glenn Miller, who once went to prison for refusing to shut down his paramilitary White Patriot Party, wrote in a blog post that he doesn't know why his son shot the "white man" who had pulled over to help him after a traffic accident.
But that didn't stop Miller from naming a scapegoat: the Springfield, Mo., Police Department.
The shooting was part of a bizarre string of events on March 28 that began with a car accident and culminated in the death of Miller's son, Jesse. Early that afternoon, an SUV driven by Jesse Miller, 30, hit a pick-up truck in Marionville, Mo. When Joseph M. Rich, 55, stopped to offer assistance, Jesse Miller killed him with a shotgun he had in his vehicle. Soon afterward, a Marionville, Mo., police officer arrived and ordered Miller to put down his weapon. Miller responded by shooting the officer, who then shot Miller dead. The officer, Andy Clark, suffered a non-life threatening shoulder wound. Source.

In 2014, it now appears that Glenn Miller of Aurora, Missouri, visited his violent history upon Overland Park, Kansas.

April is turning into the kind of month we thought it might be.

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Several postings at Twilight Language have dealt with the Aurora name game, as the theater shooting at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises occurred in Aurora, Colorado. These are some:

Understanding Aurora As A Synchromystic Fortean

Predicting Aurora

Aurora's Second Man?

Aurora Copycat Effect: The Complete List

Red Dawn Again

Aurora: Synchromystic Wonderland

Aurora Copycats: Prepare Now

Anticipating Aurora and Beyond

Red Dawn

Blood Red Movie Massacres

Dark Knight Shooting: 12 Dead, 58 Injured

Bane/Bain Bursts Bare ~ The Aurora Shootings Predicted

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Piccard/Picard, Star Trek, Borg, Bane and the Dark Knight Links to Wheeling-Bridgeport Events

There was another gun attack against a Federal today, allegedly by a lone shooter. In late news, a bomb threat has been linked to it. Why did it all bring to mind Star Trek?

Thomas Piccard, or Thomas Picard, a former Wheeling, West Virginia police officer, was identified as the gunman who fired shots at the Wheeling Federal Building on Wednesday, October 9, 2013, before being killed by police officers. Law enforcers said the shooter was 55-year-old Thomas J. "Tom" Piccard of Bridgeport, Ohio. He retired from being a police officer in Wheeling in 2000.

Piccard fired multiple rounds into the federal building during the afternoon before he was shot dead by a policeman. A court security officer also shot the gunman.

A security guard suffered minor injuries when Piccard fired an estimated 20 rounds into the building at 2:30 p.m. City resident Carla Webb Daniels said she saw the man reload his assault rifle and then fire at a nearby YWCA. She said he fired between 25 and 30 rounds.

Piccard began firing from a Chase bank parking lot across from the federal building. He was observed in the parking lot very quickly after the first shots were fired.

Authorities identified the gunman first as Thomas Picard, later with the surname Piccard, who died at a local hospital. U.S. Attorney William Ihlenfeld said he was a former Wheeling police officer.

An unidentified store manager said it sounded like the shooter used two different weapons. At a news conference late Wednesday, Piccard was said to have been armed with an assault weapon and a handgun.

The building houses the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, along with regional offices of the Social Security Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the General Services Administration.

Investigators were searching Piccard’s home in hopes of determining a motive and if he acted alone.

Officials said it was too early to tell whether Piccard was targeting anyone in the building or what his motive may have been. Asked if the gunman had any beef with the U.S. government, authorities said, “We’re really digging hard at this point to find out.”

The building houses a variety of courtrooms and related offices, including judges, prosecutors and law enforcement.

Although reportedly living in Bridgeport, Ohio, at the time of the shooting, Piccard was a former Wheeling resident (see obituary of his mother, Nancy Joan Borchert Piccard Griffiths, here).

Reporter Glenn Bolich noted that police, FBI and the Allegheny County bomb squad were on scene Wednesday night in Bridgeport, Ohio. The bomb threat is related to the Wheeling shooting, he said.

Tom Piccard, the shooter, had a "threatening" note in Latin scrawled on side of his trailer, reports Glenn Bolich, WTOV9-Steubenville, Ohio.

Andrew W. Griffin, editor of Red Dirt Report, shares this:

According to The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register, "scrawled on the exterior of a trailer in Bridgeport (Ohio) is a variation of the following phrase, in Latin: 'Abandon hope all ye who enter this place.'"
That of course is from Dante's Inferno and in Latin is: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.

Pretty grim, it would seem.

We have more to learn about Thomas Piccard, it would seem.

Red Dirt Report's Griffin made these further observations, in comments directly to me, after reading an earlier version of this posting:

The city where Piccard's actions took place - Wheeling, West Virginia (Wheeling is 98 nautical miles upstream, on the Ohio River, from Point Pleasant, West Virginia) - was noted rather frequently in one of my favorite TV shows - Northern Exposure (1990-1995). One of the show's stars was John Corbett, who played the philosophy-espousing deejay and motorcycle outlaw Chris Stevens. His character was from Wheeling and actor Corbett also is from Wheeling. Chris was known to quote from Dante while on the air.In a fascinating 1994 episode of Northern Exposure, titled "Una Volta In L'Inverno," shopkeeper Ruth-Anne tries to learn Italian so she can read Dante's Divine Comedy in its original language. Chris, meanwhile, is trying to help sunlight-deprived trapper Walt get off his "light visor" using "tough love," the way he used tough love for a codeine-addicted, gun-toting friend back in Wheeling. Actor John Corbett was born May 9, 1962. 697 years earlier, to the day, Dante Alighieri was born.

One more thing about the aforementioned Northern Exposure episode "Una Volta L'Inverno." I just rewatched it this morning and something caught my attention. During a scene where Cicely's mayor is trying to rally the townspeople to help her rid the streets of annoying herds of caribou, former Wall Street banker-turned-trapper Walt (wearing a visor to fend of SAD - seasonal affective disorder, being they live in Alaska) blurts out: "Rattle their soundsystems. Low-range harmonic waves. 100,000 hertz, say. Transmit in three second bursts. They don't like that kind of thing. Mess with the head, the body follows."The mayor dismisses the idea, while Wheeling native Chris Stevens looks across the table at Walt a bit bemused.

News reports note that Piccard lived in the "Presidential Estates" housing addition in Bridgeport, Ohio (across the Ohio River from Wheeling, W'Va.) and that he lived on Johnson Street. Google Maps shows the Presidential Estates as featuring street names of 20th century presidents - Eisenhower, Nixon, Hoover, Kennedy and, of course, LBJ. However, the main street leading into the housing addition is Adams Drive. John Adams, presumably? Of course LBJ rose to power in the wake of JFK's assassination, a tragedy that took place 50 years ago next month.

(Northern Exposure's Chris Stevens, of course, is not the same Chris Stevens who was the U.S. Ambassador of Libya who was murdered when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked on September 11, 2012.)

Matt Bell sends along this thought: "I read 'Wheeling' and I hear Shelby Downard say, in his idiom (something like), 'Over at Wheeling, West Virginia...that's where you have your shrine of Osiris.'"

The Name Piccard/Picard

The name Picard is familiar-sounding today because of the Star Trek character, Jean-Luc Picard.

In late 2366, Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard is assimilated into the Borg and his Borg designation is give as "Locutus of Borg" (pictured).

Memory Alpha points out:

As for the name Locutus, Michael Piller termed it as "a name which I got out of the dictionary about language – I think it's a Latin word for language." (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 23, p. 17) Locutus actually means "having spoken" or "he who has spoken" in Latin, still an appropriate name for one serving as spokesman.

In many of the recent Washington D. C. violence incidents, you will have noted an underlying theme of voices in people's head, hearing voices, being controlled, and related behavioral descriptions. A fictional theme of the Borg in Star Trek was one of the control of the individual for the well-being and support of the hive. 

Piccard and/or Picard is a surname meaning a person from Picardy, a historical region and cultural area of France.

This interesting surname [of Picard] can have two possible origins, both French. It can be locational and refer to someone from Picardy (Picardie) in Northern France and Normandy or else be derived from a French personal name compounded of "Pic" and -"hard" composed by analogy with Richard, in which form it was to give rise to the variant surname Pitcher. A form of the personal name Pickard is found in England as early as the 12th Century as Paganus filius (son of) Pichardi from the "Pipe Rolls from Hampshire" (1160). The surname has also emerged in records by this time (see below); a John Pikart was recorded in the Huntingdonshire Hundred Rolls (1279). In church records for Yorkshire one Agneta Pickard is noted as marrying Edwardus Bruce at Farnham on November 5th 1577. A later marriage was that of Bridget Pickard to John Grenup at Holy Trinity Church, Micklegate, York on May 9th 1626. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Pichard, which was dated 1169, in the "Pipe Rolls of Hampshire," during the reign of King Henry 11, known as "The Builder of Churches," 1154 - 1189. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling. Source.

Intriguingly, the cloned "son" of Picard, named Shinzon, in 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis, was played by actor Tom Hardy, who was Bane in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises. For more on Bane lexilinks, see here.

(Enki H/T for word of initial shooting.)

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Skyfall Stunt's James Bond Dies

Remember the big stunt at the Summer Olympics?

There was a tie-in to the then forthcoming 007 movie, Skyfall. (Skyfall's trailer splashed the prophetic Aurora building on the screen before The Dark Knight Rises began.)

A James Bond double "fell" into the Olympics stadium, along with a double for Queen Elizabeth, as both jumped from a small plane.

Both jumpers were in danger, as such stunts are no easy task. And now the James Bond double is dead.

Mark Sutton, 42, the stuntman who parachuted into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London dressed as James Bond alongside a double of Queen Elizabeth II, was killed on August 15, 2013, in a wing-diving accident in the Swiss Alps.

Sutton, a former Royal Gurkha Rifles officer for the British Army, died after jumping from a helicopter and crashing into a mountain ridge only minutes from the French border near Trient, Switzerland, the Swiss police said. (The Gurkhas are a unique unit in the Army with a reputation of being amongst the finest and most feared soldiers in the world. All Gurkha soldiers are recruited in Nepal. British Officers are recruited from across the UK and Commonwealth.)

Mark Sutton (left) - played James Bond - and Gary Connery (right) - played the Queen - are pictured in their wingstuits last year.

The Olympic stunt was a highlight of the last year’s opening ceremony and followed the showing of a film in which Daniel Craig, the actor who currently plays James Bond, called at Buckingham Palace to meet the real Queen Elizabeth and escort her to the Olympic Stadium.

Danny Boyle, who designed the opening to the Games, said Sutton and Gary Connery, who doubled for the Queen and jumped with Daniel Craig's substitute from a helicopter over the Olympic stadium, had "left indelible memories for people from all walks of life all over the world … disciplined and brave in situations most of us would find terrifying, Mark was also a gentle and thoughtful man," he wrote in the Evening Standard.

Police in the Swiss Valais canton said Sutton had died after jumping with a friend from a helicopter while wearing a wing suit above the Grandes Otannes area, close to the French border. The men had jumped from a height of 10,826ft (3,300m) at around 11am and had planned to land close to the hamlet of Le Peuty, near Trient.
Jean-Marie Bornet, of Valais police, said Sutton's injuries were so severe that experts had to use a DNA test to confirm his identity. "We do not know what caused his death but we know it was immediate. The weather was good but when a pilot takes part in this sport the aim is to fly very close to the ground or mountainside. If you do this at speeds of 200kmh [125mph] the margin for error is very small." Source.

Sutton is a name that means "south."

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Charles Ramsey Name Game

Charles Ramsey is the name of the man whose actions resulted in 

the rescue of Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus.

Illustration by David Rappoccio.

(Used with permission.)

There is an interesting history to the name Charles ("free man") + Ramsey. Ramsey has origins in English for "garlic island"; in Scottish, it is from the name Hræm's Island, which is from the Old English elements hræm(n) (raven) and ég, íg (island); from Ram's Island, which is from the Old English ramm (a ram) and ég, íg (island); or from Ramm's Island, which derives its name from the Old Norse elements rammr (strong) and ey (island).

Ramesses II was regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire. Baron de Ramsey, title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, was created in 1887. Ramsey, Isle of Man, is the third-largest town on the island. Ramsey Island is located off the coast of the St David's peninsula in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Various towns are named Ramsey, including a village in Fayette County, Illinois.

Because Cleveland's Charles Ramsey was eating a Big Mac before his rescue of Amanda Berry, a major corporation has found a name and a hero they like too.

But as Judas Disney points out to me, we have met a Philadelphia "Charles Ramsey" before - and his name was linked to Aurora and The Dark Knight Rises:

Source.

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Victor Hugo, The Joker, and Joker Copycats

February 26, 2013 is Victor Hugo's birthday. He would have been 211 years old.

The Oscars presented a large singing production of Les Misérables actors, from the movie based on the musical inspired by Hugo's popular 1862 novel. Perhaps it would be worthy of noting, on Hugo's birthday, that his writings are the source of some intriguing synchrocinematic moments.

For example, few realize that Victor Hugo is the inspiration for the Joker, make famous in recent years by the late Heather Ledger's character Joker in The Dark Knight.

The link is due to The Man Who Laughs (also published under the original working title By Order of the King), a novel by Victor Hugo, first published in April 1869.

Hugo's Romantic novel The Man Who Laughs places its narrative in 17th century England, where the relationships between the bourgeoisie and aristocracy are complicated by continual distancing from the lower class. Hugo's protagonist, Gwynplaine (a physically transgressive figure, something of a monster) transgresses these societal spheres by being reinstated from the lower class into the aristocracy—a movement which enabled Hugo to critique construction of social identity based upon class status.

The main character Gwynplaine in Hugo's The Man Who Laughs, whose face was disfigured into a laughing mask as a child, falls in love with a blind girl named Dea.

The 1928 film (including the anachronistic Ferris wheel) The Man Who Laughs serves as important link to the modern representations, a direct precursor of the Joker.

In 1940, comic book artist Jerry Robinson used Gwynplaine's lanky physique and grotesque grin as the visual inspiration for the Joker, Batman's archenemy. There the similarity ends, however; Gwynplaine is an embittered hero, while the Joker is a psychopathic criminal.

In the 1970s, Bob Kane acknowledged the inspiration for the Joker, and it was later explicitly referenced in the graphic novel, Batman: The Man Who Laughs. Comic book artist Brian Bolland said that watching The Man Who Laughs was one of his inspirations for drawing the graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke (1988). In the 2003 "Wild Cards" episode of the Justice League animated series, The Joker infiltrated a TV station by using the alias "Gwynplaine Entertainment". (Other copycats, see here.)

All of the recent Jokers trace back to Victor Hugo.

Also, according to a French blog, a David Fincher movie has a shared fate of his Se7en character played by actress Gwyneth Paltrow (whose first name resembles Hugo’s Gwynplaine, and was often slated as a Catwoman candidate), eerily echoes the not-so-happy ending of Blanche, the secret daughter of Verdi's Rigoletto (also inspired by Hugo). Source.

 For more, see also here.

James Ellroy, in his novel the Black Dahlia, published in 1987, specifically mentions Victor Hugo in regards to the facial mutilation on Beth Short's mouth (cut to form a gruesome grin). She did have this facial mutilation, as autopsy photos show. (More on the Black Dahlia and Frank Lloyd Wright, see here.)

Meanwhile, over in the Netherlands, there is news of the trial of a Joker copycat killer.

There is little denying that the 2009 Dendermonde Joker is a Heath Ledger/Joker copycat from the 2008 film The Dark Knight. (The "Dendermonde case" is code for the 2009 event involving the daycare nursery killer, Kim de Gelder, the Dendermonde Joker. I've web logged several entries about the subject, for example, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Now for an update.

An artist's impression of Kim De Gelder on the first day of his trial at Gent's courthouse on February 22, 2013. A nursery killer disguised as Batman villain The Joker told a court he was left "no choice" but to stab to death two toddlers and their caregiver at a Belgian creche -- despite saying he knew murder was wrong. Source.

De Gelder is charged with killing the two infants and their 54-year-old carer in an attack on the Fable Land nursery in the town of Dendermonde in January 2009, as well as the attempted murder of 22 others at the creche -- including 16 babies and toddlers. De Gelder is further charged with murdering an elderly woman in a separate attack a week earlier.

Just after the release of cult 2008 Batman movie The Dark Knight, De Gelder entered the nursery with his hair dyed red and his face painted white with black around his eyes -- like the film's villain The Joker, as played by the late Australian actor Heath Ledger.

In the Aurora shooting, on July 20, 2012, James Holmes (dressed as the Joker wearing Bane-like protective wear) stands accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58 in a cinema screening of The Dark Knight Rises.

Please also see Joker Copycats, 2008-2012, and the immediate Aurora Copycats, which included some Joker Copycats.

Thanks to Theo Paijmans for the Victor Hugo-Black Dahlia info.

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