INSIDE:

Mokelumne Hill: Gold town turns to ghost town.

Whatever happened to
Mata Hari?

Martin Luther the musician

Computing at the turn of the LAST century. 

While London Reveled,
Gunpowder Awaited
A Torch in the Cellar

Do you know why Guy Fawkes Day in England arguably should be "Robert Catesby Day"? Catesby was the ringleader of the famous Gunpowder Plot. Fawkes was just the, er, guy who got caught.

On Guy Fawkes Day (5 November), English children take to the streets in masks begging "a penny for the guy," in a festivity not unlike Halloween in America. They burn small effigies of the notorious Guy Fawkes, an antigovernment conspirator nabbed in a plot to blow up Parliament in London in 1605.

Just who was Guy Fawkes, and what was the motive behind the incredible plot? Short answer: Fawkes was a fervent Catholic, and the conspiracy was the work of religious militants at odds with an oppressive government. Born in 1570 to a wealthy family in Yorkshire, Fawkes as a young man left his Protestant-ruled homeland and joined the Spanish Army. He distinguished himself in continental warfare as a bold, savvy fighter.

Meanwhile back in England, another Catholic of high birth named Robert Catesby was involved in all kinds of schemes to overthrow the Church of England, Queen Elizabeth and her successor James I, who took the throne upon her death in 1603. Among other activities, Catesby tried to drum up support for an invasion of England by Catholic Spanish forces. Twice jailed, he in 1603 began working out a plan to smuggle gunpowder into a rented cellar beneath the Parliament building. Needing a military man to manage the explosives, he sent for Fawkes, a known anti-Protestant who at the time was posted in The Netherlands. Fawkes went so far as to conceal at least 20 barrels of gunpowder in the cellar. It then was a matter of waiting for Parliament to convene.

It all fell apart when one of the conspirators warned a relative serving in Parliament not to attend the session on 5 November 1605, the date appointed to detonate the barrels. The whistle was blown. Fawkes was apprehended in the basement the night before "D-Day." Tortured, he named his coconspirators. Catesby was killed by soldiers when he resisted arrest. The others were either killed during the round-up or tried and executed. Fawkes was put to death in full view of the Parliament building 31 January 1606.

The Great Blithering Antiquity Quiz: March

1) Alexander Selkirk, the real-life Scottish sailor whose cast-away experience inspired Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, was rescued from his solitary existence in the Juan Fernandez Islands in what year?
a) 1509
b) 1609
c) 1709
d) 1809

2) True or false: President Franklin D. Roosevelt once hunted big game in East Africa.

3) What was the occupation of Francis Scott Key, who wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner"?

4) In what realm did Dorothy Parker earn fame—
Olympic competition, literature, medicine or politics?

5) Which renowned composer gave us Scheherazade?

CHECK YOUR ANSWERS

Erstwhile
Axioms

Don't leave up your Christmas greenery after New Year's Day—bad luck. Get married in January—good luck.

Ever heard those sayings from antiquity? An amusing pastime is to browse a collection of folksy advice from yesteryear. A few nuggets to pique your curiosity:

* Temperature has nothing to do with snakes coming out of hibernation; they slither forth when awakened by the thunder of spring's first storm.

* If a piece of pie in the kitchen is pointed your way, you'll receive a letter (presumably not junk mail) in the day's post.

* Horses can see ghosts, and humans can glimpse them, too, by looking forward from between a horse's ears.

* The number 13 is bad luck; it's also good luck.

* If your name's initials spell a word, you'll acquire a fortune.

* Hiccoughs is a sign you've told a lie.

* It's bad luck to depart a room by a door through which you didn't enter.

* If you look into a mirror on Halloween at midnight, you'll see the person you're going to marry.

* A male whose second toe is longer than his big toe is destined to be a henpecked husband.

* And a closing caution: If you cut off a rattlesnake's head or chop up its body but fail to bury it, the pieces will reassemble themselves.