October 12

Are You Sure ... (October 12, 2020)

Aleister Crowley during K2 expedition (1902).

• ... that Aleister Crowley wrote to the British Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, offering his services, but they declined; and that Crowley associated with a variety of figures in Britain's intelligence community at the time, including Dennis Wheatley, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Maxwell Knight; and that Crowley claimed to have been behind the "V for Victory" sign first used by the BBC, although this has never been proven?

• ... that the Shakespeare-Magellan Expedition (also known as the Shakespeare-Magellan high-energy literature experiment) is a proposed joint transdimensional corporation; that both William Shakespeare and Ferdinand Magellan have endorsed the project; that the Expedition is sponsored by Extract of Radium, the Downloadable Soft Drink®; and that past attempts to convert Magellan's voyage into a transdimensional corporation have caused major outbreaks of scrimshaw abuse?

Screenshot: Are You Sure (October 12, 2020)

On This Day in History and Fiction

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  322 BC: Athenian politician and orator Demosthenes takes his own life, to avoid being arrested by the agents of his enemies.

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  1861: Mathematician Rikitarō Fujisawa born. During the Meiji era he will be instrumental in reforming mathematics education in Japan and establishing the ideas of European mathematics in Japan.

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  1875: Magician and author Aleister Crowley born. He will gain widespread notoriety during his lifetime, as a recreational drug experimenter, bisexual, and an individualist social critic; the popular press will denounce him as "the wickedest man in the world" and a Satanist.

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  1918: A massive forest fire kills 453 people in Cloquet, Minnesota.