See also "Coronat" in this  journal.

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer died today at 104.

His "Crown of Thorns" cathedral
appeared here in
some posts of August 2003.

Wikipedia:

The Chinese name of the gate, Tiānānmén 天安門 …
is made up of the Chinese characters for "heaven,"
"peace" and "gate" respectively, which is why the
name is conventionally translated as "The Gate of
Heavenly Peace". However, this translation is
somewhat misleading, since the Chinese name is
derived from the much longer phrase "receiving the
mandate from heaven, and stabilizing the dynasty."

Another anniversary today:

See also some related philosophy and mathematics.

For Henriette D. Avram, a systems analyst who “had to enter the mind of the library cataloger, a profession whose arcane knowledge– involving deep philosophical questions about taxonomy, interconnectedness and the nature of similarity and difference– was guarded like priestly ritual.” — Margalit Fox in today’s New York Times

Mrs. Avram died on April 22.

For related material on priestly ritual, see

• the Log24 entry of Easter Monday, April 17: Sub Specie Aeternitatis
• an emblem, Finis Coronat Opus, linked to from that entry’s image
• a poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” that may or may not have been influenced by that emblem.

Finis Coronat Opus

In memory of Leon Uris:

Mate Change Problem

White to mate in 2 moves

H.W.Grant, 1st Prize,
Australian Column 1924

The concept of “mate change,” appropriate on this, the coronation date of Henry VIII, is explained at Chathurangam.com, my source for the above problem.

For the connection with Leon Uris, find the “key” to the above chess problem… i.e., the notation for White’s first move.

From the New York Times, June 24:

“Reviewing Mr. Uris’s 1976 novel Trinity in The New York Times Book Review, Pete Hamill wrote: ‘Leon Uris is a storyteller, in a direct line from those men who sat around fires in the days before history and made the tribe more human.'”

Uris, 78, died at the summer solstice… Saturday, June 21, 2003. 

See also Force Field of Dreams.