Happy Guy Fawkes Day
It’s November 5:
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Fawkes was a member of a group that tried to blow up Parliament. They didn’t succeed. He was caught and came to a bad end.
There’s a brief Guy Fawkes interlude in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman finale, issue #75, and attributes the doggerel to Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Fawkes is a theme in one of my favorite graphic novels, V for Vendetta, as well as the name for Dumbledore’s phoenix in the Harry Potter series. Fawkes was also possibly the historical antecedent for the word “guy.” More here from Wikipedia.