It is not documented exactly when the monster Grendel left "his mossy home beneath the stagnant mere" to "drip his claws with mortal blood as moonbeams haunt the sky." But when he did, we can be sure that the results were rather tragic. Indeed, there may even be some truth in the rumours that "screams were his music, lightning his guide," and he may in fact have "raped the darkness, death by his side."
Likewise, closer to our own modern mythology, April 19th is the day on which, in 1943, the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, realizing the unpleasant fate in store for them, steeled themselves for an uprising against their Nazi oppressors – with tragic results (but the results would have been tragic anyway, one assumes).
