October 9^th is

Curious Events Day

Fire Prevention Day *

Leif Erikson Day *

Nautilus Night *

Pizza and Beer Day

World Post Day *

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MORE! Astronomical Clock, Abolition and Andrew Lloyd Webber, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Canada – Calgary AB:
WordFest (international literary festival)

Ecuador – Guayaquil Independence Day

Hong Kong and Macau – Chung Yeung
(Festival of Ancestors)

Saint Barthélemy – Abolition Day *

Uganda – Independence Day

United States – Honolulu HI:
Moloka’i Hoe (outrigger canoe race)

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On This Day in HISTORY

1410 – Clockmaker Mikulášof Kadaň and astronomer Jan Šindel install the Prague Orloj, the oldest astronomical clock still in working order in the world

1604 – Kepler’s Supernova was seen in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus

1635 – Roger Williams, tried and convicted of sedition and heresy, is banished from Massachusetts, after speaking against civil magistrates ordering punishments for religious offences, in favor of a person’s right to follow their own religious convictions, and questioning the King’s right to grant charters to lands already inhabited by indigenous peoples. He would shelter for the winter with the Wampanoags’ chief Massasoit

1701 – The Collegiate School of Connecticut is chartered in Old Saybrook CT, later moved to New Haven and re-named Yale University

1776 – Spanish missionaries settle in what will be San Francisco CA

1804 – Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, founded

1824 – Slavery is abolished in Costa Rica

1834 – Ireland’s first public railway, the Dublin and Kingstown line, opens

1835 – Camille Saint-Saens is born, French composer

1847 – Slavery is abolished in Saint Bathélemy,* and all slaves are freed

1855 – Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine motor, and Joshua C. Stoddard patents his calliope

1858 – Mail service via stagecoach between San Francisco CA and St. Louis MO begins

1872 – Aaron Montgomery sends out the first mail order catalogue 

1874 –  Union postale universelle, the Universal Postal Union (UPU), is created by the Treaty of Bern to: establish a uniform postal rates for international mail; set guidelines for equal treatment of foreign and domestic mail; eliminate the need for needed postage as international mail passes through other countries in transit to its destination; and set standards for size and design of international postage stamps for maximum efficiency, such as showing the value of stamps in numerals instead of spelled out in letters. The UPU became a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1948 (see 1969 entry below)

1888 – The Washington Monument opens to the public in Washington DC

1901 – Alice Mae Lee Jemison is born, member of the Seneca tribe, Indian nations rights activist, journalist, critic of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

1907 – Las Cruces, NM is incorporated

1911 – The Fire Marshall’s Association of North America holds the first Fire Prevention Day * on the anniversary of the last day of the Great Chicago Fire. President Woodrow Wilson proclaims Fire Prevention Week in 1920

1936 – Generators at Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam) begin producing electricity

1962 – Uganda becomes an independent British Commonwealth realm

1964 – U.S. Congress passes a joint resolution declaring October 9 Leif Erikson Day *

1969 – World Post Day * officially recognized at UPU Congress, to celebrate its founding

1970 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia

1981 – Capital punishment is abolished in France

1986 – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera debuts in London

2003 – Queen Elizabeth II makes Sting a Commander of the British Empire (CBE)

2007 – As part of International Cephalopod Awareness Days, Nautilus Night celebrates the lesser-known extant cephalopods, some of the 800 cephalopods known to science

2012 – The Pakistani Taliban make a failed attempt to assassinate 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out for the rights of girls to an education, sparking international support for her and her cause

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Visuals

• International postage stamps
• International flags
• The Prague Orloj, astronomical clock
• A View of Hobart Town by Irish born convict-artist Alan Carswell (1823)
• Second mail order catalogue from Montgomery Ward
• Workers setting capstone on Washington Monument
• 1940 tourgroup shows scale of Boulder Dam generators
• Malala Yousafzai

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