October 17^th is

Black Poetry Day *

Mulligan Day *

National Pasta Day

Wear Something Gaudy Day *

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty *

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MORE! Johannes Kepler, Rita Heyworth, and Albert Einstein, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Costa Rica – Feriado del Encuentro de las Culturas
(meeting of cultures day)

Haiti – Mort de Dessalines Day
(a leader of Haitian revolution)

India – Punjab:
Birth of Sikh Guru Ram Dass Ji

Jamaica – National Heroes’ Day

Laos – Vientiane:
End-of-Lent Dragon Boat Race

Peru – Señor de Luren
(Christ crucified procession)

South Africa – Family Day

St. Lucia – La Marguerite
(flower festival/Feast of St Margaret Alacoque)

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On This Day in HISTORY

1558 – Polish King Sigismund II Augustus has to maintain regular correspondence with Italy to collect his inheritance after his mother dies, so he grants to the Italian Pospero Provana the right to found a postal service as the first Postmaster of the Royal Mail, which is expanded from deliveries between the King and Venice into the Poczta Polska, the Polish postal service

1604 – German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus, to the northwest of Milky Way’s center

1739 – English King George II grants Thomas Coram a Royal Charter for London’s Foundling Hospital, to maintain and educate “exposed and deserted young children”

1888 – First issue of National Geographic Magazine appears on newsstands, containing no pictures and costing 50 cents

1907 – Guglielmo Marconi’s company begins commercial transatlantic wireless service between Nova Scotia and Ireland

1915 – Arthur Miller is born, playwright whose play Death of a Salesman won the Pulitzer Prize (1949)

1918 – Rita Hayworth, American actress and dancer, remembered for her performance in Gilda, on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Greatest Stars of All Time

1931 – Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion, and sentenced to 11 years in prison

1933 – After fleeing Nazi Germany, Albert Einstein moves to Princeton NJ

1939 – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington premieres

1940s – The term ‘Mulligan’ is in widespread use on golf courses, meaning a “do over.”  its origins are disputed, but Mulligan Day * is a second chance to get something right

1956 – Bobby Fischer defeats Donald Byrne in ‘The Game of the Century’

1957 – The Elvis Presley movie, Jail House Rock, premieres in Memphis TN

1965 – The New York World’s Fair closes after two years and 51 million visitors

1967 – The musical Hair opens at New York’s Public Theatre

1970s – On the TV sitcom Three’s Company, Larry (played by Richard Kline) declared a
Wear Something Gaudy Day * – good practice for Halloween!

1973 – OPEC begins an oil-embargo against western nations which supported Israel, including U.S. and Great Britain, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel 11 days earlier

1979 – The U.S. Department of Education Organization Act becomes law, creating the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services

1985 – The first Black Poetry Day,* set on the anniversary of the birth of Jupiter Hammon (born October 17, 1711), a slave who spent his life on the estate of the Lloyd family of Long Island NY, whose poetry was the first by an African-American to be published in the U.S. (Phyllis Wheatley’s poems -first African-American woman poet – were published in England )

1993 – The first United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty * to continue what was started on October 17, 1987, when 100,000 people in Paris declared extreme poverty, violence and hunger are human rights violations, on the spot where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948

2007 – President George W. Bush, presents the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal, and infuriates the Chinese by urging them to welcome him to Beijing

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Visuals

• Poster for International Day for the Eradication of Poverty
• International flags
• The Foundling Hospital of London in 1749
• First issue of National Geographic Magazine
• Rita Heyworth as Gilda (1946)
• Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer at the chessboard
• October 17, 1987, Trocadero Plaza, Paris

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