October 18^th is

Alaska Day *

Chocolate Cupcake Day

No Beard Day

Hard-Boiled Detective Day *

Rocky Horror Picture Show Day *

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MORE! Moby-Dick, Persons Day and the BBC, click 

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Azerbaijan – Independence Day

Canada – Persons Day *

Chile – Flag Day

South Korea – Busan: (ongoing)

Busan International Film festival

United States – Greensboro NC:

Guilford College Bryan Series

Zambia – National Day of Prayer

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On This Day in HISTORY

320 AD – Pappus of Alexandria observes a solar eclipse and writes about it in his commentary on the Almagest, a 2^nd century Greek mathematical and astronomical treatise on the motions of stars and planetary paths written by Klaúdios Ptolemaíos, the most accepted geocentric model until Copernicus published  On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres in 1543

614 – King Chlothar II proclaims the Edict of Paris, which defends the rights of Frankish nobles but excludes Jews from all civil employment in the Frankish kingdom

1386 – Heidelberg University opens its doors. Its papal charter specifies it is to be modeled after the University of Paris to include four faculties: philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and medicine. Heidelberg is Germany’s oldest university

1648 – Boston shoemakers form the first American labor organization

1775 – Poet Phillis Wheately, a black slave in Boston, is freed upon the death of her master John Wheatley

1851 – Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London

1867 – U.S. takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million – celebrated in the state as Alaska Day *

1898 – U.S. takes possession of Puerto Rico from Spain

1922 – A consortium founds the British Broadcasting Company (now the BBC) to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters for national broadcasting service

1929 – The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overrules the Supreme Court of Canada in Edwards v. Canada when it declares that women are considered “Persons” under Canadian law, establishing both the citizenship rights of Canadian women, and the “living tree doctrine,” that a constitution is organic and must be read in a broad and liberal manner so as to adapt it to changing times. The Lord Chancellor, Viscount Sankey,  wrote that “…exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours,” and that “to those who ask why the word should include females, the obvious answer is why should it not.” Celebrated in Canada as “Persons Day” *

1935 – Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra records “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”

1954 – Texas Instruments announces the first transistor radio

1967 – USSR probe Venera 4 reaches Venus, becomes first spacecraft to measure another planet’s atmosphere

1979 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allows individuals to have home satellite earth stations (TV dish receivers) without a federal government license

1990 – Los Angeles City Council proclaims the first Rocky Horror Picture Show Day * on its 40^th anniversary

1991 – Azerbaijan declares independence from the Soviet Union

2005 – The Sydney Tower Eye opens, 309 meters tall, and becomes an instant landmark

2009 – The first Hard-Boiled Detective Day,* started on the anniversary of the release date for the film noir classic, The Maltese Falcon

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Visuals

• Chocolate cupcake
• International flags
• Title page of much later printing of Pappus of Alexandria
• Opening page of Moby-Dick, illustration by Rockwell Kent
• BBC 50th Anniversary commemorative stamp

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