October 25^th is

International Artists Day *

∞

National Greasy Food Day

World Pasta Day *

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MORE! Agincourt, Bizet’s Carmen, and Pink Floyd, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Judaism – Simchat Torah

Cook Islands – Gospel Day *
Grenada – Thanksgiving Day
Kazakhstan – Republic Day
Lithuania – Constitution Day
Taiwan – Retrocession Day *

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On This Day in HISTORY

285 or 286 (traditional) – Saints Crispin and Crispinian, believed to be twin brothers, in a possibly apocryphal story,  preach Christianity by day to the Gauls and make shoes at night to earn a living and raise alms for the poor. Their success causes Rictus Varus, governor of Belgic Gaul, to have them arrested, tortured and thrown into the river with millstones around their necks – when they survive this treatment, he has them beheaded – Patron saints of  leather workers and shoe makers, their Saints Day is famously mentioned in Shakespeare’s Henry V, Act IV, scene 3 – see next entry

1415 – Henry V of England’s lightly armoured infantry and archers with longbows defeat the heavily armoured French cavalry at the Battle of Agincourt in France on Saint Crispin’s Day

1783 – Deborah Sampson receives an honorable discharge from the Continental army after serving 1 ½ years disguised as her deceased brother, Robert Shurtlieff Sampson

1821 – John Williams of the London Missionary Society begins Christian conversion of the people of Aitutaki, one of the Cook Islands – celebrated in the Cook Islands annually as Gospel Day *

1838 – Georges Bizet, French composer, is born – remembered for his opera, Carmen

1854 – Charge of the Light Brigade – during the Crimean War, the French and British were winning the Battle of Balaclava when Lord James Cardigan received a vague and confusing order to attack the Russians, which was further muddled when passed on by his aide-de-camp to Lord Lucan, whose troops charged straight into the Russian battery guarding the Russian cavalry in the North Valley and suffered 40 percent casualties. This military disaster was given a heroic spin by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade:

VI

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
…Honour the Light Brigade,
…Noble six hundred!

1870 – The first U.S. trademark is given to the Averill Chemical Paint Company of NY

1881 – Pablo Picasso, artist considered by many the most influential of the 20^th century, is born in Malaga, Spain

1900 – The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal, in part to secure the borders of their adjoining state, but also because of the discovery of gold in the area

1917 – The Bolsheviks, under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, seize power in Russia

1920 – After a  74-day hunger strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney dies

1938 – The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces swing music as “a degenerated musical system … turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people”, warning that it leads down a “primrose path to hell”.

1939 –William Saroyan’s play, The Time of Your Life, opens on Broadway

1940 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is the first African American general in the U. S. Army

1944 – Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the ‘Edelweiss Pirates’ – a loosely organized group of mostly 14 to 17 year olds who rebelled against the Hitler Youth regimentation of Nazi Germany, and sometimes assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich. By November, thirteen of their leaders had been rounded up, and then publically hanged in Cologne

1945 – Formosa Island, now called Taiwan, is ceded by Japan under the terms of the Potsdam Treaty back to the Chinese people, now marked as Retrocession Day *

1954 – U.S. cabinet meeting is televised for the first time

1955 – A microwave oven designed for home use is introduced by the Tappan Company, costing $1,295 – sales were slow

1958 – U.S. Marines withdraw from Beirut, Lebanon, after being sent in July to protect the nation’s pro-Western government

1960 – The Accutron watch by the
Bulova Watch Company is introduced,
setting a new standard for watch accuracy
because of its battery powered tuning fork
driving the gear

1962 – U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson presents photographic evidence of Soviet missile bases in Cuba to the United Nations Security Council, and John Steinbeck is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

1964 – The Rolling Stones make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show

1969 – Pink Floyd releases “Ummagumma” in the U.K.

1971 – The U.N. General Assembly votes to expel Taiwan and admit mainland China

1980 – The Hague International Child Abduction Convention concludes, after developing a multilateral treaty to provide for quick return of a child under age 16 abducted or detained by a non-custodial parent from one member country to another – as of March 2016, a total of 94 countries are party to the treaty

1983 – Operation Urgent Fury: The U. S. and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, a nation of 91,000 people, with a force of 7,600 troops, six days after Prime Minister  Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d’état – they are met with little resistance

1995 – First World Pasta Day, * launched at the World Pasta Congress in Rome

2004 – The first International Artist Day * is held to honor the contributions of artists to humanity – Celebrate! Do something creative today, or take an artist to lunch, buy an artist’s work or a ticket for a performance

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Visuals

• International Artist’s Day header
• International flags
• Charge of the Light Brigade –by  John Bampfield  (1947)
• Pablo Picasso in his studio
• Gene Kelly center stage in 1939’s Broadway production of The Time of Your Life
• Detail from 1955 Tappan ad
• 1960 Bulova Accutron watch
• World Pasta Day logo and banner

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