October 27^th is

American Beer Day *

Black Cat Day *

Cranky Co-Workers Day

Navy Day *

Sylvia Plath Day *

U.N. World Day for Audiovisual Heritage *

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MORE! Amsterdam, Niccoló Paganini and  Maxine Hong Kingston, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Canada – Edmonton AB:
Canadian Diabetes Association Expo

Greece – National Flag Day

St. Vincent & the Grenadines –
Independence Day

Turkmenistan – Independence Day

United States –
Philadelphia PA: Whiskey & Fine Spirits Fest
Portland OR: Fermentation Festival
Wadsworth OH: YMCA Wine Tasting
Washington DC: Whisky Extravaganza

Democratic Republic of the Congo –
Three-Z Naming Day (no longer celebrated – see why) *

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On This Day in HISTORY

1275 – Traditional date of the founding of the city of Amsterdam in the Low Countries – it was granted city rights, including the right to build defensive walls, to hold markets, and receive the income from them, the right to charge tolls, to mint coins, to levy taxes, and to create an official weighing system for cargo, farm products and trade goods. City citizens were not subject to a liege lord or restricted in travel – an old Dutch saying: “Stadslucht maakt vrij” which translates ‘City air makes free’ reflects these rights

1553 – Spanish polymath (physician, scientist, mathematician, theologian and cartographer among many avocations) Michael Servetus is tried in Geneva and burnt at the stake with his books for heresy on 40 different charges, but primarily because he denied the Trinity and was against infant baptism. Although Servetus was condemned by the Geneva Council of 25, the main evidence against him was provided by John Calvin and his followers.

1632 (? – exact date unconfirmed) – First North American commercial brewery is opened by the West India Company on a street that was re-named Brouwers (Brewers) Street in New Amsterdam

1659 – William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson became the first Quakers to be executed in America

1682 – Philadelphia, PA is founded by William Penn, under royal charter granted by Charles II of England, after the land had by turns been claimed the Dutch, Swedes and Finns, and the English – Penn did make a treaty, which included some payment for the land,  with the Lenape at Shackamaxon under an elm tree

1782 – Niccoló Paganini, Italian violinist and composer, is born

1787 – The first Federalist Papers are published in the New York Independent. The series of 85 essays, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, were published under the pen name “Publius”

1795 – The U.S. and Spain sign the Treaty of  Madrid, establishing boundaries between Spanish colonies and the U.S.

1810 – U.S. annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida

1827 – Bellini’s third opera, Il pirata, is premieres at Teatro alla Scala di Milano

1838 – In the aftermath of the Battle of Crooked River in the “Missouri Mormon War” in NW Missouri, Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues Extermination Order 44, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated. Joseph Smith’s followers moved to Missouri because their prophet had told them: “If ye are faithful, ye shall assemble yourselves together to rejoice upon the land of Missouri, which is the land of your inheritance, which is now the land of your enemies.”

1858 – Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th U.S. President, is born

1904 – First underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States

1922 – The Navy League of the United States organizes the first Navy Day. * October 27 was chosen because it is the birthday of President Theodore Roosevelt, who had been an Assistant Secretary of the Navy and supported a strong Navy. It’s also the anniversary of a 1775 report issued by a Continental Congress special committee favoring the purchase of merchant ships as the foundation of an American Navy

1924 – Uzbek becomes Soviet Uzbekistan, a republic of the Soviet Union

1925 – The first newsreel featuring sound is released in New York

1931 – Chuhei Numbu of Japan sets a long jump record of 26′ 2 1/4″

1932 – Sylvia Plath is born in Boston MA, the first port to win the Pulitzer Prize posthumously (1982) – Sylvia Plath Day *

1936 – Wallis Simpson files for divorce from her second husband – her affair with Edward VIII and his proposal of marriage to her created a constitutional crisis in Great Britain that ended with his abdication

1938 – Du Pont announced “nylon” as the new name for its new synthetic yarn

1940 – Maxine Hong Kingston born, award-winning author of The Woman Warrior:  Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

1947 – You Bet Your Life, the radio show starring Groucho Marx, premieres on ABC-radio

1954 – The TV show Disneyland debuts on ABC

1960 – Ben E. King records his first solo songs, “Spanish Harlem” and “Stand By Me”

1961 – NASA tests the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1

1962 – USAF Major Rudolf Anderson dies during the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 is shot down over Cuba by a Soviet-made SA-2 surface-to-air missile

1964 – Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater dubbed “A Time for Choosing” which launches his political career

1967 – Father Philip Berrigan, founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, with the other ‘Baltimore Four’ occupy the Selective Service Board office and pour chicken blood mixed with their own blood over records to protest “the pitiful waste of American and Vietnamese blood in Indochina.”

1971 – Three-Z Naming Day * – President Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of the Congo changes the country’s name to Zaire, changes the Congo River to the Zaire River, and the nation’s money from franc congolais to the zaire, but he is such a terrible despot that he is overthrown in 1997, and the country goes back to being the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the money is again the Congolese franc, and the river is the Congo once more

1979 – Saint Vincent and the Grenadines gains independence from the United Kingdom

1986 – British ‘Big Bang’ begins when the government suddenly deregulates financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way British financial markets operate

1988 – President Reagan orders the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow to be torn down because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure

1991 – Turkmenistan achieves independence from the Soviet Union

1992 – U.S. Navy radioman Allen R. Schindler, Jr. is brutally murdered by a shipmate for being gay, precipitating first military, then national, debate about gays in the military resulting in the U.S. military “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy

1994 – Gliese 229B,  a brown dwarf about 19 light years away in the constellation Lepus, has 58% of the mass of our Sun, and is the first Substellar Mass Object to be unquestionably identified

2005 – The first World Day for Audiovisual Heritage * is declared by the U.N. to encourage  preservation of radio and television programmes and motion pictures as a record of our common heritage, in conjunction with the UNESCO programme, Memory of the World

2009 – Justin Smith starts American Beer Day * to commemorate the signing by FDR of the Cullen-Harrison Act, which effectively ended Prohibition. FDR reportedly said after signing:  “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”

2010 – Cats Protection, the U.K. largest feline welfare charity, starts Black Cat Day * to debunk the superstitions surrounding black cats, to protect them from being abused or killed during Halloween week, and help black cats in shelters find their forever homes

2014 – Britain withdraws from Afghanistan, ending ‘Operation Herrick’ (codename for all British operations in the War in Afghanistan 2012-2014), part of NATO-led International Security Force and in support of American-led ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’

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Visuals

• Reel-to-reel tape recording equipment
• International flags
• Map of Amsterdam, c. 1700
• Brewers at work –New Amsterdam History Center
• President Theodore Roosevelt with quote on failure
• Sylvia Plath – neurotic quite
• Baltimore 4: David Eberhardt, Tom Lewis, Rev Jim Mengel &Fr Philip Berrigan – Ramparts
• Gliese 229B size comparison
• Black cat

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