November 5^th is

End of Daylight Savings

Love Your Red Hair Day

Gunpowder Day *

National Succotash Day

World Tsunami Awareness Day

____________________________________________________________

MORE! Guy Fawkes, Eugene V. Debbs and Shirley Chisholm, click

____________________________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

El Salvador – Primer grito de independencia *

England – London:
Old Truman Brewery Renegade Craft Fair

Italy – Rome:

Legion Obstacle Course Run

Panama – La Ciudad de Colón Day

Sweden – Allhelgonadagen
(All Saints’ Day)

United Kingdom – Guy Fawkes Day *
(also known as Bonfire Night)

____________________________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

1499 – The Catholicon is published, written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc in Tréguier, the first Breton dictionary as well as the first French dictionary

1605 – The Gunpowder Plot: Robert Catesby, with a dozen other provincial English Catholics,  plot to blow up the English House of Lords during the State Opening when King James I would also be present, but an anonymous letter sent to William Parker, 4^th Baron Monteagle, reveals their plan. The House of Lords is searched, and around midnight on 4 November 1605, Fawkes is discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder—enough to reduce the House of Lords to rubble—and arrested. The rest of the conspirators were either shot while trying to escape, or tried and executed. Great Britain celebrates foiling the plot on Guy Fawkes Day * aka Gunpowder Day *

1811 – Father José Matías Delgado, rings the bells of La Merced church in San Salvador – the ‘First Shout of Independence’ * – calling for insurrection and launching the 1811 Independence Movement in El Salvador

1829 – Technical University of Denmark (DTU) opens, now one of Europe’s leading engineering schools

1844 – In San Francisco CA, a grizzly bear named Monarch undergoes successful cataract surgery at the Zoological Garden – the bear lives until 1911

1855 – Eugene V. Debbs, union leader and socialist candidate for U.S. president, is born

1862 – President Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac after he failed to pursue Robert E. Lee’s army after the Battle of Antietam

1872 – In defiance of the law, Susan B. Anthony votes in a presidential election for the first time, but her vote isn’t counted, she’s arrested, tried, and fined $100, which she refuses to pay

1885 – Will Durant, American historian and author, is born

1895 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile

1911 – Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire and annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica

1912 – Woodrow Wilson is elected president of the United States

1914 – France and the British Empire declare war on the Ottoman Empire

1916 – The ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre in Everett, Washington – The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, nicknamed “Wobblies”) sends union organizers to Everett during a severe depression to support a strike by shingle workers.  The IWW organized rallies and marches – businesses countered by organizing vigilantes who beat them with ax handles and ran them out of town. The Seattle IWW sent in 300 of their members aboard two steamers to hold a rally, but they were met by a tug boat in the harbor, the County Sheriff, armed vigilantes and hired goon squads on the dock. In the gun battle that followed, at least five IWW members were killed and 27 wounded, two ‘citizen deputies’ were killed, shot in the back by their own side, and 20 others were wounded. Seventy-four Wobblies are arrested and charged with murdering the two ‘citizen deputies’ but are all ultimately acquitted

1925 – British ‘Ace of Spies’ Sydney Reilly, the first 20^th century “super-spy” is executed by the Soviet secret police, the OGPU

1931 – Ike Turner is born, performer and songwriter – ‘Ike and Tina’

1935 – The game ‘Monopoly’ becomes a best-seller for Parker Brothers

1940 – FDR wins an unprecedented third term as U.S. President

1941 – Art Garfunkel, singer-songwriter (‘Simon & Garfunkel’), is born

1943 – St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City is damaged in a WWII bombing raid on Rome

1946 – Gram Parsons is born, singer-songwriter (‘The Byrds’)

1955 – The rebuilt Vienna State Opera, which had been destroyed during WWII,  reopens with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio

1963 – Archaeologists find remains of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

1967 – In Moscow, the Ostankino Tower opens, the world’s tallest free-standing structure for the next nine years

1968 – Shirley Chisholm becomes 1st African-American woman elected to Congress

1974 – Ella T. Grasso was elected governor of Connecticut, the first U.S. woman elected as a state governor without succeeding her husband

1986 – The White House reaffirms the  U.S. ban on the sale of weapons to Iran

1987 – Black South African Goban Mbeki is released after serving 24 years in Robben Island prison, where he was serving a life sentence for treason against the white minority government of South Africa

1994 – Ronald Reagan announces he has Alzheimer’s disease

1998 – Henry Hyde, chair of the House Judiciary Committee , sends a 10- page letter asking President Bill Clinton to “admit or deny,” in writing and under oath, 81 assertions in the Monica Lewinsky matter, including whether he gave “false and misleading testimony” under oath. The Republican’s dismal showing in the election confirmed the public’s growing impatience with the months of hearings

2006 – Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants are sentenced to death in al-Dujail trial for the 1982 massacre of 148 Shi’a Muslims

2013 – India launches its first interplanetary probe, the Mars Orbiter Mission

____________________________________________________________

Visuals

• Red-Headed crowd for Love Your Red Hair Day
• International Flags
• Guy Fawkes Day
• Eugene V. Debs with quote
• Susan B. Anthony with quote
• IWW Badge
• Vienna State Opera
• Shirley Chisholm with quote
• South African Goban Mbeki on 2015 anniversary of his release
• Saddam Hussein responds to verdict – AP photo by David Furst

____________________________________________________________