December 4th is

Cab Franc Grape Day

Earmuff Day *

National Cookie Day *

National Sock Day

Wear Brown Shoes Day

World Wildlife Conservation Day *

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MORE! Wassily Kandinsky, Dianne Feinstein and Norman Rockwell, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Marshall Islands – Kamolol
(thanksgiving)

Tonga – King Tupou I Day

United States –
Pittsburgh PA:
› O Starry Night Concert
South Miami FL:
› Parade of the Elves
San Antonio TX:
› Texas Kosher BBQ Championship

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On This Day in HISTORY

771 – King Carloman I dies; his brother Charlemagne becomes the Frankish king, and later Emperor of the Romans

1259 – Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris –
Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) and Louis withdraws support for English rebels

1563 – After opening in December 1545, the Council of Trent holds its last session,
ending one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most important ecumenical councils, described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation

1619 – 38 colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred, on the north bank of the James River in Virginia. One of their leaders, John Smyth of Nibley, collects 60 documents concerning the settlement of Virginia which survive as important sources for modern historians

1660 – French composer André Campra is born

1674 – Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission at Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek, now the site of  the city of Chicago

1745 – Charles Edward Stuart’s army reaches Derby, its furthest point during the Second Jacobite Rising

1783 – New York’s Fraunces Tavern serves a “turtle feast” for General George Washington, who says farewell to his Continental Army officers with “a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”

1786 – Mission Santa Barbara is dedicated (on the feast day of Saint Barbara)

1791 – The first edition of  The Observer, the world’s first Sunday newspaper, is published in Great Britain

1795 – Thomas Carlyle is born, Scottish-English historian and philosopher

1812 – Peter Gaillard patents the power mower

1829 – In the face of fierce local opposition, British Governor-General Lord William Bentinck issues a regulation declaring that anyone who abets suttee in Bengal is guilty of culpable homicide

1858 – Chester Greenwood born, inventor at age 15 of earmuffs, Earmuff Day *

1861 – Britain’s Queen Victoria forbids the export of gunpowder, firearms and all materials for their production

1864 – Jews in Romania are forbidden to practice law

1866 – Wassily Kandinsky, the “father of abstract art” is born in Russia

1867 –  Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange)

1875 – Rainer Maria Rilke born, Austrian-Swiss poet and author

1881 – The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published

1910 – Alex North born, American film score composer -15 Academy Awards nominations, including Spartacus (1960) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

1915 – The Ku Klux Klan receives a charter from Fulton County GA

1918 –  U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, the first US president to travel to Europe while in office

1923 – Cecil B. DeMille’s silent film version of The Ten Commandments premieres

1930 – The Vatican issues approval of the ‘rhythm method’ of birth control

1931 – The movie Frankenstein with Colin Clive and Boris Karloff opens in New York

1941 – The Chicago Tribune and New York Times leak FDR’s top-secret plan for invading Europe in 1943

1943 – WWII resistance leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government-in-exile;  U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes down Works Progress Administration, no longer needed with wartime high employment

1944 – Dennis Wilson born, singer-songwriter-drummer of the Beach Boys

1945 – By a vote of 65–7, the United States Senate officially approves United States participation in the United Nations

1950 – University of Tennessee defies court rulings by rejecting five ‘Negro’ applicants

1954 – The first Burger King opens in Miami

1956 – The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studio for the only time – the session is not released for 25 years

1961 – Gene Chandler releases “Duke of Earl”

1965 – NASA launches Gemini 7

1974 – Pioneer II makes its closest approach to Jupiter

1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein becomes San Francisco’s first female mayor

1981 – President Reagan issues an Executive Order giving the CIA authorization to spy within the U.S., but barring assassinations

1982 – President Reagan meets with Guatemalan President Rios Montt, but dismisses his concerns over reports of human rights abuses in Central America, and lifts an arms embargo to resume sales to military rulers

1986 – Both U.S. houses of Congress moved to establish special committees to conduct their own investigations of the Iran-Contra affair

1987 – First National Cookie Day * starts in San Francisco, but goes national when Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster takes up the cause

1991 – Pan American World Airways ceases operations

1992 – President George H.W. Bush sends American troops on a mercy mission to Somalia, threatens military action against warlords blocking food for starving millions

1993 – Astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavor capture the Hubble Space Telescope to begin a successful correction of its faulty optics

1996 – NASA Launches the Mars Pathfinder

1997 – The European Union bans tobacco advertising, and gives a 2006 deadline to cigarette manufacturers to end sponsorship of major sports and cultural events

1998 – The Unity Module, second module of the International Space Station, launches

2001 – The U.S freezes financial assets of organizations with alleged ties to the terrorist group Hamas

2006 – NASA announces plans to begin building a permanent base on the moon by 2024, with the first teams landing in 2020

2011 – In Singapore hundreds of people gathered at a park to protest sexual violence against women as part of the global “SlutWalk” movement, a rare public demonstration in the tightly controlled city state

2012 – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads the“Wildlife Trafficking and Conservation: A Call to Action” event in November at the White House, working with the World Wildlife Federation to launch the first World Wildlife Conservation Day * on December 4

2013 – Norman Rockwell’s painting Saying Grace sells for $46 million at Sotheby’s NYC

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Visuals

• Plate of cookies
• World Wildlife Conservation Day poster
• Charlemagne crowned emperor by Pope Leo III
• Santa Barbara Mission, Santa Barbara CA
• Engraving ‘Burning of an Indian Widow’ from a book by the Rev. James Peggs
• Composition VII (1913)  by Wassily Kandinsky
• Rainer Maria Rilke quote
• Justice Rose Bird holds microphone swearing in Diane Feinstein as San Francisco’s first female mayor
• Saying Grace by Norman Rockwell

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