January 29th is
Corn Chip Day
Curmudgeons Day
Freethinkers Day *
National Puzzle Day *
Seeing Eye Dog Day *
World Leprosy Day *
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MORE! Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe and Robin Morgan, click
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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
China – 2nd Day of Spring Festival
(Chinese New Year)
Hong Kong & Macau – Lunar New Year/2
Japan – Nara: Wakakusa Yamayaki
(Mount Wakakusa Fire Festival)
Malaysia – Chinese New Year/2
Nepal – Sonam Lhosar/2
(Tamang New Year)
South Korea – Seol-nal/2
(Lunar New Year)
Taiwan – Chinese New Year/2
Vietnam – Tet Nguyen Dan/2
(Vietnamese New Year)
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On This Day in HISTORY
1258 – The first Mongol invasion of Đại Việt (now North Vietnam) fails when they are defeated at the battle of Đông Bộ Đầu, forcing the Mongols to withdraw
1688 – Emanuel Swedenborg born, Swedish astronomer, inventor, scientist and philosopher-theologian; founder of Swedenborgianism aka The New Church: church doctrine includes belief individuals must actively cooperate in repentance, reformation, and regeneration of their life; also believe that God explained the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures to Swedenborg as a means of revealing the truth of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ; author of Arcana Cœlestia and Heaven and Hell
1728 – John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera debuts at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London
1737 – First possible birth date of Thomas Paine (also given as February 9 in some sources), influential American Revolutionary writer; Common Sense, The American Crisis – Freethinkers Day * was created to honor his ideals
1782 – Daniel Auber born, French opera composer
1801 – Johannes Bernardus van Bree born, Dutch composer, violinist and conductor
1802 – John Beckley becomes the first Librarian of Congress
1852 – Frederic Hymen Cowen born, British composer, pianist and conductor
1819 – Stamford Raffles establishes a post on the Island of Singapore, and starts treaty negotiations with local chiefs for exclusive trade rights in exchange for British protection
1834 – US President Andrew Jackson orders the first use of federal soldiers to suppress a labor dispute; workers on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal were rebelling because of low wages and difficult and dangerous working conditions; this set a bad precedent, giving business owners confidence that they could call on the government to quell labor unrest, making them far less likely to negotiate with their workers – the canal project was abandoned in 1850 as problems and costs continued to soar
1845 – “The Raven” is published in The Evening Mirror in New York, its first publication with the name of the author, Edgar Allan Poe
1850 – Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress: California admitted to the Union as a free state, but no slavery restrictions on Utah or the New Mexico territories; Slave trading prohibited in Washington DC but slave holding is allowed there; Texas loses boundary dispute with New Mexico but gets $10 million in compensation; the Fugitive Slave Law, requiring Northerners to return runaway slaves to their owners under penalty of law
1856 – Queen Victoria establishes the Victoria Cross to recognize acts of valour by British military personnel during the Crimean War
1860 – Anton Chekhov born, Russian playwright, short story writer and medical doctor; major influence on modern theatre and the evolution of the short story
1861 – Kansas is admitted as the 34th U.S. state
1862 – Frederick Delius born, English composer; second most miserable human being after Wagner to write wonderful music
1867 – Vicente Blasco Ibáñez born, Spanish novelist and journalist; Blood and Sand; La Maja Desnuda; The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
1870 – Süleyman Nazif born, Ottoman Turkish poet and bureaucrat, served as governor of several Ottoman provinces; outspoken critic of the Armenian holocaust credited with preventing massacres in Baghdad while governor there; his writings against Imperialism also got him in hot water
1876 – Havergal Brian born, British classical composer, primarily of symphonies
1886 – Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile
1891 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed the last monarch and only queen regnant of the Kingdom of Hawaii –American planters and U.S. Marines will overthrow the monarchy two years later
1895 – Muna Lee, American poet, mystery novelist, translator and feminist; also worked for the U.S. State Department on cultural exchanges with Latin America
1907 – Charles Curtis (R-KS) resigns from the U.S. House of Representatives on January 28, and replaces Senator Joseph Burton on January 29, becoming the first Native American U.S. Senator
1915 – John Serry Sr. born, composer, concert accordion virtuoso
1916 – Paris is bombed by German zeppelins
1923 – Paddy Chayefsky born, American author and screenwriter; Marty, Network
1924 – Luigi Nono born, Italian avant-garde composer
1927 – Edward P. Abbey born, American author and environmental activist; Fire on the Mountain, The Monkey Wrench Gang
1929 – The Seeing Eye *, the first U.S. guide-dog school, is incorporated in Nashville TN
1931 – Leslie Bricusse born, English playwright and composer; Stop the World – I Want to Get Off; Victor/Victoria
1937 – Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra record the famous “Song of “India”
1940 – Burpee Seed Company displays first tetraploid flowers at the NYC Flower Show
1941 – Robin Morgan born, American journalist, author, anti-war and civil rights activist, feminist founder of Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, (W.I.T.C.H) and The Sisterhood Is Powerful Fund; essay “Goodbye to All That”
1947 – Linda B. Buck, American biologist, 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for work on olfactory receptors
1949 – The Newport News commissioned as the first air-conditioned U.S. naval ship
1954 – World Leprosy Day * is founded by French philanthropist Raoul Follereau
1963 – Great Britain is refused entry into the EEC
1966 – Sweet Charity opens at the Palace Theatre in New York City
1967 – The Mantra-Rock Dance, at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom, is organized by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness to promote their West Coast Center; the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Moby Grape, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Augustus Owsley Stanley III all participate
1987 – Physician’s Weekly announces that the famed smile on the face of Leonardo DeVinci’s Mona Lisa was caused by a “…facial paralysis resulting from a swollen nerve behind the ear”
1989 – Hungary becomes the first Eastern Bloc nation to establish diplomatic relations with South Korea
1996 – President Jacques Chirac announces a “definitive end” to French nuclear weapons testing
1996 – Garth Brooks refuses to accept his American Music Award for Favorite Overall Artist; he says Hootie and the Blowfish had done more for music that year than he did
1998 – A domestic terrorist sets off a bomb at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, AL, killing an off-duty policeman and severely wounding a nurse, the second of four bombings he claimed credit for, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics
2001 – In Indonesia, thousands of student protesters storm the parliament grounds, demanding the resignation of President Abdurrahman Wahid over his alleged involvement in two corruption scandals, but Wahid announced that he would not resign
2002 – George W. Bush describes “regimes that sponsor terror” as an “Axis of Evil” during his State of the union address, referring to Iraq, Iran and North Korea
2002 – Jodi Jill starts National Puzzle Day * to encourage more people to enjoy puzzles of all kinds
2005 – First direct commercial flights from mainland China to Taiwan since 1949 arrived in Taipei, followed by a China Airlines flight landing in Beijing
2009 – The Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt rules that people who do not adhere to one of the three government-recognized religions, while not allowed to list any belief outside of those three, are still eligible to receive government identity documents
2014 – Archaeologists announce they have uncovered what they believe to be the oldest temple in Roman antiquity, found at the Sant’Omobono site in central Rome
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Visuals
- Seeing Eye Dog in training
- International flags
- Mongol leader, Kublai Kahn
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
- Edgar Allan Poe with The Raven quote
- Anton Chekov with show me light quote
- Muna Lee on the cover of her book
- Paddy Chayefsky with generals and war widows quote
- Robin Morgan with be audacious quote
- Puzzle poster
- The Sant’Omobono site in Rome
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Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
I have to hand it to you, National Leprosy Day, maybe even shake a leg off.
I am in favor of Free Thinkers Day, in its honor, I will share with you the facts about Texas. Though Texas was a slave State, it was only because of the Missouri Comprise, later declared unconstitutional by the Sct Court. You have to understand the magnitude of Texas. It’s boundaries extended to southern Wyoming. Texas in order to get into the Union in 1845 cedes New Mexico, part of Colorado and the southern boundary of Wyoming. If I recall part of Oklahoma was in the mix. An imaginary line was drawn about the Louisiana border dividing the so called free states from the slave holder states. Texas was compensated about 20 million for the property ceded.
Afterthought, If i recall California was part of the confederacy.
The end.
Part of Texas refused to fight for the Confederacy – the German immigrants in the Texas Hill Country, who were anti-slavery – when troops came to try to enforce drafting them into the Southern army, they were met with armed resistance. After a supposed truce and a promise of safe passage to those who wished to leave Texas, the Germans attempting to leave were ambushed and many were killed. Some of my husband’s maternal ancestors were German immigrants who settled in Texas, so I know this story very well.
California came into the Union as a free state, but like Texas, there was a minority group who wanted to join the other side, but in California, the sides were reversed:
“During the secession crisis, Northern California was securely in the Union’s hands. Southern California, however, had a vocal minority of Southerners who had moved during the Gold Rush that wished to have Southern California secede from the Union and join the Confederacy. This vocal movement led to the rise of a number of pro-Confederate groups in Southern California including the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles and chapters of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a group that had previously been dedicated to annexing 25 states in Mexico, to be added to the United States as slave states.”
“California had a significant presence in the eastern theater of the Civil War, despite being over 2,500 miles away.
At the start of the Civil War, Californians wished to support the country they had joined the decade before. Californians were eventually able to support the war both monetarily and with man power. In September of 1861, Oregon Senator, Edward Baker, was sent to Philadelphia to fund and command a brigade in the name of California.The California Brigade, as it became known, was comprised of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th California Infantries.
California did manage to get some of their residents to physically represent their state in the Civil War. In the summer of 1862, Eastern-born residents of California wished to fight in the eastern theater of the Civil War. The group reached out to Massachusetts Governor, John Andrew, and offered to raise a company of Californians for Massachusetts. Governor Andrew accepted the offer on the condition that the Californians provide their own uniforms, equipment, and travel funds.
The men agreed and the California 100, the nickname given to the 100 Californian cavalrymen, traveled to Massachusetts to join the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry. The California 100 was later joined by 3 more companies of Californians and formed what would be known as the California Battalion. The California Battalion spent the first year of their service in continual conflict with John Mosby’s guerilla battalion. In 1864, the California Battalion joined Phil Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah and was active throughout the Shenandoah Valley campaign; taking part in the largest cavalry charge of the Civil War at the Third Battle of Winchester and taking part of the Union counter attack at the Battle of Cedar Creek.”
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/california-in-the-civil-war/10-facts-about-california.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/