February 12th is

International Darwin Day *

Lincoln’s Birthday *

Lost Penny Day *

NAACP Founder’s Day *

PB&J Day

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MORE! Charles Darwin, Anna Pavlova and Isaac Woodard, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – Melbourne VIC:
St. Kilda Festival

Italy – Viareggio: (ongoing)
Carnevale di Viareggio

Myanmar – Union Day

Netherlands – Amsterdam:
Grachtenfestival

Pakistan – Women’s Day *

Thailand – Bangkok:
Full Moon Party

United States – Georgia:
Georgia or Oglethorpe Day *

Venezuela – Youth Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

881 – Pope John VIII crowns Charles the Fat, great-grandson of Charlemagne, the King of Italy: Holy Roman Emperor

1429 – English forces under Sir John Fastolf defend a convoy carrying rations to the army besieging Orléans – “some 300 carts and wagons, carrying crossbow shafts, cannons and cannonballs but also barrels of herring” – in the ‘Battle of the Herrings’ – And yes, this Sir John is one of Shakespeare’s inspirations for his immortal rogue, Sir John Falstaff

1502 – Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on his second voyage to India

1541 – Santiago is founded by Spanish conquistador and first royal governor of Chile Pedro de Valdivia

1554 – A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason

1567 – Thomas Campion born, English poet, composer and musical theorist

1593 – Approximately 3,000 Korean Kingdom of Joseon defenders led by General Kwon Yul successfully repel more than 10,000 Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju

1689 – The Convention Parliament declares that the flight to France in 1688 by James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch, constitutes an abdication

1733 – Englishman James Oglethorpe founds Georgia, the 13th colony of the Thirteen Colonies, and its first city at Savannah – Georgia Day *

1791 – Peter Cooper is born, American inventor, patents formula for”quick setting powder gelatin” which he calls Portable Gelatin (he was trying to make glue at the time):  he later sells the formula, and the flavored version is created by Pearle Wait

1809 – Charles Darwin is born, English naturalist who developed the ‘theory of evolution,’ inspired by visit to the isolated Galapagos Islands; Origin of Species, The Descent of Man

1809 – Abraham Lincoln born, 16^th U.S. President (1861-1865)

1817 – An Argentine/Chilean patriotic army, after crossing the Andes, defeats Spanish troops on the Battle of Chacabuco

1818 – Bernardo O’Higgins formally approves the Chilean Declaration of Independence near Concepción, Chile

1825 –The last of the Creek/Muscogee lands in Georgia and Alabama are ceded to the United States government by the Treaty of Indian Springs, but it is signed by only six chiefs; the Creek National Council denounces it, ordering the execution of the splinter group’s leader, William McIntosh, and the other Muscogee signatories, for the capital crime of alienating tribal land. On April 29, the Upper Creek chief Menawa takes 200 warriors to attack McIntosh at his plantation on the Ocmulgee River, killing him and two other signatories, and setting fire to the house; his son-in-law Samuel Hawkins is hanged, but Samuel’s brother Benjamin escapes. The treaty is ratified the U.S. Senate by a margin of one vote, but a delegation from the Creek National Council sent with a petition to President John Adams negotiates the 1826 Treaty of Washington; the tribes surrender most of the land sought by Georgia, buy under more generous terms, while keeping a small section of land on the Georgia-Alabama border. Georgia Governor George Troop refuses to recognize the new treaty, and backs up his position by mobilizing the Georgia militia

1831 – Myra Colby Bradwell, editor-publisher/suffragist-political activist, founds the Chicago Legal News; studied law in her husband’s law office, but is denied admission to the Illinois bar because she’s a woman; her case goes all the way to the Supreme Court, where she loses

1832 – Ecuador annexes the Galápagos Islands

1851 – Edward Hargraves announces he has found gold in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia, starting the Australian gold rushes

1855 – Fannie Barrier Williams, African American educator, women’s rights advocate

1870 – Women in the Utah Territory gain the right to vote

1872 – Silas Noble and James P. Cooley patent a toothpick-making machine

1880 – John L. Lewis born, American labor leader; founder of the C.I.O.

1881 – Anna Pavlova born, Russian prima ballerina, a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev

1893 – Omar Bradley born, American general, 1st chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

1898 – Roy Harris born, American composer

1909 – The NAACP is formed when a group of white liberals, among them descendants of abolitionists  Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, and black leaders, including  W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett,and Mary Church Terrell, issue a call for a discussion of racial justice, which they release on the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth; their principle objective is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of United States and eliminate racial prejudice. The NAACP is now the oldest and largest grassroots-based civil rights organization in the U.S.

1912 – The Xuantong Emperor, Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, abdicates

1914 – In Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place

1921 – Bolsheviks launch a revolt in Georgia preliminary to the Red Army invading

1924 – George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue premieres in a concert titled “An Experiment in Modern Music”, in Aeolian Hall NY, by Paul Whiteman and his band, with Gershwin playing the piano

1934 – The Austrian Civil War begins, after a series of clashes between the paramilitary forces of the Christian Social Party (conservative coalition of the rural population, most of the upper-classes and the Catholic Church) and the Social Democratic Party (socialists and trade unionists)

1934 – In Spain the national council of Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista decides to merge the movement with the Falange Española to become Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista – “Spanish Phalanx of the Councils of the National-Syndicalist Offensive” (Researching the Spanish Civil War always gives me a headache)

1934 – Anne Krueger, American economist, former World Bank Chief Economist, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, currently professor of international economics at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

1938 – Judy Blume, award-winning American author of primarily Young Adult books; Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

1940 – First radio broadcast of The Adventures of Superman

1942 – Mildred Bailey records “More Than You Know”

1946 – African American Sgt. Isaac Woodard, hours after being honorably discharged from the U.S. Army after serving in WWII and still wearing his uniform, gets into a dispute with a bus driver over the use of the restroom; a South Carolina sheriff then beats him so badly that Woodard becomes totally blind. When South Carolina doesn’t pursue the case, President Harry S. Truman orders a federal investigation leading to the sheriff’s indictment and trial in federal court in South Carolina, where he is acquitted by an all-white jury. Woodard’s case and others galvanize the civil rights movement, and influence a shift to civil rights initiatives at the federal level. Truman establishes a national interracial commission, makes a historic speech to the NAACP and the nation in June 1947, describing civil rights as a moral priority, sends a civil rights bill to Congress in February 1948, and issues Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 on June 26, 1948, desegregating the armed forces and the federal government

1947 – The largest observed iron meteorite until that time creates an impact crater in Sikhote-Alin, in the Soviet Union

1954 – J. Lyons & Co, a large British food and catering concern, hires first-class mathematicians to improve efficiency in dealing with their very high number of transactions, differing payrolls for their numerous subsidiaries, and accurate inventory reports; their experts learn about the number-crunching capabilities of early computers, and see the possibilities for Lyons; the company forms a partnership with Cambridge University, which was developing their own first computer, the EDSAC.  Using elements of the EDSAC, the Lyons team, now expanded by hiring engineers, develops the LEO (Lyons Electronic Office), and it produces a payroll report on this day, the first time a computer is used in business

1956 – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins records “I Put a Spell On You”

1961 – Soviet Union launches Venera 1 towards Venus

1961 – The Miracles’ “Shop Around” becomes Motown’s first million-selling single

1963 – Construction begins on the Gateway Arch in St. Louis MO

1974 – The USSR exiles Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature winner

1976 – Food coloring Red Dye No. 2, is banned by the FDA because studies show it might cause cancer; red M&Ms disappear for the next 11 years

1977 – The Police record “Fall Out,” their first single

1983 – Pakistan Women’s Day * – Two hundred women protest in Lahore, Pakistan against military dictator Zia-ul-Haq’s proposed Law of Evidence, which declares that the testimony of two women in a lawsuit is equal to the testimony of one man; the women, carrying only petitions to the Lahore High Court, are tear-gassed, baton-charged and thrown into jail, but are ultimately successful in repealing the Law of Evidence and the infamous Hudood Ordinance (bringing back stoning, lashing and amputation as punishments and making adultery and fornication criminal offences, with no distinction between rape and consensual sex, so rape victims are jailed for fornication or adultery), in 2006 by the Women’s Protection Bill

1990 – Carmen Lawrence becomes Premier of Western Australia, the first woman e premier of a State of Australia

1993 – International Darwin Day * is founded by Dr. Robert Stephens to honor the accomplishments of Charles Darwin on the anniversary of his birth, now a project of the American Humanist Association

1995 – Adrienne Sioux Koopersmith launches Lost Penny Day * as a reminder that finding the pennies lost in places like your sofa cushions, coat pockets or the bottom of your purse, then donating them to charity, can make a real difference for someone in need – seems especially appropriate on Lincoln’s birthday, since he’s been on our pennies since 1909, when the Lincoln penny was first issued to commemorate his birth

1998 – U.S. federal judge Thomas Hogan declares the presidential line-item veto is unconstitutional; 4 months later, the Supreme Court concurs in a 6-3 decision

1999 – The U.S. Senate acquits President Bill Clinton on two articles of impeachment: perjury and obstruction of justice

2004 – The city of San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in response to a directive from Mayor Gavin Newsom. The first license is for lesbian activists Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79

2010 – Israeli military begins rerouting a section of the West Bank security barrier, partial victory for Palestinians fighting a 5-year legal battle to get back access to their land, lost when the Palestinian village of Bilin was cut in half by the fence in order to enlarge a Jewish settlement; the new placement returns 170 acres of agricultural land to the villagers, but 400 acres they once held are still occupied by Jewish settlements
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Visuals

• Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich
• NAACP Founder’s Day logo
• International flags
• Vasco da Gama and his ships
• Charles Darwin, false facts quote
• Abraham Lincoln, you can fool quote
•  Fannie Barrier Williams, social evils quote
• John L. Lewis, tired of waiting quote
• Omar Bradley, leadership quote
• Carmen Lawrence, judged as society quote
• Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon wedding

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