February 24th is

Girl Scout Cookie Weekend

Tortilla Chip Day

World Bartender Day

Forget Me Not Day *
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MORE! Winslow Homer, Ettie Annie Rout and George Harrison, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Hinduism – Maha Shivaratri/Maha Shivaratree/Mahashivarathri –  (Lord Shiva celebration) – public holiday in Mauritius, Nepal, Sri Lanka and much of  India 

Australia – Orangeville NSW
Secret Garden Music Festival

Cuba – Baire Proclamation *

Estonia – Iseseisvuspäev
(Independence Day)

Mexico – Día del la Bandera
(Flag Day)

South Africa – Cape Town:
Ultra South Africa Music Festival

United Kingdom – Nottingham NTS:
The Rum Festival

United States – Richmond VA:
Tucker-Boatwright Festival of Literature
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On This Day in HISTORY

303 – Roman Emperor Galerius, an advocate for the old gods and traditional ways of Roman worship, issues an edict repressing Christianity, but rescinds it in 311 during his final illness

1463 – Giovanni Pico della Mirandola born, Italian philosopher

1582 – Pope Gregory’s papal bull Inter gravissimas reforms the Julian calendar, regarded as a new calendar, the Gregorian calendar, now used by most countries

1607 –  L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi, one of the first works recognized as an opera, receives its première performance

1619 – Charles Le Brun born, French painter

1711 – The London première of Rinaldo by George Frideric Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage

1786 – Wilhelm Grimm born, one of the Brothers Grimm of Grimm’s Fairy Tales

1803 – The U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark Marbury v Madison case, applies the principle of Judicial Review. In the 1800 election, Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party defeated the Federalist party of John Adams, causing political panic among the lame duck Federalists. In Adams’ last days as president, he appointed a large number of justices of peace for the District of Columbia, which were duly approved by the Senate, signed by the president, and affixed with the official seal of the government, but not delivered to the appointees. When Jefferson assumed office March 5, 1801, he ordered James Madison, his Secretary of State, not to deliver them. William Marbury, one of the appointees, then petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, a legal order, to compel Madison to show cause why he should not receive his commission. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the decision: 1)  Marbury had been properly appointed in accordance with procedures established by law, and that he therefore had a right to the writ; 2) Since Marbury had a legal right to his commission, the law must afford him a remedy, and that it was the particular responsibility of the courts to protect the rights of individuals — even against the president of the United States; 3) However, the Court could not grant the writ because Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which granted it the right to do so, was unconstitutional insofar as it extended to cases of Original Jurisdiction – the power to bring cases directly to the Supreme Court – was the only jurisdictional matter dealt with by the Constitution itself. According to Article III, it applied only to cases “affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls” and to cases “in which the state shall be party.” By extending the Court’s original jurisdiction to include cases like Marbury’s, Congress had exceeded it authority. And when an act of Congress is in conflict with the Constitution, it is the obligation of the Court to uphold the Constitution because, by Article VI, it is the “supreme law of the land. The Original Jurisdiction ruling resulted in Marbury being denied his commission. While the ruling does not say outright that the Supreme Court will be the final arbiter of what is Constitutional, or say how the court could enforce its decisions, the principle of Judicial Review is established, and Marbury v Madison is still cited whenever the Supreme Court asserts it legitimacy
1821 – Mexico declares its independence from Spain

1835 – Siwinowe Kesibwi (The Shawnee Sun) becomes the first Indian language monthly publication in the U.S.

1836 – Winslow Homer born, highly regarded American artist and illustrator

1839 – William S. Otis receives a patent for the steam shovel

1857 – The Los Angeles Vinyard Society is organized

1857 – The U.S. Government receives its first shipment of perforated postage stamps

1863 – Arizona is organized as a territory

1866 – In Washington, DC, an American flag made entirely of American bunting is displayed for the first time

1868 – The U.S. House of Representatives impeaches President Andrew Johnson for his attempt to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, but the U.S. Senate acquits him

1877 – Ettie Annie Rout born in Tasmania, New Zealand reformer who founded the WWI New Zealand Volunteer Sisterhood to nurse the wounded, launching campaigns in Cairo and Paris to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, including inspecting brothels and warning newly-arriving soldiers; by 1917, the New Zealand Army made distribution of her safe sex kit compulsory; ironically, this made her persona non grata in New Zealand, where she was such a scandalous figure that publishing her name became subject to a ₤100 fine; has been criticized for promoting eugenics like Margaret Sanger

1895 – Baire Proclamation *- A small band of the Cuban Revolutionary Party declares an insurrection against Spanish rule at Baire, a village on the eastern tip of Cuba – though it fails to spark an immediate response in other parts of Cuba, when exiled veterans of the Cuban Ten Years War (1868-1878) read newspaper reports about Baire, they begin heading back to Cuba, and the call of Cuba libre spreads, leading to the 1898 Spanish American War

1900 – NYC Mayor Van Wyck signs the construction contract for New York’s first rapid transit tunnel, which will link Manhattan and Brooklyn.

1903 – Cuba leases Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. for a naval base

1907 – Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer born, a South African museum official who discovers a modern-day coelacanth in 1938, a fish found in fossils from 200 million years ago, but long considered extinct

1912 – Henrietta Szold founds Hadassah, the largest Jewish organization in American history, focusing on healthcare and education in Israel and U.S.

1925 – A thermit, an incendiary bomb made of aluminium powder and iron oxide, is used for the first time to break up a 250,000-ton ice jam clogging the St. Lawrence River

1926 – The first Forget Me Not Day * – lapel flowers are sold to raise money for the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) organization

1932 – Michel Legrand born, French composer

1934 – Renata Scotto born, Italian bel canto soprano and opera director

1938 – Dupont begins manufacturing the first nylon bristle toothbrushes

1940 – Frances Langford records “When You Wish Upon a Star”

1942 – The U.S. Government stops shipments of all 12-gauge shotguns for sporting use for the wartime effort

1942 – The Voice of America (VOA) airs for the first time

1943 – George Harrison born, British musician, one of The Beatles

1946 – Juan Peron is elected president of Argentina

1956 – The city of Cleveland invokes a 1931 law barring people under the age of 18 from dancing in public without an adult guardian

1965 – The Beach Boys record “Help Me Rhonda”

1975 – Led Zeppelin releases their album “Physical Graffiti”

1979 – The Police release the single “Roxanne” in the U.S.

1983 – A U.S. congressional commission releases a report condemning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II

1987 – An exploding supernova is discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy

1988 – The U.S. Supreme Court overturns a $200,000 award to Rev. Jerry Falwell was awarded by a lower court in his case against “Hustler” magazine; this ruling expands the legal protections for parody and satire

1989 – Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sentences Salman Rushdie to death for his novel The Satanic Verses, and $1 to $3 million bounty is put on Rushidie

1992 –U.S. Postal Service unveils 2 versions of its proposed Elvis stamp for fans to vote on; Young Elvis design wins and is issued on January 8, 1993

1993 – Eric Clapton wins six Grammy Awards for “Tears In Heaven”

1997 – The U.S. The Food and Drug Administration names six brands of birth control as safe and effective “morning-after” pills for preventing pregnancy

2007 – The Virginia General Assembly passes a resolution expressing “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery

2008 – Cuba’s parliament names Raul Castro as president; his brother Fidel had ruled for nearly 50 years
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Visuals

• Girl Scout cookies
• Forget-Me-Not Day
• International flags
• Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, seeds quote
• Louis XIV & Academy of Science by Charles Le Brun
• Wilhelm Grimm, help quote
• Fishing Boats, by Winslow Homer
• First perforated U.S. postage stamps
• Safe sex pioneer Ettie Rout with the Australian Graves Detachment, July 25, 1919, Villers Bretonneux, France
• Henrietta Szold, dare to dream quote
• Newspaper ad selling slaves, a sailing vessel and a quantity of molasses and rum; the scourged back of Gordon, a slave; Virginia slave auction

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