March 8th is

‘A Day Without a Woman’ Strike

International Women’s Day *

National Proofreading Day *

National Peanut Cluster Day

Discover What Your Name Means Day
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MORE! Johannes Kepler, ‘Tilly’ Shilling and Groucho Marx, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

International Women’s Day * is a public holiday in over 30 countries

Bulgaria – Mother’s Day

Liberia – Decoration Day

Peru – San Juan de Dios

Syria – Revolution Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

1010 – Persian poet ‘Ferdowsi’ (Abu ʾl-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi) completes his epic poem Shahnameh, considered the world’s longest epic poem by a single poet

1576 – Spanish explorer Diego García de Palacio first sights the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Copán

1618 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion

1655 – African-born John Casor becomes the first person legally declared a slave-for-life in England’s North American colonies; in one of the first freedom suits, Casor argues that he is an indentured servant forced by Anthony Johnson, a free black, to serve past his 7-year term; he was freed and went to work for Robert Parker. Johnson sued Parker for Casor’s services. In ordering Casor returned to Johnson for life, the court both declares Casor a slave and sustains the right of free blacks to own slaves. So a freed black man becomes the first legally recognized slave owner in America. But in a final twist of irony, when Johnson dies in 1670, his 300 acres of land passes, not to his children, but by court ruling, to a white colonist. The courts declare that “as a black man, Anthony Johnson was not a citizen of the colony”

1690-1700? – Anne McCormac, better known as Anne Bonny, born in Ireland; moves to London where her father William  dresses her as a boy called  “Andy” – moves to the Colonies where William makes good as a merchant; Anne marries part-time pirate James Bonny and is disowned; moves to Nassau, the ‘Republic of Pirates’ – sometime around 1718, Anne dumps James for pirate Captain “Calico Jack” Rackham – in 1720, their ship is captured, they’re tried, and sentenced to hang – Anne gets a stay because she is pregnant – there’s no record of  either her execution or release – one story claims her father ransomed her, and married her off to a Jamaican commissioner, with her name changed to Annabele, she has 8 children, outlives her husband and dies at age 88

1702 – England’s Queen Anne took the throne upon the death of King William III.

1714 – Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach born, German Classical composer noted for his concertos and symphonies; son of Johann Sebastian Bach, ‘C.P.E.’ Bach is often called the ‘Berlin Bach’ or the ‘Hamburg Bach’ to distinguish him from his brother Johann Christian, the ‘London Bach’

1782 – Gnadenhutten massacre: 90 peaceful Lenni Lenape Christian converts, 39 of them children, are murdered at a Moravian missionary village in Ohio by Pennsylvania militiamen who know they are not the Indians they’ve been pursuing, to retaliate for raids made by other Lenapi allied with the British; no criminal charges are filed

1841 – Oliver Wendell Holmes born, U.S. Supreme Court justice and legal scholar; as a young man he was wounded three times during the Civil War while serving with the Union’s ‘Harvard Regiment’

1855 – The first train passes over the railway suspension bridge at Niagara Falls NY

1856 – William B. Booth born, American general of the Salvation Army (1912-29)

1857 – Ruggiero Leoncavallo born, Italian opera composer and librettist

1862 – The Confederate ironclad “Merrimack” is launched

1865 – Frederic Goudy born, American printer, typographer and lettering artist who creates over 70 fonts, including Goudy, Copperplate and Californian

1880 – U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes declares that the U.S. will have jurisdiction over any canal built across the Isthmus of Panama

1887 – The telescopic fishing rod is patented by Everett Horton

1892 – Juana de Ibarbourou born, Uruguayan feminist poet who uses nature imagery and eroticism; at 17, she publishes Derechos femeninos (women’s rights), a prose work

1894 – The state of New York enacts a dog license law, the U.S. first animal control law

1904 – The Bundestag in Germany lifts its ban on the Jesuit order of priests

1905 – In Russia, it is reported that the peasant revolt was spreading to Georgia

1907 – The British House of Commons turns down a woman suffrage bill

1909 – Beatrice ‘Tilly’ Shilling born, British aeronautical engineer, motorcycle and auto racer; at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, invents ‘Miss Shilling’s orifice,’ which fixes a serious problem with the WWII Rolls-Royce Merlin engines in Hawker Hurricane and some Spitfire fighters that lose power or even completely cut-out during certain maneuverers while in combat

1910 – French Baroness de Laroche becomes the first woman to obtain a pilot’s license

1910 – The King of Spain authorizes women to attend universities

1911 – International Women’s Day * is celebrated for the first time, launched at an International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women’s Office for the German Social Democratic Party – she is inspired by the National Woman’s Day events in the U.S.

1911 – British Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Gray declares that Britain will not support France in the event of a military conflict

1917 – Russia’s ‘February Revolution’ begins as a march in St. Petersburg for “Bread and Peace” because of food shortages, but rapidly turns into rioting and strikes; Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky recounts, “The slogan ‘Bread!’ is crowded out or obscured by louder slogans: ‘Down with autocracy!’ ‘Down with the war!’” – it’s the “February Revolution” because Russia was still using the Julian calendar

1917 – The U.S. Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule

1921 – French troops occupy Dusseldorf when Germany refuses to agree to reparation demands for WWI which will beggar the country; the League of Nations refuses to intervene; Germany is forced to accept the disastrous terms and the value of the German mark plummets

1933 – Self-liquidating scrip money is issued for the first time at Franklin IN; by 1933, massive declines in employment and output, along with collapsing banking and financial systems, create a widespread perception that there is a shortage of money, and issues of local currencies, or ‘scrip,’ begin

1941 – Martial law is proclaimed in Holland in order to extinguish anti-Nazi protests

1941 – Horace Heidt and his orchestra record “G’bye Now”

1945 – Phyllis Mae Daley receives a commission in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps; she will become the first African-American nurse to serve on active duty in World War II

1946 – In New York City, the Journal American becomes the first commercial business to receive a helicopter license

1946 – The French naval fleet arrives at Haiphong, Vietnam

1948 – McCollum v. Board of Education: Vashti McCollum, an atheist, objects because her son James is ostracized for not attending religious classes and sues the school board when her complaints are unheeded, claiming students are coerced by school officials to attend the “voluntary” classes, and the power exercised by the Champaign Council on Religious Education which started the program and selects its instructors, as well as the school superintendent’s oversight of these instructors serves to determine which religious faiths participate in the instructional program, constituting a prior censorship of religion.  The U.S. Supreme Court reverses a lower court ruling, and by 8-1 declares religious instruction during “released time” within school hours at tax-supported public school facilities is unconstitutional

1953 – Census bureau reports that 239,000 farmers quit farming in previous 2 years

1954 – France and Vietnam open treaty talks in Paris to form the state of Indochina

1959 – Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx make their final TV appearance together

1961 – Max Conrad circles the globe in a record time of eight days, 18 hours and 49 minutes in the Piper Aztec

1966 – Australia announces it will triple its number of troops in Vietnam

1968 – The Fillmore East opens in New York City

1970 – Simon and Garfunkel’s album Bridge over Troubled Waters begins ten weeks as #1 on the U.S. charts, but they had split up by the time of its release

1981 – Eddie Rabbitt’s “I Love a Rainy Night” hits #1 on the Pop Chart

1982 – The U.S. accuses the Soviets of killing 3,000 Afghans with poison gas

1983 – President Reagan calls the Soviet Union an “evil empire” during a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Orlando FL

1985 – The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reports that 407,700 Americans are millionaires, more than double the total from five years before

1989 – Chinese declare martial law in Tibet after three days of protest against their rule

1993 – Beavis and Butthead series premieres on MTV

1999 – The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the conviction of Timothy McVeigh for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995

1999 – The Clinton Administration directs the firing of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee from his job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, for alleged security violations

2001 – The U.S. House of Representatives votes for an across-the-board tax cut of nearly $1 trillion over the next decade

2004 – Britney Spears tops the UK singles chart with “Toxic”

2005 – In northern Chechnya, Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov is killed during a raid by Russian forces

2008 – President George W. Bush vetoes a bill that would ban the CIA from using simulated drowning and other coercive interrogation methods on suspected terrorists

2011 – National Proofreading Day * is launched by Judy Beaver in memory of her mother, who loved correcting mistakes – thank the proofreaders in your life!

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Visuals

• Peanut Clusters
• A Day Without a Woman poster
• International flags
• Mayan city of Copán
• Sketch of Anne Bonny
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, a mind quote
• Frederic Goudy font examples
• Beatrice ‘Tilly’ Shilling on one of her motorcycles
• International Women’s Day banner
• Phyllis Mae Daley sketch, with some Navy nursing memorabilia
• Proof again cartoon

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