March 9th is

Crab Meat Day

Get Over It Day *

Meatball Day

World Kidney Day *
___________________________________________________________

MORE! Gustav Stickley, Glenda Jackson and the Smothers Brothers, click

___________________________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Belize (former British Honduras) – Baron Bliss Day
(left trust fund to benefit British Honduran citizens)

Switzerland – Sankt Gallen:
KUGL Film Festival

Tibet – Monlam Prayer Festival: first day
(prayers for Gurus and world peace)
___________________________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

1009 – First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the Quedlinburg monastery

1276 – Augsburg, in Swabia, Bavaria, becomes a Free Imperial City

1454 – Amerigo Vespucci is born, Italian explorer-navigator; Matthias Ringmann, a German mapmaker, will name the American continent in his honor

1500 – The fleet of Pedro Álvares Cabral leaves Lisbon for the Indies; it will reach Brazil, and claim it for Portugal

1566 – David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, is murdered in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland

1745 – The first carillon is shipped from England to Boston MA

1765 – After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have actually committed suicide

1793 – Jean Pierre Blanchard makes the first balloon flight in North America, an event witnessed by George Washington

1799 – The U.S. Congress contracts with Simeon North, of Berlin CT, for 500 horse pistols at the price of $6.50 each

1820 – The U.S. Congress passes the Land Act – full payment was required up front but the prices were literally dirt cheap – $1.25 an acre for a minimum size tract of 80 acres. The ‘lands’ referred to were mostly in Ohio and Missouri –then the ‘Western Frontier’ – This accelerated the confiscation of land from Native Americans

1822 – Charles M. Graham receives the first patent for artificial teeth

1832 – Abraham Lincoln announces he will run for a political office for the first time, an unsuccessful run for a seat in the Illinois state legislature

1839 – The French Academy of Science announces the Daguerreotype photo process

1839 – Modest Mussorgsky born, Russian composer

1858 – Gustav Stickley born, American Arts & Crafts movement leader; designer and furniture-maker

1860 – Ambassador Shinmi Masaoki, the first Japanese ambassador to the U.S. is appointed, in keeping with the new Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation

1862 – During the U.S. Civil War, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia fought to a draw in a five-hour battle at Hampton Roads VA

1863 – General Ulysses Grant is appointed commander-in-chief of the Union forces

1885 – Tamara Karsavina born, Russian  prima ballerina, a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and later of the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev

1892 – Vita Sackville-West born, English novelist-poet-journalist; All Passion Spent

1897 – A patent is issued to William Spinks and William Hoskins for cue chalk

1900 – German women petition Reichstag for right to take university entrance exams

1905 – British archeologist James E. Quibell discovers the Egyptian royal tombs of Tua and Yua; the discovery is often mistakenly credited to American Theodore M. Davis, the wealthy sponsor of the excavation, who has also been mislabeled as an archeologist, which he most certainly was not

1905 – Rex Warner born, English author, poet, and classicist; The Aerodrome

1905 – Vice Governor of the Congo Free State, Beligian Paul Costermans commits suicide following the release of the Casement Report, a damning account of  “the enslavement, mutilation, and torture of natives,” carried out by the private army of Belgian King Leopold II, who exploited the country as his private fiefdom, extracting maximum profits from the forced labor of its starving people

1909 – The French National Assembly passes an income tax bill

1910 – Union men urge a national sympathy strike for the 10,031 coal miners in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, who went on strike for their right to belong to the United Mine Workers of America; the miners held out for sixteen months enduring eviction, injunctions, and police brutality – 16 people were killed –  but by July, the workers had lost to the owners

1910 – Samuel Barber born, American composer

1911 – The British military defense budget includes funding for five new battleships

1916 – Pancho Villa, angered when President Wilson shifts his support from Villa to the Carranza government, leads 1,500 Mexican horsemen in a raid of Columbus, New Mexico, killing at least 17 people and torching the town

1928 – Graciela Olivarez born, American lawyer and civil rights advocate, first woman and first Latina graduate of Notre Dame Law School, chair of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Director of the Community Services Administration under President Jimmy Carter

1932 – Eamon De Valera is elected president of the Irish Free State and pledges to abolish all loyalty to the British Crown

1933 – The U.S. Congress begins its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation

1934 – Yury Gagarin born, Soviet pilot-turned-cosmonaut, world’s first man in space

1936 – Glenda Jackson born, British two-time Academy-Award-winning actress, who turned to politics, becoming a Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Highgate (1992-2010), later reconfigured as Hampstead and Kilburn (2010-2015)

1936 – The German press warns that Jews who attempt to vote in upcoming elections will be arrested

1946 – The A.F.L. accuses Juan Peron of using the army to establish a dictatorship over Argentine labor

1949 – The first all-electric dining car goes into service on the Illinois Central Railroad

1954 – WNBT-TV (now WNBC-TV), in New York, broadcasts the first local color TV commercials, an ad for Castro Decorators of New York City

1956 – British authorities accuse Archbishop Makarios of supporting terrorists, then arrest and deport him from Cyprus

1957 – Egyptian leader Nasser bars U.N. plans to share tolls for using the Suez Canal

1959 – Mattel introduces Barbie, the misogynist’s wet-dream doll with deformed feet, at the annual Toy Fair in New York

1961 – The Supremes release their first single, “I Want A Guy”

1964 – Production begins on the first Ford Mustang

1965 – 3500 U.S. combat troops arrive in South Vietnam

1966 – The Beach Boys record “God Only Knows”

1969 – “The Smothers Brothers’ Comedy Hour” is yanked by CBS and the brothers fired over politics, despite three successful seasons; the brothers take CBS to court, and win

1975 – Work begins on the Alaskan oil pipeline

1975 – Iraq launches an offensive against rebel Kurds

1977 – About a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims invade three buildings in Washington, DC, killing one person and taking more than 130 hostages; the siege ends two days later

1983 – The official Soviet news agency TASS says that U.S. President Reagan is full of “bellicose lunatic anti-communism”

1985 – The video of Gone With The Wind goes on sale in stores across the U.S

1986 – U.S. Navy divers find the crew compartment of the Challenger space shuttle along with the remains of the astronauts

1987 – Chrysler Corporation offers to buy American Motors Corporation

1987 – U2 releases their album “The Joshua Tree”

1989 – The U.S. Senate rejects John Tower, 53-47, President Bush’s choice for Secretary of Defense, first rejection in 30 years, amid misconduct allegations, including problems with drinking and women, and possible conflicts of interest. Nancy Kassebaum, the lone Republican who votes against Tower, says: ”If we are going to have a strong defense force, which consists of both men and women, we are going to have to insure fairness. I am not confident that Senator Tower would give these issues the priority they demand or would demonstrate the necessary sensitivity to their seriousness.”

1989 – In Maylasia, 30 Asian nations confer on the issue of “boat people”

1989 – A strike pushes Eastern Airlines into bankruptcy

1989 – In the U.S., President George H.W. Bush urges for a mandatory death penalty in drug-related killings

1990 – Dr. Antonia Novello sworn in as first female and Hispanic U.S. Surgeon General

1993 – Rodney King testifies at the federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of violating his civil rights by severely beating him

1995 – Canadian Navy arrests a Spanish trawler illegally fishing off of Newfoundland

2000 – In Norway, the coalition government of Kjell Magne Bondevik resigns after a no-confidence vote in the Storting over an environmental dispute

2005 – Get Over It Day * created by Jeff Goldblatt after having trouble getting over an ex-girlfriend

2006 – The first World Kidney Day * a joint initiative of the International Federation of Kidney Foundations and the International Society of Nephrology

2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights

___________________________________________________________

Visuals

• Get Over It bandaged heart
• World Kidney Day header
• International flags
• The Golden Hall in Augsburg, Swabia, Bavaria
•  Voltaire. atrocities quote
• Gustav Stickley, with his famous chair
• Vita Sackville-West, live quote
• Glenda Jackson – mink quote
• Dr. Antonia Novello, make a difference quote
• Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing

___________________________________________________________