March 12th is

Baked Scallops Day

Check Your Batteries Day *

Fanny Pack Day *

Girl Scout Day *

Milky Way Bar Day *

Plant a Flower Day *

Spring Forward –
Daylight Savings
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MORE!  Charles Boycott, Jane Delano and Mahatma Gandhi, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Judaism – Purim: festival commemorating the defeat of the evil Persian Haman’s plot to massacre the Jews by Queen Esther and Mordecai – celebrated with a reading of the story in the Book of Esther; also giving and consuming celebratory food and drink

Hinduism – Holi: Springtime ‘festival of colors’ celebrating the victory of good over evil, the end of winter, thanksgiving for a good harvest

Australia – Canberra ACT:
Canberra Day *

China and Taiwan– Arbor Day

Gabon – Renovation Day
(Democratic Party anniversary)

Mauritius – Independence Day

Myanmar – Dha Paung Full Moon

Sweden – Crown Princess Victoria’s Nameday

Zambia – Youth Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

538 – Ostrogoth King Vitiges ends his siege of Rome, retreating to Ravenna, giving the victory to Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius, sent by Emperor Justinian I to reclaim as much as possible of the Western Roman Empire

1496 – Jews are expelled from Syria

1613 – Andre Le Notre born, French landscape architect; designs gardens at Versailles

1664 – New Jersey becomes a British colony when King Charles II grants the land in the New World to his brother James, Duke of York

1755 – In North Arlington NJ, the steam engine is used for the first time

1789 – The U.S. Post Office is established

1809 – Britain signs a treaty with Persia, forcing the French to leave the country

1831 – Clement Studebaker born, American wagon and carriage manufacturer; co-founder with brother Henry of the H & C Studebaker Company, precursor of the  Studebaker Corporation, building Pennsylvania-German Conestoga wagons and carriages during his lifetime, and automobiles after his death

1832 – Captain Charles Boycott born, English land agent for Lord Erne, he is so detested by the local Irish community that his name has become the term ‘boycott‘ in the English language. When the locals withdraw their labor because of threatened evictions, demanding fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale, it becomes an anti-Irish cause célèbre in the British press, and the British government sends troops guard 1,000 men of the Irish constabulary brought in to save the harvest, costing ₤10,000 for crops worth ₤500

1841 – Englishman Orlando Jones receives U.S. patent for process to make cornstarch

1857 – Simon Boccanegra by Verdi debuts in Venice

1862 – Jane A. Delano born, American nurse and educator, who insists on the use of mosquito netting in Florida in 1887 to prevent the spread of yellow fever before doctors know mosquitos are carriers; serving as chair of the Red Cross national committee on nursing service and superintendent of  the Army Nurse Corps (1909-12), she institutes the Red Cross Nursing Service as a reserve for the Army corps, so 8,000 nurses are ready for overseas duty when the U.S. enters WWI – she oversees mobilization of 20,000 nurses, plus nurses’ aides and other workers. In 1918, she becomes director of the wartime Department of Nursing, supplying nurses to the army, navy and Red Cross. The influenza epidemic that swept Europe and America in 1918-19 greatly increased demands on Delano and the Red Cross – exhausted, she fell ill and died in France on a European inspection tour in 1919 – in her spare time, Delano had served three terms as president of the American Nurses Association (1900–12) and one as president of the Board of Directors of the American Journal of Nursing (1908–11), and co-authored with Isabel McIsaac, the American Red Cross Textbook on Elementary Hygiene and Home Care of the Sick (1913)

1863 – Gabriele D’Annunzio born, Italian novelist,dramatist and political leader

1864 – Alice Tegnér born, Swedish, music educator, poet and composer, especially of children’s songs

1868 – Henry J. O’Farrell is the first person to attempt a political assassination in Australia when he shoots HRH Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s son, in the back during the Royal’s good-will tour. The Prince is hospitalized for 2 weeks, nursed by women trained by Florence Nightingale, while incidents of anti-Irish protests and threats sweep Australia. When Prince Alfred learns of O’Farrell’s history of mental illness, he tries to intercede to get his death sentence commuted, but O’Farrell is hanged on April 21, 1868. A public subscription raises the funds to build the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in thanksgiving for the Prince’s recovery – still an important hospital in New South Wales

1877 – Annette Abbott Adams born, American lawyer and judge, first woman to serve as Assistant U.S. Attorney General

1884 – Mississippi authorizes the first state-supported college for women, Mississippi Industrial Institute and College

1889 – Vaslav Nijinsky born, Russian ballet dancer and choreographer, often cited as the greatest dancer of the 20th century

1894 – Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time, in Vicksburg, Mississippi

1903 – Der Wald, a one-act opera by Dame Ethel Smyth, debuts at the NY Metropolitan Opera, the only opera written by a woman ever performed at the Met

1907 – Dorrit Hoffleit born, American senior research astronomer at Yale University,  works on variable stars, astrometry, spectroscopy, meteors, and especially the Bright Star Catalog; mentors generations of young women and men in astronomy

1912 – Juliette Gordon Low founds the Girl Scouts * of the USA in Savannah, Georgia

1913 – Canberra Day * –Australia’s future capital is officially named Canberra (the temporary capital remains at Melbourne until 1927 while construction is underway)

1922 – Jack Kerouac born, American Beat poet, novelist; On the Road

1923 –Frank Mars creates the Milky Way * bar, first mass-produced chocolate bar with a filling; named for a milkshake not a galaxy – no caramel in the European version

1928 – Edward Albee born, American playwright; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1930 – Mahatma Gandhi begins his 240 mile ‘walk’ to the sea, to protest British rule of India by breaking the British salt monopoly, gathering thousands of followers as he goes

1932 – Al Jarreau born, American R&B/jazz singer, seven-time Grammy winner

1932 – Andrew Young Jr. born, American Civil Rights leader, Southern Christian Leadership Executive Director (1964-68), first black U.S. Congressman from Georgia (1973-77) since Reconstruction, first African-American Ambassador to the UN (1977-79)

1933 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt makes a presidential address to the nation on the radio, the first of his “Fireside Chats”

1935 – Parimutuel betting becomes legal in Nebraska

1938 – The “Anschluss” takes place as German troops enter Austria; Adolf Hitler annexes his homeland the following day

1939 – Artie Shaw and his band recorded “Deep Purple”

1940 – Finland surrenders to Russia, ending the Russo-Finnish War

1947 – U.S. President Harry  Truman establishes the “Truman Doctrine” – asks Congress for $400 million in aid to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism

1948 – James Taylor born, American singer-songwriter

1953 – Carl Hiaasen born, American author and newspaper columnist

1957 – The Crickets record “Maybe Baby”

1959 – The U.S. House joins the Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii

1985 – The U.S. and the USSR begin arms control talks in Geneva

1987 – Les Miserables opens on Broadway

1987 – The first Check Your Batteries Day * on Daylight Savings’ first Sunday

1989 – About 2,500 veterans and supporters march at the Art Institute of Chicago protesting the placement of an American flag on the floor as part of an exhibit

1992 – Mauritius becomes a republic but remains a member of the British Commonwealth

1993 – In the U.S., the Pentagon calls for the closure of 31 major military bases

1994 – A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell of the Loch Ness monster is exposed as hoax,  taken of a toy submarine with a head and neck attached

1994 – The Church of England ordains its first women priests.

1999 – Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), all three countries are former members of the Warsaw Pact
2002 – The U.N. Security Council approves a U.S.-sponsored resolution endorsing a Palestinian state for the first time

2003 – The Chinese government orders the Rolling Stones to eliminate four songs from their upcoming performances in Shanghai and Beijing, banning “Brown Sugar,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Beast of Burden,” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together”

2003 – The U.S. Air Force announces resumption of reconnaissance flights off the coast of North Korea, which stopped on March 2 after an encounter with four armed North Korean jets

2006 (year uncertain) – Plant a Flower Day * is a good day to start your spring gardening, even if you’re just planting seeds in containers indoors because there’s still snow where you live – the National Wildlife Federation encourages all of us to plant flowers that attract pollinators like butterflies, bees or hummingbirds – just garden organically with NO pesticides

2007 – International Fanny Pack Day * is started by Nick Yates, who receives a fanny pack and fruitcake as gag gifts, shoves the cake in the pack, and wears it while he walks toward his bus stop – a homeless man he passes comments, “Nice fanny pack, chief” so Yates takes out the foil-wrapped fruitcake and gives it to him, and the man, after unwrapping it, shouts after him, “A f**king fruitcake?!”  Yates decides to start carrying food for the homeless – but no fruitcake – in his pack. His simple idea is now in seven countries. Just don’t call it a ‘fanny pack’ in Britain, where it’s slang for a woman’s private parts.

2009 – Announcement the Sears Tower in Chicago, IL, will be renamed Willis Tower

2011 – The Arab League asks the U.N. Security Council to impose a no-fly zone to protect Libyan rebels

2016 – In Santiago, Chile, Iron Maiden’s plane, Ed Force One, is damaged when a ground tug collides with two of the jet’s engines
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Visuals

• Baked scallops and batteries
• Spring forward time change
• International flags
• Andre Le Notre, Versailles/Chateau de Versailles by Pierre Patel (1668)
• Jane A. Delano
• Dorrit Hoffleit, left, with graduate, hardship quote
• Jack Kerouac, under stars quote
• Edward Albee, interestingly quote
• FDR,kindness and selfish men quotes
• Carl Hiaasen, pay cash quote
•  Used-to-Be Sears Tower, Chicago

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