March 13th is

Open An Umbrella Indoors Day *

Chicken Noodle Soup Day

Coconut Torte Day

Earmuff Day *

Good Samaritan Day

Napping Day

Smart & Sexy Day *

K-9 Veterans Day *
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MORE! Andrew Carnegie,  Donella Meadows and Janet Flanner, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia –
South Australia: Adelaide Cup (horse race)
Victoria: Labour Day
Tasmania: Eight Hour Day

British Virgin Islands –
Commonwealth Day

Gibraltar – Commonwealth Day

Vatican City –
Pope Francis Election Anniversary

New Zealand – Taranaki:
Provincial Anniversary Day

Turks and Caicos Islands –
Commonwealth Day

Tuvalu – Commonwealth Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

607 – The 12th recorded passage of what will be called Halley’s Comet, 13.5 million kilometres from Earth 

624 – Battle of Badr takes place in the Hejaz region (modern-day Saudi Arabia), a key battle in the infancy of Islam, a turning point in Muhammad’s struggle with his opponents among the Quraish in Mecca; it is reported as the first large-scale engagement between the two forces, and a decisive victory for the Muslims against an army triple their size, fielded by one of the richest and most powerful cities in Arabia – no known contemporary descriptions exist, first accounts date from the 9^th Century

874 – The bones of Saint Nicephorus are interred in the Church of the Holy Apostles,  Constantinople; a rigid iconodule (supports religious images and their veneration), Nicephorus goes in and out of favor according to who is Emperor and the political strength of his opponents; though a layman in charge of the largest home for the destitute in the city, he is appointed Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (806-815) because he is favored by the Emperor. Opposed by the Stroudites (monks of the Monastery of Stoufdios, the most important monastery in Constantinople from 462 to about 1204), he is eventually forced to retire to one of the cloisters he founded, where he is revered as a confessor and writes iconodulist literary polemics

1519 – Cortez lands in Mexico

1593 – Georges de La Tour born, French Baroque painter

1639 – New College in Cambridge Massachusetts, is renamed Harvard College, for English clergyman John Harvard, who gives a deathbed bequest to the school, which had been founded just three years before

1660 – Virginia enacts a law on ‘English’ (whites) running away with negroes: “BEE itt enacted That in case any English servant shall run away in company with any negroes who are incapable of makeing satisfaction by addition of time, Bee itt enacted that the English so running away in company with them shall serve for the time of the said negroes absence as they are to do for their owne by a former act.”

1697 – Nojpetén, capital of the last independent Maya kingdom, falls to Spanish conquistadors under Martín de Ursúa y Arismendi, the final step in the Spanish conquest of Guatemala

1777 – U.S. Congress orders its European envoys to appeal to high-ranking foreign officers to send troops to reinforce the American army

1781 – German-born British astronomer and composer William Herschel discovers that Uranus is not a star, but a planet, which makes him an instant celebrity; George III appoints him as Court Astronomer, and he is elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society

1813 – Lorenzo Delmonico born, in Switzerland, but joins his uncles in 1851 their in NYC catering and pastry shop, then transforms the business into one of the most famous restaurants in the country

1852 – The New York Lantern newspaper publishes the first “Uncle Sam” cartoon, drawn by Frank Henry Bellew

1855 – Percival Lowell born, American astronomer and writer, founder and director of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff AZ

1860 – Hugo Wolf born, Austrian composer credited with bringing the 19th-century German lied, or art song, to its highest point of development

1865 – Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs a bill authorizing using slaves as soldiers in the rebel army

1877 – Earmuff Day * Chester Greenwood patents the earmuff

1884 – Standard time is adopted throughout the U.S.

1892 –  Janet Flanner born, American journalist and author, Paris correspondent for The New Yorker for 50 years, using pseudonym “Genêt”

1893 – The original Waldorf Hotel opens with 450 rooms and almost 1,000 employees

1900 – Giorgos ‘George’ Seferis born, major Greek poet; also essayis,career diplomat (Greek Ambassador to the UN 1957-1962), 1963 Nobel Laureate for Literature

1901 – Andrew Carnegie follows up on his 1889 article, “The Gospel of Wealth” by announcing his retirement from business to devote himself to giving away his fortune, an estimated $300 million, to charities, foundations and universities

1902 – In Poland, schools are shut down across the country when students refuse to sing the Russian hymn “God Protect the Czar”

1902 – Andrew Carnegie approves 40 applications from libraries for donations

1908 – The people of Jerusalem see an automobile for the first time, owned by Charles Glidden of Boston

1911 – In Flint v. Stone Tracy, the U.S. Supreme Court rules 7-2 that the privilege of operating in corporate form is valuable and justifies imposition of a federal corporate income tax, which had been challenged by Stella P. Flint, as guardian of the property of Samuel N. Stone Jr., a Minor, arguing that it is actually an excise tax on corporations, which can be imposed by the states, but not the federal government

1911 – Ivan Caryll’s The Pink Lady premieres in New York City

1916 – Lindy Boggs born, American politician, US House of Representatives (D-LA 1973-1991), Ambassador to the Vatican (1997-2001), first woman to preside over a major party convention (1976 Democratic National Convention)

1918 – Women are scheduled to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York due to a shortage of men due to wartime

1925 – A law in Tennessee prohibits the teaching of the theory of evolution

1930 – Announcement the planet Pluto has been discovered by scientist Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory – it will be downgraded to a dwarf planet

1933 – U.S. banks began to re-open after FDR’s imposed bank holiday stems panic

1935 – 3,000-year-old archives are found in Jerusalem confirming some biblical history

1941 – Adolf Hitler issues an edict calling for an invasion of the U.S.S.R.

1941 – Donella Meadows born, pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher and writer, lead author of The Limits to Growth and Thinking in Systems: a Primer

1942 – Julia Flikke of the Nurse Corps becomes the first woman colonel in the U.S. Army

1946 – Premier Tito seizes wartime collaborator General Draja Mikhailovich in a Yugoslavian cave

1947 – The musical Brigadoon opens on Broadway

1951 – Israel demands $1.5 billion in German reparations for the cost of caring for war refugees

1951 – The comic strip Dennis the Menace first appears in U.S. newspapers nationwide

1957 – Jimmy Hoffa is arrested by the FBI on bribery charges

1957 – Cuba Revolutionary student groups attacked the Presidential Palace in an assassination attempt on Batista; 40 of the attackers are killed, only a few of the attackers escaped. The failed attack provoked brutal reprisals – even leaders of political opposition groups not involved in the attack were rounded up

1961 – Ricky Nelson records “Travelin’ Man”

1963 – China invited Soviet President Khrushchev to visit Peking.

1964 – Kitty Genovese is stabbed to death in a brutal attack beginning in front of her apartment building and continuing in the vestibule; one neighbor did run downstairs without regard for her own safety, but was only in time to be with Genovese as she died; the NYC police have no record of any neighbors reporting the attack, in spite of screams for help from the victim

1969 – The Apollo 9 astronauts return to Earth after a mission that includes the successful testing of the Lunar Module

1970 – Cambodia ordered Hanoi and Viet Cong troops to leave.

1970 – Digital Equipment Corp. introduced the PDP-11 minicomputer.

1972 – The Merv Griffin Show debuts in TV syndication; later spoofed on Seinfeld

1974 – The U.S. Senate votes 54-33 to restore the death penalty

1974 – An Arab oil-producing countries embargo is lifted

1980 – A  jury in Winamac, IN, finds Ford Motor Company innocent of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of 3 young women while riding in a Ford Pinto

1990 – The U.S. lifts economic sanctions against Nicaragua

1991 – Exxon is to pay $1 billion in fines and clean-up costs for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska – they will get tax deductions for the clean-up costs, but there are still 330 separate lawsuits pending filed by residents, fishermen and environmentalists; actual clean-up costs will exceed $7 billion

1995 – The first United Nations World Summit on Social Development concluded in Copenhagen, Denmark

2003 – The journal Nature reports that scientists have found 350,000-year-old human footprints in Italy; 56 prints made by three early, upright-walking humans that are descending the side of a volcano

2003 – Open An Umbrella Indoors Day * is invented by Thomas Knibb to encourage people to abandon silly superstitions

2004 – Luciano Pavarotti gives his final performance in an opera at NY’s Metropolitan Opera, planning only to sing in concerts until October 2005

2006 – Construction of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum begins in NYC

2008 – K-9 Veterans Day * is the idea of  Joseph White, retired military dog trainer, to honor the day the U.S. Army K9 Corps was formed in 1942

2012 – After 244 years of publication, Encyclopædia Britannica announces it is discontinuing its print edition

2012 – Smart and Sexy Day * is sponsored by Smart & Sexy lingerie in collaboration with The Women’s Alliance, founded in 1999, which expanded and is now called the Alliance of Career Development Nonprofits (ACDN), to assist women in finding and maintaining employment by providing interview and work clothes, as well as offering training and support groups, for women transitioning from welfare to work, and families of military personnel serving overseas
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Visuals

• Coconut Torte
• May 13 Days collage
• International flags
• Battle of Badr
• Cuisine et Service de Table by Georges de La Tour
• At Nojpetén in Guatemala
• Modern-day Delmonico’s Restaurant
• Janet Flanner, talent quote
• Giorgos ‘George’ Seferis – poetry quote
• Lindy Boggs, death of old people quote
• Donella Meadows, fooling voters quote
•  Dennis the Menace and Mr. Wilson

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