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 9th 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
I had been looking forward to seeing Halley’s Comet all my life. It’s cycle is 75/76 years, so unless one lives as long as some of those Old Testament characters, we only get one shot at seeing it. I was living near Jackson, MS at the time, so there was no chance of seeing the comet in town. However, there is an active astronomy club, and they listed places were members were setting up so people could come and view the event through telescopes.
That particular night, it was held in the truck parking area next to a large quarry. A number of amateur astronomers were set up. Even though the comet was at it’s closest to Earth, it was just barely visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy pale blob of light. One man had a really nice 10-inch reflector set up and I got to look through it. That was one of the most powerful telescopes set up in the parking lot. It still looked like a fuzzy pale blob of light. I am sure many of those who read this will recall what a disappointment it was on it’s last visit in 1986.
The next visit by Halley’s Comet will be in 2062. Unless the human race blows ourselves out of existence before then, there are young people alive now who will get to see it. I hope it is not as much of a bust to them as it was in 1986.
My husband and I drove out to Joshua Tree National Monument to get away from all the light pollution. We were still about 25 miles away from the park when I turned my head and saw it in the night sky. We had his telescope and binoculars with us, so I got to see it through the binoculars while he was setting up – our view was much clearer than yours, especially through the telescope. He took shot a roll of film, with the camera hooked up to the telescope. When he picked them up, the guy at the counter told him he was the only person who had brought in film of the comet who had good pictures.
It was a good experience for us, even though we both got colds from being up all night and then going into work exhausted. Sorry you were disappointed.
His grandfather had been a boy when it covered the sky in 1910, and even in his 90s, his face lit up when he told us about seeing it. There was a man who had some stories, and a phenomenal memory too.
Halley’s Comet is just about at the end of its life and may be invisible to the naked eye when it returns. It has really lost a lot of mass compared to its 1910 perihelion. Halley had an outburst in 1991 that released a dust cloud that was about 150,000 miles across.
All good things must come to an end – but what a remarkable run Halley’s has had – such a touchstone in human history.
Sgt. Jason Bos was reunited with his bomb sniffing service dog “Cila” at O’Hare International Airport. He worked with her for five years. Cila was retired, and the Army gave Sgt. Bos a chance to claim her on her retirement.
This scene has been played out many times the past few years. It is good that these veterans are able to have a chance to adopt the dogs they worked with in combat zones.
That makes me smile!
Pure happiness for both!
Love the video Chuck!!🐕