March 21st is

International Day of Forests *

Common Courtesy Day

French Bread Day

National Memory Day

Single Parent Day *

Twitter Day *

World Poetry Day *

World Down Syndrome Day *

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination *
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MORE! Antonia Maury, Phyllis McGinley and Madonna, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Shintoism – Shunbun ni Hi (Spring Day)

Iraq – Spring Day

Lesotho – Tree Planting Day

Malaysia – Sultan of  Terengganu Day

Namibia – Independence Day

South Africa – Human Right’s Day *

Tunisia – Youth Day

Syria – Mothers’ Day

Turkmenistan – Spring Holiday
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On This Day in HISTORY

630 – Byzantine Emperor Heraclius returns the ‘True Cross,’ one of the holiest Christian relics, to Jerusalem

1349 – 3,000 Jews were killed in Black Death riots in Efurt Germany

1556 – Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day

1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach born, major German Baroque composer

1752 – Mary Dixon Kies born, American inventor, who receives one of the first patents given to a woman in May, 1809, for a new technique of  weaving straw with silk and  thread to make hats, which is signed by President James Madison

1788 – The city of New Orleans LA is devastated by fire, 856 buildings are destroyed

1790 – Thomas Jefferson reports to U.S. President George Washington as the first U.S. secretary of state

1804 – The French civil code, the Code Napoleon, is adopted

1806 – Benito Juárez born, Mexican lawyer and politician, 25th President of Mexico

1826 – The Rensselaer School in Troy NY is incorporated, the first U.S. engineering college, later renamed Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

1826 – Beethoven’s Quartet #13 in B flat major (Op 130) premieres in Vienna

1839 – Modest Mussorgsky born, major Russian Romantic composer

1844 – The Bahá’í calendar begins on that year’s Vernal Equinox, the Bahá’í New Year or Náw-Rúz

1851 – Vietnamese Emperor Tu Duc, tired of conspiracies and uprisings against his reign in which some French and Spanish priests have taken part, orders all Christian priests be put to death

1857 – Alice Henry born, Australian suffragist, journalist and trade unionist who  becomes a leader in the American Women’s Trade Union League

1859 – In Philadelphia, the first Zoological Society is incorporated

1861 – Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens gives the ‘Cornerstone’ Address, at the Athenaeum in Savannah, Georgia, to explain fundamental differences between the constitutions of the Confederacy and the U.S., laying out the Confederacy’s causes for declaring secession, “. . .  our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.” He defends slavery: “Our new government is founded upon exactly [this] idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

1866 – Antonia Maury born, American astronomer who publishes an important early catalog of stellar spectra

1867 – Florenz Ziegfeld born, Broadway impresario, producer of musicals and extravagant theatrical reviews

1868 – The Sorosis club for professional women is formed in New York City by Jane Cunningham Crolyn after she is not allowed to join the male-only New York Press Club; the new organization is open to professional and wealthy women, not wage-earners

1871 – New York Herald journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his famous expedition to found Dr. David Livingstone

1871 – Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the German Empire

1887 – Clarice Beckett born, Australian Tonalist painter

1902 – Romain Rolland’s play, The 14th of July, premieres in Paris

1902 – ‘Son’ House born, American Blues singer-songwriter

1904 – The British Parliament vetoes a proposal to send Chinese workers to Transvaal

1905 – Phyllis McGinley born, American poet and author, 1961 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry

1905 – Sterilization for “mental defectives” legislation is passed in the state of Pennsylvania, but the measure is vetoed by Governor Samuel Pennypacker

1906 – Ohio passes a law prohibiting hazing by fraternities after two fatalities

1910 – U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt a $10.000 yearly pension

1919 – The Hungarian Soviet Republic is established, the first Communist government formed in Europe after Russia’s October Revolution

1923 – Nizar Qabbani born, Syrian poet, diplomat and feminist, serving in Syrian missions in Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, Madrid, and London, and as UAR Vice-Secretary at their Chinese embassy; his sister’s suicide under pressure when she refused to marry a man she did not love made a profound impression on Qabbani, who was 15 years old at the time

1928 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge gives the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh for making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight

1935 – Shah Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its historical name, Iran

1939 – Kate Smith records “God Bless America”

1942 – Amina Claudine Myers, American singer-songwriter, composer and arranger

1946 – The UN has a temporary headquarters at Hunter College in New York City

1952 – Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland OH

1960 – About 70 people are killed and 180 wounded in Sharpeville, South Africa, when police fire on unarmed black demonstrators; now South African Human Rights Day *

1963 – Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, closes

1965 – NASA launches Ranger 9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar probes

1965 – Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 people at the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march, from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama

1966 – In New York, demolition work begins to clear thirteen square blocks for the construction of the original World Trade Center

1966 – International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination * is proclaimed by the UN General Assembly on the Sharpeville Massacre anniversary in South Africa

1971 – Two U.S. platoons in refuse their orders to advance into Laos, which would be in  violation of a prohibition of U.S. ground forces entering Laotian territory

1972 – The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the 1970 Voting Rights Act which set 30 days as the maximum permissible residency requirement in Dunn v. Blumstein

1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces a U. S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet war in Afghanistan

1980 – On the TV show Dallas,  J.R. Ewing is shot

1982 – The movie Annie premieres

1984 – Single Parent Day * is proclaimed on the anniversary of the founding of Parents Without Partners in 1957

1984 – Part of NYC’s Central Park renamed ‘Strawberry Fields’ to honor John Lennon

1985 – Police in Langa, South Africa, open fire on blacks marching to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings. At least 21 demonstrators are killed

1987 – U2 releases “With or Without You”

1989 – Randall Dale Adams is released from a Texas prison after his conviction is overturned, sparked by the documentary “The Thin Blue Line” which challenges evidence of Adams’ conviction for killing a police officer

1989 – Madonna’s album Like a Prayer is released

1990 – Australian businessman Alan Bond sells Van Gogh’s “Irises” to the Getty Museum. Bond purchased the painting for $53.9 million in 1987

1994 – Steven Spielberg wins his first Oscar for Best Director for Schindler’s List, which also wins Best Picture

1994 – The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change goes into force

1999 – World Poetry Day * is declared by UNESCO

2000 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5-4 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration overstepped its regulatory authority when it attempted to restrict marketing of cigarettes to young people, basing the restriction on tobacco being an addictive drug

2002 – In Paris, an 1825 print by French photography inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce is sold for $443,220. The print, of a man leading a horse, is one of the very first recorded images taken by photographic means

2006 – Twitter Day * – Social media site Twitter launches with the first tweet by co-founder Jack Dorsey

2012 – World Down Syndrome Day * is officially recognized by the UN

2016 – The Kepler space telescope captures visible light of a “shock breakout” when star KSN 2011a explodes, first exploding star’s brilliant flash shockwave is captured

2016 – The first UN International Day of Forests *
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Visuals

• French bread
• International Day of Forests sticker
• Muse, 2-line poem for World Poetry Day by Nikita Gill
• International flags
• 1815 woman’s hat made with patented Kies technique
• Thomas Jefferson foreign policy quote
• Alice Henry biography book cover
• Florenz Ziegfeld, what makes a star quote
• Clarice Beckett painting, title not listed
• Phyllis McGinley, mother quote
• Nizar Qabbani, poem
• Moondog Coronation Ball
• NYC Central Park’s ‘Strawberry Fields’
• Cigarettes are addictive poster
• Kepler space telescope image

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