March 25th is

Earth Hour Day *

Pecan Day *

Tolkien Reading Day *

World Endometriosis Day

National Medal of Honor Day *

National Day of Celebration of Greek and American Democracy *

International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members

Remembrance Day for Victims of Slavery & Transatlantic Slave Trade *
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MORE! Flannery O’Connor, Gloria Steinem and Aretha Franklin, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity – Feast of the Annunciation (Archangel Gabriel tells Mary she will be the mother of the Son of God)

Brazil – São Paulo:
Brasileño Lolla Music Festival

Cyprus and Greece – Independence Day *

Latvia – 1949 Deportations Commemoration
(over 42,000 Latvians sent to Siberia) *

San Marino – Arengo Anniversary

Sweden – Våffeldagen (Waffles Day)

United Kingdom – London:
BAH! Bad ad Hoc Hypotheses Festival

United States – Maryland: Maryland Day *
(first English settlers arrival anniversary)

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On This Day in HISTORY

717 – Leo the Isaurian joins forces with Artabasdus, and they lay siege to Constantinople; when they enter the city, Theodosius III abdicates as ruler of the Byzantine Empire, freeing his son who had been captured by Leo, and they both enter the clergy – Leo becomes Leo III

1000 – Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who was only 11 when his father died in 996, assassinates the eunuch chief minister Barjawan, who was attempting to get rid of him, and assumes control of the government

1199 – Richard I aka Richard the Lionheart, is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6

1306 – Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scots, six weeks after murdering one of his rivals, John Comyn

1409 – The Council of Pisa opens an informal Catholic ecumenical council which attempts but fails to end the Papal Schism which split the Western Church between rival claimants to the papacy

1555 – The city of Valencia is founded in what is now Venezuela 

1576 – After the Mayor and the Corporation of London ban plays and expel players from the city, as a measure against the plague, Jerome Savage takes out a sub-lease to start the Newington Butts Theatre outside London, a very early Elizabethan theatre

1584 – Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a royal charter to colonize Virginia, giving him seven years to establish a settlement or lose the rights

1634 – Maryland Day * English colonists sent by the second Lord Baltimore arrive in what’s now the state of Maryland, to found a colony with religious tolerance for followers of Jesus, both Protestant and Catholic, but when the Puritans take over in 1654, they revoke religious freedom

1655 – Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christiaan Huygens

1775 – Pecan Day * Pecan trees (some still surviving) are planted at Mount Vernon

1802 – The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a “Definitive Treaty of Peace” between France and the United Kingdom, but it only halted hostilities until May 1803

1807 – The Slave Trade Act * becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire, but does not abolish slavery, which is not abolished until 26 years later

1807 – The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger-carrying railway in the world

1811 – Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism

1821 – (Julian calendar) Traditional date of the start of the Greek War of Independence. The war had actually begun on 23 February 1821; this date chosen in the early years of the Greek state so that it falls on the day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, strengthening the ties between the Greek Orthodox Church and the newly founded state

1848 – William Keith Brooks born, American zoologist, champion for conservation of the Chesapeake Bay oyster; The Development and Protection of the Oyster in Maryland 

1867 – Arturo Toscanini born, Italian conductor

1888 – Gerald Murphy born, American expatriate, painter; he and his wife are friends of many prominent writers and artists in Paris in the 1920’s

1881 – Béla Bartók born, major Hungarian composer

1894 – Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington, D.C.; the protesters are workers who became unemployed because of the Panic of 1893, an economic depression triggered by railroad over-extensions and the crash of wheat prices, then a run on the banks

1911 – In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers, some leaping to their deaths from windows on the 8^th through the 10^th floors of the building because the doors to the exits and stairwells had been locked by the employers to prevent workers taking unauthorized breaks or stealing

1914 – Norman Ernest Borlaug born, American agronomist; Nobel Peace Prize winner for efforts to overcome world hunger; developed triticale, wheat/rye hybrid, with higher yield and protein content

1918 – The Belarusian People’s Republic is established

1923 – Bonnie Guitar born, American singer-songwriter

1925 – Flannery O’Connor born, American author,  won the 1972 National Book Award for Fiction for her short story collection

1931 – The Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers, are arrested in Alabama and charged with raping two white women on a train; convicted by an all-white jury, the appeals went all the way to the Supreme Court – twice. Regarded as a major example of miscarriage of justice

1932 – Penelope Gilliatt born, British author, screenwriter, and critic

1934 – Gloria Steinem born, American journalist, feminist and activist, co-founder Ms. magazine, and organizations including the Women’s Media Center, founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC)

1941 – The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers, signing the Tripartite Pact

1942 – Aretha Franklin born, American singer-songwriter and pianist, one of the best selling female artists of all time (over 75 million records), recipient of 18 Grammy Awards, inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the UK Music Hall of Fame and the GMA Gospel Music Hall of Fame

1949 – Lillian Elaine Fishburne born, first African American woman to hold the rank of Rear Admiral in the United States Navy

1949 – An extensive deportation campaign, the March Deportation, is conducted in Estonia, Latvia * and Lithuania to force collectivization by way of terror; Soviet authorities deport more than 92,000 people from the Baltics to remote areas of the USSR

1957 – U.S. Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” on obscenity grounds

1957 – The European Economic Community is established with West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as the first members

1960 – Roy Orbison records “Only the Lonely”

1960 – NY court rules D.H. Lawrence’s novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” not obscene

1963 – The Beach Boys release their album Surfin’ U.S.A

1965 – Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama

1979 – The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John F. Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its first launch

1988 – The Candle Demonstration in Bratislava is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia

1989 – National Day of Celebration of Greek and American Democracy * is designated in a joint resolution by both houses of Congress as an annual ‘national day’

1990 – U.S. Congress designates March 25th as annual National Medal of Honor Day *

1994 – American troops complete their withdrawal from Somalia

1996 – The European Union’s Veterinarian Committee bans the export of British beef and its by-products as a result of mad cow disease (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy)

1996 – The redesigned $100 bill goes into circulation

1998 – President Bill Clinton acknowledged during his Africa tour that “we did not act quickly enough” to stop the slaughter of 1 million Rwandans four years earlier.

2003 – Tolkien Reading Day * is organized by the Tolkien Society, held annually on March 25, the day of the downfall of Sauron

2006 – Protesters demanding a new election in Belarus, following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006, clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested

2007 – Earth Hour Day * is launched by the World Wildlife Federation, asking everyone to turn off all their lights for one hour beginning at 8:30 PM local time  to make a statement about energy conservation

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Visuals

• Tolkien Reading Day
• International flags
• Leo III on Byzantine coin
• Portrait of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah
• Newington Butts Theatre
•  Saturn’s largest moon, Titan
• Design for medallion of British Anti-Slavery Society by Josiah Wedgwood
• Wasp and Pear by Gerald Murphy – 1929
• Coxey’s Army
• The New York Herald front page – Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire 
• Flannery O’Connor – conviction quote
• Penelope Gilliatt – comedy quote
• Gloria Steinem – men and career quote
• Lillian Elaine Fishburne
• Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”
• D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”
• Civil War Era Medal of Honor
• 1996 redesigned $100 bill
• Earth Hour banner 

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