March 27th is

Celebrate Exchange Day *

World Theatre Day *

Mule Day *

Viagra Day *

Spanish Paella Day

Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day
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MORE! Jane Colden, Jelena Dimitrijević and Sarah Vaughan, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Italy – Firenze:
Strozzi Cinema Festival

Myanmar – Armed Forces Day

Nepal – Kathmandu Valley:
Ghode Jatra (horse festival)
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On This Day in HISTORY

1309 – After the city of Venice, Italy, takes over the city of Ferrara, which is a papal fiefdom, Pope Clement V issues an excommunication order for Venice and all its citizens; not only does it deny all Venetians access to Catholic sacraments, it declares them outside church law entirely; all contracts and legal agreements are rendered null and void; Venetians abroad could be legally taken prisoner and sold into slavery, a condition usually reserved for non-Christians

1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León sails past the northern end of the Bahamas and sights Florida

1625 – James I dies, and Charles I becomes King of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as claiming the title King of France

1679 – Domenico Lalli born, Italian poet, and librettist for the opera houses of Venice, including Vivaldi’s Ottone in villa and Alessandro Scarlatti’s Tigrane

1702 – Johann Ernst Eberlin born, German composer whose works bridge the Baroque and Classical eras

1724 – Jane Colden, American botanist, called the “first botanist of her sex in her country” by Asa Gray, leading American botanist and Harvard professor; excluded from botanical publications, her untitled manuscript describing the flora of the New York area contains 340 ink drawings of different species, is compiled between 1753 and 1758

1753 – Andrew Bell born, Scottish Episcopal priest, pioneer of the ‘Madras System’ of Education and founder of Madras College; in 1789, appointed as head of an orphan asylum for mixed-race boys, saw some children teaching others the alphabet, and put bright children in charge of teaching others, also eliminating corporal punishment, whole using rewards as encouragement

1794 – U.S. Congress authorizes building six frigates for a newly-formed U.S. Navy

1824 – Virginia Louisa Minor, American suffragist, co-founded Woman’s Suffrage Association of Missouri; basing her claim on the 14th Amendment, like Susan B. Anthony and others, which grants citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” including former slaves, she tries to register to vote in 1872 – when she is turned away, she and her husband file suit against the state of Missouri, which they lose

1836 – Acting on a decree passed by the Mexican Congress that all armed foreigners taken in combat are to be treated as pirates and executed, General Antonio López de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to massacre 342 Texas prisoners of war on the road outside the Presidio La Bahia in Goliad TX.  Thirty-nine others, who are wounded and unable to walk, are killed inside the fort; the Texas commander, James Fannin, is executed last, after witnessing his men being shot, knifed or clubbed to death; only 28 members of the Texas force, who faked death, escaped – “Remember Goliad!” becomes a Texas battle cry

1840 – The first Mule Day * is held in Columbia TN, as a meeting for mule breeders; it’s now a multi-day event there, but Mule Day is also celebrated in several other cities from North Carolina to California

1845 – Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist and academic, 1901 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range called Röntgen rays

1851 – Ruperto Chapí born, Spanish composer, co-founded Sociedad General de Autores y Editores

1854 – Giovanni Battista Grassi born, Italian physician, zoologist, and entomologist

1862 – Jelena Dimitrijević, Serbian short story writer, novelist, poet, traveller, social worker, feminist and polyglot; novel Nove (New Women), numerous travel books, and studies of  Muslim women from 1881-1898, including gaining access to a Turkish harem

1863 – Henry Royce, English engineer and businessman, founder Rolls-Royce Limited

1866 – President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, but his veto is overridden by Congress and the bill passes into law on April 9; it is the first U.S. federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law, mainly intended to protect the civil rights of persons of African descent born in or brought to America, in the wake of the American Civil War, a precursor to the 14^th Amendment – ‘persons’ and ‘citizens’ would not include women of any color for some time to come

1868 – Patty Smith Hill born, America composer, teacher and advocate for nursery schools, co-author, with her sister Mildred Hill, of the tune “Happy Birthday to You”

1879 – Edward Steichen born, American photographer, art gallery and museum curator; he and Alfred Stieglitz are leaders in gaining respect for photography as an art form

1883 – Marie Under born, Estonian poet, nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature eight times; a founder of the Estonian Writers’ Union (1922)

1886 – Geronimo, leader and medicine man of the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahua Apaches, surrenders to the U.S. Army

1886 – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe born in Prussia, American modernist architect, designed IBM Plaza and Seagram Building

1904 – Union organizer and speaker “Mother” Jones is ordered by Colorado state authorities to leave the state, accused of stirring up striking coal miners

1905 – Elsie MacGill born, Canadian engineer, world’s first female aircraft designer

1906 – Pee Wee Russell born, American Jazz clarinetist

1911 – Celebrate Exchange Day * Charles A. Berkey founds the first Exchange Club in Detroit MI, a group where members could exchange ideas and information on better serving their communities; in 1917, The National Exchange Club becomes a nonprofit educational service organization; in 1979, the prevention of child abuse was adopted as their National Project; current headquarters are in Toledo OH

1912 – The first cherry blossom trees, a gift to the U.S. from Japan, are planted in Washington, DC.

1914 – Belgian doctor Albert Hustin uses a diluted solution of blood with the anticoagulant sodium citrate to make the first successful non-direct (person-to-person) blood transfusion

1915 – Mary Mallon, ‘Typhoid Mary,’ a cook whose employers keep falling ill with Typhoid fever, first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the U.S., is put in  quarantine for a second time, where she remains until her death after she refuses to allow removal of her gall bladder, the site of live typhoid bacteria in her body

1920 – Hermann Muller becomes Chancellor of Germany

1924 – Sarah Vaughan born, American Jazz vocalist

1927 – Mstislav Leopold Rostropovich born, Russian cellist and conductor, outspoken champion of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union

1933 – U.S. Farm Credit Administration is established by Executive Order 6084, to regulate the Farm Credit System, a network of borrower-owned financial institutions and cooperatives

1940 – Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, based on Daphne du Maurier’s novel, premieres in Los Angeles (1941 Oscar for Best Picture)

1945 – Ella Fitzgerald & Delta Rhythm Boys record “It’s Only a Paper Moon”

1946 – Four-month long strikes at both General Electric and General Motors ended with a wage increases

1948 – Billie Holliday’s sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, just 11 days after she leaves prison, sentenced on drug charges

1952 – Singin’ in the Rain opens, starring Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds

1958 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR

1958 – Sheb Wooley records “Purple People Eater”

1962 – World Theatre Day * The International Theatre Institute begins the celebration of live theatre, its creators and its audiences, and those who call for governments and institutions to recognize its importance to global culture and economic growth

1964 – The Good Friday Earthquake, at magnitude 9.2 the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the U.S., strikes South-Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage

1967 – The Young Rascals record “Groovin'”

1975 – Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins

1980 – Silver Thursday: Lamar Hunt and his brother Nelson Bunker Hunt try to corner the world market in silver, resulting in panic on commodity and futures exchanges

1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours

1990 – The United States begins broadcasting TV Martí, an anti-Castro propaganda network, to Cuba

1993 – Jiang Zemin is appointed President of the People’s Republic of China

1993 – Italian former minister and Christian Democracy leader Giulio Andreotti is accused of mafia allegiance by the tribunal of Palermo

1998 – Viagra Day * The USDA approves use of Sildenafil, trade name Viagra, for treating erectile dysfunction

2000 – A Phillips Petroleum plant explosion in Pasadena TX kills one person and injures 71 others; OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) launches a six-month investigation and concludes that failure to train workers properly was a key factor in the explosion and fire; this was the third accident with fatalities resulting from safety violations at the plant, but it remains in operation

2001 – China reports its population is 1.26 Billion

2004 – HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander-class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe

2009 – President Barak Obama orders 4,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan and Pakistan to go after al-Qaida

2014 – The Philippine government signs a peace accord with the largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, ending decades of conflict
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Visuals

World Theatre Day

• International flags
• City of Venice, Italy in the 1300s
• Jane Colden, illustrations of specimens
• Henry Royce, perfection quote
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, chair quote
• Mother Jones, hellraiser quote
• Elsie MacGill, firsts
• National Exchange Club logo
• HMS Scylla, now an artifical reef

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