March 31st is

Bunsen Burner Day *

Crayola Crayon Day *

Eiffel Tower Day *

International Hug A Medievalist Day *

International Transgender Day of Visibility *

World Backup Day
_________________________________________________________

MORE! Gail Hamilton, Liz Claiborne and Sheila Dikshit, click 

_________________________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Malta – Jum il-Helsien *
(Freedom Day)

Micronesia – Pohnpeo
(Culture and Traditions Day)

Virgin Islands – Transfer Day *

United States – California:
Cesar Chavez Day
_________________________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

1425 – Bianca Maria Visconti, Duchess of Milan, active in the administration of the Duchy, known as “warrior woman” for her defense of Cremona against the Venetians

1492 – Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issue the Alhambra Decree which expels Jews from their Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon unless they convert to Christianity

1521 – Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan takes possession of Homohon, Archipelago of St Lazarus, Philippines

1596 – Rene Descartes born, French mathematician, scientist and philosopher

1657 – English Parliament makes the Humble Petition to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell offering him the crown: he declines

1717 – Bishop of Bangor Benjamin Hoadly’s sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ” provokes the Bangorian Controversy

1732 – Franz Joseph Haydn born, a leading Austrian Classical composer

1745 – Jews are expelled from Prague

1796 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Egmont premieres in Weimar

1808 – The French-created Kingdom of Westphalia orders Jews to adopt family names

1809 – Edward Fitzgerald born, English writer-translator; Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

1811 – Bunsen Burner Day *- Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen born, German chemist; discoverer of caesium and rubidium; developed Bunsen Burner with Peter Desaga

1822 – The massacre of the people of Greek island Chios by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire following a rebellion attempt, depicted by the French artist Eugène Delacroix

1833 – Gail Hamilton born, pseudonym for Mary Abigail Dodge, American author, noted for promotion of women’s equality in education and occupation

1841 –First performance of Robert Schumann’s 1st Symphony in B

1854 – Treaty of Kanagawa: Commodore Perry forces Japan to opens ports to US

1861 – The Confederacy takes over the U.S. mint at New Orleans

1870 – Thomas Mundy of Perth Amboy NJ becomes the first U.S. black man to vote

1872 – Serge Diaghilev born, Russian impresario; created Ballets Russes (1909)

1880 – Wasbash IN is the first town completely illuminated by electric lighting

1883 – First performance of Caesar Franck’s Le Chasseur Maudit

1890 – William Lawrence Bragg born in Australia, British physicist; discoverer (1912) of Bragg’s law of X-ray diffraction; joint winner (with his father, William Henry Bragg) of the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics

1889 – Eiffel Tower Day * – French engineer Alexandre Eiffel unfurls the French flag atop the completed Eiffel Tower as it is opened to the world; at 300 meters high (just over 984 feet), it will be the tallest man-made structure in the world for four decades

1903 – Crayola Crayon Day * – Binney & Smith Co begins making Crayolas

1909 – Gustav Mahler conducts the New York Philharmonic for the first time

1913 – Etta Baker born, American singer and Piedmont blues guitarist

1914 – Octavio Paz born, Mexican poet-writer/diplomat; 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

1917 – Transfer Day * – the Danish West Indies are transferred from Denmark to the U.S. for $25 million, and renamed the Virgin Islands

1918 – First Daylight Savings time goes into effect in the U.S.

1920 – British Parliament accepts Irish Home Rule

1921 – British coal miners goes on strike

1927 – Cesar Chavez born, leader of United Farm Workers of America, the first union of migrant American farm workers; organized the California grape boycott; worked tirelessly for the 1975 collective bargaining act for farm workers passed by the California legislature, only the second in the nation after Hawaii

1929 – Liz Claiborne born in Belgium, American fashion designer, first woman to be to found and serve as CEO of a Fortune 500 company

1930 – The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film for the next 38 years

1932 – Ford publicly unveils its V-8 engine

1933 – Congress authorizes the Civilian Conservation Corps

1938 – Sheila Dikshit born, Indian politician, serves as Chief Minister of Delhi

1939 – The Hound of Baskervilles is released, the first Holmes film starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson

1943 – Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! premieres on Broadway

1944 – Hungary orders all Jews to wear yellow stars

1945 – Premiere of Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie on Broadway

1948 – U.S. Congress passes Marshall Aid Act to rehabilitate war-torn Europe

1953 – U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare is established

1958 – U.S. Navy forms atomic sub division; meanwhile, the USSR suspends nuclear weapons tests, urging U.S. and Britain to do the same

1963 – Los Angeles CA ends streetcar service after 90 years

1965 – U.S. orders first combat troops to Vietnam

1966 – Labour Party under Harold Wilson wins British parliamentary election

1967 – In London, Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar for the first time

1968 – LBJ announces he will not seek re-election

1972 – Black Tot Day: last day of the rum ration in the Royal Canadian Navy

1979 – The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day, Jum il-Helsien *

1980 – President Jimmy Carter begins deregulation of U.S. banking industry

1983 – Marsha Norman’s ‘night, Mother premieres in NYC

1988 – Toni Morrison is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for her novel Beloved

1991 – The musical Will Rogers Follies premieres on Broadway

1992 – The U.N. Security Council votes to ban flights and arms sales to Libya, branding it a terrorist state for shielding the six men suspected of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 and a French airliner

1999 – The movie 10 Things I Hate About You opens; inspired by Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, it stars Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger

2007 – In Sydney, Australia, 2.2 million people take part in the first Earth Hour

2009 – International Transgender Day of Visibility * is launched by Transgender activist Rachel Crandall of Michigan, now spearheaded by Trans Student Educational Resources

2011 – International Hug A Medievalist Day * is started by Sarah Laseke who was studying Medieval Literature at Oxford

_________________________________________________________

Visuals

• Crayola Crayon and Kiss a Medievalist Day
• International Flags
• Rene Descartes, the world we see quote
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, intelligent thoughts
• Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes poster
• Octavio Paz, solitude quote
• Cesar Chavez, preserving culture quote
• Hug A Medievalist Day art

_________________________________________________________