April 26th is

American Red Cross Giving Day

National Audubon Day *

World Denim Day *

International Guide Dogs Day *

National Pretzel Day

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MORE! Marcus Aurelius, ‘Ma’ Rainey and Bernard Malamud, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Malaysia – Terengganu: Darul Iman
(Sultan of Terengganu’s birthday)

Tanzania – Union Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

121 – Marcus Aurelius born, Roman Emperor

1477 – The Pazzi family of Florence, wealthy bankers, plot with Francesco Salvati and Girolamo Riario to murder Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother Giuliano to oust the Medici family as rulers of Florence; Giuliano is killed during mass in the Duomo of Florence, but the wounded Lorenzo escapes, and most of the conspirators are quickly rounded up and summarily executed

1564 – William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon in England

1607 – English colonists make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia

1777 – Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rides 40 miles to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British regular forces

1785 – John James Audubon born, American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter noted for his extensive studies of American birds and his detailed illustrations of the birds in their natural habitats; The Birds of America

Shore Lark from The Birds of America

1798 – Eugène Delacroix born, French painter and lithographer

1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Régime and to eventually consolidate his own rule

1803 – European scientists become convinced that meteors exist when thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L’Aigle, France

1812 – Friedrich Flotow born in Germany, French composer

1822 – Frederick Law Olmsted, American landscape architect social critic and public administrator, co-designed New York’s Central Park

1865 – Near Bowling Green, Virginia, U.S. cavalry troopers corner and kill John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln

1875 – Natalie Curtis born, ethnomusicologist, known for transcribing and publishing traditional music of American Indian tribes and African American music

1882 – Jessie Redmon Fauset born, author, poet and editor for the NAACP magazine The Crisis, part of the Harlem Renaissance

1886 – ‘Ma’ Rainey born, African-American singer; dubbed ‘mother of the blues’

1888 – Anita Loos born, novelist, screenwriter, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1925), wrote screenplays for Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, wrote memoirs and “Twice Over Lightly” with Helen Hayes (1972)

1889 – Ludwig Wittgenstein born in Austria, English philosopher

1898 – Vicente Aleixandre born, Spanish poet and author, Nobel Prize laureate

1907 – Julia Godman Ruuttila born, union recruiter, activist and journalist, worked for the CIO’s International Woodworkers of America during the eight-and-a-half-month lock-out in 1937, raised community support, protested the Vietnam War, still walked in picket lines at 80 despite asthma, ulcers, arthritis and angina

1914 – Bernard Malamud born, American novelist and short story writer

1916 – Morris West born, Australian author and playwright; The Shoes of the Fisherman

1917 – I.M. Pei born in China, influential American modern architect

I M Pei in front of his glass pyramid at the Louvre, Paris

1922 – Jeanne Sauvé, Canadian politician, 23rd Governor General of Canada

1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established

1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain, is bombed by German Luftwaffe

1948 – International Guide Dogs Day * – International Guiding Eyes founded; in 1992, its name is changed to Guide Dogs of America

Joseph Jones, Sr. with guide dog Lucy, 1957 –
one of the earliest successes

1960 – Forced out by the April Revolution, South Korean President Syngman Rhee resigns after twelve years of dictatorial rule

1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania

1970 – The Convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) goes into force

1980: The Blondie single “Call Me” is #1 in the U.S and the UK

1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world’s first human open fetal surgery

1984 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan visits China

1986 – A nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), creating the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

1989 – The ‘April 26 Editorial’ is published on the front page of the People’s Daily during the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, calling the student movement as a destabilizing anti-party revolt that should be resolutely opposed at all levels of society. As the first authoritative document from the top leadership on the growing movement, it is interpreted as a ‘no-tolerance’ party policy toward student protesters and their sympathizers. Students are enraged, and even larger numbers come to Tiananmen Square the following day

1996 – Sotheby ends four-day auction of Jackie O stuff, taking in $34.5 million

1999 – World Denim Day * – originally ‘Denim Day L.A.’ launched by Peace Over Violence, a Los Angeles-based group, because of the infamous ‘Denim Defense’ in the case of an 18-year-old Italian girl picked up by her driving instructor, taken to an isolated road, pulled out of the car, where he wrestles her out of one leg of her jeans and forcefully rapes her. Threatening to kill her if she tells anyone, he makes her drive the car to her home. She tells her parents, who support her in pressing charges. The perpetrator is arrested, tried and convicted. But when he appeals the case, the Italian Supreme Court dismisses all charges. Their reasoning: “because the victim wore very, very tight jeans, she had to help him remove them, and by removing the jeans it was no longer rape but consensual sex. … certainly it is impossible to pull them off if the victim is fighting against her attacker with all her force.” Within hours, the women of the Italian Parliament protest the decision by wearing jeans to work and vowing to continue to wear them until the decision is changed. Members of the California Senate and Assembly also come to work in jeans as the story spreads

2000 – Vermont Governor Howard Dean signs the first bill in the U.S. allowing same-sex couples to form civil marriage unions

2005 – Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination

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