May 3rd is

Garden Meditation Day

Lumpy Rug Day *

National Public Radio Day *

National Textiles Day *

Raspberry Tart Day

UN World Press Freedom Day *

Two Different Colored Shoes Day *

Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy Day *

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MORE! Machiavelli, Dodie Smith and Pete Seeger, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Catholic and Orthodox Christianity – The traditional day of the finding of the ‘True Cross’ upon which Jesus was crucified, after a search throughout Jerusalem led by the Byzantine Empress, later Saint, Helena. In Spanish-speaking countries, name variants include the words “La Cruz” or “Las Cruses”

Australia –
Northern Territory: May Day
Queensland: Labour Day

Hong Kong & Macao – Buddha’s Birthday
(exact date of his birth is unknown)

Japan – Constitution Day
Nagoya: WEKFEST (car show)

Mexico – Día de la Santa Cruz

Peru – Fiesta de las Cruces

Poland – Constitution Day

South Korea – Buddha Day

Venezuela – La Cruz de Mayo

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On This Day in HISTORY

752 – Mayan King Yaxun B’alam IV, (‘Bird Jaguar IV’) of Yaxchilan in modern-day Chiapas, Mexico assumes the throne

1469 – Niccolò Machiavelli born, Italian Renaissance politician, historian, philosopher and author, sometimes called the founder of modern political science; Il Principe

1491 – Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptized by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I

1715 – A total solar eclipse was visible across northern Europe, and northern Asia, as predicted by Edmond Halley to within 4 minutes accuracy

1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city

1825 – Laura Matilda Towne born, American abolitionist, physician and educator, relocates to the Sea Islands of South Carolina in 1862 to provide medical care and education to newly freed slaves, founds the Penn school

1830 – The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway is opened; it is the first steam-hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.

1830 – The University of Athens is founded in Athens, Greece

1844 – Richard D’Oyly Carte born, theatrical impresario, producer of thirteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas

1849 – Jacob Riis born in Denmark, American “muckraking” journalist, photgrapher and social reformer who wrote and took pictures of NYC slum conditions

1849 – The May Uprising in Dresden, in the Kingdom of Saxony, fails. It is one of the last events in the Revolutions of 1848 that aimed to unite the German states into one nation under a constitutional monarchy; the failure of these revolutions meant a sharp rise in emigrates leaving the German states, many of them well-educated, especially artists, musicians and writers

1853 – E. W. Howe born, American editor, essayist and novelist

1855 – William Walker, American freebooter, departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Latin America and create new slave states; he succeeds usurping in the presidency of the Republic of Nicaragua in 1856 and rules until 1857, when he was defeated by a coalition of Central American armies; Walker is executed by the government of Honduras in 1860

1867 – The Hudson’s Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island

1886 – Marcel Dupré born, French organist and composer

1892 – George Paget Thomson born, English physicist, awarded 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery of the wave properties of the electron by electron diffraction

1896 – Dodie Smith born, English children’s author: Hundred and One Dalmatians 

1898 – Septima Poinsette Clark born, American educator and civil rights activist, develops literacy and citizenship workshops to support voting rights for African Americans; called “The Mother of the Movement” by Martin Luther King, Jr.

1898 – Golda Meir born in Ukraine, moved with family to the U.S. in 1906; Israeli educator and politician, 4th Prime Minister of Israel (1969-1974)

1903 – Bing Crosby born, American ‘crooner’singer-songwriter and movie star

1912 – May Sarton born, prolific American poet, novelist and memoirist

1913 – William Inge born, American playwright; 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Picnic

1913 – Raja Harishchandra, the first full-length Indian feature film is released, the beginning of the Indian film industry

1917 – Betty Comden born, American screenwriter and librettist

1919 – Pete Seeger born, American singer-songwriter, and activist: The Weavers

1920 – John Aaron Lewis born, American Jazz composer-arranger-pianist; musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet

1921 – The Government of Ireland Act 1920 is passed, partitioning Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland

1932 – Robert Osborne born, American film historian and television host

1933 – James Brown, American singer-songwriter and producer

1933 – Nellie Tayloe Ross is appointed as the first woman director of the United States Mint, serving until 1953

1934 – Frankie Valli born, American singer; The Four Seasons

1937 – Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone with the Wind, wins Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

1939 – The Andrews Sisters record “Beer Barrel Polka’

1948 – U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.

1951 – The Festival of Britain debuts in London’s newly-constructed Royal Festival Hall

1951 – U.S. Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations begin closed door hearings on dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by President Harry Truman

1951 – Christopher Cross born, American singer-songwriter; “Sailing” “Arthur’s Theme”

1952 – Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the U.S. land a plane at the North Pole

1960 –Off-Broadway musical, The Fantasticks, opens in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time

1960 – The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

1963 – The police force in Birmingham, Alabama responds with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing greater attention to the Civil Rights Movement

1971 – National Public Radio Day * celebrates the first broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered, their flagship program

1971 – Anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe begin four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C., aimed at shutting down the nation’s capital

1975 – Lumpy Rug Day * is launched by Robert Louis Birch, a librarian and linguist retired from the U.S. Patent Office Science Library, to expose all the inconvenient truths being swept under the rug by bigots and trigots (his word for people even worse than bigots)

1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (which would later become known as “spam”) is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the U.S. West Coast

1979 – Margaret Thatcher forms her government as the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

1993 – UN World Press Freedom Day * is proclaimed by the UN General Assembly, to commemorate the Windhoek Declaration produced at a 1991 UNESCO seminar to promote an independent and pluralistic African Press, and freedom of the press throughout the world as a keystone of participatory democracy

1996 – Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy Day * sponsored by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy was founded in 1996 to combat the nation’s incredibly high rates of teen pregnancy, and has expanded their campaign to include all unplanned pregnancies

2001 – The U.S. loses its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947

2009 – Two Different Colored Shoes Day * is launched by Dr. Arlene Kaiser as a day to break out of your routine and have some fun – why be “normal” – be you!

2016 – National Textiles Day * is founded by Valley Forge Fabrics to recognize all that textiles do to improve our lives. Whether woven from natural or synthetic fibers, textiles are the stuff from which our clothes, bedding, furniture covers, rugs, curtains, and canvas for art and sailing is made.

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