May 12th is

Public Gardens Day *

International Nurses’ Day

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Day

Fibromyalgia Awareness Day

Limerick Day

Military Spouse Appreciation Day

Nutty Fudge Day

One Day Without Shoes Day
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MORE! Gabriel Faure, Dorothy Hodgkin and Duke Ellington, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Islam – Shab e-Barat, the night when Allah arranges the affairs of the following year, writing the destinies of all creations for the coming year, taking their past deeds into account

Voudon – “Mangers” pour divers loas

Bangladesh – Shab e-Barat

Denmark, Faroe Islands and Greenland –
Great Prayer Day

Georgia – Saint Andrew’s Day

Iran – Imam Mahdi’s Birthday

Portugal – Pope Francis Visit/Centennial of Fátima

Thailand – Royal Ploughing Ceremony
(beginning of rice growing season)
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On This Day in HISTORY

907 – Military governor Zhu Wen forces Emperor Ai into abdicating, ending the Tang dynasty after nearly 300 years of rule

1215 – English barons, fed up with high-handed “royal justice” and high taxes, have risen in rebellion against King John, and now present him with an ultimatum: sign the Magna Carta, meant to apply only to the King, the Nobles and the Church, but it becomes an inspiration for more extended liberties over time

1789 – William Wilberforce makes his first major speech on abolition in British House of Commons, propounding reasons the slave trade is morally reprehensible and an issue of natural justice

1812 – Edward Lear born, English poet and landscape painter

1820 – Florence Nightingale born, English nurse, social reformer and statistician, known as “The Lady with the Lamp” during the Crimean War, considered the founder of modern nursing

1828 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti born, English painter and poet

1832 – Gaetano Donizetti’s opera L’elisir d’amore (“The Elixir of Love”) premieres at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan

1845 – Gabriel Faure born, French composer

1849 – Matilda Coxe Stevenson born, American ethnologist, first president of the Women’s Anthropological Society of America

1862 – Louise Phelps Kellogg born, American historian, author and educator; a leading authority on the French and British eras in the Great Lakes region; The British Regime in Wisconsin and the Northwest

1870 – Manitoba becomes a province of Canada

1874 – Clemens von Pirquet born, Austrian physician; devised tuberculosis skin test

1898 – Louisiana adopts a new state constitution with a “grandfather clause” designed to eliminate black voters

1900 – Mildred H McAfee born, American educator and first director of the WAVES in the United States Navy, dean of women at Centre College and Oberlin College, president of Wellesley College

1902 – 140,000 miners of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania go out on a strike called by the United Mine Workers after the owners refuse to recognize the UMW, negotiate or submit to arbitration

1910 – Dorothy Hodgkin born, British biochemist; 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, improved X-ray crystallography, confirmed structure of penicillin and discovered the structure of vitamin B12 and insulin

1919 – The Transvaal British Indian Association calls a mass meeting to organise opposition to the proposed Asiatics (Land and Trading) Amendment Act, which will prohibit Transvaal Indians from owning shares in limited companies

1926 – Dmitri Shostakovitch’s First Symphony premieres in Leningrad

1928 – Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ends women’s rights in Italy

1930 – Marc Connelly is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Green Pastures, which was the first play with an all-black cast to be performed on Broadway

1933 – The Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration are formed to help the needy and struggling farmers

1934 – Duke Ellington’s “Cocktails for Two” is #1 on the charts

1949 – Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India is the first foreign woman ambassador to be received in U.S.

1965 – Israel and West Germany exchange letters beginning diplomatic relations

1965 – The Rolling Stones record their song “Satisfaction”

1967 – The Jimi Hendrix Experience release their debut album Are You Experienced

1968 –The “Poor People’s March” led by Reverend Ralph Abernathy reaches Washington DC, a multiracial demonstration for economic and human rights

1977 – The Eagles album Hotel California, released in 1976, goes gold

1982 –Novelist John Updike is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Rabbit is Rich

1999 – Sir David Steel becomes the first Speaker of the modern Scottish Parliament

2002 – Jimmy Carter becomes the first present or former U.S. president to visit Cuba since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959

2008 – The first Public Gardens Day * is sponsored by American Public Gardens Association

2012 – The discovery of a missing Mayan calendar piece disproves 2012 Armageddon.

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