June 5th is

Festival of Popular Delusions Day *

Hot Air Balloon Day *

Veggie Burger Day

World Environment Day *

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MORE! Pancho Villa, Lois Browne-Evans and James Taylor, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity – Whit Monday/Pentecost Monday – a moveable feast because it determined by the date of Easter

Bermuda – Dame Lois Browne-Evans Day * 

Denmark and the Faroe Islands –
Constitution Day *

Equatorial Guinea –
President Mbasogo’s Birthday

Seychelles – Liberation Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

AD 70 – Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the Siege of Jerusalem

1660 – Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough born, wife of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, is an influential figure in her own right, through her close friendship and support of Queen Anne before 1711, and later, her inheritance as a widow which made her one of the richest women in Europe

1723 – Adam Smith born, Scottish economist, philosopher and author; key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment; The Wealth of Nations, first modern work of economics

1783 – Hot Air Balloon Day *- The Montgolfier brothers send a pig, a duck, and a rooster up in a hot air balloon on a test flight, lasting 10 minutes and reaching several thousand feet in altitude

1819 – John Couch Adams born, English mathematician and astronomer; used mathematics to predict the existence and location of Neptune

1829 – The schooner HMS Pickle, under command of J.B.B. MacHardy, races to capture the fleeing Spanish slave ship Voladora, which had left Africa with 367 people to be sold into slavery; after heavy fire is exchanged, beginning just before midnight. When the masts of the Voladora are brought down, the Spaniards surrender. The Pickle tows the Voladora into harbor at Cuba. The Havana Slave Trade Commission, a British Vice Admiralty court, condemns the Voladora for sale, and issues emancipation certificates for the 330 surviving captives, most of whom re-settle in British Caribbean colonies

1836 – Miriam Leslie born, author, publisher and suffragist; bequeathed most of her estate to Carrie Chapman Catt, to be used for the cause of women’s suffrage

1849 – Constitution Day *- Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy by the signing of a new constitution

1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper

1862 – As the Treaty of Saigon is signed, ceding parts of southern Vietnam to France, the guerrilla leader Trương Định decides to defy Vietnamese Emperor Tự Đức and fight on against the Europeans

1868 – Johan Thorn Prikker born, Dutch artist who worked in Germany

Julian’s ride across the river, by Johan Thorn Prikkr – 1906 

1878 – Pancho Villa born, Mexican revolutionary general

1883 – John Maynard Keynes born, influential English economist; revolutionary theorist on causes of business cycles, economic effects of unemployment, and macroeconomics, based on aggregate demand (total demand for finished goods and services at any given time in a society); The Economic Consequences of the Peace

1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express train leaves Paris

1887 – Ruth Fulton Benedict born, anthropologist and folklorist, President of the American Anthropological Association, member of the American Folklore Society. Wrote Patterns of Culture, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword and “The Races of Mankind,” a WWII pamphlet for the troops showing racism wasn’t grounded in scientific reality

1898 – Federico García Lorca born, major Spanish poet and radical playwright; he will be murdered by the Franquists, his books burned and banned in Franco’s Spain

1915 – Denmark amends its constitution to allow women to vote

1916 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court

1916 – The Arab Revolt against the “impious” Ottoman Empire begins, trying to establish an independent unified Arab state from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen

1917 – WWI Conscription begins in the U.S. as “Army Registration Day”

1933 – U.S. Congress abrogates the U.S. gold standard by enacting a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold

1941 – Gene Krupa and his band record “After You’ve Gone”

1945 – The first Festival of Popular Delusions Day *

1947 – U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe on a speech at Harvard University

1949 – Orapin Chaiyakan is elected as the first female member of Thailand’s Parliament

1956 – Elvis Presley’s swiveling hips during a performance of “Hound Dog” on the Milton Berle Show scandalizes the audience

1963 – John Profumo, Britain’s Secretary of State for War, resigns in the midst of a sex scandal known as the “Profumo Affair”

1963 – Dame Lois Browne-Evans Day * – Browne-Evans is elected as a Member of the Colonial Parliament, the first black female elected, during the first election in Bermuda in which non-property owners could vote; also first Bermuda woman called to the bar

1967 – Israeli forces launch a surprise attack against Egypt, beginning the Six Day War

1968 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), campaigning in California during the primaries against President Lyndon Johnson and Eugene McCarthy, is shot by a 24-year-old Palestinian angry at his support of Israel, and dies the next day

1971 – James Taylor’s “You’ve Got A Friend” is released

1973 – World Environment Day * is launched by the UN the year after the first major environmental conference is held in Stockholm, Sweden

1975 – The Suez Canal re-opens after it is declared 99% clear of mines set during the Yom Kippur War; an Egyptian blockade had closed it to shipping since the Six Day War in 1967

1981 – The Center for Disease Control (CDC) describes five cases of a rare form of pneumonia, a deadly immune deficiency disease which later became known as AIDS. By the year 2000, more than 40 million people worldwide are affected by it

2012 – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker becomes the first governor to survive a recall election, winning by 53% – investigations into allegations of campaign irregularities are closed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2015

2013 – The first article based on NSA documents leaked by the controversial Edward Snowden are published by the Guardian newspaper in the UK

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