June 11th is

Abused Women and Children’s Awareness Day *

Corn on the Cob Day

Cotton Candy Day

German Chocolate Cake Day

Making Life Beautiful Day *

Multicultural American Child Day

World Gin Day

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MORE! Marcus Aurelius, Mary Jane Rathbun and Athol Fugard, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Belgium – Mons: Ducasse de Mons
(Village Fair and Procession)

France – Flanders:
Our Lady of Esquernes Day

United Kingdom –
Newport, Isle of Wight:
› Isle of Wight Festival
Muchelney, Somerset:
› Green Scythe Fair

United States – Hawaii:
King Kamehameha Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

1184 BC – According to calculations by Eratosthenes, chief librarian of the Library at Alexandria, this day Troy is sacked and burned by the Achaeans (Greeks) at the end of the Trojan War

173 – In a violent thunderstorm, the “Miracle of the Rain” turns an ambush by the German Quadi tribe (in what is now Moravia) into a victory for Marcus Aurelius, when the storm replenishes the Romans’ depleted water supply

631 – Emperor of China Taizong of Tang sends envoys to the Xueyantuo bearing
gold and silk, seeking the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners captured during the rocky transition on the northern frontier from Sui to Tang; the embassy succeeds in freeing 80,000 Chinese men and women who are returned to China

1509 – Henry VIII of England, age 18, marries Catherine of Aragon, the 23-year-old widow of his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, who had died in 1502

1572 – Ben Jonson born, English poet, playwright, and critic

1594 – King Philip II of Spain recognizes the rights and privileges of the local nobles and chieftains in the Philippines

1741 – Joseph Warren, American physician, prominent leader of Boston’s patriot organizations during the early days of American Revolution, killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775

1742 – Benjamin Franklin invents the Franklin stove, but purposely does not patent it, so that others can freely copy the design

1748 – Denmark adopts the characteristic Nordic Cross flag later taken up by all other Scandinavian countries

1776 – The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the ‘Committee of Five’ to draft a declaration of independence

1776 – John Constable born, English Romantic painter

Gillingham Bridge – Dorset, 1823, by John Constable

1815 – Julia Margaret Cameron born in Calcutta, British photographer

1837 – The Broad Street Riot, a brawl involving at least 800 in the fighting while 10,000 spectators egg them on, in Boston MA; inebriated firemen leaving a pub which is in violation of the Sunday ‘blue laws’ by serving them, meet a large group of Irishmen on the way to a funeral; the violence is finally quelled when Mayor Samuel Eliot calls in the state militia

1842 – Carl Paul Gottfried Linde born, German engineer; because brewing beer requires low temperatures, he invents mechanical refrigeration

1847 – Millicent Fawcett born, English academic and woman suffrage leader

1860 – Mary Jane Rathbun born, American marine zoologist and crustacean expert; works at the Smithsonian almost 60 years, describing over 1000 new species and subspecies

1864 – Richard Strauss born, German Romantic composer

1880 – Jeannette Rankin born, American social worker, politician, peace and women’s rights activist, first woman elected to U.S. House of Representatives, voted in Congress against declaration of war for both WWI and WWII, casting the only vote against WWII

1892 – The Limelight Department, one of the world’s first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne, Australia

1899 – Yasunari Kawabata born, Japanese novelist; 1968 Nobel-Prize

1901 – The boundaries of the Colony of New Zealand are extended by the UK to include the Cook Islands

1910 – Jacques Cousteau born, French ocean explorer, marine biologist; Aqualung co-inventor; Marine conservation pioneering activist, founder of the Cousteau Society; filmmaker and author

1913 – Women in Illinois celebrate passage of a state woman suffrage bill allowing women to vote in presidential elections

1919 – Sir Barton, a chestnut Thoroughbred, becomes the first horse to win the Triple Crown, setting an American record for a mile and three-eighths in the Belmont Stakes

1920 – During the Republican National Convention in Chicago, party leaders gathered in a Blackstone Hotel room to come decide on their candidate for the U.S. presidential election; the Associated Press coins the phrase “smoke-filled room” in its story

1925 – William Styron born, American novelist and essayist

1928 – King Oliver and his band record “Tin Roof Blues”

1932 – Athol Fugard born, South African actor, director, and playwright

1936 – The London International Surrealist Exhibition opens; exhibiting artists include Constanin Brancusi, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso and Man Ray

1937 – One of the key trials of the Great Purge, The Case of the Military was a secret trial in which senior military officers, accused of anti-Soviet conspiracy, are executed during the night of June 11-12, immediately after the guilty verdict

1939 – President Franklin Roosevelt introduces King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England to the American hot dog during their state visit to the U.S.

1940 – The Ink Spots record “Maybe”

1942 –U.S. and the Soviet Union sign a WWII lend-lease agreement

1947 – War-time sugar rationing ends in the U.S.

1944 – The USS Missouri, the last battleship built by the U.S. Navy, is commissioned

1962 – Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin become the only prisoners acknowledged to have escaped from Alcatraz Island

1962 – Vivian Malone and James Hood, enroll in the University of Alabama as the first African American students at the school. Since she enrolled as a junior, Malone is the school’s first African American graduate in 1963

1963 – Alabama Governor George Wallace defiantly stands at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending the school; later that day, accompanied by federalized National Guard troops, they are able to register

1963 – Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam

1963 – John F. Kennedy addresses Americans from the Oval Office proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which will give equal access to public facilities, end segregation in education and guarantee federal protection for voting rights

1965 – The Rolling Stones release their album “Got Live If You Want It” in the U.K.

1968 – Lloyd J. Old identifies the first cell surface antigens that could differentiate among different cell types

1971 – U.S. Government forcibly removes the last holdouts to the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, ending 19 months of occupation

1978 – The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) is founded, one of many supporters of Abused Women and Children’s Awareness Day * – for information, contact: mainoffice@ncadv.org

1987 – Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng and Bernie Grant are elected as the first black MPs in Great Britain

1990 – U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a federal law banning U.S. flag desecration

1993 – In Wisconsin v. Mitchell, U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that states may impose harsher penalties on “hate crimes”

1993 – What’s Love Got To Do With It, the Ike and Tina Turner film biography, opens

2004 – Cassini–Huygens makes its closest flyby of the Saturn moon Phoebe

2008 – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes a historic official apology to Canada’s First Nations in regard to abuses at a Canadian Indian residential school

2008 – The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is launched into orbit

2009 – The World Health Organization declares the swine flu outbreak a pandemic

2015 – Making Life Beautiful Day * is launched by Foundation Apriori, the charitable arm of Apriori Beauty, to recognize women and men who are making life beautiful, building relationships and helping others

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