June 16th is

National Flip Flop Day *

National Fudge Day

World Sea Turtle Day *

International Day of the African Child *
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MORE! Roald Amundsen, Katharine Graham and Sun Yat Sen, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Canada – Viking AB:
Vikings in the Streets Festival

Iran – Martyrdom of Imam Ali

Ireland – Bloomsday *

Solomon Islands –
Queen’s Birthday Holiday

South Africa – Youth Day *

United Kingdom – Newark, Nottinghamshire
Newark Riverside Festival
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On This Day in HISTORY

632 –  Yazdegerd III ascends to the throne as Shah of the Persian Empire, becoming the last ruler of the Sasanian dynasty; a year after his ascension Muslin Arabs invade Persia

1373 – The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty is signed between Great Britain and Portugal

1486 – Andrea Del Sarto born, Italian painter and draftsman

Portrait of a Young Man by Andrea del Sarto, circa 1517

1487 – Battle of Stoke Field, the final engagement of the Wars of the Roses, is won by Henry VII, and almost all the remaining Yorkist leaders are killed at Stoke Field

1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, is imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, by Scots who are angry over her marriage to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, whom many believe colluded with her in the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley just three months before their hasty wedding

1624 – After the Privy Council in 1620 forbids export of any product of Virginia to a foreign country until the commodities had been landed in England, and English duties paid, the London Company stops being profitable and is bankrupt by 1624, so their royal charter is revoked, and Virginia becomes an English crown colony

1644 – Princess Henrietta of England born, Duchess of Orléans, instrumental in negotiating the Secret Treaty of Dover

1723 – Sir Joshua Reynolds born, English portrait painter

Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse by Sir Joshua Reynolds

1738 – Mary Katherine Goddard born, American publisher and first postmistress, first to print the Declaration of Independence

1796 – Camille Corot born, French landscape painter

The Goat Herd of Genzano – Camille Corot 1843 

1784 – As Holland’s House of Orange, which had been the country’s most powerful house since 1544, is toppling, the newly-risen Patriot Party pushes through a ban on the wearing of Orange colours and the singing of the Wilhelmus, to be punished by fine and imprisonment

1790 – The District of Colombia is established as the seat of U.S. government

1815 – The Battle of Quatre-Bras, a critical crossroads that must be held in order to control all the surrounding territory, between mostly Dutch forces under the Prince of Orange, part of the Seventh Coalition combined army under the overall command of the Duke of Wellington, and the left wing of the French Armée du Nord under Marshal Ney, results in nearly 9,000 dead or wounded, split almost equally between the opposing sides. Other Coalition forces rush reinforcements to hold Quatre-Bras at great cost, especially to the Black Watch 42^nd battalion, but the Prussian Army under Field Marshal Blücher is in worse case at Ligny against Napoleon. Badly outnumbered and cut off, they are forced to retreat, and Blücher is wounded. Two days later, he resumes command, and the Prussians play a decisive role in the Battle of Waterloo

28th Regiment at Quatre Bras – Elizabeth Thompson 1815 painting detail

1836 – The formation of the London Working Men’s Association gives rise to the Chartist Movement, a working-class movement for political reform (1838-1857). Two major reforms for which they campaign are suffrage for all males aged 21 or older, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime, without restriction to property owners and the secret ballot

1843 – David Popper born, Bohemian cellist and composer

1846 – The Papal conclave of 1846 elects Pope Pius IX, who begins the longest reign in the history of the papacy

1858 –Abraham Lincoln makes his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois, accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for the U.S Senate

1871 – The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology)

1881 – Natalia Goncharova born, Russian painter, costume designer, and illustrator, co-founder of artistic groups Jack of Diamonds and Donkey’s Tail

Gardening by Natalia Goncharova 

1884 – The first purpose-built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s “Switchback Railway”, opens in New York’s Coney Island amusement park.

1897 – A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later

1899 – Helen Francesca Traubel born, American dramatic soprano, known for her Wagnerian roles especially Brünnhilde and Isolde

1902 – Barbara McClintock born, American cytogeneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated

1903 – Roald Amundsen commences the first east-west navigation of the Northwest Passage, leaving Oslo, Norway

1904 – Bloomsday * date the events in the James Joyce novel Ulysses take place; Joyce chooses date because it was the beginning of his relationship with Nora Barnacle

1907 – The Coup of June 1907: Russian Tsar Nicholas II dissolves the Second Duma (parliament) by Imperial Manifesto, arrests 55 Social Democratic deputies in spite of their parliamentary immunity, then issues an edict changing the Russian electoral law to increase representation of the propertied classes, and reduce the representatives of the peasants, working class, and national minorities. Nicholas had broken the Fundamental Law, and fallen back on the Tsar’s “historical authority”– despotism

1909 – Glenn Curtiss makes the first commercial sale of a U.S. airplane, for $5,000

1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York

1911 – Ginger Rogers born, American actress and dancer, screen partner of Fred Astaire; 1941 Best Actress Oscar for Kitty Foyle

1913 – The South African Government passes the segregationist Native Land Act, which restricts purchase or lease of land by native Africans

1915 – British Women’s Institute founded, UKs largest women’s volunteer organization

1917 – Katharine Graham born, American publisher, led her family’s newspaper, The Washington Post, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for her memoir Personal History

1918 – The Bolsheviks execute Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children

1920 – Isabelle Holland born, Swiss-American author, known for books for both adults and children; two of her novels were made into movies, Bump in the Night and The Man Without a Face

1922 – The Irish republicans are beaten in a national election; the vote is in favor of the Treaty of London, which leaves the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Commonwealth

1923 – Sun Yat Sen authorizes the Republic of China Military Academy; at its opening ceremonies in May the following year, he delivers a speech which later becomes the lyrics of the Republic’s national anthem

1925 – The Union of South Africa rejects a round-table conference with India on the status of Indian nationals in South Africa on the grounds that it will constitute interference in South African affairs

1933 – The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed (later struck down by the U.S Supreme Court as unconstitutional)

1933 – The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is created under the authority of the Banking Act, to insure bank deposits, up to $2,500, by customers against loss in the event of the bank’s failure, and to extend federal oversight to all commercial banks

1937 – The Marx Brothers’ movie, A Day at the Races, opens in Los Angeles

1938 – Joyce Carol Oates born, American author; 1969 National Book Award for them

1941 – Washington National Airport opens, the first U.S. federally owned airport

1946 – The musical Annie Get Your Gun opens on Broadway, to run for 1147 performances

1947 – Pravda denounces the U.S. Marshall Plan to aid in the economic recovery of Europe from the devastation of WWII

1951 – J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye is published

1960 – Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho, starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, opens in New York City

1961 – Soviet premiere danseur Rudolf Nureyev of the Kirov Ballet defects to the West at the Paris Le Bourget Airport instead of boarding a plane to return to the USSR

1962 – The Isley Brothers release “Twist and Shout”

1963 – Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space when she pilots Vostok 6

1969 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules 9-1 in Powell v. McCormack that the House of Representatives may exclude a duly elected representative, but only for the reasons enumerated in the Qualifications of Members Clause of Article One of the Constitution

1969 – Apollo 11 blasts off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the moon

1972 – The Who release “Join Together” in the UK

1972 – David Bowie releases The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

1973 – Former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Richard Nixon’s secret taping system during the Senate Watergate hearings

1980 – The John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd movie The Blues Brothers premieres in Chicago

1991 – International Day of the African Child * honors the participants in the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976, over 10,000 black school children marched in a column over half a mile long in protest of the poor quality of education available to them, and demanding their right to be taught in their own language instead of Afrikaans; the police opened fire on the children, and killed at least 176 of them, and wounded over 1,000 others; the shooting of the children caused increased international outcry and pressure. It is now marked as Youth Day * in South Africa

1995 – Batman Forever, starring Val Kilmer and Chris O’Donnell, opens with a record $528 million weekend

1999 – Thabo Mbeki is elected second President of a democratic South Africa; in his inaugural address, he pays tribute to his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, of “a generation that pulled our country out of the abyss and placed it on the pedestal of hope, on which it rests today”

2004 – Martha Stewart is sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home confinement by a federal judge for lying about a stock sale

2007 – National Flip Flop Day is started by Tropical Smoothie Café to celebrate its 10th Anniversary. Customers wearing flip flops receive a free Jetty Punch Smoothie, and donations are collected for Camp Sunshine in Casco Maine, a year-round program for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families; since its debut in 2007, Flip Flop Day has raised over $3.7 million for Camp Sunshine

2012 – Pilot and astronaut Liu Yang becomes the first Chinese woman in space as a crew member of the Shenzhou 9 mission

2014 – World Sea Turtle Day * is promoted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

2016 – Philadelphia Becomes the first major U.S. city to tax sodas, at a rate of 1.5 cents per ounce, whether made with sugar or artificial sweeteners, in spite of fierce opposition from the American Beverage Association, which vows legal action against the tax

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