July 2nd is:

Anisette Liqueur Day

I Forgot Day 

World UFO Day *

Salvation Army Founders Day *

Second Half of the Year Day

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MORE! Christoph Gluck, Wisława Szymborska and Noel Coward, click 

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Brazil – Bahia Independence Day

Chile – Elecciones Primarias

Croatia – Otok Obonjan:
Otok Obonjan Festival (ongoing)

Curaçao – Flag and Anthem Day

Italy – Siena: Il Palio di Provenzano
(Madonna veneration/horse racing)

Netherlands – Amsterdam:
(TIKTAK Eclectic Music Festival)

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On This Day in HISTORY

626 – Prince Li Shimin, the future Chinese Emperor Taizong of Tang, kills his rival brothers Li Yuanji and Crown Prince Li Jiancheng in an ambush at the Xuanwu Gate. Within three days, Li Shimin is installed as the new crown prince

866 – Battle of Brissarthe: a combined Breton-Viking army led by Salomon, Duke of Brittany and Danish chieftain Hastein defeats the united Frankish forces led by Robert the Strong when he is killed during the battle and two other Frankish leaders also die

1489 – Thomas Cranmer born, English Reformation cleric who helped build the case for annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon; as the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, he compiled the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, the new liturgy for the Church of England; when the attempt to put Lady Jane Grey, Edward VI’s Protestant cousin, on the throne, Mary was proclaimed queen and restored Roman Catholicism as the state religion. Cramner is tried and condemned for treason and heresy, the Church deprives him of his archbishopric and turns him over to the secular authorities, he recants, then un-recants, and is burned at the stake

Thomas Cranmer, by Gerlach Flicke 1545

1504 – Bogdan the One-Eyed becomes Voivode (warlord) of Moldavia

1698 – Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine

1714 – Christoph Gluck born, German classical composer, known for his operas

1776 – In the American colonies, the Second Continental Congress adopts a resolution that “these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States” to sever ties to Great Britain; the Declaration will be formally ratified on July 4

1777 – Vermont becomes the first American colony to abolish slavery

1816 – The French frigate Méduse strikes the Bank of Arguin and 151 people on board had to be evacuated on an improvised raft, a case immortalized by Géricault’s painting The Raft of the Medusa

La Balsa de la Medusa by Jean Louis Géricault 1818 (Louvre)

1825 – Richard Henry Stoddard born, American critic and poet; worked as a blacksmith, then Nathaniel Hawthorne helped secure his appointment as inspector of customs of the Port of New York; later worked as a New York City librarian and literary reviewer for the New York World; several of his poems became song lyrics

1839 – Twenty miles off the coast of Cuba, 53 rebelling African slaves led by Joseph Cinqué take over the slave ship Amistad

1865 – Lily Braun born, German author and leader in the German feminist movement

1865 – Salvation Army Founders Day * – William Booth founds the Salvation Army

1877 – Hermann Hesse born, German novelist and poet; 1946 Nobel Prize for Literature

1879 – Genevieve Cline born, American lawyer and judge, first woman named to the federal judiciary, advocate for consumer protection, women’s rights and suffrage

1881 – President James A. Garfield is shot twice by Charles J. Guiteau at the Washington railroad station; the President’s wounds are probed by multiple doctors with unsterilized fingers and instruments, but they fail to find the bullet lodged in the more serious wound in his abdomen. Continual contact with unclean hands and instruments causes massive infection, then pneumonia; he dies after much suffering on September 19, and V.P. Chester A. Arthur is sworn in as the 21^st U.S. President

1890 – U.S. Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act

1896 – Lydia Mei born, Estonian painter, known for watercolors and still-life paintings

1898 – Hugh Dryden born, American physicist; NASA deputy administrator (1958-65)

1900 – Sibelius’ Finlandia premieres in Helsinki

1900 – Sir Tyrone Guthrie born, English theatre director; leader in the revival of interest in traditional theatre, especially Shakespeare; directed productions at the Old Vic, Sadler’s Wells, and the first season of the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Ontario, in Canada; Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis MN named in his honor

1902 – Germaine Thyssens-Valentin born, Dutch classical pianist, received her training and spent much of her life in France; she made her debut at the age of eight

1908 – Thurgood Marshall born, American civil rights activist and first African-American Supreme Court Justice

1918 – Frances Reed Elliot becomes the first African American woman accepted into the American Red Cross Nursing Service

1919 – Jean Craighead George born, American author; books for children and young adults; Newbery Award; also wrote non-fiction guides to cooking with wild foods

1923 – Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet, essayist and translator; 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature ; a woman who mixed elegance of language with “the fury of Beethoven”

1925 – Medgar Evers born, African-American civil rights activist; assassinated in 1963

1925 – Patrice Lumumba born, Congolese independence leader and prime minister

1928 – British Parliament accepts woman suffrage

1932 – NY Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the Democrat’s candidate for U.S. president at their convention in Chicago

1937 – Amelia Earhart’s plane goes missing

1941 – Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit premieres in London

Rehearsal for 1955 CBS-TV Blithe Spirit production – L to R: Lauren Bacall, Mildred Natwick, Noel Coward and Claudette Colbert

1947 – World UFO Day *- An object that the Army Air Force later said was a weather balloon crashes near Roswell, New Mexico, but many speculate it is an alien spacecraft

1958 – Elvis Presley records “Don’t Be Cruel”

1961 – The Drifters release their single “Sweets for My Sweet”

1964 – President Lyndon Johnson signs Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law

1976 – In Furman v. Georgia, U.S. Supreme Court rules that the death penalty systems
currently in place are unconstitutional, violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual” punishments, because there are no rational, objective standards for determining use of the death penalty. The ruling is that death penalty itself is not unconstitutional, but the random way it is applied that is cruel and unusual. A temporary ban of the death penalty goes into effect in the U. S., and 35 states change their death penalty criteria to comply with the Court’s ruling

1979 – U.S. Mint releases an ill-conceived dollar coin meant to honor Susan B. Anthony

Undersized Anthony dollar on left

1982 – The South African Parliament passes the Internal Security Act, giving the apartheid government broad powers to ban or restrict organizations, publications, people and public gatherings, and to detain people without trial

1990 – The Italian Catholic Church tries to halt Madonna’s concert in Rome, alleging she uses crucifixes and sacred symbols in appropriately

2003 – President George W. Bush incites attacks on American troops in Iraq, saying to the enemy “bring them on,” while promising to deal harshly attackers

2007 – President George W. Bush commutes the 2.5 year prison sentence of former V.P. national security adviser Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of two counts of perjury, and one count each of obstruction of justice and making a false statement to federal investigators in the CIA Scandal over the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert identity; Libby paid a penalty of $250, 400.00, spent two years under supervised release, and performed 400 hours of community service; he was disbarred from practicing law, but successfully petitioned for reinstatement in 2016

2013 – The International Astronomical Union names Pluto’s fourth and fifth moons Kerberos and Styx

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