July 9^th is:

Intern Appreciation Day

National Sugar Cookie Day

Open Heart Day *

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MORE! Elias Howe, Dorothy Thompson and Andy Warhol, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Bahá’í – Martyrdom of the Bab

Argentina – Independence Day

Brazil – São Paulo:
Constitution Revolution Day *

Canada – Nunavut: Nunavut Day *

Japan – Nagoya: Sumo Nagoya Basho
(Sumo Grand Tournament)

Palau – Constitution Day

South Sudan – Independence Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

455 – Military commander Avitus proclaimed Emperor of the Western Roman Empire

1357 – Emperor Charles IV helps lay the Charles Bridge foundation stone in Prague

1540 – King Henry VIII annuls his 6-month marriage to Anne of Cleves

Portraits of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves by H. Holbein

1577 – Thomas De La Warr born, English official; one of the Virginia colony founders

1609 – Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II grants Bohemia religious freedom

1764 – Ann Radcliffe born, English novelist, pioneer of the Gothic novel

1776 – General George Washington orders the Declaration of Independence read to Continental Army troops in Manhattan, as thousands of British troops on Staten Island prepare for the Battle of Long Island

1793 – Upper Canada’s Legislative Assembly passes An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province, which bans importing slaves, and frees children born to female slaves when they reach age 25

1810 – Napoleon annexes the Kingdom of Holland as part of the First French Empire

1811 – Explorer David Thompson claims Pacific NW Columbia River area for Britain

1811 – Fanny Fern born, American author and columnist for the New York Ledger

1815 – Charles Maurice de Talleyrand becomes the first Prime Minister of France

1816 – Argentina declares its independence from the Spanish Empire

1819 – Elias Howe born, American inventor of the sewing machine

1850 – The Bab, Herald of the Bahá’í faith, is executed in Tabriz, Persia

1858 – Kaikhusrau Jahan born, progressive Begum (ruler) of Bhopal from 1901 to 1926, greatly improved education and public health services for her people

1868 – 14^th Amendment to U.S. Constitution is ratified

1879 – Ottorino Respighi born, Italian composer

1887 – Samuel Eliot Morison born, American biographer and historian

1893 – Open Heart Day * – Daniel Williams performs the first successful open heart surgery, without anesthesia

1894 – Dorothy Thompson born, American journalist and radio broadcaster, first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934, recognized by Time magazine in 1939 as the second most influential woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt

1900 – Britain’s separate Australian colonies are unified into one country

1911 – Mervyn Peake born, English novelist, poet, playwright and illustrator

1915 – During WWI, the South African Defense Force of the Union of South Africa which invaded German Southwest Africa at the end of 1914, accepts the German’s surrender of the territory. Sixteen days later, South Africa annexes Southwest Africa

1926 – Mathilde Krim born in Italy, American medical researcher, founding chair of amfAR, an association for AIDS research, honored with Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged

1929 – Hassan II born, King of Morocco from 1961 to 1999

1932 – Constitution Revolution Day * – the state of São Paulo revolts against the Brazilian Federal Government, starting the Constitutionalist Revolution

1933 – Nunavut Day * – The Canadian Parliament passes the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act, leading to splitting Nunavut from the Northwest Territories  as a separate territory in 1999

1935 – Mercedes Sosa born, Argentine singer and activist, won several Grammy Awards and a posthumous Latin Grammy for Bet Folk Album, UNICEF ambassador

1936 – June Jordan born, American poet, writer, educator and activist, columnist for The Progressive, librettist for the musical I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, recipient of numerous awards including the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists

1937 – 20^th Century Fox vault fire destroys over 40,000 reels of silent films

1940 – The German Evangelist Church protests Adolph Hitler’s euthanasia pogroms, officially known as Action T4, which ultimately murdered 200,000 people, using medications like phenol, starvation or gas. The victims are mentally or physically disabled. Action T4 is the next step following the law the Nazis enacted soon after they took power in Germany, which forced the sterilization of people with such diseases as Huntington’s, schizophrenia, and epilepsy

1955 – Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” tops the charts

1962 – Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans exhibit opens in Los Angeles

1978 – In  hot, humid weather, 100,000 supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.) march in Washington DC , with purple and white banners, colors honoring the National Woman’s Suffrage Party of Alice Paul, who turned immediately after the long-awaited success of the campaign for women’s right to vote, to making women’s legal equality a Constitutional amendment. The march supports bill H.J.R. 638, to extend E.R.A.’s deadline of March 22, 1979. Only eight votes by state senators in three states had kept the E.R.A. from being ratified by March 1, 1977

1981 – Nintendo releases Donkey Kong – mascot Mario makes his debut

1986 – New Zealand’s Homosexual Law Reform Act legalizes homosexuality

1993 – Canada’s Nunavut Act leads to dividing the Northwest Territories

1995 – The Grateful Dead play their last concert, at Chicago’s Soldier Field (Jerry Garcia dies of a heart attack the following month)

2002 – The African Union, a geo-political organization of 55  countries of the African continent, meets in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and South African President Thabo Mbeki becomes its chairman

2004 – A Senate Intelligence Committee report concludes the CIA had provided unfounded assessments of the threat posed by Iraq that the Bush administration relied on to justify going to war

2011 – South Sudan becomes Africa’s newest nation, breaking away from Sudan after two civil wars over five decades that cost millions of lives

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