July 16th is

Corn Fritters Day

Fresh Spinach Day

World Snake Day

National Ice Cream Day

Guinea Pig Appreciation Day *

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MORE! Anne Askew, Ida B. Wells and Roald Amundsen, click

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World Festivals and National Holidays

American Samoa – Manu’a Cession Day
(Manu’a islands ceded to the U.S.)

Bolivia – La Paz Day

Canada – Yellowknife NT:
Folk on the Rocks

Chile – Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Italy – Venice: Festa del Redentore
(Festival of  the Redeemer, thanks for 1577 end of Plague)

Morocco – Marrakech: National Festival
of Marrakech Popular Arts * (ongoing)

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On This Day in HISTORY

Islam – On July 16, 622, Muhammad and his followers begin the Hejira from Mecca to Yathrib (re-named Medina), the beginning of the Islamic calendar

1099 – Crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon herd Jews of Jerusalem into the central synagogue and set it on fire. Those who try to escape are forced back into the flames

1194 – Clare of Assisi born, Italian founder of the Catholic order of Poor Clares

1377 – Richard of Bordeaux, aged 10, is crowned Richard II of England

1486 – Andrea Del Sarto born, Italian painter and draftsman

Madonna delle Arpie (Madonna of the Harpies) by Andre del Sarto – 1517

1546 – Anne Askew is burned at the stake after being tortured in the Tower of London. She is one of the earliest known women poets in the English language, and the first Englishwoman to demand a divorce (she had been married off  by her father at age 15 to her eldest sister’s fiancée, Thomas Kyme ,when her sister died), but she is a devout believer in direct prayer to God, without intercession by priests, while her husband is Catholic; she bore two children (who likely died in infancy)  before he threw her out, so she moves to London, resumes her maiden name and becomes a gospeller (lay preacher).  Kyme had her arrested for her preaching, and dragged back, but she escapes and returns to London, is arrested twice more, and the second time she is tortured in the Tower of London, the only recorded torture of a woman there. Ordered to name like-minded women she refuses, and is stretched on the rack, which dislocates joints of wrists, ankles, elbows, knees, shoulders and hips. Askew still refuses to renounce her beliefs, is convicted of heresy, and martyred in Smithfield, having to be carried in a chair and then bound unto the stake, unable to stand because of the torture she endured

1661 – First European banknotes issued by Stockholms Banco in Sweden

1723 – Sir Joshua Reynolds born, notable English portrait painter

Self-Portrait, by Joshua Reynolds

1755 – Future U.S. President John Adams graduates from Harvard

1769 – Father Junipero Serra founds first California Mission, San Diego de Alcalá

1782 – First performance of Mozart’s opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio

1790 – The District of Columbia established as permanent seat of U.S. government

1796 – Camille Corot born, French landscape painter

The Pond at Ville-d’Avray through the Trees by Camille Corot – 1871 

1861 – Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the American Civil War

1862 – Ida B. Wells born, American journalist, editor, suffragist, sociologist and civil rights activist, noted for her extensive documentation of racial lynchings in the United States, inspiring speaker who traveled internationally on lecture tours

1863 – Fannie Zeisler born in Austria, American pianist

1872 – Roald Amundsen born, Norwegian explorer; his expedition is the first to reach the South Pole

1880 – Emily Stowe is the first woman granted a license to practice medicine in Canada

1896 – Evelyn Peer born, African American blues singer, actor with Lafayette Players

1900 – “His Master’s Voice” the RCA Victor logo registered with U.S. Patent Office

1901 – Millicent Fawcett is appointed to lead the British government’s commission to South Africa to investigate conditions in the concentration camps holding Afrikaners, mostly women and children, at the end of the Second Boer War; her report corroborates welfare campaigner Emily Hobhouse’s shocking description of conditions in the camps, where an average of 50 children die every day

1907 – Barbara Stanwyck born as Ruby Stevens, American film and TV star; the highest-paid woman in American in 1944; nominated four times for Academy Awards for acting, but winless until she received an honorary Oscar in 1982; won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for her television work

1911 – Ginger Rogers born as Virginia McMath, dancer-actor, memorable partner of Fred Astaire; Oscar winner for Best Actress in 1941 for title role in drama Kitty Foyle

1918 – In Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his family are executed by the Bolsheviks

1926 – First color underwater photographs appear in National Geographic magazine

1935 – Oklahoma City is first U.S. city to install parking meters

1942 – Vichy French government orders mass arrest of Jews, deported to Auschwitz

1945 – U.S. detonates the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo NM test site

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

1959 – King Mohammed V of Morocco inaugurates the National Festival of Marrakech
Popular Arts * to preserve and display a rich heritage of oral, musical and visual arts, with traditional crafts and music workshops, and many presentations by storytellers, poets, musicians, and dancers

1959 – The Coasters record “Poison Ivy”

1959 – James MacMillan born, Scottish orchestral and sacred music composer

1964 – Barry Goldwater accepts the Republican presidential nomination at their San Francisco convention

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

1969 – The Who release “I’m Free”

1971 – Jeanne M. Holm is promoted to brigadier general in the United States Air Force, becoming the first woman brigadier general in the Air Force

1972 – The Grand Funk Railroad releases “We’re An American Band”

1973 – Former aide Alexander Butterfield reveals President Nixon’s secret taping system during his testimony at the Senate Watergate hearings

1980 – The Republicans nominate Ronald Reagan to be U.S. President at their convention in Detroit

1989 – South Africa’s largest labour federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, holds its third annual congress and intensifies its campaign against apartheid

1994 – Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collides with Jupiter

2005 – J.K. Rowling’s sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, sells 9 million copies in the first 24 hours after its release

2007 – Niigata, Japan: Two earthquakes injure 800, damage a nuclear power plant

2015 – NASA reveals first close-up pictures of Pluto, sent by the New Horizons probe

2016 – The first Guinea Pig Appreciation Day * is launched by Piggles Guinea Pig Rescue, a Canadian group which is a member of Helping Homeless Pets.com

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