July 27th is

Bagpipe Appreciation Day

Barbie-in-a-Blender Day

Chili Dog Day

Crème Brulee Day

Scotch Whisky Day

Walk on Stilts Day

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MORE! Hilaire Belloc, Peggy Lee and Przewalski’s horse, click  

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – Blue Mountains NSW:
Yulefest (ongoing)

Bhutan – Lord Buddha’s Sermon

Croatia – Tisno: Soundwave Festival

North Korea – Victory Day

United Kingdom –
Lake District: Kendal Calling (rock music)
Charlton Park, Malmesbury: WOMAD (world music)

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On This Day in HISTORY

1054 – Siward, Earl of Northumbria invades Scotland, defeating Scottish King Macbeth

1245 – Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for failing to honor his pledge to lead another Holy Land Crusade when Frederick turned back because of illness. Frederick’s governing policies at home helped establish the primacy of the Rule of Law, which made him unpopular with both clerics and nobles

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II

1299 – (Traditional date) Osman I invades Nicomedia, founding day of Ottoman Empire

1549 – Jesuit Francis Xavier’s ship reaches Japan

1663 – Parliament passes the Second Navigation Act, requiring all goods bound for the American colonies to be sent in English ships from English ports

1681 – Five Presbyterian preachers are killed in Edinburgh Scotland during a battle between Presbyterians and Episcopalians

1689 – Battle of Killcrankie: Jacobite Scottish Highlanders under John Graham, the Viscount Dundee, defeat the royalist force supporting King William of Orange under General MacKay, but Viscount Dundee is killed by a musket shot – in 1828, Sir Walter Scott adapted the old tune “Bonnie Dundee” to his poem in praise of the Viscount

1694 – A Royal Charter is granted to the Bank of England as a commercial institution

1775 – U.S. Army Medical Department founded, establishing an army hospital

1781 – Mauro Giuliani born, Italian composer, singer, guitarist and cellist

1789 – The U.S. federal agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs (later renamed the State Department) is established

1794 – Maximilien Robespierre, “soul” of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, is arrested, and condemned to La Guillotine, as 17,000 “enemies of France” had been condemned by his committee during the 11 months of the Terror; his supporters are declared outlaws – only verification of their identity is required after capture before they are executed without trial

1841 – Linda Richards born, American nurse and educator, one of the first nurses professionally trained in the U.S.; establishes training programs in the U.S. and Japan, creates system for hospital medical records

1853 – Lucy Maynard Salmon born, American historian and educator; first woman member of the executive committee of the American Historical Association; professor at Vassar College

1861 – George B. McClellan is put in command of the Union’s Army of the Potomac

1866 – First permanent transatlantic telegraph cable completed

1867 – Enrique Granados born, Spanish pianist and composer

1870 – Hilaire Belloc born, French poet and author who served as MP for Salford after became a British subject in 1902

1875 – Mary Olszewski Kryszak born, American educator and politician, Polish newspaper editor, librarian, and bookkeeper; served seven times as a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly; in spite of her impressive list of accomplishments, when running for office, the national press stated that “Mrs. Kryszak ‘takes in’ hemstitching work at home when not engaged in lawmaking.”

1877 – Ernst von Dohnányi born as Ernő Dohnányi, Hungarian composer

1882 – Geoffrey De Havilland born, English aircraft designer and manufacturer

1889 –  Vera Karalli born, Russian ballerina, choreographer and silent film performer

1890 – Vincent Van Gogh shoots himself, dies two days later

Wheat Field with Crows – Vincent Van Gogh’s last painting

1891 – Myrtle Lawrence born, sharecropper and labor organizer, worked with biracial Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union from 1936 to 1943, honored on the 1976 Bicentennial Freedom Train Exhibition

1900 – Kaiser Wilhelm II speech compares Germans to Huns – ‘Hun’ becomes derogatory name for Germans

1906 – Helen Wolff born, editor and publisher, published many acclaimed translations under the imprint “A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book” at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, founded Pantheon Books with her husband in 1942

1916 – Elizabeth Hardwick born, American author and literary critic, co-founder of The New York Review of Books

1919 – A riot erupts in Chicago IL at an unofficially segregated beach after a young black man is killed; Chicago Mayor William H. Thompson refuses to ask Governor Frank Lowden to send in the National Guard until the fifth day of riots. Over 500 people were injured, 23 African Americans and 15 whites are killed, making it the worst race riot in Illinois history

1921 – Frederick Banting’s University of Toronto team proves that insulin regulates blood sugar

1929 – Geneva Convention concerning prisoner-of-war treatment signed by 53 nations

1930 – Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby born, British politician and scholar, one of the “Gang of Four” founders of the Social Democratic Party in 1981, served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords from 2001 to 2004, still active in the House of Lords and Professor Emerita at Harvard University

1931 – Hordes of grasshoppers swept across farmland in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, destroying thousands of acres of crops

1940 – Bugs Bunny is introduced in animated short,  A Wild Hare

1940 – Pina Bausch born, German dancer and choreographer, leading influence in modern dance, creator of the company Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch

1942 – Peggy Lee records “Why Don’t You Do Right” with Benny Goodman

1949 – First flight of de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner

1953 – Korean War armistice agreement ends fighting, not signed by South Korea

1964 – 5000 more advisors join 16.000 U.S. military advisors already in South Vietnam

1965 – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act  requiring cigarette makers to print health warnings on all cigarette packages about the effects of smoking

1968 – The Who releases their single “Magic Bus” in the U.S.

1968 –Mama Cass Elliot releases her first solo single, ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’

1974 – U.S. House Judiciary Committee votes 27-11 to recommend impeachment of President Richard Nixon for personally obstructing justice in the Watergate case

1981 – Stevie Nicks releases her first solo album, “Bella Donna”

1982 – Madonna, the singer’s debut album, is released

1986 – U.S. Bill introduced to ban smoking on all public transportation

1990 – Belarus declares independence from Soviet Union

1995 – Korean War Veterans Memorial dedicated in Washington DC

1996 – A pipe bomb explodes during Summer Olympics in Atlanta GA

2012 – Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony in London UK

2013 – The first Przewalski’s horse (whose wild populations were believed extinct in 1969) is born via artificial insemination at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute as part of a worldwide effort to rebuild the wild herds

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