July 30 is

Cheesecake Day

Chicken and Waffles Day

Medicare’s Birthday *

International Day of Friendship *

International Paperback Book Day *

World Day Against Trafficking Persons *

National Support Public Education Day *

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MORE! Emily Brontë, Henry Moore and Anita Hill, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Italy – San Marino: Medieval Days
(battles in period costumes)

Morocco and Western Sahara –
Feast of the Throne Day

South Sudan – Martyrs’ Day

United Kingdom –
Malton: Atlas International Festival

Vanuatu – Independence Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

762 – City of Baghdad founded by Caliph Al-Mansur

Baghdad, from a 14th century Medieval illuminated manuscript

1511 – Giorgio Vasari born, Italian painter, architect, historian and writer

Allegory of Patience, part of a series, by Giorgio Vasari

1619 – The Virginia House of Burgesses, first representative assembly in America, convenes in Jamestown

1676 – Nathaniel Bacon instigates Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Virginia Colony Governor William Berkeley, who refused him a military commission to drive out all Indians from the colony, by forming his own militia and attacking peaceful Indians after his overseer is killed in a raid by different Indians

1715 – Spanish ‘gold and silver fleet’ lost off the coast of Florida

1729 – The town of Baltimore MD is founded

1733 – First American colonial Masonic lodge founded in Massachusetts

1756 – Newly built Catherine Palace presented to Russian Empress Elizabeth

1792 – Claude Rouget de Lisle’s  “La Marseillaise” is first sung in Paris

1818 – Emily Brontë born in Yorkshire, future author of Wuthering Heights

1852 – Emma Gillett born, American lawyer and women’s rights activist, co-founder of the Washington College of Law, the first law school founded by women

1856 – Richard Burdon Haldane born, Scottish lawyer, philosopher, and statesman

1863 – Henry Ford born, founder of Ford Motor Company

1880 – Robert McCormick born, American newspaper editor-publisher of the Chicago Tribune; a leading opponent of FDR’s New Deal

1889 – Vladimir Zworykin born in Russia, American inventor; “the father of television”

1898 – Scientific American magazine carries the first magazine automobile ad, for the Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH

1898 – Henry Moore born, highly regarded English sculptor

Reclining Figure, by Henry Moore, 1929

1906 – The Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen (NVV), the Netherlands Association of Trade Unions, is formed

1906 – L’udovit Rajter born, Slovakian composer and conductor

1909 – C. Northcote Parkinson born, English historian, author; “Parkinson’s Law” declares that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

1912 – Japan’s Emperor Meiji dies and is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who is now known as the Emperor Taishō

1914 – Michael Morris Killanin born, Irish author and journalist; International Olympic Committee’s sixth president

1916 – The Statue of Liberty is damaged by flying debris when German saboteurs blow up a munitions plant on nearby Black Tom Island in New York Harbor

1928 – George Eastman shows the first amateur color motion pictures to guests at his New York house including Thomas Edison

1930 – Host county Uruguay wins the first FIFA World Cup, beating Argentina 4-2

1932 – Disney premieres Flowers and Trees, first cartoon short in Technicolor

1935 – International Paperback Book Day * celebrates Sir Allen Lane’s founding of  soon-to-be-named Penguin Books, to make quality writing available in easily portable paperback form, at prices almost everyone can afford, and a mass market is born. Simon & Schuster repeats his success in the U.S with pocket-sized paperbacks selling for 25¢ in 1939

The first ten Penguin paperbacks

1939 – Eleanor Smeal born, American activist, political analyst, grassroots organizer, founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation, former president of the National Organization for Women

1940 – Patricia Schroeder born, American politician, first woman elected to U.S. States Congress from Colorado (D-CO 1973-1997); first woman to serve on the House Armed Services Committee; member of House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families; prime mover behind the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 and the 1985 Military Family Act

1942 – FDR signs legislation creating the W.A.V.E.S., a women’s auxiliary agency of the U.S. Navy, for wartime service

1945 – The USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 316 out of 1,196 men survive the sinking and shark-infested waters

1948 – Julia Tsenova, Bulgarian pianist and composer; President of the Bulgarian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music

1955 – Johnny Cash records “Folsom Prison Blues”

1956 – Anita Hill born, lawyer and professor of law, social policy and women’s studies at Brandeis University. In 1991 she testified at the Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, accusing him of sexual harassment, increasing public awareness of the issue of work place harassment

1956 – By Congressional resolution, In God we trust becomes U.S. motto

1956 – Brenda Lee records her first single, “Jambalaya”

1962 – The Trans-Canada Highway opens

1965 – LBJ signs Social Security Act into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid

1971 – NASA’s Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin land on the moon

1974 – Watergate: House Judiciary Committee votes to impeach President Nixon –
Nixon complies with Supreme Court order to release White House tapes

1975 – U.S. labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa disappears, still not found

1980 – Israeli Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law: Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel

1981 – About 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, take to the streets in Łódź to protest food ration shortages in Communist Poland

1991 – Metallica releases “Enter Sandman”

1999 – Enthronement of Moroccan King Mohamed VI

2003 – Last old-style VW Beetle rolls off assembly line in Mexico

2004 – Medicare’s Birthday *- Marilyn Clement founds Healthcare Now!, a non-profit organization advocating for a single-payer healthcare system in the U.S., and launches an annual celebration of the anniversary of Medicare, America’s only  publicly financed, universal health plan, which has kept healthcare affordable for seniors since 1965

2010 – National Support Public Education Day * is launched by the SOS Million Teacher March to raise awareness of the crisis in U.S Public Education, and give teachers a voice in the policy-making decisions that impact their classrooms

2011 – An International Day of Friendship * is declared by the UN General Assembly as part of its Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, “Recognizing the relevance and importance of friendship as a noble and valuable sentiment in the lives of human beings around the world”

2013 – World Day Against Trafficking Persons * is declared by the UN General Assembly as part of its Global Plan of Action to free an estimated 21 million victims of forced labour, 71% of them women and children, and put an end to human trafficking

2014 – Bank of America to pay $1.3 billion in civil lawsuit over ‘Hustle’ lending fraud

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