September 8th is

Ampersand Day *

. . 

Date-Nut Bread Day

Oncology Nurses’ Day

Pardon Day *

U.N. International Literacy Day *

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MORE! Michelangelo, Jacqueline Ceballos and Antonín Dvořák, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Feast Day for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Anglican Communion

Andorra – Meritxell (National Day)

French Polynesia – Internal Autonomy Day

Lithuania – Crowning of Vytautas the Great

Macedonia – Independence Day

Micronesia – Kosrae Liberation Day

Portugal – Valada: Reverence Festival

Russia – Siege of Leningrad Day

Spain – Asturias: Day of Asturias
(Battle of Covadonga)

United Kingdom – Bath:
Jane Austen Festival (opening day)

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On This Day in HISTORY

1474 – Ludivico Ariosto born, Italian poet

1504 – Michelangelo’s David is unveiled in Piazza della Signoria in Florence

1565 – Spanish Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his men establish the first permanent European settlement in North America, now St. Augustine, Florida

1588 – Marin Mersenne born, French mathematician, philosopher and theologian

1664 – New Amsterdam re-named New York when the Dutch surrender it to the British

1810 – John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company sends a company aboard the Tonquin on a voyage to the Pacific Northwest. Six months later, at the Columbia River, they found Astoria, Oregon, as a fur-trading center

1828 – Olivia Slocum Sage born, American teacher and philanthropist; as the widow of robber baron Russell Sage, she inherited over $60,000,000 in 1906, much of which she used to further education, including endowing programs for women; made large donations to Syracuse University, Yale and Princeton; also a donation to Cornell for construction of a women’s dormitory, and funds for construction at Vassar College

1830 – Frederic Mistral born, French poet, 1904 Nobel Prize-winner

1841 – Antonín Dvořák born, Czech composer (New World Symphony, Requiem)

1862 – Millennium of Russia monument unveiled in Novgorod

1893 – New Zealand’s Legislative Council passes the Electoral Act, then the governor consents on September 19, giving all New Zealand women the right to vote

1900 – The Great Galveston Hurricane, makes landfall, leaving at least 8,000 dead. With winds reaching up to 145 mph, it’s the deadliest hurricane in US history

1924 – Mimi Parent born, Canadian surrealist painter

La chouette (1991), Mimi Parent, and Masculin/Feminin (1959)

1925 – Jacqueline Ceballos born, American feminist and activist; president of New York N.O.W. (1971); co-founder and first executive director of the Women’s Forum, helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus, and founder of Veteran Feminists of America, devoted to preserving the history of ‘Second Wave’ feminism

1930 – 3M markets Scotch transparent tape

1932 – Patsy Cline born, American singer-songwriter

1935 – U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, “The Kingfish” of Louisiana politics, is shot and mortally wounded, dies two days later

1937 – Barbara Frum born in America, Canadian radio newsmagazine and TV journalist, notable for her incisive and sometimes controversial interviews on Canada’s highly-rated in-depth news show The Journal

1945 – In Washington DC, a bus equipped with a two-way radio is first put into service

1945 – Miss New York, Bess Myerson, becomes the first Jewish Miss America

1951 – Peace Treaty of San Francisco is signed by 48 nations with Japan

1952 – Canadian Broadcasting Corporation makes its first televised broadcast

1954 – Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) established

1954 – Ruby Bridges Hall born, American activist and philanthropist, first African American child to attend an all white school in the South; chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation, recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal

Race, by Normal Rockwell – Ruby Bridges is the little girl

1960 – President Eisenhower dedicates NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville AL

1966 – NBC televises the first episode of Star Trek

1966 – U.N. International Literacy Day * is proclaimed by UNESCO. In 2015, when the UN General Assembly adopts the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, universal literacy is the 4th goal on the list

1971 – Washington DC’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opens with the premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass

1974 – Pardon Day * – President Gerald R. Ford lets disgraced former President Richard Nixon off the hook by preemptively pardoning him unconditionally

1988 – Yellowstone National Park is closed for the first time in its history by wildfires

1999 – U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno names former Senator John Danforth head of independent investigation of the 1993 fire at the Branch Davidian church near Waco TX

1999 – The film American Beauty premieres in Los Angeles (2000 Best Picture Oscar)

2015 – Ampersand Day * is launched by Chaz DeSimone, a designer and typographer

2015 – British researchers announce discovery of 90 stones in a circle buried about 2 miles from Stonehenge, found by ground penetrating radar

2016 – Current Biology publishes a Giraffe DNA study which reveals there are four species of Giraffe, not just one, as previously assumed

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