September 21st is
Pecan Cookie Day
U.N. International Day of Peace *
World Alzheimer’s Day
World Gratitude Day *
___________________________________________________________
MORE! H.G. Wells, Masoumeh Ebtekar and David Bowie, click
___________________________________________________________
WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
Judaism –Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year)
Armenia – Independence Day
Belize – Independence Day
Ghana – Kwame Nkrumah Day *
Malta – Jum Indipendenza
Nepal – Ghatashhapana
(Hindu Gods’ victory over evil)
Philippines – National Day of Protest
___________________________________________________________
On This Day in HISTORY
1217 – The Livonian Crusade: At the Battle of St. Matthew’s Day, the Sword Brethren, a German crusading order, supported by mixed army of recent Christian converts, win against an Estonian army led by Lembitu of Lehola, killing 1000 Estonians including Lembitu. They then begin the process of forcibly converting the people of what are now Estonia and Latvia to Christianity; Pope Innocent III had issued a bull declaring the crusade after Bishop Berthold was killed by Livonians in 1199
1745 – Battle of Prestonpans: The Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart outflank and defeat, in ten minutes, a Hanoverian army led by Sir John Cope; but after another victory at Falkirk, the Bonnie Prince’s supporters will be totally defeated at the disastrous Battle of Culloden in April, 1746
1756 – John Loudon McAdam born, Scottish inventor of macadam road construction
1792 – The French National Convention votes to abolish the monarchy
1809 – Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, painter, illustrator, writer, and wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne; one of the Peabody Sisters; with her sisters Elizabeth and Mary, had a notable impact on early childhood education, the Transcendentalist movement, and the arts and letters of their day
Isola San Giovanni, Italy by Sophia Peabody circa 1839
1843 – John Williams Wilson claims the for the newly independent government of Chile
1851 – Susan Eakins born, American painter and photographer
1866 – H.G. Wells born, pioneering science fiction writer; The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man
1866 – Charles Nicolle, French bacteriologist; Nobel Prize in Medicine for his identification of lice as the transmitter of epidemic typhus
1867 – Henry Stimson born, American statesman, served under five presidents; U.S. Secretary of War during World War II
1874 – Gustav Holst born, son of a Swedish father and English mother, English composer known for The Planets
1884 – Ethel Percy Andrus, educator, first woman principal at a California high school; founder of the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA) and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)
1896 – Mahdist War: British forces led by Major-General Kitchener take Dongola in the Sudan
1897 – “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial is printed in the New York Sun
1898 – Empress Dowager Cixi, virulently opposed to foreigners, seizes power and ends the Hundred Days’ Reform in China
1902 – Sir Allen Lane born, English publisher; pioneer of paperback publishing
1902 – Luis Cernuda born, Spanish poet, academic and essayist who lived in exile from Spain from 1938 0n, because of the Spanish Civil War
1904 – Hans Hartung born in Germany, French gestural abstract painter; served in French Foreign Legion – annoying camerawork, but a tour of his late paintings:
1909 – Kwame Nkrumah * born, first President of Ghana
1912 – Chuck Jones, prolific American animator, producer and screenwriter
1912 – György Sándor born, Hungarian pianist and composer
1929 – Bernard Arthur Williams born, British moral philosopher; Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
1931 – Great Britain goes off the gold standard
1936 – Diane Rehm born, host of the long-running National Public Radio talk show, The Diane Rehm Show, which went off the air in December 2016; advocate for the right to die with dignity
1937 – J.R.R. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit
1942 – Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress makes its first flight
1945 – Kay Ryan born, American poet and educator; U.S. Poet Laureate (2008-2010), 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1947 – Stephen King born, American author and screenwriter
1947 – Marsha Norman born, American playwright, screenwriter and novelist; 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for ‘night, Mother
1957 – Perry Mason premieres on CBS-TV
1960 – Masoumeh Ebtekar born, Iranian journalist, politician and scientist, professor of Immunology; first woman Vice President of Iran (1997-2005); currently Vice President and Head of Environmental Protection Organization since 2013
1964 – The world’s first Mach 3 bomber, North American XB-70 Valkyrie, makes its maiden flight
1965 – World Gratitude Day * begins in Hawaii at an international gathering, and spreads when the attendees bring the idea home with them
1968 – Jimi Hendrix releases “All Along the Watchtower”
1973 – U.S. Senate confirms Henry Kissinger as the first naturalized citizen to hold the office of Secretary of State
1977 – Fifteen countries, including the U.S. and the Soviet Union, sign a nuclear non-proliferation pact
1981 – Belize becomes independent from the United Kingdom
1981 – UN International Day of Peace * is established by unanimous vote of the General Assembly, “as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day”
1981 – In a 99-0 vote, the US Senate approves Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice
1983 – Interior Secretary James G. Watt describes a special advisory panel as “a black … a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” He later apologizes and resigns
1984 – David Bowie releases “Tonight”
1985 – North and South Korea open their borders for a family reunion program
1991 – Armenia is granted independence from the Soviet Union
1996 – The all-male Virginia Military Institute (VMI) decides to allow women cadets
1996 – U.S. Congress passes the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), prohibiting federal recognition of same-sex marriage, but allowing states to use their own definition, but not requiring them to recognize same-sex marriages granted under laws of other states
2001 – U.S. Congress approves $15 billion to aid the airline industry in recovering from the loses caused by the 9-11 terrorist attacks
2001 – NASA’s Deep Space 1 flies within 2,200 kilometers (1367 miles) of Comet Borrelly
2004 – Green Day releases their album American Idiot
2008 – Mad Men is the first basic-cable TV show to win a top series Emmy award
___________________________________________________________
After Watts’ flamboyant quotation about the make-up of his panel, he really came to the nadir:
In 1995, Watt was indicted on 25 counts of felony perjury and obstruction of justice by a federal grand jury, accused of making false statements before the grand jury investigating influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which he had lobbied in the 1980s. On January 2, 1996, Watt pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor of withholding documents from the grand jury. On March 12, 1996, he was sentenced to five years’ probation, and ordered to pay a fine of $5,000 and perform 500 hours of community service. I have not researched this very much, and I really wonder what his “community service” consisted of. It is such an offense to society and to democracy that HUGE CRIMES committed by people in power receive such idiotic paltry sentences while a Black guy who tokes a little weed can go to prison for ten years working for the man while his family pays $15 for every collect call.
Oh, I am so with you – not to mention police officers who get away with killing unarmed fleeing suspects or children with toy guns because “I feared for my life.”
All public servants who have sworn to uphold the law should be held to a HIGHER standard than a regular citizen, and when they break laws, the punishment should be more severe.