September 21st is

Pecan Cookie Day

U.N. International Day of Peace *

World Alzheimer’s Day

World Gratitude Day *

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MORE! H.G. Wells, Masoumeh Ebtekar and David Bowie, click

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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

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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

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