September 29^th is

Ask a Stupid Question Day

MAGS Day *

National Biscotti Day

Save the Koala Day

World Heart Day

V.F.W. Day *

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MORE! Miguel de Cervantes, Elizabeth Gaskell and Joaquín Nin, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Judaism – Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) begins at sundown

Australia – Victoria: AFL Finale Parade

Haiti – Manman Aloumandia
(Voudin Mama Aloumandia)

India – Saraswati Puja
(Hindu goddess of the arts and knowledge)

Marshall Islands – Manit Day
(Culture day)

Nepal – Maha Nawami
(Part of Dashain Festival)

Spain – St. Michael’s Day

Turks & Caicos Islands – Youth Day

United Kingdom – Michaelmas
(Beginning of the British school year’s first term)

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On This Day in HISTORY

522 BC – King Darius I ‘the Great’ of the Persian Achaemenid Empire kills the Magian usurper Gaumāta

106 BC – Pompey born, Roman politician and general

61 BC – Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, ‘Pompey the Great,’ celebrates his third triumph in Rome, for his victories in the third Mithridatic War with the Kingdom of Pontus (parts of present-day Turkey and surrounding countries) and the Cilician pirates

929 – Qian Chu born, known as Qian Hongchu, last king of Wuyue before surrendering to the Song dynasty, during the China’s Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period

Lei Feng Pagoda in 1910 (it collapsed in 1924) – Built by Qian Hongchu to honor his concubine Huang for giving birth to his child when he was 50 years old

1066 – William the Conqueror’s army occupies Hastings, on England’s South coast

1547 – Miguel de Cervantes is born, Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright; author of Don Quixote

1571 – Caravaggio born, Italian painter whose tenebroso style, brightly highlighting a central image before a shadowy background, influenced many Baroque painters

Caravaggio’s Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, circa 1595

1578 – Spanish settlers found Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, on the site of existing settlement of the Pech, Tolupans and Twahkas

1650 – Henry Robinson opens his Office of Addresses and Encounters in Threadneedle Street, London, charging 6 pennies for answers to questions, mostly about real estate and employment – a pioneering attempt at employment and rental agencies

1654 – Vincent Lübeck born, German composer

1674 – Jacques-Martin Hotteterre born, French composer and flautist, into a family of wind instrument makers and performers

1703 – François Boucher born, French Rococo painter and decorative artist; Madame de Pompadour was his patroness

Portrait of Madame Pompadour by François Boucher

1725 – Major-General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive born, also known as Clive of India; controversial Commander-in-Chief of British India and agent of the East India Company, who subjugated Bengal and much of the rest of India, while amassing a huge personal fortune

1758 – Horatio Nelson born, 1st Viscount Nelson, British admiral, flag officer of the Royal Navy; hero of the Battle of Trafalgar against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish navies during the Napoleonic Wars

1786 – Guadalupe Victoria born, Mexican general and leader in the Mexican War of Independence against the Spanish Empire; first President of Mexico (1824-1829)

1789 – The U.S. War Department establishes a regular army of several hundred men, and the first U.S. Congress session adjourns

1810 – Elizabeth Gaskell born, English author of Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters; first biographer of Charlotte Brontë

1829 – First public appearance of London’s re-organized Metropolitan Police Force is jeered by political opponents; the force later becomes known as Scotland Yard

1848 – Caroline Yale born, American educator who revolutionizes teaching of the deaf; co-developer of the Northampton Vowel and Consonant Charts

1855 – The port of Iloilo in the Philippines is opened to world trade by Queen Isabella II of Spain, exporting sugar and other products to the U.S., Australia and Europe

1864 – The Treaty of Lisbon defines the boundaries between Spain and Portugal and abolishes the Couto Misto microstate, which had been in existence since the 10^th century

1879 – Joaquín Nin y Castellanos born, Cuban composer and pianist; father of writer Anaïs Nin and composer Thorvald Nin

1891 – Ian Fairweather born in Scotland, painter who worked much of his life in Australia; regarded as one of Australia’s greatest painters – became allergic to oil paint in his later years

Ian Fairweather Alligator Creek- Cairns -1939 

1882 – Lilias Armstrong born, English phonetician; worked on English intonation and the phonetics of Somali and Kikuyu, giving some of the first detailed descriptions of Somali and Kikuyu tone

1885 – First practical public electric tramway opens in Blackpool, England

1899 – Malolos Congress ratifies Philippine Declaration of Independence from Spain

1899 – V.F.W. Day * – The Veterans of Foreign Wars is founded by veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, “to honor the dead by helping the living”

1901 – Enrico Fermi born in Italy, American physicist, notable figure in development of the first U.S. atomic weapons, 1938 Nobel Prize laureate

1902 – David Belasco opens his first Broadway theatre in NYC

1903 – Diana Vreeland born, noted columnist for Harper’s Bazaar (1936-1962), editor-in-chief of Vogue (1963-1971) and consultant to the NY Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute (1971-1989)

1911 – Tripolitanian War: Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire over territories in North Africa, which approximate modern-day Libya

1918 – The Armistice of Salonica ends Bulgarian participation in WWI

1923 – League of Nations ‘British Mandate for Palestine’ goes into effect, legitimizing temporary British rule of the newly formed territory, along with the ‘French Mandate’ for Syria and Lebanon

1925 – Paul MacCready born, American aeronautical engineer, designer of human-powered aircraft, the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross, which won the first and second Kremer prizes for flying from England to France; founder of AeroVironment

1927 – Barbara Mertz born, American Egyptologist, historian and popular novelist under the pen names Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels

1930 – Colin Dexter born, English crime author of the Inspector Morse series

1931 – James Cronin born, American particle physicist, Nobel Laureate (1980)

1938 – The Munich Agreement settles the Sudetenland dispute in Germany’s favor

1935 – Jerry Lee Lewis, Rock’n’Roll Hall of Famer, is born

1939 – Molly Haskell born, American feminist film critic for the Village Voice in the 1960s, then New York magazine and Vogue; her influential 1974 book, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, was revised and reissued in 1987 

1941 – Babi Yar Massacre: Nazi forces under Major-General Kurt Eberhard, along with Ukranian collaborators, kill over 33,000 Jews in two days in the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine

1951 –  MAGS Day* – Memphis Archaeological and Geological Society is chartered  dedicated to the preservation of paleoindian Chucalissa Indian Village site

1951 – Michelle Bachelet Jeria born, Chilean physician and politician, first woman  elected as President of Chile, first Executive Director of UN Women

1954 – The re-make of A Star Is Born with Judy Garland and James Mason has its world premiere in Hollywood

1955 – Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge opens at New York’s Coronet Theatre

1962 – President Kennedy nationalizes the Mississippi National Guard when officials defy federal court orders to enroll James Meredith at University of Mississippi

1963 – My Favorite Martian debuts on CBS-TV

1969 – The Dmitri Shostakovich 14^th Symphony premieres

1975 – WGPR in Detroit MI becomes first black-owned-and-operated TV station

1983 – U.S. Congress  uses the War Powers Act for the first time to authorize President Reagan to keep Marines in Lebanon for 18 more months

1983 – A Chorus Line becomes Broadway’s longest-running show: 3,389 performances

1984 –“Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince is the #1 single – and Elizabeth Taylor is voted “the world’s most beautiful woman” in a Harris poll

1985 – MacGyver starring Richard Dean Anderson, debuts on ABC-TV

1987 – Whitney Houston’s “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” is #1 on the charts

1988 – NASA shuttle Discovery launches, the first manned space flight since the Challenger disaster

1990 – Millie’s Book by Barbara Bush becomes “non-fiction” #1 best-seller

1993 – Bosnian Parliament overwhelmingly rejects an international peace plan unless Bosnian Serbs return land they took by force

1994 – U.S. House votes to end lobbyists buying meals/entertainment for its members

1997 – The Rolling Stones release “Bridges To Babylon” in the U.K.

2000 – Israeli riot police storm a major Jerusalem shrine and open fire on stone-throwing Muslim worshippers, killing four Palestinians and wounding 175

2008 – Dow Industrial Average drops 777 points, its largest one-day point decline, after  U.S. House of Representatives votes down $700 billion bank bailout plan, then Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual declare bankruptcy

2009 – NASA’s Messenger spacecraft makes a third and final flyby of Mercury

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