October 19^th is

Conflict Resolution Day *

Evaluate Your Life Day

Global Dignity Day *

Seafood Bisque Day

Hagfish Day *

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MORE! Scipio, Annie Smith Peck and Auguste Lumière, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Albania – Mother Teresa Day

Canada – Halifax NS:
Halifax Pop Explosion

Mozambique – Samora Machel Day
(first President of Mozambique)

Nepal – Yam Panchak/Tihar Festival
(Hindu god Yama festival)

Niue – Constitution Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

202 BC – Battle of Zama: Scipio Africanus leads a Roman army supported by Numidian cavalry under Masinissa to a decisive victory over the Carthaginians under Hannibal Barca, ending the Second Punic war after 17 years

1469 – The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile begins the unification of Spain

1512 – Martin Luther becomes a doctor of theology

1605 – Sir Thomas Browne born, English polymath and author; best known for his book of reflections, Religio Medici

1765 – The Stamp Act Congress draws up resolutions addressed to King George III, acknowledging his sovereignty, but claiming full rights and liberties as subject of Great Britain, including the right to be taxed, only by their consent, and only by the colonial legislatures which represent them

1781 – Representatives of British General Lord Cornwallis surrender his sword to American General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia

1784 – Leigh Hunt born, English poet and critic

1789 – John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States

1812 – Napoleon’s army begins the retreat from Moscow

1850 – Annie Smith Peck born, American mountaineer, teacher, linguist, feminist, author and lecturer; first woman to attend the American School of Classical Studies at Athens; taught archaeology and Latin at Purdue University and Smith College; her tunic and trousers worn with boots when she climbed the Matterhorn in 1895 caused a serious hullaballoo in the press, and prompted public debate on what woman can and should do; first woman to climb Huascarán in Peru (22,204 feet/6768 meters) when she was 57 years old, then climbed Coropuna (20,922 feet/6.377 meters) in 1911 and planted a “Votes for Women” banner at the summit; she continued to climb mountains until she was 82 years old

1856 – Edmund Beecher Wilson born, American zoologist and geneticist, author of The Cell, a notable textbook, he and Nettie Maria Stevens, working independently, both discovered the chromosomal basis of sex

1858 – George A. Boulenger born in Belgium, zoologist in Britain who described and gave scientific names to over 2,000 animal species, mostly fish, reptiles and amphibians; as a botanist, he devoted much study to roses

1859 – Alfred Dreyfus born, French Jewish army officer wrongfully tried and convicted of treason, his uniform publicly stripped of all insignia, and his sword broken; after serving four years of a life sentence in the infamous Devil’s Island prison, he is re-tried, found guilty again in spite of evidence that he is innocent, but is offered a pardon because of public outcry – especially the tireless advocacy of Dreyfus by author Émile Zola. Dreyfus accepts the pardon rather than returning to Devil’s Island, but is held under house arrest for two more years, until finally exonerated by a military commission; readmitted to the army, promoted to Major

1862 – Auguste Lumière born, pioneering French cinema director-producer

1864 –The American Civil War’s northernmost land action is a raid from Canada by 21 Confederate soldiers on St. Albans, Vermont, to rob banks, and trick the Union Army into diverting troops to defend the Canadian border. When several villagers resist, one is killed and two are wounded. The raiders retreat to Canada with over $200,000 taken from the city’s three banks. Under U.S. government pressure, Canada arrests the raiders, returns $88,000 of recovered money to St. Albans, but refuses to extradite the raiders on the grounds that they are soldiers under orders in time of war, and releases them. This makes many Canadians turn against the Confederacy, feeling Canada is being drawn into the conflict in spite of its declared neutrality, so Confederates never launch a raid from Canada again

1868 – Bertha Knight Landes born, president of the Washington State chapter of the League of Women Voters; Seattle city councilwoman 1922-1924, and first female mayor of a major American city, Seattle, 1926-1928; her mayoral campaign motto was “municipal housekeeping,” and during her tenure as mayor, she tightened the budget, raised standards, and pushed hard to clean up city hall, bold reforms in a time of widespread corruption in Seattle

1879 – Emma Bell Miles born, American writer, poet, and artist; she published The Spirit of the Mountains in 1905, which contained stories, travel narratives, entries from her journals, and cultural analysis of Southern Appalachia; the section of her book on Appalachian music first appeared as an article in Harper’s Monthly in 1904, probably the first mention of Appalachian music in a popular magazine; several of her journals have also appeared in print

Bookcover – Emma Bell Miles working on a painting – her painting of a hummingbird 

1882 – Umberto Boccioni born, influential Italian painter and sculptor

1900 – Max Planck, German theoretical physicist, while working on creating lightbulbs to produce maximum light with minimum energy, formulates the Planck black-body radiation law, to describe the amount of energy given off by an ‘ideal’ physical body, which absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, no matter what the frequency or angle of incidence

1908 – Geirr Tveitt born, Norwegian composer and pianist

1909 – Marguerite Perey born, French physicist, a student of Marie Curie, who discovered the element francium; in 1962, she became the first woman elected to the French Académie des Sciences, an honor denied to her mentor

1910 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar born, Indian astrophysicist, shared the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler

1912 – After the Treaty of Lausanne, Italy takes possession of Tripoli, Libya, from the Ottoman Empire

1917 – Dallas Love Field TX is named by the U.S. Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps after Moss L. Love, who was killed during a training flight in 1913

1931 – John le Carré born, English intelligence officer and author of highly successful espionage novels

1935 – The League of Nations places economic sanctions on fascist Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia

1943 – Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University

1950 – Iran is the first country to accept technical assistance from the United States under the Point Four Program, the fourth foreign policy objective made by Harry Truman in his inaugural address in January 1949 – winning developing countries to the U.S. side in the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. by sharing with them expertise in agriculture, industry and healthcare

1960 – The U.S. imposes a drastic trade embargo against Cuba, not lifted until 2015

1967 – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles release “I Second That Emotion”

1973 – President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court decision that he must turn over the Watergate tapes

1974 – Niue becomes a self-governing colony of New Zealand

1983 – Cara Santa Maria born, American science writer, producer, television host and podcaster; science correspondent for the Huffington Post

1992 – Metallica releases “Wherever I May Roam”

2003 – Mother Teresa is beatified by Pope John Paul II

2005 – Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

2005 – First Conflict Resolution Day * sponsored by the Association for Conflict Resolution, set for the 3^rd Thursday of October

2006 – HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland, and Operation HOPE founder, American John Hope Bryant, who became friends at a World Economic Forum, start Global Dignity Day,* now observed in 50+ countries on the third Wednesday in October, to affirm the dignity of young people, while teaching them to respect the dignity of others

2009 – First Hagfish Day,* started by WhaleTimes on the 3^rd Wednesday of October, as reminder that even the ugliest of creatures serves a valuable function in their ecosystem. Not all endangered species are cute or pretty, but all of them deserve to the chance to survive

2011 – When more painful austerity measures are announced by the Greek government, hundreds of youths smash and looting stores in central Athens, clashing with police, during a massive anti-austerity protest

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