October 23rd is

Boston Cream Pie Day *

iPod Day *

National Mole Day

TV Talk Show Host Day *

San Juan Capistrano Swallows Depart Day

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MORE!  ‘Speckled Red’, Ellie Greenwich and “Weird Al” Yankovic, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Cambodia – Paris Peace Agreements Day

Hungary –Republic Proclamation Day

Libya – Liberation Day

Macedonia – Macedonian Revolution Day

New Zealand – Labour Day

Niue – Peniamina Gospel Day *

Thailand – Chulalongkorn Day
(King Rama V memorial day)

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On This Day in HISTORY

42 BC – Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat Brutus, who commits suicide

1295 – The first treaty forming the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England is signed in Paris by King of Scots John Balliol and King Philip IV of France

1707 – Following ratification of the Acts of Union by the parliaments of England and Scotland, a new unified Kingdom of Great Britain is created, and the separate ruling bodies unified into the Parliament of Great Britain

1801 – Albert Lortzing born, German composer and singer; noted for German Spieloper, a form of light comic opera

1812 – French General Claude François de Malet conspires to overthrow Napoleon Bonaparte, claiming the Emperor died in Russia, so he is now commandant of Paris

1817 – Pierre Larousse born, major French encyclopaedist and lexicographer

1844 – Robert S. Bridges, Britain’s Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930

1846 – (October 26) Peniamina Nukai, a convert to Christianity, returns to Niue to preach the gospel, and converts many islanders to Christianity. National Holiday in his honor on the fourth Friday of October, Peniamina Gospel Day *

1850 – First National U.S. Woman’s Rights Convention begins in Worcester MA; over 1,000 women and men attended; there were delegates from 11 states, including one who traveled all the way from California, which had just become a state on September 9, 1850

1856 – Boston Cream Pie * is created by Chef M. Sanzian at Boston’s Parker House Hotel

1861 – After mobs in Baltimore attack Union troops changing trains, and critical rail bridges to Washington were burned, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases

1865 – Neltje Blanchan born, American scientific historian and nature writer; she published eleven books, many on wildflowers and birds, noted for a combination of scientific facts and poetic expression; a devoted supporter of American Red Cross, serving as a Red Cross commissioner in China when she died suddenly at age 52

1867 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the British North America Act, uniting the Province of Canada (Quebec and Ontario) with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into a single federation, the dominion of Canada; a Senate is formed, all Senators to be appointed by the Governor General to serve until mandatory retirement age, unlike the House of Commons, where representatives are elected

1868 – Frederick W. Lanchester born, English polymath and engineer, pioneer in automotive engineering and aerodynamics; co-creator of operations research (using advanced analytical methods to make better decisions – also called decision science)

1873 – William D. Coolidge born, American physicist and engineer; major contributor to X-ray machines development; V.P./Director of General Electric Research Laboratory

1885 – Lawren Harris born, Canadian painter, one of the ‘Group of Seven’ who developed a distinctly Canadian style of painting in the early 20^th century

Afternoon Sun, Lake Superior by Lawren Harris – 1924

1892 – ‘Speckled Red’ (Rufus) Perryman born, American blues and boogie-woogie singer-pianist

1894 – Emma Williams Vyssotsky born, American astronomer at the McCormick Observatory of the University of Virginia, specialized in the motion of stars and kinematics of the Milky Way; fifth awardee of the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy, for distinguished contributions to astronomy

1897 – Marjorie Flack born, American illustrator-author of children’s books; The Story of Ping and Angus Lost

1904 – Harvey Penick born, American golf coach and author of Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, the best-selling golf book ever published

1905 – Felix Bloch born, Swiss physicist; co-recipient of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for work on nuclear magnetic measurement; work at Los Alamos during WWII; first Director-General of CERN

1906 – Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France

1911 – First use of aircraft in war: Italo-Turkish War: An Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army line

1915 – Woman’s suffrage: In New York City, over 31,000 women march on Fifth Avenue for the right to vote

1917 – Lenin calls for the October Revolution, which begins with an armed insurrection in Petrograd

1920 – Bob Montana born, American comic strip artist; created original character likenesses for the Archie comics

1925 – Manos Hatzidakis born, Greek composer; 1960 Academy Award for Best Song, for Never on Sunday

1925 – Johnny Carson is born – beginning in 1950, he hosted the Tonight Show for 42 years, so all TV Talk Show hosts are honored today, TV Talk Show Host Day *

1929 – NY Stock Exchange shows first signs of panic as market prices keep dropping

1935 – Chophouse Massacre: Dutch Schultz and 3 others are killed in Newark NJ saloon

1935 – JacSue Kehoe born, American neuroscientist-researcher; noted for discovering that a single neurotransmitter can have multiple types of receptors

1940 – Ellie Greenwich born, American singer-songwriter and record producer; wrote or co-wrote hits like “Be My Baby” “Da Wa Diddy Diddy” “Leader of the Pack” and “River Deep – Mountain High”

1942 – Britain launches a major offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein in Egypt during World War II

1942 – Michael Crichton born, American best-selling author, screenwriter, film producer-director; The Andromeda Strain, and Jurassic Park and many others

1942 – Anita Roddick born, British businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner; founder of The Body Shop, a pioneer in ethical consumerism and fair trade with developing countries

1944 – WWII Battle of Leyte Gulf: largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines –
My dad was aboard one of the smaller ships, the USS Kitkun Bay, shown below, which was hit by a Kamikaze, but the bombs didn’t explode. A man on deck just a few feet from my father was killed by scrapnel.

1945 – Maggi Hambling born, British contemporary painter and sculptor, whose public works projects have stirred a great degree of controversy

Scallop (2003), Aldeburgh beach, a tribute to Benjamin Britten – the words “I hear those
voices that will not be drowned” are from his opera Peter Grimes

1945 – Ernie Watts born, American jazz and R&B saxophonist

1946 – The United Nations General Assembly convenes for the first time, at an auditorium in Flushing, Queens, NYC

1956 – Dianne Reeves born, American Jazz singer; 5-time Grammy winner, Best Female Jazz Vocal Performer

1956 – Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation

1959 – “Weird Al” Yankovic born, musician, songwriter, and satirist

1970 – Gary Gabelich sets a land speed record in ‘Blue Flame’ a rocket-powered automobile, fueled with natural gas

1972 – The musical Pippin premieres on Broadway

1973 – Watergate scandal: US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations

1983 – A suicide truck-bombing at Beirut International Airport in Lebanon kills 220 U.S. Marines, 18 sailors and 3 Army soldiers; a near-simultaneous attack on French forces kills 58 paratroopers

1987 – U.S. Senate rejects the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork, 58-42, because of his stated desire to roll back the civil rights decisions of the Warren and Burger courts, and Bork’s role in the Watergate ‘Saturday Night Massacre’

1989 – The Hungarian Republic is officially declared by President Mátyás Szűrös, replacing the communist Hungarian People’s Republic

1998 – Dr. Barnett Slepian, an OB-GYN who performed abortions, is killed in suburban Buffalo NY by sniper fire through his kitchen window, the climax of five sniper attacks on doctors in New York and Canada by anti-abortion terrorists – Dr. Slepian’s murderer is serving a 25-year-to-life sentence

1998 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a “land for peace” agreement

2001 – iPod Day * Apple Computer introduces the iPod portable digital music player

2001 – NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft begins orbiting Mars

2006 – Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling is sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for his role in the company’s collapse

2012 – Skyfall, the 23^rd James Bond movies, premieres in London

2015 – Adele releases her single “Hello” – the first song to be downloaded more than a million times in the first week

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