October 26^th is

Eradication of Smallpox Day *

Howl at the Moon Night

Intersex Awareness Day *

National Mule Day *

National Mincemeat Day

National Pumpkin Day

National Day of the Deployed *

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MORE! Benjamin Franklin, Beryl Markham and Pat Conroy, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Austria – National Day

Bulgaria – St. Demetrius Day *

Benin – Armed Forces Day

Cook Islands – Gospel Day *

Kenya – General Election Holiday

Nauru – Angam Day *
(Day of Fullfillment)

Nepal – Chhat Parwa

Thailand – Chulalongkorn
(Cremation of King Bhumbol Adulyade)

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On This Day in HISTORY

306 – Feast Day of Saint Demetrius * of Thessaloniki, revered by the Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian and Serbian Orthodox churches, and the Roman Catholic and Coptic churches as well – tradition says he was run through with spears during the Christian persecutions of Diocletian and Galerian (see also next entry)

1185 – The Uprising of Asen and Peter begins on the feast day of St. Demetrius *of Thessaloniki and ends with the creation of the Second Bulgarian Empire, ruled by the Asen dynasty

1685 – Domenico Scarlatti born, Italian late Baroque composer who transitioned into the classical period; noted for keyboard sonatas; son of composer Allessandro Scarlatti

1759 – Georges Danton born, a leader and orator of the French Revolution; he becomes the first president of the Committee of Public Safety, but his opposition to the Reign of Terror will lead to his own death at the guillotine

1774 – The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia

1775 – King George III of Great Britain goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorizes military response to quell the American Revolution

1776 – Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution

1785 – Mule Day * commemorates the first Spanish Jacks given as a gift to America by King Charles III of Spain, delivered on October 26 in Boston. George Washington is one of the first Americans to breed them

The Donkey, by Nikolaos Lytras

1821 – John Williams of the London Missionary Society begins Christian conversion of the people of Aitutaki, one of the Cook Islands – celebrated in the Cook Islands annually as Gospel Day *

1825 – The Erie Canal opens, from Albany, New York to Lake Erie

1837 – Louisa Lee Schuyler born, establishes the first U.S. training school for nurses in conjunction with Bellevue Hospital. In 1915 she is awarded the first honorary LL.D. degree given to a woman by Columbia University

1845 –Tennessee Celeste Claflin born, reformer and suffragist. She and her sister Victoria Woodhull are the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage firm

1854 – Charles William Post born, inventor of  Grape Nuts and Post Toasties cereals

1881 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, between the three Earp brothers with Doc Holiday and the Ike Clanton Gang, takes place at Tombstone, Arizona

1894 – Florence Nagel born, British racehorse and Irish wolfhound trainer-breeder and feminist; in 1920, when she trained her first racehorse, women were forced to employ a man to hold a Jockey Club trainers license on their behalf because women were excluded by the Jockey Club, but she challenged this, and became one of the first two U.K. women to licensed to train racehorses. She sponsored the Florence Nagle Girl Apprentices’ Handicap Race, first run in 1986 at Kempton Park., and left funds in her will to continue the race

1894 – John S. Knight born, newspaper journalist, owner and editor who built up the Knight Newspaper chain from his family’s Akron Beacon Journal to a portfolio of fifteen newspapers, when then merged with Ridder publication to form Knight-Ridder Newspapers; his nationwide column, “The Editor’s Notebook” earned him the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing

1900 – Karin Boye born, Swedish poet and novelist; noted for her dystopian sci-fi novel Kallocain

1902 – Beryl Markham born, British-Kenyon aviator, horse trainer and breeder, and writer; she holds the record as the first woman to fly solo east-to-west across the Atlantic; memoir, West with the Night

1902 – Henrietta Hill Swope born, American astronomer; studied variable stars, and measured the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid stars

1905 – Sweden accepts the independence of Norway

1909 – Itō Hirobumi, four time Prime Minister of Japan (the 1st, 5th, 7th and 10th) and Resident-General of Korea, is assassinated at the Harbin train station in Manchuria

1911 –Mahalia Jackson born, American gospel singer

1911 – Sorely MacLean born, influential Scottish poet

1912 – The Ottoman-occupied city of Thessaloniki, is liberated and unified with Greece on the feast day of its patron saint, Saint Demetrius *

1913 – Charlie Barnet born, American jazz saxophonist, composer and band leader

1917 – Erwin Rommel, as a young Oberleutnant, begins his military legend, leading 100 German soldiers to capture Mount Matajur in Italy, overcoming a force of 7,000 Italians

1920 – Sarah Lee Lippincott born, American astronomer; pioneer in determining the character if binary stars and the search for extrasolar planets

1921 – The Chicago Theatre opens on North State Street in the Chicago Loop

1932 – The first Angam Day * in Nauru – the small island has a goal of maintaining a minimum population of 1,500 people to assure survival. Twice, on 1932 and in 1949, the population have been lower than that, and Angam Day is a celebration the birth of the 1,500^th baby

1935 – Gloria Conyers Hewitt born, African American mathematician; researches in Group Theory and Abstract Algebra; awarded the National Science Foundation postdoctoral Science Faculty Fellowship

1936 – The first electric generator at Boulder Dam (later renamed Hoover) goes into full operation

1940 – The P-51 Mustang makes its maiden flight

1947 – Hillary Rodham Clinton born, U.S. Secretary of State (2009-13); Senator (D-NY 2001-09); U.S.First Lady (1993-2001); first woman U.S. presidential candidate for a major party, won the popular vote, but didn’t carry the Electoral College

1945 – Pat Conroy born, American novelist and memoirist; The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini

1945 – Nancy Davis Griffeth born, American computer scientist and academic; modeling biological systems in computational biology

1949 – President Harry S. Truman raises minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour

1951 – Winston Churchill returns as the prime minister of Great Britain

1955 – New York City’s “The Village Voice” is first published

1958 – Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris

1962 – In one of the most dramatic verbal confrontations of the Cold War, American U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson asks his Soviet counterpart during a Security Council debate whether the USSR had placed missiles in Cuba

1967 – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran

1968 – Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy pilots Soyuz 3 on a four-day space mission

1970 – “Doonesbury,” Gary Trudeau’s comic strip, premieres in 28 U.S. newspapers

1970 – Elton John’s “Your Song” is released in the U.S.

1971 – Al Green’s hit single “Tired of Being Alone” goes gold

1972 – National security adviser Henry Kissinger declares “peace is at hand” in Vietnam; U.S. involvement doesn’t end until the next year, and the war is not ended until 1975

1975 – Egyptian president Anwar Sadat makes an official state visit to the U.S.

1977 – Marisha Pessl born, American novelist; Special Topics in Calamity Physics

1977 – The last known case of naturally-occurring smallpox in Somalia, regarded by the World Health Organization as the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination – Eradication of Smallpox Day *

1984 – “Baby Fee,” a newborn with a severe heart defect, receives a heart transplanted from a baboon, and lives for 21 days

1985 – The Australian government returns ownership of Uluru (Ayres Rock) to the local Pitjantjatjara Aborigines

1988 – Soviet and American icebreaking ships work together to free two whales which had been trapped for nearly 3 weeks in an Arctic ice pack

1992 – Pearl Jam’s album Vs. sets a new first week sales record of 950,000 copies

1994 – Prime Ministers Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan and Yitzak Rabin of Israel sign a peace treaty

1996 – First Intersex Awareness Day * in Boston MA, held by the Intersex Society of America in cooperation with the Transexual Menace group

2001 – The USA PATRIOT Act (“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”) is signed into law by George W. Bush, giving authorities unprecedented ability to search, seize, detain or eavesdrop, on aliens and U.S. citizens alike, in their pursuit of possible terrorists

2006 – Shelle Michaels Aberle founds National Day of the Deployed,* asking North Dakota Governor John Hoeven to be the first governor to proclaim a day of recognition for the men and women serving their country overseas. The date was chosen because it is the birthday of Aberle’s cousin, LTC Davis Hosna, who was deployed to Iraq at the time.  When John Hoeven became a Senator representing North Dakota, he introduced a resolution to make this a National Day, which was passed in 2011

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