December 4th is

Cab Franc Grape Day

Earmuff Day *

National Cookie Day *

National Sock Day

Wear Brown Shoes Day

World Wildlife Conservation Day *

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MORE! Thomas Carlyle, Joan Brady and Norman Rockwell, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Austria – Graz:
Graz Film Festival

New Zealand – Westland:
Provincial Anniversary Day

Spain – Navarre:
San Francisco Javier Day

Tonga – King Tupou I Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

771 – King Carloman I dies; his brother Charlemagne becomes the Frankish king

Charlemagne crowned emperor by Pope Leo III

1259 – Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris – Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) and Louis withdraws support for English rebels

1563 – After opening in December 1545, the Council of Trent holds its last session, ending one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most important ecumenical councils, described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation

1619 – Thirty-eight colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred, on the north bank of the James River in Virginia. One of their leaders, John Smyth of Nibley, collects 60 documents concerning the settlement of Virginia which survive as important sources for modern historians

1660 –André Campra born, French composer

1674 – Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission at Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek, now the site of the city of Chicago

1745 – Scottish Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s army reaches Derby, its furthest point south during the Second Jacobite Rising

1783 – New York’s Fraunces Tavern serves a “turtle feast” for General George Washington, who says farewell to his Continental Army officers with “a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”

1786 – Mission Santa Barbara dedicated on the feast day of Saint Barbara

1791 – The first issue of  The Observer, the world’s original Sunday newspaper, is published in Britain

1795 – Thomas Carlyle born, Scottish-English historian and philosopher

1812 – Peter Gaillard patents the power mower

1829 – In the face of fierce local opposition, British Governor-General Lord William Bentinck issues a regulation declaring that anyone who abets suttee in Bengal is guilty of culpable homicide

Engraving of the burning of an Indian widow, from a book by Reverend James Peggs

1835 – Samuel Butler born, English author; noted for Erewhon, and The Way of All Flesh

1849 – Crazy Horse born, Oglala Lakota war leader

1858 – Earmuff Day * – Chester Greenwood born, inventor at age 15 of the earmuff

1861 – Britain’s Queen Victoria forbids the export of gunpowder, firearms and all materials for their production

1864 – Jews in Romania are forbidden to practice law

1865 – Edith Cavell born, British nurse; during WWI, she is executed by the Germans for helping Allied soldiers escape through enemy lines

1866 – Wassily Kandinsky born in Russia, “father of abstract art”

Composition VII, by Wassily Kandinsky, 1913

1867 – Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange)

1875 – Rainer Maria Rilke born, Austrian-Swiss poet and author

1881 – The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published

1882 – Constance Davey born, Australian psychologist who started the special education classes in South Australia, and developed university courses on working with special needs children for teachers and social workers; author of Children and Their Law-makers, published in 1956

1895 – Fung Yu-lan born, Chinese philosopher and academic

1908 – Alfred D. Hershey born, American bacteriologist and geneticist, 1969 Nobel laureate; founding member of the World Cultural Council

1910 – Alex North born, American film score composer

1915 – The Ku Klux Klan receives a charter from Fulton County, Georgia

1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, the first US president to travel to Europe while in office

1920 – Jeanne Sobelson Manford born, teacher and gay rights activist, co-founder of  Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), for which she was awarded the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal

1922 – Lucille Atcherson becomes the first woman US Diplomatic Consular Officer at Bern legation in Switzerland, then later serves in Panama. She was a woman suffragist, and a WWI volunteer who helped wounded Americans and French civilian war survivors, for which she was honored with Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise

1923 – Cecil B. DeMille’s silent film version of The Ten Commandments premieres

An Egyptian set from the 1923 version of The Ten Commandments

1930 – The Vatican issues approval of the ‘rhythm method’ of birth control

1931 – Frankenstein film, with Colin Clive and Boris Karloff, opens in New York

1939 – Joan Brady born in San Francisco, American-British author; the first woman and first American to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for her novel Theory of War (1993)

1941 – The Chicago Tribune and New York Times leak FDR’s top-secret plan for invading Europe in 1943

1943 – WWII resistance leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government-in-exile;  U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes down Works Progress Administration, no longer needed with wartime high employment

1944 – Dennis Wilson born, singer-songwriter and drummer of the Beach Boys

1945 – Roberta Bondar born, Canada’s first woman astronaut, and first neurologist in space, aboard NASA Space Shuttle Discovery in 1992; served as NASA’s head of space medicine (1993-2004)

1945 – By a vote of 65–7, the United States Senate officially approves United States participation in the United Nations

1947 – Jane Lubchenco born, American environmental scientist and marine ecologist; Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and  Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (2009-2013)

1956 – Nia Griffith born in Ireland of Welsh parents, British Labour politician; MP for Llanelli (2005 to present); former teacher, school inspector, and head of languages (she speaks English, Welsh, Italian, French and Spanish); Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages since 2015; a leading Welsh LGBT figure

1950 – University of Tennessee defies court rulings by rejecting five ‘Negro’ applicants

1954 – The first Burger King opens in Miami

1956 – The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studio for the only time – the session is not released for 25 years

1961 – The female contraceptive ‘pill’ becomes available on the National Health Service in Britain

1965 – NASA launches Gemini 7

1966 – Suzanne Malveaux born, twin sister of Suzette M. Malveaux; American television journalist; former NBC Pentagon correspondent; moderator of the 2007 National Association of Black Journalists convention; a key reporter in CNN’s 2004 and 2006 election coverage; CNN White House correspondent; co-anchor of  Around the World (2012-2014)

1966 – Suzette M. Malveaux born, twin sister of Suzanne Malveaux; lawyer and professor of law at the Columbus School of Law; expert on civil rights law and class action litigation; appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, a gender discrimination in pay and promotion suit

1974 – Pioneer II makes its closest approach to Jupiter

1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein is sworn in as San Francisco’s first female mayor

Justice Rose Bird holds microphone, swearing in Dianne Feinstein as San-Francisco’s first female mayor

1981 – President Reagan issues an Executive Order giving the CIA authorization to spy within the U.S., but barring assassinations

1982 – President Reagan meets with Guatemalan President Rios Montt, but dismisses his concerns over reports of human rights abuses in Central American, and lifts an arms embargo to resume sales to military rulers

1986 – Both U.S. houses of Congress moved to establish special committees to conduct their own investigations of the Iran-Contra affair

1987 – First National Cookie Day * starts in San Francisco, but goes national when Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster takes up the cause

1991 – Pan American World Airways ceases operations

1992 – President George H.W. Bush sends American troops on a mercy mission to Somalia, threatens military action against warlords blocking food for starving millions

1993 – Astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavor capture the Hubble Space Telescope to begin a successful correction of its faulty optics

1995 – The first NATO peacekeeping troops land in the Balkans

1996 – NASA launches the Mars Pathfinder

1997 – The European Union bans tobacco advertising, and gives a 2006 deadline to cigarette manufacturers to end sponsorship of major sports and cultural events

1998 – The Unity Module, second module of the International Space Station, launches

2001 – The U.S freezes financial assets of organizations with alleged ties to the terrorist group Hamas

2006 – NASA announces plans to begin building a permanent base on the moon by 2024, with the first teams landing in 2020

2011 – In Singapore hundreds of people gathered at a park to protest sexual violence against women as part of the global “SlutWalk” movement, a rare public demonstration in the tightly controlled city state

2013 – Norman Rockwell’s painting Saying Grace sold for $46 million at Sotheby’s NYC

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