December 17th is

Maple Syrup Day

Wright Brothers Day *

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MORE! Charles Dickens, Penelope Fitzgerald and William Safire, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Pagan: Saturnalia – gift-giving, gambling, hat-wearing, drinking and feasting in honor of the Roman god Saturn

Bhutan – National Day

Chile – Election Day

Mexico – Las Posadas
(Joseph and Mary’s journey to Bethlehem)

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On This Day in HISTORY

497 BC – The first Saturnalia festival was celebrated in ancient Rome

Painting by Roberto Bompiani 1875  (this is pretty tame for Saturnalia, but most of the other works of art were X-rated)

1398 – Tamerlane, also called Amir Timur, wins the battle against Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq, and sacks the city of Delhi in northern India, leaving it in ruins

1538 – Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII of England

1616 – Sir Roger L’Estrange born, English Royalist and pamphleteer; An Account of the Growth of Knavery

1749 – Domenico Cimarosa born, Italian opera composer;  Il matrimonio segreto, Oreste 

1777 – American Revolution: France formally recognizes the United States

1778 – Humphry Davy born, English chemist and physicist

1790 – During repair work on the Mexico City Cathedral, workers discover the Aztec calendar stone

1797 – Joseph Henry born, American scientist who worked on electromagnets; served as First Secretary of the Smithsonian

1807 – John Greenleaf Whittier born, American Quaker poet, editor and abolitionist

1819 – Simón Bolívar declares the independence of Gran Colombia in Angostura, now Ciudad Bolívar in Venezuela

1843 – Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is published

1865 – First performance of the Unfinished Symphony by Franz Schubert

https://youtu.be/IAAmC2QCsg4

1873 – Ford Madox Ford, English novelist, poet and editor; The Good Soldier

1874 – Mackenzie King born, Canadian economist and politician, longest-serving Canadian Prime Minister; led the country during WWII, mobilizing supplies and volunteers to support Britain

1892 –First performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker in St. Petersburg

1894 – Edwin J. Cohn, American biochemist whose method of separating blood plasma proteins (blood fractionation) was used in lifesaving treatments of WWII soldiers

1894 – Arthur Fiedler born, American conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra

1900 – Dame Mary Cartwright born, British mathematician; first woman to earn a first in mathematics at Oxford; a pioneer in what is now called chaos theory

1903 – The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

1903 – Ray Noble born, English bandleader, composer, “Love Is the Sweetest Thing”

1903 – Erskine Caldwell born, American novelist; Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre

1910 – Sy Oliver, American Jazz composer-arranger-bandleader

1916 – Penelope Fitzgerald born, historical novelist, biographer and essayist; 1979 Book Prize for her novel Offshore, and the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award for The Blue Flower, an historical novel which was her final work

1918 – 1,000 demonstrators from the Australian Workers’ Union, angry about taxation, wage and employment issues, march on Government House in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

1929 – William Safire born, American journalist and author, On Language, Safire’s Political Dictionary

1930 – Dorothy Rowe born, Australian psychologist and author, with a specialty in depression; Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison, Beyond Fear

1935 – First flight of the Douglas DC-3

1940 – María Elena Velasco born, one of Mexico’s few major women filmmakers, also an actress and screenwriter

1942 – Paul Butterfield born, American blues harmonica player and singer; The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

1943 – The ban on Chinese immigrants becoming U.S. citizens is lifted by repeal of the Act of 1882 and the introduction of the Magnuson Act

1944 – The U.S. Army announces the end of its policy of excluding Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. Japanese-Americans are released from detention camps

1945 – Jacqueline Wilson born, British children’s author; noted for Tracy Beaker series; won the Smarties Prize, and was the fourth British Children’s Laureate (2005-2007)

1947 – First flight of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet strategic bomber

1951 – The American Civil Rights Congress delivers “We Charge Genocide” to the United Nations

1953 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decides to approve RCA’s color television specifications

1955 – Carl Perkins writes the song “Blue Suede Shoes”

https://youtu.be/b2f_eSZgp88

1957 – The United States successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral FL

1959 – The film On the Beach premiered in New York City and in 17 other cities, the first motion picture to debut simultaneously in major cities around the world

https://youtu.be/EMzEWpKKOZs

1960 – Troops loyal to Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia crush the coup that began December 13, returning power to their leader upon his return from Brazil.

1967 – Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming near Portsea, Victoria, and is presumed drowned

1969 – The U.S. Air Force closes its Project “Blue Book” concluding that there is no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings

1978 – OPEC decides to raise oil prices by 14.5% by the end of 1979

1986 – Davina Thompson became the world’s first recipient of a heart, lungs, and liver transplant

1989 – The animated TV series The Simpsons premieres

1992 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

2003 – SpaceShipOne, piloted by Brian Binnie, makes its first powered and first supersonic flight

2005 – Anti-World Trade Organization protesters riot in Wan Chai, Hong Kong

2014 – The United States and Cuba re-establish diplomatic relations after severing relations 55 years before

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