December 26th is

Candy Cane Day

Thank-you Note Day

Spiced Caramel Apple Martini Day

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MORE! Thomas Gray, Mary Somerville and W.C. Handy, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

• Western Christianity – Feast of St. Stephen
• Juledag (Northern Europe – 2^nd day of Christmas)
• Zoroastrian – Zartusht No Diso (death of Zoraster)
• First Day of Kwanzaa

British Commonwealth – Boxing Day

Falkland Islands – Stanley Races

South Africa – Day of Goodwill

Namibia – Family Day

Slovenia –
Independence & Unity Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

887 (?) – Berengar of Fruili becomes King Berengar I of Italy

Berengar I depicted in a 12th century manuscript

1526 – Rose Lok born, Englishwoman who worked for her husband and one of her brothers, who were mercers (dealers in textiles, especially silk and other fine materials) in partnership together; the men were imprisoned during the reign of Queen Mary I for being Protestants; at the age of 84, she wrote an account of her parents, and events during her life up to 1558

1618 – Elisabeth born Princess of the Palatinate, Princess-Abbess of Herford Abbey (1667-1680), providing refuge for persecuted Protestants; had extensive correspondence with notable intellectuals of the time, René Descartes in particular, with whom she carried on a lively debate about his idea of Dualism (mind separate from the body); this correspondence has given scholars insight into 17^th century theoretical debates

1716 – Thomas Gray born, English poet and classical scholar; known for Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

1780 – Mary Fairfax Somerville born, Scottish polymath; she and Caroline Herschel became the first women members of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time; the term “scientist” was first used to describe her, someone who possesses the intellect to combine mathematics, astronomy and physics seamlessly; author of “On the Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible Solar Rays”

1791 – Charles Babbage born, mathematician-engineer, inventor of the adding machine, and the cowcatcher, the V-shaped metal bumper on front of locomotives1799 – Four thousand people attend George Washington’s funeral where Henry Lee III declares he was “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen”

1819 – E.D.E.N. Southworth born, American author of over 60 novels, who took up writing to support her children when her husband deserted the family in 1844; supporter of women’s rights and friend of Harriet Beecher Stowe; best known for The Hidden Hand, a novel which first appeared in serial form in the New York Ledger

1825 – Advocates of liberalism in Russia rise up against Czar Nicholas I but are suppressed during the Decembrist revolt in Saint Petersburg

1862 – The USS Red Rover is commissioned by the U.S. Navy as a hospital ship and takes aboard Sisters of the Order of the Holy Cross, the first women to serve as nurses aboard a navy ship

1865 – James H. Mason patents a coffee percolator

1871 – Gilbert and Sullivan collaborate for the first time, on their lost opera, Thespis

1891 – Henry Miller born, controversial American novelist

1893 – Mao Tse-tung born, leader of the communist revolution in China

1898 – Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium

1900 – Evelyn Bark, leading member of the British Red Cross; fluent in six languages with a working knowledge of several others, she developed language cards to help doctors and nurses communicate with patients when there was no shared language; during WWII, she was part of the British Red Cross Commission entering just-liberated Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany; one of the first volunteers to enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; after the war, worked for the Red Cross International Tracing Service, helping survivors from the camps, trying to reunite them with their families, as well as organizing a hospital and rehabilitation center for them; coordinated relief for Hungarian refugees in 1956; one of the first women to receive the British Order of St Michael and St George in 1967; No Time to Kill is her autobiography

1921 – The Catholic Irish Free State becomes a self-governing dominion of Great Britain

1931 – George Gershwin’s musical, “Of Thee I Sing,” opens at New York’s Music Box Theatre, the first musical to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize

1938 – Bahram Beyzai born, Iranian director-producer-screenwriter

1939 – W.C. Handy records the classic “St. Louis Blues”

1941 – Winston Churchill is the first British prime minister to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress

1944 – Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie debuts at Chicago’s Civic Theatre

1963 – The Beatles release “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” in the U. S.

1966 – The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach

1975 – Tu-144, world’s first commercial supersonic aircraft, goes into service

Tu-144 prototype in flight on February 1, 1969

1995 – Israel turned dozens of West Bank villages over to the Palestinian Authority

2002 – The first cloned human baby is born, announced on December 27 by Clonaid

2004 – Orange Revolution: The final run-off election in Ukraine is held under heavy international scrutiny

2009 – China opens the world’s longest high-speed rail route between Beijing and Guangzhou

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