December 28th is

Endangered Species Act Day *

Card Playing Day

Chocolate Candy Day

Pledge of Allegiance Day *

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MORE! F. W. Murnau, Sandra Faber and Linus Torvalds, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Falkland Islands –
Stanley Horse Races (2nd day)

Mexico – Holy Innocents’ Day

Nepal – Sonam Lhosar
(Tamang New Year)

Spain – Ibi: Els Enfarinats
(mock historical battle)

Swaziland – Incwala Day
(purification day before new year)

Tunisia – Douz: International
Sahara Festival & Camel Races

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On This Day in HISTORY

484 – Alaric succeeds his father Euric as king of the Visigoths, in southern Gaul

1065 – Westminster Abbey is consecrated under Edward the Confessor

Westminster Abbey West Front, by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd

1522 – Margaret of Parma born, illegitimate but acknowledged daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; appointed by her half-brother Philip II of Spain as Governor of the Netherlands (1559-1567), she resigned when it became clear that her authority would be less than that granted to the Duke of Alba, sent to put down by force northern Dutch opposition to Philip’s religious oppression, in spite of her warnings that military intervention would be disastrous

Margaret, Duchess of Parma, by Antonis Mor

1722 – Eliza Lucas Pinckney born in the British West Indies, educated in French music and botany, a subject at which she excelled; when her family moved to South Carolina, she became an overseer on one of her family’s plantations, and kept a record of her decisions and experiments; the result was that Indigo became one of the South’s major cash crops, its cultivation and processing as dye would produce one-third of South Carolina’s exports before the Revolutionary War

1732 – Benjamin Franklin publishes the first Poor Richard’s Almanac

1798 – Thomas James Henderson born, Scottish astronomer-mathematician; first Astronomer Royal for Scotland; first to measure the distance to Alpha Centauri, and first to determine the parallax of a fixed star

1832 – John C. Calhoun, outspoken and unrepentant supporter of slavery, becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign, leaving to be appointed as South Carolina’s U.S. Senator Robert Hayne’s replacement

1836 – South Australia is proclaimed as an Australian state, with Adelaide as its capital

1836 – Spain signs Santa Maria-Calatrava Treaty, recognizing Mexico’s independence

1842 – Calixa Lavallée born, French-Canadian composer who served as a Union Army band member during the U.S. Civil War, and composed the music for O Canada, the national anthem of Canada

1846 – Iowa becomes the 29^th U.S. state

1856 – Woodrow Wilson born, 28^th President of the United States

1867 – U.S. annexes Midway Atoll, its first territory outside Continental limits

187 1 – Frederick Pethick-Lawrence born, British Labor politician, socialist-conscientious objector-women’s rights activist; as Secretary of State for India and Burma, he was much involved in negotiations for India’s independence

Frederick and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, at home in Surrey

1873 – William Draper Harkins born, American chemist who first proposed the principle of nuclear fusion, which led to the development of the H-bomb

1882 – Arthur Eddington born, English astrophysics pioneer who popularized science; his articles on Einstein’s theory of general relativity were the first written in English; the natural limit to the luminosity of stars is named the Eddington Limit in his honor

1885 – The political party, Indian National Congress, is founded in Bombay, India

1888 –   F. W. Murnau born, German Expressionist director- producer-screenwriter, his films Nosferatu, Faust and Sunrise are widely regarded as early cinema masterpieces

1895 – The Lumière brothers, filmmaking pioneers who patented the cinematograph,  show their series of under-a-minute films to a paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines – the debut of the cinema

https://youtu.be/4nj0vEO4Q6s

1897 – Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac premieres in Paris

1895 – Carol Ryrie Brink born, American novelist and juvenile author; her book Caddie Woodlawn won the 1936 Newbery Medal

1898 – Carl-Gustaf Rossby born, Swedish-American meteorologist, study of fluid mechanics in weather, identified the Jet Stream and the long waves in the westerlies named the Rossby Waves in his honor

1902 – Mortimer J. Adler born, American philosopher and author; founder, Institute for Philosophical Research; co-founder, Great Books Foundation; The Idea of Freedom

1905 – Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines born, American pianist and bandleader

1912 – The first municipally owned streetcars begin service in San Francisco CA

1918 – Constance Markievicz, Irish revolutionary nationalist, socialist and feminist, while detained in Holloway prison for making a seditious speech, became the first woman to be elected MP to the British House of Commons. As a member of Sinn Féin, she declined to take her seat after being released as part of their abstentionist strategy

1919 – Emily Cheney Neville born in England, American children’s author; won the 1964 Newbery Medal for It’s Like This, Cat

1928 – ‘Moe’ Koffman born, Canadian Jazz musician-composer-arranger, soloist and member of Boss Brass

https://youtu.be/Q6WCLOQVbuA

1932 – Manuel Puig born, Argentine author, Kiss of the Spider Woman

1934 – Maggie Smith born, English actress, Academy award winner for The Prime of Miss Jean Broody, and Best Supporting for California Suite; Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films

1937 – The Irish Free State becomes the Republic of Ireland under a new constitution as the sovereign state of Eire

1944 – Sandra M. Faber born, American astrophysicist known for research on the evolution of galaxies, making important discoveries linking the brightness of  galaxies to the speed of their stars; co-discoverer of the Faber-Jackson relation, an empirical power-law relation; worked on the design of the Keck observatory and telescopes in Hawaii; awarded the National Medal of Science in 2013

1945 – Pledge of Allegiance Day * – U.S. Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance

1946 – Edgar Winter born, American Rock/Blues musician-singer, The Edgar Winter Group

1946 – Barbara Thomas Judge, Lady Judge, born in the U.S., has dual British-American citizenship; first female Chairman of the Institute of Directors; Chairman Emeritus of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA); Chairman of the United Kingdom’s fraud prevention service Cifas; former Chairman of the Pension Protection Fund and a UK Business Ambassador on behalf of UK Trade & Investment; also a trustee of several cultural and charitable institutions, including the Royal Academy of Arts 

1948 – “Zigaboo” Modeliste born, American Funk Rock drummer-songwriter

https://youtu.be/ZvsPlGqG0Bc

1950 – The Peak District becomes Britain’s first designated National Park

1953 – Martha Wash born, singer-musician, civil rights activist who campaigned for legislation to make vocal credits mandatory; The Weather Girls, “It’s Raining Men”

1954 – Denzel Washington born, American actor-director-producer, Academy Awards for Glory and Training Day

1969 – Linus Torvalds born, Finnish-American computer programmer, the Linux kernel

1973 – The Endangered Species Act * is passed in the United States

1973 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn publishes Gulag Archipelago, an exposé of the Soviet prison system; he spent eight years in prison for writing derogatory comments in private letters about Joseph Stalin and his regime

1978 – John Legend born (John Stephens), American musician-songwriter-actor, multiple Grammy award winner, Golden Globe and Academy Award winner

1981 – Elizabeth Jordan Carr, first American test-tube baby, is born in Norfolk VA; she became a journalist, currently working as editor of Daybreak.com

1989 – Alexander Dubcek, who was expelled from the Communist Party in 1970, is elected speaker of the Czech parliament

1995 – German prosecutors, investigating pornography, pressure CompuServe to set a precedent by blocking access to sex-oriented newsgroups for its Internet customers

2005 – Former top Enron Corporation accountant Richard Causey pleads guilty to securities fraud and agrees to help pursue convictions against Enron founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling

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Svetlana Kapanina