January 30th is

Croissant Day

The Lone Ranger Day *

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MORE! William Shakespeare, Barbara Tuchman and Gandhi, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Czech Republic – Praha:
Reduta Jazz Club Festival

Nepal – Shahid Diwas
(Martyrs’ Day)

Scotland – Lerwick, Shetlands:
Up Helly Aa (Viking festival)

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On This Day in HISTORY

58 BC – Livia Drusilla born, wife of Roman Emperor Augustus, later known as Julia Augusta, who wielded considerable power behind the scenes, but always portrayed the ideal Roman matron in public

Bust of Livia Drusilla, copy of original,
with nose recreated, Pushkin Museum

516 BCE – Construction ends on the Second Holy Temple of Jerusalem, Beit HaMikdash HaSheni, replacing Solomon’s Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE

The Second Temple in Jerusalem, by Alex Levin

1018 – The Peace of Bautzen between the Ottonian Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and the Piast duke of the Polans Bolesław I Chrobry which ended a series of Polish-German wars over the control of Lusatia and Upper Lusatia, Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia

1505 – Thomas Tallis born, one of the greatest English composers, noted especially for choral music

1590 – Lady Anne Clifford born, English peeress; in 1605 she inherited her father’s  ancient barony by writ, becoming the suo jure (“in one’s own right”) 14^th Baroness de Clifford; hereditary High Sheriff of Westmorland (1653-1676); patron of literature, and her own diary for 1603-1616 has been published

1595 – Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet debuts at London’s Curtain Theatre

Romeo and Juliet, by Raphael Tuck – c. 1900

1648 – The Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück is signed, ending the Eighty Years’ War between the Netherlands and Spain

1649 – King Charles I of England is beheaded, wearing two shirts to prevent the cold from making him shiver lest the crowd assume he was afraid – he wasn’t a wise king, but he died bravely

1661 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed more than two years after his death, on the 12th anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed

1697 – Johann Joachim Quantz born, German Baroque composer, royal flutist

1703 – The Forty-seven Ronin, led by Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenge their master’s death

1710 – Vigilio Blasio Faitello born, Italian composer

1775 – Walter Savage Landor born, English author and poet

1790 – The first purpose-built lifeboat is tested on the River Tyne in northern England

1798 – The first fisticuffs on the U.S. House of  Representatives floor takes place when Connecticut’s Roger Griswold (Federalist) attacks Vermont’s Matthew Lyon (Democratic-Republican), who had spit tobacco juice at him, with a cane. Lyon defended himself with a pair of fire tongs. Griswold was a supporter of John Adams preparations for a possible war with France, but Lyon believed preparations for war would precipitate one. A resolution to expel them was defeated 73-21

1820 – Edward Bransfield sights Trinity Peninsula and claims discovery of Antarctica

1826 – The Menai Suspension Bridge opens, considered the first modern suspension bridge, connecting the Isle of Anglesey to the North West coast of Wales

1844 – Richard Theodore Greener becomes the first black graduate from Harvard

1847 –  Yerba Buena is renamed San Francisco, California

1862 – The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched

1868 – Charles Darwin’s Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication is published

1882 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt born, 32nd U.S. President

1883 – James Ritty and John Birch patent the first cash register

1889 – Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, age 30, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead, having shot his 17-year-old mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera and then himself, at Mayerling, his hunting lodge

1894 – C.B. King patents the pneumatic hammer

1899 – Max Theiler, South African-born, American virologist, developed the Yellow Fever vaccine

1902 – The first Anglo-Japanese Alliance is signed in London, which would be in effect until the early 1920s

1908 – Mohandas Gandhi, leading the non-violent resistance to laws requiring persons of color to be registered and carry registration cards, is released from prison by Jan Smuts after serving less than half his sentence because of public outcry

Gandhi’s law office in South Africa, circa 1906

1911 – The destroyer USS Terry makes the first airplane rescue at sea saving the life of pilot Douglas McCurdy ten miles from Havana, Cuba

1912 – Barbara Tuchman born, American historian and author; won Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction twice, for The Guns of August and Stilwell and the American Experience in China; also notable are A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14^th Century, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, and The Zimmerman Telegram

1916 – During World War I, Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca corresponded with Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, concerning the political status of lands held by Ottoman Empire, and the growing Arab desire for independence from the Ottoman Empire. In the letters McMahon committed Britain to recognize Arab independence after World War I “in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca,” not including areas under France influence, in exchange for Arab help in fighting the Ottomans. However, exposure of the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement between France and UK revealed the two countries plans to split and occupy parts of the promised Arab country

1923 – Marianne Ferber born, American feminist economist and author; co-author of The Economics of Women, Men and Work, often used as a textbook and reference; member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, and a founding member  and president (1995-1996) of the International Association of Feminist Economics (IAFFE)

1925 – Constantine VI, after serving as Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople for 43 days, is exiled to Greece by the Turkish Government, briefly under the Republican People’s Party

1929 – Lois E. Hole born, Canadian politician, professional gardener and best-selling author; Lieutenant Governor of Alberta (2000-2005); noted for her “Favourites” series on plants, which won the 1996 Educational Media Award from the Professional Plant Growers Association; appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 1999

1929 – Lucille Teasdale-Corti born, Canadian physician and pediatric surgeon who worked in Uganda from 1961 to 1996; unable to secure an internship in the U.S. in 1960 (several rejections specifically because she was a woman), her final internship was at the Hôpital de la Conception in Marseille, France. During her internship, she was asked by Piero Corti to help set up a surgery at a mission hospital near Gulu in Northern Uganda, “just for a couple of months” at no pay, except for travel expenses and cigarettes. She and Piero were married in 1961, and they put many newly graduated Italian doctors through three months of hands-on training as part of an Italian government aid project and a civil service alternative for the doctors in lieu of compulsory military service; during Idi Amin’s dictatorship, they chose to remain, one of the few hospitals still operating throughout the Uganda-Tanzania War and the chaos afterwards – the local people pledged to the hospital safe – but she became HIV-positive from performing surgeries on war casualties, often cutting herself on bone fragments; diagnosed with AIDS in 1985, she continued her work, in spite of the devastating illness, almost to her death in 1996, because she was the only surgeon available

1930 – The Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the extermination of the Kulaks, originally a name for prosperous independent farmers, but under this order, “peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres more than their neighbors”

1931 – Shirley Hazzard born in Australia, Aussie-American author; won the 2003 National Book Award for Fiction for The Great Fire

1933 – Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany

1933 – The Lone Ranger Day * – The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit’s radio station WXYZ

1935 – Richard Brautigan born, American author and poet; Trout Fishing in America

1939 – Eleanor Smeal born, American feminist, 3-term president of N.O.W. (1977-1979, 1979-1982 and 1985-1987), co-founder and president of the Feminist Majority Foundation

1944 – Lynn Harrell, American classical cellist

1946 – U.N. Security Council Resolution 2 is adopted, encouraging Iran and the Soviet Union to resolve their conflict over Soviet troops occupying Iranian territory

1948 – Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu extremist

1951 – Phil Collins born, British singer and drummer

1956 – The home of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1956 – Elvis Presley records “Blue Suede Shoes”

1958 – Yves Saint Laurent, age 22, holds his first major fashion show in Paris, for Christian Dior

1959 – The “unsinkable” MS Hans Hedtoft strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage and sinks, killing all 95 aboard

1959 – Cynthia Carter born, journalist, academic and feminist; senior lecturer, Cardiff School of Journalism; co-founder and editor of the journal Feminist Media Studies

1960 – The African National Party is founded in Chad, through the merger of traditionalist parties

1964 – In a bloodless coup, General Nguyễn Khánh overthrows General Dương Văn Minh’s military junta in South Vietnam, but he is forced to resign in February 1965

1968 – Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army forces begin the Tet Offensive

1969 – The Beatles perform for the last time in public, on the roof of Apple Studios

1972 – Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations, and begins developing its ‘nuclear deterrence’ in response to its loss of East Pakistan in 1971’s Bangladesh Liberation War

1975 – The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, site of the wreck of the USS Monitor, is established as the first United States National Marine Sanctuary

1979 – Iran’s  civilian government announces it will allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to return from exile

1989 – With Soviet forces on the verge of withdrawing, the American Embassy closes in Kabul, Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

1994 – Peter Leko at age 14 becomes the youngest Chess Grand Master

1995 – National Institutes of Health workers announce the success of clinical trials testing the first preventive treatment for sickle-cell disease

1997 – A New Jersey judge rules that the unborn child of a female prisoner must have legal representation, and denying the prisoner bail reduction to enable her to leave the jail and obtain an abortion

2003 – The Kingdom of Belgium officially recognizes same-sex marriages

2005 – The first free Parliamentary elections in Iraq since 1958; twelve parties receive enough votes to win a seat in the assembly, but the United Iraqi Alliance leads with about 48% of the vote

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, United Iraqi Alliance leader, at a Baghdad polling station

photo by Staff Sgt. Angelique Perez, U.S.A.F.

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