March 3rd  is

Mulled Wine Day

World Hearing Day *

UN World Wildlife Day *

National Anthem Day *

What If Cats and Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs Day

__________________________________________

MORE! Anne Sullivan, Alice Paul and Sameera Moussa, click

__________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Bulgaria – Liberation Day

East Timor – Veterans Day

Georgia – Mother’s Day

Ireland – Irish Whiskey Day

Japan – Hina Matsuri
(Doll Festival)

Malawi – Martyrs’ Day

__________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

724 – Japanese Empress Genshō abdicates the throne in favor of her nephew Shōmu

1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan incorporates Wales into England, and is the constitutional basis for the government of the Principality of North Wales

1585 – Teatro Olimpico is inaugurated in Vicenza in northern Italy with a production of Oedipus the King by Sophocles; it is the last design of Andrea Palladio before his death, and one of only three Renaissance theatres still standing; Teatro Olimpico is still used several times a year, and is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Vicenza

1652 – Thomas Otway born, English dramatist and poet

1678 – Madeleine Jarret born, called Madeleine de Verchères, Canadian leader; as a 14-year-old girl led a fight against Iroquois warriors attacking Fort Verchères

1756 – William Godwin born, philosopher and political writer

1791 – U.S. Congress passes a resolution creating the U.S. Mint

1793 – William Macready born, English actor, manager and diarist

William Macready as Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry IV

1803 – The first impeachment trial of a U.S. Judge begins; U.S. District Court Judge John Pickering, of the district of New Hampshire, is accused of making unlawful rulings and intoxication on the bench

1812 – The U.S. Congress passes the first foreign aid bill, authorizing $50,000 for the relief of victims of an earthquake in Venezuela

1817 – The first commercial steamboat route from Louisville to New Orleans is opened

1841 – John Murray born, Scottish naturalist

1842 – Sidney Lanier born, American Poet

1844 – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov born, Russian composer, one of  The Five aka The Mighty Handful: Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin, who all lived in St Petersburg between 1856 and 1870

1845 – U.S. Congress passes legislation overriding a U.S. President’s veto for the first time; lame-duck President John Tyler vetoes an appropriation bill which has a provision prohibiting the President from authorizing building of Revenue Marine Service (Coast Guard) ships without Congressionally approved appropriations; the next Congressional veto override would not happen until over a decade later, during Franklin’s Pierce’s administration

1845 – An Act of Congress establishes uniform postal rates throughout the U.S., effective on July 1, 1845

1847 – Alexander Graham Bell born in Scotland, American inventor of the telephone

1849 – The U.S. Department of the Interior is established

1849 – U.S. Congress passes the Gold Coinage Act which allows minting of gold coins

1851 – The U.S. Congress authorizes the 3-cent piece, the smallest U.S. silver coin

1852 – Daniel A. P. Murray born, African American biographer, author and historian; joins professional staff of the Library of Congress in 1871, rises to assistant librarian (1881-1922); compiles collection of books and pamphlets by black Americans for the 1900 Paris Exposition exhibit on Negro Authors, the nucleus of the Library’s Colored Authors Collections, now called the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection

1857 – Britain and France declare war on China – the Second Opium War

1863 – Free city delivery of mail is authorized by the U.S. Postal Service

1865 – President Lincoln and the U.S. Congress create the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, commonly called the Freedmen’s Bureau, and appoints Union General Oliver O. Howard as its chief. The bureau helps black families find family members separated during the war, legal assistance to help settle court cases, and assists in establishing schools by renting buildings for classrooms, providing books and transportation for teachers, and offering military protection from opponents of black literacy for students and teachers

1873 – U.S. Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” books through the mail; it is later used against Margaret Sanger, among others, to try to prevent distribution of information about contraceptives

1875 – U.S. Congress authorizes the 20-cent piece, which is only used for 3 years

1877 – Garrett Morgan born, African-American inventor of a smoke hood, an early breathing system for firefighting

1878 – Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign the Treaty of San Stenafano, granting independence to Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and autonomy to Bulgaria; Austria-Hungary forces treaty term changes in the Treaty of Berlin on July 13, 1878

1885 – The American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) is incorporated in New York as a subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone Company

1885 – The U.S. Post Office begins offering special delivery for first-class mail

1887 – Anne Sullivan arrives at the Alabama home of Captain and Mrs. Arthur H. Keller to become the teacher of their blind and deaf 6-year-old daughter, Helen

1893 – Hanya Holm born in Germany, modern dance pioneer, emigrated to U.S.in 1931, taught dancing in many states, choreographed ballets, including “Metropolitan Daily” (1938), the first ballet televised in the U.S.; also choreographed for theatre, movies and opera

1893 – Beatrice Wood born, American illustrator and potter

1894 – The Atlantis begins publication, the first Greek newspaper in America

1900 – 100,000 striking miners in the Ruhr area of Germany return to work, having been given assurances of wage increases and a shorter working day; but the employers’ pledges are not kept, beginning 20 years of strife between miners and owners

1902 – Enrico Caruso makes recordings of ten arias for the Gramophone Company, first famous performer to make a record

1902 – Isabel Bishop born, artist, known for painting young, generally lower-middle class office workers as subjects, focus of retrospective at Whitney Museum of American Art (1975); honored with 1979 Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award 

The Kid (left), and Reading Together – by Isabel Bishop

1903 – Immigration Act of 1903, a major overhaul of  U.S. immigration policy, expands excludable classes of immigrants to include anarchists, prostitutes, epileptics, any who’d “been insane within five years,” and any who had two or more “attacks of insanity”; deportation within two years of arrival of “any alien who becomes a public charge by reason of lunacy, idiocy, or epilepsy,” unless they could clearly demonstrate the condition began after arrival; also imposes $2 head tax per immigrant

1904 – Wilhelm II of Germany makes the first recording of a political document with Thomas Edison’s cylinder

1905 – Russian Tsar Nicolas II agrees to the creation of an elected assembly

1908 – After a dozen violent incidents sparked by a severe economic crisis and high unemployment, the U.S. government declares open war on anarchists; President Theodore Roosevelt states ‘compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance’

1910 – J.D. Rockefeller Jr. announces his withdrawal from business to administer his father’s fortune for an “uplift in humanity”; he appeals to Congress for the incorporation of the Rockefeller Foundation ‘to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world’; the foundation initially focuses on public health and medical education; by the 1920s, it is the largest philanthropic enterprise in the world. It should be noted that none of its millions of dollars are used to help the workers or their families that had been exploited, beaten by thugs, or killed during the rapacious acquisition of the Rockefeller fortune

1910 – In New York, Robert Forest founds the National Housing Association to fight deteriorating urban living conditions

1913 – Margaret Bonds born, African American pianist, arranger and composer, who frequently collaborated with Langston Hughes

1913 – The Suffrage Procession, led by Inez Millholland on a white horse, is the first suffragist parade in Washington DC. Organized by the suffrage strategist Alice Paul and her committee, which includes Lucy Burns, for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, thousands of suffragists march down Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration “. . . in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded,” according to the official program

1917 – Sameera Moussa born, pioneering Egyptian nuclear scientist; her work makes medical use of nuclear technology affordable; organizer of the Atomic Energy for Peace Conference

1918 – The Treaty of Brest Litovsky is signed by Germany, Austria and Russia; it ends Russia’s participation in WWI

1919 – The Chicago Music Association is founded to provide a performance venue for classically trained black musicians who are denied access to major concert halls and opera houses throughout the country. Later that year, the National Association of Negro Musicians is formed, with CMA as its first branch

1922 – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned is published

1923 – The first issue of Time magazine is published; founded by Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce

1926 – James Merrill born, American poet; winner of 1977 Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection Divine Comedies

1931 – National Anthem Day * – The “Star Spangled Banner,” with lyrics originally written as a poem called “Defense of Fort McHenry” by Francis Scott Key, is adopted as the U.S. national anthem

1939 – In Bombay, Gandhi begins a fast to protest autocratic rule in India

1941 – Moscow denounces Axis rule in Bulgaria

1943 – Myra Sadker born, studied and researched sex roles in children’s literature, wrote texts to challenge sexism in the education of girls because it short-changes their ambitions, co-author of Sexism in School and Society (1973), and Failing at Fairness

1945 – During World War II, Finland declares war on the Axis powers

1949 – Bonnie J. Dunbar born, American engineer, academic, and NASA astronaut

1952 – In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds New York’s Feinberg Law that bans Communist teachers in the U.S.; it remains in force until Keyishian v. Board of Regents, another Supreme Court decision in 1967, declares most of its provisions unconstitutional

1956 – Morocco gains its independence

1962 – Jackie Joyner-Kersee born, one of the world’s greatest female athletes, records in the long jump (1988) and the heptathlon (1986), won 3 gold, 1 silver, and 2 bronze medals in 4 Olympic games

1969 – Apollo 9 is launched by NASA to test a lunar module

1972 – NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft is launched

1973 – Japan announces its first defense plan since WWII

1980 – The USS Nautilus (SSN-571), launched in 1954 as world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine, is decommissioned

1987 – U.S. House of Representatives rejects a package of $30 million in non-lethal aid for the Nicaraguan Contras

1991 – In California, Rodney King is severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers, captured on amateur video

1994 – The Mexican government reaches a peace agreement with the Chiapas rebels

1995 – As a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia ends, several gunmen are killed in Mogadishu by U.S. Marines overseeing the pull-out of the peacekeepers

2002 – Voters in Switzerland approve joining the United Nations, abandoning almost 200 years of formal neutrality

2005 – Margaret Wilson is elected as Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives, beginning a period lasting until August 23, 2006 where all the highest political offices, including Elizabeth II as Head of State, are occupied by women, making New Zealand the first country with all women in positions of highest power

2007 – World Hearing Day * is designated by WHO (World Health Organization) at the first International Conference on Prevention and Rehabilitation of Hearing Impairment, which takes place in Beijing China, to promote hearing care and research worldwide

2014 – The UN General Assembly launches the first World Wildlife Day *

 
__________________________________________