March 28th is

Barnum & Bailey Day *

Black Forest Cake Day

Something on a Stick Day

Weed Appreciation Day *

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MORE! Clara Lemlich, Astrid Lindgren and Iris Chang, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Czech Republic
and Slovakia –
Teachers’ Day *

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On This Day in HISTORY

193 – Roman Emperor Pertinax is assassinated by the Praetorian Guards, who then sell the throne in an auction to Didius Julianus

845 – Paris is sacked by a fleet of Viking raiders who sail up the River Seine; Charles the Bald pays the huge sum of 7,000 livres (5,670 pounds) in silver and to get them to leave

1592 – Teachers’ Day * in the Czech Republic and Slovakia honors Jan Amos Konesky aka Comenius, Moravian teacher born this day; believes in education for girls as well as boys, opposes corporal punishment, introduces books in the children’s native language instead of Latin, adds pictures to books for children, emphasizes logical thinking over rote memorizing

1774 – British Parliament passes the Coercive Acts against Massachusetts, closing the port of Boston until damages are paid for the Boston Tea Party; restriction of Massachusetts town meetings; changes the governor’s council to appointees; makes British officials immune from criminal prosecution in Massachusetts; makes colonists responsible for costs of housing and quartering British troops on demand, even in peacetime – if no other housing is available, they must take troops into their homes

1776 – Juan Bautista de Anza finds the site which will be the Presidio of San Francisco

The Presidio, 1843 sketch by a Swedish visitor

1794 – Formal opening of the Louvre in Paris

1796 – Bethel African Methodist Church of Philadelphia is the first U.S. black church

1799 – Slavery is abolished in New York state

1802 – Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers the 2 Pallas asteroid

1819 – Sir Joseph William Bazalgette born, British civil engineer; designed London’s main sewer system

1834 – A first – Congress censors President Andrew Jackson for refusing to turn over documents relating to the running battle between the President and Congress over the Bank of the United States, dismantled  by Jackson, who vetoes legislation to renew its charter, but Congress musters votes to overturn the veto; Jackson orders Treasury to disperse all federal funds to individual state banks, and refuses the Senate’s demand to see his cabinet’s papers; Both Houses join in censuring Jackson for assuming power not conferred on the president by the  Constitution

1845 – Mexico drops diplomatic relations with the U.S. over annexation of Texas and subsequent border dispute

1854 – Crimean War: Britain and France declare war on Russia

1866 – First hospital-based ambulance goes into service in Cincinnati OH

1873 – Anne Douglas Sedgwick born in America, British author;  Tante and The Little French Girl 

1881 – Barnum & Bailey Day * – P.T. Barnum merges his show with James A. Bailey’s circus

1886 – Clara Lemlich born, American labor organizer, leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the shirtwaist workers strike in New York’s garment industry in 1909

1890 – Paul Whiteman born, American bandleader

1895 – Ángela Ruiz Robles born, Spanish teacher and inventor; wanting to lighten the weight of textbooks carried by her students, she made a device out of a series of text and illustrations on reels, all under a sheet of magnifying glass with a light for reading in the dark, with spoken descriptions of each topic, the mechanical precursor to the electronic book

1904 – Isabel Cuchí Coll born, journalist and author, director of the “Sociedad de Autores Puertorriqueños” (Society of Puerto Rican Authors)

1906 – Dorothy Knowles born in South Africa, British academic and expert on French theatre, French Drama of Inter-War Years 1918-39; also a pioneer and champion in British women’s fencing, founder of the Liverpool University fencing club (1936)

1910 – Henri Fabre’s seaplane makes first takeoff from water in France

1912 – Marina Raskova born, Russian navigator, instrumental in the formation of combat regiments of women who were pilots, support staff and engineers

1927 – Vina Mazumdar born, Indian academic, feminist and women’s rights activist, pioneer in women’s studies programs in India; Memories of a Rolling Stone

1931 – Guatemala becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty

1917 – Jews are expelled from Tel Aviv and Jaffa by Turkish authorities

1917 – Puccini’s La Rondine premieres in Monte Carlo

1922 – Grace Hartigan born, American Abstract Expressionist painter of the NY School

Grace Hartigan – LIFE Magazine May 1957

1930 – Turkish cities Constantinople and Angora change names to Istanbul and Ankara

1935 – Robert Goddard uses gyroscopes to control a rocket

1939 – Madrid falls to Francisco Franco, ending the Spanish Civil War

1944 – Astrid Lindgren begins writing Pippi Longstocking

1959 – Eleven After Tibet uprising, China dissolves Tibet’s government and installs Panchen Lama

1959 – Laura Chinchilla born, Costa Rican politician; first woman President of Costa Rica (2010-2014); Vice President and Minister of Justice (2006-20o8); National Assembly Deputy for San José (2002-2006)

1963 – Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds premieres in New York.

1968 – “Whiskey On A Sunday” is recorded by the Irish Rovers

1968 – Iris Chang born, daughter of Taiwanese emigrants, American journalist and historical nonfiction author; Thread of the Silkworm, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II and The Chinese in America

1969 – Greek poet and diplomat Giorgos/George Seferis makes a speech on BBC radio against the military junta in control of Greece: “…It has been almost two years now that a regime has been imposed on us which is totally inimical to the ideals for which our world — and our people so resplendently — fought during the last world war.…I am a man without any political affiliation, and I can therefore speak without fear or passion. I see ahead of me the precipice toward which the oppression that has shrouded the country is leading us. This anomaly must stop. It is a national imperative…”

1970 – Jennifer Weiner born, American screenwriter, television producer and novelist; In Her Shoes; vocal critic of gender bias in both the publishing industry and the media

1979 – Twelve days after the premiere of the movie The China Syndrome, there is a major nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, Middletown, PA

1989 – For the first time, the America’s Cup sailing trophy is won in a courtroom instead of on the water – New Zealand beats Stars and Stripes in a New York courtroom

1990 – Jesse Owen is posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal

2000 – Weed Appreciation Day * is launched to point out the usefulness of weeds in our gardens like dandelions (entirely edible for wildlife and humans) and milkweed, which is a favorite of the threatened Monarch butterfly

2006 – A million union members, students and unemployed take to the streets in France protesting the government’s proposed First Employment Contract law

2013 – Pope Francis becomes the first Pope to wash the feet of women in the Maundy Thursday service

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