March 29th is

Lemon Chiffon Cake Day

Little Red Wagon Day *

Manatee Appreciation Day

Niagara Falls Runs Dry Day *

Vietnam War Veterans Day *

Whole Grain Sampling Day *

Mom & Pop Business Owner’s Day

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MORE! Frances Jacobs, Pearl Bailey and Elizabeth Hand, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity: Maundy Thursday/Holy Thursday (ceremonial washing of the feet of the poor and the giving of alms)

Central African Republic – Barthelemy Boganda Day
(first Prime Minister, C.A.R. as autonomous territory)

India – Mahavir Jayanti/Mahaveer Janma Kayanak
(Jain festival celebrating birth of Mahaveer)

Madagascar – Martyrs’ Day

Taiwan – Spring Youth Day
(2^nd Guangzhou Uprising)

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On This Day in HISTORY

502 – King Gundobad issues a new legal code, Lex Burgundionum, at Lyon that makes Gallo-Romans and Burgundians subject to the same laws; covers marriage, inheritance and weregild, a form of restitution for injury or death of a loved one and for theft or damage of property in early Germanic society – as Christianity spread, it was replaced by capital punishment, and almost entirely gone by the 12^th century throughout the Holy Roman Empire

1001 – Sokkate born, Pagan dynasty King in the Irrawaddy Valley (Myanmar)

1461 – Edward of York defeats the army raised by Queen Margaret (of Anjou), wife of the mentally unstable Henry VI of the House of Lancaster, at the Battle of Towton to become King Edward IV of England

The Opening Barrage, by Graham Turner

1549 – Brazil’s first capital, Salvador da Bahia, is founded by Portuguese settlers under Tomé de Sousa, Brazil’s first governor-general

1561 – Santorio Santorio born, Italian physician; pioneer in use of precision instruments in medicine

1632 – Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English seize it in 1629

1638 – Swedish Lutherans found the first white settlement in Delaware

1673 – King Charles II accepts the Test Act, excluding Roman Catholics from public functions by requiring oaths of supremacy and allegiance, and a declaration against transubstantiation by all men in any civil or military office

1675 – King Charles II and John Flamsteed lay the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London

Flamsteed House, Royal Observatory, by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd

1679 – King Charles II accepts the Habeas Corpus Act of (English) Parliament, which defines and strengthens the ancient prerogative of the writ of habeas corpus (Latin – ‘you have the body’) stopping unlawful detention; in criminal matters other than treason and felonies, it gives prisoners or third parties acting on their behalf the right to challenge their detention by demanding from the Lord Chancellor, Justices of the King’s Bench, or Barons of the Exchequer a judicial review of their imprisonment, and forbids jailers from moving prisoners to evade the writ – if they disobey, jailers face severe fines, paid to the prisoner. Though amended, the act is on the statute book to this day

1806 – U.S. Congress authorizes survey for the Cumberland Road, the first major improved highway built by the U.S. government, from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois, where Congressional funding runs out, a distance of 614 miles

1843 – Frances Wisebart Jacobs born, American charity organizer; co-founder with four clergymen of the Charity Organization Society (1887) in Denver CO, which will become the United Way of America, which joins with United Way International in 2009 to become United Way Worldwide, the world’s largest privately-funded nonprofit

Frances Jacobs stained glass window at the Colorado State Capitol

1848 – Niagara Falls Runs Dry Day * – a huge upstream ice jams stop almost all water flow over Niagara Falls (both American Falls and the Canadian Horseshoe Falls) for several hours; dry enough to walk out into the riverbed below the falls

1849 – Great Britain formally annexes the Punjab after defeating Sikhs in India

1852 – Ohio makes it illegal for children under 18 and women to work more than a 10-hour workday

1864 – Finding maintaining a protectorate over the Ionian Islands too expensive, Great Britain cedes them to Greece

1866 – Dr. John Pemberton creates Coca-Cola

Dr. John Pemburton and early Coca-Cola advertisement

1867 – British North America Act (Canadian constitution) is given Royal Assent

1871 – Queen Victoria opens the Royal Albert Hall in London

Royal Albert Hall – inset: Queen Victoria

1879 – Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin premieres in Moscow

1900 – Charles Elton born, English Biologist who develops the ‘food chain’ idea

1902 – Sir William Walton born, English composer

1903 – Vera M. Dean born, American political scientist and author, head of research for the Foreign Policy Association; “Is Democracy Possible in Africa?”

1906 – E. Power Biggs born in England, American organist

1907 – In the Transvaal, Gandhi’s Satyagraha (‘devotion to truth’) campaigners hold a mass protest against the Asiatic Law Amendment Act, which requires all male Asians to register and be finger-printed, and carry ‘certificates’ (passes) at all times, which must be shown to police officers on demand. It is the beginning of a seven-year struggle in which thousands of Indians, including Gandhi, are jailed, and protesters flogged or even shot for striking, refusing to register, burning their certificates, or other forms of non-violence. Ultimately, public outrage at the harsh methods the government employs, against people who are steadfastly non-violent, forces South African General Jan Smuts to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi

Gandhi’s law office in South Africa, 1906

1908 – Henri Farman carries the first passenger in an airplane, aircraft designer Leon Delagrange, in his bi-plane

1912 – Hanna Reitsch born, German pilot, awarded the Iron Cross First Class and the Luftwaffe Pilot/Observer Badge during WWII

1918 – Pearl Bailey born, American singer and actress; receives a 1969 USO award for  her WWII tour entertaining U.S troops, and a 1988 Presidential Medal of Freedom

1923 – Betty Binns Fletcher born, American lawyer and federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (1979- 2012); one of the first women to become a partner in a major U.S law form, and the second woman appointed to the Ninth Circuit bench; writes liberal opinions on employment discrimination, environmental protection and the death penalty; when her son is nominated for a judgeship on the Ninth Circuit, Conservative Republicans, led by Orrin Hatch (R-UT), claim a mother and son serving on the same court violates a 1911 federal anti-nepotism law; Judge Fletcher agrees to accept senior status in order clear the way for her son’s confirmation, which means she serves only part time, only on cases in her home city, Seattle, and does not handle death penalty cases – her original seat is filled by a Republican

Judge Betty Binns Fletcher, center, on first U.S. all-woman judicial
panel with Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson and Judge Judith Nelsen Keep

1929 – Sheila Kitzinger born, British social anthropologist, pregnancy and childbirth author; natural childbirth and breastfeeding advocate; National Childbirth Trust board member; taught MA in midwifery at the University of West London, and lectured on the social anthropology of birth of breastfeeding; The Good Birth Guide, The Politics of Birth, and Rediscovering Birth  

1936 – Judith Guest born, American novelist and screenwriter; Ordinary People, Second Heaven, and The Tarnished Eye

1940 – Astrud Gilberto born, Brazilian singer-songwriter

1944 – Lynne Segal born in Australia, British-based socialist feminist, academic and author; co-author of the influential 1979 book Beyond the Fragments, advocating broader alliances among trade unionists, feminists and leftist political groups, and author of Is the Future Female? and Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men; member of the Virago (publishing) Advisory Board (1984-1993)

1949 – Pauline Marois born, public servant and politician; leader of the Parti Québécois (2007–2014), and Premier of Quebec (2012–2014); chief of staff for the Ministry of State for the Status of Women (1979–1981), promoted to Minister when her former boss left (1981-1982)

1951 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union

1957 – Elizabeth Hand born, American scifi/fantasy writer and novelist; co-creator of DC Comics series Anima; Waking the Moon (1994) won the Tiptree Award and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award; The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon won 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella

1961 – After a 4½ year trial, Nelson Mandela is acquitted of treason in Pretoria

1964 – Catherine Cortez Masto born, American attorney and Democratic politician, the first woman and first Latina U.S. Senator from Nevada since 2017; Attorney General of Nevada (2007-2015)

1971 – U.S. Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. convicted for murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre (Calley spends 3 years under house arrest)

1971 – Lara Logan born, South African journalist and war correspondent; Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CBS News since 2006

1971 – A Los Angeles jury recommends the death penalty for Charles Manson and three female followers for 1969’s Tate-La Bianca murders; but sentences are later commuted to life

1973 – The last U.S. troops leave South Vietnam, ending America’s direct military involvement in the Vietnam War (see also entry for 2017)

1974 – Chinese farmers discover the Terracotta Army near Xi’an, 8,000 clay warrior statues buried to guard tomb of China’s 1st emperor Qin Shi Huang

1992 – Democratic presidential front-runner Bill Clinton admits to experimenting with marijuana “a time or two” while attending Oxford University, adding, “I didn’t inhale and I didn’t try it again.”

1993 – Catherine Callbeck becomes Premier of Prince Edward Island, the first woman to win a general election for a premiership of a Canadian province

2004 – The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban cigarettes smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants

2012 – Whole Grain Sampling Day * is sponsored by the Whole Grains Council, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group; first proposed at 2002 Whole Grains Summit organized by Oldways Preservation Trust

2016 – Little Red Wagon Day * is launched – in 2017,  Radio Flyer celebrates its 100^th anniversary; started in 1917, when Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin builds his first wagon in Chicago, which he calls the ‘Liberty Coaster’ in honor of the Statue of  Liberty

2017 – Vietnam War Veterans Day * honors Vietnam veterans on anniversary of withdrawal of U.S. military units from South Vietnam (see also entry for 1973)

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