March 30th is

National Doctor’s Day *

‘I Am in Control’ Day *

National Pencil Day *

Virtual Vacation Day

Take a Walk in the Park Day

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MORE! Anna Sewell, Janet Browne and Shahka Sherkat, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity: Good Friday

Trinidad & Tobago –
Spiritual Shouter Baptist
Liberation Day *

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On This Day in HISTORY

240 BC – Perihelion passage recorded of what will be called Halley’s Comet

1135 – Moses Maimonides born, Spanish-born Jewish philosopher, jurist and physician

1533 – Thomas Cranmer becomes Archbishop of Canterbury

1746 – Francisco de Goya born, major Spanish painter

May Third 1808; Self-Portrait sketch; Señora  Sabasa Garcia,
by Francisco de Goya 

1778 – Voltaire, the leading philosopher of the French Enlightenment, having returned to Paris from a long exile in Switzerland, is in the audience when a bust in his likeness is crowned with a laurel wreath after a performance of his last play Irène; he dies in Paris a few months later

1820 – Anna Sewell born, English author; her novel Black Beauty helps get anti-animal cruelty legislation passed

1822 – U.S. Congress combines East and West Florida into the Florida Territory, and William Pope Duvall becomes its first civilian governor, taking over from the military governor, future President Andrew Jackson

1842 – Dr. Crawford W. Long administers the first ether anesthetic for a delicate surgery to remove a tumor from a man’s neck; the surgery is a success, and the patient awakens having felt nothing during the operation – see also entry for 1933

1853 – Vincent Van Gogh born, Dutch Impressionist painter, his work has a major impact on Western Art after his death

1856 – The Crimean War ends with Russia’s signing of the Peace of Paris

1858 – Pencil Day * – Hyman Lipman patents his method of attaching an eraser to the end of a pencil

1863 – Mary Calkins born, philosopher and psychologist, first woman president of the American Psychological Association

1864 – Helen Abbot Merrill born, mathematician, professor, textbook author, earns Ph.D. from Yale in 1903 with a thesis “On Solutions of Differential Equations which possess an Oscillation Theorem” – Wellesley Mathematics Department professor/chair (1915-32), executive council and then VP of Mathematical Association of America

1867 – “Seward’s Folly”: Secretary of State William Seward negotiates and signs the treaty for the U.S. to buy Alaska from Russia for 2 cents an acre, a total of $7,200,000

1870 – The 15th amendment to the Constitution, giving black men the right to vote, goes into effect

1870 – Texas becomes last confederate state readmitted to Union

1880 – Sean O’Casey born, Irish playwright; The Plough and the Stars, Juno and the Paycock

1882 – Melanie Klein born in Austria, British psychoanalyst, devised new techniques for working with children

1891 – Arthur Herrington born, American engineer-manufacturer; WWII jeep developer

1902 – Brooke Astor born, American author and philanthropist

1919 – Mahatma Gandhi announced a hartal, resistance to the Rowlatt Act, legislation passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi to indefinitely extend emergency measures of no-limit detention, incarceration without trial and suspension of  judicial review enacted in the Defence of India Act 1915 during WWI, named for Sir Sidney Rowlatt president of the legislative council; the hartal called for all Indians to stop doing business and fast, but when violence broke out in the Punjab and other areas, Gandhi suspended the hartal; violent protests continued, leading up to the infamous April 13 Amritsar massacre of  hundreds nonviolent unarmed civilians, including women and children, by troops under the command of Colonel Dyer, who ordered the exits blocked, and the troops to fire on the crowd with no warning

1925 – Josef Stalin speaks before the Yugoslav commission of the Comintern’s executive committee in support of the rights of non-Serbian Yugoslavians

1933 – The first Doctor’s Day * was a local event, started by Eudora Almond, too honor her husband, Dr. Charles Almond, and all the other members of his profession; see 1842 entry for Dr. Crawford Long; officially proclaimed as a National Day by President George H.W. Bush in 1991

1949 – After the Icelandic Alpingi (parliament) votes to join newly-formed NATO, anti-NATO protesters clash with supporters of the decision in front of the parliament building, and escalates into a rocking-throwing riot; Reykjavik police quell rioters with tear gas and arrests; protestors fear being dragged into the Cold War, and a confrontation with the U.S.S.R.

1950 – Janet Browne born, British science historian, noted for work on 19^th century biology and a two-volume biography of Charles Darwin; currently Aramont Professor of History of Science at Harvard University

1951 – Tina Monzon-Palma born, Filipina broadcast journalist and news anchor; led a public service campaign against child abuse (1997-1998); currently anchor of The World Tonight, an evening news program

1951 – Spiritual Shouter Baptist Liberation Day * celebrates the repeal of the Trinidad & Tobago 1917 Shouter Prohibition Ordinance prohibiting the shouting services of the Spiritual Baptists; the only country in the world with a public holiday honoring the Spiritual Baptist faith

1953 – Albert Einstein announces revised unified field theory

1956 – Shahka Sherkat born, Persian pioneer of the Iranian Women’s Rights movement and feminist author; founder-publisher of Zanan (Women) magazine in 1991, the first journal to focus on women’s rights after the 1979 Iranian Revolution; frequently in hot water with the Iranian government, Sherkat was sentenced to four months in prison for attending the 2000 Iran After the Elections Conference in Berlin, but the sentence was reduced on appeal to a heavy fine; honored in 2005 with the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) Courage in Journalism Award

1957 – Marie-Christine Kounja born, Chadian diplomat and first published Chadian woman author; First Secretary at the Chadian Embassy in Nigeria

1959 – The Dalai Lama is granted political asylum in India after fleeing Chinese-held Tibet, as thousands of Tibetans are killed fighting Chinese forces

1959 – Martina Cole born, British crime novelist, noted for strong women characters and gritty realism; her first book, Dangerous Lady, was made into a highly-rated four-part TV mini-series

1961 – The UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is signed by representatives of 185 countries; so far, 40 have ratified the convention

1964 – The TV game show Jeopardy! premieres

1967 – The cover shot for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album is taken by Peter Blake; it would win a Grammy for Best Album Cover

1970 – Miles Davis releases his double album Bitches Brew

1972 – A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opens on Broadway

1980 – Mark Medoff’s play Children of a Lesser God premieres on Broadway

1981 – ‘I Am In Control’ Day * – As President Reagan is being rushed to surgery after an assassination attempt that wounded Reagan, a Secret Service agent, a police officer and gravely wounded Press Secretary James Brady, Secretary of State Alexander Haig mistakenly claims, “As of now, I am in control here in the White House.”  He is taken to task by the media for those words, since the Vice President and several others are ahead of him in the line of officials tapped take over in the event of the President being incapacitated, but he says later he only meant he was in charge until Vice President Bush arrived at the White House and could be sworn in as Acting President

1981 – The film Chariots of Fire premieres at a Royal Command Performance in London; it will win the 1982 Best Picture Oscar

1987 – Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers sells for 22.5 million pounds ($39.7 million)

1995 – Pope John Paul II, who has never faced pregnancy or childbirth, issues an encyclical condemning abortion and euthanasia as crimes no human laws can legitimize

1999 – A Portland OR jury finds Philip Morris liable for $81 million to the family of a man who died of lung cancer after smoking Marlboros for four decades

2006 – American reporter Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, is released after an 82-day ordeal as a hostage in Iraq

Jill Carroll talks with U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc, as she prepares to leave Iraq on U.S. Air Force transport/ CSM photo

2009 – President Barack Obama asserts unprecedented government control over the auto industry, rejecting GM and Chrysler’s restructuring plans and engineering the ouster of GM’s chief executive, Rick Wagoner, demanding fresh concessions for long-term federal aid and raising the possibility of quick bankruptcy for either ailing auto giant. “I am absolutely committed to working with Congress and the auto companies to meet one goal: The United States of America will lead the world in building the next generation of clean cars,” Obama said, adding, “our auto industry is not moving in the right direction fast enough to succeed.”

2012 – Austerity Measure: the Spanish Government cuts its budget by 27 billion Euros

2013 – The Kenyan Supreme Court declares Uhuru Kenyatta the rightful winner of Kenya’s presidential election

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