April 14^th is

Webster’s Dictionary Day *

Look Up at the Sky Day

National Dolphin Day

Pan American Day *

National Pecan Day

Slow Art Day *

International Moment of Laughter Day *

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MORE! Temür Khan, Loretta Lynn and David Hare, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

 Bangladesh – Pahela Baishakh
(Bangla New Year)

Cambodia – Choul Chnam Thmey
(Cambodian New Year)

Haiti and Honduras – Pan American Day

India – Vaisakhi/Baisakhi (Sikh new year
festival/Khalsa panth of warriors)

Japan – Orange Day
(orange love tokens exchange day)

Laos – Pi Mai (Laos New Year)

Nepal – Bisket Jatra (Festival of
 Nepalese New Year – ongoing)

Sri Lanka – Sinhala & Tamil New Year

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On This Day in HISTORY

AD 70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, surrounds the Jewish capital with four Roman legions

1294 – Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan dynasty with reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong

1434 – The foundation stone of Nantes Cathedral, in France, is laid

1629 – Christiaan Huygens born, Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist; first to sight rings of Saturn and its moon Titan; invented the pendulum clock

1775 – The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is organized in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, the first American abolition society

1816 – Bussa, a slave in British-ruled Barbados, leads a slave rebellion and is killed; first national hero of Barbados

1827 – Augustus Pitt Rivers born, English archaeologist, “father of British archaeology”

1828 – Webster’s Dictionary Day * – Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary

1844 – Anatole France born, French poet and novelist; La Révolte des anges 

1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, and dies the next day

1866 – Anne Sullivan born, American educator, Helen Keller’s teacher

1889 – Arnold Toynbee born, English historian and author; 12 volume Study of History

1890 – Pan American Day *- The Pan-American Union is founded by the First International Conference of American States in Washington, D.C.

1894 – The first commercial motion picture house opened in New York City using ten Kinetoscopes, a device for peep-show viewing of films

1900 – Opening Day of the Exposition Universelle, the world’s fair in Paris, France

1905 – Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby born, American educator; as Vice Principal for Girls at Little Rock Central High School in 1957 when nine black students, six of them girls, were admitted to the school after desegregation, she was responsible for protecting the girls; in 1958, Governor Orval Faubus closed all the public schools to resist desegration, and after a year of paying teachers. who were under contract, to sit in empty schools, three members of the Little Rock School Board declared themselves a majority and fired dozens of teachers and administrators, including Huckaby; but the board members were voted out of office, and those who had been fired were reinstated. Author of Crisis at Central High: Little Rock 1957–58, published after her retirement in 1980, based on the diary she kept during the crisis

Elizabeth Huckaby, on left, in front of Little Rock Central High School

1909 – Massacres of 15,000 Armenians in the Armenian provinces, especially in Adana, Cilicia; some of the Young Turks were probably involved

1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 23:40, sinks morning of April 15th

1919 – Shamshad Begum born, Indian singer, sang in a number of languages including Hindi, Tamil, and Punjabi

1919 – K. Saraswathi Amma born, Malayalam-language feminist writer from the state of Kerala in India, whose short stories, essays and a novel were radically anti-patriarchy, so she was dismissed at the time as “an incorrigible man-hater” but has since been re-discovered and celebrated by feminist scholars

1924 – Helen W. Warnock born, the Baroness Warnock, English philosopher and author who has written extensively on ethics and existentialism; Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge (1984-1991); chair of a 1974 UK inquiry on special education, which resulted on a radical change to placing learning-disabled children in mainstream school, and giving them additional educational support; President of Listening Books, a charity providing audiobooks to anyone who has difficulty reading 

1926 – Barbara R. Anderson born, Lady Anderson, a New Zealand medical technologist and teacher who first became a published novelist in her sixties

1927 – The first Volvo car premieres in Gothenburg, Sweden

1932 – Loretta Lynn, American singer-songwriter; 7 American Music Awards, 12 Academy of Country Music awards and 4 Grammys

1939 – John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is published

1941 – German forces under General Erwin Rommel attack Tobruk in Libya

1949 – Dame Deanne Julius born, American- British economist and analyst, formerly for the CIA; founding member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee; current Lady Usher of the Blue Rod of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George since 2016

1955 – Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” is released

1960 – The musical Bye Bye Birdie opens on Broadway

1978 – David Hare’s play Plenty premieres in London

1978 – Thousands of Georgians demonstrate in the capital Tbilisi against Soviet attempts to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language

1988 – In a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan

1989 – Tom Petty releases his first solo album Full Moon Fever 

1991 – The Republic of Georgia introduces the post of President after its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union

2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%

2009 – Slow Art Day * is founded by art enthusiasts, and is now a global grassroots volunteer movement to encourage people go with a friend or loved one to visit an art museum in their area, and view just 3 or 4 works of art for 5 to 20 minutes each, and then talk about them – taking it slowly and concentrating on just a few artworks might inspire you to visit museums more often, to look at less, but see more

2013 – International Moment of Laughter Day * is launched by Izzy Gesell, American “Humorologist,” because laughter relieves stress and boosts optimism

2014 – The Jihadist terrorist group Boko Haram abducts 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria; some have since escaped, been rescued, or freed, but the fate of over 100 of the girls remains unknown

2015 – Stone tools found at the Lomekwi 3 archaeological site in Kenya are dated to 3.3 million years ago, the oldest stone tools yet found

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