April 24th is

Library of Congress Day *

World Meningitis Day

International Sauvignon Blanc Day

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day *

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MORE! Thutmose III, Annie Oakley and Sigmund Freud, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Armenia – Armenian Remembrance Day

Gabon – Women’s Day Holiday

Niger – Concord Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1479 BCE – Thutmose III ascends to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifts to Hatshepsut (‘Foremost of Noble Ladies’ – second confirmed female pharaoh, after Sobekneferu – Low Chronology of the 18th dynasty)

1184 BCE – Traditional date of the fall of Troy

1558 – Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the French Dauphin, François, in Paris

1704 – The first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, begins publication

1706 – Giambattista Martini born, Italian composer

1800 – Library of Congress Day * – The U.S. Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress”

1815 –Anthony Trollope born, English novelist

1847 – Susan Dimock born, American physician, resident physician of New England Hospital for Women and Children, first woman to join North Carolina Medical Society

1885 – American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

1889 – Lyubov Popova born, Russian avant-garde artist and designer; one of the first women in Cubo-Futurism

1895 – Joshua Slocum, begins his voyage to become the first person to sail single-handedly around the world, setting sail from Boston MA aboard his sloop Spray

1898 – Spain declares war after rejecting an American ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba

1900 – Elizabeth Goudge born, British author; Carnegie Medal, The Little White Horse

1904 – Willem de Kooning born in Holland, American Abstract Expressionist painter

1905 – Robert Penn Warren born, American writer and first U.S. poet laureate

1913 – The Woolworth Building, a skyscraper in New York City, still of the 100 tallest buildings in the U.S.

1915 – Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day * – 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders are arrested in Constantinople, beginning the Armenian Genocide in Turkey; an estimated 1.5 million Armenians are killed; the Turkish government remains adamant that the numbers are greatly exaggerated and most of the deaths caused by disease, but there is convincing evidence, including photographs and written eye-witness accounts by workers for international charities and by missionaries running schools and orphanages in Turkey

1916 – Easter Rising: Irish rebels, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, launch a vain attempt in Dublin to end British rule and proclaim an Irish Republic

1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to rescue the crew of the sunken Endurance

1922 – The first segment of the Imperial Wireless Chain  to provide wireless telegraphy  between Leafield in Oxfordshire UK and Cairo, Egypt, goes into operation

1923 – In Vienna, Sigmund Freud publishes his paper Das Ich und das Es (The Ego and the Id) outlining his theories of the id, ego, and super-ego

1926 – The Treaty of Berlin is signed by Germany and the Soviet Union, pledging neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years

1931 –Bridget Riley born, English artist and muralist, she is one of the foremost painters in Op Art

1932 – Benny Rothman leads the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, in the Peak district of Derbyshire, to protest walkers in England and Wales being denied access to areas of open country; six trespassers are arrested. Trespass is not a criminal offence in any part of Britain at the time, but jail sentences of two to six months are given for offences of violence in scuffles with the gamekeepers attempting to keep the walkers out. The movement contributed to passage of the National Parks legislation in 1949

1933 – Nazi Germany shuts down the Jehovah’s Witnesses Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg

1934 – Laurens Hammond patents a pipeless organ with the tonewheel generator

1940 – Sue Grafton born, American mystery writer; noted for her alphabet series (A is for Alibi) with protagonist Kinsey Milhone

1942 – Barbra Streisand born, American singer-songwriter, actress, producer-director, winner of awards: Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony

1944 – Maarja Nummert born, Estonian architect, noted for innovative designs for schools and churches

1953 – Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

1961 – Del Shannon’s single “Runaway” hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100

1962 –Massachusetts Institute of Technology makes 1st satellite relay of a television signal

1968 – Apple Records refuses to sign David Bowie

1968 – Louis Armstrong’s single “What a Wonderful World” reaches #1 on the UK’s charts, making him the oldest person, at 66, ever to score a UK #1

1970 – The Gambia becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, with  Dawda Jawara as its first President

1972 – John Lennon’s controversial single “Woman is the Nigger of the World” is released in the U.S, reaching #57 on Billboard’s Hot 100, in spite of virtually every U.S. radio station refusing to air it. Yoko Ono had used the phrase, and Lennon wrote the song to make the point that women deserve better treatment and higher status

1990 – NASA launches the Hubble Space Telescope from the Space Shuttle Discovery

1996 – The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act passes into law in the U.S.

1996 – The PLO main assembly votes to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel

2004 – After Libya cooperates in eliminating weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. lifts economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously

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