April 28^th is

Great Poetry Reading Day

Blueberry Pie Day

Workers’ Memorial Day *

National Brave Hearts Day *

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MORE! James Monroe, Hertha Ayrton and Harper Lee, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Afghanistan – Victory Day

Barbados –
National Heroes’ Day

Gibraltar –
Workers’ Memorial Day

Wallis and Futuna –
Saint Pierre-Chanel Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1192 – Hashshashin kill Conrad of Montferrat, aka Conrad I, King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his election; Hashshashin, a splinter group of Nizaris Ismails, a Persian sect which split from a branch of Shia Islam in the 11^th century; English word is assassin

1253 – Nichiren, Japanese Buddhist monk, declares Nam u Myōhō Renge Kyō to be the essence of Buddhism; the foundation of Nichiren Buddhism

1758 – James Monroe born, 5th U.S. President

1761 – Marie Harel born, French cheesemaker; legend says she invented Camembert cheese, but her real contribution was to begin innovations which enabled her grandson Cyrille to greatly increase cheese production

1764 – Marie-Joseph Chenier born, French poet, dramatist, politician and revolutionary

1788 – Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the U.S. Constitution

1789 – Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island

1838 – Tobias Asser born, Dutch jurist; 1911 Nobel Prize for Peace, for his role in The Hague treaties

1854 – Hertha Marks Ayrton born, British pioneering engineer, mathematician, physicist, inventor and advocate for woman suffrage; she patented an engineering drawing instrument called a line-divider, useful to artists and architects as well as engineers, the first of 26 patents she would register. In 1899, her paper on a solution to the flickering and hissing of arc lighting was the first one read by a woman at the Institution of Electrical Engineers, who afterwards made her their first woman member. In 1901, her petition to read one of her papers before the Royal Society was refused because of her sex, but her paper was allowed to be read by Fellow John Perry, who proposed her for a Fellowship, which the society refused on the grounds that married women were not allowed to become Fellows; but in 1904, she became the first woman to read her  paper at the Society; in 1906, the Royal Society awarded the Hughes Medal to Ayrton for her work on electric arcs, and ripples in sand and water, another first. As of 2015, only one other woman, Michele Dougherty in 2008, has been awarded the Hughes Medal

1868 – Lucy Booth born, English composer and Salvation Army territorial co-commander with her husband in India, and after his death, a commander in Denmark, Norway and South America; noted for the Salvation Army song Keep On Believing

1886 – Erich Salomon born, German photographer; a pioneer of photojournalism

1896 – Na Hye-sok born, pioneering Korean feminist, author, poet, journalist and first professional woman painter in Korea, who used the pseudonym Jeongwol; her short story, Kyonghul (1918), about a woman’s self-discovery, is considered the first feminist work in Korean literature. After her husband divorced her for infidelity while they were living in Paris, her reputation was ruined when she published A Divorce Confession, which challenged male dominance and repression of women’s sexuality in Korean society. Unable to sell her writing or her paintings, she spent her last years living on the charity of Buddhist monasteries. Her paintings are now highly regarded and sell for thousands of dollars, but it is difficult to authenticate her later work, and a number of fakes have appeared on the market

1902 – Johan Borgen born, Norwegian author, dramatist, and essayist

1906 – Bart Jan Bok born in Holland, American astronomer; expert on the Milky Way

1906 – Kurt Godel born in Austria, American mathematician and logician

1910 – Frenchman Louis Paulhan wins the 1910 London-to-Manchester Air Race, the first long-distance aeroplane race in England

1916 – Ferruccio Lamborghini born, Italian car manufacturer

1920 – Azerbaijan becomes part of the Soviet Union

1926 – Harper Lee born, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom

1932 – Brownie Ledbetter born, became politically active in 1957, during Little Rock Integration Crisis, joined Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), then Little Rock Panel of American Women, which organized discussion groups and developed programs to help students and train teachers. National Women’s Political Caucus (Political Action Chair 1973), worked for E.R.A., co-founder with Bella Abzug of Women’s Environment and Development Organization

1940 – Glenn Miller and his orchestra record “Pennsylvania 6-5000”

https://youtu.be/fbeQnYbZisI

1945 – Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are captured and executed by Italian partisans when they attempt to flee to Switzerland

1947 – A six-man expedition ser sail from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia

1967 – Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the Army, citing religious reasons – he is a convert to the Islamic faith – “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” – he is stripped of his title, banned from boxing for 3 years, convicted of draft evasion, fined and sentenced to 5 years in prison, but appeals and his sentence is later overturned by the U.S Supreme Court

1971 – Workers’ Memorial Day * sponsored by the AFL-CIO, honors union workers who died in accidents or from work-related illnesses, and all those who fought for safer working conditions, on the day that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) opens its doors; OSHA was a provision of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, passed in 1970

1980 – Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned over his opposition to the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran

1990 – The musical “A Chorus Line” closes after 6,137 performances on Broadway

1993 – First Take Our Daughters to Work Day, sponsored by the Ms. Foundation; it became Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day * in 2003

1994 – Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who betrayed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pleads guilty to espionage and tax evasion and is sentenced to life in prison without parole

1996 – President Bill Clinton gives over 4 hours of videotaped testimony as a defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater business partners

2001 – A Russian rocket lifted off from Central Asia bearing the first space tourist, California businessman Dennis Tito

2004 – The first photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal were shown on CBS’ 60 Minutes II

2007 – National Brave Hearts Day * – on this day, Jeremy and Amy Jacobs were told their 13-month-old daughter Ava had a massive brain tumor; by chance, Jeremy overheard someone talking about a new treatment, Proton Therapy, which saved their daughter’s life; the Jacobs created BraveHearts for Kids to give information and support to families with a child suffering from pediatric cancer

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