May 3rd is

Chocolate Custard Day

Garden Meditation Day

Lumpy Rug Day *

National Textiles Day *

National Public Radio Day *

Two Different Colored Shoes Day *

UN World Press Freedom Day *

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MORE! Marcel Dupré, Golda Meir and William Inge, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Catholic and Orthodox Christianity – Traditional day of the finding of the ‘True Cross’ upon which Jesus was crucified, after a search throughout Jerusalem led by the Byzantine Empress, later Saint, Helena. In Spanish-speaking countries, name variants include the words “La Cruz” or “Las Cruses”

Cambodia – Pithi Cheat Preah Meaning Korl
(Royal ploughing ceremony)

Japan – Constitution Day

Mexico – Día de la Santa Cruz

Peru – Fiesta de las Cruces

Poland – Constitution Day

Venezuela – La Cruz de Mayo

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On This Day in HISTORY

752 – Mayan King Yaxun B’alam IV, (‘Bird Jaguar IV’) of Yaxchilan in modern-day Chiapas, Mexico assumes the throne

1469 – Niccolò Machiavelli born, Italian Renaissance politician, historian, philosopher and author, sometimes called the founder of modern political science; Il Principe

1481 – Juana de la Cruz Vázquez y Gutiérrez born, Spanish abbess of the Franciscan Third Order Regular, and mystic who experienced visions, muteness and the stigmata; authorized to preach publically, an extraordinary permission for a woman; 72 of her sermons were collected in 1509 in The Conhorte

1491 – Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptized by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I

1715 – A total solar eclipse was visible across northern Europe, and northern Asia, as predicted by Edmond Halley to within 4 minutes accuracy

1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city

1825 – Laura Matilda Towne born, American abolitionist, physician and educator, relocates to the Sea Islands of South Carolina in 1862 to provide medical care and education to newly freed slaves, founds the Penn school

1830 – The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway is opened; it is the first steam-hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.

1830 – The University of Athens is founded in Athens, Greece

1844 – Richard D’Oyly Carte born, theatrical impresario, producer of thirteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas

1849 – Jacob Riis born in Denmark, American “muckraking” journalist, photographer and social reformer who wrote about and took pictures of NYC slum conditions

1849 – The May Uprising in Dresden, in the Kingdom of Saxony, fails. It is one of the last events in the Revolutions of 1848 that aimed to unite the German states into one nation under a constitutional monarchy; the failure of these revolutions meant a sharp rise in emigrates leaving the German states, many of them well-educated, especially artists, musicians and writers

1853 – E. W. Howe born, American editor, essayist and novelist

1855 – William Walker, American freebooter, departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Latin America and create new slave states; he succeeds usurping in the presidency of the Republic of Nicaragua in 1856 and rules until 1857, when he was defeated by a coalition of Central American armies; Walker is executed by the government of Honduras in 1860

1867 – The Hudson’s Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island

1886 – Marcel Dupré born, French organist and composer

1892 – George Paget Thomson born, English physicist, awarded 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery of the wave properties of the electron by electron diffraction

1894 – Phyllis Greenacres born, psychoanalyst, interest in physical maturation and psychological development in children led to study of gifted infants, wrote “Swift and Carroll” (1955), a biographical study in applied analysis

1896 – Dodie Smith born, English children’s author; noted for Hundred and One Dalmatians, and I Capture the Castle 

1898 – Septima Poinsette Clark born, American educator and civil rights activist, develops literacy and citizenship workshops to support voting rights for African Americans; called “The Mother of the Movement” by Martin Luther King, Jr.

1898 – Golda Meir born in Ukraine, moved with family to the U.S. in 1906; Israeli educator and politician, 4th Prime Minister of Israel (1969-1974)

1901 – Estelle Massey Osborne born, first African American to earn a Master’s degree in Nursing Education, and the first black American head nurse (1923-1926), at St. Louis Hospital #2 in Missouri; returned to school, earned her BS (1929) and her Master of Science degree (1931); President of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (1934-1939); consultant to the National Nursing Council for War Services (1943-1945); on the American Nurses Association board (1948-1952); posthumously inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame

1902 – Jimmy Winkfield, riding Alan-a-Dale, wins the Kentucky Derby for the second year in a row; the last African American jockey to ride a winner in the derby

Jimmy Winkfield riding Alan-a-Dale

1903 – Bing Crosby born, American ‘crooner’singer-songwriter and movie star

1906 – Anna Roosevelt Halsted born, American newspaper and magazine editor, and children’s book author; appointed by President Kennedy to the Citizen’s Advisory Council on the Status of Women (1963-1968), and as vice-chairman of the President’s Commission for the Observance of Human Rights (1968-1971)

1912 – May Sarton born, prolific American poet, novelist and memoirist; Journal of a Solitude

1913 – William Inge born, American playwright; 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Picnic

1913 – Raja Harishchandra, the first full-length Indian feature film is released, the beginning of the Indian film industry

1917 – Betty Comden born, American screenwriter and librettist for Broadway and Hollywood musicals with comedy partner Adolph Green; notable for Bells Are Ringing, Singin’ in the Rain, and the screenplay for Auntie Mame (1958)

1919 – Pete Seeger born, American singer-songwriter, and activist; The Weavers

1920 – John Aaron Lewis born, American Jazz composer-arranger-pianist; musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet

1921 – The Government of Ireland Act 1920 is passed, partitioning Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland

1923 – Clara Shepard Luper born, civil rights leader and teacher; earned a Master of Arts degree in History Education in 1951; advisor for the Oklahoma City NAACP Youth Council in 1957, led them in 1958 in a successful sit-in at Katz drugstore, resulting in the Katz corporation desegregating their lunch counters in three states; led campaigns for equal banking rights, employment opportunities, open housing, and voting rights (1958-1964); in 1968, one of the few African-American teachers hired at a previously segregated Oklahoma City high school as part of a court-ordered desegregation plan; co-author of Behold the Walls, an account of the campaign for civil rights in Oklahoma City (1979)

Clara Shepard Luper and Melvin Porter, Oklahoma’s first African American State Senator

1932 – Robert Osborne born, American film historian and television host

1933 – James Brown, American singer-songwriter and producer

1933 – Nellie Tayloe Ross is appointed as the first woman director of the United States Mint, serving until 1953

1937 – Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone with the Wind, wins Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

1937 – Nélida Piñon born, Brazilian author, won the Walmap Prize, 1970, for her historical novel, Fundador (Founders), known for A Republica dos Sonhos (The Republic of Dreams), President of Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters)

1948 – U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to black Americans and other minorities are legally unenforceable

1949 – Ruth Lister born, Baroness Lister of Burtersett, Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University, and author of books and articles on poverty and child poverty in particular, social issues and women’s citizenship; appointed to House of Lords as a Life Peer in 2011, and sits as a Labour Party member

1951 – The Festival of Britain debuts in London’s newly-constructed Royal Festival Hall

1951 – Tatyana Tolstaya born, Russian writer and TV host, known for her novels and acerbic essays on contemporary Russian life

1951 – U.S. Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations begin closed door hearings on dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by President Harry Truman

1951 – Christopher Cross born, American singer-songwriter; “Sailing” “Arthur’s Theme”

1952 – Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the U.S. land a plane at the North Pole

1959 – Uma Bharti born, Indian politician, member of the Indian Parliament; Minister of Drinking Water & Sanitation since 2017; Minister of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation (2014-2017)

1960 – Off-Broadway musical, The Fantasticks, opens in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming one of the longest-running musicals in New York

1960 – The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

1961 – Leyla Zan born, Kurdish politician, peace and human rights activist; member of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party until it was banned; elected as an independent member of the Grand National Assembly (1991-1994); imprisoned for 10 years when Turkish courts ruled her activities were against the unity of the country (1994-2004); served in parliament (2011-2018)

1963 – The police force in Birmingham, Alabama responds with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing greater attention to the Civil Rights Movement

1963 – Mona Siddiqui born in Pakistan, British Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, the first person to hold this chair, and Dean International for the Middle East; her family moved to England when she was 5 years old; fluent in English, French, Arabic and Urdu

1971 – National Public Radio Day * celebrates the first broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered, their flagship program

1971 – Anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe begin four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C., aimed at shutting down the nation’s capital

1975 – Lumpy Rug Day * is launched by Robert Louis Birch, a librarian and linguist retired from the U.S. Patent Office Science Library, to expose all the inconvenient truths being swept under the rug by bigots and trigots (his word for people even worse than bigots)

1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (now known as “spam”) is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the U.S. West Coast

1979 – Margaret Thatcher forms her government as the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

1993 – UN World Press Freedom Day * is proclaimed by the UN General Assembly, to commemorate the Windhoek Declaration produced at a 1991 UNESCO seminar to promote an independent and pluralistic African Press, and freedom of the press throughout the world as a keystone of participatory democracy

1996 – Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy Day * sponsored by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy was founded in 1996 to combat the nation’s incredibly high rates of teen pregnancy, and has expanded their campaign to include all unplanned pregnancies

2001 – The U.S. loses its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947

2009 – Two Different Colored Shoes Day * is launched by Dr. Arlene Kaiser as a day to break out of your routine and have some fun – why be “normal” – be you!

2016 – National Textiles Day * is founded by Valley Forge Fabrics to recognize all that textiles do to improve our lives. Whether woven from natural or synthetic fibers, textiles are the stuff from which our clothes, bedding, furniture covers, rugs, curtains, and canvas for art and sailing is made

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