May 22nd is

National Maritime Day *

Sherlock Holmes Day *

U.S. Colored Troops Day *

Vanilla Pudding Day

World Goth Day *

International Day for Biological Diversity *

_________________________________________

MORE! John Wycliffe, Mary Casatt and Arthur Conan Doyle, click

_________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Buddha’s Birthday celebrated in Hong Kong, Macau, and South Korea

Australia – Darwin NT:
Deckchair Film Festival

Martinique – Abolition Day

Yemen – Unification Day

_________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

334 BC – The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus

760 – The 14th recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet

1176 – During Saladin’s conquest of Syria, the Hashshashin (assassins) attempt to murder him near Aleppo

1370 – Several Jews are murdered, and the rest of the Jewish community is banished from Brussels

1377 – Pope Gregory XI issues five papal bulls to denounce 19 propositions of On Civil Dominion written by English theologian John Wycliffe, which attacked the privileged status of the priesthood, and the luxury and pomp of the Church’s ceremonies

1408 – Tallapaka Annamacharya born, Hindu saint, and earliest known India musician to compose sankirtanas (praise songs) for Venkateswara, one of Vishnu’s avatars, and the first known composer of carnatic music

1762 – Rome’s Trevi Fountain is completed and inaugurated by Pope Clemens XIII

1772 – Ram Mohan Roy born, Indian philosopher and reformer, advocate for abolishing sati, the custom of a widow (suttee, “good woman”) casting herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, held up as an ideal of Hindu womanly devotion, but sometimes by compulsion of the wives of wealthy men, so other relatives could inherit the estate

1783 – William Sturgeon born, English physicist; invents electric motor, electromagnet

1807 – A grand jury indicts former U.S. V.P. Aaron Burr on a charge of treason

1813 – Richard Wagner born, German composer and librettist, mostly of operas

1814 – Amalia Lindegren born, Swedish painter, one of only four women given a dispensation to study at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts (1849-1850), and the first woman to be given a scholarship by the academy to study art in Paris (1850-1853)

Sunday Evening in a Farmhouse, by Amalia Lindegren

1816 – A mob in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, England, riots over high unemployment and rising grain costs, which spreads to neighboring Ely the next day

1826 – HMS Beagle departs on its first voyage

1828 – Albrecht von Grafe born, German surgeon and pioneering ophthalmologist

1840 – The transportation of British convicts to the New South Wales colony in Australia is abolished

1841 – Catulle Mendès born, French poet, playwright, novelist and editor; founder of La Revue fantaisiste, which publishes works by Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire, and editor of Le Parnasse contemporain

1844 – Mary Casatt, American Impressionist painter and printmaker, one of “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism

Auguste Reading to Her Daughter, Mary Casatt – 1910

1846 – Rita Cetina Gutiérrez born, Mexican teacher, poet and pioneering Mexican feminist who promoted secular education; opened La Siempreviva (‘everlasting’),  Mexico’s first secular school for poor girls, and an art college for young women;  established simultaneously a scientific and literary society and a newspaper of the same name, specifically written for young women

1848 – Slavery is abolished in Martinique

1849 – Future U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is issued Patent #6,469 for an invention for “buoying vessels over shoals,” the only U.S. President to ever hold a patent

1859 – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle born in Scotland, British author of the Sherlock Holmes adventures – see Sherlock Holmes Day * in 2013

1863 – US Colored Troops Day * – The U.S. War Department issues General Order Number 143 on May 22, 1863, establishing the Bureau of Colored Troops to recruit African-American soldiers to fight for the Union Army.  Regiments, including infantry,  cavalry, engineers, light artillery, and heavy artillery units, are recruited from all states of the Union and become known as the United States Colored Troops (USCT); Native Americans are also recruited

1872 – President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act into law, restoring full civil and political rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers

1892 – Dr. Washington Sheffeld invents the collapsible metal toothpaste tube

1900 – The Associated Press is formed in New York as a non-profit news cooperative

1906 – The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their “Flying-Machine”

1907 – Laurence Olivier is born, British actor-manager and stage and film director, co-director of the Old Vic; founding director of Britain’s National Theatre

1907 – Edith Margaret Faulstich born, American philatelist and philatelic journalist and editor, a specialist in postal history and postal covers; a founding member of the Postal History Society of the Americas, and its first woman president

1909 – Margaret Brown Mee born, British botanical artist, environmentalist and trade unionist, specialist in plants of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, after moving to Brazil in 1952, worked as a botanical artist for São Paulo’s Instituto de Botanica (1958-1964), creating 400 folios of gouache illustrations, 40 sketchbooks and 15 diaries of her explorations; one of the first people protest the impact of large-scale mining and deforestation on the Amazon Basin; Flowers of the Brazilian Forests and The Diaries of Margaret Mee

Margaret Mee working – Bromeliad

1927 – Peter Matthiessen born, American novelist, short story writer, editor and environmental activist; co-founded The Paris Review; the only writer to win the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction; The Snow Leopard, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse and Shadow County

1930 – Marisol Escobar born in Paris, French sculptor of Venezuelan heritage who worked in New York City; feminist who used exaggerated, stylized feminine poses and behaviors in several satirical works

1933 – Congress declares National Maritime Day * to commemorate the American steamship Savannah’s voyage from the United States to England, marking the first successful crossing of the Atlantic Ocean with steam propulsion. During World War II more than 250,000 members of the American Merchant Marine served their country, with more than 6,700 giving their lives, hundreds being detained as prisoners of war and more than 800 U.S. merchant ships being sunk or damaged

1939 – Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel (actually named the Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy), declaring continuing trust and cooperation, and an intention for a union of policies on military and economic matters

1942 – Mexico enters World War II on the side of the Allies

1943 – Joseph Stalin disbands the Comintern, also called the Third International (1919–1943), an international communist organization advocating world communism

1943 – Betty Williams born, Northern Irish peace activist, co-founder with Mairead Corrigan of the Community of Peace People; co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize; co0founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative in 2006 with Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchú Tum, to support women’s rights campaigns around the world

1946 – The Culinary Institute of America is founded

1946 – Lyudmila Zhuravleva born, Ukrainian astronomer; at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, she discovered 213 minor planets and asteroids

1947 – Truman Doctrine is enacted; Congress appropriates aid for Greece and Turkey

1950 – Irène Frain born, French novelist, journalist and historian; founding member of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society; Le Nabab (The Nabob); advocate and activist for the Tibetan cause and Aid to Tibetan Children

1956 – Lucie Brock-Boido born, American poet who published four collections of poetry; winner of the Witter-Bynner Prize for  Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim fellowship

1957 – The South African government approves racial separation in universities

1958 – Riots in Ceylon become a watershed in the race relationship of various ethnic communities of Sri Lanka; 300 people, mostly Tamils, are killed

1959 – Mehbooba Mufti born, Indian politician, the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir since 2016, and the second Muslim woman chef minister in India; president of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party, and a member of the Indian Parliament (2004-2009)

1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the Great Society, a set of domestic programs to end poverty and racial injustice, during a speech at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

1967 – World Goth Day *- The origins are uncertain, but one theory is that it is related to music of the band The Doors acquiring its ‘Gothic Rock’ nickname in 1967

1969 – NASA’s Apollo 10 lunar module flies within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the moon’s surface

1972 – Ceylon adopts a new constitution, becoming a Republic, changes its name to Sri Lanka, and joins the Commonwealth of Nations

1972 – Accounting Day is founded; there is an annual accountants’ convention

1973 – U.S. President Richard Nixon confesses his role in the Watergate cover-up

1976 – Cheyenne Carron born, French film director, screenwriter and producer; Jeunesse aux coeurs ardents

1987 – During the Hindu-Muslin riots in Meerut, Uttar Padesh state, in India, 42 Muslim youth were rounded up, allegedly by 19 personnel of PAC, the Provincial Armed Constabulary, from the Hashimpura mohalla (area) of the city, and taken by truck to the outskirts, where they were shot, and their bodies dumped in water canals; the case against the 16 accused who survived the riots is still pending, the oldest pending case in the Delhi court, where it was transferred in 2002; five survivors testified in 2007

1990 – North and South Yemen are unified to create the Republic of Yemen

1992 – The UN Convention on Biological Diversity is established; the International Day for Biological Diversity * is proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2000

1994 – A worldwide trade embargo goes into effect against Haiti because its military rulers refuse to reinstate ousted elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide

1996 – The Burmese military regime tries to block a pro-democracy meeting by jailing 71 supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy, and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize

2002 – A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

2003 – Annika Sörenstam plays in the Colonial golf tournament in Fort Worth TX, the second woman to play against the men in a PGA Tour event, since Babe Zaharias played in the 1945 Los Angeles Open

2013 – Sherlock Holmes Day * is launched on the birthday of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who ironically grew to loathe Sherlock, feeling the reading public’s demands for more Holmes stories kept him from writing “serious” literature

2015 – The Republic of Ireland becomes the first nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage in a public referendum

_________________________________________