May 26th is

Paper Airplane Day

Blueberry Cheesecake Day

World Lindy Hop Day

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MORE! Aleksandr Pushkin, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Mamie Smith, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – National Sorry Day *

Denmark –
Crown Prince Frederik’s Birthday

Georgia – Independence Day

Guyana – Independence Day

Netherlands – Hellendoorn:
Daupop Festival

Poland – Mother’s Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

946 – Edmund I, King of the English, is assassinated by Leofa, a thief sentenced to exile

1135 – Alfonso VII of León and Castile is crowned in León Cathedral as Imperator totius Hispaniae (Emperor of all of Spain)

1538 – The city of Geneva, Switzerland, expels John Calvin and his followers, after the city’s council insists that unleavened bread be used for communion at Easter services, so Calvin refuses to give communion at all, and a riot ensues. Calvin lives in exile in Strasbourg for the next three years

1647 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony bans Jesuit priests from the colony on penalty of death; in addition to being French Catholics, the Jesuits converted many Indians in Canada who were potential French allies, and England and France were at war

1647 – Alse Young becomes the first person executed as a witch in the American colonies, when she is hanged in Hartford, Connecticut

1650 – John Churchill born, 1^st Duke of Marlborough, English general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire

1689 – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu born, English poet and letter writer; “stole” her education from books in her father’s library, teaching herself Latin. Remembered for letters written home from the Ottoman Empire as the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, the first notable secular work by a woman about “the Muslim Orient” (Letters from Turkey). Also notable for introducing and campaigning for smallpox inoculation in Britain after her return from Turkey. In her writings, she addresses and challenges the hindering attitudes of her society toward women and their intellectual and social growth

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, by Charles Jervas, circa 1717

1799 – Aleksandr Pushkin born, Russian poet, novelist, dramatist and short-story writer

1805 – The Lewis and Clark expedition first sights the Rocky Mountains

1837 – Washington Roebling born, American civil engineer; Brooklyn Bridge designer

1860 – During the struggle for the unification of Italy, the Expedition of the Thousand, a volunteer corps led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, with help from disgruntled locals, occupies Palermo, Italy

1861 – U.S. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair announces the end of postal connection to the South because of the Civil War

1861 – The Union blockades New Orleans LA and Mobile AL

1869 – Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

1881 – Julia C. Stimson born, American nurse, Major in the United States Army, superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during WWI, chief of the Nursing Council on National Defense during WWII, recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal as well as Victory Medals for WWI and WWII

1883 – Mamie Smith born, American singer, pianist, and dancer; the first African American artist to make a vocal blues recording (1920)

1895 – Dorothea Lange born, American photographer and journalist; notable work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression

1896 – Tsar Nicholas II is crowned; he will be the last Tsar of Russia

1898 – San Francisco approves City Charter, allows Municipal ownership of utilities

1899 – Muriel McQueen Fergusson born, Canadian politician, Senator and first woman Speaker of the Canadian Senate

1906 – The Archaeological Institute of America is formed

1908 – The first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made at Masjed Soleyman in southeast Persia; the United Kingdom acquires the rights

1909 – Helen Moore Anderson born, American diplomat; President Truman appoints her as Ambassador to Denmark, first woman to serve as chief of mission at the level of ambassador (1949-1953). She learned Danish after her appointment. Appointed by President Kennedy as minister to Bulgaria (1962-1964), the first woman chief of a U.S. diplomatic mission behind the Iron Curtain; President Lyndon Johnson appointed her to the UN Trusteeship Council in 1965, where she was the first woman to sit on the Security Council, and a year later she served on the UN Committee for Decolonization

Helen Moore Anderson with President Kennedy in 1962

1913 – The Actors’ Equity Association of America is formed in New York

1913 – Emily Duncan becomes Great Britain’s first woman magistrate

1916 – Henriette Roosenburg born, journalist, Dutch resistance courier during WWII and political prisoner; tells the story in her memoir The Walls Came Tumbling Down; after WWII, she became a correspondent for Time Inc, in Paris, The Hague and New York; awarded the Bronze Lion of the Netherlands 

1920 – Peggy Lee born, American singer-songwriter

1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs Immigration Act of 1924 into law; immigration remains open to the college-educated and skilled workers, but entry was denied to Mexicans, and disproportionately to Eastern and Southern Europeans and Japanese. At the same time, the legislation allowed for more immigration from Northern European nations such as Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries

1927 – The last Model T Ford, #15,000,000, rolls off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company

1930 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in United States v. Norris that since Albert Norris, who was charged with conspiracy to transport intoxicating liquors in violation of the National Prohibition Act, purchased the intoxicating liquor but did not sell it or transport it, he was not in violation of the Prohibition Act

1937 – San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opens after five years of construction; Pedestrian Day, some 200,000 walkers marvel at the 42,000-foot-long suspension bridge. It opens for vehicles the following day

1938 – Lyudmila Petrushevskaya born, Russian novelist and playwright; her work was often censored by the Soviet government, but she published a number of well-respected works of prose after perestroika; her memoir is The Girl from the Metropol Hotel

1940 – Monique Gagnon-Tremblay born, French Canadian Liberal politician; member of the National Assembly of Quebec (1985-2012); Leader of the Opposition (1998)

1940 – The first successful helicopter flight in the U.S., in a Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 designed by Igor Sikorsky

1943 – Erica Terpstra born, Dutch politician of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (WD); Undersecretary for Health, Welfare and Sport (1994-1998); member of the House of Representatives (1977-1994); was a swimmer at the 1960 and 1964 Summer Olympics

1947 – Carol O’Connell born, American crime fiction author, known for Kathy Mallory series, and the standalone novels, The Judas Child, and Bone by Bone

1949 – Dame Anne McGuire born, British Labour politician; member of Parliament (1997-2015); Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2005-2008)

1951 – Sally Ride born, American physicist and astronaut, first American woman in space, physics professor, member of committees to investigate the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters

1953 – Kay Hagan born, American lobbyist and politician; joined lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in 2016; defeated Elizabeth Dole in 2008, the first woman to defeat an incumbent woman in a U.S. Senate race, for U.S. Senator from North Carolina (2009-2015); served in North Carolina Senate (1999-2009)

1961 – The Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee is established in Atlanta GA

1963 – The Organization of African Unity (OAU) is formed

1964 – Caitlín R. Kiernan born in Ireland, (alternate pen name Kathleen Tierney), American author of science fiction and dark fantasy, trained as a paleontologist, transsexual lesbian; noted for Silk, and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, which won the 2012 James Tiptree Jr. Award

1966 – Vietnamese student protesters attack and burn the U.S. Information Service library and cultural center, after the Saigon police unit assigned to protect flees

1972 – President Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in Moscow

1973 – Deep Purple’s single “Smoke On The Water” is released

1987 – U.S. Supreme Court upholds a provision in the Bail Reform Act of 1984 contested in United States v. Salerno; bail may be denied to arrestees charged with serious felonies if clear and convincing evidence shows that no release conditions “will reasonably assure . . . the safety of any other person and the community”

1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in County of Sacramento vs. Lewis that police can’t be held responsible for injuries to either fleeing suspects or bystanders caused by high-speed chases unless their actions are so egregious that they “shock the conscience” – allowing lawsuits only if police officers show a “reckless disregard for life” – and leaving those injured with no federal remedy against the state and local governments which employ the police officers

1998 – National Sorry Day * a grassroots movement prompted by the refusal of Prime Minister John Howard to issue an official apology to the Aboriginal people from the Australian government because he “did not subscribe to the black armband view of history.” Sorry Day is in remembrance of the mistreatment of indigenous Australians, especially the “Stolen Generations” – Aboriginal and mixed-race children separated, often forcibly, from their families, in an attempt to stamp out the indigenous culture

2009 – President Obama nominates federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court

2011 – Congress passes a four-year extension of post-September 11^th  powers, contained in the Patriot Act, to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists

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