June 22nd is

Chocolate Éclair Day

Journey’s End Day *

Onion Rings Day

Worldwide VW Beetle Day *

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MORE! Bilbo Baggins, Katherine Dunham and Ferdinand Porsche, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Åland  & Finland– Midsummer’s Eve

Croatia – Fascist Resistance Day

France – Nîmes: Festival de Nîmes

Germany – Berlin: Midsommar Festival

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On This Day in HISTORY

662: Ruizong (personal name Li Dan) born, last Chinese emperor of the Tang Dynasty; he cedes the imperial throne to his mother Wu Zeitan in 690, who installs herself as empress regnant – the only woman in Chinese history ever to rule as empress regnant

1342 – Journey’s End Day * – by Shire Reckoning, Bilbo Baggins returns to his home at Bag End in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit

Bag End by cmykyles

1377 – Richard II succeeds Edward III as King of England

1427 – Lucrezia Tornabuoni born, Italian political advisor to her husband Piero Cosimo de’ Medici and her son, Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent,’ during their de facto rule of Florence and the Florentine Republic; supported convents, widows and orphans, and was a patron of the arts, especially poets; author of religious stories, plays and poetry

1633 – The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe, after heated controversy

1675 – The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, is founded; British King Charles II and John Flamsteed lay the foundation stone

1772 – Somerset v Stewart UK court case finds slavery unsupported by English common law, encourages abolitionist movement

1805 – Giuseppe Mazzini born, Italian journalist, revolutionary and uncompromising republican, during Risorgimento (“Rising Again”), the struggle for Italian Unification

1813 – Laura Secord sets out to walk 20 miles to warn Canadian troops of an impending attack by the Americans during the War of 1812

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates for the second and last time

1844 – Harriett Stone Lothrop born, used pseudonym Margaret Sidney, American author of the Five Little Peppers series

1856 – H. Rider Haggard born, English novelist of adventure stories, notably King Solomon’s Mines and She; also involved in agricultural reform as a commissioner on land use boards, his efforts contributed to passage of the 1909 Development Bill 

1869 – Caroline O’Day born, American politician, third woman and first female Democrat, elected to Congress from New York (1935-1943); co-sponsor of Wagner-O’Day Act, predecessor to the expanded Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act, requiring all federal agencies to purchase specified supplies and services from nonprofit agencies employing people with significant disabilities, such as blindness, since 2006 called AbilityOne

1870 – U.S Congress votes on formation of the Department of Justice; much of the department’s time in its early years is spent prosecuting Ku Klux Klan members

1871 – William McDougall born in England, American psychologist noted for his work in developing theories on instinct and on social psychology; opponent of behaviorism

1887 – Sir Julian Huxley born, British biologist, philosopher, and author; influential in development of embryology, systematics, and studies of behaviour and evolution; brother of Aldous Huxley

1898 – Erich Maria Remarque born in Germany, American author; All Quiet on the Western Front

1906 – Anne Morrow Lindbergh born, American author of fiction and non-fiction; Gift from the Sea; married to aviator Charles Lindbergh

1909 – Katherine Dunham born, American dancer, choreographer, author, educator and activist, called the “matriarch and queen mother of black dance”, directed the Katherine Dunham Dance Company for almost 30 years

1911 –Coronation of George V as King of the UK and British Dominions beyond the Seas

1914 – Mei Zhi born, Chinese author and essayist; joined the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai in 1932; she and her husband Hu Fen were arrested in 1955 for “counter-revolutionary activities” – her “crime” was that she had transcribed one of her husband’s books. She was in prison until 1961 when her mother died. Her husband wasn’t released in 1965, and they both remained under surveillance by the Public Security Department. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, they were sent to a prison camp that produced tea. Hu was imprisoned, fell ill, and she was taken to the prison to nurse him. In 1979, Mei was “rehabilitated” and then given permission to take Hu to Beijing for treatment of his increasing mental illness, where he died in 1985.  She wrote memoirs of his imprisonment,  and published collections of children’s stories. She joined the China Writer’s Association in 1982, which offered some protection of writer’s rights, but also enforced acceptable literary norms

Mei Zhi and Hu Fen

1918 – Dame Cicely Saunders born, English nurse, social worker, physician and writer; notable for her role in the birth of the hospice movement, highlighting palliative care, especially pain management; founded a charity to promote research in improving the care and treatment of patients with progressive illnesses

1921 – Barbara Vucanovich born, American politician, first woman to represent Nevada in U. S. House of Representatives (R-NV, 1983-1997), advocate for breast-cancer awareness

1921 – Gower Champion born, American choreographer, dancer and director

1921 – Joseph Papp born, American theatrical producer and director; founder of NY’s Public Theatre and Shakespeare in the Park

1933 – Dianne Feinstein, American politician, San Francisco Mayor (1978-1988); U. S. Senator (D-CA, 1992 to present); first and only woman to chair Senate Rules Committee (2007–2009) and the Select Committee on Intelligence (2009- 2015)

1934 — Worldwide VW Beetle Day *- A contract is signed for the development of the VW Beetle by Ferdinand Porsche

1939 – Ada E. Yonath born, Israeli scientist and crystallographer; pioneering work on structure of the ribosome was rewarded by a 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry shared with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A. Steitz ; director of Center for Biomolecular Structure at the Weizmann Institute of Science

1940 – WWII: Eight days after Hitler’s forces overrun Paris, a French delegation at Compiègne signs an armistice treaty with the Nazis

1940 – Joan Busfield born, British sociologist, psychologist and author; President of the British Sociological Association (2003-2005); noted for research on mental disorders; Managing madness: changing ideas and practice, Men, women, and madness: understanding gender and mental disorder, and Mental Illness

1940 – U.S. Congress authorizes building 200 new ships, a 70% increase in the U.S. Navy fleet, at a cost of $4 billion

1940 – Dame Esther Rantzen born, English journalist and presenter of That’s Life! (1973-1994); founder of the child protection charity ChildLine in 1986, and The Silver Line, to combat loneliness, in 2012

1941 – Germany invades the Soviet Union

1944 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the GI Bill of Rights, authorizing a broad package of benefits for WWII veterans

1945 – The WWII Battle of Okinawa ends, after 83 days during which 110,000 Japanese and 12,520 Americans are killed

1946 – Sheila Hollins, Baroness Hollins, British professor of psychiatry of learning disability; President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (2005-2008);crossbench Life Peer in the House of Lords since 2010; President of the British Medical Association (2012-2013)

1947 – Octavia E. Butler born, African American scifi author; multiple winner of Hugo and Nebula awards; Parable of the Talents, Bloodchild, Speech Sounds; inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010

1949 – Meryl Streep born, American actress, nominated for a record 21 Academy Awards, and winner of three Oscars; known for supporting liberal political causes and  gender equality

1949 – Elizabeth Warren born, American Democratic politician; U.S Senator from Massachusetts since 2013; FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion (2006-2010); Law School professor whose research and analysis established her expertise in bankruptcy and commercial law; among other universities, she taught at Harvard Law School (1992 and 1995-2011)

1953 – Cyndi Lauper born, American singer-songwriter and LGBTQ activist

1959 – Chuck Berry releases “Memphis”

1972 – Wangechi Mutu born in Kenya, Kenyan-American artist and sculptor 

 1974 – Jo Cox born, British Labour Member of Parliament (2015-2016); assassinated on June 16, 2016, shot and stabbed to death by a far-right extremist; supporter of aid to refugees from war in the Middle East, and advocate for Britain to remain in the European Union; worked for Oxfam (2001-2015) rising to head of policy and advocacy at Oxfam GB

1977 – Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell begins serving an 8-year sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up

1981 – Mark David Chapman pleads guilty to killing former Beatle John Lennon

1987 – The International Labour Organisation (ILO), at its annual conference in Geneva, calls for international sanctions against South African minerals

1992 – R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul: U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that hate-crime laws that ban cross-burning and similar expressions of racial bias as hate ‘speech’ violate the First Amendment

1995 – Worldwide VW Beetle Day * is launched, commemorating the contract signed on this day in 1934 between the German Automobilistic Industry National Association and Dr. Ferdinand Porsche for a prototype “people’s car” to be submitted within 10 months of the contract signing, the genesis of the world’s best-selling car

2011 – President Barack Obama announces he will pull home 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by the following summer

2015 – South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley calls for removal of the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds after the hate-crime murders of nine black Charleston church members during a prayer meeting

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