September 1^st is

Emma M Nutt Day *

World Letter Writing Day *

No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day
(words that don’t rhyme)

International Day of the Taiji Dolphins *

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MORE! Emma Stebbins, Cetshwayo and Ann Richards, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

 Australia – Birdsville, Queensland:
Birdsville Horseraces

Belgium – Antwerpen: Laundry Day Festival   

Eritrea – Bahti Meskerem
(Revolution Day)

Luxembourg – Kermesse:
Jour Férié d’Usage

Isle of Man – Castletown Harbour:
World Tin Bath Championship

Netherlands – Utrecht:
Lief Music Festival

Slovakia – Constitution Memorial Day

Uzbekistan – Mustaqillik Kuni
(Independence Day)

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On This Day in History

717 – The Byzantine navy defeats an 1,800-ship Muslim armada using Greek Fire

948 – Emperor Jingzong of the Liao dynasty born, reigned from 969 t0 982; he cracked down on government corruption, and employed Han Chinese officials in his government enabling it to be run more efficiently

1449 – Tumu Fortress Crisis: Ming dynasty Emperor Zhu Qizhen captured by Oirat Mongols, and held captive

1532 – Anne Boleyn is made Marquis of Pembroke by King Henry VIII of England

1593 – Arjumand Banu born, Mughal Empress, beloved consort of Shah Jahan, who builds the Taj Mahal as her final resting place

1604 – The Sikh Holy Scripture, Guru Granth Sadib, is installed at Harnabdir Sahib

1608 – Giacomo Torelli born, Italian stage designer and engineer of innovative machinery for spectacular stage effects

1653 – Johann Pachelbel born, German composer and organist, remembered for his Canon in D Major

1715 – French King Louis XIV dies after 72 year reign, longest of any major European monarch

1772 – Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa is founded by Father Junipero Serra

1773 – African-American slave Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is published by act of Parliament in England

1791 – Lydia Huntley Sigourney born, American poet, known as the “Sweet Singer of Hartford,” published under the name Mrs. Sigourney

1804 – German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding discovers a large asteroid in the Main Belt, and names it Juno

1807 – Former U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr found innocent of treason

1810 – John H. Wood patents the first plow with interchangeable parts

1815 – Emma Stebbins born, American sculptor and painter; her best-known work  “Angel of the Waters” is at Bethesda Terrace in New York’s Central Park

1818 – José María Castro Madriz born, Costa Rican lawyer and politician, first President of Costa Rica

1836 – Narcissa Whitman, a missionary, one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rockies, arrives in Walla Walla, Washington, with her husband

1849 – Elizabeth Harrison born, American educator, founder of National Louis University, created professional standards for early childhood teachers

1854 – The original Engelbert Humperdinck born, German playwright and composer; noted for his his opera Hansel and Gretel

1854 – Anna Botsford Comstock born, American artist, educator and conservationist, illustrator and co-author or author of several books including Manual for the Study of Insects and The Handbook of Nature Study

1859 – Pullman Sleeping cars go into service

1873 – Cetshwayo becomes King of the Zulus upon the death of his father Mpande

1875 – Edgar Rice Burroughs born, American author; creator of Tarzan series

1876 – Harriet Shaw Weaver born, English journalist and political activist and
suffragette; publisher and later editor of The Egoist; literary executor of James Joyce

1877 – Francis William Aston born, English chemist; 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovery of isotopes in non-radioactive elements, and work on whole-number rule

1878 – J.F.C. Fuller, British Major General, military historian, pioneering theorist on modern armored warfare; after retirement, became an admirer of fascism and Hitler; only senior British officer not asked to return to service during WWII

1878 – Emma M. Nutt becomes first woman telephone operator for Boston’s Telephone Dispatch Company, then worked the job for 33 years.  Emma M. Nutt Day *celebrates her achievement and honors telephone operators

1883 – Anita Bush born, American stage actress and playwright, founder of Anita Bush All-Colored Dramatic Stock Company, a repertory theatre company which brought theatre to black audiences

1884 – Hilda Rix Nicholas born, Australian post-impressionist landscape and portrait artist who traveled in North Africa before WWI; her husband was killed in the war only a month after they were married

Une Australienne (An Australian Lady), 1926 – by Hilda Rix Nicholas

1886 – Othmar Schoeck born, Swiss composer

1897 – Boston’s Tremont Street Subway opens, the first underground rapid transit in North America

1902 – The pioneering science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon, premieres in France

1905 – Alberta and Saskatchewan join the Canadian federation

1906 – International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys established, based in Basel, Switzerland

1906 – Eleanor Burford Hibbet born, prolific and popular English author under several pen names, but mainly Jean Plaidy for fiction about European royalty, such as her Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots series; Victoria Holt for gothic romances, like Bride of Pendorric and The Secret Woman; and Ellen Burford for romance novels, Castles in Spain and Heart’s Afire

1907 – Walter Reuther born, United Automobile Workers Union president (1946-1970)

1910 – Peggy van Praagh born in England, ballet dancer; Australian Ballet founder

1914 – St. Petersburg, Russia, renamed Petrograd by the Imperial government

1919 – Hilda Hänchen born, German physicist, discoverer of the Goos-Hänchen effect

1920 – The Fountain of Time opens in Chicago IL to commemorate 100 years of peace between the U.S. and Great Britain following the Treaty of Ghent

1920 – Liz Carpenter born, American activist, feminist, author, journalist, media adviser and speech writer; as a reporter covered presidents Franklin D Roosevelt through John F Kennedy

1923 – Kantō Earthquake devastates Tokyo and Yokohama, leaving 105,000 dead

1925 – Arvonne Fraser born, American women’s rights advocate and political campaigner; U.S. Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women (1993-1994); fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs (1982-1994); Director of the Office of Women in Development at the U.S. Agency for International  Development (1977-1981); member of U.S. delegations to the first two UN World Conferences on Women in Mexico City (1975) and Copenhagen (1980); Fraser ran her husband’s successful political campaigns for the Minnesota state Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives between 1954 and 1976; leaded the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign in the upper Midwest in 1976

1933 – Ann Richards born, American Democratic politician and feminist; Governor of Texas (1991-1995), known for her quick-witted one-liners; while Texas state treasurer (1983-1991), she gained national recognition when she delivered a nominating speech for Walter Mondale at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, and the keynote address at the Democrat’s 1988 convention

1939 – General George C. Marshall becomes Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army

1939 – The Nazis invade Poland; in Germany, Adolf Hitler signs an order to systematically euthanize mentally ill and disabled people

1939 – Lily Tomlin born, American comedian, writer, producer and feminist/LGBT advocate; noted for her keen observational comedy, winner of the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her 1985 one-woman show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe; she also has a Grammy, and a total of six Emmys for writing, producing, and voiceover

1939 – The Swiss Parliament elects Henri Guisan head of the Swiss Armed Forces, and mobilizes them

1942 – A federal judge in Sacramento CA upholds the wartime detention of Japanese-American citizens as well as Japanese nationals

Japanese Internment Camp at Manzanar

1942 – Carolyn Cherry born, as C. J. Cherryh, a notable American speculative fiction writer, using the pen name C.J. Cherryh because at the beginning of her career the field was so dominated by men, and her editor thought that Cherry sounded too much like a romance writer’s name. Won Hugo Awards Best Novel for Downbelow Station and Cyteen, and Best Short Story for “Cassandra” and the 2016 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of American

1951 – The U.S., Australia and New Zealand sign the ANZUS treaty for mutual defense

1952 – Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is published, which will win the Pulitzer Prize

1958 – Iceland expands its fishing zone overlapping the U.K. zone, starts the Cod Wars

1961 – The first conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is held in Belgium; NAM has 120 member countries, not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc; founding nations are Yugoslavia, India, Indonesia, Egypt and Ghana; their declaration is known as “The Initiative of Five”

1970 – Padma Lakshmi born in India, American author, actress, TV host-producer, and advocate for women’s healthcare; noted for her cookbook Easy Exotic and her memoir Love, Loss and What We Ate; suffered from endometriosis from early adolescence, but it went undiagnosed or misdiagnosed until she was in her mid-thirties, so she became a co-founder of The Endometriosis Foundation of America to educate, raise awareness, fund research and advocate for legislation. The foundation was instrumental in the opening in 2009 of The MIT Center for Gynepathology Research

1972 – American Bobby Fischer defeats Russian Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become world chess champion

1977 – Generation X released their debut single “Your Generation”

1979 – Space probe Pioneer 11 passes Saturn at distance of 13,000 miles (21,000 km)

1985 – A joint U.S.-French expedition locates the wreckage of RMS Titanic

1991 – Uzbekistan declares independence from the Soviet Union

2003 – International Day of the Taiji Dolphins * is launched by the Dolphin Project to raise awareness of Japanese dolphin hunting season, which opens on September 1 each year. Hundreds of dolphins are slaughtered, but some are captured for sale to marine parks. Hunting permits are issued by the Japanese government

2005 – Richard Simpkin wanted to photograph and interview people he considered Australian Legends, so he wrote dozens of letters asking to meet them. He was always elated when he got a reply. By 2005, he had interviewed and photographed 80 people. This project inspired him to found World Letter Writing Day * on September 1 (not to be confused with U.S. National Letter Writing Day on December 7)

2009 – In Vermont, a law allowing same-sex marriage goes into effect

2011 – Former Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Maria van der Hoeven takes office as Executive Director of the International Energy Agency. The IEA is an autonomous intergovernmental organization established in 1974, after the oil crisis of 1973, as part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

2015 – The UN confirms that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant destroyed the main building of the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria

Temple of Bel at Palmyra in 2002

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