September 3rd is

U.S. (& Territories) Labor Day *

Penny Press Day *

Welsh Rarebit Day

U.S. Bowling League Day

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MORE! Prudence Crandall, Frederick Douglass and Kiran Desai, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – Flag Day

Bermuda & Canada – Labour Day

Puerto Rico – Día de Santiago Inglesias Pantín
(Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico 1933-1939)

San Marino – Republic Foundation Day

Swaziland – Umhlanga (Reed Dance Holiday)

Taiwan – Armed Forces Day

Tokelau – Tokehega Day
(maritime treaty of Tokehega)

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On This Day in HISTORY

301 – San Marino, the world’s oldest continuous republic, is founded by Saint Marinus

1189 – Richard the Lionheart is crowned as King Richard I of England

1499 – Diane de Poitiers, French noblewoman and courtier, as the mistress of King Henry II of France, she wields much influence and power at the French Court

1653 – Roger North born, English lawyer, historian and biographer; Lives of the Norths, and his autobiography give insights into the Baroque period in Britain

1666 – The Royal Exchange burns on the second day of the Great Fire of London

1783 – Treaty of Paris is signed by Great Britain and the now independent United States of America, ending the Revolutionary War

1802 – William Wordsworth composes a sonnet entitled Composed on Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

1803 – Prudence Crandall born, American educator, establishes a private school for girls which is boycotted when she admits an African American student; considered the first integrated classroom in the U.S.; official State Heroine of Connecticut

1811 – John Humphrey Noyes born, American founder of the Oneida Community, and author of Male Continence

1824 – Caroline Soule born, American author, editor, ordained minister; co-founder of the Women’s Centenary Aid Association, Universalist Church of American Missionary

1833 – The New York Sun begins publication. Edited by Benjamin Day, first successful “Penny Press” * newspaper. Slogan: “It Shines for All.” Sold for a penny, instead of six cents like the larger papers, it depended on advertising revenue to make up the difference. Affordable for the working poor, the penny press increased their interest in local and national news printed, not always accurately, along with scandals, police crime reports, local births, deaths and marriages not covered in more expensive papers.

1838 – Frederick Douglass boards a train in Maryland escaping from slavery, carrying the “sailor’s protection” papers of from a brave co-worker at the Baltimore shipyard where he worked

1849 – Sarah Orne Jewett born, American author, noted for setting her stories on the southern seacoast of Maine; The Country of the Pointed Firs, A White Heron

1856 – Louis Sullivan born, influential American architect of the Chicago School, and precursor of the Prairie School; known for “form follows function” philosophy

1868 – Mary Parker Follett born, American social worker and management consultant, pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and behavior

1875 – Ferdinand Porsche born, Austrian automotive engineer

1875 – First official game of polo in Argentina after introduction by British ranchers

1888 – Thomas Milton Rivers born, American virologist and bacteriologist; Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research head; aided in polio vaccine development

1895 – Charles H. Houston born, African American lawyer, Howard University Law School dean; NAACP Litigation Director; a leader in dismantling Jim Crow laws

1897 – Sally Benson born, American screenwriter and short story author, known for her collected stories titled Junior Miss, published in The New Yorker and adapted for Broadway and radio

1899 – Sir Macfarlane Burnet born, Australian physician and virologist; 1960 Nobel Prize for predicting acquired immune tolerance; develops theory of clonal selection

1907 – Loren Eiseley born, American anthropologist, educator and author; The Immense Journey, Darwin’s Century and The Unexpected Universe

1914 – WWI: French modernist composer Albéric Magnard is killed defending his estate against invading German soldiers

1914 – Dixy Lee Ray born, marine biologist, work on marine invertebrates led to public television programs, appointed to Atomic Energy Commission, described as idiosyncratic, and “ridiculously smart,” elected Washington state’s first female governor, known for her leadership during devastating eruption of Mount St. Helens

1916 – Labor Day * (now a U.S. national holiday on the first Monday of September) In 1868, the average American worker worked 10-to-12-hour days, 6-to-7 days a week, and children as young as 5 and 6 worked in factories and mines. That year, the National Labor Union Party secured the legal introduction of the 8-hour workday for workmen and employees of the federal government. Attempts were made to nullify this reform, but President Grant held firm. The next decade saw as many set-backs as victories for the Labor Movement. The turning point came with the founding of the American Federation of Labor, which called for a series of strikes for an 8-hour workday between 1886 and 1890, leading to an international demonstration on May 1, 1890. In 1914, Ford Motor Co. did institute 8-hour shifts, but many Ford workers still worked a 6 day week. The struggle continued, but a major victory was won on September 3, 1916, when the U.S. Congress passed the Adamson Act, mandating an 8-hour workday for interstate railroad workers, the beginning of nationwide federal laws limiting working hours

1920 – Tereska Torrès born, French author; best-selling novel Women’s Barracks is a fictionalized account of her experiences during the war; first notable pulp fiction to show Lesbian relationships

1921 – Marguerite Higgins born, American journalist, war correspondent during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War

1921 – Ruth Orkin born, American photographer; when denied admission to Cinematographer’s Union because of sexual discrimination, she filmed a NY street-scene series. Then in Florence, she shot the iconic photo “American Girl in Italy” (1956)

1926 – Alison Lurie born, American author and English professor, known for her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Foreign Affairs

1930 – Cherry Wilder born, pseudonym for Cherry Barbara Grimm, New Zealand author, known for science fiction and fantasy including the Torin Trilogy

1935 – Sir Malcolm Campbell is first to drive an automobile over 300 miles an hour, reaching 304.331 MPH on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah

Sir Malcolm Campbell with his Rolls Royce Merlin

1938 – Liliane Ackermann born, French microbiologist, Jewish community pioneer, author and lecturer; her family found refuge in a small town near Grenoble during WWII; she studied on her own to learn the Talmud, and earned her first Ph.D., in microbiology, in 1974 at the Université Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg, and Ph.D. in Humanities at the Université de Strasbourg in 1999. She taught at the elementary and secondary levels from 1956 to 2007, but also taught Jewish education for adults, and gave lectures on biochemistry and microbiology (1975-1996) at Université Louis Pasteur. In 1972, she and her husband Henri took charge of Yeshurun, a national Jewish youth movement which met year-round, but also had summer camps. She also started counseling and teaching classes for the handicapped, the elderly. and women without the financial means to continue their education

1938 – Sarah Bradford born, Vicountess Bangor, English travel writer and biographer, noted for several biographies of members of the Borgia family, as well as British royals, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

1938 – Caryl Churchill born, British playwright known for dramatizing abuses of power, and exploring sexual politics and feminist themes; Owners, Cloud Nine, Top Girls (she won a 1983 Obie Award for Playwriting for the Off-Broadway production), Softcops, Serious Money, The Skriker and A Number

1943 – WWII: The Allied invasion of Italy begins on the same day that U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Italian Marshal Pietro Badoglio sign the Armistice of Cassibile aboard the Royal Navy battleship HMS Nelson off Malta

1944 – Anne Frank and her family are on the last transport train from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp

1947 – Susan Milan born, English musician, soloist, composer, and academic; Professor of the flute at the Royal College of Music; founder of the British Isles Music Festival in Charterhouse School for outstanding young musicians

1948 – Lyudmila Karachkina born, Russian astronomer, did research on astrometry and photometry of minor planets; credited with discovery of 130 minor planets and asteroids

1951 – The soap opera Search for Tomorrow debuts on CBS-TV

1967 – Swedish motorists stopped driving on left side of the road and began driving on the right side

1968 – Grace Poe-Llamanzares baptized (adopted as an infant), Filipina Independent senator, educator, and philanthropist; Senator of the Philippines since 2013; Chair of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (2010-2012)

1971 – Qatar becomes an independent state

1971 – Kiran Desai born, Indian novelist born in Delhi, educated in England and America; her first novel, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1988), won the Betty Trask Award, given for a best new novel; The Inheritance of Loss, won the 2006 Man Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award

1976 – NASA spacecraft Viking 2 lands on Mars, takes first close-up, color photos of the planet’s surface

1981 – International Day for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women * – the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, goes into force. 189 states have ratified, but several countries signed subject to certain declarations, reservations, and objections. U. S. has signed, but not ratified the treaty.  The Holy See, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Tonga are not signatories to CEDAW

1989 – U.S. starts shipping $65 million in military aircraft and weapons to Columbia for its fight against drug lords

1994 – Crosby, Stills and Nash release “After the Storm” album

2001 – Sierra Leone’s President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah shakes hands with Revolutionary United Front General Issa Sesay, declaring their nation’s war to be over

2005 – George W. Bush orders more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

2013 – Hunters in Mississippi catch a record 727-pound alligator

2016 – The U.S. and China, together responsible for 40% of the world’s carbon emissions, both formally join the Paris global climate agreement. On June 1, 2017, Donald Trump withdrew the U.S from the Paris Agreement, claiming it will undermine the U.S. economy

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