September 7th is

Acorn Squash Day

ADHD Awareness Day *

Buy a Book Day *

Grandma Moses Day *

Neither Rain Nor Snow Day *

Salami Day *

Superhuman Day *

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MORE! Dom Pedro I, Edith Sitwell and Desmond Tutu, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Brazil – Independence Day

Fiji – Constitution Day

India – Mumbai: Road to Ultra India

Israel – Tel Aviv: Life in Color Festival

Marshall Islands – Dri-Jerbal
(Labor Day)

Mozambique – Lusaka Peace Agreement Day

Nepal – Nijamati Sewa Divas
(Civil Servants Day)

Wales – Portmeirion: Festival No. 6

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On This Day on HISTORY

1251 BC (legend) – A solar eclipse marks the birth of Heracles (aka Hercules) at Thebes

1533 – Elizabeth born, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn; after the death of her half-sister Queen Mary I, she will become Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland

1541 – Hernando de Cabezon born, Spanish composer

1813 – First use in print of nickname ‘Uncle Sam’ for United States in NY’s Troy Post

Uncle Sam Cartoon by Thomas Nast – 1877

1814 – William Butterfield born, English Gothic Revival architect

1822 – Prince Pedro declares Brazil is independent from Portugal; on December 1, he is crowned Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil

1829 – Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden born, American geologist; pioneering surveyor of the Rocky Mountains, and leader of the first federally-funded geological survey of the Yellowstone area of Wyoming

1857 – Mormon extremists in Mountain Meadows Utah slaughter 120 men, women and children of an emigrant wagon train on its way to California. Only 17 children, all younger than seven, were spared, and taken in by local families

1860 – Anna Robertson Moses born, aka Grandma Moses, American folk artist – (see 1960 entry)

Bennington, by Grandma Moses

1865 – Elinor Wylie born, American novelist and poet

1887 – Dame Edith Sitwell born, English poet, critic and editor; an eccentric often cruelly mocked for her tall thin appearance, a large and distinctive nose, and her flamboyant style of dress

1896 – First successful heart surgery performed by Ludwig Rehn in Frankfurt, repairing a stab wound suffered by 22-year-old Wilhelm Justus, who lived to age 56, dying in 1930

1900 – Taylor Caldwell born, prolific American novelist, much of it historical fiction

1901 – The Boxer Protocol, one of the ‘unequal treaties’ between China and an alliance of eleven Western nations, is signed, officially ending the Boxer Rebellion

1903 – Margaret Landon born, American author; her best-selling novel, Anna and the King of Siam, became the inspiration for the Broadway musical The King and I

1903 – Dorothy Marie Donnelly born, American poet, essayist and informal salon host with her husband Walter at their home, visited by intellectuals, scholars, and authors, including Senator Philip Hart, mystery writer Henry Branson who lived next door, Renaissance scholar Leo Kirschbaun, art historian Richard Ettinghausen, and poet Robert Hayden; Donnelly published six volumes of poetry and prose

1907 – Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitiana embarks on her maiden voyage from Liverpool England to New York City

RMS Lusitiana – 1907 post card

1912 – David Packard born, American engineer; cofounder of Hewlett-Packard Co.

1914 – Neither Rain Nor Snow Day * celebrates the opening day of main New York City Post Office building, inscribed, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” from a passage in Herodotus describing the Persian mounted postal carriers, 500 BC:  “It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.” (trans. by A.D. Godley)

1916 – U.S. federal employees win the right to Worker’s Compensation in the Federal Employees Liability Act

1923 – Nancy Keesing born, Australian Jewish author of fiction, nonfiction and poetry; Garden Island People, The Woman I Am: Poems, Douglas Stewart

1925 –Laura Ashley born, Welsh designer who builds a fashion, home furnishings and textiles empire

1925 – Bhanumathi Ramakrishna born, multilingual Indian film star, producer, director, scriptwriter, and author; awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s 3^rd highest civilian award, for her contributions to Indian cinema; also known for her philanthropy, founding member of the community service organization Altrusa International, life member of the Red Cross Society, and a school bearing her name in Tamil Nadu providing free education for the poor

1927 – Philo Farnsworth builds the first fully electronic television device, an “image dissector”

1934 – Mary Bauermeister born, German painter, art installation creator and garden designer, influenced by Pop Art and Nouveau Réalisme

Twin-Tools Series Sale Table, 1967 – Mary Bauermeister 

1936 – Charles Holley born, better known as Buddy Holly, American Rock’n’Roll star of the 1950s

1936 – Benjamin, the last known Tasmanian “wolf” (thylacinus cynocephalus), a carnivorous marsupial, dies at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. Thylacine fossils estimated to be 23 million years old have been found in NW Queensland

1940 – Artie Shaw and his orchestra record “Temptation”

1940 – WWII: The German Luftwaffe begins its blitz of London, a massive aerial bombardment; in 71 raids over the next eight months, over 40,000 civilians will be killed, and as many as 139,000 injured

1943 – Beverley McLachlin, Canadian jurist, Chief Justice of Canada (2000-2017); the first woman Chief Justice, and the longest serving in Canadian history

1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is elected first secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party

1956 – Sam Cook releases single “You Send Me’

1957 – First appearance of NBC’s peacock logo

1960 – On the 100^th Birthday of Anna Mary Robertson Moses, NY Governor Rockefeller proclaimed the first ‘Grandma Moses Day’ to honor the American folk artist, who began painting in her 70s

Self-Portrait, Grandma Moses

1977 – Torrijos-Carter Treaties signed by U.S. and Panama. U.S. agrees to transfer control of the Panama Canal at the end of the 20^th century.

1979 – The Chrysler Corporation asks the U.S. government for a $1.5 billion bail-out to save it from bankruptcy

1979 – ESPN makes it cable television debut

1986 – Desmond Tutu becomes the first black leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa

1997 – First flight of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, fifth-generation, single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft developed for the U.S. Air Force

2004 – Attention Deficit Disorder Association spearheads passage of U.S. Senate resolution designating September 7 as National ADHD Awareness Day *

2006 – The Salami Appreciation Society of Henrico VA inaugurates Salami Day *

2008 – U.S. government takes control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage financing companies

2012 – The first Buy a Book Day * encourages readers to support authors by purchasing copies of their work

2016 – The first Superhuman Day * inspired by the Summer Paralympic Games, celebrates all the incredible athletes, musicians, craftspeople, artists and people from every other discipline, who never let disability stop them from fulfilling their dreams

Richard Whitehead (GBR) sets a new Paralympic Record and wins the Gold Medal in the Men’s 200m – T42 Final in the Olympic Stadium at the Paralympic Games, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – photo by Bob Martin for OIS/IOC

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