September 12th is

Chocolate Milkshake Day

Day of Encouragement *

Video Games Day

International Police Woman Day *

U.N. Day for South-South Cooperation *

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MORE! Gustav Mahler, Kara David and Steven Biko, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Cape Verde Islands – National Day

Ireland – Lisdoonvarna:
Matchmaking Festival (thru 9-30)

Nepal – Hari Talika Teej
(Women’s healthy husband & family fest)

Netherlands – Amsterdam:
Nederlands Theatre Festival (thru 9-16)

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On This Day in HISTORY

490 BC (traditional) – The conventionally accepted date for the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians, and their Plataean allies, defeat the first Persian force to invade Greece on the plains of Marathon. Legend has it that Phidippides, an Athenian soldier who was the fastest runner, was chosen to warn other Greek cities of the Persian invasion, and though he ran a much longer distance, it was an unnamed soldier who ran the first ‘marathon’ after the battle to bring the news of victory to Athens whose run is remembered

362 – Sixteen Kingdoms:  Jin Xiaowudi, age 10, succeeds his father Jin Jianwendi as Emperor of the Eastern Jin dynasty; he will reign from 372 to 396, the last Jim emperor to wield imperial power

379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I begins his reign as Ajaw of Tikal (379-404?); he was the son of Spearthrower Owl, a lord of Teotihuacan

1492 – Lorenzo de’ Medici born, Duke of Urbino, ruler of Florence (1516-1519), grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent

1590 – María de Zayas y Sotomayor born, Spanish author during Spain’s Golden Age, often regarded as a pioneer of literary feminism; Novelas Amorosas y ejemplares  (Amorous and Exemplary Novels), Desengaños Amorosos (Disenchantments of Love)

1609 – Henry Hudson and his crew aboard the Halve Maen (Half Moon), begin ten days of exploration up the river which will be named after Hudson

1725 – Guillaume Le Gentil born, French astronomer who discovers several Messier objects, and is the first to catalog the dark nebula Le Gentil 3 in the constellation Cygnus

1739 – Mary Bosanquet Fletcher born, Methodist preacher and philanthropist, who convinced John Wesley (leading figure in the founding of Methodism) to allow women to preach publicly. She and preacher Sarah Crosby were the most popular women preachers of their day, and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher was honored by Methodists as “Mother in Israel.” She was co-founder of The Cedars, an orphanage for girls, in the East London area of Leytonstone, where they were taught, manners, reading, writing, nursing and domestic skills, under strict discipline, as well as receiving intensive religious instruction. Rising costs and concerns about poor air quality caused her to move to the orphanage to Cross Hall, in Morley, West Yorkshire, thinking to save costs as the staff grew their food, but their lack of  farming experience made this venture less successful than she hoped. She closed Cross Hall (after finding places for the orphans) in 1782 because she got married. She and her husband then worked together running a school. She began preaching more like the male preachers, by quoting biblical texts, continuing to preach and lead classes up to a few months before her death

1846 – Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning

1847 – Mexican-American War: The Battle of Chapultepec begins with the invading American army under General Winfield Scott besieging Mexican troops led by General Nicolás Bravo holding Chapultepec Castle

1848 – Switzerland approves its first Constitution and becomes a Federal state

1853 – Celestia Parrish born, American educator and pioneering woman in psychology; overcame English-born psychologist E. B. Tichener’s prejudice against women to take a class from him and got him to correspond with her so she could better teach her students – later he submitted some of her papers to the America Journal of Psychology, after she founded the first psychology lab in the southern U.S. at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, VA; after teaching at the Georgia State Normal School,  she became Georgia State Supervisor of Public Schools (1911-1918)

1857 – Manuel Espinosa Batista born, Columbian pharmacist who became a politician and campaigned for a separate Panamanian state, one of the founders of the Republic of Panama in 1903; also known for giving scholarships to poor boys who were promising students to study overseas, giving money to build new houses after the 1885 great fire in Colón, and making substantial donations to civic improvement projects

1859 – Florence Kelley born, American social and political reformer and activist, worked in favor of minimum wage, 8-hour workdays and against child labor and sweatshops

1866 – The first American burlesque show, The Black Crook, opens in New York City

1873 – First practical typewriter goes on sale

1880 –  H.L. Mencken born, American journalist, critic and acerbic wit

1892 – Alfred Knopf born, American publisher; founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

1897 – Irène Joliot-Curie born, French physicist, 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, daughter of Nobel laureates Marie and Pierre Curie

1898 – Ben Shahn born, American painter and graphic artist

1901 – Ernst Pepping born, German composer, primarily of  Protestant sacred music

1902 – Marya Zaturenska born in Ukraine, American author and lyric poet who won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection, Cold Morning Sky; she came to the U.S. with her family when she was 8 years old; as a teenager, she worked in a clothing factory during the day while attending high school classes at night, and won scholarships to attend college; published eight volumes of poetry, edited six poetry anthologies, and published A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940

1910 – Gustav Mahler’s Symphony #8 premieres in Munich

1913 – Jesse Owens born, American athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, much to the chagrin of Adolf Hitler

1915 – Over 4,200 Armenian Genocide survivors on Musa Dagh mountain, holding out against Turkish troops trying to forcibly deport them, are rescued by the French Third Squadron, with assistance from British ships, and taken to safety in Port Said

1916 – Adelina and August Van Buren finish first successful transcontinental motorcycle tour by two women, after leaving New York City on July 5, 1916

1921 – Stanislaw Lem born, Polish science fiction writer, philosopher and satirist who trained as a physician; best-known for his novel Solaris; one of the most widely-read science fiction authors in the world, whose books have sold over 45 million copies

1922 – The Episcopal Church removes the word “Obey” from the bride’s wedding vows

1928 – Katharine Hepburn made her stage debut in the play “The Czarina”

1928 – Muriel “Mickie” Siebert born, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, joining the 1, 365 male members of the exchange in 1967 (in 1870, sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage firm.) Siebert was also head of one of the first women’s banks. She was appointed by New York Governor Carey as Superintendent of Banks for New York State (1977-1980); co-author of Changing the Rules: Adventures of a Wall Street Maverick

1933 – Leó Szilárd, Hungarian-born physicist, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction

1940 –The Lascaux cave paintings discovered in France,  outstanding examples of Paleolithic period art, estimated to be 17,000 years old

1943 – Leonard Peltier born, an Anishabe and Dakota/Lakota Native American activist, member of the American Indian Movement (AIM); in a controversial 1977 trial, he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first-degree murder of two FBI agents during the 1975 Pine Ridge Shootout, which Amnesty International placed under the ‘Unfair Trials’ category in its Annual Report: USA 2o1o, and posted a petition supporting his application for clemency, which has been denied by U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barak Obama

1944 – U.S. Army troops enter Germany for the first time during WWII

1950 – Marguerite Blais born, French Canadian Quebec Liberal politician, journalist, and media host: Member of the Quebec National Assembly for Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne (2007-2015); president of Conseil de la famille et de l’enfance (2003-2007); director general of the Fondation du maire de Montréal pour la jeunesse; advocate for the deaf community and persons with hearing disabilities

1953 – Nan Goldin born, American photographer noted for portraiture, and her visual autobiographical documentary slideshow/photobook, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency

1953 – Fiona Mactaggart born, British Labour politician, teacher, feminist and activist; Appointed in 2018 as the chair of Agenda, the alliance for women and girls at risk. Member of Parliament for Slough (1997-2017); primary school teacher (1987-1992); General Secretary of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (1982-1987); Vice President/National Secretary of the National Union of Students (1978-1981)

1954 – Lassie makes its television debut on CBS

1957 – Hans Zimmer born in Germany, American composer of film scores; 9 Academy Award nominations with one win for The Lion King

1959 – Bonanza premieres, first TV series in color

1964 – Canyonlands, near Moab UT, becomes a National Park

1962 – President John F. Kennedy, at a speech at Rice University, reaffirms that the U.S. will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade

1966 – The Beatles receive a gold record for “Yellow Submarine”

1973 – Tarana Burke born, African-American civil rights activist who started the ‘Me Too’ movement in 2006 which was the inspiration for #MeToo after the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal launched dozens of revelations of cases of sexual abuse and harassment; Senior Director at Girls for Gender Equity; one of “the silence breakers” named collectively by TIME Magazine as its 2017 ‘Person’ of the Year

1973 – Kara David born, Filipina journalist and television host; news anchor of News to Go at GMA News TV, and host-writer for the i-Witness documentary series; founder and president of the Project Malasakit foundation, which aids people in remote communities and sends poor children to school; in 2010, she became the second person from the Philippines to win a Peabody Award, for her documentary Ambulansyang de Paa (Ambulance on Foot)

1977 – South African anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko dies at age 30, while in police custody, which triggers an international outcry

1978 – U.N. General Assembly adopts a plan of action to promote and implement technical cooperation among developing countries

1980 – A Turkish coup d’état, led by Chief of the General Staff General Kenan Evren, overthrows the ineffective Grand National Assembly of Turkey, so factionalized that it wasn’t able to elect a President for six months prior to the coup

1991 -Space shuttle Discovery launches an observatory to study the Earth’s ozone layer

1992 – Dr. Mae Jemison becomes first African-American woman in space. She is the payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Endeavor. Also onboard are Mission Specialist N. Jan Davis and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mark C. Lee. They are the first married couple to fly together in space, and Mamoru Mohri becomes the first Japanese person to fly into space

2000 – Dutch lawmakers give same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt children.

2002 – Police Womans Day * honors members of the International Association of Women Police (IAWP)

2005 – Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael Brown resigns, three days after losing his onsite command of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts

2007 – Day of Encouragement * is launched by The Encouragement Foundation in Arkansas, and proclaimed by the Government of Arkansas as a State Day

2011 – U.N. General Assembly approves September 12 as United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation, * commemorating the 1978 U.N. plan of action to promote and implement technical cooperation between developing countries

2013 – The Washington Post reports that Syrian rebels have begun receiving ‘light weapons’ delivered by the CIA, while an op-ed in the New York Times written by Russian President Vladimir Putin urges America to “return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement” in dealing with Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile

2015 – Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas is awarded a Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival for Desde allá (From Afar)

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