September 13th is

Kids Take Over the Kitchen Day

National Peanut Day

Programmer’s Day *

Roald Dahl Day *

Uncle Sam Day *

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MORE! J.B Priestly, Anna Devlin and Desmond Tutu, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Argentina – Librarians Day

Canada – Banff, Alberta:
Fall Leaf Peep (ongoing)

India – Ganesh Chaturthi/Vinayaka Chaturthi
(Birth Day of Lord Ganesha)

Japan – Daisetsuzan Mountain, Hokkaido:
Autumn Color Viewing (ongoing)

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On This Day in HISTORY

509 BC – Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome’s Capitoline Hill is dedicated

533 – Battle of Ad Decimum: Byzantine General Belisarius leads his troops to victory over the Vandals commanded by King Gelimer near Carthage in North Africa

678 – K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Nahb III born, an ajaw of the Maya City Palenque, who ascended the throne in December 721 and reigned until circa 736; he was a grandson of K’inich Janaab Pakal I, known as Pakal the Great

1475 – Cesare Borgia born, condottiero (military leader), nobleman, politician, and the  first cardinal to resign his office, after his older brother Giovanni was assassinated in 1497; Borgia’s ruthless rise to power was the major inspiration for Machiavelli’s The Prince; Borgia was the bastard son of Pope Alexander VI, the first pope to openly recognize his children born out of wedlock

1583 – Girolamo Frescobaldi born, Italian composer; a child prodigy, he was an important contributor of late Renaissance and early Baroque keyboard music

1584 – San Lorenzo del Escorial Palacio is completed near Madrid

El Escorial Biblioteca (library)

1739 – Grigory Potemkin born, Russian army office and statesman

1775 – Laura Secord born, Canadian heroine of the War of 1812, who walked 20-miles out of American-occupied territory to warn British troops of an impending attack

1788 – The Congress of the Confederation authorizes the first national election and declares New York City the temporary national capital

1789 – The U.S. Government takes out its first loan

1813 – Daniel Macmillan born, Scottish bookseller; co-founder of Macmillan Publishing

1814 – Frances Scott Key is inspired to write his poem “Defense of Fort McHenry”

1819 – Clara Schumann born, German pianist and composer, gives first public performances of several works by Johannes Brahams

1830 – Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, notable Austrian late 19^th century author, admired for her psychological insight; Božena, Das Gemeindekind

1844 – Ann Webb Young born, one of LDS President Brigham Young’s many wives, who filed for divorce on grounds of cruelty, neglect and abandonment; excommunicated from the LDS Church in 1874; her divorce became final in 1875. She went on the lecture circuit, advocating against polygamy and Mormonism; Webb testifies before Congress during debates before passage of the Poland (anti-polygamy enforcement) Act. Author of Wife No. 19, or The Story of a Life in Bondage

1844 – Anna Lea Merritt born, American painter; known for portraits, landscapes and religious scenes; she lived and worked primarily in England as a professional artist

Ophelia, by Anna Lea Merritt

1851 – Walter Reed born, American pathologist and bacteriologist; U.S. Army doctor who leads the team that confirms Yellow Fever is transmitted by mosquitoes

1857 – Milton Hershey born, American chocolate manufacturer

1858 – Catharinus Elling born, Norwegian composer

1860 – John (“Black Jack”) Pershing born, American General in command of the American Expeditionary Force in WWI

1865 – Maud Charlesworth born in England, known as Maud Ballington Booth, Salvation Army leader and co-founder of the Volunteers of America

1874 – Arnold Schoenberg born in Austria, American composer

1876 – Sherwood Anderson born, American author; Winesburg, Ohio

1886 – Amelie ‘Melli’ Beese born, early German aviator and sculptor; she had to leave Germany to study sculpting at the Royal Academy in Stockholm because German art schools did not admit female students; returning home, she studied mathematics, ship building and aeronautical engineering, and with difficulty found some aviators who would instruct a woman in flying; she became the first woman pilot in Germany to participate in a flight display on her birthday, September 13, 1911. She opened a flying school the following year, designed and patented a collapsible aircraft, and worked with her future husband, Charles Boutard on a flying boat design. But when they married in 1913, she became a French citizen, and they were arrested during WWI as “undesirable aliens, Charles was interned, and their goods were confiscated. After the war, they filed suit to recover their property, but the case dragged on, and German hyper-inflation greatly decreased its value. The marriage deteriorated, and they separated. In 1925, she crashed the aeroplane she was flying when she reapplied for her pilot’s license. Three days before Christmas that year, she shot herself

1894 – J.B Priestly born, English novelist and playwright; An Inspector Calls

1898 – Hannibal W. Goodwin patents celluloid film, used to make movies

1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the U.S. killed in an automobile accident

1914 – Leonard Feather born, British jazz pianist and composer

1916 – Bill Monroe born, American singer, songwriter and mandolin player

1916 – Roald Dahl born in Wales, author;  James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

1917 – Carol Kendall, American author of folk tale stories for children; The Gammage Cup was a 1960 Newbery Honor Book

1919 –  Mary Midgley, British philosopher, advocate for science, ethics and animal rights, author of many books including her autobiography The Owl of Minerva

1920 – Else Holmelund Minarik born, American children’s author noted for her Little Bear series

1922 – Highest shade temperature 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit recorded at El Azizia, Libya

1924 – Maurice Jarre born, French composer; nine Academy Award nominations with four wins for Best Original Film Score

1931 – Marjorie Jackson-Nelson born, Australian sprinter who won two Olympic Gold Medals, and held six world records; in 2001, she became the Governor of South Australia, serving until 2007; among her many honors, Member of  the Order of the British Empire (1953), and Companion of the Order of Australia (2001)

1933 – Elizabeth McCombs is the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament

1935 – Howard Hughes sets new airspeed record, 352 mph, in his H-1 plane

1938 – Judith Martin is born, aka etiquette author ‘Miss Manners’

1943 – Mildred DeLois Taylor born, African-American author known for books on the struggles of Black families in the Deep South; know for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and The Road to Memphis

1948 – Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) is elected U.S. Senator, first woman to serve in both houses of Congress, serving a combined total of 33 years, 1940-1973

1948 – The School of the Performing Arts, the first specialized public school for the arts, opens in New York

1951 – Anna Devlin born, Irish author, playwright and screenwriter; noted for Ourselves Alone, After Easter, and The Forgotten

1956 – IBM 305 RAMAC is introduced, first computer to use disk storage

1956 –Anna Geddes, born in Australia, Photographer noted for baby photography shooting infants in fruits and flowers; founder of the Geddes Philanthropic Trust, which raises awareness of child abuse and neglect

1957 – Dame Eleanor Warwick King, British judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales since 2008

1957 – Tatyana Mitkova born, Russian broadcast journalist who refused to read the official Soviet Union version of the military response to the 1991 uprising in Lithuania;  won 1991 International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists

1960 – The FCC bans payola (bribes for more airplay of a record company’s product)

1965 – The Beatles release “Yesterday”

1970 – First NYC Marathon

1971 – The four-day riot that claimed 43 lives at New York’s Attica Correctional Facility ends as police and guards storm the prison

1989 – Desmond Tutu leads the Cape Town Peace March, one of the largest anti-Apartheid demonstrations in South Africa, with an estimated crowd of 30,000

1989 – George W. Bush proclaims Uncle Sam Day * in honor of the birth of Samuel Wilson, a N.Y. meatpacker whose “U.S.” stamp on shipments to the American army during the War of 1812 led to the nickname Uncle Sam

1990 – The TV series Law and Order premieres on NBC

1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chair Yasser Arafat sign first major agreement, granting Palestine limited self-government in Gaza Strip and Jericho

1995 – Beverley Palesa Ditsie addressed the UN at the Beijing Women’s Conference about the importance of including lesbian rights in discussions about the empowerment and  uplifting of women. Ditsie was the first person and first openly lesbian woman to address the issue of protecting the rights of LGBT people at a UN conference. Ditsie was born in Soweto in 1971 during the height of Apartheid, and was an anti-Apartheid and LGBT rights activist, one of the founding members of GLOW, South Africa’s first multiracial political lesbian and gay rights group. During drafting of South Africa’s constitution, she was at the forefront arguing for protecting people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. South Africa became the first nation in the world to include such a protection in its constitution

2001 – U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell names Osama bin Laden as the prime suspect in the terror attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 – limited U.S. commercial flights resume after being grounded for two days

2009 – Russia President Dmitry Medvedev signs the decree for the Day of the Programmer * held annually on the 265^th day of the year

2015 – California Governor Jerry Brown declares a State of Emergency after wildfires devastate Lake and Napa counties

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