September 21st is

Pecan Cookie Day

Hobbit Day *

U.N. International Day of Peace *

World Alzheimer’s Day

World Gratitude Day *

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MORE! Barbara Longhi,  J.R.R. Tolkien and Masoumeh Ebtekar, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Armenia – Independence Day

Belize – Independence Day

Ghana – Kwame Nkrumah Day *

Malta – Jum Indipendenza

Philippines – National Day of Protest

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On This Day in HISTORY

1217 – The Livonian Crusade: At the Battle of St. Matthew’s Day, Livonian Brothers of the Sword, a German crusading order, supported by mixed army of recent Christian converts, win against an Estonian army led by Lembitu of Lehola, killing 1000 Estonians including Lembitu. They then begin the process of forcibly converting the people of what are now Estonia and Latvia to Christianity; Pope Innocent III had issued a bull declaring the crusade after Bishop Berthold was killed by Livonians in 1199

Livonian Brothers of the Sword

1428 – Jingtai Emperor born Zhu Qiyu, Emperor of the Ming dynasty who reigned from 1449 to 1457, when he was overthrown by his brother, and demoted to Prince of Cheng; his death shortly thereafter may have been murder

1552 – Barbara Longhi born, Italian painter, admired as a portraitist during her lifetime, but many of her works are now lost or unattributed

St Catherine of Alexandria (presumed self-portrait) 1589, by Barbara Longhi

1745 – Battle of Prestonpans: The Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart outflank and defeat, in ten minutes, a Hanoverian army led by Sir John Cope; but after another victory at Falkirk, the Bonnie Prince’s supporters will be totally defeated at the disastrous Battle of Culloden in April, 1746

1756 – John Loudon McAdam born, Scottish inventor of macadam road construction

1792 – The French National Convention votes to abolish the monarchy

1809 – Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, painter, illustrator, writer, and wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne; one of the Peabody Sisters; with her sisters Elizabeth and Mary, had a notable impact on early childhood education, the Transcendentalist movement, and the arts and letters of their day

Isola San Giovanni, Italy by Sophia Peabody circa 1839

1843 – John Williams Wilson claims the for the newly independent government of Chile

1851 – Susan Eakins born, American painter and photographer

1866 – H.G. Wells born, pioneering science fiction writer; The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man

1866 – Charles Nicolle, French bacteriologist; Nobel Prize in Medicine for his identification of lice as the transmitter of epidemic typhus

1867 – Henry Stimson born, American statesman, served under five presidents; U.S. Secretary of War during World War II

1874 – Gustav Holst born, son of a Swedish father and English mother, English composer known for The Planets

1884 – Ethel Percy Andrus, educator, first woman principal at a California high school;  founder of the National Retired Teachers Association (NRTA) and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)

1896 – Mahdist War: British forces led by Major-General Kitchener take Dongola in the Sudan

1897 – “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial is printed in the New York Sun

1898 – Empress Dowager Cixi, virulently opposed to foreigners, seizes power and ends the Hundred Days’ Reform in China

1902 – Sir Allen Lane born, English publisher; pioneer of paperback publishing

1902 – Luis Cernuda born, Spanish poet, academic and essayist who lived in exile from Spain from 1938 0n, because of the Spanish Civil War

1904 – Hans Hartung born in Germany, French gestural abstract painter; served in French Foreign Legion – annoying camerawork, but a tour of his late paintings:

1909 – Kwame Nkrumah * born, Ghanian revolutionary and politician; first President of Ghana, and a founding member of the Organization of African Unity; won the 1962 Lenin Peace Prize

1912 – Chuck Jones, prolific American animator, producer and screenwriter

1912 – György Sándor born, Hungarian pianist and composer

1916 – Françoise Giroud born to immigrant Turkish Sephardic Jews, French journalist, screenwriter, writer and politician; French Minister of Culture (1976-1977); editor of Elle magazine (1946-1953); co-founder in 1953 of the French newsmagazine, L’Express, which she edited until 1971, and then became its director until 1974

1917 – Phyllis Nicolson born, British mathematician; notable for work on the Crank-Nicolson Method with John Crank, for numerically solving the heat equation and similar partial differential equations

1929 – Bernard Arthur Williams born, British moral philosopher; Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

1931 – Great Britain goes off the gold standard

1932 – Shirley Conran born, British novelist and journalist; author of Lace, which was on the New York Times best Seller list for 13 weeks; founder of Maths Action, an  educational non-profit

1932 – Marjorie Fletcher born, Director of the British Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS – 1986-1988); she joined the WRNS in 1953, and served two tours in Malta; director of the naval staff college in 1979; first woman to become director of the naval staff duties division in the Ministry of Defense

1936 – Diane Rehm born, host of the long-running National Public Radio talk show, The Diane Rehm Show, which went off the air in December 2016; advocate for the right to die with dignity

1937 – Hobbit Day * – J.R.R. Tolkien publishes The Hobbit

1942 – Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress makes its first flight

1944 – Fannie Flagg born, American comedian, actress and author; noted for her 1987 best-selling novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, and her screenplay adaptation for the 1991 movie, which was nominated for an Academy Award

1945 – Kay Ryan born, American poet and educator; U.S. Poet Laureate (2008-2010), 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

1946 – Rose Garrard born, English sculptor, multi-media artist and author; noted for sculptures and fountains, many installed in Malvern and other places in Worcestershire, her home county; she has also done much research and written books on the area’s history and the restoration of its local springs

The Malvinha Fountain – Rose Garrard

1947 – Stephen King born, award-winning American author and screenwriter of scifi, fantasy, horror and suspense

1947 – Marsha Norman born, American playwright, screenwriter and novelist; 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for ‘night, Mother

1956 – Marta Kauffman born, American writer and TV producer; co-creator and co-executive producer with David Crane of the comedy series Friends (1994-2004), and co-creator with Howard J. Morris of Grace and Frankie since 2015

1957 – Perry Mason premieres on CBS-TV

1960 – Masoumeh Ebtekar born, Iranian journalist, politician and scientist, professor of Immunology; first woman Vice President of Iran (1997-2005); currently Vice President and Head of Environmental Protection Organization since 2013

1964 – The world’s first Mach 3 bomber, North American XB-70 Valkyrie, makes its maiden flight

1965 – Johanna Vuoksenmaa born, Finnish director and screenwriter for television and film; noted for her feature films, Nousukausi (Upswing), and 21 Tapaa Pilata Avioliitto (21 ways to Ruin a Marriage)

1965 – World Gratitude Day * begins in Hawaii at an international gathering, and spreads when the attendees bring the idea home with them

1968 – Jimi Hendrix releases “All Along the Watchtower”

1969 – Anne Burrell born, American chef, and host on the Food Network shows, Secrets Of a Restaurant Chef and Worst Cooks in America

1970 – Samantha Power born in Ireland, American academic, war correspondent, author, diplomat and dedicated to atrocity prevention; During the Obama Administration, she was a Special Assistant to the President (2008) and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council (2009-2013); the inaugural Chair of the Atrocities Prevention Board (2012), where she focused on UN reform, women’s and LGBT rights, religious freedom and  religious minorities, refugees, human trafficking, human rights, and democracy. Appointed as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2013-2017)

1973 – U.S. Senate confirms Henry Kissinger as the first naturalized citizen to hold the office of Secretary of State

1973 – Vanessa Grigoriadis born, American journalist of Greek descent; contributor to The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair; author of Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus, published in 2017

1977 – Fifteen countries, including the U.S. and the Soviet Union, sign a nuclear non-proliferation pact

1981 – Belize becomes independent from the United Kingdom

1981 – UN International Day of Peace * is established by unanimous vote of the General Assembly, “as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day”

1981 – In a 99-0 vote, the US Senate approves Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice

1983 – Interior Secretary James G. Watt describes a special advisory panel as “a black … a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” He later apologizes and resigns

1985 – North and South Korea open their borders for a family reunion program

1986 – Lindsey Stirling born, American violinist, composer and performance artist; presents choreographed violin performances, live and as music videos on her YouTube channel (2007); in 2013, she teamed with the non-profit Atlanta Music Project to allow under-served children in Atlanta to learn and perform music in choirs and orchestras

1991 – Armenia gains independence from the Soviet Union

1996 – The all-male Virginia Military Institute (VMI) decides to allow women cadets

1996 – U.S. Congress passes the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), prohibiting federal recognition of same-sex marriage, but allowing states to use their own definition, but not requiring them to recognize same-sex marriages granted under laws of other states

2001 – U.S. Congress approves $15 billion to aid the airline industry in recovering from the loses caused by the 9-11 terrorist attacks

2001 – NASA’s Deep Space 1 flies within 2,200 kilometers (1367 miles) of Comet Borrelly

2004 – Green Day releases their album American Idiot

2008 – Mad Men is the first basic-cable TV show to win a top series Emmy award

2016 – The science journal Nature publishes three genetic studies that conclude all non-Africans are descended from one migration out of Africa between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago, and another study that found the Australian Aboriginal civilization to be the oldest known on earth

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