September 30th is

Chewing Gum Day

Hot Mulled Cider Day

International Translation Day *

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MORE! Rumi, Claudia Card and Cesar Chavez, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Abkhazia – National Liberation Day

Botswana – Botswana Day

Portugal – Lisbon:
Wanderlust 108 Festival

Sao Tome and Principe –
Agricultural Reform Day

Spain – Tarragona: Concurs de Castells
(human tower competition)

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On This Day in HISTORY

737 – Battle of the Baggage: The Turgesh tribe drives back the Umayyad invasion of Khuttal (now part of Tajikistan), then follow them south of the Oxus River and capture their baggage train

1207 – Rumi born, Persian mystic and poet

1530 – Girolamo Mercuriale born, Italian philologist and physician, noted for his work De Arte Gymnastica

1541 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his forces enter the territory of the Tula (or Tulia) people in present-day western Arkansas, encountering fierce resistance

1788 – The Pennsylvania Legislature elects the first two members of the U.S. Senate: William Maclay of Harrisburg and Robert Morris of Philadelphia

1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote)premiered at ‘Theater auf der Wieden’ in Vienna, Austria

1801 – Zacharias Frankel born, Bohemian rabbi and theologian; founder of Conservative Judaism

1802 – Antoine-Jerome Balard born, French chemist; discovered the element bromine

1814 – Lucinda Hinsdale Stone born, educator, feminist, advocate for suffrage and education for women, abolitionist and literary club organizer, inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1983

1832 – Ann Jarvis, American activist, the mother who inspired Mother’s Day; activist for public health education for women to reduce infant mortality and death from disease; her daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis, is the founder of the Mother’s Day holiday in the U.S.

1846 – Dr. William Morton performs a painless tooth extraction using ether

1860 – Britain’s first tram service begins in Birkenhead, Merseyside

1875 –  Anne Henrietta Martin born, suffragist, author, first woman to run for US Senate in 1918

1882 – Hans Geiger born, German physicist; introduced the Geiger Counter

1882 – First hydroelectric power plant begins operation in Appleton WI

1883 – Nora Stanton Blatch Barney born in England, American civil engineer, architect, suffragist and peace activist; one of the first women to graduate with an engineering degree; granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. While she was the first woman admitted as a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1906, their “liberal-minded generosity” balked  at making her a full Fellow when she applied in 1916. It was not until 99  years later, in 2015, that her “significant contributions” were finally honored with a posthumous Fellowship

1895 – Madagascar becomes a French protectorate

1897 – Charlotte Wolff born in Prussia, British physician and psychotherapist; her writings on sexology, especially lesbianism and bisexuality, are influential early works in the field

1901 – Thelma Terry born, American bassist, first woman instrumentalist to lead a notable jazz band, Thelma Terry and Her Play Boys, in the 1920s and 30s; a young Gene Krupa was one of her Play Boys early in his career

1906 – The Royal Galician Academy, Galician language’s biggest linguistic authority, starts working in Havana Cuba

1907 – McKinley National Memorial for the president dedicated in Canton, OH

1915 – A Serbian Army private becomes the first soldier in history to shoot down an enemy aircraft with ground-to-air fire

1924 – Truman Capote born, American author; Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood

1927 – W.S. Merwin born, American poet; U.S. Poet Laureate (2010); two-time Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner, 1971 and 2009; National Book Award for Poetry 2005

1929 – Carol Fenner born, American children’s author and illustrator; noted for Yolanda’s Genius, Gorilla-Gorilla and The Skates of Uncle Edward, which won an honor from the Coretta Scott King Awards

1929 – Leticia Ramos-Shahani born, Filipina diplomat, and politician; President Pro Tempore of the Senate (1993-1996); Philippines Senator (1987-1998); UN Assistant Secretary-General for Social and Humanitarian Affairs (1985-1987); Secretary-General of the 1985 World Conference on the UN Decade of Women in Nairobi Kenya;   Philippine Ambassador to Australia (1981-1985)

1935 – Porgy and Bess premieres in Boston MA, then goes on to Broadway

1935 – Boulder Dam (later renamed Hoover Dam), on the border between Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt; it will begin operations in 1936

1938 –League of Nations outlaws “intentional bombings of civilian populations” but has no power to enforce it

1938 – British, French, German and Italian leaders agreed at a meeting in Munich that Nazi Germany would be allowed to annex Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland

1940 – Claudia Falconer Card born, American ethics and social philosopher and academic; taught at the University of Wisconsin from 1969 until 2015, and was UW-Madison’s Emma Goldman Professor of Philosophy, with teaching affiliations in Women’s Studies, Jewish Studies, Environmental Studies and LGBT Studies; her published work is regarded as essential to the study of 20th century feminism

1943 – The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) at Kings Point NY is dedicated

1946 – Nuremberg International Tribunal finds 22 top Nazis guilty of war crimes

1949 – After delivering 2.3 million tons of food to West Berlin despite the Soviet blockade, the Berlin Airlift ends

1950 – Laura Esquivel born, Mexican novelist, screenwriter and Morena Party politician; has served in the Chamber of Deputies (2012-2018); author of the bestseller Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)

1951 – The Red Skelton Show first airs on NBC-TV

1953 – The International Federation of Translators claims September 30 as International Translation Day * to pay tribute to the work of translators

1954 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world’s first nuclear reactor powered vessel

1954 – Julie Andrews makes her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend

1955 – Actor James Dean, age 24, is killed in a car crash in California

1960 – Julia Adamson born in Canada, British musician, composer, and founder-manager of Invisiblegirl Records and Invisible Girl Music Publishing

1960 – Nicola Griffith born in England, British-American novelist, essayist and short story writer; her first novel, Ammonite, won the 1993 James Tiptree, Jr and Lambda Awards, and Slow River won the 1997 Nebula Award for best novel

1960 – Blanche Lincoln born, American Democratic politician; U.S. Senator from Arkansas (1999-2011); Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the first district of Arkansas (1993-1997)

1962 – Black student James Meredith succeeds on his fourth try to register for classes at the University of Mississippi

1962 – The National Farm Workers Association, founded by Cesar Chavez, forerunner of United Farm Workers, holds its first meeting in Fresno CA

1965 – The 30 September Movement: an attempted coup against the Indonesian government, which is crushed by the military under Suharto and leads to a mass anti-communist purge, killing over 500,000 people

1966 – Albert Speer, Nazi armaments minister, and Baldur Von Schirach, Hitler Youth founder, are released from Spandau prison after completing 20-year sentences

1966 – Cat Stevens releases his first single “I Love My Dog”

1966 – The British protectorate of Bechuanaland declares its independence, and becomes the Republic of Botswana; Seretse Khama takes office as the first President.

1967 – Emmanuelle Houdart born in Switzerland, living in Paris, Swiss artist, illustrator, costume and textile designer, and author; contributor to French newspapers and magazines, including Libération and Le Monde

Ma mere by Emmanuelle Houdart

1968 – The first public showing of the Boeing 747 at the Boeing Everett Factory

1971 – Soviet Union and U.S. sign pacts to prevent accidental nuclear war

1976 – California enacts Natural Death Act, first U.S. right-to-die legislation

1977 – Because of budget cuts and dwindling power reserves, NASA’s Apollo program’s ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down

1980 – Israel issues new currency, the shekel, to replace the pound

1981 – Cecelia Ahearn born, Irish novelist whose books have sold over 25 million copies; noted for P.S. I Love You, and Where Rainbows End, which won the 2005 Corine Award; she was the co-creator of the TV series Samantha Who?, which starred Christina Applegate (2007-2009)

1982 – First episode of Cheers airs on NBC-TV

1985 – Téa Obreht born in Serbia, Serbian-American novelist and short story writer; her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction

1989 – Thousands of East Germans emigrate under NATO-Soviet Union accord

1990 – The Dalai Lama unveils the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights, a monumental sculpture, in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa – ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’

1991 – The Haitian military overthrows Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first freely-elected president

1997 – Bob Dylan releases his album Time Out of Mind

1997 – France’s Roman Catholic Church apologizes for keeping silent during persecution and deportation of Jews under pro-Nazi Vichy regime

2004 – Merck & Co. pulls Vioxx, its heavily promoted arthritis drug, from the market after a study finds it doubles the risk of heart attacks and strokes

2005 – Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten prints controversial Muhammad drawings

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