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, Massachusetts, 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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September 30, 1935: John Royce Mathis (“Johnny Mathis”) born.
Johnny Mathis’ music is not “my kinda music” but I heard him in person last Sunday and I must say his voice is beautiful. Remarkable, actually. I had never really listened to it before!
Thanks Malisha –
The hardest part of editing these posts is all the stuff I have to leave out because otherwise no one would have enough time to read them!
Glad you have discovered Johnny Mathis – his voice is something really special.
I only knew about his birthday because he sang at a benefit (where a posthumous award was given to my recently deceased lawyer friend) and the MC announced that his birthday was coming up so we sang Happy Birthday to him; it was fun! Since I had not listened to his music I didn’t expect to recognize any of it but I did! When I worked in a diner when I was 16, his songs were on the juke-box! He’s still got his voice at age 83. I therefore assume that the cigarette gracing his album cover was just a prop and that he never smoked. (Isn’t it weird that they used to think it was supercool to hold a cigarette?)
I think one of the biggest reasons a lot of people started smoking before the 1960s is because it give them “something to do with their hands” in social situations. And cigarettes were certainly used effectively by actors as props. By the time all the damaging medical reports on the health problems caused by tobacco were coming out, millions of people were already addicts. My mother was one of them. She went to college at age 16, and started smoking in an attempt to look older and more sophisticated. I will always believe that smoking contributed to the stroke she had in her late 70s, and to the Alzheimers that ultimately killed her.