October 8^th is

Pierogi Day

Fluffernutter Day

National Salmon Day

Alvin C. York Day *

World Octopus Day/
1^st Day of Cephalopod Awareness Days*

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MORE! Rose Scott, Che Guevara and Pinar Selek, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Bahamas _ National Heroes’ Day

Cambodia – Bonn Phchum Ben
(Ancestors’ day)

Canada – Thanksgiving Day

Croatia – Independence Day

India – Mahalaya
(Hindu homage to Ancestors)

Japan – Fitness Day

Kiribati – Honoring Education Day

Norfolk Island – Agricultural Show Day

Northern Mariana Islands –
Commonwealth Cultural Day

Peru – Battle of Angamos/Navy Day

Sint Maarten – Constitution Day

Turks and Caicos Islands – National Heritage Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

319 BC – Pyrrhus of Epirus born, Greek general and later King of Epirus; a very strong early opponent of Rome, but some victories cost him such heavy losses that the term Pyrrhic victory is coined from his name

314 – Battle of Cibalae – between Roman Emperors Licinus and Constantine I, in what is now Croatia; despite being outnumbered, it is a resounding victory for Constantine

1551 – Giulio Caccini born, Italian Renaissance composer, singer and instrumentalist; father of composer-lutenist Francesca Caccini and singer-composer Settimia Caccini

1645 – Jeanne Mance, French nurse and pioneering settler in Quebec province, establishes its first hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal

1807 – Harriet Taylor Mill born, English philosopher and women’s rights advocate; second wife of John Stuart Mill, who influenced his views on the status of women

1820 – Henri Christophe, the slave who became a leader of the Haitian Revolution, self-declared président et généralissime de l’État d’Haïti, and later King of Haiti’s northern state, commits suicide by shooting himself with a silver bullet rather than risk a coup and assassination; his son, who succeeds him, is assassinated 10 days later

1829 – The Liverpool and Manchester Railway holds the Rainhill Trials; five engines are entered; only the winner, Stephenson’s Rocket, completes the trial, and wins the contract to produce locomotives for the railway

1833 –Edmund Stedman born, American poet and anthology editor

1834 – Walter Kittredge born, American musician-songwriter; best known song is “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground”; abolitionist and temperance supporter

1838 – John Hay born, American statesman, assistant to Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt

1847 – Rose Scott born, Australian women’s rights and suffrage activist and speaker in New South Wales; co-founder of the Women’s Literary Society in Sydney, first President of the Women’s Political Education League; successfully worked for the Early Closing Act of 1899, which gave shorter evening hours to shop girls, as well as working for appointment of matrons at police stations and women inspectors in shops and factories, improving conditions for women prisoners, and New South Wales legislation raising the age of consent from 14 to 16

1848 – Pierre De Geyter born, Belgian composer and Socialist; composer of the music for  L’Internationale:

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

Refrain:
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

1860 – The telegraph line between Los Angeles and San Francisco opens

1871 – The Great Chicago Fire starts, which will destroy over 3 square miles of the city and leave more than 100,000 homeless; fires also burn in Peshtigo WI, Holland MI and Manistee MI, all on the shores of Lake Michigan

1872 – Mary Engle Pennington born, American bacteriological chemist and refrigeration engineer; first head of the Food Research Laboratory of the USDA (1907), developed safety standards for food processing and shipping; founder of the Household Refrigeration Bureau in 1923 to educate consumers on safe practices in domestic refrigeration, publishing pamphlets such as The Care of the Child’s Food in the Home (1925) and Cold is the Absence of Heat (1927)

1879 – The Navy of Chile defeats the Navy of Peru at the Battle of Angamos after Peruvian Admiral Grau is killed

1882 – Harry Kirby McClintock born, American singer-songwriter; “Big Rock Candy Mountains” and “The Old Chisholm Trail”

1883 – Dick Burnett born, American folk musician-songwriter; “Song of the Orphan Boy”and “Man of Constant Sorrow,”  which was used in the film O Brother Where Art Thou (not ‘Though’)

1890 –Eddie Rickenbacker born, American WWI flying ace; head of Eastern Airlines

1892 – Sergei Rachmaninoff premieres Prelude in C-sharp Major in Moscow

1892 – Marina Tsvetaeva born, notable Russian poet who committed suicide in 1941 after her husband was executed by the Soviets on espionage charges

1898 – Clarence Williams born, American Jazz pianist, composer and music publisher

1904 – Edmonton, Alberta, and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, are incorporated as Canadian cities

1918 – Alvin C. York Day * U.S. Corporal Alvin York captures 132 German soldiers almost single-handedly in the Argonne Forest. He’s promoted to Sergeant, and awarded the Medal of Honor

1924 – Thirunalloor Karunakaran born, renowned Indian Malayalam-language poet, scholar, translator and leftist intellectual of Kerala, among his notable works are Manjuthullikal, Rani, Vayalar, and Oru Mahayudhathinte Paryavasanam, a retelling of the ancient Sanskrit epic, The Mahabharata 

1929 – Betty Boothroyd born, English academic and politician, Labour MP for West Bromwich (1973-1992), first woman to serve as Speaker of the House of Commons (1992-2000); currently President of NBFA Assisting the Elderly

1930 – Faith Ringgold born, African American artist, noted for her narrative quilts, masks and sculptures. She was also an activist for civil and women’s rights, and was a member of Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), and co-founded Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation (WSABAL). In 1950, she had enrolled at City College of New York, but was not allowed to major in art because at the time art education was the only art-related major open to women at CCNY. She got her BA in 1955, and began teaching in NY public schools, and earned her Master’s in 1959. A trip to Europe that year, and two trips to West Africa in 1976 and 1977 all had a profound impact on her work. Also wrote and illustrated 17 children’s books

1932 – The Indian Air Force is established, called the Royal Indian Air Force between 1945 and 1950, but the Royal was dropped after India became a Republic; it is now the fourth largest air force in the world, after the U.S., Russia and Israel

1937 – Merle Park born in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), British prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet, where she started in the corps de ballet in 1954, then became a soloist in 1958, and a principal dancer in 1962; best remembered for her Giselle, but was often paired with Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

1938 – Norman Rockwell’s self-portrait is the cover of the Saturday Evening Post

1943 – R.L. Stine born, American author, screenwriter, and television producer; noted for his Goosebumps series of children’s books

1945 – U.S. President Truman announces the secret of the atomic bomb will be given only to Great Britain and Canada

1946 – Hanan Ashrawi born, Palestinian Third Way politician, activist and scholar, a leader during the First Intifada, and Palestinian Delegation spokesperson during the Middle East peace process; first woman elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council; also served on advisor boards for the World Bank, the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)and the International Human Rights Council; chair of the English Department at Birzeit University (1973-1978 and 1981-1984) and Dean of its Faculty of Arts (1986-1990); founder in 1974 of the Birzeit University Legal Aid and Human Rights Action Project; awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2003

1946 – Bel Mooney born, English journalist, broadcaster, author and columnist; has written for Nova magazine, New Statesman, Daily Mirror, The Sunday Times, and is a weekly columnist for the Daily Mail; Mooney was a broadcaster for BBC Radio 4 (1982-2008), notably for Devout Sceptics; novelist and children’s author, known for her best-selling children’s series Kitty and Friends, and children’s novel The Voices of Silence, awarded a NY Public Library Book of the Year citation

1949 – Ashawna Hailey born as Shawn Hailey, American computer scientist, creator of the HSPICE program used by much of the semiconductor industry to simulate and design silicon chips; founder of Meta-Software, which later became part of Synopsis; she was a trans woman; noted as an activist for the reform of laws on creational drugs; after her death in 2011, a $10 million USD bequest was shared between Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. The ACLU, Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project and Second Harvest Food Bank

1949 – Sigourney Weaver born as Susan Weaver, American actress and three-time nominee for Academy Awards, environmental activist who warns of threats to the oceans from deep-sea trawling, and honorary chair of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

1950 – United Nations troops cross into North Korea

1951 – Shannon C. Stimson born, American political theorist, philosopher and economics historian; Professor of Political Science at University of California Berkeley since 1991, and presently serves on the editorial board of the Adam Smith Review; author of The American Revolution in the law: Anglo-American jurisprudence before John Marshall, and co-author of After Adam Smith: a century of transformation in politics and political economy

1956 – Janice E. Voss born, American electrical engineer with a doctorate in aeronautics & astronautics from MIT; NASA astronaut (1990 group), who flew in space as a mission specialist on five missions, and participated in the first Shuttle rendezvous with the Mir Space Station in 1995; she died in 2012 from breast cancer

1957 – Jerry Lee Lewis records “Great Balls of Fire”

1958 – Ursula von der Leyen born in Belgium, German Christian Democratic Union politician; first woman and current Minister of Defence for Germany since 2013; Deputy Leader of the CDU party since 2009; Minister for Labour and Social Affairs (2009-2013); as Minister of Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (2005-2009), instituted extensive blocking of child pornography on the internet, which was overturned as censorship by the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), the federal criminal police office; member of the Bundestag for Lower Saxony since 2009; noted for support of equal opportunities for women in politics, and same-sex marriage/adoption rights

1966 – U.S. government declares LSD is dangerous and illegal

1967 – Guerilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia

1969 – First day of the ‘Days of Rage’: the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society stage a series of property-destroying and confrontational anti-Vietnam War actions in Chicago to “bring the war home”

1970 – Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn wins the Nobel Prize for literature

1971 – Pinar Selek born, Turkish sociologist, feminist and author; advocate for the rights of vulnerable communities in Turkey, including women, the poor, street children, sexual minorities, and Kurdish communities. She is the author of several books published in Turkish, German, and French, and was one of the founding editors of Amargi, a Turkish feminist journal. Selek is currently living in exile in France, because of a 20-year series of prosecutions connected to a 1998 explosion in Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar which killed 7 people and wounded about 100 others. The arrest is widely considered as motivated by her work with the Kurds, particularly her contact with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Her academic research papers were confiscated, and she refused to name the individuals she had interviewed for her project. She spent 2 ½ years in prison, ill-treated and tortured, but was released in 2002 when a team of experts issued reports which concluded that the explosion had been caused by the accidental ignition of a gas cylinder, not a bomb. She has since been tried and acquitted of all charges in four trials, in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014, but in 2017 the Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court demanded that her most recent acquittal be reversed, and her case is once again being considered; Interpol ignored the Turkish government’s warrant for her arrest

1974 – Franklin National Bank, which had introduced such innovations as drive-up teller windows, and bank-issued credit cards under its previous CEO, collapses due to fraud and mismanagement, largest bank failure in U.S. history up to that time

1974 – Baja California Sur becomes the 31st state of Mexico, after being El Territorio Sur de Baja California

1982 – Poland bans Solidarity, whose members constitute a third of the total working-age population of the country, and all other trade unions

1984 – Anne Murray becomes the first woman to win the Country Music Associations Album of the Year Award for A Little Good News

1992 – The U.S. Postal Service issues commemorative stamps for Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Clyde McPhatter, Dinah Washington, and Otis Redding

1993 – The Transitional Executive Council becomes operational in South Africa, and the UN requests that its member states terminate restrictions on economic relations with South Africa, and end the oil embargo

2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush announces establishment of the Office of Homeland Security, and Tom Ridge is sworn in as its director

2007 – The Octopus News magazine forum members establish Cephalopod Awareness Days * in October

2017 – Wildfires ignite in Northern California’s wine country, killing over 40 people, and forcing the evacuation of 20,000 others

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