October 22nd is

National Knee Day *

National Nut Day

National Color Day

National Smart is Cool Day

International Stuttering Awareness Day *

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MORE! Franz Liszt, Doris Lessing and Deepak Chopra, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Egypt – Abu Simbel Sun Festival

Malaysia –
29^th Sultan of Kedah Installation

New Zealand – Labour Day

Nuie – Nukai Peniamina Gospel Day

United States – Salem, Massachusetts:
Psychic Fair & Witches Market (til 10-31)

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On This Day in HISTORY

362 – The temple of Apollo at Daphne, near Antioch, is destroyed in a mysterious fire

794 – Emperor Kanmu moves Japan’s capital from Nagaoka-kyō to Heian-k yō (now Kyoto)

906 – Abbasid military officer Ahmad ibn Kayghalagh leads a raid against the Byzantine Empire from Tarsus. He and his raiders defeat the Byzantine forces, and reach the Halys River, taking 4,000 or 5,000 captives, as well as many horses and cattle as spoils

1511 – Erasmus Reinhold born, influential German astronomer and mathematician; catalogues a large number of stars, and creates Prutenicae Tabulae (Prussian Tables), based on Copernican calculation methods, which become the foundation for calendar reform under Pope Gregory XIII in 1582

1575 – Aguascalientes is founded in North-Central Mexico by Juan de Montoro as a postal service rest stop between Zacatecas and Mexico City

North Tower, 18^th century Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Aquascalientes

1633 – Battle of Liaoluo Bay: On the southern coast of Kinmen Island, near the Chinese mainland, the Ming dynasty navy defeats the fleet of the Dutch East India Company, which is attempting to control all shipping in the Taiwan Strait

1707 – Scilly Naval Disaster: The fleet of the British Royal Navy encounters severe weather in the English Channel near the Isles of Scilly off the southeast tip of Cornwall. The navigators’ inability to accurately calculate their ships latitude and longitude and unreliable compasses combined with terrible visibility causes four of the 21 ships and over 1500 sailors to be lost when they struck the coastal rocks of the isles. In 1714, Parliament passed the Longitude Act, establishing the Board of Longitude and offering a series of monetary rewards, increasing with each level of greater accuracy, for anyone who could find a simple, practical method of precisely determining a ship’s longitude

1730 – In Russia, construction is completed on the Ladoga Canal, linking the Neva and Svir Rivers, a project of Peter the Great to increase the safety and speed of transporting goods to St.Petersburg

1746 – The College of New Jersey, originally a school to train ministers, receives its charter, after moving to Princeton NJ, it is renamed Princeton University

1784 – Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska

1797 – Andre-Jacques Gamerin makes the first recorded parachute jump, from about 3,000 feet (1,000 meters)

1811 – Franz Liszt born, Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso

1836 – Sam Houston is the inaugurated as first constitutionally elected president of the Republic of Texas

1844 – Followers of Baptist preacher William Miller face “The Great Disappointment” when Jesus Christ doesn’t return to earth, nor does the world end, on the sixth wrong date which Miller had ‘predicted’

1844 – Sarah Bernhardt born, renowned French stage actress; after a lackluster debut at the Comédie-Française and brief membership in the company (1862–1864), she clashed with one of the leading actresses and was forced to leave. After further trials and tribulations, she found her home at the Odéon theatre, which was popular with students from the Left Bank. The theatre became a hospital during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), and Bernhardt took charge of nursing the wounded. Later, she returned triumphantly to the Comédie-Française (1872-1878), and would also make several world tours, beginning with a debut in London in 1879. She was noted for playing the title roles in La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, fils, and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Sarah Bernhardt in Edmond Rostand’s L’Aiglon (1900)

1870 – Ivan Bunin, Russian author and poet, first Russian awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933)

1879 – Thomas Edison conducts first successful experiments with high-resistance carbon filament

1882 – Edmund Dulac born in France, English book and magazine illustrator

1882 – N. C. Wyeth born, painter, and one of America’s greatest illustrators

Treasure Island: Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver by N C Wyeth

1883 – In New York, the newly-organized National Horse Show Association of America hold the first national horse show in the U.S.; and the Metropolitan Opera House holds its grand opening (this building will be demolished in 1967)

The Old Metropolitan Opera House-1883

1887 – John Reed born, American radical journalist and socialist activist; noted for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World

1897 – Marjorie Flack born, American children’s book author; The Story About Ping, her Angus series, and Boats on the River, which was a Caldecott Honor book

from Angus and the Cat – Marjorie Flack

1903 – George Wells Beadle born, American geneticist

1905 – Karl Guthe Jansky born, American physicist and pioneer of radio astronomy; discovers radio waves emanating from the Milky Way in 1931

1907 – Panic of 1907 begins as depositors withdraw money from many New York banks

1910 – Dr. Crippen is convicted at London’s Old Bailey of poisoning his wife, is sentenced to hang

1913 – Emperor Bảo Đại of Annam born, the last emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, when Annam was a protectorate of French Indochina (1926-1945), and covered about two-thirds of present-day Vietnam. Under coercion by the Japanese in 1945, he declared Vietnamese independence from France, and the country became the Empire of Vietnam, but he was persuaded to abdicate by Hồ Chí Minh after the Japanese were defeated, and became the “supreme advisor” of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam until the French returned and ousted Hồ Chí Minh in November 1946. The French attempted to quell the armed conflict this set off by bringing him back as “head of state” but he spent most of his time in France. In 1955, a questionable referendum vote of 98% in favor of a republic in which the total number of votes exceeded the total number of registered voters by over 350,000 nevertheless resulted in Điện Biên Phủ becoming president of South Vietnam, with Hồ Chí Minh in control of North Vietnam, and Bảo Đại in exile in the south of France

Former Emperor Bảo Đại and his wife in Paris – 1955

1919 – Doris Lessing born, British novelist, poet, playwright, 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature; The Grass Is Singing, The Golden Notebook

1920 – Timothy Leary, American psychologist, author and advocate for psychedelic drug therapy; conducts experiments with LSD and psilocybin

1925 – Edith Kawelohea McKinzie born, Hawaiian genealogist, author, and hula expert

1925 – Robert Rauschenberg born, American painter and illustrator

Robert Rauschenberg in his studio

1927 – Nicolas Tesla introduces a motor with one-phase electricity

1929 – Dory Previn born, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

1931 – Ann Rule born, American true crime author and former Seattle police officer; in 1971, while volunteering at a suicide crisis hotline, she worked with Ted Bundy, and after he was revealed as a serial killer, she wrote The Stranger Beside Me (1980)

1934 – FBI agents kill bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd in a shoot-out in Ohio

1941 – WWII: French Resistance member Guy Môquet, and 29 communist prisoners turned over by the Vichy government, are executed by the Germans in retaliation for the assassination of a German officer

1943 – Catherine Deneuve born, French International film star; 1993 Oscar for Best actress for Indochine; UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Safeguarding of Film Heritage (1994-2003), also involved with Children of Africa, Voix de femmes pour la démocratie (Voice of women for democracy), and Amnesty  International’s campaign against the death penalty; in 1972, she signed the Manifesto of the 343, an admission by the signers they had undergone illegal abortions, which exposed them to judicial actions and prison sentences

1947 – Deepak Chopra born in British India, American alternative medicine advocate, author and public speaker

1952 – Julie Dash, American film producer-director-writer, her 1991 feature, Daughters of the Dust, is the first full-length film directed by an African-American woman to be in general theatrical release in the U.S.

1934 – Federal agents shoot to death bank robber “Pretty Boy” Floyd

1954 – Federal Republic of German is invited to join N.A.T.O.

1957 – Vietnam War: During a series of widespread Viet Minh guerrilla bombings and assassinations which begin in this month, over 400 South Vietnamese officials are killed by year’s end; on this day, the U.S. Army suffers its first casualties

1959 – Marc Shaiman born, American composer-lyricist for theatre, film and television

1962 – President Kennedy informs Americans that he has ordered U.S. forces to blockade Cuba, in response to discovery of Soviet missile bases on the island

1964 – Jean-Paul Sartre refuses to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature

1965 – The Rolling Stones release “Get Offa My Cloud” in the U.K.

1967 – Oona King born, Baroness King of Bow, British Labour politician; member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow (1997-2005); the second British black woman elected to Parliament; served as Vice-Chair of the All-Parliamentary Group on Bangladesh; strong advocate for international aid and human rights; after a visit to Rwanda, she spoke out about genocide

1968 – Apollo 7 slashes down in the Atlantic Ocean, after 163 orbits of the Earth

1976 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration bans Red Dye #4 after it is discovered to cause tumors in dogs

1981 – The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization is decertified by the federal government for its strike the previous August

1983 – New York’s Metropolitan Opera celebrates its 100^th anniversary

1986 – President Reagan signs the Tax Reform Act of 1986 into law

1995 – The 50th anniversary of the United Nations is marked by a record number of world leaders gathering

1995 British pound coins stamps honoring the UN’s 50th anniversary

1996 – The first October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality Day * organized to protest brutality and repression by law enforcement; the coalition also sponsors the Stolen Lives Project, which documents officer-involved killings

1998 – The first International Stuttering Awareness Day * is created and sponsored by International Stuttering Association

2010 – The International Space Station sets 3641 day record for longest continuous human occupation of space

2015 – The first National Knee Day * – love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t get around very well without knees!

2016 – After Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said it was “time to say good-bye” to the U.S., his Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay says that the U.S. remains “our closest friend,” but that the Philippines wants to break away from a “mindset of dependency and subservience” and forge closer ties with other nations

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