November 2nd is

Deviled Egg Day

Broadcast Traffic Directors Day *

International Day to End Impunity
for Crimes against Journalists *

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MORE! Rose Bird, Harry Truman and Sofia Polgár , click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christian – All Souls Day
Rastafarian – Haile Selassie Coronation *

Chile – Día de las Iglesias

Mauritius – Arrival of Indentured Laborers
(first of 1000s of Chinese and Indian laborers)

Mexico – Oaxaca: Carnivalesque

Norway – Oslo: Oslo Whiskey Festival

South Africa – Capetown: Windhoek Obtorberfest

United Kingdom –
Harrow: Harrow Fireworks Festival

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On This Day in HISTORY

1410 – Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War: Two cadet branches of the French royal family, the House of Valois-Orléans (Armagnac) and the House of Burgundy become locked in a power struggle over control of the government during a “lull” in the Hundred Years’ War between the French and the English. The Peace of Bicêtre on this day suspends the hostilities, but both sides had taken up arms again by early spring, 1411

Coats of Arms: House of Burgundy, and House of Valois-Orléans

1675 – King Philip’s War/First Indian War: Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow leads a colonial militia against the Narragansett

1721 – Peter the Great, sovereign of all Russia, changes his title to Emperor

1739 – Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf born, German composer

1755 – Marie Antoinette born in Austria, queen consort of Louis XVI of France

1783 – U.S. General George Washington gives his “Farewell Address to the Army”

1833 – Mahendralal Sarkar born, Bengali Indian physician, social reformer, and propagator of scientific studies in 19^th century India; he and Jagabandhu Bose shared the honor of being the second MDs to graduate from Calcutta Medical College; where Sarkar was noted for his knowledge of optics. Sarkar started a campaign for a national science association in 1867; the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science was established in 1876, and he became its first secretary. Regular lectures and demonstrations were organized to popularise the sciences with the Indian public. Sarkar also supported education for women, including higher education

1868 – New Zealand officially adopts a national standard time

1879 – Marion Jones Farquhar born, American tennis player, first Californian to reach the finals at the Women’s U.S. Tennis Championships in 1898, but her first win is in 1899, her second win is in 1902. At the 1900 Olympics, became the first American woman to win a medal in Tennis; inducted into International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2006. After her marriage to Robert David Farquhar, she was a voice coach, violinist, and opera libretto translator (this one is personal – her husband, who was a notable architect in New York and Southern California, is a distant relative of mine, and since we also have some Joneses in the family, it’s possible, although less likely, that I’m also related to her family)

1887 – Harper’s Bazaar magazine is founded

1890 – Moa Martinson born, Swedish author of proletarian literature who portrayed the conditions of the working class, especially the lives of working-class women. She started work at age 15, as a kitchen maid and apprentice pantry chef (responsible for refrigerated foods); her difficult first marriage, living in an area so isolated she gave birth to one of her sons alone on the kitchen floor, and the economic hardships of the time were vividly depicted in her semi-autobiographical books;  Kvinnor och äppelträd (Women and Apple Trees), Kungens rosor (The King’s Roses), and Rågvakt (Rye Guard)

1899 – Second Boer War: The Boers, commanded by Louis Botha, begin their 118-day siege of Ladysmith, held by British forces under Lt. General Sir George White

1911 – Odysseas Elytis born, Greek poet, 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature winner

1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”

1920 – In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station, first broadcast is results of 1920 U. S. presidential election

1921 – Margaret Sanger’s National Birth Control League combines with Mary Ware Denetts’ Voluntary Parenthood League to form the American Birth Control League

Margaret Sanger with National Birth Control League staff and volunteers, 1921

1928 – Herb Geller born, American Jazz saxophonist and composer

1930 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia

1936 – Rose Bird born, American judge, first female justice on the California Supreme Court, and first woman Chief Justice of California (1977-1987)

1936 –  The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world’s first regular, “high-definition” (then defined as at least 200 lines) service. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is also founded

1939 – Pauline Neville-Jones born, career member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service (1963-1996) in Rhodesia, Singapore, Washington DC and Bonn; seconded to the European Commission (1977-1982); 1991-1994, Head of Defence and Overseas Secretariat in the Cabinet Office and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet; made a Dame Commander in 1995, and The Baroness Neville-Jones in 2007

1942 –Shere Hite born in the U.S., becomes a German citizen in 1995, sexologist whose work focuses primarily on female sexuality

1947 – In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose or H-4 The Hercules; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built

1948 – Harry S. Truman defeats Thomas E. Dewey for U.S. president, but the Chicago Tribune publishes an early edition with the headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” The Truman victory surprised many polls and newspapers

1949 – Lois McMaster Bujold born, American speculative fiction author; 4-time Hugo Award-winner; The Mountains of Mourning, The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls

1949 – At the Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference, the Netherlands agrees to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia, and

1953 – Constituent Assembly of Pakistan names country Islamic Republic of Pakistan

1959 – Quiz show scandals: Twenty One game show contestant Charles Van Doren tells to Congressional committee he was given questions and answers in advance

1959 – The first section of the M1 motorway, the U.K.’s first inter-urban motorway, is opened between present junctions 5 and 18, along with M10 and M45 motorways

1960 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case

1961 – k.d. lang born, Canadian pop-country singer-songwriter, 4-time Grammy winner

1964 – King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother Faisal

1964 – Britta Lejon born, Swedish Social Democratic politician; member of the Riksdag; chairman of the Trade Union ST since May 2012; in the cabinet of Göran Persson (1996-2006)

1969 – Biafran War: 300,000 refugees in camps near the Biafran-Nigerian border face starvation after the Nigerian government orders the Red Cross to leave. The civil war began in 1967 when the Igbo majority in the southwestern region declared the Republic of Biafra, and tried to secede from Nigeria. The region was blockaded by the Nigerian government, causing wide-spread famine. An estimated two million Biafran civilians died from starvation during the two-and-a-half years of the war (1967-1970)

1974 – Sofia Polgár  born, Hungarian chess player, the middle sister with Susan and Judit Polgár, the Polgár trio of Chess Grandmasters; Sofia is World Under-14 Girls Champion in 1986, her highest performance rating: 2879 at a tournament in Rome; once ranked as the World’s sixth-strongest woman player

1977 – Emma Reynolds born, British Labour Politician; Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton North East since 2010

1978 – The Police release their debut album “Outlandos d’Amour”

1983 – U.S. President Reagan signs into law Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

1984 – Velma Barfield, who confessed to six murders, becomes the first woman executed in the U. S. since 1962

1985 – The South African government imposes severe restrictions on television, radio and newspaper coverage of unrest by both local and foreign journalists

1986 – A 12-by-16-inch ‘cell’ of a poison apple from Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is purchased for $30,800

1993 – U.S. Senate calls for full disclosure of Senator Bob Packwood’s diaries in a sexual harassment probe

2001 – The animated film Monsters, Inc. opens with the highest box office for an animated film

2003 – U.S. Episcopal Church consecrates its first openly gay bishop

2009 (?) – First mention found of Traffic Directors Day * – a day to say thank you to the media people who bring us traffic reports

2010 – Republicans won control of the House of Representatives, picking up 63 seats in midterm elections, while Democrats retained a majority in the Senate; Republican governors outnumbered Democrats after gaining six states.

2013 – A U.N. resolution establishes November 2 as International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. * Between 2006 and 2017, over 1,000 journalists have been killed for reporting the news and informing the public. It’s estimated that only one in ten cases of violent crimes against journalists result in convictions. UNESCO believes that this escalating violence with impunity means that serious human rights abuses, corruption in government and business, and organized crime may go unreported and unchecked

2014 – An Egyptian judge sentenced eight men to three years in prison for “inciting debauchery” and “violating public decency” by appearing in a video for an alleged same-sex wedding, possibly the first gay wedding in Egypt, which went viral on YouTube. The Judge said the video footage was “humiliating, regrettable and would anger God.” Homosexuality is not outlawed in Egypt, but same-sex marriage is illegal

2016 – Pope Francis announced that the Catholic Church would probably never allow women to serve as priests. Pope John Paul II wrote in 1994 that Jesus chose only men as his apostles, and that, “The exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his Church.” Pope Francis said the letter indicated that the ban would likely endure forever. He had raised the hopes of advocates for ordaining women when he created a commission earlier this year to study the possibility of women serving as deacons, who perform some of the functions of priests. Women did serve as deacons early in the church’s history

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