November 14th is

World Diabetes Day *

Loosen Up, Lighten Up Day

Pickle Appreciation Day

Operating Room Nurse Day

Spicy Guacamole Day

National Speakers Association Spirit Day *

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MORE! Nellie Bly, Steve Biko and Ruby Bridges, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Guinea Bissau –
Readjustment Movement Day

India – Children’s Day

Ireland – Dublin:
St. Laurence O’Toole (patron saint)

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On This Day in HISTORY

1666 – First experimental blood transfusion takes place in Britain, between two dogs

1668 – Johann von Hildebrandt born, Austrian Baroque architect and military engineer; designed/built the Belvedere palaces for Prince Eugene of Savoy

South front of upper Belvedere Palace

1719 – Leopold Mozart born, Austrian violinist, composer, and conductor

1765 – Robert Fulton born, American engineer and inventor

1770 – Scottish explorer James Bruce arrives at the source of the Blue Nile at Lake Tana in northwest Ethiopia – which European got there first is disputed

1805 – Fanny Mendelssohn born, German pianist and composer

1832 – New York City’s first streetcar goes into operation – it is horse-drawn and can carry 30 people

1840 – Claude Monet born, French Impressionist painter

Haystack: End of Summer by Claude Monet

1851 – Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is published in the U.S.

Opening lines of Moby Dick – illustration by Rockwell Kent

1856 – Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott born, American woman suffragist; one of the organizers of the Pan-American Conference of Women in 1922; founding member of the League of Women Voters, and founder of the Maryland chapter of the League of Women Voters, serving as its president for 20 years

1878 – Julie Manet born, French painter, artist’s model, art collector and diarist, Growing Up with the Impressionists

1881 – Charles J. Guiteau’s trial for assassinating U.S. President Garfield opens

1889 – Jawaharlal Nehru born, Indian independence leader; India’s first Prime Minister (1947-1964)

1889 – Queen Victoria approved a Royal Charter creating the British South Africa Company (BSAC), the final step in the formation of Zambesia, giving almost sovereign powers to the BSAC, headed by Cecil Rhodes. In October 1888, King Lobengula of the Matabele (Ndebele) had signed the Rudd concession with C.D. Rudd, a partner of Rhodes, by which, in return for a thousand Martini-Henry rifles, 100 000 rounds of ammunition, £1200 annually and a steamboat with guns, Lobengula had given Rhodes and his partners a monopoly of all the metals and minerals in his kingdom and the right to mining companies to do anything necessary to further their operations. When Lobengula later discovered what the concession really meant, he tried to renounce it, but the British Government paid no heed to him. After 1894 the country was renamed Rhodesia in honour of Rhodes. Known as Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980

1889 – Pioneering journalist Nellie Bly (born Elizabeth Cochrane) begins her challenge: to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg’s record, going around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes

1900 – Aaron Copeland born, American composer; Copeland has had a major impact on the “American Sound” in orchestral music

1903 – The U.S. Women’s Trade Union League is established

 1906 – Louise Brooks born, actor and dancer in American and German films (Pandora’s Box), and author of memoir Lulu in Hollywood and film criticism

1907 – Astrid Lindgren born, Swedish author, best known for the Pippi Longstocking series

1910 – Aviator Eugene Burton Ely makes the first takeoff from a ship in a Curtiss pusher, from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in Hampton Roads, Virginia

1918 – Czechoslovakia becomes a republic

1919 – Veronica Lake born, American actress whose long ‘peek-a-boo’ hair was so copied that she changed her hairstyle during WWII to help prevent women working in wartime factories from catching their hair in the machinery. Her struggles with alcohol hurt her later career

1920 – Mary Greyeyes born, a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the first First Nations woman to join the Canadian Armed Forces, serving in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (1942-1946); a publicity picture of her in uniform brought her much attention; at the end WWII, Indigenous people who served in the Canadian military were offered the choice to give up their treaty rights and Indian status in return for the right to vote, and she was urged to visit a polling station and have her picture taken voting, but she pointed out the unfairness of the voting laws and refused. First Nations people didn’t get the right to vote in Canada until 1960

1921 – Ea Jansen born in Estonia, Finno-Ugric historian; most of her research focused on the national awakening of Estonia, and she made substantial contributions to the knowledge of this period; taught at the Tallinn Pedagogical University

1922 – The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) begins domestic radio service

1934 – Catherine McGuinness born, Irish jurist and politician; represented the University of Dublin in the Seanad Éireann (Ireland’s Senate – 1979-1981 and 1983-1987); first woman Judge of the Circuit Court (1994-1996); Judge of the High Court (1996-2000); Judge of the Supreme Court (2000-2006); President of the Law Reform Commission (2005-2011); Member of the Council of State since 2012

1935 – Franklin Roosevelt announces that the Philippines have become a free commonwealth after approval of their new constitution. The Tydings-McDuffie Act plans for the Philippines to be completely independent by July 4, 1946

1935 – King Hussein of Jordan born, reigned from 1953 to 1999

1939 – Wendy Carlos, born Walter Carlos, American musician and composer noted for electronic music and film scores, particularly featuring the Moog synthesizer

1940 – WWII: German planes bomb Coventry, England, destroying most of the town

1943 – Assistant Conductor Leonard Bernstein, age 25, debuts with the New York Philharmonic, fills in for ailing Bruno Walter prior to a national broadcast concert

1944 – Karen Armstrong born, British author and commentator; a former Roman Catholic religious sister; noted for her books on comparative religion and as a writer and presenter for BBC Channel Four; A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism,  Christianity and Islam 

1944 – Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra record “Opus No. 1” for RCA Records

1945 – Louise Ellman born, British Labour Co-operative MP for Liverpool Riverside since 1997

1946 – Emily Greene Balch, co-founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1950 – Sarah Radclyffe born, British film producer; co-founder of Working Title Films; noted as executive producer on Caravaggio, Wish You Were Here, A World Apart, Les Misérables (1998 version), and The War Zone

1954 – Condoleezza Rice born, American Republican politician; second woman to be U.S. Secretary of State (2005-2009)

1956 – The USSR crushes the Hungarian uprising

1956 – Babette Babich born, American philosopher; known for studies of Nietzsche,  Heidegger, Anders, Adorno, and Hölderlin, and work in aesthetics, including philosophy of music, life-size bronzes in antiquity (Greek sculpture), and continental philosophy, especially the philosophy of science and technology. Babich has also made substantive contributions to scholarly discussion of the role of politics in institutional philosophy (the analytic-continental divide) as well as gender in the academy

1956 – Valerie Jarrett born, American public servant in the Obama Administration; Director of the U.S. Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs (2009-2017), and Senior Advisor to the President (2009-2017); previously served in various positions in the mayor’s office in Chicago (1987-2005) and was a member of the Chicago Stock Exchange (2000-2007) and as its chair (2004-2007)

1960 – Ruby Bridges becomes the first black child to attend a segregated white elementary school in Louisiana

Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of Ruby Bridges
being escorted to school by U.S. Marshalls

1961 – The Elvis Presley film Blue Hawaii premieres

1967 – The Columbian Congress declares the “Day of the Columbia Woman” in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the death of ‘La Pola’, Policarpa Salavarrieta, a Neogranadine seamstress-turned-spy for the revolutionary forces fighting against the Spanish who was caught and executed

Policarpa Salavarrieta, watercolor by José María Espinosa

1968 – Yale University announces it is going co-educational

1969 – Apollo 12 blasts off from Cape Kennedy FL on the second manned moon mission

1970 – Santana releases Black Magic Woman

1972 – Blue Ribbon Sports becomes Nike

1972 – Lara Giddings born, Australian Labor politician; Premier of Tasmania (2011-2014); Deputy Premier of Tasmania (2008-2011); Treasurer of Tasmania (2010-2014); Member of the Tasmanian Parliament (1996-1998 and 2002-2018)

1973 – National Speakers Association Spirit Day * – the National Speakers Association was founded in this year by Cavett Robert, who was born on November 14, 1907, so he is honored by the association on Spirit Day

1977 – The inquest into the death while in police custody of Black Consciousness leader Steven Biko opens in Pretoria, South Africa

1983 – The British government announces that 96 Tomahawk cruise missiles, part of a planned NATO deployment, have arrived at Greenham Common air base; thousands of protesting women who have camped outside the gate stage a lie-in

1986 – The SEC fines Ivan Boesky $100 million for insider stock trading

1991 – World Diabetes Day * is launched by the International Diabetes Federation

1994 – U.S. experts visit North Korea’s main nuclear complex for the first time under an accord that opened such sites to outside inspections

1995 – The U.S. government institutes a partial shutdown, closing national parks and museums while most government offices operate with skeleton crews, due to lack of funds because President Clinton vetoed the spending bill sent to him by the Republican-controlled Congress which brutally slashed funding for Medicare, education, the environment, and public health

1999 – The United Nations imposes sanctions on Afghanistan for refusing to hand over terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden

2007 – Buildings in Kaixian, China are demolished to make way for the Three Gorges project – the urban area, dating back 1,800 years, is submerged under the Three Gorges reservoir by October 2008

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