December 1st is

Antarctica Day *

Civil Air Patrol Day *

Day With(out) Art *

Eat a Red Apple Day

National Fried Pie Day

World AIDS Awareness Day *

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MORE! Anna Komnene, Rex Stout and Marie Bashir, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Central African Republic –
Republic Proclamation

Chad – Freedom and Democracy Day

Ghana – Farmer’s Day

Kazakhstan – Day of the First President

Mexico – Presidential inauguration

Portugal – Independence Restoration Day

Romania – Ziua unirii (national day)

United Kingdom – London:
The Wine Gang Winter Festival

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On This Day in HISTORY

1083 – Anna Komnene born, Byzantine princess, scholar, physician, hospital administrator, and historian; author of the Alexiad, an account of her father’s reign which is now the main source of Byzantine political history for the period; she administered a large hospital and orphanage in Constantinople, and taught medicine there; considered an expert on the treatment of gout; after she was involved in a plot to overthrow her brother when he took the throne after her father’s death, she forfeited her estates, spending her late years in the convent of Kecharitomene, studying philosophy and history

1420 – Hundred Years War: Henry V of England enters Paris

1577 – Francis Walsingham is knighted, Queen Elizabeth I of England’s principal secretary, dubbed her “spymaster”

1709 – Franz Xaver Richter born, Czech singer-songwriter, violinist, and conductor

1716 – Étienne Maurice Falconet born, French Rococo sculptor; his patron was Madame de Pompadour

1761 – Marie Tussaud, French sculptor, founded Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, hired to make death masks of victims of the guillotine during the French Revolution, barely escapes the guillotine herself

1802 – Sir Dominic Corrigan born, Irish physician who specialized in diseases of the heart and lungs; the abnormal “collapsing” pulse of aortic valve insufficiency is named Corrigan’s pulse

1824 – The House of Representatives convenes to decide the presidential election because no candidate receives a majority in the Electoral College. John Quincy Adams is eventually chosen the winner over Andrew Jackson and William Crawford.

1834 – Slavery is abolished in the Cape Colony by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833

1835 – Hans Christian Andersen publishes his first book of fairy tales

1847 – Christine Ladd-Franklin born, mathematician, logician, psychologist and feminist; advocate of equality for women within the scientific community; noted for her work, Color and Color Theories

1862 – In his State of the Union Address President Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation; “in giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free”

1865 – Shaw University, the first university for black students in the southern U. S., is founded in Raleigh, North Carolina

1878 – During President Hayes’ tenure, the first telephone is installed in the White House in Washington, D.C., by Alexander Graham Bell personally

1885 – Dr. Pepper is sold for the first time

1886 – Rex Stout born, American mystery writer of more than 70 novels and stories featuring the gourmand detective, Nero Wolfe; during WWII, he chaired the War Writers Board, and wrote and broadcast the radio program, Our Secret Weapon

1893 – Dorothy Detzer born, worked at Hull House investigating child labor infringements, national secretary of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1924-46), known as the “Lady Lobbyist” in Congress, respected for research and integrity – no personal favors, private dinners or backroom deals

Dorothy Detzer testifying before Congress in 1939   

1894 – Afrânio Pompílio Gastos do Amaral born, Brazilian herpetologist; researcher on snake anti-venom serum; the taxonomic authority on 40 new species; two snakes and a gecko are named for him

1910 – Dame Alicia Markova born as Lilian Marks, English ballerina and choreographer-director; notable for her career with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and as Prima Ballerina for the company that would become the Royal Ballet, was the first to perform several of Frederick Ashton’s early ballets

1912 – Minoru Yamasaki born, American “New Formalism” architect; designed the original World Trade Center in New York, and the IBM Building in Seattle WA

1913 – The Buenos Aires Metro, first underground railway system in the Southern Hemisphere and Latin America, begins operation

1913 – Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line

1913 – The first drive-in automobile service station opens, in Pittsburgh PA

1913 – Crete, self-ruling since the First Balkan War, is annexed by Greece

1918 – Kingdom of Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of  Denmark

1925 – The Locarno Pact finalizes the treaties between World War I protagonists

1930 – Dame Marie Bashir born, Australian physician, psychiatrist, and politician; director of the Community Health Services in the Central Sydney Area (1987-1990); Governor of New South Wales (2001-2014)

1933 – Lou Rawls born, American R&B/blues singer-songwriter and record producer

1933 – Violette Verdy born Nelly Armande-Guillerm, French ballerina, choreographer; a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre (1957-1958), and the New York City Ballet (1958-1977); dance director of the Paris Opera Ballet

1934 – Sergei M. Kirov, head of the Communist Party in Leningrad, is assassinated; the beginning of Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s massive purge which claims millions of lives

1936 – The first patent is issued for a commercial scale hydroponic system for plant culture (a ‘hydroponicum’) to Ernest Walfrid Brundin and Frank F. Lyon

1937 – Gordon Crosse born, English composer and academic

1941 – Founding of the Civil Air Patrol * an auxiliary unit of the U.S. Air Force, under Administration Order 9 signed by Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City and Director of the Office of Civilian Defense

1942 – In the U.S., nationwide gasoline rationing goes into effect

1945 – Bette Midler, American singer-songwriter, actress and producer

1952 – The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of sex reassignment surgery

1954 – Dame Judith Hackitt born, British chemical engineer and civil servant; Chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive (2008-2016)

1955 – In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1956 – The Leonard Bernstein musical Candide opens on Broadway, based on the book by Voltaire

1958 – Candace Bushnell born, American journalist, columnist, novelist and television producer; her column for the New York Observer was anthologized as the bestselling book Sex and the City, which became the basis for the hit TV series Sex and the City

1958 – The Central African Republic attains self-rule within the French Union

1959 –Antarctica Day * – 12 nations sign the Antarctic Treaty, setting it aside “forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes in the interest of mankind”  

1963 – The Beatles’ first single, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” is released in the U.S.

1964 – President Lyndon Johnson and top advisers meet to discuss bombing North Vietnam

1965 – An airlift of refugees from Cuba to the United States begins

1967 – U.K. release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience album Axis: Bold as Love

1969 – The first draft lottery since World War II is held in the U.S.

1973 – Papua New Guinea gains self-governance from Australia

1975 – The Styx album Equinox is released

1984 – NASA conducts Controlled Impact Demonstration, deliberately crashing a remote-controlled airliner in order to test a promising fuel additive for retarding or suppressing fire in a crash-landing scenario

1988 – First World AIDS Day, now called World AIDS Awareness Day *

1989 – Right-wing ‘Reform the Armed Forces’ Movement officers attempts to oust Philippine President Corazon Aquino in a failed bloody coup d’état

1989 – East Germany’s parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the Communist Party the leading role in the state

1989 – First Day With(out) Art * – museums offer programs drawing attention to AIDS

1990 – British and French workers digging the Channel Tunnel from their respective countries drill through a final piece of rock and shake hands,  22.3 km from the UK, 15.6 km from France, 40 metres beneath the seabed

1991 – Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union

1999 – The Russian Duma passes an animal rights bill prohibiting people from eating their pets

2000 – Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) is sworn in as Mexico’s President, ending 71 years of domination by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)

2009 – President Barack Obama orders 30,000 more U.S. troops into the war in Afghanistan but promises to begin withdrawal in 18 months

2013 – China launches the Chang’e 3 lunar probe incorporating a robotic lander and Jade Rabbit rover

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