January 12th is

Curried Chicken Day

Glazed Donut Day

Marzipan Day

Pharmacist Day

Kiss a Ginger Day

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MORE! Rosalba Carriera, Spiridon Louis and Mieko Kamiya, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Algeria – Yennayer
(Amazigh New Year)

Finland – Seinäjoki:
Seinäjoki Metal Festival

India – Youth Day

Tanzania – Zanzibar Revolution Day

Turkmenistan – Remembrance Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1528 – Gustav I of Sweden is crowned, the first king from the House of Vasa line

1554 – Bayinnaung becomes King of Burma, then goes on to assemble the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia, which includes much of modern-day Burma, Chinese Shan states, Lan Na, Lan Xang, Manipur and Siam

1616 – The city of Belém, Brazil is founded on the Amazon River delta by the Portuguese captain Francisco Caldeira Castelo Branco

Belem – Cathedral of Sé – completed in 1771

1628 – Charles Perrault born, French author/Académie Française member; derived his fairy tales from earlier folk tales; Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots,etc

1673 – Rosalba Carriera born, successful Venetian Rococo painter, noted for portrait miniatures, beginning with snuff box lids, and pastel work; made an ‘Accademico di merito’ by the Roman Accademia di San Luca, the title for non-Roman members

Dame im Türkischen Kostüm (Lady in a Turkish Costume),
by Rosalba Carriera

1711 – Gaetano Latilla born, Italian opera composer

1724 – Frances Brooke born, English novelist, essayist, playwright and translator; she spent time in Quebec, Canada, where her husband was serving as a military chaplain, and wrote The History of Emily Montague there, believed to be the first novel written in Canada, but it was published in England upon her return

Frances Moore Brooke – by Catherine Read

1729 – Edmund Burke, Irish philosopher-orator-politician, born; Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, On American Taxation – “If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take?”

1773 – The Charleston Museum, America’s first public museum, is founded in Charleston North Carolina

1799 – Priscilla Falkner Bury born, English Botanist and Illustrator,  A Selection of Hexandrian Plants; John James Audubon and Wilfrid Jasper Blunt admired her work

Crinum Augustum, by Priscilla Falkner Bury

1822 – Étienne Lenoir born, Belgian engineer, designed the first successful internal combustion engine

1856 – John Singer Sargent born, American painter

Self-Portrait 1907, by John Singer Sargent

1863 – Swami Vivekananda born, Indian Hindu monk-philosopher; key figure in introducing Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world, raising interfaith awareness, and increasing Hinduism’s status as a major world religion

1866 – The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed in London

1871 – Eugéne Nielen Marais born, South African writer, and poet in Afrikaans; publisher-editor of the Afrikaans newspaper, Land en Volk; he studied law in England, and nature in the Waterberg Mountains in Pretoria, including termites, puff adders, spitting cobras, and baboons, and wrote his findings in Afrikaans. Marais discovered the Waterberg cycad, aptly named Encephalartos eugene-maraisii 

1873 – Spiridon Louis born, Greek runner who won the first modern-day Olympic Marathon in the 1896 Summer Olympics, becoming a national hero

Spyridon Louis in 1896

1874 – Laura Adams Armer born, American writer, photographer and artist; her book Waterless Mountain won the 1932 Newbery Award; Adams Armer photographs of San Francisco’s Chinatown, and extensive photos of the lives and culture of the Navajo and Hopi people are now part of museum collections in the San Francisco area and Santa Fe New Mexico

1876 – Jack London born, American author and adventurer

1878 – Ferenc Molnár is born in Budapest, American playwright; Liliom  (adapted as the musical Carousel), The Guardsman, The Swan, The Good Fairy

1879 – British forces under the command of Lord Chelmsfold attack Sihayo’s kraal in the Batshe Valley in Zululand, the first attack in the Anglo-Zulu war

1884 –  “Texas” Guinan born, American entertainer-producer, “The Queen of the West,” an early female emcee who opened a speakeasy in New York called the 300 Club during Prohibition; credited with coining “butter and egg men” and “give the little ladies a great big hand”- she greeted her patrons with “Hello, suckers!”

1882 – The Holborn Viaduct Electric Light Station in London, a pioneering public steam power station to service both public lighting and the needs of private consumers opens, using Edison incandescent lamps for street lighting

1895 – Britain’s National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, aka the National Trust, is founded by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley

1904 – Henry Ford sets a new land speed record of 91.37 mph

1906 – Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s cabinet (including H. H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill) embarks on sweeping social reforms

1908 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time

1914 – Mieko Kamiya born, Japanese psychiatrist who treated leprosy patients at Nagadhima Aiseien Sanatorium; she also translated a number of philosophical works into Japanese, including Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, and books by Michel Foucault, Virginia Woolf and Khalil Gibran. Noted for her book, Ikigai Ni Tsuite (The Meaning of Life) based on her experiences with leprosy patients

1915 – U.S. House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote

1916 – Ruth Rogan Benerito born, American chemist, a pioneer in development of wash and wear and stain resistant fabrics

1916 – Mary Baldwin Wilson born, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx, British poet; married to Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the UK in the 1960s and 1970s

1918 – Finland’s “Mosaic Confessors” law goes into effect, making Finnish Jews full citizens, eliminating restrictions on movement, place of residence, and employment

1928 – Vladimir Horowitz debuts as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, New York City

1930 – Jennifer Johnston born, Irish novelist; The Old Jest, set during the Irish War of Independence, won the 1979 Whitbread Book Award; The Captains and the Kings won Author’s Club First Novel Award (1973)

1930 – Glenn Yarbrough born, American folk singer, The Limeliters

1932 – Hattie Wyatt Caraway (Democrat – Arkansas) becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, to finish her husband’s term after his death; she surprised her party when she announced she would run for re-election, saying, “The time has passed when a woman should be placed in a position and kept there only while someone else is being groomed for the job.” Vice President Charles Curtis invited her to preside over the Senate, the first woman to do so, and she was the first woman in the Senate to chair a committee (Senate Committee on Enrolled Bills). When she won re-election, she became the first woman elected to a full term in the U.S. Senate, altogether serving from 1932 to 1945

1935 – Teresa del Conde Pontones born, Mexican art historian, biographer, critic and a columnist for the newspaper La Jornada (The Working Day); a Fellow of the Academia des Artes; served as director of Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City for over a decade

1936 – Raimonds Pauls born, Latvian composer, Latvian Minister of Culture (1988-1993)

1936 – Jennifer Hilton born, Metropolitan Police of London Commander awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in the 1989 Birthday Honours; now Baroness Hilton of Eggardon, life peer and Member of the House of Lords since 1991

1941 –Dame Fiona Caldicott born, British psychiatrist and psychotherapist; Chair of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and a past President of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy; first woman President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1993–1996) and its first woman Dean (1990–1993);  Chair, National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care (2011-2013)

1942 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board

1943 – The Office of Price Administration announces that standard frankfurters/hot dogs/wieners would be replaced by ‘Victory Sausages’

1944 – Cynthia Robinson born, American trumpeter and vocalist with Sly and the Family Stone, the first woman trumpeter in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

1946 – Hazel Cosgrove born, Lady Cosgrove, Scottish lawyer and judge; first woman Sheriff of Glasgow and Strathkelvin; first woman appointed as a Senator of the College of Justice; served as a judge on Scotland’s Supreme Courts (1996-2006); Deputy Chair of the Boundary Commission for Scotland (1997-2006)

1947 – Sally Hamwee born, Baroness Hamwee, British Liberal Democrat politician and spokesperson, Life Peer and Member of the House of Lords since 1991; Member of the London Assembly (2000-2008), and its chair (2002-2007)

1948 – Britain’s first supermarket opens at Manor Park, run by the London Co-Op

1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma that state schools cannot discriminate against qualified law-school applicants because of race if there is no equivalent state institution for people of color – Thurgood Marshall was the primary attorney for Ada Lois Sipuel

1949 – Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a Chicago-based children’s show, makes its national debut on NBC-TV

1950 – Sheila Jackson Lee born, American politician; U.S. Congresswoman (Democrat-Texas) since 1995; Houston City Council Member (1990-1995)

1950 – Dorrit Moussaieff born in Israel, jewelry designer, and First Lady of Iceland (2003-2006)

1953 – Mary Harron born, Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter; noted as co-author and director of American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page and for TV series Alias Grace, winning the 2018 Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction of a Limited Series

1955 – Rod Serling’s teleplay Patterns appears on Craft Television Theatre, starring Richard Kiley, Everett Sloane and Ed Begley, earning Serling his first of six dramatic writing Emmys, and launching his career

1958 – Christiane Amanpour born, British-Iranian journalist and television host; Chief International Anchor for CNN and host of CNN’s interview program Amanpour

1962 – Operation Chopper, the first American combat mission in the Vietnam War

1963 – Nando Reis born, Brazilian musician-producer

1966 – U.S. President Johnson says in his State of the Union address that the U.S. should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there was ended

1966 – “Batman” debuts on ABC-TV

1969 – Led Zeppelin, the band’s debut album, released in the U.S.

1969 – Margaret Nagle born, screenwriter, television producer and human rights activist; winner of three Writers Guild of America Awards, in 2015 for The Good Lie, in 2014 for body of work, and in 2011 for Best New Show for Boardwalk Empire

1971 – All In the Family debuts on CBS-TV

1986 – Space shuttle Columbia blasted off with a crew that included the first Hispanic-American in space, Dr. Franklin R. Chang-Diaz

1991 – The U.S. Congress passes a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military power to force Iraq out of Kuwait, Senate voting 52-47 and House 250-183

1998 – 19 European nations agree to prohibit human cloning

2000 – U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, give police authority to stop and question any person who runs at the sight of an officer

2005 – NASA launches “Deep Impact” – spacecraft designed to impact on Comet Tempel 1 after a six-month, 268 million-mile journey

2006 – The U.S. Mint begins shipping new 5-cent coins to the regional Federal Reserve Banks, showing Thomas Jefferson looking forward, from an 1800 Rembrandt Peale portrait – presidential images put on coins were previously in profile

2010 – Haiti is dealt a catastrophic blow when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes ten miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital. The quake, the region’s worst in 200 years, levels many sections of the city, destroying government buildings, foreign aid offices, and countless homes of the poor

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