March 9th is

Crab Meat Day

U.S. Meatball Day

Get Over It Day *

Panic Day

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MORE! Sue Lee, Graciela Olivarez and Emma Bonino, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Lebanon – Eid Al Moalim
(Teachers Day)

Netherlands – Utrecht:
VeggieWorld Festival

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On This Day in HISTORY

1009 – First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the Quedlinburg monastery

1276 – Augsburg, in Swabia, Bavaria, becomes a Free Imperial City

The Golden Hall in Augsburg, Swabia, Bavaria

1454 – Amerigo Vespucci is born, Italian explorer-navigator; Matthias Ringmann, a German mapmaker, will name the American continents in his honor

1500 – The fleet of Pedro Álvares Cabral leaves Lisbon for the Indies; it will reach Brazil, and claim it for Portugal

1566 – David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, is murdered in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland

1745 – The first carillon is shipped from England to Boston MA

1765 – After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have actually committed suicide

1793 – Jean Pierre Blanchard makes the first balloon flight in North America, an event witnessed by George Washington

1799 – The U.S. Congress contracts with Simeon North of Berlin, Connecticut, for 500 horse pistols at the price of $6.50 each

1820 – The U.S. Congress passes the Land Act – full payment was required up front but the prices were literally dirt cheap – $1.25 an acre for a minimum size tract of 80 acres. The ‘lands’ referred to were mostly in Ohio and Missouri –then the ‘Western Frontier,’ and the act accelerated confiscation of land from Native Americans

1822 – Charles M. Graham receives the first patent for artificial teeth

1831 – The French Foreign Legion is founded by King Louis-Philippe during France’s conquest of Algeria

1832 – Abraham Lincoln announces he will run for a political office for the first time, an unsuccessful run for a seat in the Illinois state legislature

1839 – The French Academy of Science announces the Daguerreotype photo process

1839 – Modest Mussorgsky born, one of “The Five” Russian composers; noted for Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bald Mountain

1858 – Gustav Stickley born, American Arts & Crafts movement leader; designer and furniture-maker

Gustave Stickley, adjustable back chair

1860 – Ambassador Shinmi Masaoki is appointed, the first Japanese ambassador to the U.S., in keeping with the new Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation

1862 – During the U.S. Civil War, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia fought to a draw in a five-hour battle at Hampton Roads VA

1863 – American Civil War: General Ulysses Grant is appointed commander-in-chief of the Union forces

1885 – Tamara Karsavina born, Russian prima ballerina, a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and later of the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev

The Firebird – 1912: Tamara Karsavina and Michel Fokine

1892 – Vita Sackville-West born, English novelist-poet-journalist; All Passion Spent

1897 – A patent is issued to William Spinks and William Hoskins for cue chalk

1900 – German women petition Reichstag for right to take university entrance exams

1905 – British archaeologist James E. Quibell discovers the Egyptian tombs of courtiers Tua and Yuya; the discovery often mistakenly credited to American Theodore M. Davis, the excavation’s wealthy sponsor, who has also been mislabeled as an archaeologist, which he certainly was not

Yuya’s outer coffin and gilded mummy mask

1905 – Rex Warner born, English author, poet, and classicist; The Aerodrome

1905 – Vice Governor of the Congo Free State, Belgian Paul Costermans commits suicide following the release of the Casement Report, a damning account of  “the enslavement, mutilation, and torture of natives,” carried out by the private army of Belgian King Leopold II, who exploited the country as his private fiefdom, extracting maximum profits from the forced labor of its starving people – estimates place the death toll during this reign of terror at half the population

1909 – The French National Assembly passes an income tax bill

1910 – Union men urge a national sympathy strike for the 10,031 coal miners in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, who went on strike for their right to belong to the United Mine Workers of America; the miners held out for sixteen months enduring eviction, injunctions, and police brutality – 16 people were killed –  but by July, the workers had lost to the owners

1910 – Sue Lee born, labor organizer in San Francisco, helped form the first Chinese chapter of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU); led 15-week strike against the National Dollar Stores garment factory for better wages and working conditions. Her story featured in Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco

1910 – Samuel Barber born, American composer; best known for Adagio for Strings

1911 – The British military defense budget includes funding for five new battleships

1916 – Pancho Villa, angered when President Wilson shifts his support from Villa to the Carranza government, leads 1,500 Mexican horsemen in a raid of Columbus, New Mexico, killing at least 17 people and torching the town

1928 – Graciela Olivarez born, American lawyer and civil rights advocate, first woman and first Latina graduate of Notre Dame Law School, chair of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), Director of the Community Services Administration under President Jimmy Carter

1932 – Eamon De Valera elected president of the Irish Free State and pledges to abolish all loyalty to the British Crown

1933 – The U.S. Congress begins its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation

1934 – Yury Gagarin born, Soviet pilot-turned-cosmonaut, world’s first man in space

1936 – Glenda Jackson born, British two-time Academy-Award-winning actress, who turned to politics, becoming a Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Highgate (1992-2010), later reconfigured as Hampstead and Kilburn (2010-2015)

1936 – The German press warns that Jews who attempt to vote in upcoming elections will be arrested

1946 – The A.F.L. accuses Juan Peron of using the army to establish a dictatorship over Argentine labor

1948 – Emma Bonino born, Italian politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs (2013-2014); Member of the Italian Senate (2008 -2013); Vice President of the Italian Senate (2008-?); Minister of European Affairs and International Trade (2006-2008); European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection (1995-1999); Italian Chamber of Deputies (1976- 2006). Long-time campaigner for abortion rights and against nuclear power. Honored in 2004 with the Open Society Prize and the Prix Femmes d’Europe for Italy, and the North-South Prize in 1999

1949 – The first all-electric dining car goes into service on the Illinois Central Railroad

1951 – Helen Zille born, South African politician and journalist; Premier of the West Cape province (2007-2015); member of the its Provincial Parliament; Democratic Alliance leader (2007-2015); mayor of Cape Town (2006-2009); member of the anti-apartheid groups Black Sash, a non-violent white women’s resistance organization, and the End Conscription Campaign (allied with the United Democratic Front), her home became a safe house for political activists during the 1986 State of Emergency, but at one point she was forced into hiding with her 2-year-old son; later, she became an activist in the South Africa Beyond Apartheid Project and the Cape Town Peace Committee

1954 – WNBT-TV (now WNBC-TV), in New York, broadcasts the first local color TV commercials, an ad for Castro Decorators of New York City

1956 – British authorities accuse Archbishop Makarios of supporting terrorists, then arrest and deport him from Cyprus

1957 – Egyptian leader Nasser bars U.N. plans to share tolls for using the Suez Canal

1957 – Mona Sahlin born, Swedish Social Democratic politician, the first woman to chair the  party (2007-2011); member of the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament,  elected in 1982 as the youngest member at that time, she served from 1982 to 1991, and represented  Stockholm County from 2002 to 2011; chair of the European Council Against Racism (1997-1998)

1959 – Mattel introduces Barbie, the misogynist’s wet-dream doll with deformed feet, at the annual Toy Fair in New York

1961 – The Supremes release their first single, “I Want A Guy”

1964 – Production began on the first Ford Mustang

1965 – The first U.S. combat troops arrived in South Vietnam

1966 – The Beach Boys record “God Only Knows”

1969 – “The Smothers Brothers’ Comedy Hour” is yanked by CBS and the brothers fired, despite three successful seasons, claiming they were in breach of contract, but really CBS was tired of endless battles between the censors and the show’s stars, and under pressure from incoming president Richard Nixon; the brothers take CBS to court, and the judge finds CBS is the party in violation of the contract

1975 – Work begins on the Alaskan oil pipeline

1975 – Iraq launches an offensive against rebel Kurds

1977 – About a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims invade three buildings in Washington, DC, killing one person and taking more than 130 hostages; the siege ends two days later

1983 – The official Soviet news agency TASS says that U.S. President Reagan is full of “bellicose lunatic anti-communism”

1985 – The video of Gone With The Wind goes on sale in stores across the U.S

1986 – U.S. Navy divers find the crew compartment of the Challenger space shuttle along with the remains of the astronauts

1987 – Chrysler Corporation offers to buy American Motors Corporation

1987 – U2 releases their album “The Joshua Tree”

1989 – The U.S. Senate rejects John Tower, 53-47, President Bush’s choice for Secretary of Defense, first rejection in 30 years, amid misconduct allegations, including problems with drinking and women, and possible conflicts of interest. Nancy Kassebaum, the lone Republican who votes against Tower, says: ”If we are going to have a strong defense force, which consists of both men and women, we are going to have to insure fairness. I am not confident that Senator Tower would give these issues the priority they demand or would demonstrate the necessary sensitivity to their seriousness.” Questions about donations from defense contractors to his previous political campaigns, and $1 million  in consultant fees from seven defense contractors after he left office also swayed the vote

1989 – In Malaysia, 30 Asian nations confer on the issue of “boat people”

1989 – A strike pushes Eastern Airlines into bankruptcy

1989 – In the U.S., President George H.W. Bush urges for a mandatory death penalty in drug-related killings

1990 – Dr. Antonia Novello sworn in as first female and first Hispanic United States  Surgeon General

1993 – Rodney King testifies at the federal trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of violating his civil rights by severely beating him

1995 – Canadian Navy arrests a Spanish trawler illegally fishing off of Newfoundland

2000 – In Norway, the coalition government of Kjell Magne Bondevik resigns after a no-confidence vote in the Storting (‘great thing’ – Norway’s national legislature) over an environmental dispute

2005 – Get Over It Day * created by Jeff Goldblatt after having trouble getting over an ex-girlfriend

2009 – President Obama’s executive order lifts restrictions placed on federal funding for new stem cell research

2011 – Illinois becomes the 16^th U.S. state to abolish the death penalty when Governor Pat Quinn signs a bill making a 10-year moratorium on the death penalty permanent

2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights

2016 – The European migrant crisis escalates as Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia close their borders to migrants trying to reach Northern Europe

Syrian refugees blocked at the Greek-Macedonian Border

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