March 19th is

International Read to Me Day *

National Certified Nurses Day *

Chocolate Caramel Day

Deskfast Day *

Let’s Laugh Day

National Poultry Day

World Social Work Day

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MORE! Minna Canth, Ernestine Rose and Clara Breed, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

 Western Christianity – St. Joseph’s Day/Feast of St. Joseph/ Josefistag – a holiday in Austria, Columbia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Spain, Switzerland (regional), Vatican City, and Venezuela. Father’s Day is celebrated in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Honduras, and Bolivia on St. Joseph’s Day

Dominican Republic – Battle of Azua Day
(first big battle in 1844 war of independence)

Finland – Social Equality Day *

Haiti – St. Joseph Expression de la jurisdiction Legba
(Patron Saint of laborers – Loko in Voudon)

Libya – Victory Over Kadhafi Day

Poland – Kashubian Unity Day *
(celebrating first historical mention)  

United States – San Juan Capistrano, California:
Return of the Swallows to Mission San Juan Capistrano

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On This Day in HISTORY

1206 – Güyük Khan born, Khagan of the Mongol Empire, grandson of Genghis Khan and the third “Great Khan” who reigned from 1246 to 1248; there were rumors he had been poisoned when he died on April 20, 1248, at age 48, but they were never substantiated, and his heavy drinking and deteriorating health were the more likely causes of his death

1238 – In Pope Gregory IX’s Bull, he refers to Prince Bogislaw I of Pomerania as
duce Cassubie (duke of Kashubia), the first historical mention of Kashubia, now celebrated by Kashubian-Pomeranians in Poland with annual cultural festivals and folk arts fairs, Kashubian Unity Day *

1279 – The Battle of Yamen: the Mongol Yuan navy delivers a crushing tactical and strategic blow to Song Dynasty troops, led by Song General Zhang Shijie, in confiscated vessels, who are further hampered by bad weather and transport ships carrying fleeing Song court officials and servants

Battle of Yamen monument

1563 – The Edict of Amboise is signed, ending the first phase of the French Wars of Religion and granting certain freedoms to the Huguenots, allowing unregulated Protestant services in private households of nobles and one pre-determined town or suburb in each sénéchaussée (a kind of district)

1571 – Spanish troops occupy Manila, and Miguel López de Legazpi gives the title city to the colony of Manila

1641 – Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi born, eminent Sunni Muslim scholar and Sufi; he taught in the Umawi Mosque in Damascus and the Salihiyya Madrasa, and traveled throughout the Middle East; author of over 300 books and monographs

1644 – During the Li Zingcheng uprising, sparked by famine, as rebels prepare to take the capital, Emperor Chongzhen gathers his family for a final feast, and then kills all of them with a sword, except his sons and one daughter who lost an arm but survived. He then commits suicide, and hundreds of the imperial court and household also commit suicide out of loyalty to the Emperor

1649 – The House of Commons of England passes an act to abolish the House of Lords, declaring it “useless and dangerous to the people of England” (since they did not obtain the consent of the King or the House of Lords, this was not recognized as a valid law after the Restoration of the Monarchy on 1660)

1687 – Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, is murdered by some of his own men, who apparently mutinied because the group had been stranded after their last ship ran aground and sank into the mud

1748 – Elias Hicks born, American Quaker minister, advocate for the abolition of slavery

1748 – The English Naturalization Act passed granting Jews right to colonize in America

1813 – David Livingstone born, Scottish explorer and missionary

1821 – Sir Richard F. Burton born, English geographer-explorer, translator-writer, soldier-adventurer

1822 – The town of Boston Massachusetts is incorporated as the city of Boston

1831 – In the first recorded bank robbery in America, the City Bank of New York losses $245,000

1844 – Minna Canth born, Finnish author, playwright and women’s rights activist; known for The Pastor’s Family and The Worker’s Wife; she has been honored in Finland on her birthday since 2007, which is also the country’s Social Equality Day *

1848 – Wyatt Earp born, American lawman, gambler, and Town Marshall of Tombstone Arizona

1853 –  The Taiping reform movement/civil war occupies and makes Nanjing its capital until it falls to the Xiang Army in 1864

1859 – Ellen Gates Starr born, American social reformer, co-founded Hull House with Jane Addams

1859 – Charles Gounod’s opera Faust premieres at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris

1860 – William Jennings Bryan born, American orator, Congressman (D-NB, 1891-1895), Secretary of State (1913-1915), runs for U.S. president but defeated twice by William McKinley in 1896 and 1900; gives his famous ‘Cross of Gold’ speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, July 9, 1896, supporting free silver; an ardent anti-Darwinist, attends ‘Scope’s monkey trial’ and dies in his sleep shortly after

1861 – The First Taranaki War ends, a conflict over sovereignty and land ownership between the Māori and the New Zealand government, on the North Island

1864 – Charles ‘C.M. ‘ Russell born, American artist, historian and outdoorsman

On the Trail, by Charles ‘C.M. ‘ Russell

1879 – Maurice Barrymore (father of John, Ethel and Lionel) and fellow actor Ben Porter make the mistake of winning a game of cards with notorious gunfighter Jim Currie, who gets drunk and tries to bait them into a fight. Barrymore challenges Currie to a fistfight, but Currie shoots him in the chest, and then kills Porter. Barrymore survives, but even his testimony isn’t enough to get a conviction (Currie’s brother was mayor of Shreveport LA and rumored to have influenced the verdict). Barrymore vows never to return to Texas

1880 – Ernestine Rose born, American librarian, named for the 19^th century feminist Ernestine Polowsky Rose. While studying at the New York State Library School, she had a summer job at the Lower East Side branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL), working with Russian-Jewish immigrants to help them adjust to a new country without trying to ‘Americanize’ them. During WWI, she served as director of hospital libraries for the American Library Association (ALA). She worked as the head librarian (1915-1917) at the NYPL Seward Park Branch, and encouraged her staff to become well versed in the Jewish, Yiddish and Russian customs and culture of the surrounding community. In 1920, she became the branch librarian at Harlem’s 135^th Street Branch, and hired four new librarians, all African-American, to help her turn the library into a community center, encouraging community groups to hold meetings at the library, and held reading and organized story hours, free public lectures, exhibitions of Black artists and sculptors, and created a reference collection of Black Literature. In 1922, she worked with Franklin Hopper, Central Branch’s chief of circulation, the National Urban League and the American Association for Adult Education to secure a combined $15,000 grant from the Rosenwald Fund and the Carnegie Corporation to form the Harlem Committee. The committee used the funds to develop cultural programs with well-known speakers, vocational programs at the YWCA and the Urban League, as well as social programs within the Harlem community. In 1926, the committee oversaw the purchase of the Arthur A. Schomburg collection for the Division of Negro Literature and History, which later became the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture. The collection of over 5,000 volumes, 3,000 manuscripts, 2,000 etchings and portraits, and several thousand pamphlets, showcased African American history and culture. Schomberg was hired as the first head of the collection. In 1933, Rose worked with the Works Progress Administration on a writers project for the library. She worked for the NYPL until her retirement in 1942

Rose’s retirement ceremony in 1942. She is flanked by Claude Barnett (left), founder of
the Associated Negro Press, and Laurence Reddick, curator of the Schomburg Collection

1881 – Edith Nourse Rogers born, American politician, first woman elected to the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts. For 35 years in the House of Representatives, Rogers was an advocate for veterans, sponsoring the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (AKA the G.I. Bill), the 1942 bill that created the Women’s Army Auxiliary (WAAC), and the 1943 bill that created the Women’s Army Corps (WAC)

1882 – Minnie Fisher Cunningham born, the first woman to get a pharmacy degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch– in 1901, she discovered that the less-educated men working next to her made twice the pay she did, and “that made a suffragist out of me.” She was a founding member of the Women’s National Democratic Club; active in politics at both the state level in Texas and at the national level; a gifted coalition builder and effective speaker for suffrage, she also campaigned for legislation to lower infant mortality, to recognize married women’s citizenship as separate from their husband’s, for prison reform, and for enriched flour to help improve nutrition for the poor. She was a founding member and first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters; served on the Democratic National Committee at the invitation of Eleanor Roosevelt – FDR nicknamed her ‘Minnie Fish’

1883 – Joseph Stilwell born, U.S. Army general, now most noted as the subject of historian Barbara Tuchman’s book, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

1891 – Earl Warren born, Chief Justice of the United States (1953-1969); Governor of California (1943–1953)

1892 – Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, a selection of 8 numbers from the ballet is first performed in St. Petersburg, Russia

1895 – The Los Angeles Railway is established to provide streetcar service

1895 – African American Clatonia Joaquin Dorticus patents a brush to apply coloring liquids to hard-to-reach parts of shoes

1900 – Archeaologist Arthur Evans begins the excavation of Knossos Palace on Crete

Knossos Palace: Dolphin fresco in the Queens Chamber – Sir Arthur Evans (L)

1900 – Frederic Joliot-Curie born, French Nobel Prize-winning physicist; shared prize with his wife, Irene

1903 – U.S. Senate ratifies the Cuban treaty, gaining naval bases in Guantanamo and Bahia Honda

1906 – Clara Breed born, American librarian and activist in San Diego, California, who supported Japanese American children, many she knew from her work, while they were interned in camps during WWII. When several children came by the library to turn in their library cards before being sent to the camps and to say goodbye to her, she gave them stamped, self-addressed postcards so they could write to her and tell her what they needed. She not only sent them books, but often sent items like soap and toothpaste as well. Even though many of the children were sent to the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona, she visited them multiple times, and received over 250 post cards and letters from the children. She wrote letters to many members of Congress, and published articles about the unfair treatment of the children and other Japanese Americans, including “Americans with the Wrong Ancestors” for a magazine in 1943. Breed wrote letters for college-age students requesting they be allowed to attend colleges in the Midwest. She worked for the San Diego Public Library system for over 40 years. She began in 1928 as the children’s librarian at the East San Diego Branch, was named as acting city librarian in 1945, then became city librarian in 1946, and held the position for the next 25 years. She oversaw the expansion of the library system, adding several branches and was the driving force behind the opening of a new main library in 1955. She also established the Serra Cooperative Library System, which allowed patrons to borrow books through their local branch from libraries throughout San Diego and Imperial Counties. The letters and artifacts from her former pen pals are now part of the permanent collection of the Japanese American National Museum, which featured them in an exhibit called “Dear Miss Breed: Letters from Camp”

1906 – Reports in Berlin estimate the cost of the German war with the Nama and Herero people in Southwest Africa at $150 million, and pressure builds at home to end the war

1907 – Elizabeth Maconchy born, English composer of Irish heritage

1908 – The state of Maryland bars Christian Scientists from practicing without medical diplomas

1915 – Pluto is in a photograph for the first time, but isn’t noticed until sometime later

1917 – U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Adamson Act, which establishes an eight-hour workday for interstate railroad workers, with overtime pay, as constitutional

1918 – U.S. Congress approves Daylight-Saving Time

1920 – U.S. Senate rejects the Versailles Treaty for a second time, maintaining its policy of isolationism

1924 – U.S. troops are rushed to Tegucigalpa as rebel forces take the Honduran capital

1931 – The state of Nevada legalizes gambling

1931 – Emma Andijewska born, modern surrealist Ukrainian author, and painter; suffers serious illness during WWII living in Germany, then France; family moves to New York, 1957; she becomes an American citizen, marries a Ukrainian writer, returns to Munich

1933 – Renée Taylor born, American actress, playwright and screenwriter; co-author with her husband Joseph Bologna of the Broadway and movie hit Lovers and Other Strangers, and the film Made for Each Other, in which they starred

1935 – Nancy Malone born, American actress, director and producer; made the transition from actress to successful television producer and director; was the first woman vice-president of television at 20^th Century Fox (1976); board member of The Alliance of Women Directors; won an Emmy Award for producing Bob Hope: The First 90 Years (1993)

1936 – Canned beer is sold to the British public for the first time, by Felinfoel Brewery in Wales

1939 – Lloyd L. Gaines disappears; an African American student, the central figure in the 1938 Supreme Court case Gaines v. Canada. After graduating with honors from Lincoln University, he’s rejected for admission to the University of Missouri School of Law because of his race and Missouri’s policy of paying for black graduate students to attend out-of-state schools; in December 1938, the U.S Supreme Court rules that the State of Missouri either must admit Gaines or secure admission for him to another school of equal status within the state; March 19 1939, Gaines leaves his fraternity house to buy stamps and is never seen again; in 2001, he is posthumously honored, along with Marion O’Fallon Oldham (also denied admission because of her race) when the University of Missouri dedicates the Gaines-Oldham Black Cultural Center

1942 – Heather M. Robertson born, Canadian journalist, novelist and non-fiction writer; Reservations are for Indians, Grass Roots and Walking into Wilderness; a founding member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and the Professional Writers Association of Canada; launched the Robertson v. Thomson Corp. class action suit regarding freelancers’ retention of electronic rights to their work

1944 – Michael Tippett’s oratorium Child of Our Time premieres in London

1945 – Adolf Hitler issues his “Nero Decree” ordering the destruction of German facilities that could fall into Allied hands as German forces are retreating

1947 – Chiang Kai-Shek’s government forces take control of Yenan, the former headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party

1947 – Glenn Close born, American actress, singer, producer, activist and philanthropist; winner of three Tonys, three Golden Globes and a seven-time nominee for Academy Awards for acting, currently holding the record for the living actor with most Oscar nominations without a win. She is a strong supporter of Democratic candidates for Congress and the presidency, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, and has campaigned for gay marriage, women’s rights and mental health. She was part of a benefit performance of The Vagina Monologues which raised $250,000 for prevention of violence toward women, and she volunteered to produce a documentary for Puppies Behind Bars, which provides service dogs for wounded war veterans. Her sister has bipolar disorder, so Close volunteers at NYC’s Fountain House, a facility to help people suffering from mental illness, and she founded and chairs BringChange2Mind, a campaign to end the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness. In 2016, she donated $75,000 to the Mental-Health Association of Central Florida to fund counseling and other assistance for victims of the Pulse nightclub shootings in Orlando

1949 – The Soviet People’s Council signs the constitution of the German Democratic Republic, and declares that the North Atlantic Treaty is merely a war weapon

1953 – The Academy Awards air on television for the first time

1953 – Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real premieres on Broadway

1954 – The first rocket-driven sled on rails is tested in Alamogordo NM

1954 – Jill Abramson born, author, journalist, first woman to be executive editor of the New York Times

1960 – Eliane Elias born, Brazilian jazz singer, composer-arranger, and pianist; multiple Grammy winner

1962 – Bob Dylan, Dylan’s first album is released

1963 – In Costa Rica, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and six Latin American presidents pledge to fight Communism

1963 – Mary Scheer born, American comedian, voice actress, screenwriter and producer; one of the original cast members of MADtv

1964 – Filming begins on the movie Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery as James Bond

1965 – Indonesia nationalizes all foreign oil companies

1965 – Rembrandt’s Titus is auctioned for $7,770,000 USD

1968 – 2000 Students at Howard University seize an administration building in a massive sit-in, initially over the right of the campus newspaper to criticize the policies of the university president James Nabrit, but demands quickly expand to include establishment of an Afro-American studies department, appointment of a black university president, and courses which will allow students to reach out to the working class neighborhood surrounding the school

1969 – British invade Anguilla

1972 – India and Bangladesh sign a friendship treaty

1977 – The last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show airs

1979 – The U.S. House of Representatives begin broadcasting its daily business on TV

1985 – The U.S. Senate votes to authorize production of the MX missile

1987 – Televangelist Jim Bakker resigns from The PTL Club program due to a sex scandal, then revelations of accounting fraud bring about his arrest and imprisonment

1990 – Latvia’s political opposition claims victory in the first free elections in 50 years

1994 – The largest omelet in history is made with 160,000 eggs in Yokohama, Japan

1998 – The World Health Organization (WHO) warns a tuberculosis epidemic could kill 70 million people in next two decades

2000 – Vector Data Systems conducts a simulation of the 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco TX which shows that federal agents had not fired first

2001 – California officials declare a power alert and order two days of rolling blackouts

2002 – Operation Anaconda, the largest U.S.-led ground offensive since the Gulf War, ends in eastern Afghanistan, with reports showing at least 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are dead, and 11 allied troops killed since the operation began on March 2

2002 – Zimbabwe is suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations after the country’s 2001 elections, marred by politically motivated violence, were found to be flawed by electoral observers. The suspension barred Zimbabwe from Commonwealth meetings for a period of 12 months, when a decision would be taken on reinstatement based on the progress made by the country

2003 – U.S. President George W. Bush announces ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ declaring war on Iraq; U.S. forces launch a strike against “targets of military opportunity” in Iraq, using cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, aimed at Iraqi leaders thought to be near Baghdad

2008 – Certified Nurses Day * is created by a collaboration of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) and the American Nurses Association (ANA); now an official National Day by Congressional proclamation

2011 – U.S. and French forces launch the broadest international military effort since the Iraq war against Moammar Gadhafi’s military, in support of the Libyan uprising

2015 – Deskfast Day * is started as part of the national ‘A Better Breakfast’ campaign founded by Brian George, to encourage people to take a few minutes for the ‘most important meal of the day’

2016 – International Read to Me Day * is launched by Australian Emma Mactaggart, author, illustrator and founder/publisher at Boogie Books, to emphasize the importance of reading regularly to children

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