April 4th is

School Librarian Day *

Chicken Cordon Bleu Day

Vitamin C Day *

International Carrot Day *

World Rat Day *

International Day for Mine Awareness & Action *

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MORE! Philip Astley, Mary Colter and Hugh Masekela, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Angola – Peace Day

Canada – Calgary, Alberta:
2019 Environmental Gathering

Croatia – Zabreb:
European Education Festival

Sénégal – Independence Day

Switzerland – Meiringen: Haslital
Mountain Festival (through April 7)

Taiwan and Hong Kong – Children’s Day

United Kingdom – London:
European Poetry Festival (through April 15)

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On This Day in HISTORY

503 BC – Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, consul of the Roman Republic, is awarded a triumph for his victory over the Sabines, celebrated on this day

188 – Caracalla born, Roman Emperor, has his younger brother murdered; noted for building a giant bathhouse, his obsession with Alexander the Great, and massacres of his brother’s supporters and much of the population of Alexandria; assassinated by a disaffected soldier passed over for promotion

1147 – First known reference to Moscow, as the place where Prince Sviatoslav Olgovich met Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, who is considered the founder of Moscow

1572 – William Strachey born, English author; his eye-witness report of 1609 Sea Venture shipwreck and 10-month sojourn on Bermuda believed to be the inspiration for the storm and shipwreck in Shakespeare’s The Tempest

1581 – Sir Francis Drake is knighted for completing a  circumnavigation of the globe

Drake’s Ship, The Golden Hind

1640 – Gaspar Sanz born, Spanish guitarist, Baroque composer, and priest

1648 – Grinling Gibbons born in Holland, notable British sculptor and wood carver; he created carvings for Windsor Castle, Hampton Court Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Trinity College Oxford and Trinity College Cambridge

1660 – The Declaration of Breda, a proclamation by Charles II promises a general pardon for crimes committed during the English Civil War and other concessions to all those who recognize him as the lawful king; this leads to Charles being proclaimed King

1721 – Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, becomes Britain’s first Prime Minister, serving for 20 years, the longest uninterrupted run of any British PM

1768 – Philip Astley presents integrated entertainment with music, animals, acrobats and clowns, regarded as the first modern circus, at Astley’s Amphitheatre in London

1785 – Bettina von Arnim born, German author, illustrator, and composer

1796 – French zoologist Georges Cuvier delivers the first paleontological lecture

1802 –  Dorothea Dix born, American nurse, mental health and prison reformer

1812 – U.S. President James Madison enacts a 90-day embargo on trade with the UK

1814 – Napoleon abdicates for the first time and names his son Napoleon II as Emperor of the French

1818 – U.S. Congress adopts the flag of the United States with 13 red and white stripes and one star for each state (then 20)

1828 – Casparus van Wooden of Amsterdam patents chocolate milk powder

1841 – William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia, first U.S. President to die in office, and sets a record for the briefest administration

1850 – Los Angeles California is incorporated as a city. The city was originally founded in 1781 by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve, as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, (The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels)

1865 – U.S. Civil War: A day after Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln visits the Confederate capital

1868 – Philippa Fawcett born, English mathematician and educator; she was the daughter of suffragist Millicent Fawcett, president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (1897-1919), and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first English woman physician was her aunt. In 1890, she became the first woman to make the top score on the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos exams, 13% higher than the highest-placed man, but she didn’t receive the title of senior wrangler, as only men were then ranked. Women were listed separately without titles, having only been allowed to take the Tripos since 1881, when Charlotte Angas Scott was unofficially ranked eighth. On the 1890 women’s list, Fawcett is only described as “above the senior wrangler.” No woman was officially awarded the first position until Ruth Hendry in 1992. Fawcett won the Marion Kennedy scholarship, and conducted research in fluid dynamics. She was a college lecturer in Mathematics at Newnham College for 10 years, then left Cambridge to train mathematics teachers at the Normal School in Johannesburg, and also set up schools in South Africa. In 1905, she returned to take a position in the administration of education for London County Council, where she developed secondary schools. Denied a Cambridge degree because she was a woman, she became of the “steamboat ladies,” women of Girton, Newnham and Somerville Colleges, refused degrees they would have been given by Cambridge and Oxford if they were male. They traveled to Ireland, where the University of Dublin gave them ad eundem degrees (earned degrees for work done at another college) at Trinity College Dublin, after Trinity began admitting women in 1904. Trinity gave about 720 women ad eundem degrees between 1904 and 1907.

1869 – Mary Colter born, American architect, designed the Desert View Watchtower at the Grand Canyon in Arizona

1871 – Mary Florence Potts patents the ‘Mrs. Potts’ pressing iron, which has a detachable handle so several iron bodies can be heated and rotated

1872 – Mary Coffin Ware Dennett born, pacifist, advocate for women’s rights suffrage, birth control, and sex education; published Birth Control Laws, which reviewed the laws and argued for free dissemination of information; she continues to mail sex education pamphlets labeled obscene in 1922, leading to her arrest and conviction in 1929 – a storm of protest and the case made by the ACLU to the federal Court of Appeals wins reversal of her conviction in 1930

1873 – The Kennel Club is founded, first official registry of purebred dogs in the world

1887 – Argonia, Kansas elects Susanna M. Salter as the first woman mayor in the U.S.

1887 – William Cumming Rose born, American biochemist, researches amino acids, determines importance of eight essential amino acids in human nutrition

1896 – Robert E. Sherwood born, American playwright and screenwriter

1902 – Cecil Rhodes, British financier, mining magnate and Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896) in South Africa, leaves ₤6 million ($10 million USD) in his will for scholarships to Oxford University for citizens of the British Commonwealth, United States and Germany, known as the Rhodes Scholarship. Among the scholars who have gone on to distinguished careers are former U.S. President Bill Clinton; astronomer Edwin Hubble; Australian pharmacologist Howard Florey, co-recipient with Alexander Fleming and Ernst Chain of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering penicillin; American politician James Fulbright who founded his own scholarship program; Zambian human- and civil- rights activist Lucy Banda-Sichone; South African Anti-Apartheid lawyer Bram Fischer, American author and feminist social critic Naomi Wolf; and American political commentator and MSNBC television host Rachel Maddow

Cartoon of “Rhodes the Colossus” and Cecil Rhodes

ON O1902 – Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin born, French novelist, poet and journalist; she was awarded the 1949 Renée Vivien prize for women poets; her most notable novel was Madame de . . .

1913 – Muddy Waters born, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

1914 – Marguerite Duras born, French novelist, screenwriter, playwright and director

1921 – Orunamamu born as Marybeth Washington in the U.S., American-Canadian storyteller. She worked as a school teacher, then after her retirement, became a professional storyteller and griot (West African word for a bard-historian/storyteller- praise singer); she was the subject of two documentaries, and mentioned in numerous books and articles. She was a regular participant in the Calgary Spoken Word Festival. Orunamamu lived to be 93 years old

1922 – Elmer Bernstein born, American composer and conductor

1925 – The Schutzstaffel (SS) is founded in Germany

1928 – Maya Angelou born, American memoirist and poet

1931 – Dame Catherine Tizard born; first woman elected as mayor of Auckland City, NZ (1983-1990) and the first woman appointed as Governor-General of New Zealand (1990-1996); the 100^th anniversary of New Zealand Women’s Suffrage is celebrated during her term of office; while in office, she ends the practice of New Zealanders bowing to the Governor-General, saying, “No New Zealander should have to bow to another.” Dame Catherine also ended the practice of members of staff ceasing to clean whenever the Governor-General enters the room

1932 – Vitamin C Day * – C.G. King first isolates Vitamin C in a lab at University of Pennsylvania

1932 – Johanna Reiss born, Dutch writer based in New York City; noted for her memoir, A Hidden Life, and her young adult novels, The Upstairs Room, and The Journey Back, based on the three years she spent in as a young Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis during WWII, and her return years later to visit the farming family that had sheltered her

1939 – Faisal II crowned as King of Iraq a month before his fourth birthday. His uncle Abd al-llah was appointed as regent until 1953. Faisal was the last Iraqi king; he was deposed during the July 14 Revolution, a coup d’état by the Iraqi Army, and executed along with many members of his family, ending the Hashemite monarchy. The Kingdom of Iraq then became the Republic of Iraq

1939 – Glenn Miller records “Moonlight Serenade”

1939 – Hugh Masekela born, South African musician. He went into exile after the 1961 Sharpeville Massacre which left 69 people dead, and 180 seriously wounded. After studying at London’s Guildhall School, he moved to New York, where he composed and recorded many new songs, including “Grazing in the Grass” which won the 1968 Grammy for Best Contemporary Pop Performance – Instrumental. He went on to win two more Grammys, in 1989 for the musical Sarafina!, and in 2012 for his album Jabulani. Masekela returned to South Africa in the 1990s, and has been one of South Africa’s most celebrated musicians. He died on January 23, 2018, from prostate cancer

1939 – Darlene Hooley born, American high school teacher and Democratic politician; U.S. Representative for Oregon’s 5^th District (1997-2009); Clackamas County Board of Supervisors (1987-1996); member of Oregon state House of Representatives (1980-1987); in 1976, she was the first woman to serve on the West Linn City Council

1942 – Elizabeth Levy born, prolific American children’s book author; noted for children’s mystery series, Something Queer is Going On

1944 – Magda Aelvoet born, Belgian-Flemish politician, a Minister of State since 1995; provincial Senator for Antwerp (1999-2002); Member of the European Parliament and President of the EU Greens Party (1994-1999)

1944 – Mary Kenny born, Irish author, broadcaster, playwright, journalist and founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement. She was Woman’s Editor of The Irish Press in the 1970s. In 1971, she travelled with Nell McCafferty, June Levine and other Irish feminists on the “Contraceptive Train” from Dublin to Belfast to buy condoms, which were illegal at that time in the Republic of Ireland. Later that year she became Features Editor of The Evening Standard in London

Mary Kenny – photo by Tony Gavin

1948 – Anna King born, British author of ten novels; noted for her first novel, Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries, a semi-autobiographical story of dealing with Crohn’s Disease and its impact on the main character and her family

1949 – Twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

1949 – Shing-Tung Yau born in China, naturalized American mathematician, awarded the Fields Medal for his mathematical research in 1982

1953 – Chin Ye born, Chinese violinist and composer of contemporary classical music; noted for her composition, Si Ji (Four Seasons)

1956 – UN Security Council Resolution 113 calls on Israel and Palestinians to fully cooperate with the UN  Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO)

1958 – The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) peace symbol, also called the nuclear disarmament symbol, is displayed in public for the first time in London; designed for the British-based CND by Gerald Holtom

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 1960 peace symbol pin

1960 – France agrees to grant independence to the Mali Federation, a union of Senegal and French Sudan

1960 – Godknows Igali born, Nigerian diplomat, civil servant, and scholar

1960 – Elvis Presley records “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

1964 – The Beatles occupy the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart with “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Twist and Shout,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Please Please Me”

1967 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech in New York City’s Riverside Church

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee

1968 – NASA launches Apollo 6

1969 – Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart

1971 – The musical Follies opens on Broadway

1973 – The World Trade Center in New York is officially dedicated

1975 – Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen in  Albuquerque, New Mexico; Allen left Microsoft in 1982 during a serious illness, but didn’t officially resign until 2000

1975 – Delphine Arnault born, French businesswoman; director and executive vice president of Louis Vuitton (LVMH Group) since 2003, the first woman and youngest person to be a member of the LVMH management board; in 2014 Arnault started the LVMH Prize, an international competition for young designers

1979 – Deposed Prime Minister of Pakistan and head of the Pakistan’s People’s Party Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is executed, after a highly controversial trial in which he was accused of authorizing an assassination attempt on political opponent Ahmed Raza Khan Kasuri, which resulted in the death of Kasuri’s father. The original judge handling the case found the evidence “contradictory and incomplete” but he was replaced by a five judge panel. The 706-page official transcript of the trial released publicly did not contain the objections or inconsistencies in the evidence pointed out by Bhutto’s defence. Bhutto was declared not guilty of murder, but was sentenced to death in a close split decision. There were suspicions voiced by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsay Clark and others that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was at least tacitly complicit in the coup d’état that overthrew Bhutto, because of his left-wing ideas and his efforts to improve relations between Pakistan and the USSR/Communist Bloc

1981 – Henry Cisneros is elected mayor of San Antonio Texas, the first Latino elected as mayor of a major U.S. city

1983 – NASA Space Shuttle Challenger makes its maiden voyage into space

1985 – School Librarian Day * is part of National School Library Month, founded by the American Association of School Librarians

1984 – President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons

1996 –  Comet Hyakutake imaged by USA Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous

2000 – Pink releases her debut album Can’t Take Me Home

2002 – World Rat Day * is started by domesticated rat enthusiasts to dispel the negative myths about them and show what wonderful pets and companion animals they are

2003 – International Carrot Day * is founded to celebrate this root veggie, which originated in Central Asia, but has been part of people’s diets around the world for centuries; China produces 45% of the world’s carrots and turnips, the U.S. only 4%

2006 – An Iraq tribunal charges Saddam Hussein and six others, with genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds

2006 – The first International Day for Mine Awareness & Action * declared by the UN General Assembly to bolster continued efforts to eliminate landmines and other explosive hazards

2015 – Italian navy and coast guard vessels rescue 1,500 migrants in five separate incidents in the Mediterranean. Three of the five ships sent rescue signals after encountering difficulties off the Libyan coast. Italy rescued 170,000 migrants in the Mediterranean in 2014

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