April 14^th is

Look Up at the Sky Day

National Pecan Day

National Dolphin Day

Pan American Day *

International Moment of Laughter Day *

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MORE! Maggie Laubser, Arnold Toynbee and Sue Hill, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity – Palm Sunday

Bangladesh and West Bengal –
Pahela Baishakh (Bengali New Year)

Cambodia – Choul Chnam Thmey
(Cambodian New Year)

Haiti and Honduras – Pan American Day

India –
Vaisakhi/Baisakhi
(Sikh new year festival/Khalsa panth of warriors)
Ambedkar Jayanti
(Birthday of the Dalit Buddhist social reformer)

Japan – Orange Day
(orange love tokens exchange day)

Laos – Pi Mai (Laos New Year)

Mexico – Domingo de Ramos
(Palm Sunday, start of Holy Week)

Nepal – Bisket Jatra (Festival of
 Nepalese New Year – ongoing)

South Korea – Black Day
(Singles consolation dinner)

Sri Lanka – Sinhala & Tamil New Year

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On This Day in HISTORY

AD 70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, surrounds the Jewish capital with four Roman legions

The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under
the Command of Titus, A.D. 70, by David Roberts – 1850

1294 – Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan dynasty with reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong

1434 – The foundation stone of Nantes Cathedral, in France, is laid

1629 – Christiaan Huygens born, Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist; first to sight rings of Saturn and its moon Titan; invented the pendulum clock

1775 – The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is organized in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, the first American abolition society

1816 – Bussa, a slave in British-ruled Barbados, leads a slave rebellion and is killed; first national hero of Barbados

1819 – Harriet Grannis Arey born, American author, editor and publisher, who used the pen name Mrs. H. E. G. Arey; she was one of the few girls of her era to study in a co-educational environment. She became a contributor to the Daily Herald in Cleveland, Ohio, then after her marriage moved to Wisconsin, where she was the Preceptress and Teacher of English Literature, French, and Drawing” at State Normal School in  Whitewater.  When she returned to Cleveland, she edited a month publication devoted to charitable work, and was co-founder and first president of the Ohio Woman’s State Press Association. Noted for Household Songs and Other Poems

1827 – Augustus Pitt Rivers born, English archaeologist, “father of British archaeology”

1828 – Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary

1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, and dies the next day

1866 – Anne Sullivan born, American educator, Helen Keller’s teacher

1886 – Maggie Laubser born, South African painter; her first exhibition in South Africa, after years of study and working in Europe, was met with harsh criticism, but by the 1940s, her work was earning awards; she became a member of the South African Academy for Arts and Science in 1948

Self-Portrait, by Maggie Laubser

1889 – Arnold Toynbee born, English historian and author; 12-volume Study of History

1890 – Pan American Day *- The Pan-American Union is founded by the First International Conference of American States in Washington, D.C.

1894 – The first commercial motion picture house opened in New York City using ten Kinetoscopes, a device for peep-show viewing of films

1900 – Opening Day of the Exposition Universelle, the world’s fair in Paris, France

1905 – Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby born, American educator; as Vice Principal for Girls at Little Rock Central High School in 1957 when nine black students, six of them girls, were admitted to the school after desegregation, she was responsible for protecting the girls; in 1958, Governor Orval Faubus closed all the public schools to resist desegration, and after a year of paying teachers. who were under contract, to sit in empty schools, three members of the Little Rock School Board declared themselves a majority and fired dozens of teachers and administrators, including Huckaby; but the board members were voted out of office, and those who had been fired were reinstated. Author of Crisis at Central High: Little Rock 1957–58, published after her retirement in 1980, based on the diary she kept during the crisis

Elizabeth Huckaby, on left, in front of Little Rock Central High School

1909 – Massacres of 15,000 Armenians in the Armenian provinces, especially in Adana, Cilicia; some of the Young Turks were probably involved

Armenian refugees in the desert

1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 23:40, sinks during the early morning hours of April 15th

1919 – Shamshad Begum born, Indian singer, sang in a number of languages including Hindi, Tamil, and Punjabi

1919 – K. Saraswathi Amma born, Malayalam-language feminist writer from the state of Kerala in India, whose short stories, essays and a novel were radically anti-patriarchy, so she was dismissed in her time as “an incorrigible man-hater” but has since been re-discovered and celebrated by feminist scholars

1924 – Helen W. Warnock born, the Baroness Warnock, English philosopher and author who has written extensively on ethics and existentialism; Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge (1984-1991); chair of a 1974 UK inquiry on special education, which resulted on a radical change to placing learning-disabled children in mainstream school, and giving them additional educational support; President of Listening Books, a charity providing audiobooks to anyone who has difficulty reading

1926 – Barbara R. Anderson born, Lady Anderson, a New Zealand medical technologist and teacher who first became a published novelist in her sixties

1927 – The first Volvo car premieres in Gothenburg, Sweden

1932 – Loretta Lynn, American singer-songwriter; winner of seven American Music Awards, twelve Academy of Country Music Awards and four Grammys

1939 – John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is published

1941 – German forces under General Erwin Rommel attack Tobruk in Libya

1949 – Dame Deanne Julius born, American-British economist and analyst, formerly for the CIA; founding member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee; current Lady Usher of the Blue Rod of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George since 2016

1954 – Sue Hill born, English healthcare scientist and specialist in respiratory medicine, PhD in pulmonary pathophysiology, Dame of the British Empire (2018), and Chief Scientific Officer for England since 2002; worked on initiatives for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), including leading the development of UK National Occupational Standards for healthcare science. She is Vice-President of the British Lung Foundation, and co-founder with Robert Stockley of the biennial COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) international conference

1955 – Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame” is released

1957 – Sibylle Szaggars born in Germany, multimedia environmental artist

1960 – The musical Bye Bye Birdie opens on Broadway

1960 – Tina Rosenberg born, American journalist and non-fiction author; New York Times writer and columnist, and frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and The New Republic; co-founder with David Bornstein and Courtney Martin of the Solutions Journalism Network in 2013. Her book, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism, won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 1995 National Book Award for Nonfiction

1978 – David Hare’s play Plenty premieres in London

1978 – Thousands of Georgians demonstrate in the capital Tbilisi against Soviet attempts to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language

1981 – Amy Leach born, British theatre director; co-founder of the En Masse theatre company; her productions of The Echo Chamber and The Ignatius Trail won Fringe First Awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2003 and 2004

1986 – Desmond Tutu becomes the first black Archbishop of South Africa

1988 – In a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan

1989 – Tom Petty releases his first solo album Full Moon Fever 

1991 – The Republic of Georgia introduces the post of President after its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union

2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%

2013 – International Moment of Laughter Day * is launched by Izzy Gesell, American “Humorologist,” because laughter relieves stress and boosts optimism

2014 – The Jihadist terrorist group Boko Haram abducts 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria; some have since escaped, been rescued, or freed, but the fate of over 100 of the girls remains unknown

2015 – Stone tools found at the Lomekwi-3 archaeological site in Kenya are dated to 3.3 million years ago, the oldest stone tools yet found

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