April 24th is

Fashion Revolution Day *

World Day for Laboratory Animals

Library of Congress Day *

World Meningitis Day

International Sauvignon Blanc Day

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day *

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MORE! Tomitaro Makino, Doris Burn and Benny Rothman, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Armenia – Armenian Remembrance Day

Australia and Canada – Kapyong Day
(Battle of Kapyong Remembrance)

Gabon – Women’s Day Holiday

India – Panchayati Raj Day
(Local government day)

Japan – Botany Day *

Nepal – Democracy Day

Niger – Concord Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1479 BCE – Thutmose III ascends to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifts to Hatshepsut (‘Foremost of Noble Ladies’ – second confirmed female pharaoh, after Sobekneferu – Low Chronology of the 18th dynasty)

1184 BCE – Traditional date of the fall of Troy

1492 – Sabina of Bavaria-Munich born; she was promised in marriage at age six by her uncle, King Maximilian I (Holy Roman Emperor 1508-1519), to Ulrich, Duke of Württemberg. They were married in 1511, but the marriage was exceedingly unhappy because of Ulrich’s violent temper, and his obsession with the wife of another man. He killed the husband during an altercation. Sabina was forced to flee from Ulrich, leaving her son and daughter behind. She sought shelter with her brother William IV, Duke of Bavaria, and won both his support and that of Emperor Maximilian, who twice placed Ulrich under the imperial ban. In 1551, when her son Christoph inherited the throne of Württemberg. Sabina moved to Nürtingen, the official widow’s residence of the Württembergs, where she led a small court. She was an educated woman, and Nürtingen became a meeting place for Württemberg Protestantism

Sabina of Bavaria-Munich, by Barthel Beham – 1530

1558 – Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the French Dauphin, François, in Paris

1704 – The first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, begins publication

1706 – Giambattista Martini born, Italian composer

1800 – Library of Congress Day * – The U.S. Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress”

1815 –Anthony Trollope born, English novelist, playwright, essayist and non-fiction author, noted for the Chronicles of Barsetshire, a series of novels set in the imaginary county of Barsetshire

1847 – Susan Dimock born, American physician, resident physician of New England Hospital for Women and Children, first woman to join North Carolina Medical Society

1862 – Botany Day * – Tomitaro Makino, Japanese botanist and pioneer in Japanese plant taxonomy, the identification and classification of plants. In 1887, he became the publisher of an academic journal of botany, and in 1936, he published his six volume Makino Book of Botany. This book describes 6000 species, including 1000 which Makino had discovered.  His 1940 book, Makino’s Illustrated Flora of Japan, is still used as an encyclopedic text today. He name over 2500 plants, including 1500 new varieties. At his death, his collection of 400,000 specimens was donated to Tokyo Metropolitan University

1885 – American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

1889 – Lyubov Popova born, Russian avant-garde artist and theatrical set designer and textiles designer; one of the first women in Cubo-Futurism

Marionnette, by Lyubov Popova

1895 – Joshua Slocum, begins his voyage to become the first person to sail single-handedly around the world, setting sail from Boston MA aboard his sloop Spray

1898 – Spain declares war after rejecting an American ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba

1900 – Elizabeth Goudge born, British author; Carnegie Medal, The Little White Horse

1904 – Willem de Kooning born in Holland, American Abstract Expressionist painter

1905 – Robert Penn Warren born, American writer, poet, and first U.S. poet laureate (1944-1945). He won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the King’s Men and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to date to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry

1913 – The Woolworth Building, a skyscraper in New York City, still of the 100 tallest buildings in the U.S.

1915 – Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day * – 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders are arrested in Constantinople, beginning the Armenian Genocide in Turkey; an estimated 1.5 million Armenians are killed; the Turkish government remains adamant that the numbers are greatly exaggerated and most of the deaths caused by disease, but there is convincing evidence, including photographs and written eye-witness accounts by workers for international charities and by missionaries running schools and orphanages in Turkey

1916 – Easter Rising: Irish rebels, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, launch a vain attempt in Dublin to end British rule and proclaim an Irish Republic

1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to rescue the crew of the sunken Endurance

1922 – The first segment of the Imperial Wireless Chain  to provide wireless telegraphy  between Leafield in Oxfordshire UK and Cairo, Egypt, goes into operation

1923 – Doris Burn born, American children’s book author and illustrator; as an adult, she lived on Waldron Island, one of the San Juan Islands of Washington State, with no electricity, running water or telephone service. All her supplies came by boat from the mainland. She is best known for the first book which she wrote and illustrated, Andrew Henry’s Meadow

Illustration from Andrew Henry’s Meadow

1923 – In Vienna, Sigmund Freud publishes his paper Das Ich und das Es (The Ego and the Id) outlining his theories of the id, ego, and super-ego

1926 – The Treaty of Berlin is signed by Germany and the Soviet Union, pledging neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years

1931 –Bridget Riley born, English artist, illustrator and muralist, one of the foremost painters in Op Art

1932 – Benny Rothman leads the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, in the Peak district of Derbyshire, to protest ‘ramblers’ (walkers who were working class, and had little access to outdoor recreation) in England and Wales being denied the right to walk in large areas of open country that were privately owned game preserves for the wealthy. Six of the trespassers are arrested. Trespass wasn’t a criminal offence in any part of Britain at the time, but jail sentences of two to six months were given to four leaders, including Benny Rothman, for offences of violence in scuffles with the gamekeepers attempting to keep the walkers out. The movement contributed to passage of National Parks legislation in 1949, and Britain’s first national park, the Peak District National Park

The front wave of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass

1933 – The Nazi regime in Germany shuts down the Jehovah’s Witnesses Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg

1934 – Shirley MacLaine born, American actress, dancer, singer, author and activist; Six-time Academy Award nominee, including a 1975 Best Documentary Feature nomination as co-director for The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir.  She won the 1983 Best Actress Oscar for Terms of Endearment. MacLaine is the author of Out on a Limb; Dancing in the Light; and McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs, written while she was organizing and campaigning for George McGovern’s presidential candidacy

1934 – Laurens Hammond patents a pipeless organ with the tonewheel generator

1940 – Sue Grafton born, American mystery writer; noted for her alphabet series (A is for Alibi) with protagonist Kinsey Milhone

1942 – Barbra Streisand born, American singer-songwriter, actress, producer-director, winner of awards: Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony

1944 – Maarja Nummert born, Estonian architect, noted for innovative designs for schools and churches

 Johvi State Upper Secondary School – Maarja Nummert

1947 – Denise Kingsmill born in New Zealand, Baroness Kingsmill of Holland Park, British Labour Life Peer since 2006; solicitor with a degree in Economics and Anthropology from Girton College, Cambridge. Deputy Chair of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (1996-2003). Noted for taking women’s rights cases, especially relating to employment law, and undertaking two inquiries for the government in gender equality and human capital management

1948 – Eliana Gil born, Ecuadorian therapist, lecturer and writer; known for her work on trauma and abuse. She is a registered Play Therapy Supervisor, a registered Art Therapist, and a licensed Marriage, Family, Child Counselor . She has worked in child abuse prevention and treatment since 1973. She is the senior partner in the Gil Institute for Trauma Recovery and Education in Fairfax, Virginia

1953 – Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

1955 – End of the Bandung Conference: Twenty-nine non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa, many of them newly independent, finish their meeting in Indonesia which condemns colonialism, racism, and the Cold War.  The combined inhabitants of these countries, 1.5 billion people, represented 54% of the world’s population. In 2005, on the 50^th anniversary of the conference, leaders from Asian and African countries meet again to launch the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP), pledging to promote political, economic and cultural cooperation between the two continents

1955 – Marion Caspers-Merk born, German Social Democratic politician; Bundestag member for Lörrach-Müllheim (1990-2009), and Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health (2005-2009). She also served on the Global Commission on Drug Policy

1961 – Del Shannon’s single “Runaway” hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100

1962 –Massachusetts Institute of Technology makes 1st satellite relay of a television signal

1968 – Apple Records refuses to sign David Bowie

1968 – Roxanna Panufnik born, British classical composer of Polish heritage, who has written works for orchestra, chamber groups, chorus, opera, ballet and musical theatre

1968 – Louis Armstrong’s single “What a Wonderful World” reaches #1 on the UK’s charts, making him the oldest person, at 66, ever to score a UK #1

1969 – Eilidh Whiteford born, Scottish National Party politician; SNP Social Justice, Work & Pensions Spokesperson (2015-2017); Member of Parliament for Banff and Buchan (2010-2017)

Eilidh Whiteford. photo by Kami Thomson

1970 – The Gambia becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, with  Dawda Jawara as its first President

1972 – John Lennon’s controversial single “Woman is the Nigger of the World” is released in the U.S, reaching #57 on Billboard’s Hot 100, in spite of virtually every U.S. radio station refusing to air it. Yoko Ono had used the phrase, and Lennon wrote the song to make the point that women deserve better treatment and higher status

1990 – NASA launches the Hubble Space Telescope from the Space Shuttle Discovery

1988 – Alexandra Shevchenko born, Ukrainian feminist activist, self-styled ‘sextremist’ and a founding member of the protest group FEMEN, originally a student group, but FEMEN evolved into regularly demonstrating against the sexual exploitation of all Ukrainian women. They frequently employed shock tactics like appearing topless with their message painted on their bodies, or dressed in costume, such as French maids during a 2011 demonstration in Paris against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Money Fund who was indicted on charges of sexually assaulting a maid at the Sofitel New York Hotel. Charges were dropped because of inconclusive physical evidence and conflicting statements made by the victim. In the meantime, there were a number of other women who came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, including attempted rape and hiring prostitutes for sex parties, but charges were never filed, or were dropped, or Strauss-Kahn was acquitted. In 2013, shortly after the group’s book, FEMEN, was published in French, Shevchenko left the Ukraine

1996 – The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act passes into law in the U.S.
AEDPA has a huge impact on the law of habeas corpus. One provision limits the power of federal judges to grant relief unless the state court’s adjudication of the claim resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the US Supreme Court; or based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the state court proceeding. In addition to modifications that pertain to all habeas corpus cases, AEDPA enacted special review provisions for capital cases from states that enacted quality controls for performance of counsel in state courts in the post-conviction phase. States that enacted quality controls would see strict time limitations enforced against their death-row inmates in federal habeas proceedings coupled with extremely deferential review to the determinations of their courts regarding issues of federal law. AEDPA also created entirely new statutory law. For example, the judicially-created abuse-of-the-writ doctrine had restricted the presentation of new claims through subsequent habeas petitions. AEDPA replaced this doctrine with an absolute bar on second or successive petitions

1996 – The PLO main assembly votes to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel

2004 – After Libya cooperates in eliminating weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. lifts the economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously

2014 – Fashion Revolution Day * – Held on the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, in which the building collapsed, killing 1133 workers and injuring 2500. It is a campaign for change in the fashion industry to better inform consumers who the people are that make their clothes and to advocate for better and safer working conditions

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