June 16th is

U.S. Fathers’ Day

National Fudge Day

World Sea Turtle Day *

International Day of the African Child *

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MORE! Geronimo, Eileen Atkins and Rudolf Nureyev, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Argentina – Engineers’ Day

Canada – Viking, Alberta:
Vikings in the Streets Festival

Ireland – Bloomsday *

Seychelles – Fathers’ Day

South Africa – Youth Day *

United Kingdom – Sussex:
Sussex Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

363 – Roman Emperor Julian is forced to retreat after Persians flood the area behind him. He orders his troops on a risky forced march, withdrawing up the valley of the Tigris River, under heavy attack by the Persians

632 –  Yazdegerd III ascends to the throne as Shah of the Persian Empire, the last ruler of the Sasanian dynasty; a year after his ascension Muslin Arabs invade Persia

1139 – Emperor Konoe born, the eighth son of Emperor Toba; he was proclaimed emperor at the age of three when his older brother, Sutoku abdicated. His reign lasted from 1142 to 1155, when he died at age 16

1373 – The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty is signed between Great Britain and Portugal

1407 – During the Ming-Hô War, the Ming armies capture former King HồQuý Ly and his son King HồHán Thương of the Hồ dynasty

1486 – Andrea Del Sarto born, Italian painter and draftsman

Portrait of a Young Man by Andrea del Sarto, circa 1517

1487 – Battle of Stoke Field, the final engagement of the Wars of the Roses, is won by Henry VII, and almost all the remaining Yorkist leaders are killed at Stoke Field

1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, is imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, by Scots who are angry over her marriage to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, whom many believe colluded with her in the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley, just three months before her hasty remarriage to Bothwell

Reconstruction of Lochleven Castle

1624 – After the Privy Council in 1620 forbids export of any product of Virginia to a foreign country until the commodities had been landed in England, and English duties paid, the London Company stops being profitable and is bankrupt by 1624, so their royal charter is revoked, and Virginia becomes an English crown colony

1644 – Princess Henrietta of England born, Duchess of Orléans, instrumental in negotiating the Secret Treaty of Dover

1723 – Sir Joshua Reynolds born, English portrait painter

Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse by Sir Joshua Reynolds

1738 – Mary Katherine Goddard born, American publisher; in 1774, she and her widowed mother took over as publishers of the Providence Gazette newspaper; in 1775, she became the first American woman postmaster, in Baltimore; in 1777, she was the first printer to offer copies of the Declaration of Independence, commissioned by Congress, which included the signer’s names (now called the Goddard Broadside); in 1789, she opened a bookstore in Baltimore, which was almost certainly the first with a woman proprietor in the U.S.

1784 – As Holland’s House of Orange is toppling, which had been the country’s most powerful house since 1544, the newly-risen Patriot Party pushes through a ban on the wearing of Orange colours and the singing of the Wilhelmus, to be punished by a fine
and imprisonment

1790 – The District of Colombia is established as the seat of U.S. government

1796 – Camille Corot born, French landscape painter

The Goat Herd of Genzano – Camille Corot 1843

1815 – The Battle of Quatre-Bras, a critical crossroads that must be held in order to control all the surrounding territory, between mostly Dutch forces under the Prince of Orange, part of the Seventh Coalition combined army under the overall command of the Duke of Wellington, and the left wing of the French Armée du Nord under Marshal Ney, results in nearly 9,000 dead or wounded, split almost equally between the opposing sides. Other Coalition forces rush reinforcements to hold Quatre-Bras at great cost, especially to the Black Watch 42^nd battalion, but the Prussian Army under Field Marshal Blücher is in worse case at Ligny against Napoleon. Badly outnumbered and cut off, they are forced to retreat, and Blücher is wounded. Two days later, he resumes command, and the Prussians play a decisive role in the Battle of Waterloo

28th Regiment at Quatre Bras – Elizabeth Thompson 1815 painting detail

1829 – Geronimo born (his Chiricahua Apache name, Goyaałé, means “one who yawns”) prominent leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band; from 1850 to 1866, his band joined with three other Chiricahua bands to carry out many raids, and resistance to U.S. and Mexican military campaigns in northern Mexico and the southwestern U.S., part of the prolonged conflict which started with American settlement in Apache lands at the end of the 1848 American-Mexican War; after two “surrenders” and attempts to live on reservations in Arizona failed, his third breakout from the reservation ended in his capture, and treatment as a prisoner of war. Geronimo was deported with 27 other Apaches to exile in Florida, and died in Fort Sill Oklahoma in 1909, never allowed to see his homeland again

1829 – Bessie Rayner Parkes born, English poet, essayist and journalist; one of the most prominent feminists and women’s rights campaigners in Victorian England. She and her friend Barbara Smith Bodichon campaigned for the Married Women’s Property Act 1870, that made married women the legal owners of the money they earned and the right to inherit property. Parker became the principal editor of the first English feminist  periodical, the English Woman’s Journal, published monthly (1858-1964). Its closure was due to financial difficulties and conflicts between sponsors and chief contributors, but it led to many other women’s ventures, including the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women; the Law-Copying Office; the Langham Place Group, where women gathered informally to talk; and the Victoria Printing Press (entirely staffed by women), which was started by Parkes in 1860. In 1866, Parkes and Bodichon formed the first Women’s Suffrage Committee. A petition they created was presented to the House of Commons, and they launched a campaign for voting rights. She wrote and published 14 books; poetry, essays, biography, memoirs, travel and works for children, as well as a very effective pamphlet on women’s rights, and dozens of articles. She died in 1925, at the age of 95

1836 – The formation of the London Working Men’s Association gives rise to the Chartist Movement, a working-class movement for political reform (1838-1857). Two major reforms for which they campaign are suffrage for all males aged 21 or older, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime, without restriction to property owners and the secret ballot

1843 – David Popper born, Bohemian cellist and composer

1846 – The Papal conclave of 1846 elects Pope Pius IX, who begins the longest reign in the history of the papacy

1858 –Abraham Lincoln makes his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois, accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for the U.S Senate

1871 – The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology)

1884 – LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s “Switchback Railway” opens in New York’s Coney Island amusement park, the first purpose-built roller coaster

1897 – A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later

1899 – Helen Francesca Traubel born, American dramatic soprano, known for her Wagnerian roles, especially Brünnhilde and Isolde

1902 – Barbara McClintock born, American cytogeneticist and major figure in the history of genetics; noted for her development of maize cytogenetics in the 1940s and 1950s, and her theory that genes are transposable on and between chromosomes, which was confirmed by other scientists by the early 1980s. Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, the first woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated

1903 – Roald Amundsen commences the first east-west navigation of the Northwest Passage, leaving Oslo, Norway

1904 – Bloomsday * date the events in the James Joyce novel Ulysses take place; Joyce chooses date because it was the beginning of his relationship with Nora Barnacle

1907 – The Coup of June 1907: Russian Tsar Nicholas II dissolves the Second Duma (parliament) by Imperial Manifesto, arrests 55 Social Democratic deputies in spite of their parliamentary immunity, then issues an edict changing the Russian electoral law to increase representation of the propertied classes, and reduce the representatives of the peasants, working class, and national minorities. Nicholas had broken the Fundamental Law, and fallen back on the Tsar’s “historical authority”– despotism

1909 – Glenn Curtiss makes the first commercial sale of a U.S. airplane, for $5,000

1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York

1911 – Ginger Rogers born, American actress and dancer, screen partner of Fred Astaire; 1941 Best Actress Oscar winner for Kitty Foyle

1913 – The South African Government passes the segregationist Native Land Act, which restricts purchase or lease of land by native Africans

1915 – British Women’s Institute (BWI) founded, UKs largest women’s volunteer organization

1915 – Marga Faulstich born, German glass chemist; worked for Schott AG for 44 years, and was Schott’s first woman executive. Faulstich worked on more than 300 types of optical class, especially for microscopes and binoculars. There are 40 patents registered in her name

1917 – Katharine “Kay” Graham born, American publisher; first woman publisher of a major American newspaper as the leader of her family’s newspaper, The Washington Post, after her husband’s suicide in 1963, formally assuming the title of president by 1967, and publisher (1969-1979), then chair of the board (1973-1991); recipient of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for her memoir Personal History

1918 – The Bolsheviks execute Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children

1920 – Isabelle Holland born, Swiss-American author, known for books for both adults and children; two of her novels were made into movies, Bump in the Night and The Man Without a Face

1922 – The Irish republicans are beaten in a national election; the vote is in favor of the Treaty of London, which leaves the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Commonwealth

1923 – Sun Yat Sen authorizes the Republic of China Military Academy; at its opening ceremonies in May the following year, he delivers a speech which later becomes the lyrics of the Republic’s national anthem

1925 – The Union of South Africa rejects a round-table conference with India on the status of Indian nationals in South Africa on the grounds that it will constitute interference in South African affairs

1933 – The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed (later struck down by the U.S Supreme Court as unconstitutional)

1933 – The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is created under the authority of the Banking Act, to insure bank deposits, up to $2,500, by customers against loss in the event of the bank’s failure, and to extend federal oversight to all commercial banks

1934 – Dame Eileen Atkins born, English actress and screenwriter; three-time Olivier Award winner in 1988 for Best Supporting Performance (for multiple roles), and for Best Actress in 1999 for The Unexpected Man, and for Best Actress in 2004 for Honour. Atkins joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1957, and has appeared regularly on stage in London, on Broadway, and at the Edinburgh Festival. She was the co-creator with Jean March of the television dramas Upstairs, Downstairs and The House of Elliot. She also wrote the screenplay in 1997 for Mrs. Dalloway, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Atkins was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1990, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001

1937 – The Marx Brothers’ movie, A Day at the Races, opens in Los Angeles

1938 – Joyce Carol Oates born, American author of over 40 novels, as well as plays, novellas, short stories and poetry; 1969 National Book Award for them, and a 2010 National Humanities Medal

1941 – Washington National Airport opens, the first U.S. federally owned airport

1946 – The musical Annie Get Your Gun opens on Broadway, to run for 1147 performances

1946 – Karen Dunnell born, British medical sociologist and civil servant; National Statistician and CEO of the UK Office for National Statistics (2005-2009); also inaugural CEO of the UK Statistics Authority in 2008; Fellow of the Royal Statitical Society; appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours

1947 –  In the USSR, Pravda denounces the U.S. Marshall Plan to aid in the economic recovery of Europe from the devastation of WWII

1951 – J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye is published

1955 – Grete Faremo born, Norwegian politician, civil servant and lawyer; current Executive Director of the UN Office for Project Services since 2014; Norwegian Minister of Justice (1992-1996 and 2011-2013, when she oversaw a major overhaul of the nation’s emergency system and other reforms); Minister of Defence (2009-2011); Minister of International Aid (1990-1992); Minister of Petroleum and Energy (1996); Member of the Norwegian Parliament (1993-1997)

1957 – Leeona Dorrian born, Lady Dorrian since 2005; incumbent Lord Justice Clerk, beginning in 2016, the second most senior judicial post in Scotland, and the first woman to serve in this position; Senator of the College of Justice (2005-2012), promoted to the Inner House, the senior section of the Court of Session of the Supreme Civil Court of Scotland, in 2012

1960 – Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho, starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, opens in New York City

1961 – Soviet premiere danseur Rudolf Nureyev of the Kirov Ballet defects to the West at the Paris Le Bourget Airport instead of boarding a plane to return to the USSR

1962 – The Isley Brothers release “Twist and Shout”

1963 – Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space when she pilots Vostok 6

1969 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules 9-1 in Powell v. McCormack that the House of Representatives may exclude a duly elected representative, but only for the reasons enumerated in the Qualifications of Members Clause of Article One of the Constitution

1969 – Sharmishta Chakrabarti born in London to Bengali parents; feminist, advocate for civil liberties and human rights; created a life peer as Baroness Chakrabarti in 2016; British Labour Party politician; Lord Temporal (non-clergy) Member of the House of Lords since 2016; in 2018, it was announced that she would be sworn as a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom

1969 – Apollo 11 blasts off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the moon

1972 – David Bowie releases The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

1973 – Former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield publicly revealed the existence of President Richard Nixon’s secret taping system during the Senate Watergate hearings

1980 – The John Belushi-Dan Aykroyd movie The Blues Brothers premieres in Chicago

1991 – International Day of the African Child * honors the participants in the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976, over 10,000 black school children marched in a column over half a mile long in protest of the poor quality of education available to them, and demanding their right to be taught in their own language instead of Afrikaans; the police opened fire on the children, and killed at least 176 of them, and wounded over 1,000 others; the shooting of the children caused increased international outcry and pressure. It is now marked as Youth Day * in South Africa

1995 – Batman Forever, starring Val Kilmer and Chris O’Donnell, opens with a record $528 million weekend

1999 – Thabo Mbeki is elected second President of a democratic South Africa; in his inaugural address, he pays tribute to his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, of “a generation that pulled our country out of the abyss and placed it on the pedestal of hope, on which it rests today”

2004 – Martha Stewart is sentenced to five months in prison and five months of home confinement by a federal judge for lying about a stock sale

2010 – Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco

2012 – Pilot and astronaut Liu Yang becomes the first Chinese woman in space as a crew member of the Shenzhou 9 mission

2014 – World Sea Turtle Day * is promoted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

2016 – Philadelphia becomes the first major U.S. city to tax sodas, at a rate of 1.5 cents per ounce, whether made with sugar or artificial sweeteners, in spite of fierce opposition from the American Beverage Association, which files suit to overturn the tax; the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decides in January, 2018, to hear the case.  In July, 2018, the court upheld the city’s controversial tax on sodas and other sweetened beverages. In a 4-2 majority opinion, the court found that the city had not violated state law by taxing the distribution of beverages

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