July 8^th is:

Chocolate with Almonds Day

Bodypainting Day *

Coca-Cola Day *

Math 2.0 Day

National Blueberry Day *

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MORE! Raquel Correa, Jonathan Daniels and Ruby Sales, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Argentina – Rosario:
Alcoholocausto Festival

Denmark – Copenhagen:
Copenhagen Jazz Festival

France – Carcassonne:
The Carcassonne Festival

Italy – Torino:
Kappa Future Festival

Japan – Fukuoka: Hakata Gion Yamakasa
(Teams pulling heavy floats in races)

Ukraine – Air Defence Forces Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1099 – Some 15,000 starving Crusaders begin the siege of Jerusalem by marching in a religious procession around the city walls as its Muslim defenders watch. The Crusaders will seize Jerusalem from the Fatimid Caliphate and lay the foundations for the Kingdom of Jerusalem

1478 – Gian Giorgio Trissino born, Italian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, and diplomat; noted for his tragic play Sophonisba, based on the life of the Carthaginian noblewoman who legendarily poisoned herself rather than be exhibited in a Roman triumph with the spoils of war after Carthage is defeated by the Romans in 206 BC

1497 – Vasco da Gama embarks on the first direct European voyage to India

1592 – Imjin War: The Korean Navy decisively beats the Japanese Navy at the Battle of Hansan Island, South Gyeonsang Province, Korea, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

1593 – Artemisia Gentileschi born, Italian painter, one of the most accomplished painters of her generation, noted for painting strong or suffering women from myth; the first  woman member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence

Artemisia Gentileschi – Self-Portrait

1621 – Jean de La Fontaine born, French fabulist and poet; known for his Fables, and as one of the famous French literary quartet of the Rue du Vieux Colombier, along with the dramatist Jean Racine, the poet Boileau and the great French playwright Molière

Gustave Doré illustration of a La Fontaine fable

1663 – Charles II of England grants John Clarke a Royal charter for Rhode Island

1776 – John Nixon, an American Militia lieutenant-colonel, delivers the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, in Philadelphia

1821 – Maria White Lowell, American poet and abolitionist, advocate for temperance and women’s rights. She was taught under a strict ascetic discipline at an Ursuline convent, until it was burned down during the Ursuline Convent Riots in 1834 during a wave of anti-Catholicism in New England. In 1839, she attended the first “conversation” organized by women’s rights activist Margaret Fuller, the same year her brother introduced her to his Harvard classmate, James Russell Lowell. They became engaged in 1840, but her father insisted that Lowell be gainfully employed before they were married. She and her mother spent the winter of 1843-1844 in Philadelphia, hoping its milder winter would help heal her lungs, already in the early stages of tuberculosis. She first met Quakers there, and her growing friendship with members of the congregation led to her more active opposition to slavery. After her marriage to Lowell in 1844, she joined the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, and persuaded her husband to use his writing to further the anti-slavery cause. They moved to Philadelphia, where he worked as an editor on Pennsylvania’s Freeman, an antislavery weekly, but moved back to Massachusetts in 1845. Of her four children, born between 1845 and 1850, only her fourth child Mabel survived to adulthood, the others dying as infants. Maria White Lowell died in 1853, at the age of 32. Her husband privately printed her poems two years after her death.

1822 – English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns

1831 – Coca-Cola Day * – John Stith Pemberton born, American pharmacist who invented Coca-Cola

1839 – John D. Rockefeller born, future world’s richest oil tycoon, as founder of the Standard Oil Company; though later in life he became a philanthropist, his advisors and managers were responsible for the strike-breaking tactics in Colorado that caused the death of 15 wives and children of the miners during the Ludlow massacre, and none of his massive charitable donations went to succor the workers who built his fortune

1844 – Mary Bailey Lincoln born, American pioneer in domestic science, author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book: What to Do and What Not to Do in Cooking 

1851 – Arthur Evans born, English archaeologist, a pioneer in the study of Bronze Age Aegean civilization, notable for his unearthing of the palace of Knossos on Crete; he was the first to define Cretan scripts Linear A and Linear B, and earlier pictographic writing

Arthur Evans and the Palace of Knossos

1853 – Commodore Matthew Perry resorts to “gunboat diplomacy,” arriving in Edo Bay with four armed vessels, and firing off blank shots from their 73 cannons, to intimidate the Japanese into opening up trade with the U.S.

1862 – Ella Reeve “Mother” Bloor born, American labor organizer, communist, and   a major figure in the socialist feminist movement. Bloor worked as a trade union organizer and helped during industrial disputes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, Ohio and New York. She organized strikes across a wide range of industries including miners, hatters, steelworkers, and needle-workers. In 1905, Bloor helped Upton Sinclair gather information on the Chicago stock yards. Her investigative reporting, under the pen-name Mr. Richard Bloor, eventually appeared in Sinclair’s best-selling book, The Jungle.

1867 – Käthe Kollwitz born, German painter, printmaker and sculptor; she often depicted the tragedy of war, poverty, and hunger

Käthe Kollwitz, Self-Portrait

1874 – An initial force of North-West Mounted Police depart from Fort Dufferin in Manitoba on the March West, heading to Fort Whoop-up, a notorious American whisky-trading post located at the junction of the St. Mary River and Oldman Rivers, but the Americans are warned they are coming, and the Mounties find no whisky

1882 – Percy Grainger born, Australian composer, arranger and pianist

1889 – The first issue of the Wall Street Journal is published

1896 – William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech at Democratic Convention, in favor of taking American currency off the gold standard, which defined currency value strictly in terms of gold, so paper currency could be exchanged at face value for gold. Bryan wanted to increase the amount of currency in circulation by backing it with silver and gold

1899 – Audrey Richards born, English social anthropologist, and field researcher who studied East African peoples, especially the Bemba, in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Uganda and the Transvaal in South Africa. Richards’ detailed studies included social psychology, food and nutrition, agriculture, land use, economic organization, and how long ordinary tasks took to complete, from fence-building to food gathering and preparation

1907 – Hirao Kishio born, Japanese composer

1911 – “Two Gun” Nan Aspinwall, rodeo cowgirl, arrives in New York City, after riding across the U.S. on horseback, departing from San Francisco CA on September 1, 1910

“Two Gun” Nan Aspinwall and her horse Lady Ellen

1916 – Jean Rouverol born, American author, actress and screenwriter; blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s. She played supporting roles in Hollywood movies in the 1930s, then after her marriage to screenwriter Hugo Butler and the birth of her children, she acted in radio series like One Man’s Family in the 1940s. While her husband was serving overseas during WWII, she wrote her first novella, which she sold to McCall’s magazine in 1945. In 1950, her first screenplay was made into a film, but in 1951, she and her husband were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee because they had been members of the Communist Party in the early 1940s. The Rouverols took their four children and went into self-exile in Mexico rather than face a prison sentence. They would not return to the U.S. until 1964, but they co-authored screenplays, sold under names of friends from the Writers Guild of America, and she continued to write short stories and articles for magazines under pen names. After their return to California, she wrote a book on Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her husband died in 1968, and she wrote three more books, as well as writing scripts for soap operas like Guiding Light, Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns. At age 84 in 2000, she published Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years. She lived to be 100 years old

1918 – Julie Pirie born, British spy for MI5, who infiltrated the Communist Party in the 1950s, initially as a typist, but worked her way into the inner circles, working directly for the under party secretary John Gollan. She was never found out, and retired from the party in 1978, with a pension which the Party paid until her death in 2008; her next assignment for MI5 was to collect information on the activities of the Provisional IRA, often posing as a tourist. She finally left active operations in the 1990s, but lectured to groups of MI5 and police trainees

1926 – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross born in Switzerland, Swiss-American psychiatrist, author and leading authority on the psychology of dying. She developed the theory of the five mental-emotional stages of terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Best known as the author of On Death and Dying.  Kübler-Ross was inducted into the American National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007.

1929 – Shirley Ann Grau born, American author; 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Keepers of the House

1932 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22.

1933 – Harold Ickles is chosen by President Franklin Roosevelt to head the new Public Works Administration (PWA), created by the National Industrial Recovery Act, to distribute and oversee loans and grants to state and local governments so they can contract private companies to build public works projects, 34,000 over the next ten years, including New York’s Triborough Bridge, Grand Coulee Dam, the San Francisco Mint, Washington National Airport, and Key West’s Overseas Highway. During 1939, the PWA shifted to preparations of war, funding the construction of the aircraft carriers Yorktown and Enterprise, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and aircraft

Harold Ickes – 1944,  by Yousuf Karsh

1934 – Raquel Correa, Chilean journalist, mostly worked for newspaper El Mercurio de Santiago, awarded Chile’s National Journalism Award in 1991

1945 – Micheline Calmy-Rey born, Swiss Social Democratic politician; President of Switzerland (2007 and 2011); Vice President of Switzerland (2006 and 2010); Minister of Foreign Affairs and Member of the Swiss Federal Council (2003-2011)

1947 – Jenny Diski born, English writer; regular contributor to the London Review of Books, and won the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking around America With Interruptions. Noted for her  memoirs,  Skating to Antarctica in 1997, and In Gratitude, written about her mentor Doris Lessing, and other literary figures who had inspired her, which was published in 2016, just before her death from cancer

1948 – The U.S. Air Force’s recruits first women into its W.A.F. program, and the U.S. Navy accepts its first peace-time female recruits after the Women’s Armed Service Integration Act allows women to serve when the nation is not at war

1948 – Ruby Sales born, African American social activist; at age 17, she participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965, she was part of the voter registration drive, and was arrested with others for picketing a whites-only store, which was ignoring the Civil Rights Act of 1964; after her release, she went with friends to buy sodas at a nearby store, where she was confronted by a special county deputy with a shot gun; fellow marcher and activist Jonathan Daniels, a white Episcopalian studying for the priesthood, pushed her out of the way, and was shot to death in her place. Sales was so traumatized by his murder she could barely speak for seven months, but in spite of death threats made against her and her family, she testified at the trial. The deputy was acquitted by an all-white-male jury, resulting in legal challenges and a reform of jury selection procedures. She went on to the same divinity school that Jonathan Daniels had attended, then worked as a human rights advocate in Washington DC. Sales founded the SpiritHouse Project, a non-profit inner-city mission dedicated to Daniels’ memory

1951 – Anjelica Huston born, American actress, director, producer and author; won the 1985 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Prizzi’s Honor, and made her directorial debut with the 1996 film Bastard out of Carolina, then directed and starred in Agnes Browne in 1999. She has published two memoirs: A Story Lately Told and Watch Me. Huston led a 2007 letter campaign for U.S. Campaign for Burma and Human Rights Center, and recorded a public service announcement for PETA urging her Hollywood colleagues not to use great apes in television, movies or advertisements

1952 – Marianne Williamson born, teacher, author and lecturer on the intersection between spirituality and politics; founder of Project Angel Food, a meals-on wheels program serving homebound people with AIDS; a co-founder of the Peace Alliance, the grassroots campaign supporting legislation to establish a U.S Department of Peace; and member of the Board of RESULTS, a non-profit working to end poverty; author of several books, including  A Woman’s Worth, and Tears to Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment

1958 – The soundtrack for Oklahoma! is awarded the first gold record album

1958 – Tzipi Livni born, Israeli politician, diplomat, and lawyer; represented five different factions during her time (1999-2019) in the Knesset (Israeli legislature). She also served in 8 different cabinet positions, including Foreign Minister (2006-2009,  record for the most government roles held by an Israeli woman. She is known for her efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is a leading voice for the two-state solution

1960 – U2 Incident: USSR charges US pilot Francis Gary Powers with espionage

1966 – The Beatles release “Nowhere Man”

1975 – Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin begins his historic visit to West Germany, the first by an Israeli head of government, beginning by laying a memorial wreath at the Nazi death camp at Belsen

1976 – Dame Ellen MacArthur born, English solo long distance sailor; broke the work record for fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe in 2005; retired from professional sailing in 2010, and launched the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a non-profit working on creating a circular economy, to minimize waste and increase recycling, repair and repurposing, creating a sustainable economy with the least impact on the environment

1981 – U.S. Senate confirms Sandra Day O’Connor to Supreme Court (99-0)

1982 – Sophia Bush born, American actress and activist, fundraising for Fuck Cancer, Run for the Gulf and Global Green Gulf Relief; campaigned for Barak Obama and other Democrats in Texas during the 2008 election; supporter of gay rights, women’s rights, and protecting the environment; one of the performers who told stories about the people who were killed in the Orlando Pulse massacre in a 2016 Human Rights Campaign memorial video

2011 – NASA launches the space shuttle Atlantis in its final mission

2014 – Bodypainting Day * is founded by Andy Golub in New York City; now also observed in Amsterdam, San Francisco and Berlin

2016 – The first National Blueberry Day * is launched by Holiday Insights to honor blueberries during their season of ripening – if you’d rather drink your blueberries, mix up a Blue & Silver Bells variation on a margarita: 2 ounces Silver Tequila, ¾ ounce Blueberry Lavender Syrup, ½ ounce fresh Lemon Juice, Lemon Twist as garnish – build in rocks glass over ice, stir, garnish

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