July 9^th is:

Open Heart Day *

Gothic Novel Day *

National Sugar Cookie Day

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MORE! Ann Radcliffe, Daniel Williams, and June Jordan, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Baha’i – Martyrdom of the Báb *

Argentina –
Día de la Independencia

Australia – Constitution Day

Azerbaijan –
Diplomatic Service Employees Day

Brazil – São Paulo:
Constitution Revolution Day *

Cambodia – Arbor Day

Canada – Nunavut: Nunavut Territory Day *

Palau – Constitution Day

South Africa – Cape Town: Bokeh Fashion
Film Festival (through July 14)

South Sudan – Independence Day

United Kingdom – London: British Summer Time
(Music festival in Hyde Park – though July 14)

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On This Day in HISTORY

455 – Military commander Avitus, a Gallic-Roman, is proclaimed Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, but his reign ends in October 456, because the Senate and the People of Rome found him too chummy with Visigoth King Theodoric II

595 – General Kim Yu-sin of the Korean kingdom of Silla, with his Tang dynasty allies, defeats the army of the kingdom of Baekje in the Battle of Hwangsanbeol; Baekje’s General Gyebaek is killed, and Baekje King Uija surrenders

1249 – Japanese Emperor Kameyama born, his reign began when he was eleven years old, and lasted from 1259 to 1274, when he abdicated to his son, Emperor Go-Uda, and began his reign as cloistered emperor, until his son was pressured to abdicate in 1287. In 1291, Kameyama helped establish the Buddhist temple Nanzen-ji in Kyo. He died at age 56 in 1305

1357 – Emperor Charles IV helps lay the Charles Bridge foundation stone in Prague

1540 – King Henry VIII annuls his 6-month marriage to Anne of Cleves

Portraits of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves by H. Holbein

1577 – Thomas De La Warr born, English official; one of the Virginia colony founders

1609 – Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II grants Bohemia religious freedom

1764 – Gothic Novel Day * – Ann Radcliffe born, English novelist, pioneer of the Gothic novel; noted for The Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of Udolpho

1776 – General George Washington orders the Declaration of Independence read to Continental Army troops in Manhattan, as thousands of British troops on Staten Island prepare for the Battle of Long Island

1793 – Upper Canada’s Legislative Assembly passes An Act to Prevent the further Introduction of Slaves and to limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province, which bans importing slaves, and frees children born to female slaves when they reach age 25

1810 – Napoleon annexes the Kingdom of Holland as part of the First French Empire

1811 – Explorer David Thompson claims Pacific NW Columbia River area for Britain

1811 – Fanny Fern born, American author and columnist for the New York Ledger

1815 – Charles Maurice de Talleyrand becomes the first Prime Minister of France

1816 – Argentina declares its independence from the Spanish Empire

1819 – Elias Howe born, American inventor of the sewing machine

1850 – The Bab, Herald of the Bahá’í faith, is executed by firing squad in Tabriz, Persia

1858 – Kaikhusrau Jahan born, progressive Begum (ruler) of Bhopal (1901- 1926), greatly improved education and public health services for her people

1868 – 14^th Amendment to U.S. Constitution is ratified – Section One: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

1879 – Ottorino Respighi born, Italian composer, violinist, and musicologist; best known for Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome

1887 – Samuel Eliot Morison born, American biographer and historian

1893 – African American surgeon Dr. Daniel Williams performs the first successful open heart surgery, without anesthesia, on James Cornell

1894 – Dorothy Thompson born, American journalist and radio broadcaster, first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934, recognized by Time magazine in 1939 as the second most influential woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt

1900 – Britain’s separate Australian colonies are unified into one country

1910 – Govan Mvuyelwa Mbeki born, South African politician, activist and writer; South African Communist Party member in the 1930s, and joined African National Congress in 1935. He was the editor (1938-1944) of Inkundla Ya Bantu (originally The Territorial Magazine.) He served on the Transkei Territorial Authorities General Council (1944-1950.) The SA Communist Party was banned in 1950. In 1952, Mbeki was imprisoned for three months, convicted of disobeying apartheid laws by participating in Defiance Campaign. He worked on several newspapers, including the New Age, the (South African) Guardian, Fighting Talk and Liberation. In 1960, he was banned, and became part of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, improvising bombs, until his arrest in 1963. He was sentenced to Robben Island, where he remained for 24 years, until being released in 1987. He was elected to South Africa’s post-apartheid Senate (1994-1997), where he served as Deputy President, and then served on the National Council of Provinces (1997-1999). He died in 2001, at the age of 91. Noted for his book, The Struggle for Liberation in South Africa: A Short History, published in 1992

1911 – Mervyn Peake born, English novelist, poet, playwright and illustrator

1915 – During WWI, the South African Defense Force of the Union of South Africa which invaded German Southwest Africa at the end of 1914, accepts the German’s surrender of the territory. Sixteen days later, South Africa annexes Southwest Africa

1917 – Krystyna Chlond Dańko born, Polish orphan in Otwock who saved the lives of her Jewish friend Lusia Kokszko, and Lusia’s family during the WWII Nazi occupation of Poland, smuggling two of them out of Otwock to Warsaw; she hid the rest of the family, and brought them food and clothing; in 1998, she was awarded the title Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Most of the rest of the Jews of Otwock perished in the Triblinka death camp, or were summarily shot when the Otwock ghetto was liquidated in September 1942

Krystyna Chlond Dańko in 1936

1926 – Mathilde Krim born in Italy, American medical researcher, part of the team that developed a prenatal method to determine fetal gender; one of the earliest researchers to recognize the severity of the threat of AIDS, she was the founding chair of AIDS Medical Foundation which became amfAR, an association for AIDS research; she was honored in 2000 with Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the 2003 Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged

1929 – Hassan II born, King of Morocco (1961-1999)

1930 – Janice Lourie born, American computer scientist and graphic artist; pioneer in CAD/Cam for the textile industry, best known for inventing software tools that facilitate textile production from artist to manufacturer; a founding member of the Camerata of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and played the tenor shawm and psaltery from the museum collection

1931 – Sylvia A. Bacon born, American Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (1970-1991), appointed by Richard Nixon; worked for the U.S. Department of Justice (1956-1970) and served under Ramsey Clark, helping to draft legislation for D.C. court reform

1932 – Constitution Revolution Day * – the state of São Paulo revolts against the Brazilian Federal Government, starting the Constitutionalist Revolution

1933 – Nunavut Day * – The Canadian Parliament passes the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act, leading to splitting Nunavut from the Northwest Territories  as a separate territory in 1999

1935 – Mercedes Sosa born, Argentine singer and activist, won several Grammy Awards and a posthumous Latin Grammy for Best Folk Album, UNICEF ambassador

1936 – June Jordan born, American poet, writer, educator and activist, columnist for The Progressive, librettist for the musical I Was Looking at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky, recipient of numerous awards including the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists

1937 – 20^th Century Fox vault fire destroys over 40,000 reels of silent films

1940 – The German Evangelist Church protests Adolph Hitler’s euthanasia pogroms, officially known as Action T4, which ultimately murdered 200,000 people, using medications like phenol, starvation or gas. The victims are mentally or physically disabled. Action T4 is the next step following the law the Nazis enacted soon after they took power in Germany, which forced the sterilization of people with such diseases as Huntington’s, schizophrenia, and epilepsy

1944 – Judith M. Brown born in India, British historian, specialist in modern South Asia, and an Anglican priest; Beit Professor of Commonwealth History, and a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford (1990-2011); Research Fellow, Fellow and Director of Studies in History, Girton College, Cambridge (1968-1971); Gandhi and Civil Disobedience: The Mahatma in Indian Politics 1928-1934

1953 – Margie Gillis born, Canadian modern dance choreographer and solo dancer whose repertoire includes over 100 pieces; in 1987, she became the first modern dance artist to be awarded the Order of Canada; in 2008, the inaugural recipient of the Stella Adler MAD Spirit Award for her involvement in social causes

Margie Gillis performing her own Torn Roots, Broken Branches

1955 – Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” tops the charts

1962 – Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans exhibit opens in Los Angeles

1970 – Masami Tsuda born, Japanese shōjo manga artist; noted for Kare Kano: His and Hers Circumstances, and the series Chotto Edo Made

1974 –Siân Berry born, British politician and environmentalist; Co-Leader with Jonathan Bartley of the Green Party of England and Wales since 2018; Leader of the Green Party in the London Assembly (2016-2018); Member of the London Assembly since 2016; Principal Speaker of the Green Party (2006-2007). She was a founder of the Alliance against Urban 4X4s, a campaign demanding measures to stop sport utility vehicles from “taking over our cities” which has placed about 150,000 mock parking tickets on 4X4s

1978 – In  hot, humid weather, 100,000 supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.) march in Washington DC, with banners in purple and white to honor the National Woman’s Suffrage Party of Alice Paul. Paul turned, immediately after the long-awaited success of the campaign for women’s right to vote, to making women’s legal equality a Constitutional amendment, first introduced in Congress in 1923, but not sent to the states for ratification until 1972. The march supports bill H.J.R. 638, to extend E.R.A.’s deadline to March 22, 1979. Only eight votes by state senators in three states had kept the E.R.A. from being ratified by March 1, 1977

1981 – Nintendo releases Donkey Kong – mascot Mario makes his debut

1986 – New Zealand’s Homosexual Law Reform Act legalizes homosexuality

1987 – Rebecca Sugar born, American animator, producer and songwriter; the first woman animator to independently create a series for a network, the Cartoon Network series Steven Universe, which first aired in 2013. She was previously a writer and storyboard artist on the network’s Adventure Time series (2010-2013). She has been nominated five times for Primetime Emmy Awards

1993 – Canada’s Nunavut Act leads to dividing the Northwest Territories

1995 – The Grateful Dead play their last concert, at Chicago’s Soldier Field (Jerry Garcia dies of a heart attack the following month)

2002 – The African Union, a geo-political organization of 55  countries of the African continent, meets in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and South African President Thabo Mbeki becomes its chairman

2004 – A Senate Intelligence Committee report concludes the CIA had provided unfounded assessments of the threat posed by Iraq that the Bush administration relied on to justify going to war

2011 – South Sudan becomes a new nation, breaking away from Sudan after two civil wars over five decades that cost millions of lives

Flag of South Sudan

2013 – The three kidnapped women, held captive in a Cleveland house and raped for over ten years, release a video. In their first public statement since their escape, they thank the many supporters for “such an outpouring of love and kindness.” The Courage Fund, established to help them, had already raised over $1 million

2018 – China announces that the poet Liu Xia, who had been under house arrest and 24-hour surveillance since 2010 when her husband, author and activist Liu Xiaobo, won the Nobel Peace Prize, will be allowed to leave the country for Berlin, Germany. She had never been charged with a crime. The announcement came just days before the one-year anniversary of Liu Xiaobo’s death from liver cancer while serving an 11-year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.” His arrest and incarceration set off world-wide protests and appeals for his release 

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