July 12^th is

Simplicity Day *

Different Colored Eyes Day 

Pecan Pie Day

Night of Nights *

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MORE! Beah Richards, E.D. Nixon and Eiko Ishioka, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Egypt – Hurghada:
Art Promenade Street Festival

France – Le Barcarès: Electrobeach

Kiribati – Independence Day

Malta – Floriana: Isle of Malta Festival

Papua New Guinea – Kokopo:
National Mask & Warwagira Festival

Sao Tome and Principe – Independence Day

Northern Ireland, Newfoundland,
and Labrador – Orangemen’s Day *

Tahiti – Pape’ete: Heiva
(Polynesian cultural festival – until 7-20-2019)

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On This Day in HISTORY

100 BC – Julius Caesar born, Roman politician, general and author, who played a critical role in the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire

927 – King Constantine II of Scotland, King Hywel Dda of Deheubarth, Ealdred of Bamburgh and King Owain of the Cumbrians accepted the overlordship of King Æthelstan of England, leading to seven years of peace in the north

Æthelstan presents a book to St Cuthbert, earliest surviving portrait
of an English king, an illustration from Bede’s Life of Saint Cuthbert

1191 – Third Crusade: Saladin’s garrison surrenders to Philip Augustus, ending the
two-year siege of Acre

1468 – Juan del Enzina (also spelled Encina) born, Spanish composer, poet and playwright; son of a shoemaker of Jewish converso descent; noted as ‘one of the
founders of Spanish drama’

1543 – King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace

1561 – Saint Basil’s Cathedral (Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed) in Moscow is consecrated

1562 –Acting Bishop of Yucatán Diego de Landa, after hearing of Maya converts who continued to practice idol worship, orders an Inquisition, then he has many of the Maya sacred codices burned

1690 – Orangemen’s Day * – Battle of the Boyne (Gregorian calendar): The armies of  William of Orange defeat the forces of deposed King James II of England and Ireland in County Meath in Ireland

1730 – Josiah Wedgwood founds the Wedgwood China Company

1776 – British Captain James Cook begins his third voyage

1789 – In response to the dismissal of the French finance minister Jacques Necker, who had made himself popular by eliminating some taxes, the radical journalist Camille Desmoulins gives a speech which results in the storming of the Bastille two days later

1790 – French Revolution: The Civil Constitution of the Clergy is passed in France by the National Constituent Assembly, declaring the Catholic Church in France subordinate to the revolutionary government

1799 –  Ranjit Singh, age 21, conquers Lahore and becomes Maharaja of the Punjab, ruling the Sikh Empire

1817 – Simplicity Day * – Henry David Thoreau born, cabin-in-the-woods philosopher

1849 – Sir William Osler born, Canadian physician, one of the four founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital. He created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians, and was the first to bring medical students out of the lecture hall for bedside clinical training. Noted for his diagnostic skills, and as the founder of the History of Medicine Society

1854 – George Eastman born, American photographic processing and equipment pioneer; founder of Eastman Kodak

1860s (? – year not recorded) –  George Washington Carver born, African-American son of slaves who didn’t learn to read and write until he was 20 years old; world-renowned scientist whose discoveries helped to improve agriculture in the South, developing uses for sweet potatoes, peanuts and red clay and sandy loam common to Southern states; accorded membership in the Royal Society of London

1870 – William W. Lyman patents the first rotary can opener with a cutting wheel

1879 – Margherita Piazzola Beloch born, Italian mathematician; fields of study were algebraic geometry, algebraic topology and photogrammetry; notable for her work on birational transformations in space, contributions to the theory of skew algebraic curves, and the topological properties of algebraic curves

1884 – Louis B. Mayer born, future MGM Movie Mogul

1884 – Amedeo Modigliani born, Italian modern painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France

Jeanne Hebuterne with Necklace 1917, by Modigliani

1895 – Buckminster Fuller born, American architect, engineer, inventor and theorist; popularized the geodesic dome; designed the Montreal Biosphère

1886 – Jean Hersholt born, Danish-American film and radio actor and director; one of the main founders in 1939 of the Motion Picture Relief Fund, to assist down-on-their luck industry employees with medical care. The fund created the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital. In 1956, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences created the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Oscar given to an “individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.” He also translated over 160 of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales from Danish into English, still regarded as one of the best English translations

1895 – Kirsten Flagstad born, Norwegian soprano, ranked among the greatest singers of the 20th century, known for her roles in the operas of Wagner

1895 – Oscar Hammerstein II born, American songwriter and director-producer

1899 – E.D. Nixon born, African-American civil rights leader and union organizer; one of the main organizers of the landmark Montgomery Bus Boycott by black residents in 1955, which lasted over a year, and nearly bankrupted the city-owned bus system. The boycott ended after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Browder v. Gayle (1956) that the local and state laws were unconstitutional, and ordered Alabama to end bus segregation

1904 – Pablo Neruda born as Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, Chilean poet and diplomat; won the 1953 Lenin Peace Prize and the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature

1917 – Bisbee Arizona: striking miners are kidnapped and deported by vigilantes

1918 – Doris Grumbach born, American novelist, biographer, essayist and co-owner of Wayward Books bookstore in Sargentville ME; literary editor of The New Republic (1972-1974); noted for novels about women, many with gay and lesbian themes, and her two memoirs: Coming into the End Zone, and Extra Innings

1920 – Beah Richards born, American stage, film and television actress, author, poet,  playwright, and civil rights activist, known for performances in the original Broadway productions of The Miracle Worker and A Raisin in the Sun

1925 – Akutagawa Yasushi born, Japanese composer and conductor; his father was Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, an author noted for his short stories

1928 – Pixie Williams born, New Zealand singer, of Māori descent, recipient of a triple platinum award from the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand for “Blue Smoke” and a single platinum award for “Let’s Talk It Over”

1933 – The U.S. Minimum wage is 40 cents an hour

1933 – Donald E. Eastlake born, American crime fiction author and screenwriter; also used the pen name Richard Stark; three-time Edgar winner; Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America

1938 – Eiko Ishioka born, Japanese art director, costume designer, and graphic designer known for her work in stage, screen, advertising, and print media. She won the 1992 Oscar for Best Costume Design for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and was posthumously nominated for a costume design Oscar for her work in the 2012 film Mirror Mirror. Ishioka died of pancreatic cancer in 2012

Costume for the film The Fall – Eiko Ishioka

1943 – Christine McVie born, British singer-songwriter and keyboardist, solo artist and member of Fleetwood Mac, inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, recipient of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors’ Gold Badge of Merit

1944 – Delia Ephron born, American novelist, playwright and screenwriter; co-author with her sister Nora of the play Love, Loss and What I Wore, which ran Off-Broadway for over 2 ½ years; her screenplays include The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and  You’ve Got Mail 

1951 – Joan B. Bauer born, American young adult author; noted for Squashed, and Rules of the Road, which was a Newbery Honor Book and won the Golden Kite Award

1952 – Irina Bokova born, Bulgarian politician and diplomat; first woman Director-General of UNESCO (2009-2017); Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs (acting/1996-1997), Bulgarian Ambassador to France and Monaco; advocate for gender equality, improved education and preventing funding for terrorism, especially by enforcing protection of intellectual goods; firm opponent of racism and anti-Semitism; led UNESCO’s activities on Holocaust remembrance

1954 – Elvis Presley signs his first recording contract, with Sun Records, and quits his day job as a truck driver

Elvis with Sweetpea

1957 – Surgeon General Leroy Burney warns of direct link between smoking and cancer

1962 – The Rolling Stones perform their first concert at London’s Marquee Club

1962 – Joanna Shields born in America, Baroness Shields, British Conservative politician and Group CEO of BenevolentAi; Life peer in the House of Lords since 2014; Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Internet Safety (2016-2018); Under-Secretary of State Minister for Internet Safety & Security (2015-2017)

1965 – The Beach Boys release “California Girls”

1969 – Chantal Jouanno born, French UDI (center-right) politician and former French karate champion: French Senator for Paris since 2011; French Minister of Sports (2010-2011); French Minister for Ecology (2009-2010)

1969 – Anne-Sophie Pic born, French chef; the fourth woman to win three Michelin stars, for her family’s restaurant, Maison Pic, in Valance, in Southern France

1970 – Aure Atika born in Portugal to Moroccan-Jewish parents, French actress, screenwriter and director; noted for directing À quoi ça sert de voter écolo? (What’s the point of voting Green?), which won the 2004 Prix de la Fondation Beaumarchais for best short film,  De l’amour (In Love), and On ne badine pas avec Rosette (Don’t Mess with Rosette)

1971 – The Australian Aboriginal Flag becomes one of several official flags of Australia and is flown for the first time

1971 – Loni Love born, African American comedian, actress, author, and a host on the talk show The Real since 2013. She switched from electrical engineering to music engineering, then won a $50 prize in a stand-up comedy competition, and played clubs while keeping her day job at Xerox, becoming a regular at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. After eight years at Xerox, Love resigned during a layoff to prevent someone else from losing their job, and pursued comedy full-time

1972 – Shirley Chisholm receives 152 votes in the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention, becoming the first black candidate for President of the United States from a major political party and first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination

1975 – Dr. Manuel Pinto da Costa, leader of the Committee for the Liberation of São Tomé and Principe, becomes the first president (1975-1991 and 2011-2016) of the newly independent Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Principe

1979 – The Pacific island nation of Kiribati becomes independent from the UK

1979 – Brooke Baldwin born American television journalist and news anchor; joined CNN in 2008 to anchor CNN Newsroom with Brook Baldwin

1984 – Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale names New York Congresswoman Geraldine A. Ferraro his running mate, making her the first woman to run on a major party ticket

1990 – Dobsonville shanty town women in Soweto, South Africa, strip to the waist and confront bulldozers in a vain attempt to stop the demolition of their homes ordered by government authorities. Dobsonville echoes the destruction of Sophiatown in Soweto between 1955 and 1960, (after passage of the Native Resettlement Act No. 19 of 1954) the forcible removal by police of over 60,000 residents, in spite of protests and violent confrontations which the government blames on agitation by the ANC, specifically naming Nelson Mandela

1990 – Just two days after Mikhail Gorbachev is re-elected head of the Soviet Communist Party, Boris Yeltsin, president of the Republic of Russia, announces his resignation from the party, a serious blow to Gorbachev’s efforts to keep the struggling Soviet Union together. By December 1991, Gorbachev has resigned and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved, but Yeltsin retains power, as president of Russia

1997 – Malala Yousafzai born, Pakistani universal education and human rights advocate; youngest person to win a Nobel Prize, as co-recipient of the 2014 Peace prize at age 17; she survived a Taliban assassination attempt in 2012, targeted because of her blog, written as ‘BBC Urdu’  and detailing the Taliban occupation of the Swat district of Pakistan, which received much attention after the NY Times made a documentary in 2010 about her

1999 – Night of Nights * – the last commercial Morse Code transmission in the U.S. is thought to have been broadcast; each year on the anniversary, historic former Morse code radio stations KPH, KSM, and KFS are returned to the air by radiotelegraphers of the Maritime Radio Historical Society

1999 – The 52-member Organisation of African Unity (OAU) begins a conference in Algeria to address African problems ranging from a $220 billion debt to civil conflicts

2000 – The first X-Men movie premieres in NYC

2010 – Roman Polanski is declared a free man, no longer confined to house arrest in his Alpine villa, after Swiss authorities reject a U.S. request for the Oscar-winning director’s extradition because of a 32-year-old conviction for sex with a minor, a 13-year-old girl. The five original charges against him were for rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, a lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance to a minor, but he accepted a plea bargain and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Polanski fled from the U.S. in February, 1978, to avoid imprisonment and deportation. In 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences belatedly voted to expel Polanski from its membership because of his conviction and flight from punishment, after awarding him a Best Director Oscar in 2002 for The Pianist

2013 – On her 16^th birthday, Malala Yousafzai addresses the United Nations, calling for universal access to education

2017 – The FBI announced it is ending the search for the notorious skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper, who parachuted from a Seattle-bound Northwest Orient Airlines flight with $200,000 in cash on November 24, 1971, and vanished. After a 45-year investigation, the crime remains the only unsolved U.S. skyjacking

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