July 30 is

Cheesecake Day

Chicken and Waffles Day

Medicare’s Birthday *

International Paperback Book Day *

National Support Public Education Day *

UN International Day of Friendship *

UN World Day Against Trafficking Persons *

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MORE! Emily Brontë, L’udovit Rajter and Anita Hill, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Brazil – Rio de Janeiro:
Rock in Rio Festival (through Aug-1-2019)

China – Quingdao:
Quingdao Beer Festival

France – Mur-de-Sologne:
European Yoga Festival

Ghana –Accra:
Panafest Year of Return Celebration

India – Kolkata, West Bengal:
Mazi Mejwani Festival (through Aug-4-2019)

Morocco –
Feast of the Throne Day

Norway – Trondheim: St. Olav Festival (though Aug-3-2019)

Paraguay – Día del Amigo

Poland – Gdańsk: Gdańsk Shakespeare Festival

South Sudan – Martyrs’ Day

Vanuatu – Independence Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

762 – City of Baghdad founded by Caliph Al-Mansur

Baghdad, from a 14th century Medieval illuminated manuscript

1470 – Honghzi Emperor of the Ming dynasty born, who reigned from 1487 to 1505; known for being a peace-lover, and since he had only one empress and no concubines, he is notable as one of only two monogamous emperors in Chinese history. The other was Emperor Fei of Western Wei

1511 – Giorgio Vasari born, Italian painter, architect, historian and writer

Allegory of Patience, part of a series, by Giorgio Vasari

1619 – The Virginia House of Burgesses, first representative assembly in America, convenes in Jamestown

1676 – Nathaniel Bacon instigates Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Virginia Colony Governor William Berkeley, who refused him a military commission to drive out all Indians from the colony, by forming his own militia and attacking peaceful Indians after his overseer is killed in a raid by different Indians

1715 – Spanish ‘gold and silver fleet’ lost off the coast of Florida

1729 – The town of Baltimore MD is founded

1733 – First American colonial Masonic lodge founded in Massachusetts

1751 – Maria Anna Mozart born, nicknamed “Nanneri,” older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, she was trained from the age of seven by their father Leopold to play the harpsichord and the fortepiano. She and her brother were taken on tour. She was a talented player, and sometimes received top billing in the early days, but her career was cut short when she reached the age of 18, the age her parents considered her marriageable. She was no longer permitted to perform in public. Dominated by her father, she was forced to turn down a marriage proposal from the man she loved, and was married instead to a magistrate, already twice a widower, with five children from his previous marriages. When she gave birth to her first child in 1785, she had returned to the Mozart home. Her father Leopold, for whom the boy had been named, took over the infant, raising him in the Mozart household until Leopold the elder died in 1787, and her son was finally returned to his mother. After her husband died in 1821, she returned to Salzburg, with her two children and four of her stepchildren, to work as a music teacher. In 1825, she became blind, and died in 1829 at the age of 78. Though she and her brother had been very close in childhood, their last visit was in 1783, and she received the last letter from him in 1788, three years before he died

1756 – Newly built Catherine Palace presented to Russian Empress Elizabeth

1792 – Claude Rouget de Lisle’s  “La Marseillaise” is first sung in Paris

1818 – Emily Brontë born In Yorkshire, English poet and author of Wuthering Heights

1852 – Emma Gillett born, American lawyer and women’s rights activist, co-founder of the Washington College of Law, the first law school founded by women

1856 – Richard Burdon Haldane born, Scottish lawyer, liberal politician, philosopher, and statesman; British Lord Chancellor (1912-1915); Secretary of State for War (1905-1912) who implemented reforms to the army

1863 – Henry Ford born, founder of Ford Motor Company

1880 – Robert McCormick born, American newspaper editor-publisher of the Chicago Tribune; a leading opponent of FDR’s New Deal

1889 – Vladimir Zworykin born in Russia, American inventor; dubbed “the father of television”

1893 – Fatima Jinnah born in British India, dental surgeon, biographer, stateswoman and one of the founders of Pakistan; she was a close advisor of her older brother Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who would become the first Governor General (1947-1948) of the new nation, and a leading member of the All-India Muslim League; after independence in 1947, she co-founded the Pakistan Women’s Association which did much to help the resettlement of women migrants. But after her brother’s death in 1948, she was banned from speaking on the radio until 1951, and her radio address to the nation then was heavily censored by Liaquat Ali Khan’s administration. She wrote a biography of her brother in 1956, but it wasn’t published until 1987 because of censorship, and accusations that she had written ‘anti-nationalist material.’  Even when it was finally published, several pages were left out. She came out of political retirement in 1965, to run for president against the military dictator Ayub Khan, but the military rigged the election. When she died in 1967, rumors spread that it was not a natural death, and her family demanded an inquiry, but the government quashed any inquiry. Honored by the people for her support of civil rights, her funeral was attended by almost half a million people. She is often referred to as Māder-e Millat (Mother of the Nation)

1898 – Scientific American magazine carries the first magazine automobile ad, for the Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH

1898 – Henry Moore born, highly regarded English sculptor

Reclining Figure, by Henry Moore, 1929

1906 – The Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen (NVV), the Netherlands Association of Trade Unions, is formed

1906 – L’udovit Rajter born, Slovakian composer and conductor

1909 – C. Northcote Parkinson born, English historian, author; “Parkinson’s Law” declares that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

1912 – Japan’s Emperor Meiji dies and is succeeded by his son Yoshihito, who is now known as the Emperor Taishō

1914 – Michael Morris Killanin born, Irish author and journalist; International Olympic Committee’s sixth president

1916 – The Statue of Liberty is damaged by flying debris when German saboteurs blow up a munitions plant on nearby Black Tom Island in New York Harbor

1928 – George Eastman shows the first amateur color motion pictures to guests at his New York house including Thomas Edison

1930 – Host county Uruguay wins FIFA’s first World Cup, 4-2 over Argentina

1932 – Disney premieres Flowers and Trees, first cartoon short in Technicolor

1935 – International Paperback Book Day * celebrates Sir Allen Lane’s founding of  soon-to-be-named Penguin Books, to make quality writing available in easily portable paperback form, at prices almost everyone can afford – and a mass market is born. Simon & Schuster repeats his success in the U.S with pocket-sized paperbacks selling for 25¢ each in 1939

The first ten Penguin paperbacks

1939 – Eleanor Smeal born, American activist, political analyst, grassroots organizer; co-founder and president of the Feminist Majority Foundation; twice president of the National Organization for Women (1977-1982 and 1985-1987)

1940 – Patricia Schroeder born, American Democratic politician, U.S. Representative from Colorado (1973-1997), first woman to serve in U.S. Congress from Colorado; first woman on the House Armed Services Committee. She was a prime mover behind the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, and the 1985 Military Family Act. She briefly ran for U.S. President after Gary Hart dropped out of the 1987 race, but was derailed when she teared up during a speech, instantly branding her as “weak,” even though male candidates doing the same thing were praised for showing their feelings. She was an advocate of stronger copyright laws, and after leaving the House of Representatives, she became President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (1997-2008). Now retired in Florida, she is on the board of the League of Women Voters of Florida. Schroder was named to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995

1942 – FDR signs legislation creating the W.A.V.E.S., a women’s auxiliary agency of the U.S. Navy, for wartime service

1942 – Polly Pickering born, English wildlife artist and environmentalist; conservation partner to the government of Bhutan; founder of the Pollyanna Pickering Foundation, which fundraises and campaigns for animal welfare and conservation

1945 – The USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 316 out of 1,196 men survive the sinking and shark-infested waters

1947 – Françoise Barré-Sinoussi born, French virologist; Director of Unité de Régulation des Infections Rétrovirales (Regulation of Retroviral Infections Division), and professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Best known for her pioneering work identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS. She and Luc Montagnier jointly received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in the discovery of HIV. She has served a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN-AIDS, and initiated collaborations with developing countries and multidisciplinary networks to pool resources and share information. In 2012, she became president of the International AIDS Society

1948 – Julia Tsenova, Bulgarian pianist and composer; President of the Bulgarian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music

1949 – Dame Sonia Proudman born, British judge of the High Court of England and Wales in the Chancery Division (2008-2017); Deputy High Court Judge (2001-2008); became a Bencher in 1996, and was a Recorder in 2000. Proudman was called to the Bar in 1972, after being one of the first women to win an Eldon Law Scholarship to study for the English Bar, awarded to University of Oxford students who earned either a first class honours degree in the Final Honours School, or a distinction on the BCL or MJur (academic degrees in law)

1950 – Harriet Harman born, British solicitor and Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham since 1982; Harman holds the current record for the longest continuously-serving woman MP in the House of Commons. She was Deputy Leader and Chair of the Labour Party (2007-2015); Acting Leader of the Opposition in 2015

1955 – Johnny Cash records “Folsom Prison Blues”

1956 – Anita Hill born, lawyer and professor of law, social policy and women’s studies at Brandeis University. She became a national figure during the 1991 U.S. Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas when she testified that he had sexually harassed her as her supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The Senate voted 52-to-48 to confirm him anyway. The manner in which the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee challenged and dismissed Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment angered women politicians, lawyers and feminists. Congress passed a bill later in 1991 that gave harassment victims the right to seek federal damage awards, back pay, and reinstatement, signed into law by President George H. W. Bush. By 1992, harassment complaints to the EEOC were up by 50%, and private companies started training programs to deter sexual harassment

1956 – By Congressional resolution, In God we trust becomes U.S. motto

1956 – Soraida Martinez born, American abstract expressionist artist of Puerto Rican heritage; founder of the art movement Verdadism, which juxtaposes abstract art with written social commentary, using art to advocate for human and civil rights, feminism and social action

1956 – Brenda Lee records her first single, “Jambalaya”

1960 – Jennifer Chase Barnes born, musicologist, university administrator, opera singer and a leading authority on composers Gian Carlo Menotti, Thea Musgrave and Ethel Smyth.  As Project Director at the Royal College of Music (1996–1999), Barnes established a Leverhulme research partnership between Imperial College, Manchester University and the Royal College of Music to develop  using wireless EEG biofeedback in designing a program to analyze the role of alpha, beta and theta waves in musicians and dancers under performance stress. Her findings were integrated into the curricula of performing arts institutions worldwide

1962 – The Trans-Canada Highway opens

1964 – Laine Randjärv born, Estonian Reform Party politician; Vice President of the Riigikogu (parliament) since 2011; Minister of Culture (2007-2001); Mayor of Tartu (2004-2007)

1965 – LBJ signs Social Security Act into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid
(see also 2004 entry)

1971 – NASA’s Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin land on the moon

1973 – Clementa C. Pinckney born, American minister and Democratic politician; senior pastor at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston; South Carolina Senate member (2001-2015); South Carolina House of Representatives (1997-2001); one of nine African Americans killed in a mass shooting by a white supremacist Neo-Nazi at a prayer meeting in his church in 2015

1974 – Watergate: House Judiciary Committee, after eight months gathering evidence and pushing Nixon to comply with a subpoena for taped Oval Office conversations, votes to impeach President Richard Nixon – Nixon complies with Supreme Court order to release White House tapes

1975 – U.S. labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa disappears, still not found

1978 – In Japan, the Okinawa Prefecture changes its traffic from the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side

1980 – Israeli Knesset passes the Jerusalem Law: Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel

1981 – About 50,000 demonstrators, mostly women and children, take to the streets in Łódź to protest food ration shortages in Communist Poland

1991 – Metallica releases “Enter Sandman”

1999 – Enthronement of Moroccan King Mohamed VI

2003 – Last old-style VW Beetle rolls off an assembly line in Mexico

2004 – Medicare’s Birthday *- Marilyn Clement founds Healthcare Now!, a non-profit organization advocating for a single-payer healthcare system in the U.S., and launches an annual celebration of the anniversary of Medicare, America’s only publicly financed, universal health plan, which has kept healthcare affordable for seniors since 1965 (see also 1965 entry)

2006 – The world’s longest running music show, Top of the Pops, is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two, after 42 years on the air

2010 – National Support Public Education Day * is launched by the SOS Million Teacher March to raise awareness of the crisis in U.S Public Education, and give teachers a voice in the policy-making decisions that impact their classrooms

2011 – An International Day of Friendship * is declared by the UN General Assembly as part of its Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, “Recognizing the relevance and importance of friendship as a noble and valuable sentiment in the lives of human beings around the world”

2013 – World Day Against Trafficking Persons * is declared by the UN General Assembly as part of its Global Plan of Action to free an estimated 21 million victims of forced labour, 71% of them women and children, and put an end to human trafficking

2017 – Venezuela’s National Electoral Council said that 8,089,320 people, or 41.53 percent of registered voters, participated in the election for a new constitutional assembly with the power to rewrite the South American nation’s constitution. Embattled President Nicolas Maduro, who called the vote, declared victory, saying the balloting was “a vote for the revolution.” Opposition leader Henrique Capriles said the election was a sham, and participation was actually less than 15 percent. Violent protests on election day left at least 10 people dead. The opposition, which says the election pushed Venezuela closer to a dictatorship, called for more anti-Maduro protests

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