September 19th is

Butterscotch Pudding Day

National Gymnastics Day

International Talk Like a Pirate Day *

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MORE! Mabel Vernon, William Golding and Pablita Velarde, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – Sydney: Kinetic
Connections Sacred Music Festival

Chile – Glories of the Army Day
(2^nd Day of Fiestas Patrias)

China – Jizhong: Pingyao
International Photography Festival

Ireland – Dublin:
Arts and Human Rights Festival

Italy – Naples: St. Januarius Feast Day

Mexico – Saltillo: Festival La Maroma
(Acrobatic Festival)

New Zealand – Tauranga:Festival of Architecture

Philippines – Quezon City:
Kopong-Kopong Not a Silent Film Festival

Saint Kitts and Nevis – Independence Day

Slovakia – First Public Appearance of
the Slovak National Council

Tonga – National Day of Mourning

United Kingdom –Northumberland:
Hexham Abbey Festival (ends Sept-23-2019) 

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On This Day in HISTORY

634 – The Siege of Damascus ends with the Rashidun Arabs under Khalid ibn al-Walid capturing Damascus from the Byzantine Empire

931 – Muzong born, Emperor of the Liao dynasty, who reigns from 951 to 969, plagued by plots and rebellions, which he brutally and successfully puts down

1356 –The English army of Edward, the Black Prince, wins the Battle of Poitiers against the French, and captures French King John II

Edward, Prince of Wales as Knight of the Order of the Garter, 1453,
illustration from the Bruges Garter Book

1426 – Marie of Cleves born, German princess, poet, songwriter and patron of letters. In 1440, she became Duchess of Orléans by marriage at age 14 to Charles, grandson of the French King Charles V. Marie’s son became King Louis XII of France. Her husband, who was 32 years her senior, died in 1465. In 1480, she secretly married the Artesian “Sieur de Rabodanges” who was one of her gentlemen of the chamber, and several years her junior.  She died at age 60 in 1487

1676 – 500 Virginia settlers, led by Nathaniel Bacon, rebel against Colonial governor William Berkeley in Jamestown, angry about Berkeley’s slow response to attacks upon them by local Indian tribes; most of Jamestown burns, but the rebellion is quickly crushed. The Virginia legislature has to move its meetings to Governor Berkeley’s plantation

1692 – Giles Corey, aged 81, is pressed to death, continuing to refuse to enter a guilty or not guilty plea to charges of witchcraft, during the Salem witch trials

1749 – Jean Baptiste Delambre born, French mathematician, astronomer and author of books on the history of astronomy; Director of the Paris Observatory (1804-1822)

1783 – The Montgolfier brothers send live animals up in a hot air balloon, including a sheep and a rooster

1819 –   John Keats writes “Ode to Autumn”

1839 – George Cadbury born – English chocolatier who, with his brother Richard, built their father’s small chocolate business into a major chocolate manufacturer; as Quakers, they were concerned with the quality of life of their employees and provided an alternative to grimy city life. They acquired several acres of land, and moved the factory to a new country location, where they built a factory town, which was not exclusive to the employees of the factory. This village became known as Bournville after the nearby river and French word for “town.” The houses were never privately owned, but the costs stayed low and affordable. Bournville was a marked change from the poor living conditions of the urban environment. Here, families had houses with yards, gardens, and fresh air. 

1862 – At the Battle of Iuka in Mississippi, Union troops defeat Confederate forces under General Sterling Price, while he and his second-in-command pass messages back and forth to each other through an aide since they are not on speaking terms. (A member of my family of whom I am not proud, except that his bullheadedness did help the Union cause)

1867 – Arthur Rackham born, English book illustrator, one of most admired artists of the Golden Age of British book illustration. Rackham’s illustrations for the Early American were a turning point in book production, as the process of color-separated printing made the accurate reproduction of color artwork possible. Among his many works, his illustrations for Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Rip Van Winkle, The Wind in the Willows, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare are especially notable

Pan, from The Wind in the Willows, by Arthur Rackham

1868 – La Gloriosa, the Glorious Revolution, begins in Spain. Queen Isabella II will be deposed because her vacillation between the liberal and conservative sides, palace intrigues, and favoritism, united all the political factions – the liberals, the conservatives, the moderates, and the progressives – against her

1878 – Charles Mauguin born, French mineralogist and crystallographer; pioneer in the study of silicate minerals

1879 – In the UK, the Blackpool Illuminations are switched on for the first time

1881 – President James A. Garfield dies, after two months of suffering from gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin

1883 – Mabel Vernon born, American Quaker pacifist and national leader in the U.S. suffragist movement; a principal member of the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage, with major figures like Inez Milholland and Alice Paul, she helped organize the 1913 Woman Suffrage Parade and the Silent Sentinels, a daily picket of Woodrow Wilson in front of the White House, the six-day-week picket of Woodrow Wilson by Suffragists in front of the White House, later moved to Lafayette Square, from January 1917 to June 1919

1887 – Lovie Austin born, American bandleader, composer-arranger and pianist; considered one of the best women jazz blues piano players of the 1920s 

1889 – Sarah Louise Delany born, African American civil rights pioneer and educator; the first black NY public schools teacher of high-school-level domestic science; she and her sister are the subjects of the oral history, Having Our Say, by journalist Amy Hill Hearth. Delany died at age 109

1893 – All New Zealand women over age 21, including the Māori, are granted the right to vote by Royal Assent of the governor to the Electoral Act of 1893, the first independent country in modern times to enfranchise women. However, women were not allowed to run for office until 1920. 

1894 – Rachel Field born, American novelist, poet and children’s author; best known for Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, winner of the 1930 Newbery Award, and also named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, for books considered worthy of placement “on the same shelf” as Carroll’s Alice; Time Out of Mind won an inaugural National Book Award in 1935, for Most Distinguished Novel

1903 – King Leopold II of Belgium denies accusations of brutality in the Congo Free State, and warns foreign powers not to interfere in the running of his private country, which he controlled and exploited from 1865 to 1909. The Congo was Leopold’s “private project” to strip all the area’s rubber and ivory for the sole benefit of himself, while pretending to be a benevolent philanthropist bringing Christianity and ‘civilization’ to the heathens. In truth he was using his merciless personal army to enslave, starve, maim and kill millions of Africans

1905 – Judith Vallentin Auer born, German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. As a student, she joined the Young Communist League of Germany in 1924, and married Erich Auer, a worker in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1926, and became a member of the KPD. When Hitler seized power in 1933, the KPD was banned.  After her daughter Ruth was born in 1929, she learned typing and shorthand. She found work at Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG, producer of electrical equipment) in the cable works division, first as a short-hand typist, and later as a buying agent. At AEG, she came in contact with the resistance group led by Fritzs Plön, who was a welder.  Auer managed the finances of the resistance group, and used her buying trips for AEG to do courier work, establishing links with other resistance groups, especially Theodor Neubauer in Thuringia, one of the states which became a Nazi stronghold early in the 1930s. She hid the Communist politician and resistance fighter Franz Jacob in her flat for several months after he fled from Hamburg. Auer was arrested at her workplace in July 1944, and later tortured. She was sentenced to death along with others who had been arrested, and hanged in October 1944.

1909 – Ferdinand Porsche, Austrian engineer, automotive designer, and automaker

1911 – William Golding born, author; notable for his classic novel Lord of the Flies; winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature

1915 – Elizabeth Stern born in Canada, American pathologist; a pioneer in work on cell progression from normal to cancerous. Her breakthrough studies of cervical cancers have changed the disease from fatal to one of the most easily diagnosed and treatable. Her studies showed that a normal cell advanced through 250 distinct stages before becoming cancerous and thus is the most easily diagnosed of all cancers. Stern was the first to linking a virus in herpes simplex to cervical cancer. She was also the first to report the linkage between oral contraceptives and cervical cancer

1917 – Amalia Hernández Navarro born, Mexican ballet choreographer; pioneer in developing baile folklorico, and a Mexican cultural icon. In 1952, she founded the world-renowned Ballet Folklórico de México. Originally there were only eight dancers, but the company grew to 60 performers by 1959, and was commissioned to represent Mexico at the Pan American Games in Chicago, Illinois. She created over sixty baile folklorico works. Hernández also founded the Folkloric Ballet School in Mexico City. She was knowledgeable about pre-Columbian culture, and used elements from Mexico’s diverse cultural heritage, including specific regional folklorico traditions, in her choreography

1918 – Pablita Velarde born Tse Tsan (Tewa for ‘Golden Dawn’), American Santa Clara Pueblo ‘flat style’ painter; at age fourteen, she was one of the first female artists accepted to Dorothy Dunn’s Santa Fe Studio Art School. Velarde learned to prepare paints from natural pigments for her later work, which she called ‘earth paintings.’ She was commissioned in 1939 by the U.S. National Park Service, under a grant from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), to depict scenes from Pueblo life for the Bandalier National Monument. In 1953, she was the first woman recipient of the Grand Purchase Award at the Philbrook Museum’s annual Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Painting, and in 1954, Velarde was among the twelve Native American artists and craftsmen honored by the government of France with the Palmes Académiques, the first foreign honors ever paid to Native American artists. She published Old Father the Story Teller, featuring six Tewa tribal stories, in 1960. Honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure in 1988, and by the National Women’s Caucus for Art with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990

Deer Dancer – Pablita Velarde

1922 – Damon Knight born, American science fiction writer and editor; his short story “To Serve Man” was adapted as a classic episode of television’s The Twilight Zone

1929 – Marge Roukema born, American moderate Republican politician, Member of the U.S, House of Representatives for New Jersey’s 5^th District (1983-2003), and 7^th District (1981-1983). She was frequently challenged by more conservative male Republicans in the primaries, but continued to be reelected, until she decided not to run for a 12^th term in 2002 after her district had been gerrymandered in favor of conservative voters. She refused to endorse Scott Garrett, the conservative Republican who won the primary to succeed her. He held the seat from 2003 to 2017 (in the 2016 election, he was the only incumbent Congressman in New Jersey not to be reelected).  Marge Roukema died of complications related to Alzheimer’s disease in 2014, at the age of 85

1930 – Bettye Lane born, American photojournalist who covered the American feminist movement, donating over 1700 images and her collection of ephemera, all documenting the women’s movement from the 196os to the 1980s, to the Schlesinger Library; some of her work is also preserved at the Library of Congress and the NY Public Library

Top: Left – Women electricians, 1981 — Right – Bella Abzug’s 1977 NY mayoral campaign
Bottom: 1970 Women’s Equality demonstration — photographs by Bettye Lane

1932 – Stefanie Zweig born, German Jewish writer and journalist; best known for her novel Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa), a bestseller in Germany, based on her early life in Kenya, where her family had fled to escape persecution by the Nazis

1934 – Over two years after the kidnapping and murder of Charles and Anne Lindburgh’s 20-month-old son, Bruno Hauptmann is arrested in New York

1936 – Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald record “Indian Love Call”

1939 – Louise Botting born, British radio presenter and journalist, and she became one of the first women directors on the board of an FTSE-100 (Financial Times Stock Exchange Index) company, when she was appointed to the board of AVIVA, a multinational insurance company

1940 – Zandra Rhodes born, English fashion designer, noted for her 1977 collection, a take on punk which she called Conceptual Chic, featuring beaded safety pins and dresses with holes; founded the Fashion and Textile Museum, which opened in London in 2003

1942 – The first advertisement announcing the ‘Little Golden Books’ appears in Publishers Weekly

1945 – Kate Adie born, English BBC television and radio journalist; as chief news correspondent for BBC News (1980-2003), she frequently covered war zones and terrorist attacks; since 2003, presents From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio

Kate Adie at Tiananmen Square

1946 – Winston Churchill, speaking at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, calls for a Council of Europe, which is founded in 1949 by the Treaty of London

1947 – Torunn ‘Teri’ Garin born, Norwegian chemical engineer, one of the developers of aspartame sweetener as a sugar substitute while working for General Foods (1971-1985), where she became a senior laboratory manager. Earlier in her career, she researched ways to minimize water pollution caused by food production.

1947 – Tanith Lee born, prolific British scifi, horror and fantasy author of over 90 novels and 300 short stories; first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Death’s Master in 1979, which is part of her Flat-Earth Cycle, won several World Fantasy Awards for Best Short Story, and 2009 World Horror Grand Master Award

1950 – Joan Lunden born, American television news correspondent and co-host of ABC’s Good Morning America (1980-1997)

1952 – The U.S. bans Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country

1957 – The U.S. conducts its first underground nuclear test in Nevada

1959 – Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev is told ‘nyet’ – Disneyland, ‘the happiest place on Earth’, will not allow him to visit

1960 – “The Twist” by Chubby Checker hits #1 on the charts

1965 – Sunita Williams born, U.S. astronaut and Naval officer; assigned to the International Space Station as a member of Expeditions 14 and 15, flight engineer on Expedition 32, and commander of  Expedition 33

1966 – Soledad O’Brien born, American broadcast journalist and executive producer; anchor for the syndicated weekly program Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien; founder and chair of Starfish Media Group since 2013

1968 – Steppenwolf is awarded its first gold record for “Born to be Wild”

1970 – The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuts on CBS

1975 – Eric Clapton receives a gold record for “I Shot the Sheriff”

1980 – The South African government hands over Mafeking to the Republic of Bophuthatswana, three years after it gained independence. The spelling of the town’s name was changed from the British ‘Mafeking’ to the Tswana ‘Mafikeng’ (‘place of stones’). Mafikeng becomes the seat of the Bophuthatswana government until the new capital in Mmabatho is ready. The republic lasts until 1994, when it is reintegrated into South Africa, as the new constitution takes effect, and South Africa’s first non-racial democratic elections are held

1984 – China and Britain complete a draft agreement to transfers Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule by 1997

1985 – Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testify at U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music

1985 – In the early morning hours, a violent earthquake, 8.0 on the Richter Scale,  collapses buildings and kills at least 5,000 people in the Greater Mexico City area. The epicenter is 220 miles (350 kilometres) away, off the western coast of Mexico. However, the capital was built on an ancient lake bed, which becomes the consistency of pudding during the impact of the shaking. Rescue efforts are complicated by the collapse of the building of the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (Ministry of Communication and Transportation), severely hampering communication with the rest of the country and the world. Much of the downtown area is destroyed, a major television station is hit by its own ten-ton antenna, and the tower of the Hospital Juárez collapses unto lower sections of the complex. Heavy machinery cannot get through to the hospital for five days, but most of the newborn babies in the hospital’s nursery are saved, even though they aren’t reached by rescuers until seven days later. The “Miracle Babies” become a rare positive story to come out of the disaster. Almost six million people are suddenly without potable water, 70% of the population is without telephone service, and 40% without electricity. 1,687 schools are damaged, and almost a third of the Metro stations remain closed for weeks afterwards because of surface debris and ongoing search-and-rescue efforts

1986 – The FDA accelerates approval of AZT for use against HIV and AIDS

1995 – John Bauer and Mark Summers decide on June 6 that what the world needs is Talk Like a Pirate Day * – but June 6 is D-Day, so they choose Mark’s ex-wife’s birthday, September 19, instead, but their friend Brian Rhodes has to keep reminding them about it until 2002 when John chances upon Dave Barry’s email, and they send him their great idea, asking him to be the spokesperson for TLAP day. Dave Barry writes a really funny column (of course) about the idea, and it’s now an international holiday

1998 – National Gymnastics Day is created

2001 – U.S. combat aircraft are sent to the Persian Gulf in response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the NY’s World Trade Center

2002 – George W. Bush asks Congress for authority to use military force if necessary to disarm and overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein if he doesn’t abandon weapons of mass destruction

2004 – Hu Jintao becomes the undisputed leader of China

2008 – The Bush administration asks Congress for $700 billion to buy mortgage-related assets from U.S. financial institutions to stave off financial catastrophe

2010 – A bronze bust of Frank Zappa is dedicated outside an east Baltimore MD library

2014 –Pakistani protesters clash with police in Islamabad, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. All schools in the capital are closed because of the unrest and outbreaks of violence. Sharif, a wealthy businessman, Leader of the Opposition to the government of Benazir Bhutto from 1993 to 1996, has been Prime Minister of Pakistan three times, 1990 to 1993, 1997 to 1999, and 2013 until 2017, when he will be removed from office, and disqualified from holding any public office, by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Links between his family’s businesses and eight offshore oil companies involving money laundering and corruption are revealed among the ‘Panama Papers’ –millions of secret documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists will make public in 2016

2016 – Hurricane Maria, the most powerful storm to hit the Puerto Rico since 1932, cuts power to all of the island, leaving over 3 million people without electrical power. By September, 2019, there were still reports of places on the island where power has not been restored, the longest blackout in U.S. history

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