October 14^th is

Peace Corps Speech Day *

Indigenous Peoples Day

Columbus Day (U.S.)

Be Bald and Free Day

National Dessert Day

World Standards Day *

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MORE! Lillian Gish, Spencer Williams and Shula Marks, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Belarus – Mothers Day

Bhutan – Thimpu:
Jumolhari Mountain Festival

Georgia – Mtskheta:
Svetitskhoveli Cathedral Day

Germany – Weimar: Onion Market

Italy – Ispra: Datami Resonances
Festival (science and arts festival)

Japan – Kobe: Nada No Kenka Matsuri
(shrine festival – floats, wrestling matches)

Mexico – Guanajuato: Cervantino Festival
(music, dance and theatre festival)

Moldova – Chişinău: Hramul Chişinăulul
(capital of Moldova – patron saint day)

Norfolk Island – Agricultural Show Day

Poland – National Education Day

Slovenia – Maribor: Maribor Theatre Festival

Tanzania – Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Day
(Uhuru Torch Race)

Ukraine – Day of the Ukraine Defenders

Uruguay – Salto:
Salto Independent Film Festival

Yemen – October Revolution/Liberation Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1066 – William the Conqueror’s Norman forces defeat Harold II’s English army at the Battle of Hastings

1563 – Jodocus Hondius the Elder born, Flemish engraver and cartographer; early maps of the ‘New World’ and Europe

1606 map of the Americas by Jodocus Hondius

1586 – Trial begins of Mary, Queen of Scots, accused of conspiracy to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I under the English Act for the Queen’s Safety

1618 – Sir Peter Lely born, English painter of Dutch origin, notable fashionable portrait painter, later portrait artist to King Charles I, then Oliver Cromwell, and then King Charles II

Self Portrait, by Sir Peter Lely

1641 – Joachim Tielke born, German musical stringed instrument maker; lutes, angelicas, guitars, violins, and viol da gambas

1644 – William Penn born, Quaker, founder of Pennsylvania

1656 – The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony enact the first legislation against the Quakers, levying a heavy fine on any ship bringing Quakers to the colony from England, and making Quakers subject to imprisonment or exile

1773 – The first recorded Ministry of Education is formed in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Commission of National Education

1801 – Joseph Plateau born, Belgian physicist, pioneer in illusion of moving image with his invention, the phenakistiscope

1861 – Julia A. Ames born, American journalist, editor and temperance reformer; associate editor of the Women’s Temperance Publishing Association’s Union Signal and a volunteer at “The Anchorage,” a mission in Chicago for outcast women run by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She died at age 30 of typhoid pneumonia in 1891

1867 – Masaoka Shiki born, also known as Masaoka Noboru, Japanese poet and author of the Meiji period in Japan

1880 – Chief ‘Victorio’ Bidu-ya, and his Warm Springs band of Mimbreño Apaches, are killed by Mexican soldiers at Cero Tres Castillos in Chihuahua, Mexico

1882 – University of the Punjab is founded in Lahore, in what is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

1884 – George Eastman, patents paper-strip photographic film

1888 – French inventor Louis Le Prince films Roundhay Garden Scene, the oldest surviving motion picture film in existence

1888 – Katherine Mansfield born as Kathleen Mansfield in New Zealand, noted primarily for short stories and essays; Bliss and Other Stories and The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield   

1889 – Spencer Williams born, American Jazz and blues composer, pianist and singer; “Basin Street Blues” and “Everybody Loves My Baby”

1893 – Lillian Gish born, American screen and stage actress, director and writer; pioneer in film whose career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987; The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me (autobiography with Ann Pinchot)

1894 – e.e. cummings born, American poet, author and playwright

1894 – Victoria Drummond born, first British woman marine engineer and first woman member of the Institute of Marine Engineers, served at sea during WWII as an engineering officer in the British Merchant Navy, frequently cited for bravery under fire; retired after making 49 voyages in her 40-year career

1897 – Alicja Dorabialska born, Polish chemist; her family moved to Moscow during WWI, from 1915 to May, 1918, then returned to Warsaw. She became an assistant in the Institute of Physical Chemistry at Warsaw University of Technology in 1918. In 1925, Maria Skłodowska-Curie came to Warsaw for the foundation stone ceremony for the Radium Institute. They met at a Polish Chemical Society banquet honoring the Nobel laureate. Madame Curie invited Dorabialska to Paris, where she studied under Curie. Dorabialska was the first woman appointed as an assistant professor in the department of physical and inorganic chemistry of Lviv Polytechnic in 1934. She spent most of WWII with her mother and sister in Warsaw, which saved her from being shot, as many of her colleagues were. She secretly hid a Jewish woman in her apartment, and also continued teaching in secret. In 1945, Dorabialska was promoted to full professor at Lviv Polytechnic, and served as dean of the chemistry department (1945-1951)

1906 – Hannah Arendt born in Germany, notable American political theorist who escaped from Germany after being arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo for being Jewish in 1933, went to Switzerland, then France, and came to America in 1941 on a visa illegally issued by Hiram Bingham, who gave about 2,500 Jewish refugees unauthorized visas

1908 – Ruth Hale born, American playwright, director, producer and actress; moved from Utah to California, and co-founded the Glendale Centre Theatre with her husband James. She wrote plays for the venue, including Handcart Trails, How Near the Angels, and A Choice Land, which she also produced and directed. The Hales opened arena-style theatres in Utah and Arizona

1909 –Dorothy Kingsley born, American screenwriter for film, radio and television; was a “script doctor” at MGM, sometimes uncredited, she often re-wrote the ‘books’ (plots and dialogue) for MGM musicals, including Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Pal Joey

1910 – English aviator Claude Grahame-White flies his Farman biplane over Washington DC, then lands on Executive Avenue near the White House

1912 – Campaigning in Milwaukee, former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is shot and mildly wounded by a mentally-disturbed saloon keeper. With the bullet still in the wound in his chest, Roosevelt delivers his speech as scheduled

1913 – The Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, U.K.’s worst coal mining catastrophe, is caused by high levels of airborne coal dust combined with methane-hydrogen gas, then the resulting fire and afterdamp  (carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen). 439 miners and one would-be rescuer are killed

1916 – C. Everett Koop born, American admiral and surgeon, U.S. Surgeon General (1983-1989), noted for his campaign against tobacco use; frustrated by Reagan Administration block on addressing the AIDS crisis; personally opposed to abortion, but in spite of political pressure refused to say that abortions performed by medical professionals posed a health risk to women

1926 – Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne, is published

1933 – Nazi Germany withdraws from the League of Nations World Disarmament Conference, to begin secret rearmament, in violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles

1938 – Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Coll born, British librarian and museum director; first woman appointed as a director of a national arts collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum (1987-1994); Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia (1995-1997), resigned because of multiple sclerosis

1938 – Shula Marks born, South African history professor and author; School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London; a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO, 1977-1980), and co-author of a monograph for WHO on Health and Apartheid. Marks is currently working on the public health campaign against the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Honored in 2002 with the Distinguished Africanist Award by the African Studies Association of the UK. Noted for her books on South Africa, including Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women

1944 – German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide rather than face execution for conspiring against Adolf Hitler

1946 – World Standards Day * – The International Organization for Standardization (IOS)  is founded at a meeting of delegates from 25 countries at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London, to coordinate and unify industrial standards, and begins operations on February 23, 1947. The ISO now has members from 162 countries, and its Central Secretariat is in Geneva Switzerland

1947 – USAF Captain Chuck Yeager breaks sound barrier when the Bell X-1, a rocket-powered aircraft named Glamorous Glennis for his wife, reaches Mach 1

1949 – Katha Pollitt born, American feminist poet and essayist; writing frequently on abortion rights, racism, welfare reform, feminism and poverty

1949 – Under the Smith Act of 1940, which bans advocating or belonging to a group that advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, the FBI prosecutes eleven Communist Party USA (CPUSA) leaders in one of the lengthiest trial in U.S history, lasting 10 months. Case is based on undercover informant testimony interpreting communist texts and organization meetings as violating the Smith Act. All 11 defendants are found guilty and sentenced to up to 5 years in federal prison, while all 5 defense attorneys receive jail sentences for contempt of court – two of them are disbarred

1955 – Iwona M. Blazwick born, British art critic and lecturer; Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery since 2001; supporter of young artists’ work; author of numerous monographs and articles on contemporary artists, art movements, and art history

1956 – ‘Babassaheb’ (Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar), Indian jurist and social reformer who campaigns for ending discrimination against Dalits (‘Untouchables’); leads 385,000 followers in converting to Buddhism, launching the Dalit Buddhist Movement

1956 – Jennell Jaquays born as Paul Jaquays, American game designer; noted for work on The Dark Tower module for Dungeons & Dragons, and on conversions of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong to video game system versions. More recently, worked on the Age of Empires series and Quake III Arena. She is the creative director for The Transgender Human Rights Institute in Seattle, and campaigned for passage of “Leelah’s Law” to outlaw “conversion therapy” of LGBTQ youth

1957 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first Commonwealth monarch to open an annual session of the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa

1958 – The U.S Atomic Energy Commission carries out an underground nuclear weapon test at the Nevada Test Site

1960 – Peace Corps Day *– On the presidential campaign trail, Senator John F.  Kennedy asks students at University of Michigan how many would volunteer to serve their country and the cause of peace by living and working in the developing world

1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis begins when a USAF U-2 pilot flies over the island and takes pictures of Soviet missiles being installed which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads

1964 – Martin Luther King is announced as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

1966 – The Montreal Metro repaid-transit system begins operations in Canada

1968 – NASA’s Apollo 7 astronauts make the first live U.S. television broadcast from orbit

1969 – The British fifty-pence coin is introduced, beginning the phase-out of the shilling

1979 – 200,000 people join the first Washington DC march for Lesbian and Gay Rights

1982 – Ronald Reagan proclaims the ‘War on Drugs’

1986 – Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel is named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

1991 – Burmese (Myanmar) opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

1994 – Yasser Arafat and Yitzak Rabin receive Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo Accords

1997 – Paul McCartney’s Standing Stone debuts

2006 – The U.N. Security Council votes unanimously to impose punishing sanctions on North Korea for carrying out a nuclear test

2014 – The World Health Organization (WHO) announce Ebola virus death toll at 4,447, and the fatality rate has reached 70%

2017 – Producer Harvey Weinstein is expelled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after multiple news sources publish dozens of accusations of sexual harassment and rape

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