October 30^th is

Checklist Day *

Devil’s Night

Create a Great Funeral Day *

Haunted Refrigerator Night *

National Candy Corn Day

World Audio Drama Day *

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MORE! Zoë Akins, Orson Welles and Rosa Parks, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – Sydney: Q Station
Ghost Tours (thru Nov-2-2019)

Canada – Vancouver: Heart of the City Festival

Chile – Santiago: Festival Internacional
de Capoeira (martial arts-dance fusion)

India – Tamil Nadu: Thevar Jayanthi
(Ukkirapandi Thevae’s birthday)

Israel – Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Night Run

Italy – Lucca: Lucca Comics & Games

Japan – Nakano City: Gyoza Festival
(Stuffed wonton)

Mexico – Puerto Aventuras: Solfest Cancun

Netherlands – Amsterdam: Storytelling Festival

Northern Ireland – Derry: Banks of
the Foyle Halloween Carnival (thru 11-01)

Slovakia – Independence Centenary

South Africa – Johannesburg:
International Flower Show

South Korea – Seoul:
Seoul International Music Festival

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On This Day in HISTORY

637 – The Byzantine army in Roman Syria is defeated by the Muslim forces of the Rashdun Caliphate at the Battle of the Iron Bridge, a nine-arch stone bridge across the Orontes River which had gates trimmed in iron. The capital city of Antioch surrenders. Rashidun armies capture most of northern Syria. By the summer of 638, the Taurus Mountains in Turkey mark the frontier of the Rashidun Caliphate in Anatolia

758 – In China, Guangzhou (Canton) is sacked by Arab and Persian pirates

1501 – The Banquet of Chestnuts was a fête in Rome, but there is a disputed report that former Cardinal Cesare Borgia held the banquet in his chambers at the Papal Palace, where guests were supposedly entertained by 50 prostitutes who did a strip-tease dance after dinner, then groped around on the floor for chestnuts in between lighted candelabras before an orgy commenced, but many scholars believe the story was either entirely fabricated or greatly exaggerated by enemies of the Borgias

1657 – Anglo-Spanish War: Spain fails to retake Jamaica when forces under Cristóbal Arnaldo Isasi are defeated at the Battle of Ocho Rios by the English occupying army led by Governor Edward D’Oyley

1728 – Mary W. Hayley born, the curious and independent child of a prosperous distiller, who loved to read, and defied convention as she grew older by attending trials at the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, and traveled throughout Britain. She became an English businesswoman who parlayed the inheritance in 1753 from her much older first husband into a sizeable estate with her second husband, who had been the chief clerk of husband #1, by establishing trade relationships with the American colonies. Their firm shipped the tea which went overboard in the Boston Tea Party. When her second husband died, she ran the business on her own, and became one of the few British merchants who recouped her losses from America after the war. In 1784, she bought a frigate formerly used as a war ship, and refurbished it as a whaling and sealing vessel, which she rechristened the United States. She moved to Boston for the next eight years, running the whaling business and becoming known for her charitable donations. Returning from the venture’s inaugural voyage to the Falkland Islands with a cargo of whale oil, her ship was boarded by the British Navy in 1785, and the cargo was seized. But the British Crown was unable to prove that she owed duty because British merchants were exempt if a third of their crew were also British, so the Crown had to recompense her. In 1786, she married a Scottish merchant in Boston, but in 1792, she left him, returning to England with the stipulation that he never again appear in her presence. She retired to Bath, and died there in 1808

1735 – John Adams born, ‘founding father’ and 2nd U.S. President

1741 – Angelica Kauffman born, Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome; she and Mary Moser were the only two women among the founding members of the Royal Academy in London (1768); best remembered for historical scenes and portraits

Self-Portrait, by Angelika Kauffmann – 1784

1751 – Richard Brinsley Sheridan born, Irish playwright, satirist, poet and Whig politician; the long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; noted for his plays, including The Rivals, The Critic and his best play, A School for Scandal. He was a member of the British Parliament from 1780 to 1812, where he supported the American Colonies and opposed the British restrictions which led to the revolutionary war. After he was not reelected to Parliament in 1812, his creditors closed in on him, and he spent his last years harassed by debt and frequently bedridden as his health failed. The American Congress, upon hearing of his financial troubles, offered him ₤20,000 in recognition of his efforts to prevent the war, but their offer was refused (perhaps because of the War of 1812 between Britain and America)

1810 – Battle of Monte de las Cruces, a pivotal early battle in the Mexican War of Independence between Mexican insurgent troops led by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and Ignacio Allende and the New Spain royalist troops of General Torcuato Trujillo, in the Sierra de las Cruces mountains between Mexico City and Toluca. It was a victory for the insurgents, but Hidalgo still decided to retreat toward Guadalajara, possibly because of heavy casualties suffered by his army

1817 – The independent government of Venezuela is declared by Simón Bolívar, but it was becomes a department of the republic of Gran Colombia in 1821, and finally gains full independence in 1830

1831 – In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in U.S. history

1839 – Alfred Sisley born, British Impressionist painter who worked in France

Chemin de la Machine, Louveciennes – Alfred Sisley, 1873

1857 – Gertrude Horn Atherton born, author of over 60 stories and articles

1863 – Danish Prince Vilhelm arrives in Athens to assume his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes

1864 – Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge born, pianist, endowed first pension fund for Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1916); funded Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s Bureau of Educational Experiments; established a foundation at the Library of Congress (1925) that provided for the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium

1864 – Helena is founded in Montana after four prospectors discover  gold at “Last Chance Gulch”

1871 – Paul Valéry born, French poet, author, essayist and philosopher

1877 – Irma Rombauer born, author of The Joy of Cooking, which is still in print in revised editions, and over 18 million copies have been sold 

1881 – Elizabeth Madox Roberts born, American poet and author; The Time of Man

1885 – Ezra Pound born, expat American poet, notable modernist

1886 – Zoë Akins born, Pulitzer Prizing-winning playwright, author and poet; her comedy The Greeks Have a Word for It became the 1953 hit movie How to Marry a Millionaire

1888 – In the Rudd Concession, King Lobengula of Matabeleland grants exclusive mining rights to Cecil Rhodes’ agents, led by Charles Rudd

1894 – Daniel Cooper received first U.S. patent for a time clock

1894 – Philip Arnold Heseltine born, English music critic who wrote combative music criticism and papers on early music under his own name, while composing song cycles and choral works inspired by folk and Celtic music under his alter-ego, Peter Warlock. He died of coal gas poisoning in 1930, with doors and window bolted on his London flat, probably a suicide

1896 – Ruth Gordon born, actress, screenwriter; one of the Lost Boys in “Peter Pan,” with Garson Kanin wrote comedies for Hepburn and Tracy movies, starred as Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker (1954), and in Harold and Maude

1905 – Czar Nicholas II issues the October Manifesto, granting the Russian peoples basic civil liberties and the right to form a duma (legislative assembly)

1908 – Pedro de Alcântara, Prince of Grão-Pará, renounces his claim to the Brazilian throne, which had been abolished in 1889, in order to marry Bohemian Countess Elisabeth Dobržensky de Dobrženicz, who was not of royal birth

1915 – Fred Friendly born, pioneering American broadcast journalist

1917 – Minni Nurme born, Estonian author, poet and translator; during WWII, she was living behind Soviet lines; after the war, she moved to Tallinn, Estonia’s capital. She wrote two novels, several collections of short stories, and eleven collections of poetry, in spite of harassment by Stalinist authorities

1923 – Gloria Oden born, American poet and academic, her poetry collection Resurrections, a nominee for the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was a response to the unsolved murders of her mother and sister

1925 – John Logie Baird creates Britain’s first television transmitter

1928 – Daniel Nathans born, American microbiologist; joint winner of 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics

1932 – Louis Malle born, French director, producer and screenwriter

1934 – Frans Brüggen born, Dutch conductor, baroque flute and recorder virtuoso

1935 – Checklist Day * honors the safety innovation of a preflight checklist, which has saved countless lives and aircraft, introduced after a Model 299 prototype for the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress crashed during takeoff at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, because of a gust lock that was still engaged

1938 – Orson Welles radio play of the H.G.Welles classic, War of the Worlds, is broadcast – some people tuning in after the start are fooled into thinking that it’s a real newscast

1939 – Grace Slick born, American singer-songwriter (Jefferson Airplane)

1941 – Franklin D. Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid, including food, fuel, weapons, warships, and airplanes, to the Allied nations engaged in WWII, in return for leases on Allied army and navy bases

1944 – Martha Graham’s ballet Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copeland,  premieres at the Library of Congress

1944 – Anne Frank and her sister Margot are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

1945 – Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the professional baseball color line

1946 – Andrea Mitchell born, American television journalist , anchor and commentator

1947 – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which regulates international trade, is signed by 23 nations at Geneva during the U.N. Conference on Trade and Employment

1953 – George C. Marshall, who, as secretary of state following World War II, engineered a massive economic aid program for Europe, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace

1953 – U.S. President Eisenhower approves the top secret document National Security Council Paper No. 162/2, that the United States’ arsenal of nuclear weapons must be maintained and expanded to counter the communist threat, and General George Marshall is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1955 – Heidi Heitkamp born, American Democratic politician, U.S. Senator from North Dakota since 2013; first woman elected to the U.S. senate from North Dakota; North Dakota Attorney General (1992-2000)

1960 – Michael Woodruff performs the first successful kidney transplant in the United Kingdom at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary

1961 – The U.S.S.R. detonates hydrogen bomb ‘Tsar Bomba’ over Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean; at 50 megatons of yield, it is the largest explosive device ever detonated

1961 – The Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved an order to remove Joseph Stalin’s body from Lenin’s tomb

1963 – Rebecca Ann Heineman born as William S. Heineman, American video game programmer and trans woman; founding member of Interplay Productions and  Logicware, now CEO of Olde Skuul

1972 – U.S. President Nixon approves increasing Social Security spending by $5.3 billion

1972 – Jessica Hynes born, English scriptwriter and actress; co-creator, writer and star of the British sitcom Spaced, for which she won a BAFTA award; and creator and actor in Up the Women, a comedy about the British woman suffrage movement; supporter of the Women’s Equality Party

1973 – The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey is completed between the continents of Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus Strait

1975 – Prince Juan Carlos becomes Spain’s acting head of state, taking over for the country’s ailing dictator, General Francisco Franco

1975 – New York Daily News runs headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead” a day after President Gerald R. Ford says he’d veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City

1976 – Stephanie Izard born, considered one of America’s top chefs; co-owner and executive chef of three award-winning Chicago restaurants: Girl and the Goat, Little Goat, and Duck Duck Goat

1983 – The first democratic elections in Argentina after seven years of military rule

1985 – Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for its final successful mission before the Challenger disaster

1988 – Metallica releases their single, “Eye of the Beholder”

1992 – South Africa signs an air serves agreement with Zambia

1993 – Ulster Defence Association paramilitary mass shooting at a Greysteel, Northern Ireland Halloween party, killing 8 civilians and wounding 13

1995 – Quebec citizens narrowly vote (50.58% to 49.42%) in favour of remaining a Canadian provence in their 2nd national sovereignty referendum

1999 – Stephanie Allen West starts Create a Great Funeral Day. * When her significant other died suddenly in 1988, she faced the overwhelming responsibility of his funeral completely unprepared. Then ten years later, her husband went through a similar struggle with his mother’s funeral, who had left no directions or final wishes. So Allen West decided to encourage people to think about how they would like their life to be celebrated by friends and family, and then let their loved ones know their wishes.

2005 – Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks is the first woman to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda

2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (an historic Lutheran church destroyed in the WWII firebombing of Dresden) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project

2010 – Haunted Refrigerator Night * is started as a reminder to clear out that spooky stuff at the back of your fridge

2011 – Two Kenyan fighter aircraft bomb the southern Somali town of Jilib, attempting to rid Somalia of Islamic al Shabaab rebels, after the insurgents had crossed the border into Kenya repeatedly, fighting with Kenya’s security forces and staging a series of kidnappings. At least 12 civilians were killed and another 52 were injured during the bombing

2013 – On the 75^th anniversary of the Mercury Theatre on the Air’s radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, the first World Audio Drama Day * is celebrated

2014 – Sweden is the first European Union member state to officially recognize the State of Palestine

2017 – South Korea announced summit talks with China are planned for early November in a push to normalize their ties strained over Seoul’s decision to let the U.S. deploy a controversial missile defense system within its borders earlier this year. The installation of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system touched off domestic protests and economic retaliation by China, which called the THAAD system a threat to its security. South Korea and the U.S. say the missile defenses are intended strictly as protection against threats from North Korea, which has been warning of attacks against the U.S. and its allies with nuclear-tipped missiles

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