November 12th is

Fancy Rat & Mouse Day *

World Pneumonia Day *

National French Dip Day

Chicken Soup for the Soul Day *

Pizza With The Works Except Anchovies Day

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MORE! Carol Gluck, Neil Young and Barbara Stühlmeyer, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Argentina – Buenos Aires:
Feria de las Naciones

Australia – Ultimo:
Electronic Music Conference

Azerbaijan – Constitution Day

Canada – Saskatoon: Sovereign
Indigenous Nations Two Spirit Gathering

East Timor – National Youth Day

France – Brest: Brest Short Film Festival

Hungary – Budapest: Verzio International
Human Rights Documentary Festival

Indonesia – Father’s Day/Health Day

Kenya – Nairobi: Machweo Dance Festival

Mexico – Morelia: International
Organ Festival at Morelia Cathedral

Poland – Bydgoszcz: International
Art Festival of Cinematography

South Africa – Cape Town:
Melkbosstrand Full Moon Beach Walk

Taiwan – Sun Yat-sen’s Birthday

Thailand – Phuket: Loy Kratong Festival
(floating offerings to the water goddess)

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On This Day in HISTORY

1439 – Plymouth, England is the first town incorporated by the English Parliament

The Barbican, Plymouth, England

1606 – Jeanne Mance born, French Canadian settler and nurse who was one of the founders of Montreal. After taking patients into her home (1642-1645), she received a contribution that enabled her to found the city’s first hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal in 1645. She returned to France twice to seek financial support for the hospital, and recruited three sisters of the Religieuses hospitalières de Saint-Joseph to provide care for the patients so she could devote more time to directing the operation of the hospital

1651 – Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz born, Hieronymite nun of New Spain, self-taught scholar, feminist philosopher, composer and poet; called “The Mexican Phoenix”; Her criticism of misogyny and the hypocrisy of men led to her condemnation by the Bishop of Puebla, and in 1694 she was forced to sell her collection of books and focus on charity towards the poor; she died the next year, from the plague while treating her sister nuns

1793 – Jean Sylvain Bailly, French astronomer, mathematician and political leader early in the French Revolution, who presided over the Tennis Court Oath (Serment du Jeu de Paume,  a vow “not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established.”) Served as the first Mayor of Paris (1789-1791), but resigned on November 12, 1791, after his order to the National Guard in July to disperse the riotous crowd demanding the King step down made him extremely unpopular. Arrested in July, 1793, and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris in November after he refused to testify against Marie Antoinette. On November 12, he was guillotined at the Champ de Mars, the site selected because it was where he “betrayed” the democratic movement. Forced to endure the freezing rain and the insults of a howling mob, when a scoffer shouted, “Tu trembles, Bailly?” (“Do you tremble, Bailly?”), he stoically responded, “Oui, mais c’est seulement de froid.” (“Yes, but it is only the cold.”)

1799 – Andrew Ellicott Douglass witnesses the Leonids meteor shower from a ship off the Florida Keys

1815 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton born, American suffragist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the women’s rights movement; She wrote the Declaration of Sentiments for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention which launched the woman suffrage campaign; president of the National Woman Suffrage Association (1892-1900), but she was also an advocate for women’s parental and custody rights, property, wage and employment rights, divorce and birth control; author/editor of the controversial The Woman’s Bible, a challenge to the traditional view that women should be subservient to men

1817 – Bahá’u’lláh  (“Glory of God”) born as Mírzá Ḥusayn-`Alí Núrí; founder of the Bahá’í Faith, and author of many theological works

1833 – Alexander Borodin born, Russian Romantic composer, physician and chemist

1840 – Sculptor Auguste Rodin born in Paris, especially remembered for his works “The Kiss” and “The Thinker”

Detail of Rodin’s Gates of Hell

1859 – The first flying trapeze act is performed by Jules Leotard at Cirque Napoleon in Paris, France. Leotard also designed of the garment named for him

1866 – Sun Yat-sen born, Chinese revolutionary, physician, first president and founding father of the Republic of China (Taiwan)

1893 – The treaty of the Durand Line delineating the border between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan is signed by Sir Mortimer Durand, British India diplomat, and Afghan Amir Abdur Rahman Khan; the Durand Line is recognized as an international border between the two nations.

1905 – Norway’s referendum on the Storting (‘great thing’ – supreme Norwegian legislature) decision to offer the throne of the newly independent country to Prince Carl of Denmark is approved by 78.9% of voters. Prince Carl and his wife, Princess Maud of Wales, are crowned King and Queen on June 22, 1906

1905 – Louise McPhetridge Thaden born, American aviation pioneer, held the women’s records for altitude, endurance and speed; won the first Women’s Air Derby, nicknamed the Powder Puff Derby in 1929, but one pilot was killed, so women were barred from racing from 1930-1935; in 1936, the first year women are allowed in the race, she won the Bendix Trophy Race, setting a new world record of 14 hours, 55 minutes from New York City to Los Angeles, and the pilot Laura Ingalls (not the author) came in second

1911 – Buck Clayton born, American Jazz trumpeter; leading member of Count Basie’s ‘Old Testament’ Orchestra, whose work with Li Jinhiu, the “father of Chinese popular music” strongly influenced music in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan

1911 – Roland Barthes born, French essayist and theorist whose writing influenced a diverse range of fields

1912 – King George I of Greece makes a triumphal entry into Thessaloniki after its liberation from 482 years of Ottoman rule

1912 – The frozen bodies of British explorer Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica

1915 – Theodore W. Richards, of Harvard University, becomes the first American awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry

1918 – Austria and Czechoslovakia become independent republics

1921 – Representatives of nine nations gather for the Washington Conference for Limitation of Armaments

1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union

1936 – In California, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic

1940 – Walt Disney releases Fantasia

1941 – Carol Gluck born, American historian, author and authority on Japan; books including Rekishi de kangaeru (Thinking with History) and Showa: the Japan of Hirohito; a founding member of the Committee on Global Thought

1942 – WWII: The naval Battle of Guadalcanal begins

1944 – Booker T. Jones born, American musician and songwriter; Booker T. and the M.G.s

1945 – Neil Young born, Canadian singer-songwriter, producer-director-screenwriter, band member of Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young and Crazy Horse

1945 – John Tracy Kidder born, American nonfiction author; won the Pulitzer Prize for The Soul of a New Machine

1945 – Judith Roitman born, American mathematician specializing in set theory, topology, and Boolean algebra; has run workshops for elementary and high school teachers on teaching mathematics; served in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics writing group which produced Principles and Standards for School Mathematics; received the Louise Hay Award in recognition of her work as a math educator; she is also a poet, her collection No Face: Selected and New Poems was published in 2008

1946 – Exchange National Bank in Chicago IL opens the first drive-up banking facility

1948 – In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II

1954 – The Ellis Island immigration station in New York Harbor closes after processing more than 20 million immigrants since 1892

1956 – Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia join the United Nations

1956 – During the Suez Crisis, Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian refugees in Rafah after the invasion of the Gaza strip

1958 – A team of rock climbers led by climber Warren Harding (the climber, not the U.S. president) completes the first ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley

1962 – Mariella Frostrup born in Norway, Norwegian-Scottish journalist and presenter, best known as a British television and radio presenter of arts programmes. She is an active supporter of Oxfam, Comic Relief and The Children’s Society. Frostrup is a co-founder of the Gender Rights and Equality Action Trust, which works in partnership with grassroots organizations like Femmes Africa Solidarité, which supports women’s  empowerment and leadership in building peace

1964 – Barbara Stühlmeyer born, German musicologist, church musician, and authority on Hildegard of Bingen; co-author of Tugenden und Laster (Virtues and Vices)

Co-Authors Dr. Barbara Stühlmeyer and Sabine Böhm

1964 – Paula Murphy sets the women’s land speed record 226.37 MPH

1968 – Equatorial Guinea joins the United Nations

1969 – Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai Massacre, in the first piece of a three-part series in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

1975 – The Union of the Comoros, an archipelago island nation in the Indian Ocean, joins the United Nations

1976 – Judith Holofernes born as Judith Holfeder-Roy, German singer-songwriter known for her lyrics, which often address social issues; lead singer of Wir sind Helden. She is an active supporter of Tibet Initiative, a German campaign for human rights and self-determination in Tibet, and for Viva con Agua, a German charity for global clean drinking water. She performed at an anti-nuclear power demonstration following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

1979 – In response to the Iran Hostage Crisis, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran

1980 – NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings

1982 – Yuri Andropov succeeds Leonid Brezhnev as the USSR General Secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee

1983 – The American Fancy Rat & Mouse Association (AFRMA) founded, sponsors competition shows and information booths at Pet Expos, to educate the public on breeding, proper care and exhibition, and promote Fancy Rat & Mouse Day *

1984 – Space shuttle astronauts Dale Gardner and Joe Allen snare the Palapa B-2 satellite in history’s first space salvage

1984 – Madonna’s Like a Virgin album is released

1985 – Xavier Suarez is elected as Miami’s first Cuban-American mayor

1987 – The American Medical Association issues a policy statement that it is unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat a patient because they had AIDS or were HIV-positive

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web

1990 – Japanese Emperor Akihito formally assumes the Chrysanthemum Throne

1995 – The Erdut Agreement is a peaceful resolution of Croatia’s War of Independence

1996 – Eminem’s first studio album, Infinite, is released

1997 – The UN Security Council imposed new sanctions on Iraq for constraints being placed on UN arms inspectors

1999 – President Bill Clinton signs a sweeping measure knocking down Depression-era barriers and allowing banks, investment firms and insurance companies to sell each other’s products

2003 – Shanghai Transrapid sets a new world speed record (501 kilometres per hour (311 mph) for commercial railway systems

2004 – Comparative Toxicogenomics Database, a public website curating scientific data describing relationships between chemicals/drugs, genes/proteins, diseases, taxa, phenotypes, GO annotations, pathways, and interaction modules, is launched by the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University

2009 – First World Pneumonia Day, * a program of the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote prevention and treatment of pneumonia, the greatest cause of child deaths worldwide

2011 – The Arab League votes to suspend Syria for its bloody crackdown on protesters

2014 – The European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe deploys the Philae lander, which reaches the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

2018 – U.S. Roman Catholic bishops met in Baltimore, planning to vote on measures to hold themselves accountable for the church’s child sexual abuse scandal, but in a last-minute surprise the Vatican told them to hold off until next year. Pope Francis announced plans to hold a summit in Rome in 2019 to discuss the abuse crisis with bishops from around the world. The U.S. bishops learned of the delay minutes before their meeting, and many were stunned. “We are not ourselves happy about this,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “We are working very well to move to action, and we’ll do it. We just have a bump in the road.” Abuse survivors denounced the delay

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