November 24th is

Brownielocks Day

Celebrate Your Unique Talent Day

Horse Welfare Day *

National Sardines Day

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MORE! Esther Aplin, Scott Joplin and Parveen Shakir, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Austria – Oberdrauburg:
Oberdrauburg Christmas Market

Canada – Winnipeg: Grey Cup Festival

India – Assam: Lachit Divas *

Italy – Barbarano Vicentino:
Fiera di Santa Caterina

Mexico – Santa Lucia del Camino:
Mixteca Music Festival

Netherlands – Amsterdam:
Innovation in the Dam

New Zealand – Rotorua:
Rotorua Running Festival

Philippines – Carcar City:
Kabkaban Festival (ritual dancing)

Russia – Mothers Day

Rwanda – Kigali: SEKA Comedy Fest

South Africa – Potchefstroom:
Proudly African Music Festival

Thailand – Tha Hin: Lopburi Monkey Festival

Turkey – Teachers Day

Turkmenistan – Harvest Day

United Kingdom – Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival

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On This Day in HISTORY

380 – Theodosius I makes his adventus (formal entry) into Constaninople as Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire

1429 – By order of Charles VII, Jeanne d’Arc begins the unsuccessful siege of La
Charité, in bad weather, with troops that are underequipped and poorly supplied

1605 – The coronation of Jahangir, Padishah of the Mughal Empire, who reigns from 1605 to 1627

1622 – Lachit Divas * – Lachit Borphukan (councilor) born, commander in the Ahom Kingdom (now part of Assam, India) who is remembered for his leadership at the 1671 Battle of Saraighat which thwarted the attacking Mughal forces commanded by Ramsingh I trying to take the Ahom Kingdom

1632 –Baruch Spinoza born, important Dutch philosopher, usually counted as a Rationalist; best known for his monumental work, Ethics

1642 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to reach the island Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania)

1690 – Charles Theodore Pachelbel born, German composer, who moved to the American colonies, where he became a noted musical figure in Charleston, SC as the organist of St. Philip’s Church, and a concert organizer; his father was composer Johann Pachelbel

1713 – Laurence Sterne born in Ireland, British author of Tristram Shandy

1713 – Junipero Serra, Spanish Franciscan missionary in Mexico and California

Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first mission built in California

1724 – Maria Amalia of Saxony born; became Queen consort of Naples and Sicily (1738-1759) when she married Charles, King of Naples and Sicily, who later became Charles III of Spain, and she became Queen consort of Spain (1759-1760). Theirs was a successful marriage, and she was quite influential in politics and matters of state, especially after the birth of her son Felipe in 1747, when she was given a seat on the council of state. She carried on her duties in spite of frequent illnesses, probably related to her 13 pregnancies. Six of the children died in childhood, and one was diagnosed as an imbecile. Her seventh child became Charles IV of Spain. In September 1760, Maria Amalia died suddenly in Spain, at the age of 35

1762 – First written record of the word ‘sandwich’ in Edward Gibbons’ Journal: ‘I dined at the Cocoa Tree….supping at little tables….upon a bit of cold meat, or a Sandwich.’

1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (now Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety)

1849 – Frances Hodgson Burnett born, English-American children’s author; A Little Princess,  The Secret Garden

1853 – ‘Bat’ (William) Masterson is born in Canada, Dodge City lawman, gambler, army scout, buffalo hunter, and journalist

1858 – Marie Bashkirtseff born, to a wealthy Russian noble family, painter, sculptor and “tell all” diarist. As a child, she traveled with her mother through most of Europe, spending longer periods of time in Germany and on the Riviera, until the family settled in Paris. She studied painting in France at the Robert-Fleury studio and at the Académie Julian. The Académie was one of the few establishments that accepted women students at that time. Bashkirtseff exhibited at the Paris Salon as early as 1880 and every year thereafter except 1883. In 1884, she exhibited a portrait of Paris slum children entitled The Meeting and a pastel portrait of her cousin, for which she received an honorable mention. After she contracted tuberculosis, she wrote several articles for Hubertine Auclert’s feminist newspaper La Citoyenne in 1881 under the nom de plume “Pauline Orrel.” Probably her most-quoted saying is “Let us love dogs, let us love only dogs! Men and cats are unworthy creatures.” She died in Paris in October 1884 at the age of 25

Marie Bashkirtseff – Self-Portrait

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species

1859 – Cass Gilbert born, American architect, designer of skyscrapers, museums, libraries, and the U.S. Supreme Court building

U.S. Supreme Court building and Cass Gilbert in 1907

1864 – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec born, French painter and illustrator

1867 – Scott Joplin born, American Ragtime pianist and composer

1874 – Joseph F. Glidden patents barbed wire for fencing

1877 – Horse Welfare Day *- Anna Sewell’s novel Black Beauty is published, which prompts animal welfare reform movements in the U.K. and U.S.A.

1886 – Margaret C. Anderson born, American founder, publisher and editor of The Little Review, an art and literary magazine, noted for introducing the works of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot in the U.S., and publishing the first thirteen chapters of James Joyce’s then-unpublished novel, Ulysses

1888 – Dale Carnegie born, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People

1895 – Esther Applin, American geologist and paleontologist; a leader in the use of microfossils to determine the age of rock formation, crucial to successful drilling operations in the oil industry, in the Gulf of Mexico region in particular. Her considerable contributions to micropaleontology greatly increased respect for women in the geological field. In spite of skepticism and even ridicule from the established men in her field when she first presented her ideas in 1921, her work for the Rio Bravo Oil Company (1920-1927) proved the effectiveness of her theory in finding the best oil bearing stratigraphic layers. Her discoveries became essential to drilling operation, and were the irreplaceable until electric logs became feasible in the 1950s. After leaving Rio Bravo, she worked as a consultant to other oil companies (1927-1944), then went to work for the U.S. Geological Survey (1944-1962) until her retirement

1903 – Clyde J. Coleman patents an electric self-starter for an automobile

1914 – Bessie Blount Griffin born, American physical therapist, inventor, and forensic scientist; created an apparatus during WWII to help amputees feed themselves, leading to her invention in 1951 of an electronic feeding device; as a forensic scientist, she worked for law enforcement in Norfolk VA, then became chief document examiner for the Portsmouth VA police. In 1977, she trained in England at Scotland Yard, and became the first African-American woman to work there. In the 1990s, she was an independent consultant, studying slave papers and Civil War documents as well as verifying the authenticity of documents containing Native American-U.S. treaties, before retiring at age 83

1917 – Nine members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed by a bomb, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001

1922 – Nine Irish Republican Army members are executed by an Irish Free State firing squad. Among them is the author of The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers, who had been arrested for illegally carrying a revolver

1932 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (aka the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens

1943 – Margaret E. M. Tolbert born, American biochemist, professor and the first woman director of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee University (1979-1987). She was also an administrative chemist at British Petroleum, and was part of the transition planning for its merger with Standard Oil of Ohio (1987-1993). Served as director of the New Brunswick Laboratory (1996-2002), the first African American and first woman in charge of a Department of Energy laboratory. Her study of signal transduction in liver cells was among the first to discover the rapid effects of ligands that did not involve RNA or protein synthesis and occur by some intracellular messenger other than cyclic AMP

1947 – John Steinbeck’s novel The Pearl is published

1947 – A group of writers, producers and directors that become known as the “Hollywood 10” are cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry

1949 – Dame Sally Davies born, British physician and haematologist, expert on sickle cell disease; Chief Medical Officer of England since 2010 (the most senior doctor in the English Civil Service, equivalent in rank to Permanent Secretary)

1950 – The musical Guys and Dolls opens on Broadway

1952 – Parveen Shakir born, Urdu poet and Pakistani civil servant; published six collections of poetry, often using the Urdu first-person, feminine pronoun in her verses which, though common in prose, was rarely used in poetry, even by female poets, before her; recipient of Pakistan’s distinguished Pride of Performance award for outstanding contributions to literature in 1976; killed in a car accident in 1994

1954 – Margaret Wetherell born, prominent British academic in the field of discourse analysis; co-author of Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour (1987)

1955 – Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth born, Swedish politician, Member of the Moderate Party; Minister for Culture and Sports (2006-2014); Member of the Swedish Riksdag for Stockholm Municipality (2002-2014); advocate for increased funding for gender studies, and outspoken opponent of graffiti vandalism

1958 – Margaret P. Curran born, Scottish Labour politician; elected in 1999 to the new Scottish Parliament; Minister for Parliamentary Business (2004-2007); Minister for Communities (2003-2003); Minister for Social Justice (2002-2003); Member of Parliament for Glasgow East (2010-2015), for Glasgow Baillieston (1999-2011)

1961 – Arundhati Roy born, Indian author and screenwriter, noted for her best-selling novel, The God of Small Things, which won the 1997 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which was a 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; she wrote a television serial, The Banyan Tree, and the documentary, DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy, in 2002; she is also a political activist for human rights and the environment

1962 – The first broadcast of influential British satirical television programme That Was the Week That Was, presented by David Frost

1963 – In the first live, televised murder, Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President  Kennedy, is murdered two days after the assassination, by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters

1965 – Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, declares himself President and rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997

1966 – Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” is released

1969 – NASA’s Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to land on the Moon

1973 – A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis, but the limit only lasts four months

1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed “Lucy” (after The Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression

1976 – Mona Hanna-Attisha born in England of Iraqi parents who were scientists and dissidents who fled during Saddam Hussein’s regime. She is a pediatrician, professor, and public health advocate whose research exposed the Flint water crisis. She is commonly referred to as “Dr. Mona.” Her research revealed children were exposed to dangerous levels of lead in Flint, Michigan. Dr. Hanna-Attisha’s findings were initially ridiculed by the State of Michigan, when a Michigan Department of Environmental Quality spokesperson accused her of being an “unfortunate researcher” “splicing and dicing numbers” who was causing “near hysteria.” About ten days later, after The Detroit Free Press published its own findings consistent with her research, and after Hanna-Attisha engaged in one-on-one conversations with Michigan’s chief medical officer, the State of Michigan backed down and concurred with her findings. She is now the director of an initiative to mitigate the impact of the crisis. Hanna-Attisha is the author of the 2018 book What the Eyes Don’t See. She has been honored with the 2017 Heinz Award for Public Service, the 2016 Ridenhour Prize for truth-Telling , and the 2016 PEN American Center James C Goodall Freedom of Expression Award

1983 – The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) releases six Israeli prisoners in exchange for the release of 4,500 Palestinians and Lebanese held by the Israelis.

1987 – The U.S. and the Soviet Union agree to scrap short- and medium-range missiles, first superpower treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons

1989 – Czechoslovakia’s hard-line party leadership resigned after more than a week of protests against its policies

1995 – Irish voters narrowly approve constitutional amendment legalizing divorce

2010 – A jury in Austin convicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) on charges he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002; his three-year sentence was overturned on appeal by the Texas Court of Appeals, and he was formally acquitted; and the State of Texas appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals failed, and his acquittal was upheld

2013 – Iran signs an interim agreement with the P5+1 countries, limiting its nuclear program in exchange for reduced sanctions

2015 – The National Assembly of Vietnam unanimously passes a law, which takes effect in 2017 as part of the revised civil code, that recognizes and allows gender reassignment surgery

2017 – The Trump Administration confirmed that a promise was made to Turkish President Recep Erdogan that United States will no longer supply weapons to the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, after Ankara first announced the promise to the media. The U.S. confirmation did not specify when the change would happen. The Kurds are U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State, but Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group because of its ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought Turkey for years for Kurdish independence or at least autonomy

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