December 4th is

Cab Franc Grape Day

National Cookie Day *

National Sock Day

Wear Brown Shoes Day

World Wildlife Conservation Day *

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MORE! Juliette Récamier, Crazy Horse and Joan Brady, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Eid il-Burbara, a holiday similar to Halloween in honor of Saint Barbara. (celebrated by Middle Eastern and Russian Christians in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Russia, Syria and Turkey)

Belize – San Pedro:
Holiday Boat Lighting Parade

Canada – Ottawa: Christmas
Lights Across Canada

Germany – Freiburg: Freiburg Christmas Market

India – Navy Day

Japan – Tokyo: Festivals
Management Conference

Mexico – Guadalajara: Feria
Internacional del Libro (Book fair)

Netherlands – Amsterdam:
World Architecture Festival

New Zealand – Napier: Starry
Christmas Paint and Wine Night

Nigeria – Badagry: Badargy Heritage Festival

Poland – Barbórka (Miners day)

South Africa – Cape Town: Cape Tango Festival

Thailand – Thai Environment Day

Tonga – King Tupou I Day

UAE – Dubai: International Wireless
& Telecommunication Conference

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On This Day in HISTORY

34 – Perseus, born as Aulus Persius Flaccus, of Estruscan heritage; Roman poet and satirist; Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, the stoic philosopher, was his mentor, who published his work after his death in the year 62. Persius’ poetry later became very popular in the Middle Ages

771 – King Carloman I dies; his brother Charlemagne becomes the Frankish king

Charlemagne crowned emperor by Pope Leo III

1110 – The Kingdom of Jerusalem, a crusader state established after the First Crusade, captures the fortified coastal city of Sidon from the Fatimid Caliphate after a two-month siege, forces led on the landward side by Baldwin I of Jerusalem, and from the sea by   Sigurd I of Norway and Ordelafo Faliero, Doge of Venice

1259 – Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris – Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including  Normandy) and Louis withdraws support for English rebels

King Henry and King Louis

1563 – After opening in December 1545, the Council of Trent holds its last session, ending one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most important ecumenical councils, described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation

1619 – Thirty-eight colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred, on the north bank of the James River in Virginia. One of their leaders, John Smyth of Nibley, collects 60 documents concerning the settlement of Virginia which survive as important sources for modern historians

1660 –André Campra born, a leading early 18th century French opera composer

1674 – Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission at Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek, now the site of the city of Chicago

1745 – Scottish Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s army reaches Derby, its furthest point south during the Second Jacobite Rising

1777 – Juliette Bernard Récamier born, French leader of a salon that attracted the leading literary and political figures of Paris; she became an icon of neoclassicism; married at age 15 to Jacques-Rose Récamier, a banker who was almost 30 years her senior; apparently the marriage was never consummated; in spite of her husband’s heavy financial losses, beginning in 1805, and his death in 1830, which left her in even more reduced financial circumstances, she continued to receive visitors in her apartment in a building that had been a convent, where she lived from 1819 until her death from cholera in 1849. The récamier, a type of chaise longue, is named for her

Madame Recamier, nee Julie Bernard – artist uncredited

1783 – New York’s Fraunces Tavern serves a “turtle feast” for General George Washington, who says farewell to his Continental Army officers with “a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”

1786 – Mission Santa Barbara in California is dedicated on the feast day of Saint Barbara

1791 – The first issue of  The Observer, the world’s original Sunday newspaper, is published in Britain

1795 – Thomas Carlyle born, Scottish-English historian and philosopher

1812 – Peter Gaillard patents the power mower

1829 – In the face of fierce local opposition, British Governor-General Lord William Bentinck issues a regulation declaring that anyone who abets suttee in Bengal is guilty of culpable homicide

Engraving of the burning of an Indian widow, from a book by Reverend James Peggs

1835 – Samuel Butler born, English author; noted for Erewhon, and The Way of All Flesh

1849 – Crazy Horse born, Oglala Lakota war leader

1858 – Chester Greenwood born, inventor at age 15 of the earmuff

1861 – Britain’s Queen Victoria forbids the export of gunpowder, firearms and all materials for their production

1864 – Jews in Romania are forbidden to practice law

1865 – Edith Cavell born, British nurse; during WWI, she iwas executed by the Germans for helping Allied soldiers escape through enemy lines

1866 – Wassily Kandinsky born in Russia, “father of abstract art”

Composition VII, by Wassily Kandinsky, 1913

1867 – Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange)

1875 – Rainer Maria Rilke born, Austrian-Swiss poet and author; recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets; noted for The Book of Hours; Duino Elegies; and Letters to a Young Poet

1881 – The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published

1882 – Constance Davey born, Australian psychologist who started the special education classes in South Australia, and developed university courses on working with special needs children for teachers and social workers; author of Children and Their Law-makers,  published in 1956

1883 – Katherine Susannah Prichard born in Fiji, Australian author; co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, and member of the Movement Against War and Fascism; noted for her political activism, organizing left-wing women’s groups and unemployed workers, for her novels, Working Bullocks and Coonardoo, and her short story collection, Kiss on the Lips. Because of her political activities, she was frequently harassed by Western Australia police, and the Australian government kept a surveillance file open on her from 1919 until her death in 1969

1895 – Fung Yu-lan born, Chinese philosopher and academic

1908 – Alfred D. Hershey born, American bacteriologist and geneticist, 1969 Nobel laureate; founding member of the World Cultural Council

1910 – Alex North born, American film score composer

1915 – The Ku Klux Klan receives a charter from Fulton County, Georgia

1917 – Dr. H. J. Terblanche born, South African linguist, who pioneered an English- Afrikaans technical dictionary, and compiled several dictionaries and grammar books

1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, the first US president to travel to Europe while in office

1920 – Jeanne Sobelson Manford born, teacher and gay rights activist, co-founder of  Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), for which she was awarded the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal

1922 – Lucille Atcherson becomes the first woman US Diplomatic Consular Officer at Bern legation in Switzerland, then later serves in Panama. She was a suffragist, and a WWI volunteer who helped wounded Americans and French civilian war survivors, for which she was honored with Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise

1923 – Cecil B. DeMille’s silent film version of The Ten Commandments premieres

An Egyptian set from the 1923 version of The Ten Commandments

1930 – The Vatican issues approval of the ‘rhythm method’ of birth control

1931 – Frankenstein, starring Colin Clive and Boris Karloff, opens in New York

1939 – Joan Brady born in San Francisco, American-British author; the first woman and first American to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for her novel Theory of War (1993)

1941 – The Chicago Tribune and New York Times leak FDR’s top-secret plan for invading Europe in 1943

1943 – WWII resistance leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government-in-exile;  U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes down Works Progress Administration, no longer needed with wartime high employment

1944 – Dennis Wilson born, singer-songwriter and drummer of the Beach Boys

1945 – Roberta Bondar born, Canada’s first woman astronaut, and first neurologist in space, aboard NASA Space Shuttle Discovery in 1992; served as NASA’s head of space medicine (1993-2004)

1945 – By a vote of 65–7, the United States Senate officially approves United States participation in the United Nations

1947 – Jane Lubchenco born, American environmental scientist and marine ecologist; Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and  Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (2009-2013)

1950 – University of Tennessee defies court rulings by rejecting five ‘Negro’ applicants

1954 – The first Burger King opens in Miami

1956 – Nia Griffith born in Ireland of Welsh parents, British Labour politician; MP for Llanelli (2005 to present); former teacher, school inspector, and head of languages (she speaks English, Welsh, Italian, French and Spanish); Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages since 2015; a leading Welsh LGBT figure

1956 – The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studio for the only time – the session is not released for 25 years

1958 – Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger become autonomous within the French Community

1961 – ‘The Pill,’ an oral contraceptive for women, becomes available on the National Health Service in Britain

1962 – Northern Rhodesia’s first African-dominated government is formed under Kenneth Kaunda; in 1964, Kaunda is elected as first President of the renamed Republic of Zambia

1965 – NASA launches Gemini 7

1966 – Suzanne Malveaux born, twin sister of Suzette M. Malveaux; American television journalist; former NBC Pentagon correspondent; moderator of the 2007 National Association of Black Journalists convention; a key reporter in CNN’s 2004 and 2006 election coverage; CNN White House correspondent; co-anchor of  Around the World(2012-2014)

1966 – Suzette M. Malveaux born, twin sister of Suzanne Malveaux; lawyer and professor of law at the Columbus School of Law; expert on civil rights law and class action litigation; appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, a gender discrimination in pay and promotion suit

1974 – Pioneer II makes its closest approach to Jupiter

1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein is sworn in as San Francisco’s first female mayor

Justice Rose Bird holds microphone, swearing in Dianne Feinstein
as San-Francisco’s first woman mayor

1981 – President Reagan issues an Executive Order giving the CIA authorization to spy within the U.S., but barring assassinations

1982 – President Reagan meets with Guatemalan President Rios Montt, but dismisses his concerns over reports of human rights abuses in Central American, and lifts an arms embargo to resume sales to military rulers

1984 – Anti-apartheid demonstrations continue in front of the South African Embassy in Washington DC and spread to other US cities where South Africa has Consulates

1986 – Both U.S. houses of Congress moved to establish special committees to conduct their own investigations of the Iran-Contra affair

1987 – First National Cookie Day * starts in San Francisco, but goes national when Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster takes up the cause

1991 – Pan American World Airways ceases operations

1992 – President George H.W. Bush sends 28,000 U.S. troops on a mercy mission to Somalia to block Somali gangs from intercepting food shipments, and threatens further  military action against warlords keeping humanitarian aid from reaching millions left starving, without clean water or medical help, by famine and civil war

1993 – Astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavor capture the Hubble Space Telescope to begin a successful correction of its faulty optics

1995 – The first NATO peacekeeping troops land in the Balkans

1996 – NASA launches the Mars Pathfinder

1996 – The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa is approved by Constitutional Court of South Africa’s Parliament

1997 – The European Union bans tobacco advertising, and gives a 2006 deadline to cigarette manufacturers to end sponsorship of major sports and cultural events

1998 – The Unity Module, second module of the International Space Station, launches

2001 – The U.S. freezes financial assets of organizations with alleged ties to Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist militant organization considered a terrorist group by Israel and the U.S. 

2006 – NASA announces plans to begin building a permanent base on the moon by 2024, with the first teams landing in 2020

2011 – In Singapore hundreds of people gathered at a park to protest sexual violence against women as part of the global “SlutWalk” movement, a rare public demonstration in the tightly controlled city state

2013 – Norman Rockwell’s painting Saying Grace sold for $46 million at Sotheby’s NYC

2015 – Defense Secretary Ash Carter announces that the Pentagon is opening all combat jobs in the U.S. military to women. Women who meet entry standards will now be able to serve in any unit, including the elite Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, and the Marine Corps infantry

2018 – Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive who was forced to resign after over a dozen accusations of sexual misconduct were reported by the New Yorker and the New York Times, destroyed evidence and misled investigators in an effort to protect his reputation and $120 million severance deal, according to a draft of a report lawyers prepared for the CBS board reviewed by The New York Times. Moonves was once one of the media’s most influential executives, but he was forced to step down in September because of accusations of harassment, sexual assault, retaliation against accusers, and attempts to suppress allegations. Lawyers hired by the network said Moonves was “evasive and untruthful at times,” and “deliberately lied about and minimized the extent of his sexual misconduct.” His actions would justify denying him his lucrative severance package, the lawyers said

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