February 9th is

Pizza Day

Toothache Day

Read in the Bathtub Day

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MORE! Satchel Paige, Alice Walker and Eric Holder, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – St. Kilda: St Kilda Festival

Brazil – Paraná: Festa da Uva (grapes)

Canada – Hamilton:
For the Love of Butter Tarts Festival

France – Paris:
All Europe Waacking Festival

India – Nagpur:
Biryani Bhandara Biggest Eating Fest

Italy –Putignano: Carnevale di Putignano

Japan – Chiba: Winter Wonder Festival

Kenya – Nairobi:
Transform Kayole Arts Festival

Lebanon – Saint Maroun’s Day
(patron saint of Lebanon)

Mexico – Puebla: Fire Rock Festival

Norway – Geilo: Ice Music Festival

Peru – Huanchaco: Huanchaco Salsa Fest

Saint Helena – RMS St Helena Voyage Day

Singapore – Huayi (contemporary dance)

South Africa – Springs:
Road to Umshubhelo Music Festival

Tanzania – Jambiani:
Mie Horiuchi Struden Retreat (yoga)

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On This Day in HISTORY

474 – Zeno the Isaurian is crowned as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire, with his son, Leo II, the 7-year-old heir to the throne of his grandfather, Leo I

1267 – Synod of Breslau orders Jews of Silesia to wear special caps

1555 – John Hooper, Anglican Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, burns at the stake for heresy during Queen Mary I’s reign after she restores Catholicism

1621 – Alessandro Ludovisi becomes Gregory XV, the last Pope to be elected by acclamation (voice vote)

1682 – Thomas Otway’s play Venice Preserved premieres in London, with Elizabeth Barry, one of the most highly regarded actresses of the day, playing the female lead

1741 – Henri-Joseph Rigel born in Germany, Classical composer who worked in France

1775 – British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion

1825 – After no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes in the U.S. presidential election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives  elects John Quincy Adams as President of the United States

1826 – Keʻelikōlani born, member of the Kamehameha family; she served as Royal Governor of the Island of Hawai’i (1855-1874); member of the Privy Council of Kamehameha (1847-1854),  and served in the House of Nobles (1855-1857)

1849 – Laura Clay born, suffragist, orator, co-founder and first president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA); lobbying from the 1880s into the 1900s by Clay and other members of KERA resulted in state legislative and educational victories, including protection of married women’s property and wages, requiring women physicians in state female insane asylums, admission of women to several all-male colleges, a women’s dormitory at the University of Kentucky, the establishment of juvenile courts and detention homes, and raising the age of sexual consent for girls from 12 to 16. Clay’s name was placed in nomination for U.S. president at the 1920 Democratic National Convention

1854 – Aletta Jacobs born, Dutch physician, a leader of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and an ardent pacifist, who went on a world speaking tour, meeting with feminists and pacifists around the world; first woman to officially attend a Dutch University and first woman physician in the Netherlands; a pioneer in the study of contraception and a birth control advocate. Jacobs set up the Netherlands’ first family planning centre, a free clinic for poor women and prostitutes. She also taught hygiene, maternal care and childcare courses. She campaigned for social justice and labor rights, including breaks for women working 10 hour days on their feet in shops; her efforts led to new health and safety laws

1861 – Jefferson Davis elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama

1863 – Anthony Hope born, English novelist-playwright; noted for The Prisoner of Zenda

Frontispiece 1898 edition Prisoner of Zenda, illustrated
by Charles Dana Gibson, and a photo of Anthony Hope

1864 – Miina Härma born, Estonian woman composer and organist

1865 – Mrs. Patrick Campbell born, major English actor-manager, who made notable appearance in plays by Shakespeare and Shaw – her sharp wit enlivened the letters she exchanged with Shaw

1867 – Natsume Sōseki born, novelist widely considered the greatest modern Japanese writer; Kokoro, I Am a Cat

1870 – US President Grant signs a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau

1874 – Amy Lowell born, American poet; 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

1885 – Alban Berg born, Austrian Composer

1889 – US President Cleveland signs a bill elevating the U.S. Department of Agriculture to a Cabinet-level agency

1893 – Giuseppe Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, premieres at La Scala

1894 – Hershey’s Chocolate Company starts as a subsidiary of Milton Hershey’s Lancaster Caramel Company

1899 – Minnesota’s Record Low Temperature: – 59 degrees Fahrenheit at Leech Lake Dam

1910 – Jacques Monod born, French biologist, 1965 Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for cell research

1913 – A group of meteors, visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, lead astronomers to conclude the source is a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth

1920 – Under the terms of the Svalbard Treaty, international diplomacy recognizes Norwegian sovereignty over Arctic Archipelago Svalbard, and designates it as demilitarized

1922 – Brazil becomes a signatory of the Berne Convention copyright treaty

1923 – Brendan Behan born, Irish author-political commentator

1934 – The Balkan Entente is formed by the Balkan Pact Treaty signed by Greece, Turkey, Romania and Yugoslavia, to maintain the geopolitical status quo of the post WWI years. All territorial disputes among the member nations are suspended.  Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Soviet Union refuse to sign

1940 – J M. Coetzee born as John Coetzee, South African novelist, essayist and translator; the first writer to receive the Booker Prize twice, in 1983 for Life & Times of Michael K, and in 1999 for Disgrace; winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, and the three-time winner of South Africa’s CNA Award (Central News Agency Literary Award); also noted for Waiting for the Barbarians, Age of Iron, and The Master of Petersburg

1941 – Sheila Kuehl born, child actress, lawyer, gay rights activist, and politician; first openly gay legislator in the California State Assembly (1994-2000) and first woman named California Speaker pro Tempore; California State Senator (2000-2008); on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors since 2014

1942 – Year-round Daylight saving time is instituted in the U.S. as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources

1942 – Carole King born, American singer-songwriter and pianist

1944 – Alice Walker born, American author and poet, 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Literature for The Color Purple

1945 – Carol Wood born, American mathematician who researched mathematical logic, model-theoretic algebra and theory of differentially closed fields; program officer in the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the National Science Foundation; deputy director at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute; President of the Association for Women in Mathematics (1991-1993); served on board of trustees for the American Mathematical Society (2002-2007)

1947 – Carla Del Ponte born, prosecuting attorney and ambassador; member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (2012-2017); Switzerland’s Ambassador to Argentina (2008-2011); Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, 2003?-2008), and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR, 1999-2003);
Swiss attorney general (1994-1999)

1950 – McCarthy Red Witch Hunt: Senator Joseph McCarthy, in a speech at the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, claims to have a list of names of members of the Communist Party known to the Secretary of State who are nevertheless working and shaping policy in the U.S. Department of State – it was not illegal for an American to be a member of the Communist Party until the Communist Control Act of 1954 outlawed the Communist Party of the United States, and criminalizes membership in or support for the Party or “Communist-action” organizations. The Supreme Court never ruled on its constitutionality, and it hasn’t been enforced by any administration, but the provisions “outlawing” the Communist Party have never been repealed either

1954 – Jo Duffy born, comic book editor and writer; noted for her work for DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and several graphic novels

1955 – In South Africa, in the early hours of the morning, about 2,000 policemen, armed with guns, rifles and knobkerries, force the families of the Black community of Sophiatown to move to Meadowlands, Soweto. Their possessions are loaded on police trucks, then dumped in Meadowlands where they are forced to stay. The families, many with babies and young children, are exposed to cold and rainy weather. The forced removals are part of the government’s countrywide apartheid plan to turn Black residential and business areas in desirable parts of cities and towns into white enclaves. The new, white suburb built on the ruins of Sophiatown is named Triomf, which means “triumph”

1959 – The R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, becomes operational at Plesetsk, USSR

1960 – Peggy A. Whitson born, American biochemist, and NASA astronaut; first woman appointed as NASA Chief of the Astronaut Office (2009-2012); first woman commander of the International Space Station; holds women’s record for number of days in space, a total of 665 days accrued

1962 – Neil Sedaka’s first recording of “Breaking Up is Hard to Do”

1964 – The Beatles make their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a “record-busting” audience of 73 million viewers across the USA

1965 – U.S. Marine Corps sends a MIM-23 Hawk missile battalion to South Vietnam, the first American troops in-country without an official advisory or training mission

1971 – Satchel Paige becomes the first Negro League player to be voted into the USA’s Baseball Hall of Fame

1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth after the third manned Moon landing

1975 – The Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraft returns to Earth

1986 – Halley’s Comet appears in the inner Solar System

1991 – Voters in Lithuania vote for independence

1995 – Bernard Harris becomes the first African American NASA astronaut to take a spacewalk

1996 – Copernicium, a synthetic radioactive chemical element named after Nicolaus Copernicus, is created by Sigurd Hofman and Victor Ninov’s GSI group in Germany

2011 – Spain’s best-known judge, Baltasar Garzón, remembered for issuing an international warrant to arrest Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens, is banned from the legal profession for eleven years, without appeal, for illegal wire-tapping.  He now serves as head of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange’s legal team

2012 – Hundreds of Texas A&M graduates form a human wall to keep Westboro Baptist Church members from picketing the funeral of fellow Aggie Lt. Colonel Roy Tisdale

2014 – Attorney General Eric Holder announces a new Department of Justice memo instructing federal government lawyers to give same-sex marriages equal recognition, to “the greatest extent of the law” including joint bankruptcy filings and federal prison visitation rights for same-sex couples

2018 – A second staffer has followed White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter in resigning his position over domestic abuse allegations. White House speechwriter David Sorensen resigned after his ex-wife, Jessica Corbett, told The Washington Post he “ran a car over her foot, put out a cigarette on her hand, threw her into a wall and grasped her menacingly by her hair while they were alone on their boat in remote waters off Maine’s coast.” Corbett said she shared these accusations with the FBI months ago when Sorensen was subject to a background check. He has denied all allegations

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