March 3rd is

What If Cats and Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs Day

World Hearing Day *

Sun Day

Mulled Wine Day

World Press Freedom Day

(United Nations) World Wildlife Day *

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MORE! Elisabeth Abegg, Sameera Moussa and Hattie Winston, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Fiesta de las Cruces: Spain, Columbia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and Trinidad

Bulgaria – Liberation Day

East Timor – Veterans Day

Egypt – Sportsmen’s Day

France – Dunkirk: The Dunkirk Festival

Georgia – Mothers Day

Ireland – Irish Whiskey Day

Japan – Hina-matsuri (Doll Festival)

Lebanon – Teachers Day

Malawi – Martyrs’ Day

Poland – Constitution Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

724 – Japanese Empress Genshō abdicates the throne in favor of her nephew Shōmu

1284 – The Statute of Rhuddlan incorporates Wales into England, and is the constitutional basis for the government of the Principality of North Wales

1575 – Battle of Tukaroi: Indian Mughal Emperor Akbar leads his invading army into battle against the forces of the Sultanate of Bengal and Bihar, led by the Bengali ruler Daud Khan Karrani. It is a decisive victory for Akbar

Akbar with falcon

1585 – Teatro Olimpico is inaugurated in Vicenza in northern Italy with a production of Oedipus the King by Sophocles; it is the last design of Andrea Palladio before his death, and one of only three Renaissance theatres still standing; Teatro Olimpico is still used several times a year, and is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Vicenza

1652 – Thomas Otway born, English dramatist and poet

1678 – Madeleine de Verchères born as Marie-Madeleine Jarret, Canadian New France leader; as a 14-year-old girl, she led a fight against Iroquois warriors attacking Fort Verchères, preventing the Iroquois from capturing the fort

1756 – William Godwin born, philosopher and political writer

1791 – U.S. Congress passes a resolution creating the U.S. Mint

1793 – William Macready born, English actor, manager and diarist; he was the first major actor to perform in Shakespeare’s King Lear as originally written, which had been replaced on stage for over 150 years by Nahum Tate’s The History of King Lear, a bastardized version of Shakespeare’s tragedy with a happy ending

William Macready as Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry IV

1803 – The first impeachment trial of a U.S. Judge begins; U.S. District Court Judge John Pickering, of the district of New Hampshire, is accused of making unlawful rulings and intoxication on the bench

1812 – The U.S. Congress passes the first foreign aid bill, authorizing $50,000 for the relief of victims of an earthquake in Venezuela

1817 – The first commercial steamboat route from Louisville to New Orleans is opened

1841 – John Murray born, Scottish naturalist

1842 – Sidney Lanier born, American Poet

1844 – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov born, Russian composer, one of  The Five aka The Mighty Handful: Mily Balakirev (leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin, who all lived in St Petersburg between 1856 and 1870

1845 – U.S. Congress passes legislation overriding a U.S. President’s veto for the first time; lame-duck President John Tyler vetoes an appropriation bill which has a provision prohibiting the President from authorizing building of Revenue Marine Service (Coast Guard) ships without Congressionally approved appropriations; the next Congressional veto override would not happen until over a decade later, during Franklin’s Pierce’s administration

1845 – An Act of Congress establishes uniform postal rates throughout the U.S., effective on July 1, 1845

1847 – Alexander Graham Bell born in Scotland, American inventor of the telephone

1849 – The U.S. Department of the Interior is established

1849 – U.S. Congress passes the Gold Coinage Act which allows minting of gold coins

1851 – The U.S. Congress authorizes the 3-cent piece, the smallest U.S. silver coin

1852 – Daniel A. P. Murray born, African American biographer, author and historian; joins professional staff of the Library of Congress in 1871, rises to assistant librarian (1881-1922); compiles collection of books and pamphlets by black Americans for the 1900 Paris Exposition exhibit on Negro Authors, the nucleus of the Library’s Colored Authors Collections, now called the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection

1857 – Britain and France declare war on China – the Second Opium War

1863 – Free city delivery of mail is authorized by the U.S. Postal Service

1865 – President Lincoln and the U.S. Congress create the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, commonly called the Freedmen’s Bureau, and appoints Union General Oliver O. Howard as its chief. The bureau is intended to help black families find family members separated during the war, to provide legal assistance to settle court cases, assist in establishing schools by renting buildings for classrooms, providing books and transportation for teachers, and offer military protection for students and teachers from opponents of black literacy. A negative effect of the bureau was its frequent forcing of freed slaves to work for white plantation owners again for low wages, and the rise of sharecropping, which institutionalized their poverty

Southern white racist propaganda against the Freedmen’s Bureau and freed slaves
printed after Southerner Andrew Johnson became U.S. President in 1865

1873 – U.S. Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” books through the mail; it is later used against Margaret Sanger, among others, to try to prevent distribution of information about contraceptives

1875 – U.S. Congress authorizes the 20-cent piece, which is only used for 3 years

1877 – Garrett Morgan born, African-American inventor of a smoke hood, an early breathing system for firefighting

1878 – Russia and the Ottoman Empire sign the Treaty of San Stenafano, granting independence to Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and autonomy to Bulgaria; Austria-Hungary forces treaty term changes in the Treaty of Berlin on July 13, 1878

1880 – Florence Auer born, American theatre and film actress, and screenwriter for the early silent films Her Great Price (1916), A Modern Cinderella (1917) and Her Mad Bargain (1921)

1882 – Elisabeth Abegg born, German educator and resistance fighter against Nazism, who sheltered about 80 Jews during the Holocaust. Born in Strasbourg, she moved to Berlin in 1918 after earning a doctorate in classical philology and Romance studies from Leipzig University. She was involved in post-WWI relief work organized by the Quaker community, was an active member of the German Democratic Party, and taught at the Luisengymnasium Berlin (a secondary school for girls). When Hitler came to power in 1933, she openly criticized the Nazi regime, and was punished by being transferred to another school. In 1938, the Gestapo questioned her. In 1941, she was forced to retire from teaching, and officially converted to Quakerism. In 1942, she started helping Jews find safe shelter, then established an extensive network of rescuers among Quaker friends and her former students.  She sold her jewelry to pay for the escape of some Jews to Switzerland, and tutored Jewish children while they were hidden in her apartment. After WWII ended, she resumed teaching in Berlin, and continued to be active in Quaker groups and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1947, a group of Jews she had rescued published a book, And a Light Shined in the Darkness, dedicated to her. Abegg received the Verdienstkreuz am Bande (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany) in 1957, and was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Veshem in 1967

1885 – The American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) is incorporated in New York as a subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone Company

1887 – Anne Sullivan arrives at the Alabama home of Captain and Mrs. Arthur H. Keller to become the teacher of their blind and deaf 6-year-old daughter, Helen

1893 – Hanya Holm born in Germany, modern dance pioneer, emigrated to U.S.in 1931, taught dancing in many states, choreographed ballets, including “Metropolitan Daily” (1938), first televised ballet in the U.S.; also choreographed for theatre, movies and opera

1893 – Beatrice Wood born, American illustrator, sculptor and acclaimed studio potter, co-founder and editor of The Blind Man magazine with artist Marcel Duchamp and writer Henri-Pierre Roché in 1917. Her autobiography, I Shock Myself, was published in 1985 when she was 90 years old, but she lived to be 105. She said about her long life: “I owe it all to chocolate and young men.”

1894 – The Atlantis begins publication, the first Greek language newspaper in America

1900 – 100,000 striking miners in the Ruhr area of Germany return to work, having been given assurances of wage increases and a shorter working day; but the employers’ pledges are not kept, beginning 20 years of strife between miners and owners

1900 – Ruby Dandridge born Ruby Butler, African American actress, best known for roles on the radio shows Amos ‘n Andy and the Judy Canova Show. In 1937, she played one of the witches in a “sepia” (all black cast) version of Macbeth at the Maya Theatre in Los Angeles. Mother of actress Dorothy Dandridge

1902 – Enrico Caruso makes recordings of ten arias for the Gramophone Company, first famous performer to make a record

1902 – Isabel Bishop born, artist, known for painting young, generally lower-middle class office workers as subjects, focus of retrospective at Whitney Museum of American Art (1975); honored with 1979 Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award

The Kid (left), and Reading Together – by Isabel Bishop

1903 – Immigration Act of 1903, a major overhaul of  U.S. immigration policy, expands excludable classes of immigrants to include anarchists, prostitutes, epileptics, any who’d “been insane within five years,” and any who had two or more “attacks of insanity”; deportation within two years of arrival of “any alien who becomes a public charge by reason of lunacy, idiocy, or epilepsy,” unless they could clearly demonstrate the condition began after arrival; also imposes $2 head tax per immigrant

1904 – Wilhelm II of Germany makes the first recording of a political document with Thomas Edison’s cylinder

1905 – Russian Tsar Nicolas II agrees to the creation of an elected assembly

1908 – After a dozen violent incidents sparked by a severe economic crisis and high unemployment, the U.S. government declares open war on anarchists; President Theodore Roosevelt states ‘compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance’

1910 – J.D. Rockefeller Jr. announces his withdrawal from business to administer his father’s fortune for an “uplift in humanity”; he appeals to Congress for the incorporation of the Rockefeller Foundation ‘to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world’; the foundation initially focuses on public health and medical education; by the 1920s, it is the largest philanthropic enterprise in the world. It should be noted that none of its millions of dollars were used to help the workers or their families who had been exploited, beaten by thugs, or killed during the rapacious acquisition of their fortune by the Rockefellers

1910 – In New York, Robert Forest founds the National Housing Association to fight deteriorating urban living conditions

1911 – Jean Harlow born as Harlean Carpenter, American film star and sex symbol; dubbed the “Blonde Bombshell” for her “platinum” blonde hair. Her first major appearance was in Hell’s Angels in 1930, but her big break ironically came in Red-Headed Woman in 1932, which made her a major star, followed by Red Dust; Dinner at Eight; Reckless and Suzy. She died at age 26 in 1937 during the filming of Saratoga, of complications from kidney failure

1913 – Margaret Bonds born, African American pianist and composer, one of the first black composers to gain recognition in the U.S.; she was member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, and founded the Margaret Bonds Chamber Society, black musicians group performing works by classical black composers; best known for her frequent collaboration with poet Langston Hughes, including her voice and piano setting of The Negro Speaks of Rivers. She wrote Montgomery Variations for orchestra, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr and the 1965 Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery

1913 – The Suffrage Procession, led by Inez Millholland on a white horse, the first suffragist parade in Washington DC. Organized by suffrage strategist Alice Paul and her committee, which includes Lucy Burns, for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Thousands of suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration “. . . in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded,” the official program said

1917 – Sameera Moussa born, pioneering Egyptian nuclear scientist; her work makes medical use of nuclear technology affordable; organizer of the Atomic Energy for Peace Conference

1918 – The Treaty of Brest Litovsky is signed by Germany, Austria and Russia; it ends Russia’s participation in WWI

1919 – The Chicago Music Association is founded to provide a performance venue for classically trained black musicians who are denied access to major concert halls and opera houses throughout the country. Later that year, the National Association of Negro Musicians is formed, with CMA as its first branch

1920 – Ronald Searle born, English satirical cartoonist, artist and illustrator; creator of St. Trinian’s, a comic strip about a girls’ boarding school which led to a popular series of British comedy films in the 1950s

1922 – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned is published

1923 – The first issue of Time magazine is published; founded by Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce

1926 – James Merrill born, American poet; winner of 1977 Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection Divine Comedies

1928 – Rubén Salazar born in Mexico, Mexican-American journalist and civil rights activist; he was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times (1959-1970); in August, 1970, he was covering the National Chicano Moratorium March, organized to protest the Vietnam War because a disproportionate number of Mexican-Americans were serving and dying in the U.S. Army there. After the marchers arrived at the concluding rally, the Los Angeles Country Sheriff’s Department used tear gas to break it up, causing panic and rioting. Salvazar was resting after the march in a nearby bar when he was killed by a tear gas round fired by a sheriff’s deputy which broke the window and hit him in the head. The round was the wrong kind for the situation, one designed for barricades, not the kind designed for firing directly into crowds

1939 – In Bombay, Gandhi begins a fast to protest autocratic rule in India

1939 – The longest cricket test match in history is played between South Africa and England in Durban. The game lasted for nine days – March 3 to March 14, and ended in a draw because the English players had to leave to catch their boat back to Britain

1941 – Moscow denounces Axis rule in Bulgaria

1943 – Myra Sadker born, American educator and researcher, pioneer in research that documented gender bias in America’s schools, sex-based roles in children’s literature, and wrote papers and books to challenge sexism in educating girls because it short-changes their ambitions; co-author of Sexism in School and Society, and Failing at Fairness

1945 – During World War II, Finland declares war on the Axis powers

1945 – Hattie Winston born, African American actress and singer, best known for her role as Valerie the Librarian on the PBS children’s series, The Electric Company. She served as national co-chair for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) Equal Employment Opportunities Committee. In 1998, she donated the Hattie Winston African American Scripts and Screenplays Collection to the University of Louisville in Kentucky. In 2006, she was one of the readers of “Slave Narratives: A Mighty, Mighty People” for Stories On Stage, a non-profit performing arts organization

1947 – Jennifer Warnes born, American singer-songwriter, record producer and arranger; after touring as a singer with Leonard Cohen’s band in the 1970s, she became a vocal arranger and guest artist for over half a dozen of his albums

Jennifer Warnes with Leonard Cohen

1949 – Bonnie J. Dunbar born, American engineer, academic, worked for NASA (1978-2005), and served as an astronaut on five missions beginning in 1985; honored with the NASA Superior Accomplishment Medal in 1997; president and CEO of The Museum of Flight (2005-2010); head of the University of Houston’s STEM Center (2013-2015); professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University since 2016

1952 – In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds New York’s Feinberg Law that bans Communist teachers in the U.S.; it remains in force until Keyishian v. Board of Regents, another Supreme Court decision in 1967, declares most of its provisions unconstitutional

1962 – Jackie Joyner-Kersee born, one of the world’s greatest female athletes, records in the long jump (1988) and the heptathlon (1986), won 3 gold, 1 silver, and 2 bronze medals in 4 Olympic games

1969 – Apollo 9 is launched by NASA to test a lunar module

1971 – The South African Broadcasting Corporation lifts its ban on the Beatles, after the group had broken up. The ban began in August 1966 after John Lennon’s facetious comment that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” John Lennon’ solo records remained banned

1972 – NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft is launched

1973 – Japan announces its first defense plan since WWII

1976 – Kampamba Mulenga Chilumba born, Zambian Patriotic Front politician; Member of Parliament for Kalulushi since 2016; served as Minister of Fisheries and Livestock (2018), and as Minister of Information and Broadcasting (2016) 

1980 – The USS Nautilus (SSN-571), launched in 1954 as world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine, is decommissioned

1987 – U.S. House of Representatives rejects a package of $30 million in non-lethal aid for the Nicaraguan Contras

1991 – In California, Rodney King is severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers, captured on amateur video

1994 – The Mexican government reaches a peace agreement with the Chiapas rebels

1995 – As a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Somalia ends, several gunmen are killed in Mogadishu by U.S. Marines overseeing the pull-out of the peacekeepers

1998 – A two-day nationwide strike begins, shutting down most of Zimbabwe’s economy. The government threatens to punish those who encouraged the protest, and to “delegalize” the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). In 1999, Morgan Tsvangirai emerges as an opposition leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)

2002 – Voters in Switzerland approve joining the United Nations, abandoning almost 200 years of formal neutrality

2005 – Margaret Wilson is elected as Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives, beginning a period lasting until August 23, 2006 where all the highest political offices, including Elizabeth II as Head of State, are occupied by women, making New Zealand the first country with all women in positions of highest power

2007 – World Hearing Day * is designated by WHO (World Health Organization) at the first International Conference on Prevention and Rehabilitation of Hearing Impairment, which takes place in Beijing China, to promote hearing care and research worldwide

2014 – The UN General Assembly launches the first World Wildlife Day *

2016 – Honduran indigenous leader Berta Cáceres was murdered. A member of her group, the Indian Council of People’s Organizations of Honduras, said at least two assailants broke into her house and shot her. The Lenca Indian activist won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize for her role in fighting a dam project on the Gualcarque River, considered sacred by the Lencas. She had reported receiving death threats from landowners, police, and soldiers, because of her activism 

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