March 10th is

International Bagpipe Day *

Harriet Tubman Day *

Landline Telephone Day

Mario (Mar.10) Day

Pack Your Lunch Day

U.S. Paper Money Day *

Women & Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

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MORE! Kate Sheppard, Hallie Brown and Harriet Tubman, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Australia – Port Noarlunga:
Umbrella Festival

Azerbaijan – Theatre Day

Bulgaria –
Holocaust Remembrance Day

Canada – Montreal:
Computer Animation Festival

Finland – Oulu: Oulu Music Festival

Japan – Shiogama: Hote Matsuri
(Shinto Shrine Spring Festival)

Kenya – Nairobi: Reggae Festival

Mexico – Bucerías: Banderas Bay Festival

Nigeria – Lagos:
Eko International Film Festival

Peru – Barranco: Secret Food Tour

Tibet – Tibetan Uprising Day

United Kingdom – Cheltenham:
Cheltenham Festival (horse racing)

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On This Day in HISTORY

241 BC – The Roman fleet sinks 50 Carthaginian ships in the Battle of Aegis, off the western coast of Sicily, the final naval battle of the First Punic War

947 – Liu Zhiyuan declares himself Emperor Gaizu (947-948), founding the very brief Later Han dynasty, and establishing Bian as his capital (present-day Kaifeng)

1607 – Susenyos I, at the Battle of Gol in southern Gojjam (now part of northwestern Ethiopia), defeats Yaqob, nəgusä nägäst (hereditary ruler) of Ethiopia, to solidify his claim to the throne, reigning as Emperor until 1632

Partially restored palace of Susenyos I

1629 – Charles I of England dissolves Parliament, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule

1656 – In the American colony of Virginia, suffrage is extended to all free men regardless of their religion (from 1619 to through the 1640s, when laborers were in very short supply and demand for workers kept growing, all adult males could vote; but as labor needs were fulfilled, the disenfranchisement began with indentured servants, and kept shrinking, down to tax-paying free men who had been residents for a certain length of time – and bringing in African slaves to replace white workers expedited limiting the class of men entitled to vote to white male residents aged 21+ who were land, business and/or house owners, and ‘mainstream’ Protestants – Catholics and Jews were especially targeted for exclusion – excluding non-property owners was excused by claims that the votes of non-property owners would be easily bought

1772 – Friedrich von Schlegel born, German writer and critic, originator of many of the philosophical ideas that inspire the early German  Romantic movement

1785 – Thomas Jefferson becomes American minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin

1792 – John Stone patents the pile driver

1804 – Formal ceremonies transferring the Louisiana Purchase from France to the U.S. take place in St. Louis

1816 – Argentine War of Independence, Cruce de los Andes (Crossing of the Andes), Action of Juncalito: a group of Spanish Royalist scouts are captured by Argentinian Mounted Grenadiers led by José Félix Aldao

1841 – Ina Coolbrith born, American poet, author and librarian; the first Poet Laureate of the state of California

1844 – Marie Euphrosyne Spartali born, daughter of a Greek merchant family living in Britain, notable Pre-Raphaelite painter; when she married an American journalist, they traveled frequently to Florence and Rome, and to America

Girl Playing Music, by Marie Euphrosyne Spartali

1847 – Kate Sheppard born in Britain, co-founder in 1885 of New Zealand’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and from 1887, leader of the country’s woman suffrage movement. After several unsuccessful attempts to pass suffrage bills, in 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world where women won the vote. In 1896, she was a founder and first president of the National Council of Women, campaigning for women’s right to run for Parliament, their right to divorce, to guardianship of their children, and she spoke in favor of contraception. Kate Sheppard is depicted on New Zealand’s ten-dollar note, and a Sheppard Memorial was unveiled in Christchurch on the 100^th anniversary of the passage of New Zealand’s women’s suffrage bill

1848 – The U.S. Senate ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war with Mexico

1849 – Abraham Lincoln applies for a patent for a device lifting vessels over shoals by means of inflated cylinders

1850 – Hallie Quinn Brown, African-American educator, author and civil rights activist for women and black Americans, founder of the Colored Woman’s League of Washington, D.C. which merges with the National Association of Colored Women in 1894; first woman to earn a Master of Science degree from Wilberforce University; dean of Allen University in South Carolina (1885-1887) and principal under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute (1892-1893), then became a professor at Wilberforce in 1893; a noted orator, she often traveled with “The Wilberforce Grand Concert Company” fundraising for the school

1858 – Henry W. Fowler born, English lexicographer and philologist;  worked on the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and authored A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

1862 – U.S. Paper Money Day * – The U.S. government issues the first Legal Tender paper currency not backed by silver or gold deposits

1862 One Dollar bill

1867 – Lillian D. Wald born, the first public health nurse in the U.S., social worker, suffragist, humanitarian, author, human rights and women’s rights activist. She started a visiting nurse service in 1893, and the demand became so great that she moved the service to the Henry Street Settlement house in New York City in 1895, renaming it the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service. She became known as the “Angel of Henry Street.” She also worked tirelessly opposing political and social corruption, and was a leader in the campaigns for revision of child labor laws, improved housing conditions in tenement districts, enactment of pure food laws, education for the mentally handicapped, and passage of enlightened immigration regulations. Wald was involved in the founding of the NAACP and the Women’s Trade Union League. After Wald died at age 73 in 1940, the nursing service continued to expand. In 1944, it became the Visiting Nurse Service of New York

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call when he speaks the words “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you”

1876 – Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington born, American sculptor, noted for animal sculptures, especially horses, first woman artist elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters

El Cid by Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington

1880 – The Salvation Army * arrives in America: Commissioner George Scott Railton and seven women officers kneel on the dockside at Battery Park in New York City to give thanks for their safe journey

1881 – Jessie Boswell born, English post-impressionist painter and designer who spent most of her working life in Italy, and became an Italian citizen

Biella from my window, by Jessie Boswell (1943)

1885 – Tamara Karsavina born, Russian prima ballerina, a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and later of the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev

The Firebird – 1912: Tamara Karsavina and Michel Fokine

1893 – New Mexico State University cancels its first graduation ceremony because the only graduate was robbed and killed the night before

1898 –  Josephine Groves Holloway born, organization executive, college registrar, social worker; founded the first unofficial Girl Scout troop for African American girls (1924), then worked for two decades to have her troops recognized by the Nashville Girl Scout Council in 1942

1902 – U.S. Attorney General Philander Knox announces that a suit is being brought against Morgan and Harriman’s Northern Securities Company, to enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act; Northern Securities initial loss in court is upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 14, 1904

1903 – Clare Boothe Luce born, American politician, writer and playwright; Republican representative from Connecticut in the U.S. House of Representatives (1943-1947); US Ambassador to Brazil (1959) and Italy (1953-1956); noted for the play, The Women, which has an all-woman cast

1903 – Bix Beiderbecke born, American jazz cornetist and composer

1910 – Slavery is abolished in China

1912 – China becomes a republic after the overthrow of the Manchu Ch’ing Dynasty

1914 – At London’s National Gallery, suffragette Mary Richardson slashes Diego Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus with a meat cleaver: “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas. Mrs. Pankhurst seeks to procure justice for womanhood, and for this she is being slowly murdered by a Government of Iscariot politicians.” Emmeline Pankhurst and other members of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), while serving sentences for their activities, go on hunger strikes to protest the horrible conditions at Holloway Prison; the government begins violent force-feedings to prevent them from dying as martyrs

1924 – In Radice v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a New York statute “prohibiting employment of women in restaurants in large cities (cities of the first and second class) between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. held not an arbitrary and undue interference with the liberty of contract of the women and their employers, but justifiable as a health measure” – in spite of being unable to say  “whether this kind of work is so substantially and especially detrimental to the health and welfare of women” or not; held not to deny equal protection under the law “either (a) because it applies only to first and second class cities, or (b) because it does not apply to women employed in restaurants as singers and performers, to attendants in ladies’ cloak rooms and parlors and those employed in hotel dining rooms and kitchens, or in lunch rooms or restaurants conducted by employers solely for the benefit of their employees” – “To be violative of the Equal Protection Clause, the inequality produced by a statute must be actually and palpably unreasonable and arbitrary” 

1924 – Judith B. Jones born, American cookbook author, and book editor at Alfred A. Knopf, notable for rescuing The Diary of Anne Frank from the reject pile, and championing Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking; retired as a senior editor and vice president at Knopf

1927 – Prussia lifts its ban on Nazis, allowing Adolf Hitler to speak in public

1932 – Marcia Field Falkender born, Baroness Falkender (1974), British Labour politician and writer; started as private secretary to Harold Wilson (1956-1964), became his political secretary and head of the political office when Wilson became leader of the Labour party and during his years as Prime Minister (1964-1970 and 1974-1976); columnist for the Mail on Sunday (1983-1988); author of Inside Number 10, and Downing Street in Perspective

1933 – Nevada becomes the first U.S. state to regulate drugs

1933 – Elizabeth Azcona Cranwell born, Argentine poet, author, translator, literary critic for La Nación newspaper

1940 – W2XBS-TV in New York City aired the first televised opera as it presented scenes from I Pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo

1944 – Gail North-Saunders born, Bahamian historian, archivist, and author; established the Bahamian National Archives and was its first director (1971-2004); Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People

1945 – Katherine Houghton born, American actress and playwright; thought best known for her role in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Houghton has written eleven plays which have been produced, and the book for the musical Bookends

1947 – Kim Campbell born, Canadian Progressive Conservative politician; became leader of her  party in 1993, and was appointed by the Governor-General as the first woman and first British Columbian to be Prime Minister of Canada (1993), but the Progressive Conservatives were swept from power by a Liberal landslide that October. Her autobiography, Time and Chance, was a bestseller in Canada. In 1996, she became the Canadian consul general to Los Angeles, until 2000. Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders (1999-2003);President of the International Women’s Forum (2003-2005)

1949 – Barbara Corcoran born, American businesswoman, investor, syndicated columnist and author; co-founder of The Corcoran-Simoné, a real estate business (1973-1980), then formed her own firm, The Corcoran Group, and began publishing The Corcoran Report, covering real estate trends in New York City. In 2001, Che sold her business to NRT Inc. for $66 million. Columnist for More Magazine, The Daily Review and Redbook; author of Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business

1959 – Sweet Bird of Youth, the play by Tennessee Williams, opens at NYC’s Martin Beck Theatre, directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page, who wins a Tony Award for Best Actress

1961 – Laurel Salton Clark born, American physician, U.S. Navy Captain, NASA astronaut; died, Space Shuttle Columbia disaster; posthumously awarded Space Medal of Honor

1965 – The movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “The Sound of Music” premieres in Los Angeles, California

1965 – Walter Matthau and Art Carney open on Broadway in The Odd Coupleby Neil Simon, directed by Mike Nichols; it is nominated for Best Play, and wins Tonys for Best Actor (Matthau), Best Author, Best Director and Best Scenic Design

1966 – France withdraws from NATO’s military command to protest U.S. dominance of the alliance and asks NATO to move its headquarters from Paris

1969 – James Earl Ray pleads guilty in Memphis TN, to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1971 – U.S. Senate approves an amendment to lower the voting age to 18

1981 – U.S. Postal Service announces a first class postage increase from 15 to 18 cents

1982 – The U.S. bans Libyan oil imports for their continued support of terrorism

1983 – Janet Mock born, American author, television producer and host of POPular!, and transgender rights activist; her debut book, Redefining Realness, was a New York Times bestseller

1986 – The Wrigley Company raises the price of a seven-stick pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum from a quarter to 30 cents

1986 – The Bagpipe Society is formed in Britain, then in 2012 sponsors an International Piping Conference and launches the first International Bagpipe Day * encouraging all pipers to go out on March 10^th at noon local time, play their pipes, then post a photo or video on the Society’s Facebook page

1987 – The Vatican condemns surrogate parenting as well as test-tube babies and artificial insemination

1990 – By Senate Joint Resolution 257, Harriet Tubman Day * is proclaimed on the anniversary of her death, March 10, 1913

1991 – “Phase Echo” begins, the operation to withdraw 540,000 U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region

1993 – Dr. David Gunn was shot to death during an anti-abortion protest outside the Pensacola Women’s Medical Services clinic. The gunman ambushed Dr. Gunn, shooting him three times in the back with a shotgun, shouting “Don’t kill any more babies.” Death threats, vandalism, and arson at abortion clinics increased dramatically during the 1990s; but while new laws were passed to protect abortion clinics, and pro-choice advocates successfully sued anti-abortion groups under existing racketeering laws, the number of doctors providing abortion services plummeted

1994 – White House officials begin testifying before a federal grand jury about the Whitewater controversy, over the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and their associates Jim and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed business venture in the 1970s-1980s. Laura Jean Lewis, an investigator  for Resolution Trust Corporation, thinks Whitewater might be connected to the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, owned by the McDougals, and submits a criminal referral to the FBI, naming the Clintons as witnesses in  the Madison case. Little Rock U.S. Attorney Charles A. Banks and the FBI determine that the referral lacks merit, but Lewis won’t back off. Eventually, though the U.S Attorney and the FBI repeatedly find no merit in her additional referrals, she is called to testify before the Senate Whitewater Committee in 1995, which takes over 10,000 pages of testimony, and 35,000 pages of depositions from almost 250 people, resulting in an 800 page report, showing they found insufficient evidence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons. Lewis, however, is suspected of illegally recording a conversation with a senior government attorney during the investigation, and she is investigated for various wrongdoings, including misuse and mishandling of classified material, secretly recording conversations with her colleagues, and use of government equipment for personal gain. In 2003, while George W. Bush is Commander-in-Chief, Lewis is appointed as chief of staff of the Pentagon Inspector General’s Office – where she is curiously unenthusiastic about investigating allegations concerning Halliburton’s many government contracts and practices, the company of which Vice President Dick Cheney is the former CEO

1997 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuts in television

1998 – Eric Clapton releases his album Pilgrim

2002 – The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon informed the U.S. Congress in January that it is making contingency plans for the possible use of nuclear weapons against countries that threaten the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, including Iraq and North Korea

2010 – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Israel to promote U.S.-backed peace talks just as the Israeli government inveils plans for new settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, to provide over 1,600 new homes in Rabat Shlomo. Biden releases a statement condemning the plan: “The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel.” Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev responds “from the point of view of Israel, Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital and will remain as such.”  

2013 – The Israeli government approves 1,500 more housing units for the Ramat Shlomo settlement in east Jerusalem. The decision comes just days after the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners. Israeli officials say the new units are part of a deal with the United States and the Palestinians. The Palestinians deny any such agreement

2014 – The U.S. Senate unanimously approved a bill that would change the way the military handles sexual assault cases. The legislation would remove the “good soldier defense” that has cast doubt on past criminal allegations, but, unlike a rival bill that failed last week, it would leave decisions on rape prosecutions to military commanders. Congress and the Pentagon have pledged to address the persistent problem of rape in the military. In related news, a military judge halted the court-martial of Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair to look into possible Pentagon interference in the rape trial. Colonel James Pohl, the presiding judge, dismissed the jury to consider whether Army officials who rejected Sinclair’s plea offer had been unduly influenced, after emails surfaced in which a senior military lawyer, writing to Fort Bragg judicial officials, questioned the accuser’s credibility

2016 – Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, and Macedonia close their borders to new migrants, effectively shutting off a route that more than one million people have used to get from Syria and other trouble spots to Western Europe. The move had the implicit support of the European Union

Syrian refugees in Greece blocked at the Macedonian border

2017 – Impeachment in 2016 of South Korean President Park Geub-hye for influence peddling by her top aide is upheld by the nation’s Constitutional Court

2019 – U.S. Federal authorities arrested more domestic terror suspects in 2018 than people inspired by or linked to international terror groups, The Washington Post reported, citing the newspaper’s review of internal FBI figures. In 2018, 120 domestic terrorism suspects were arrested, compared to 100 people linked to international groups such as the Islamic State or al Qaeda. The figures illustrate why officials and politicians debate how to focus U.S. national security resources. The debate intensified after the arrest last month of Coast Guard Lt. Christopher P. Hasson, 49, an alleged white nationalist inspired by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011

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