April 10th is

Encourage a Young Writer Day *

ASPCA Day *

Farm Animals Day *

Golfer’s Day *

National Safety Pin Day *

International Siblings Day *

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MORE! Dolores Huerta, Thomas Kgope and Rachel Corrie, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity – Good Friday, or Holy Friday, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at Calvary

Azerbaijan –
Day of the Builder

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On This Day in HISTORY

837 – Halley’s Comet makes its closest approach to Earth: 3.2 million miles, or 5.1 million kilometres

1407 – Deshin Shekpa, Fifth Karmapa Lama and head of the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism, visits the Ming dynasty capital at Nanjing. He is awarded the title “Great treasure Prince of Dharma”

1515 – Venice, Italy, adds restrictions to Jewish rights and residency, prior to creating the first Jewish ghetto in 1516

Detail of panorama of Venice in the 1500s

1525 – Albrecht von Preussen, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, assumes the title Duke of Prussia, marking its beginnings as a Protestant state

1710 – The Statute of Anne, also called the Copyright Act 1710, the first law regulating copyright by the government and courts rather than by private parties, comes into force in Great Britain. The previous Licensing of the Press Act 1662 gave the power to enforce restrictions on copying to the Stationers’ Company, a guild of printers given the exclusive power to print, and the responsibility to censor literary works. Public protest of censorship caused Parliament not to renew the Licensing Act, and the Stationers decided to seek an alliance with the authors rather than the publishers in getting a new bill passed. The Copyright Act was granted Royal Assent by Queen Anne, and prescribed a copyright term of 14 years, with a provision for renewal for a similar term, during which only the author and the printers to whom they chose to license their works could publish the author’s creations. Following this, the work’s copyright would expire, with the material falling into the public domain. Despite a period of instability known as the ‘Battle of the Booksellers’ when the initial copyright terms under the Statute began to expire, the Statute of Anne remained in force until the Copyright Act 1842 replaced it. It was the first law to protect an author’s rights rather than the publishers

1766 – Sir John Leslie born, Scottish physicist and mathematician, first to artificially create ice, using an air pump apparatus

1788 – William Hazlett born, English author, essayist, social commentator and philosopher; considered one of the greatest essayists in the English language

1815 – Mount Tambora, a volcano on Sumbawa, one of the Indonesian Islands, begins a 3-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately kills 71,000 people, and affects the global climate of Earth for the next two years

1821 – Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is blamed by Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II for his inability to suppress the uprising that became the Greek War of Independence. Gregory V had officially condemned the Greek revolutionary activities, attempting to protect the Greeks of Constantinople from Ottoman Turkish reprisals. Then the Greeks scored several military successes in the Peloponnese against Ottoman forces. On Easter Sunday, by order of the Sultan, Gregory was taken out of the Patriarchal Cathedral, still in full Patriarchal vestments, and hanged from the main gate of the Patriarchate, his body left for two days on the gate, and then it was thrown into the Bosphorus. This was immediately followed by a massacre of the Greek population in Constantinople

1827 – Lew Wallace born, American author; known for Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ

1829 – William Booth born, English evangelist preacher, social reformer and founder of the Salvation Army

1847 – Joseph Pulitzer born, American newspaper publisher, endows fund for annual writing prizes

1849 – International Safety Pin Day * – Walter Hunt patents the safety pin (he wasn’t the first with the idea, but was first to patent)

1858 – In London, the original ‘Great Bell’ aka ‘Big Ben’ of the Westminster Clock Tower, first cast in 1856, is melted down and recast after badly cracking; the new bell also cracks, but it was a small crack, so eventually it is put back up an eighth of a turn away from its original position so the hammer would fall on an uncracked section, and it has been in service ever since

1864 – Unpaid volunteer Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the first woman surgeon of the Union Army, is captured by Confederate troops after crossing enemy lines to treat the wounded, and arrested as a spy. She was working with a Confederate doctor performing an amputation at the time. Sent to the notorious Castle Thunder Prison for political prisoners and spies, the feminist and ardent adherent to rational dress for women, refused to wear the clothes provided as “more becoming of her sex” instead of her work clothes, made over from a man’s shirt and trousers (She often replied to criticism, “I don’t wear men’s clothes, I wear my own clothes.”) Walker was released in a prisoner exchange for a Confederate doctor in August, 1864. After the war, Walker was awarded a disability pension for partial muscular atrophy suffered while she was imprisoned by the enemy, and Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and George Henry Thomas recommended her for the Medal of Honor, which originally was not strictly a military honor. On November 11, 1865, President Andrew Johnson signed the bill awarding her the medal, the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor. It was stricken from the rolls in 1917, and she was ordered to surrender it, but she wore it until her death in 1919, and President Jimmy Carter restored her medal posthumously in 1977

1864 – Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg is proclaimed Emperor of Mexico during the French intervention in Mexico

1866 – ASPCA Day * – American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals founded in NYC by diplomat and philanthropist Henry Bergh; horrified by seeing horses beaten by their drivers while serving as acting vice-consul at the American legation at St. Petersburg, upon returning home, he begins to lobby on behalf of “these mute servants of mankind “and convinces the New York State Legislature to charter incorporation of the ASPCA, and 9 days later, to pass the first effective anti-cruelty law in the U.S., allowing the ASPCA to investigate complaints of animal cruelty and make arrests

1867 – George William Russell born, Irish author, poet and painter; pen name Æ; he was also an Irish nationalist and yet he was a pacifist, and a believer in theosophy

“Frolic” is more cheerful than many of Russell’s other poems: 

1868 – At Arogee in Abyssinia, British and Indian forces defeat an army of Emperor Tewodros II (reign: 1855-1868). This immediately segued into the Battle of Magdala, a crushing defeat for Tewodros, who committed suicide rather than be captured

1870 – Vladimir Lenin born, Russian Communist, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution; head of state under various titles (1917-1924) as Russia evolved into the Soviet Union, a one-party socialist state under the Communist Party

1880 – Frances Perkins born, sociologist, worker-rights and industrial safety advocate; the first woman appointed to U.S. cabinet, by Franklin Roosevelt, as Secretary of Labor (1933-1945)

1894 – G.W. Murray patents a Furrow Opener/Stalk Knocker, and a Cultivator/Marker

1903 – Clare Boothe Luce born, American politician, U.S. Ambassador to Italy and Brazil; U.S. Congress Representative (Republican-Connecticut, 1943-1947); recipient of  the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983

1903 – Clare Turlay Newberry, American children’s book author and illustrator; four of her books were named Caldecott Honor Books; Barkis, Marshmallow, April’s Kittens and T-Bone the Babysitter

Malo, by Clare Turlay Newberry

1910 – Margaret Clapp born, American author and scholar, president of Wellesley College; won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow

1916 – Golfer’s Day * – In January, Department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker invites golf professionals and leading amateurs to a luncheon at the Taplow club in New York City’s Martinique Hotel to discuss forming a golf association; an organizing committee is chosen, and on April 10, the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) of America is founded with 35 charter members

1917 – Robert Burns Woodward born, American organic chemist; noted for synthesis of vitamin B12; won the 1965 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

1925 – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is published

1927 – George Antheil presents a scaled-down version of his Ballet Mécanique at NYC’s Carnegie Hall, the first symphonic work using an airplane propeller and other mechanical devices not normally associated with ballet

1930 – Dolores Huerta born, American labor, civil rights and women’s rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers with César Chávez; Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights and Presidential Medal of Freedom; became the founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation in 2002, to create opportunities for community leadership and grassroots campaigns; Huerta was the first Latina to be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993

1933 – Helen McElhone born, Scottish politician, Member of Parliament for Glasgow’s Queen’s Park; Vice-Chair of Finance Committee for Strathclyde Regional Council; on Scottish Labour Party Candidate Vetting Panel

1934 – David Halberstam born, American journalist and historian; 1964 Pulitzer for International Reporting; The Best and the Brightest

1937 – Bella Akhmadulina born, Russian poet, author and translator; 1994 Pushkin Prize; Casket and Key, Izbrannoye (Selected Verse)

1940 – Pat Steir born, American painter and printmaker

1941 – Paul Theroux born, American travel writer and novelist; The Mosquito Coast

1944 – Synthetic quinine was made for the first time at Harvard University

1954 – Anne Lamott born, American novelist, non-fiction writer and progressive political activist/public speaker; Hard Laughter, her first novel was written for her father, writer Kenneth Lamott, after his diagnosis of brain cancer; her non-fiction book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, inspired the title of Freida Lee Mock’s documentary Bird by Bird with Annie: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott

1954 – Thomas Kgope born, South African artist, who was working as an electrician when artist Norman Catherine saw Kgope’s interest in what he was working on, and gave Kgope some materials and showed him basic art techniques

1956 – Nat King Cole is attacked by a four white Klansmen who jump on the stage during his performance for an all-white audience in Birmingham Alabama; his back is injured, so he is unable to finish the show, or to sing at the second performance scheduled for an all-black audience in the segregated city, although he appeared briefly to apologize to the audience. The white audience at the first show called out against the attackers while the British Ted Heath Band gamely played “God Save the Queen” to try to settle things down.  The attackers are arrested at the scene and convicted of assault and battery. Nat King Cole was born in Alabama

1956 – Dame Carol V. Robinson born, British chemist, noted for research in chemical biology; since 2009, Royal Society Research Professor at the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford; from 2001 to 2009, Professor of Mass Spectrometry at the Department of Chemistry of Cambridge; has worked on protein folding, the three-dimensional  structure of proteins, ribosomes, molecular chaperones and membrane proteins; in 2004, honored with both a Royal Society Fellowship and the Rosalind Franklin Award; in 2010, received the Davy Medal “for her ground-breaking and novel use of mass spectrometry for the characterisation of large protein complexes”

1957 – Rosemary Hill born, British historian, author and biographer; best-known for God’s Architect, a biography of Augustus Pugin, which won multiple awards, including the Wolfson History Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Stonehenge,  and co-author with Angela Carter of Unicorn: The Poetry of Angela Carter

1958 – Bobby Darin records “Splish Splash”

1961 – Carole Goble born, British computer scientist and information systems expert; Professor of Computer Science at the University of Manchester since 1985, and appointed to a chair in 2000. Known for myGrid, BioCatalogue, my Experiment, and Semantic Grid. Co-leads the Information Management Group with Norman Paton. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the British Computer Society, and an appointee to the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

1963 – Doris Leuthard born, Swiss Christian Democratic People’s Party politician; third woman to be elected President of the Swiss Confederation by the Federal Assembly, a position with a one-year term (for 2010 and 2017); Vice President of Switzerland (2016-2017 and 2009); Minister of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (2010-2018); Minister of Economic Affairs (2006-2010); fifth woman to be a Member of the Swiss Federal Council (2006-2018)

1967 – Frank and Nancy Sinatra become the first father-daughter duo to hit #1 on Billboard’s pop chart with “Somethin’ Stupid”

1971 – John Denver makes his first appearance on the charts with “Take Me Home Country Roads”

1972 – Isaac Hayes wins an Oscar for Best Original Song for “Shaft”

1977 – Stephanie Sheh born, also uses the alias Jennifer Sekiguchi, American ADR writer, producer, director and voice actress in Anime, cartoons, video games and films. In 2011, she formed the fundraising organization We Heart Japan in response to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami

1979 – Rachel Corrie born, American peace activist and diarist; member of the International Solidarity Movement. In 2003, she was killed in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, by an Israel Defense Forces armored bulldozer while trying to block the demolition of a Palestinian house. An Israeli investigation of her death concluded the driver of the bulldozer could not see her, so her death was an accident; other members of the International Solidarity Movement who were there say he ran over her deliberately. In 2005, her parents filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Israel, charging Israel with not conducting a full and credible investigation into the case and with responsibility for her death, asking a symbolic one U.S. dollar in damages. An Israeli court rejected their suit in 2012, upholding the findings of the 2003 military investigation. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were critical of the court’s ruling. Her writings and emails to her parents were published in 2008 as a book, Let Me Stand Alone

1982 – Saturday Night Live asks viewers to vote: boil ‘Larry the Lobster’ or set him free; the audience votes to free him

1995 – New York ban on smoking in restaurants with more than 35 seats goes into effect

1997 – National Sibling Day * is founded by Claudia Evart in honor of her brother and sister, who both died young, and to celebrate the special bond between siblings; her Siblings Foundation becomes a non-profit organization in 1999

1998 – Negotiators in Northern Ireland reach a landmark settlement that calls for Protestants and Catholics to share power; referendum vote scheduled for May

2001 – The Netherlands legalize mercy killings and assisted suicide for patients with unbearable, terminal illness

2005 – National Farm Animals Day * is launched by Animal Expert and vegetarian Colleen Paige, to raise awareness of the mistreatment of animals raised for slaughter

2012? (year uncertain) – Encourage a Young Writer Day * is part of National Library Week, sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA)

2017 – A Federal judge in Texas ruled that Republican lawmakers designed the state’s strict voter ID law to discriminate against Democratic-leaning minority voters. It was the second time U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos had ruled against the law. Two years ago, she said the voter ID law was similar to a “poll tax” intended to suppress the minority vote. An appeals court had asked Gonzalez Ramos to take another look at her original ruling, and she said nothing had changed. Under the law, voters have to show one of seven forms of identification while at the polls. Concealed handgun licenses are on the approved ID list, while college student IDs are not. The state was forced to weaken the law for the 2016 elections

U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos

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