April 29th is

‘Peace’ Rose Day *

Shrimp Scampi Day

Zipper Day *

International Dance Day *

Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare *
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MORE! C.P. Cavafy, Maya Deren and Francis Meilland, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Italy – Catherine of Siena
Feast Day (a patron saint of Italy)

Japan – Shōwa Day
(birth of Hirohito, Emperor Showa)

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On This Day in HISTORY

1289 – Al Mansur Qala’un, Sultan of Egypt, captures ancient Tripoli, (site now in modern-day Lebanon) from the Crusader States after a siege beginning in early March, then burns it to the ground, killing all but 1200 women and children, sent to Alexandria as slaves

1429 – French soldiers led by Joan d’Arc relieve the Siege of Orléans, surrounded by the British since the previous October

1483 – Gran Canaria, largest of the Canary Islands, is conquered by the Kingdom of Castile

1521 – Swedish troops under Gustav Vasa defeat Danish forces under Didrik Slagheck  in the Battle of Västerås and capture the city of Västerås The Danes holding the castle, however, refuse to surrender to the Swedes, until after enduring a nine-month siege

1745 – Oliver Ellsworth born, American jurist and politician; chief author of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which establishes the federal judiciary of the United States

1770 – James Cook and his crew make their first landfall on the mainland of the Australian continent; Cook originally christens the area “Stingray Bay” but later crossed that out and names it “Botany Bay”

Botany Bay by Charles Gore, 1789

1783 – David Cox born, English landscape painter, a leading member of the Birmingham School of artists, and one of the precursors of Impressionism

1813 – Rubber is patented by J.F. Hummel

1847 – Joachim Andersen born, Danish flautist, composer, conductor, and co-founder of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

1854 – Henri Poincare born, French mathematician, astronomer, and scientific philosopher

1858 – Georgia Hopley born, American journalist, editor, lecturer and temperance advocate; first woman reporter in Columbus, Ohio; by 1893, she was editor and owner of the Columbus School Journal.  She was an active member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1900, she was appointed as Ohio’s representative at the Paris Exposition, where she also was a correspondent for the Associated Press. Hopley was appointed in 1901 as a member representing Ohio on the Board of Women Managers of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo NY, and later  in 1901 appointed as a special inspector for the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics to inspect conditions for working women and children. In 1920, she was the supervisor of publicity for Warren G. Harding’s presidential campaign in Ohio. In 1922, Hopley became the first woman prohibition agent of the U.S. Bureau of Prohibition, but not as an enforcer. She traveled across the country making speeches about prohibition and law enforcement, urging women in particular to support dry laws through their civic and religious organizations, and to use their votes to support prohibition. She resigned from the Bureau in 1925, because her expenditures of $50,000 for publicity over three years were considered excessive, and her speeches were determined to have gone beyond the scope of the federal government. She returned to journalism, focusing on women’s rights

1861 – U.S. Civil War: The state of Maryland’s House of Delegates votes not to secede from the Union

1862 – U.S. Civil War: the City of New Orleans, the South’s largest city and key port, falls to the Union, the first objective of Winfield Scott’s ‘Anaconda Plan’ to divide the Confederacy by seizing control of the Mississippi River.  Flag Officer David Farragut, aboard the USS Hartford, led thirteen Union ships,  fighting their way through the Confederate naval vessels and past Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip to take the city. The last Confederate defenders, 3000 poorly armed militiamen, were hastily evacuated to Camp Moore, 126 kilometers (78 miles) to the north

Capture of New Orleans, 1862 by Julian Oliver Davidson
(The USS Hartford under fire from Fort Jackson)

1863 – C.P. (Constantine) Cavafy born in Egypt, of Greek parents, one of the most important figures in Greek poetry, and most widely translated into other languages

1875 – Rafael Sabatini born in Italy, English writer of period adventure novels; best known for his international best-sellers,which were made into successful films: The Sea Hawk, Scarmouche, and Captain Blood

1879 – Sir Thomas Beecham born, English conductor and impresario

1880 – Lillian Jones Horace born, pioneering educator and writer; the earliest known African American woman novelist in Texas; the only other well-known black southern women novelist besides Zora Neale Hurston in early-to-mid twentieth century; one of only two black women nationally to own a publishing company before 1920; Five Generations Hence

1891 – Bharathidasan born as Kanaka Subburathinam, Indian Tamil poet, essayist, short story writer and playwright; his literary works most often concerned socio-political issues; a number of his poems became lyrics for songs used in films

1893 – Harold Urey born, American Nobel-Prize winning chemist (1934); helped develop the atom bomb

1894 – Marietta Blau born, Austrian physicist; developed photographic nuclear emulsions that were usefully able to image and accurately measure high energy nuclear particles and events, leading to her establishing a method to accurately study reactions caused by cosmic ray events. Albert Einstein recognized her as a very capable experimental physicist, and after 1938 when she fled the rise of the Nazis, Einstein helped her to continue her work in Mexico City and then the U.S. Her nuclear emulsions significantly advanced the field of particle physics. For her work, much of which was unpaid because of her gender, she was nominated for the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physics by Erwin Schrödinger, but was passed over, and the prize given instead to Cecil Powell for development of the photographic method for particle detection and discovery of the pion (a meson consisting of a quark and antiquark) using this method

1899 – Duke Ellington born as Edward Kennedy Ellington, American Jazz musician, composer and bandleader

1899 – Mary Petty born, American illustrator, notable for her many covers and cartoons for The New Yorker (1927-1966)

1900 – Concha de Albornoz born, Spanish intellectual and early feminist, exiled during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, living mostly in Greece, Mexico and the U.S., where she became a professor at Mount Holyoke College (1944-1952)

1900 –Amelia Best born, Australian politician, one of the first women elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly (1955-1956 and 1958-1959)

1910 –The People’s Budget, passed by the House of Commons and reluctantly by the House of Lords, is the first budget in British history with the intent of redistributing wealth among the British people, implementing unprecedented taxes on the lands and high incomes of Britain’s rich to fund new social welfare programmes

1911 – Tsinghua University, a major mainland China university, is founded in Beijing

1913 – Margaret Owings born, California artist, writer, environmental activist; founder Friends of the Sea Otter (1968); assisted Environmental Defense Fund; Voice From the Sea

1913 – Zipper Day * – Gideon Sundback patents a “hookless fastener,” the first widely marketed zipper

1916 – After six days of fighting, Irish rebel leaders surrender to British forces in Dublin, bringing the Easter Rising to an end

1917 – Maya Deren born as Eleanora Derenkowska, American experimental filmmaker, choreographer, author and photographer; she was also an influential film theorist in the 1940s-1950s; best known for Ritual in Transfigured Time

1927 – Construction of Spirit of St Louis (the monoplane which Charles Lindburgh will fly across the Atlantic) is completed

1933 – Willie Nelson born, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer

1937 – Jill Paton Walsh born, English children’s author and novelist; she continued the Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane mystery series after the death of Dorothy Sayers

1941 – Dorothy Edgington born, English philosopher noted for her work in metaphysics and philosophical logic; president of the Mind Association (2004-2005), and a Fellow of the British Academy; The Paradox of Knowability

1941 – Hanne Darboven born, German painter; best known for large-scale minimalist installations of tables of numbers, musical arrangements and photographs; her Mathematical Music converted rows of numbers into musical notes, and with the help of a collaborator, they were adapted into performable compositions

1942 – Rennie Fritchie born in Scotland, Baroness Fritichie, British civil servant; UK Commissioner for Public Appointments since 1999; President of the Pennell Initiative for Women’s Health in Later Life. Fritchie was one of the first full-time women’s training advisors, a pioneer in training the staff of the newly established Equal Opportunities Commission in the 1970s, and she worked on programmes to improve the status of women. She has also published extensively on the status of women, as well as contributing to radio and television programmes

1943 – Brenda Dean born Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, British trade unionist, the first woman elected to head a major industrial trade union, serving as General Secretary of the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT) from 1985 to 1991.   She was raised to the peerage in 1993 and ap[pointed to the Privy Council in 1998. She was a member of the Labour opposition front bench in the House of Lords (1994-1997) and a member of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education which published an influential report in 1997. She was also a member of the Royal Commission on House of Lords Reform in 1999. Her autobiography, Hot Mettle, covers her tenure as SOGAT General Secretary, and SOGAT’s battles with Rupert Murdoch

Brenda Dean with strikers in 1986

1943 – Ruth Deech born, Baroness Deech, British bioethicist, academic, lawyer and politician; chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA – 1994- 2002);chair of the Bar Standards Board (2009-2014); crossbench peer in the House of Lords since 2005

1944 – British WWII agent Nancy Wake, a leading figure in the French Resistance and the Gestapo’s most wanted person, parachutes back into France to be a liaison between London and the local maquis group

1945 – Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor; Allied Forces enter Berlin

1945 – Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops

1945 – The Italian commune of Fornovo di Taro is liberated from German forces by Brazilian forces

1945 – ‘Peace’ Rose Day * – Famed French rose breeder Francis Meilland develops a beautiful hybrid tea rose in the 1930s, then sends cuttings to friends in Italy, the U.S., Germany, and Turkey to insure its survival during WWII. In 1945, he contacts Field Marshall Alan Brooke, offering to name the rose after him, but Brooke suggests it be called the ‘Peace’ Rose, and the name is formally announced on this day, as the Allied Forces move into Berlin, and WWII is officially ending. Peace roses are also presented to the first delegation of the United Nations in San Francisco, with a note: “We hope the ‘Peace’ Rose will influence men’s thoughts for everlasting world peace.”

Francis Meilland

1946 – International Military Tribunal for the Far East convenes, indicts former Prime Minister of Japan Hideki Tojo and 28 former Japanese leaders for war crimes

1950 – Debbie Stabenow born, American Democratic politician; first woman U.S. Senator from Michigan, incumbent since 2011; Chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee since 2017; Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Committee since 2015; Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee (2011-2015); U.S. House of Representatives member for Michigan’s 8th district (1997-2001); Michigan State Senator (1991-1994); Michigan House of Representatives (1979-1991)

1951 – Tibetan delegates to the Central People’s Government arrive in Beijing and draft a Seventeen Point Agreement for Chinese sovereignty and Tibetan autonomy

1956 – Karen Barad born, American feminist theorist, known for her theory of agential realism: Objects do not precede their interaction, but emerge through particular intra-actions. The deeply connected way that everything is entangled with everything else means that any act of observation makes a “cut” between what is included and excluded from what is being considered. Nothing is inherently separate from anything else, but separations are temporarily enacted so one can examine something long enough to gain knowledge about it. She is Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz

1958 – Michelle Pfeiffer born, American actress and producer, best known for her roles in Grease 2, Scarface, Married to the Mob, Dangerous Liasions, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Love Field. She is a supporter of the American Cancer Society, the Humane Society, and is on the board of directors for Environmental Working Group

1963 – Eeyore’s Birthday Party * is celebrated in Austin TX, and becomes an annual event

1965 – Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) successfully launches its seventh rocket in its Rehber series

1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opens on Broadway; some of its songs become anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement

1968 – Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović born, Croatian Independent politician, President of Croatia (2015-2020); Assistant Secretary General of NATO for Public Diplomacy (2011-2014); Ambassador of Croatia to the United States (2008-2011); Croatian Minister of Foreign and European Affairs (2006-2008); and Minister of European Affairs (2003-2005). She attended high school in Los Alamos, New Mexico (1985-1986) as part of a student exchange program, earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish languages from the University of Zagreb in 1993, followed by a course at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (1995-1996), and a masters degree in international relations at the University of Zagreb (2000). She was a Fulbright scholar the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University (2002-2003)

1975 – U.S. evacuates its citizens from Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind in response to advancing North Vietnamese forces, ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War

1981 – Lisa Goodwin-Allen born, British chef; best known as the executive chef of the Michelin starred Northcote restaurant since 2004, at the Northcoate Hotel, in a 19^th century manor house in Lancashire

1982 – International Dance Day * is launched by the Dance Committee of the International Theatre Institute (ITI)

1990 – Wrecking cranes began tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate

1992 – Deadly rioting that claimed 54 lives and caused $1 billion in damage erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King

1996 – The musical Rent opens on Broadway

1997 – The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 comes into force, outlaws production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons among its signatories

2005 – On the anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the General Assembly declares April 29^th as a Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare *

2013 – British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic took another step toward the goal of launching a commercial space flight service. The company’s new spaceship,  SpaceShipTwo, fired up its rocket engine in flight for the first time, breaking the sound barrier during its 16-second power-up over California’s Mojave Desert. Branson plans to be one of the first non-test pilots to ride the spaceship in about a year. Customers have lined up to pay $200,000 per ride

2017 – The People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C. attracted tens of thousands of marchers, while smaller rallies were organized in about 300 other locations around the country. In Washington, temperatures were 20 degrees above average, making for a sweltering walk from the Capitol to the White House to the Washington Monument. “Trump is undoing everything Obama did. He doesn’t realize climate change impacts everyone. It impacts him,” said one marcher, Michele Holmes 

2018 – Donald Trump lashed out at comedian Michelle Wolf for her caustic routine at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, calling her “filthy” in a late night tweet. Wolf skewered the Trump administration in her monologue, saying that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders “burns facts, and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye.” She also compared Sanders to Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale, who indoctrinates the handmaids into a system that enslaves them. Wolf also made fun of Trump’s bragging about his wealth and business savvy: “Trump is so broke he has to fly failed business class.” The association’s leaders issued a statement claiming Wolf’s monologue was “not in the spirit” of the group’s mission “to promote civility and unity.” Comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted that Wolf’s critics should be demanding that “Trump apologize for calling women fat pigs, slobs, talking about their bodies.” 

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