May 27th is

Amarone (wine) Day

Cellophane Tape Day *

Grape Popsicle Day

Joe Cool Day *

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MORE! Amelia Bloomer, Herman Wouk and Faten Hamama, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Bahá’i: Ascension of Baha’u’Llah, the founder of the faith – begins at sundown

Australia – Reconciliation Week *

Bolivia – Día de la Madre *

Japan – Navy Day

Guadeloupe, Saint Martin–
Abolition of Slavery

Nicaragua – Armed Forces Day

Nigeria – Children’s Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

742 – Emperor Dezong of the Tang dynasty born; his reign from 779 to 805 will be the third longest in the dynasty; he starts as a diligent and spending-conscious ruler, and tries to reform the tax laws, but his attempts to destroy the powerful regional warlords nearly topple the Tang dynasty. He becomes increasingly paranoid, lets the warlords’ power grow unchecked, and gives little authority to his chancellors

1096 – Count Emico, leading a motley band of French and German ‘Crusaders’ on their way to the Holy Land, first accepts a large bribe from the Jews of Mainz, then allows his men to enter the city and massacre at least 1,100 Jews. The guards of Bishop Rutland and the Mainz burghers at first offered some resistance, but were quickly overwhelmed

1153 – Malcolm IV is crowned King of Scotland

1199 – John ‘Lackland’ succeeds his brother, Richard the ‘Lionheart,’ as King of England

1332 – Ibn Khaldun born, a leading Arab historian and philosopher; best known for his highly influential book, Muqaddimah or Prolegomena(Introduction). His theories were later used by 19^th century historians and scholars to analyze the growth and decline of the Ottoman Empire

1668 – Three colonists are expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists

1703 – Tsar Peter the Great of Russia founds the city of Saint Petersburg

Peter I, by Valentin Serov 

1792 – Julia Evelina Smith born, American suffragist, author and translator, known for Abby Smith and her Cows about the tax resistance struggle for suffrage that she and her sister fought, and for translating the Bible from the original languages

Julia Evelina Smith, left, and Abby Hadassah Smith

1812 – After an uprising in Cochabamba, Bolivia, is put down for a second time by Spanish General Goyeneche, the women of the city are gathered by Manuela Gandarilla, an old blind woman, to take up the arms of their dead and wounded in the Battle of La Coronilla, named for the hill where it is fought. They are slaughtered by the Spanish. Commemorated as Mothers’ Day * also known as “Day of the Heroines of Coronillas”

1818 – Amelia Bloomer born, American journalist and women’s rights activist; first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper, The Lily, which was the first newspaper specifically for women; advocate for female “rational dress.” Bloomers were named for her, but she was introduced to the fashion by Elizabeth Smith Miller

1819 – Julia Ward Howe born, American poet and songwriter; wrote lyrics of The Battle Hymn of the Republic; first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame

1837 – James ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok born, American Western folk hero; scout, lawman, gunfighter, gambler, and showman, among many other occupations

1849 – Alzina Parsons Stevens born, American labor leader, reformer and journalist; she lost her right index finger as a child working in a cotton factory; as an adult, she moved to Chicago, and worked as a type-setter, proof-reader, compositor, editor, correspondent and reporter. She joined the Knights of Labor, and organized the Working Woman’s Union, the first of its kind in Chicago in 1877, then went on to organize women laborers in Toledo, Ohio. In 1892, she came back to Chicago, and became a resident of Hull House, working with Florence Kelley advocating for an 8-hour-day for child laborers

1861 – Victoria Earle Matthews born, American author, essayist, journalist, settlement worker and activist; founder of the White Rose Mission, a settlement house for young black women

1867 – Arnold Bennett born, English author and playwright

1871 – Georges Rouault born, French artist

1874 – The initial group of Dorsland trekkers under leader Gert Jacobus Alberts leaves Pretoria to explore new territory

1878 – Anna Cervin born, Swedish artist who painted landscapes, still lifes and copies of  old family portraits

1883 – Jessie Arms Botke born, American painter and muralist; influential figure in art in California; noted for her studies of birds

1883 – Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia

1886 – Harry Stratford Caldecott born, South African painter

1888 – Louis Durey born, French composer known for choral works

1894 – Dashiell Hammett born, American detective novelist and screenwriter

1906 – Buddhadasa born, Thai monk and influential ascetic-philosopher, innovative re-interpreter of Buddhist doctrine

1907 – A second wave of Bubonic Plague breaks out in San Francisco  during the reconstruction of the city after the 1906 earthquake, causing 78 deaths; the first plague epidemic in the U.S. began in San Francisco in March 1900, but early denials prevented stamping it out until 1904

1907 – Rachel Carson born, American biologist, environmentalist, and author; her book Silent Spring helped launch the environmental movement

1909 – William Hansen born, American physicist; pioneer in microwave technology

1912 – John Cheever born, American novelist and short story writer

1915 – Ester Soré born, Chilean singer-songwriter, one of the most famous entretenedora (entertainer) Chileans of her time

1915 – Herman Wouk born, American novelist; The Winds of War, War and Remembrance

1925 – Tony Hillerman born, American novelist and journalist; his Navajo Tribal Police mystery series is being continued by his daughter Anne

1926 – Bronze figures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are erected in Hannibal MO

1928 – Thea Musgrave born, Scottish composer of opera and orchestral music

1930 – The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public

1930 – National Cellophane Tape Day * – Richard G. Drew patents transparent cellophane adhesive tape

1931 – Auguste Piccard and Paul Knipfer make the first flight into the stratosphere in a balloon, gathering substantial data on the upper atmosphere, and reaching 15781 meters (51,775 feet)

Paul Knipfer and Auguste Piccard

1931 – Faten Hamama born, Egyptian film and television actress and producer, a child actor who became an icon of Middle Eastern cinema; she fled the country in 1966 after being harassed by Egyptian Intelligence for her liberal views, but returned in 1971 after President Gamal Nasser’s death; in her films and television programs, she often criticized Egyptian laws that restricted women; her film Oridu Hallan (أريد حلاً, I Want a Solution) portrayed the hardships of an Egyptian woman unable to get a divorce from her husband because at the time, only men could file for divorce. After the success of the film, the Egyptian government changed the law to allow a woman to divorce her husbands, if she returned the mahr (dowry) he had given her

1933 – Walt Disney’s “Three Little Pigs” is first released

1933 – U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed, requiring registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission

1933 – The ‘Century of Progress’ World’s Fair opens in Chicago

1934 – Harlan Ellison born, American speculative fiction author and screenwriter

1935 – U.S. Supreme Court declares that President Franklin Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act is unconstitutional

1935 – Ramsey Lewis born, American jazz pianist and composer

1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims an “unlimited national emergency” during WWII

1941 – The British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck off the French coast

1944 – Ingrid Roscoe born, English historian and politician, writer on English art and Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire

1950 – Dee Dee Bridgewater born, American Jazz singer-songwriter;  UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization

1956 – Cynthia Mc Fadden born, American television journalist; senior legal and investigative correspondent for NBC News since 2014; anchor and correspondent for ABC News, and co-anchor of Nightime (1994-2014); recipient of the 1995 George Foster Peabody Award

1956 – Dame Rosemary Squire born, British theatre owner and producer; co-founder and joint chief executive of Trafalgar Entertainment Group Ltd, and of The Ambassador Theatre Group, which has venues in Britain, the U.S. and Australia, one of the most prolific theatre producers in the world

1957 – Buddy Holly and the Crickets release “That’ll be the Day”

1960 – A military coup overthrows the democratic government of Turkey’s President Celâl Bayar; Bayar and 15 other party members are tried for violating Turkey’s constitution and sentenced to death by a kangaroo court appointed by the junta, but  Bayar’s sentence is commuted to life imprisonment

1963 – Bob Dylan releases his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

1963 – Jomo Kenyatta is elected as the first Prime Minister of Kenya, now independent from Great Britain

1967 – Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census – commemorated during Reconciliation Week *

1968 – Rebekah Brooks born, British journalist and newspaper editor; CEO of News UK since 2015; CEO of News International (2009-2001); first female editor of The Sun (2003-2009); editor of News of the World (2000-2003), where she was cleared of all charges after the newspaper was one of several Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation papers whose employees were charged with phone hacking and police bribery

1969 – Construction of Walt Disney World begins in Florida

1971 – Sophie Walker born, journalist and leader of the UK’s Women’s Equality Party since 2015; the WEP’s candidate in the 2016 London mayoral election; author of Grace Under Pressure, about her daughter who has Asperger’s syndrome, and an advocate for the National Autistic Society

1971 – Joe Cool Day * – in the Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy makes his first appearance as his alter-ego Joe Cool

1975 – Feryal Özel born in Turkey; American astrophysicist specializing in the physics of compact objects and high energy astrophysical phenomena; widely recognized for her contributions to the field of neutron stars, black holes, and magnetars: currently a professor in the University of Arizona’s Astronomy Department and the Steward Observatory. Recipient of  a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship (2002-2005) and the 2013 Maria Goeppert Mayer award from the American Physical Society

1977 – The Sex Pistols release their single “God Save the Queen” which was banned by the BBC and the Independent Broadcasting Authority

1982 – Japan announces elimination of tariffs on 96 industrial goods

1985 – British representatives in Beijing exchange instruments of ratification with Chinese officials for the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997

1986 – Mel Fisher recovers a jar that containing 2,300 emeralds from the Spanish ship Atocha, which sank in the 17th century

1988 – The U.S. Senate ratifies the INF treaty, the first arms-control agreement since the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) in 1972 to receive Senate approval.
1994 – Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia from two decades of exile

1995 – In Charlottesville, VA, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed after being thrown from his horse during a jumping event

1996 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiates a cease-fire with Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the Chechnya war for independence

1997 –U.S. Supreme Court rules the sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones against Bill Clinton could continue while he was serving as U.S. president

1998 – Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison for not warning anyone about the plot to bomb an Oklahoma City federal building, which killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others

1999 – In The Hague, Netherlands, a war crimes tribunal indicts Slobodan Milosevic and four others for atrocities in Kosovo, the first time a sitting head of state is charged with crimes against humanity

2016 – Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and meet surviving victims of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as Hibakusha (“explosion-affected people”). He called for a nuclear-free future “in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not known as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening.”

2019 – Associated Press Fact Check: Boastful on the occasion of Memorial Day, Donald Trump and his Veterans Affairs secretary claimed full credit for health care improvements that were underway before they took office. Trump said he passed a private-sector health care program, Veterans Choice, after failed attempts by past presidents for the last “45 years.” That’s not true. The Choice program, which allows veterans to see doctors outside the government-run VA system at taxpayer expense, was first passed in 2014 under President Barack Obama

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