June 5th is

Festival of Popular Delusions Day *

Hot Air Balloon Day *

National Ketchup Day

Veggie Burger Day

World Environment Day *

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MORE! Alifa Rifaat, Bill Moyers and Lois Browne-Evans, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Azerbaijan – Day of Reclamation

Bermuda –
Dame Lois Browne-Evans Day *

Denmark & the Faroe Islands –
Grundlovsdag (Constitution Day *)

Equatorial Guinea –
President Mbasogo’s Birthday

Iran – 1963 Khordad Uprising Day

New Zealand – Arbor Day

Seychelles – Liberation Day

Suriname –
Hindustani Arrival 147th Anniversary

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On This Day in HISTORY

AD 70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son and heir of Roman Emperor Vespasian, leads his Roman legions  as they breach the middle wall of the city

Titus Caesar Vespasianus

1257 – In Poland, Kraków is granted city rights by high Duke Bolesław V ‘the Chaste’

1640 – Pu Songling born, Qing dynasty classical Chinese writer; best known for Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio)

1646 – Elena Cornaro Piscopia born, Venetian mathematician, philosopher and linguist; one of the first women to receive an academic degree from a university, and the first woman in the world to earn a Ph.D. The illegitimate daughter of a nobleman and a peasant – her father later married her mother, but that did not change her status or that of her brothers born out of wedlock. When it was discovered that she was a child prodigy, she was given a classical education by tutors, becoming proficient in Latin, Greek, French and Spanish by age 7, and also learned Hebrew and Arabic, earning the title “Oraculum Septilingue” and went on to study mathematics, philosophy, theology  and music, playing several instruments and composing music, and in her twenties, took up physics and astronomy. She rebuffed all her father’s attempts to marry her off, and took the habit of a Benedictine Oblate, but without taking the vows to become a nun. Felice Rotondi, her advisor in theology, petitioned the University of Padua to grant her the laurea (equivalent to a bachelor’s degree) in theology, but Gregorio Cardinal Barbarigo, the bishop of Padua, refused to allow it because she was a woman, but did allow her to work toward a degree in Philosophy, which was conferred on her in 1678, with great ceremony in Padua Cathedral, attended by most of the Venetian Senate, the University authorities and faculty, and guests invited from the Universities of Bologna, Perugia, Rome and Naples. The Lady Elena discoursed for an hour in classical Latin on the works of Aristotle. She then devoted herself to study and charitable works until her death from tuberculosis in 1684 at age 38

1660 – Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough born, wife of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough; an influential figure in her own right through her close friendship and support of Queen Anne before 1711, and later, her inheritance as a widow which made her one of the richest women in Europe

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough – by Michael Dahl

1718 – Thomas Chippendale born, highly influential English cabinet-maker; in 1754, published a book of his designs, The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, much used by other cabinet makers, which made the Chippendale style famous

Chippendale Carved Mahogany Side Chair

1723 – Adam Smith born, Scottish economist, philosopher and author; key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment; The Wealth of Nations, first modern work of economics

1783 – Hot Air Balloon Day *- The Montgolfier brothers send a pig, a duck, and a rooster up in a hot air balloon on a test flight, lasting 10 minutes and reaching several thousand feet in altitude

1819 – John Couch Adams born, English mathematician and astronomer; used mathematics to predict the existence and location of Neptune

1829 – The schooner HMS Pickle, under command of J.B.B. MacHardy, races to capture the fleeing Spanish slave ship Voladora, which had left Africa with 367 people to be sold into slavery; heavy fire is exchanged, beginning just before midnight. When the masts of the Voladora are brought down, the Spaniards surrender. The Pickle tows the Voladora  into harbor at Cuba. The Havana Slave Trade Commission, a British Vice Admiralty court, condemns the Voladora for sale, and issues emancipation certificates for the 330 surviving captives, most of whom re-settle in British Caribbean colonies

Modern replica of the HMS Pickle

1836 – Miriam Folline Squiers Leslie born, author, publisher and suffragist;  after her husband Frank died, she took over his publishing business, then legally changed her name to Frank Leslie; she bequeathed most of her estate to Carrie Chapman Catt, to be used for the cause of women’s suffrage

The new Frank Leslie

1849 – Constitution Day *- Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy by the signing of a new constitution

1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper. 

1862 – As the Treaty of Saigon is signed, ceding parts of southern Vietnam to France, the guerrilla leader Trương Định decides to defy Vietnamese Emperor Tự Đức and fight on against the Europeans

1868 – Johan Thorn Prikker born, Dutch artist who worked in Germany

Julian’s ride across the river, by Johan Thorn Prikkr – 1906

1873 – Sultan Barghash bin Said of Zanzibar closes the great slave market, under the terms of a treaty with Great Britain

1878 – Pancho Villa born, Mexican revolutionary general

1883 – John Maynard Keynes born, influential English economist; revolutionary theorist on causes of business cycles, economic effects of unemployment, and macroeconomics, based on aggregate demand (total demand for finished goods and services at any given time in a society); The Economic Consequences of the Peace

1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express train leaves Paris

1884 – Ivy Compton-Burnett born, English novelist, author of over 20 dark and sometimes humorous books about families and domesticity, including Pastors and Masters, A House and Its Head, Daughters and Sons, Manservant and Maidservant. She won the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son

1887 – Ruth Fulton Benedict born, American anthropologist and folklorist, President of the American Anthropological Association, member of the American Folklore Society. Her fieldwork among the Native Americans of the Southwest provided the basis of her first book, Patterns of Culture, in which she compared and contrasted Zuñi, Dobu, and Kwakiutl. She also wrote The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and “The Races of Mankind,” a WWII pamphlet for the troops showing racism wasn’t grounded in scientific reality. Margaret Mead was one of her students

1898 – Federico García Lorca born, major Spanish poet and radical playwright; he will be murdered by the Franquists, his books burned and banned in Franco’s Spain

1914 – Beatrice de Cardi born, British archaeologist, a specialist in the Persian Gulf, Qatar, Baluchistan and Pakistan. She studied history, Latin, economics and archaeology at University College London (1933-1935), and worked for Sir Mortimer Wheeler, director of the London Museum (1936-1939), first as his secretary and later as his assistant. During WWII, she was based in Chungking, China, working for the Allied Supplies Executive of the War Cabinet, but she frequently visited India. After the war, de Cardi was Britain’s Assistant Trade Commissioner in Karachi, Delhi and Lahore. She worked with Sadar Din of the Pakistani Archeological Department constructing archaeological surveys in western Baluchistan, collecting ceramic potsherds, copper objects, bone and flint from a number of sites in Jhalawan.  In the 1960s, she discovered distinctive pottery at sites near the Bampur River which led to a new understanding of the nature of trade links in the Persian Gulf region in the Bronze Age. She also carried out work in the Persian Gulf, and launched a number of expeditions in the United Arab Emirates that yielded the first examples of Ubaid pottery in the region, and also discovered more than 20 tombs from the second millennium B.C. In 1973, the government of Qatar appointed de Cardi to lead an archaeological expedition aiming to illustrate Qatar’s history for its new national museum. Her team discovered domestic tools and pottery which suggested that Qatar had traded with other regions much longer ago than previously thought. She didn’t give up field work until she was in over 90 years old, and lived to be 102

1915 – Denmark amends its constitution to extend the vote to women

1916 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, the first Jewish jurist to be appointed to the Supreme Court

1916 – The Arab Revolt against the “impious” Ottoman Empire begins, trying to establish an independent unified Arab state from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen

1916 – WWI: The British cruiser Hampshire hits a German mine off the Orkney Islands and sinks. Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, is among those who drowned

1917 – WWI Conscription begins in the U.S. as “Army Registration Day”

1930 – Alifa Rifaat born as Fatimah Rifaat, Egyptian author of controversial short stories which the dynamics of female sexuality, relationships, and loss in rural Egyptian culture, while her protagonists still maintain their religious faith, and accept their fates. She did not attempt to undermine the patriarchal system, but used her work to depict problems inherent in a patriarchal society when men do not adhere to their religious teachings that advocate for the kind treatment of women; noted for Distant View of a Minaret, Bahiyya’s Eyes and My World of the Unknown 

1933 – U.S. Congress abrogates the U.S. gold standard by enacting a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold

1934 – Bill Moyers born, American television reporter, investigative journalist, and political commentator;  White House Press Secretary during the Johnson administration (1965-1967); host of Bill Moyers Journal on public television (1971-1981 and 2007-2010); with his wife Judith, produced  several PBS documentary series, including The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis and In Search of the Constitution (both 1987) and  Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth and A World of Ideas (both 1988); in 1995, Moyers was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism

1937 – Hélène Cixous born, French academic, feminist writer, poet and rhetorician; her article Le Rire de la Méduse (The Laugh of Medusa) in 1975 established her as an early theorist of poststructuralist feminism; she founded the centre of feminist studies at the Centre universitaire de Vincennes of the University of Paris, the first feminist studies program at a European university

1939 – Margaret Drabble born, Lady Holroyd, English novelist and biographer; The Millstone won the 1966 John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and Jerusalem the Golden won the1967 James Tait Black Memorial Prize; also published biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson, and critical studies of William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy; outspoken critic of Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the policies of the Bush administration

1941 – Spalding Gray born, American actor and author, known for his autobiographical monologues, especially Swimming to Cambodia, Monster in a Box, and Gray’s Anatomy

1945 – The first Festival of Popular Delusions Day * was the day before D-Day, the last day the Nazi regime could have thought they might still win WWII

1947 – U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe on a speech at Harvard University

1947 – Laurie Anderson born, American avant-garde composer and pioneer in electronic music, musician, film director and multimedia artist. She starred in and directed the 1986 concert film Home of the Brave

1949 – Orapin Chaiyakan is elected as the first woman member of Thailand’s Parliament

1949 – Dame Elizabeth Gloster born, British judge, the first woman appointed as a judge of the Commercial Court; serving as a Lady Justice of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in 2013, and consequently appointed to the Privy Council ; Vice-President of the Civil Division since 2016

1949 – Susan Lindquist born, molecular biologist, pioneer in the study of protein folding; her work showed that alternate structural shapes of protein molecules could result in substantially different effects, and demonstrated instances in fields as diverse as human diseases, evolution and synthetic biomaterials designed to interact with biological systems. Prion protein are known as disease agents, but her work with yeast prion proteins also demonstrated a mechanism of protein-only inheritance. She extended this to interpret involvement in cellular memory and cross-kingdom communication

1951 – Suze Orman born, American financial advisor and columnist, author, television host and motivational speaker; published several books, including The Road to Wealth and The Laws of Money

1953 – Kathleen Kennedy born, American film producer, co-founder with Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall of Amblin Entertainment; producer of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park, two of the top ten highest-grossing films of the 1990s; president of Lucasfilms since 2012

Kathleen Kennedy at Cannes

1956 – Elvis Presley’s swiveling hips during a performance of “Hound Dog” on the Milton Berle Show scandalizes the audience

1963 – John Profumo, Britain’s Secretary of State for War, resigns in the midst of a sex scandal known as the “Profumo Affair”

1963 – Dame Lois Browne-Evans Day * – Browne-Evans is elected as a Member of the Colonial Parliament, the first black woman  to be elected in Bermuda, during the first election in Bermuda in which non-property owners could vote; also the first woman in Bermuda called to the bar

1964 – Lisa Cholodenko born, American screenwriter and TV and film director; wrote and directed Laurel Canyon and The Kids Are All Right; won a Primetime Emmy for the 2014 miniseries Olive Kitteridge

1964 – A resolution to expel South Africa from the Universal Postal Union is approved by the Union’s congress in Vienna, by 58 votes to 30, with 26 abstentions

1967 – Israeli forces launch a surprise attack against Egypt, beginning the Six Day War

1968 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Democrat-New York), campaigning in California during the primaries against President Lyndon Johnson and Eugene McCarthy, is shot by a 24-year-old Palestinian angry at his support of Israel, and dies the next day

1971 – James Taylor’s “You’ve Got A Friend” is released

1973 – World Environment Day * is launched by the UN the year after the first major environmental conference is held in Stockholm, Sweden

1975 – The Suez Canal re-opens after it is declared 99% clear of mines set during the Yom Kippur War; an Egyptian blockade had closed it to shipping since the Six Day War in 1967

1981 – The Center for Disease Control (CDC) describes five cases of a rare form of pneumonia, a deadly immune deficiency disease which later became known as AIDS. By the year 2000, more than 40 million people worldwide are affected by it

1989 – Tiananmen Square protests: a column of tanks sent to suppress the protests by force are halted for over half an hour by a single unidentified protester. He is known only as ‘Tank Man’ when film and photographs of his confrontation with the tanks becomes the world-wide defining image of the protests

1993 – Forces of Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid ambush UN peacekeeping troops in Mogadishu, killing twenty-two Pakistani soldiers

2001 – The United Nations marks the 20th anniversary of the first official report on AIDS. Worldwide, an estimated 58 million people have contracted HIV, and more than 22 million of them have died in the last two decades

2012 – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker becomes the first governor to survive a recall election, winning by 53% – investigations into allegations of campaign irregularities are closed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2015

2013 – The first article based on NSA documents leaked by the controversial Edward Snowden are published by the Guardian newspaper in the UK

2018 – Judge Aaron Persky, who came under heavy fire across the U.S. when he sentenced Stanford swimmer Brock Turner to just six months in jail after he was found guilty of the sexual assault of an unconscious woman, is recalled by Santa Clara County voters in California, by a margin of 61.5% to 38.4%. Persky was the first judge to be recalled in California in over 80 years. (Chief Justice Rose Bird of the California Supreme Court had been removed from office in 1986 when Californians voted by a margin of 52% to 48% not to reconfirm her because of her opposition to the death penalty)

2019 – The results of a Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted May 31-June 2 were announced, revealing that 19% of women registered as Democrats said matters that affect women, including birth control, abortion and equal pay, were the top set of issues on their mind when casting votes for federal office, an 8% increase over a poll taken May3-6, before governors in Georgia and Alabama, quickly followed by Missouri and Louisiana, signed into law draconian anti-abortion laws. 56% of all voters polled said they oppose states passing laws like those in Georgia and Alabama. Only 20% of the Republicans polled said they support a total ban on abortion, while 45% of them thought that abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at risk.

2019 – The Trump administration responds to rising immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border by cutting programs for unaccompanied minors at federal shelters, including English classes, recreational programs, and legal aid, The Washington Post reports. Without the cuts, federal officials claimed, the shelter program could run out of money by late June. Education and recreation for minors in custody are required under a federal court settlement and state licensing requirements, but the Office of Refugee Resettlement has started discontinuing funding for services that are “not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety.” A shelter employee told the Post the cuts have alarmed workers, who fear the care for the children will suffer.

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