June 8th is

World Oceans Day *

Best Friends Day

Upsy Daisy Day *

Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day

Name Your Poison Day

World Brain Tumor Day *

Caribbean American HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

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MORE! Lena Baker, Theodore Roosevelt and Mary Bonauto, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Norfolk Island –
Bounty Anniversary Day *

Peru – Engineer’s Day

Slovenia – Primož Trubar Day *

Solomon Islands –
Temotu: Temotu Province Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

218 – Battle of Antioch: the forces of Emperor Macrinus (proclaimed emperor in 2017 after the assassination of Caracalla) are defeated by rebels under General Gannys who support Elagabalus, Caracalla’s cousin, as the ‘rightful’ Emperor

Elagabalus

452 – Attila the Hun begins his invasion of Italy, sacking cities and razing Aquileia, a city founded by Romans in 180/181 BC at the head of the Adriatic, to the ground

632 – Muhammad ibn Abullāh, prophet and founder of Islam, dies in Medina in Arabia

793 – Viking Northmen raid the abbey on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, a major center of Christian learning on the Northumbrian coast, considered, the beginning of the Viking Age. A life of St. Cuthbert, who was a Bishop of Lindisfarne, written at the abbey, is the oldest extant piece of English historical writing, and the Lindisfarne Gospels are among the most beautifully illuminated manuscripts to survive to the present day

862 – Emperor Xizong of the Tang dynasty born; during his reign (873-888), the great agrarian rebellions, led by Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao, are both put down, but the Tang state is left in pieces ruled by warlords rather than the imperial government

1042 – Edward the Confessor becomes King of England, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England

Edward the Confessor – Bayeux Tapestry

1191 – Richard I (‘the Lionheart’) arrives in Acre, beginning his crusade

1508 – Primož Trubar Day * Primož Trubar born, Slovenian Protestant Reformer who introduced Lutheranism in Slovenia; author of the first book printed in the Slovene language; founder and first superintendent of the Protestant Church of the Duchy of Carniola

1625 – Gian Domenico Cassini born in Italy, French astronomer; discoverer of four satellites of Saturn and the division of the planet’s rings, now called the Cassini Division

1671 – Tomaso Albinoni born, Italian Baroque composer

1784 – Antoine Carême born, French founder of haute cuisine; “the cook of kings and the king of cooks”

1786 – In New York City, the first commercially made ice cream is offered for sale

1789 – James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution in Congress

1794 – Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution’s new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large organized festivals all across France

1810 – Robert Schumann born, German Romantic composer

1829 – Sir John Millais born, English painter and illustrator

Rosalind in the Forest, by John Millais

1848 – Franklin Hiram King born, American agricultural scientist; inventor of the cylindrical tower silo

1856 – A group of 194 Pitcairn Islanders, descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, arrives at Norfolk Island, the ‘Third Settlement of the Island’

1858 – Charlotte Angas Scott born, mathematician; competed in “Tripos” final examinations (1880) offered at Cambridge. Mastery of Tripos exams qualified her to receive a bachelor’s degree with honors, previously only awarded to male Cambridge students. Ranked 8th in test scores, but not allowed at awards ceremony, solely because she was female; one of first English women to obtain a doctorate in mathematics; published An Introductory Account of Certain Modern Ideas and Methods in Plane Analytical Geometry (1894), which is still widely used

1860 – Alicia Boole Stott born, Irish-English mathematician known for her models of three-dimensional geometric figures, coined “polytope” for a convex solid in four (or more) dimensions

Cell representations by Alicia Boole Stott

1861 – Tennessee secedes from the Union

1867 – After Ausgleich, the Austro-Hungarian compromise that establishes the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, Franz Joseph I is crowned Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary

1869 – Frank Lloyd Wright born, leading American modern architect

1871 – Luisa Tetrazzini born, Italian operatic soprano; Chicken Tetrazzini is named for her, possibly by Ernest Arbogast, chef at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel

1887 – Herman Hollerith patents a punched card calculator for ‘Compiling Statistics’

1900 – Lena Baker born, to an African American sharecropper family in Cuthbert Georgia. The mother of three children, she was hired by Ernest Knight, a white employer, who sexually assaulted her multiple times and held her imprisoned for days at a time. Knight’s son and several townspeople disliked their “relationship” and tried to end it by threatening her. One night in 1944, Baker was trying to escape when Knight threatened her with an iron bar, and then they struggled over his pistol, and Baker shot and killed him. She reported the incident immediately, saying she had acted in self-defense. Lena Baker was charged with capital murder. Judge William “Two Gun” Worrill, who kept a pair of pistols in view on his judicial bench, presided over her trial. The all-white, all-male jury convicted her of capital murder by the end of the first day of the trial. After Baker’s court-appointed counsel filed an appeal, he dropped her as a client. Governor Ellis Arnall granted Baker a 60-day reprieve so that the Board of Pardons and Parole could review the case, but in January 1945 it denied Baker clemency. She was transferred to Georgia State Prison at Reidsville on February 23, 1945. Her last words before her execution were: “What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed myself. Where I was I could not overcome it. God has forgiven me. I have nothing against anyone. I picked cotton for Mr. Pritchett, and he has been good to me. I am ready to go. I am one in the number. I am ready to meet my God. I have a very strong conscience.”  On March 5, 1945, she became the only woman in Georgia executed by electrocution. In 2005, sixty years after her execution, the state of Georgia granted Baker a full and unconditional pardon

1900 – Estelle Griswold born, birth control advocate and pioneer, defendant in the Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut  which legalized contraception for married couples in 1965

1903 – Jessie Bernard born, sociologist, feminist critic and author of The Paradox of the Happy Marriage (1971), and The Female World (1981)

1903 – Marguerite Yourcenar born in Belgium, French novelist and essayist; Memoirs of Hadrian; winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, the first woman elected to the Académie Française, in 1980. The Yourcenar Prize is named in her honor

1906 – Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value

Theodore Roosevelt – Yosemite 1903

1910 – John W. Campbell born, American science fiction writer; influential editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact

1912 – Wilhelmina Barns-Graham born, one of the foremost British abstract painters, and co-founder of the influential Penwith Society of Arts

White Cottage Cornwall – by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

1920 – Gwen Harwood born in Tasmania, one of Australia’s finest poets whose early work was published under various pseudonyms, including Walter Lehmann, Francis Geyer and Miriam Stone; librettist for over a dozen works by prominent Australian composers; she won many awards for her poetry, including the 1977 Robert Frost Medallion; The Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize was created in her memory in 1996

1929 – Margaret Bondfield becomes Minister of Labour, the first woman appointed to a Cabinet position in the United Kingdom

1933 – Joan Rivers born as Joan Alexandra Molinsky, American comedian, writer, producer, actress and TV host. She was the first woman to host (1986-1987) a late night talk show, The Late Show with Joan Rivers, and then hosted The Joan Rivers Show (1989-1993), for which she won the 1990 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host. She was an activist for HID/AIDS research, and for organizations which delivered meals to HID/AIDS patients. Rivers was also an Honorary Director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, a supporter of Guide Dogs for the Blind, Habitat for Humanity, Human Rights Campaign, and many Jewish charities. She died in 2014 at age 81

1937 – Gillian Clarke born, Welsh poet, playwright, Welsh-speaker and translator; co-founder in 1990 of Tŷ Newydd, the National Writing Centre of Wales, which offers residential creative writing, courses in Welsh and English, retreats, seminars and forums.  She held the pole of National Poet of Wales (2008-2016), and in 2010 became the second Welsh poet to be awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In 2011 she was made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards, and in 2012 she received the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award

1947 – Sara Paretsky born, American novelist and author of detective fiction, best known for her V.I. Warshawski series

1949 – George Orwell’s enduring and influential dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is published; it introduces Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, the Thought Police, Newspeak, the Ministry of Truth and other phrases to the English language, often called “Orwellian”

1949 – Helen Keller, Dorothy Parker, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, John Garfield, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson are all named in an FBI report as members of the Communist Party

1950 – In South Africa, the Johannesburg Bar declared that if the Suppression of Communism Bill was passed, the freedom of people in South Africa would be in jeopardy. In a speech in parliament, Justice Minister C.R. Swart stated that the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) would be outlawed should the Bill be passed. Under this Bill, not only would the party be outlawed, but it would a crime, punishable by ten years’ imprisonment, to propagate or further the aims of communism

1953 – U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co. Inc., a lawsuit spearheaded by Mary Church Terrell against a segregated restaurant in Washington DC, that its policy of segregation is illegal, upholding laws passed in the District of Columbia in 1872 and 1873 prohibiting segregation in public places, which, although never enforced for decades, are still on the books in 1953

1957 – Sonja Vectomov born, Czech sculptor based in Finland, known for bronze statues of Finnish cultural figures

Sculpture of architect Wivi Lönn by Sonja Vectomov

1958 – Louise Richardson born, Irish political scientist, specialist in the study of terrorism; Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford since 2016; Principal and vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews (2009-2015), the first woman and first Roman Catholic in modern times to hold the position; executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study (2001-2008); author of What Terrorists Want, and When Allies Differ: Anglo-American Relations in the Suez and Falkland Crises

1959 – Shortly before noon off the coast of Florida, Balao-class submarine USS Barberofires a cruise missile toward the Navy Auxiliary Air Station at Mayport, its training-type warhead containing two official USPS mail containers holding 3,000 commemorative postcards, the first known use of missiles by any postal department. It is also the only attempt – although successful, it is prohibitively expensive

1961 – Mary Bonauto born, American lawyer and civil rights advocate and activist in the struggle to eradicate discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. She has been working with GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) since 1990. Bonauto was one of the leaders who worked with the Maine legislature to pass a same-sex marriage law, then defended it at the ballot in a narrow loss during the 2009 election campaign. But in the 2012 election, Maine voters approved the measure, making it the first state to allow same-sex marriage licenses via ballot vote. Bonauto is best known for being lead counsel in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health which made Massachusetts the first state in which same-sex couples could marry in 2004. She is also responsible for leading the first strategic challenges to section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

1963 – Karen Kingsbury born, American novelist and newspaper writer. She was a sports writer for the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily News. Best known for Baxter Family series

1968 – Authorities announce the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr

1970 – Gabrielle Giffords born, American Democratic politician and gun control advocate; U.S. House of Representatives (D-AZ, 2007-2012), the third woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress from Arizona; she resigned after she was shot in the head, but survived with a severe brain injury; the gunman shot 24 others, killing six people

1972 – During the Vietnam War, 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc is burned by napalm, an event captured by AP photographer Nick Ut moments later while the young girl is running down a road, in an iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo

1976 – Catherine McKinnell born, British Labour politician, member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne North since 2010; prominent campaigner for the Women Against State Pension Inequality

1979 – The Who releases the soundtrack album The Kids Are Alright

1984 – Homosexuality is declared legal in the Australian state of New South Wales

1987 – New Zealand’s Labour government declares a national nuclear-free zone under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987

1987 – Fawn Hall, national security aide Oliver L. North’s secretary, testified at the Iran-Contra hearings that she had helped to shred some documents

1992 – The first World Oceans Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, proclaimed by the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea

1998 – The de facto president of Nigeria (1993-1998), dictator Sani Abacha dies suddenly of a heart attack. He stabilized the nation’s economy, but cracked down with equal harshness on violence and on dissent, and was accused of human rights abuses

2000 – World Brain Tumor Day * is announced by Deutsche Hirntumorhilfe (German Brain Tumor Association), a non-profit organization founded in 1998 which provides information and support to brain tumor patients, as well as supporting research to find a cure for brain tumors

2003 – The first Upsy Daisy Day * is launched by Stephanie West Allen to encourage the habit of starting each day with humor and a positive attitude

2004 – The first Venus Transit in well over a century takes place, the previous one being in 1882

2009 – Two American journalists are found guilty of illegally entering North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of penal labor

2010 – Scientists at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson Arizona report that a Mars geological mapping project found sedimentary deposits in the Hellas Planitia region of the red planet which suggest that a large sea could have covered the area between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago

2016 – In Michigan, Davontae Sanford, was released after spending eight years in prison, starting when he was 14 years old. He was wrongfully convicted of a quadruple murder inside a drug house. Sanford was arrested in 2007 after he approached Detroit police near the scene of the crime. After hours of police interrogation over two days, without a parent or guardian present, he confessed. Witnesses said his voice sounded like one of the shooters, but two weeks after his sentencing, a hitman confessed to the murders and led police to the murder weapon. Michigan State Police decided to conduct a fresh investigation in 2015

2017 – The Scottish Episcopal Church voted to let priests conduct same-sex weddings, marking the first time an Anglican branch has moved to allow gay weddings in church. The measure, removing a doctrinal clause declaring marriage to be a “union of one man and one woman,” required a two-thirds overall majority, and it passed with 80 percent backing from bishops and laity, and 67 percent from the clergy. The church’s presiding bishop, the Most Reverend David Chillingworth, said that “our church now affirms that a same-sex couple are not just married, but are married in the sight of God,” calling the change “a momentous step.” The move puts the Scottish church at odds with Anglican leaders, who last year sanctioned the U.S. Episcopal Church for making the same change. 

2018 – On World Ocean Day, members of the Council of Women World Leaders joined Friends of Ocean Action in calling on their network of international organizations, collaborators and partners for action to conserve the world’s ocean and marine resources. “If you want to save the Ocean, make women part of the solution.” ​Human activities and global warming are threatening our largest life-sustaining ecosystem, which disproportionally affects women and girls in developing countries. Inclusion of women in global leadership positions drives innovative solutions and creativity that benefits entire communities. Greater gender diversity is needed in the global fight for a healthier ocean and for the sustainable use of oceans, and is one of the targets of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

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