June 11th is

German Chocolate Cake Day

Corn on the Cob Day

Cotton Candy Day

Making Life Beautiful Day *

______________________________

MORE! Jeannette Rankin, Suleiman Mousa and Hazel Scott, click

______________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Brazil – Data Magna da Marinha do Brasil
(Brazilian Navy Day)

Canada – Nova Scotia:
William Davis Miners’ Memorial Day

Belgium – Flanders:
Our Lady of Esquernes Day

Honduras – Student Day

United States – Hawaii:
King Kamehameha Day

______________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

1184 BC – According to calculations by Eratosthenes, chief librarian of the Library at Alexandria, this day Troy is sacked and burned by the Achaeans (Greeks) at the end of the Trojan War

Greek urn depicting the death of Priam, last King of Troy

173 – In a violent thunderstorm, the “Miracle of the Rain” turns an ambush by the German Quadi tribe (in what is now Moravia) into a victory for Marcus Aurelius, when the storm replenishes the Romans’ depleted water supply

631 – Emperor of China Taizong of Tang sends envoys to the Xueyantuo  bearing gold and silk, seeking the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners captured during the rocky transition on the northern frontier from Sui to Tang; the embassy succeeds in freeing 80,000 Chinese men and women who are returned to China

1509 – Henry VIII of England, age 18, marries Catherine of Aragon, the 23-year-old widow of his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, who had died in 1502

1572 – Ben Jonson born, English poet, playwright, and critic

1594 – King Philip II of Spain recognizes the rights and privileges of the local nobles and chieftains in the Philippines

1741 – Joseph Warren, American physician, prominent leader of Boston’s patriot organizations during the early days of American Revolution, killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775

1742 – Benjamin Franklin invents the Franklin stove, but purposely does not patent it, so that others can freely copy the design

1748 – Denmark adopts the characteristic Nordic Cross flag later taken up by all other Scandinavian countries

1776 – The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the ‘Committee of Five’ to draft a declaration of independence

1776 – John Constable born, major English Romantic painter

Gillingham Bridge – Dorset, 1823, by John Constable

1815 – Julia Margaret Cameron born in Calcutta, British photographer who experimented with soft focus and manipulating the picture during processing

Left: Sir John Herschel with Cap – by Julia Margaret Cameron
Right: Julia Margaret Cameron – by Henry Herschel Hay Cameron

1837 – The Broad Street Riot, a brawl involving at least 800 in the fighting while 10,000 spectators egg them on, in Boston MA; inebriated firemen leaving a pub which is in violation of the Sunday ‘blue laws’ by serving them, meet a large group of Irishmen on the way to a funeral; the violence is finally quelled when Mayor Samuel Eliot calls in the state militia

1842 – Carl Paul Gottfried Linde born, German engineer; because brewing beer requires low temperatures, he invents mechanical refrigeration

1847 – Dame Millicent Fawcett born, English academic and woman suffrage leader who was President (1897-1919) of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), the moderate non-violent branch of the movement; a tireless campaigner who also focused on improving women’s opportunities for high education; co-founder of Newnham College, Cambridge

1847 – Afonso, Prince Imperial and heir apparent to the throne of the Empire of Brazil, died from epilepsy at age two, leaving Emperor Dom Pedro II without a male heir

1860 – Mary Jane Rathbun born, American marine zoologist, widely recognized as the crustacean authority of her time; she established the basic taxonomic information on Crustacea; Rathbun worked at the Smithsonian for almost 60 years, most of that time serving as the entire Department of Marine Invertebrates, finally resigning her position as superintendent to use her salary to hire an assistant, and continuing her work as a volunteer. She escribed over 1000 new species/subspecies, and published over 160 scientific papers

1864 – Richard Strauss born, major German Romantic composer

1865 – Paraguayan War, Battle of the Riachuelo: the Brazilian Navy squadron defeats the Paraguayan Navy

1877 – Renée Vivien born as Pauline Mary Tarn, an American-British poet who wrote in French and lived in Paris during the Belle Époque. Vivien was a high-profile lesbian, dubbed “Muse of the Violets” because of her love of the flower. She was as notable for her series of relationships as for her Sapphic verse; the famed French writer Colette was her neighbor from 1906 to 1908, and wrote a controversial portrait of Vivien in The Pure and the Impure. Renée Vivien died at the age of 32 in 1909, the result of drug and alcohol abuse, and anorexia nervosa – she only weighed about 70 pounds at the time of her death

Renée Vivien in manly and feminine attire

1880 – Jeannette Rankin born, American social worker, politician, peace and women’s rights activist, first woman elected to U.S. House of Representatives, voted in Congress against declaration of war for both WWI and WWII, casting the only vote against WWII

1886 – Moses Kottler born, son of Jewish emigrants, South African sculptor and painter; studied art in Jerusalem, Munich, Paris and London; member of the New Group, which aimed to raise the quality and awareness of South African art, help artists in financial difficulty, and hold more exhibitions all over South Africa

1892 – The Limelight Department, one of the world’s first film studios, is officially established in Melbourne, Australia

1899 – Yasunari Kawabata born, Japanese novelist; in 1968, he became the first Japanese to be awarded Nobel Prize for Literature; Meijin (The Master of Go) and Yama no Oto (The Sound of the Mountain)

1901 – The boundaries of the Colony of New Zealand are extended by the UK to include the Cook Islands

1909 – Natascha Artin Brunswick born in Russia, mathematician, translator; her family left after Russia after the October Revolution in 1917, eventually arriving in Germany; she studied mathematics at the University of Hamburg, graduating in 1930; also a photographic enthusiast who took many pictures of pre-WWII Germany. Because her mother was a Jew who had converted to Christianity in order to marry her father, Natascha became classified as half-Jewish under Nazi law. After she married her former mathematics professor, Emil Artin, he was forced into early retirement from his professorship in 1934. In 1937, the Artins and their two children left Germany for the U.S; he was able to get a teaching position at the University of Notre Dame, but she was classified as an enemy alien, and her camera was confiscated by police in 1942 (by the time it was returned to her, she had lost interest in photography, but her son discovered her photographs decades later, and arranged for their exhibition). Nevertheless, the U.S. Army hired her to teach Russian to soldiers in an Army Specialized Training Program. Emil Artin was hired by Princeton University in 1946; two years later, the couple divorced and he moved back to Germany. In 1959, she married composer Mark Brunswick. She was the technical editor and translator for the journal Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, founded at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where she worked until 1989

1910 – Jacques Cousteau born, French ocean explorer, marine biologist; Aqualung co-inventor; Marine conservation pioneering activist, founder of the Cousteau Society; filmmaker and author

1913 – Women in Illinois celebrate passage of a state woman suffrage bill allowing women to vote in presidential elections

1919 – Sir Barton, a chestnut Thoroughbred, becomes the first horse to win the Triple Crown, setting an American record for a mile and three-eighths in the Belmont Stakes

1919 – Suleiman Mousa born, Jordanian author and historian; noted for Al Hussein Bin Ali and the Great Arab Revolt and T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View

1920 – During the Republican National Convention in Chicago, party leaders gathered in a Blackstone Hotel room to come decide on their candidate for the U.S. presidential election; the Associated Press coins the phrase “smoke-filled room” in its story

1920 – Hazel Scott born in Trinidad, Jazz/Classical pianist, singer, and civil rights activist; was recognized early as a musical prodigy, her mother  took her to New York City at the age of four. Scott was given scholarships from the age of eight to study at the Juilliard School, and began performing in a jazz band and on the radio by age 16. She was prominent as a jazz singer throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In 1950, she became the first black person to have a TV show, The Hazel Scott Show, featuring variety entertainment. When on tour she refused to perform in segregated venues. Her television show was cancelled a week after she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in September 1950. In 1945, she had married U.S. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. They divorced in 1960, after Scott had moved to Paris in the late 1950s to revive her career, not returning to the United States until 1967. She died of cancer in 1981, survived by her son, Adam Clayton Powell III

1922 – Jean Sutherland Boggs born, Canadian art historian, specialist in Edgar Degas’ work, academic and civil servant; the first woman director at both the National Gallery of Canada (1966-1976), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1978-1982); Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard (1976-1979); chair and CEO of Canada Museums Construction Corporation (1982-1985), where she directed the construction of a National Gallery building and the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which opened in 1986, and is now called the Canadian Museum of History; author of Portraits by Degas, and several other books about the painter’s life and work; became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1973

Jean Sutherland Boggs with Degas painting Woman with an Umbrella

1925 – William Styron born, American novelist and essayist; known for Sophie’s Choice, and his memoir, Darkness Visible

1928 – King Oliver and his band record “Tin Roof Blues”

1932 – Athol Fugard born, South African actor, director, and playwright

1936 – The London International Surrealist Exhibition opens; exhibiting artists include Constanin Brancusi, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso and Man Ray

Back row, from left: Rupert Lee, Ruthven Todd, Salvador Dalí , Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Herbert Read, E LT Mesens, George Reavey and Hugh Sykes-Davies Front row, from left: Diana Lee, Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar, Sheila Legge and unknown – Photograph: Evening Standard

1937 – One of the key trials during the Great Purge of the Soviet Communist Party in the USSR was The Case of the Military, a secret trial in which senior officers of the Red Army, accused of anti-Soviet conspiracy, are executed during the night of June 11-12, immediately after the guilty verdict

1939 – President Franklin Roosevelt introduces King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England to the American hot dog during their state visit to the U.S.

1940 – The Ink Spots record “Maybe”

1942 –U.S. and the Soviet Union sign a WWII lend-lease agreement

1947 – War-time sugar rationing ends in the U.S.

1944 – The USS Missouri, the last battleship built by the U.S. Navy, is commissioned

1962 – Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin become the only prisoners acknowledged to have escaped from Alcatraz Island

1963 – Alabama Governor George Wallace defiantly stands at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending the school; later that day, accompanied by federalized National Guard troops, they are able to register, and become the first African American students at the school. Since she enrolled as a junior, Malone was the school’s first African American graduate in 1965

1963 – Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burns himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam

1963 – John F. Kennedy addresses Americans from the Oval Office proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which will give equal access to public facilities, end segregation in education and guarantee federal protection for voting rights

1965 – The Rolling Stones release their album “Got Live If You Want It” in the U.K.

1968 – Lloyd J. Old identifies the first cell surface antigens that could differentiate among different cell types

1971 – U.S. Government forcibly removes the last holdouts to the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, ending 19 months of occupation

1971 – Liz L. Kendall born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Leicester West since 2010; advocate for the living wage and expanding academy schools programme (secondary schools, mostly state-funded, which are self-governing non-profit charitable trusts), and supporter of worker representation on company boards

1987 – Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng and Bernie Grant are elected as the first black Members of Parliament in Great Britain

Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott

1990 – U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a federal law banning U.S. flag desecration

1993 – In Wisconsin v. Mitchell, U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously that states may impose harsher penalties on “hate crimes”

2004 – Cassini–Huygens makes its closest flyby of the Saturn moon Phoebe

2008 – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes a historic official apology to Canada’s First Nations in regard to abuses at a Canadian Indian residential school

2008 – The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is launched into orbit

2009 – The World Health Organization declares the swine flu outbreak a pandemic

2015 – Making Life Beautiful Day * is launched by Foundation Apriori, the charitable arm of Apriori Beauty, to recognize women and men who are making life beautiful, building relationships and helping others

2018 – The San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado shut down for the first time in its 113-year history due to a drought-driven fire that has expanded to 22,131 acres. The 1.8-million-acre forest spans nine counties and is popular with U.S. and international tourists, who flock there in the summer season, which is just getting underway. Authorities in the national forest already had imposed fire restrictions. “Under current conditions, one abandoned campfire or spark could cause a catastrophic wildfire, and we are not willing to take that chance with the natural and cultural resources under our protection and care, or with human life and property,” said Richard Bustamante, SJNF forest fire staff officer. The area will remain closed until there is enough rainfall to reduce the danger

2019 – The Bohemian Club is an elite private club, founded in 1872. Its membership is confidential, but U.S.Presidents and Supreme Court Justices have been members in the past. The club has never admitted women as members. It holds an annual retreat at its private property, Bohemian Grove in Sonoma County, which is shrouded in secrecy. The country had approved, for the last 14 years, a contract for sheriff’s deputies to provide security for the event, but this year, Supervisor Shirlee Zane of the Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors raised the issue, “How can we contract tax-funded services with a club that openly discriminates against women?”  She added, “Women’s rights are being shredded throughout the country and we are kept out of decision-making. This is another way it’s happening in our own backyard.” Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, the first woman to represent the district which includes Bohemian Grove, said, “Bohemian Grove has always been a strange anachronism in my district. It’s 2,700 acres of mystery I haven’t been allowed to set foot on.” Nevertheless, the supervisors voted to once again provide security for the retreat, because the short time between the vote and the retreat, set to begin July 10, raised safety concerns if the club were unable to contract private security. “We wouldn’t be up here even having this discussion if the Bohemian Club said no African-Americans allowed, no gays allowed, no Latinos allowed, no immigrants allowed or no Jews allowed,” Zane said

______________________________