July 4^th is:

Happy U.S. Independence Day!

Barbecued Spareribs Day

Caesar Salad Day

Country Music Day

Sidewalk Egg Frying Day

 Independence from Meat Day

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MORE! Pilar Barbosa, Bill Withers and Sonia Pierre, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Norway – Queen Sonja’s Birthday

Philippines – Philippine Republic Day

Rwanda – Liberation Day

Tonga – Birthday of His Majesty
King Tupou VI

U.S. territories –
4^th of July/Independence Day

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On This Day in HISTORY:

362 BC – The Thebans, led by Epaminondas, defeat the Spartans at the Second Battle of Mantinea, but Epaminondas is hit in the chest with a spear, which broke, leaving its iron point in his body, and he collapses. The Thebans fight fiercely to keep their wounded ruler from falling into Spartan hands, but he dies of the wound just after hearing that the Thebans are victorious. The loss of Epaminindas far outweighs the value of the victory – neither side can create a strong enough collation to unite the city-states, which eases the way for the conquest much of Greece by Philip II of Macedon in 346 BC, and the rise of his son, Alexander the Great

68 BC – Salonia Matidia born; her maternal uncle was Trajan, who thought highly of her intelligence and listened to her opinions; her daughter married Hadrian, who became Roman Emperor after Trajan; when Matidia died in 119, Hadrian delivered her funeral oration, deified her, and granted her a temple and altar in Rome itself, making her the first divinized Roman woman with a full-scale temple of her own, not shared with her husband

1054 – Chinese of the Song dynasty and Arab observers record a supernova – remnants form the Crab Nebula

The Crab Nebula

1095 – Usama ibn Munqidh born, medieval Muslim poet, author, faris (knight), and diplomat from the Banu Munqidh dynasty of Shaizar in northern Syria. He was exiled from Shaizar in 1131. He became a traveler, and a courtier at several different courts, including the Fatimid court in Cairo. During his life, he was most known as a poet and adib (man of letters), but now known for his Kitab al-I’tibar (Book of Contemplation), which contains lengthy descriptions of the crusaders of the First and Second Crusades

1636 – The City of Providence is founded in the English colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations by Roger Williams after he was banished from the Massachusetts colony for his religious views. Because of a policy of complete religious toleration, the city becomes a haven for refugees from religious bigotry

1744 – Treaty of Lancaster: the Iroquois Six Nations confederation cedes what they think is just the Shenandoah Valley to the English, who think the Iroquois have ceded their claim to all the land up to the Ohio River, for 200 pounds in gold and 200 pounds in goods

1776 – The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence

1789 – The Tariff Act of 1789, the first substantial Congressional legislation, is signed into law by President George Washington; together with the Collection Act of 1789, they protect American trade and raise revenues for the federal government

1802 – The U.S. Military Academy opens at West Point NY

1803 – President Jefferson announces the Louisiana Purchase to the American people

1804 – Nathaniel Hawthorne born, major 19^th century American author; House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter

1807 – Giuseppe Garibaldi born, Italian nationalist, military leader of the unification of Italy, a founding father with Camillo Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II, and Giuseppe Mazzini of the Kingdom of Italy

1817 – Erie Canal Construction begins, to connect Lake Erie with the Hudson River

1826 – Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die on the same day, the 50^th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence

1826 – Stephen Foster born, popular American songwriter of over 200 songs, , including Oh! Susanna, Camptown Races, Beautiful Dreamer, and Old Kentucky Home

1827 – Slavery is abolished in New York state

1845 – Henry David Thoreau begins his two-year experiment in simple living at Walden Pond near Concord MA

1855 – Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published

1863 – American Civil War: After 47 days of siege, Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant, while Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia is retreating after devastating losses at the Battle of Gettysburg, almost one-third of his army and his general officers killed, wounded, captured or missing

1868 – Henrietta Swan Leavitt born, American astronomer; she discovered the relationship between luminosity and variables associated with Cepheid stars, stars which vary regularly in brightness in periods ranging from a few days to several months, during her study of hundreds of variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds. The Period-Luminosity relation is used by astronomers to calculate the distance between Earth and other galaxies

1883 – Reuben ‘Rube’ Goldberg born, American engineer, sculptor and cartoonist, won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for his work at the New York Sun; a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society; their Reuben Award is named for him, and is given to the Cartoonist of the Year

1898 – Dr. Pilar Barbosa de Rosario born, Puerto Rican historian, educator and political activist; daughter of Puerto Rican Senator Jose Barbosa, often called “the Father of the Puerto Rican Statehood Movement; got her Doctorate in History at Clark University in Massachusetts, and returned home to become the first woman hired as a professor at University of Puerto Rico’s College of Liberal Arts; in 1929, she established the Department of History and Social Sciences, and was its director until 1943, but continued to teach until her retirement in 1967; she was very active in the statehood movement, following in her father’s footsteps, and served as a political advisor to members of the New Progressive Party, including Resident Commissioner and Governor Luis Fortuño (2009-2013); named by the Legislative Assembly as Official Historian of Puerto Rico in 1993; she lived to be 98 years old

1898 – Gertrude Lawrence born, British actress, singer and dancer, international theatrical and film star; during WWII, she traveled under grueling conditions to entertain troops in both Europe and the Pacific

Gertrude Lawrence on the cover of LIFE, November 27, 1944

1900 – Belinda Boyd Dann, Australian born as Quinlyn Warrakoo to a Nykina mother and an Irish cattle station manager; one of the “stolen generations,” when she was 8 years old, she was taken away from her mother and sent to Beagle Bay Mission in Western Australia, where her name was changed to Belinda Boyd. She married Mathias Dann in 1918. Although she remembered Warrakoo was her name, she did not know who she was or where she came from. One of her grandsons told her story and her original name to a friend who was connected to the Nykina people, and in 2007, Warrakoo met her 97-year-old brother for the first time, just weeks before he died, and she spoke the Nykina language for the first time in almost a century. She died a few months later at age 107

1900 – Nellie Mae Rowe born, Africa-American self-taught artist, now considered an important folk artist; her home and yard were her primary canvas, which she referred to as her ‘playhouse’; it was dismantled and torn down after her death in 1982, replaced by a hotel, which has a plaque identifying the site’s previous inhabitant

Happy Days – (1981) crayon and pencil, by Nellie Mae Rowe

1905 – Lionel Trilling born, American author and major literary critic

1910 – “America the Beautiful” is published; lyrics from the poem “America” (title changed from “Pikes Peak” for publication) by Katherine Lee Bates, and music by Samuel A. Ward,  which he originally composed for a hymn called “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem” published in 1895

1910 – Gloria Stuart born, American film and stage actress, visual artist and political and environmental activist; she made her first appearance in movies in 1932, and played her last role in 2004, with a gap from 1945 to 1975, in which she left acting, and became an artist working in several mediums, including painting, making fine prints and miniature books, and shaping Bonsai. In 1975, she started doing small parts on television and in movies, then was cast in 1996 as the older Rose in Titianic, five days after her 86^thbirthday, for which she was nominated in 1997 for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She was campaigned for an actors’ union, and was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. Stuart helped form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936, and was co-founder with Dorothy Parker of the League to Support the Spanish War Orphans. She was also a long-time environmentalist: “I belong to every organization that has to do with saving the environment.”  She lived to the age of 100

Idiot’s Bouquet – Hand, by Gloria Stuart

1911 – Susanna Kok born in the Free State province of South Africa, medical missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church and authority on leprosy. Dr. Kok worked mainly in Mkar, Nigeria. She was the first to describe and study what came to be called Mkar disease (granuloma multiforme), a skin disease which is similar to leprosy, but doesn’t respond to treatment as leprosy does. She also worked on a study of nerve conduction in leprosy patients, and made nerve biopsies the standard procedure for diagnosing leprosy, replacing the less successful skin analysis that was used previously

1917 – Manuel Laureano Rodríguez Sánchez born, known as Manolete, one of the greatest Spanish bullfighters

1918 – Esther and Pauline Friedman born, twin sisters better known as Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, American syndicated advice columnists

1927 – First Flight of the Lockheed Vega 1, at Mines Field

1927 – Neil Simon born, American playwright; has more combined Tony and Oscar nominations than any other writer, and is the only playwright ever to have four plays running on Broadway at the same time

1934 – Yvonne B. Miller born, American Democratic politician, civil rights activist and teacher; first African American woman to serve in both houses of the Virginia state legislature; first woman to chair a Virginia Senate committee; she died while in office as the longest-serving woman in the Virginia Senate at that time

1936 – Zdzisława Donat born, Polish coloratura soprano, notable as the Queen of Night in Die Zauberflöte, Professor Emeritus at Frédéric Chopin University of Music

1937 – Queen Sonja of Norway born as a commoner; noted as a humanitarian activist, involved in Princess Märtha Louise’s Fund, which provides assistance to disabled children in Norway, and active in large-scale initiatives to raise funds for international refugees. Served as Vice President (1987-1990) of the Norwegian Red Cross, traveling with delegations to Botswana and Zimbabwe in 1989; Queen Sonja’s School Award, started in 2006, honors schools demonstrating “excellence in efforts to promote inclusion and equality”

Queen Sonja Of Norway at the 2019 Empowerment Breakfast With Minority Women

1938 – Bill Withers born, American singer-songwriter; Three Grammy wins, and four additional nominations; inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015

1942 – Irving Berlin’s musical This is the Army opens on Broadway

1946 – The Philippines becomes independent

1950 – The first program is aired by U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe, an anti-communist propaganda broadcast aimed at Central Europe and the Soviet Union

1951 – Kathleen Kennedy Townsend born, American attorney, Democratic politician; since 2010, chair of American Bridge, a non-profit which raises funds for Democratic candidates and causes; Lieutenant Governor of Maryland (1995-2003)

1958 – Vera Leth born, Greenlandic civil servant, County Council Ombudsman for the Parliament of Green land since 1997

1959 – The new 49-star U.S. flag honoring Alaska statehood is unfurled

1963 – Sonia Pierre born, Dominican human rights advocate, worked to end  Antihaitianismo, discrimination against persons of Haitian origin in the Dominican Republic; recipient of Amnesty International’s 2003 Human Rights Ginetta Sagan Fund Award and the 2006 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award; she grew up in a migrant workers’ camp, one of 12 children, whose father was an undocumented worker from Haiti. Her mother came with a temporary work permit in 1957. Pierre’s nationality was disputed by the Junta Central Electoral, which said her birth certificate was forged. She began her political activism at age 14, organizing a five-day protest by sugar cane workers for better living conditions and wages. She was arrested, but the workers’ demands were met. She became director of the Movement for Dominican Women of Haitian Descent (MUDHA). In 2005, she petitioned the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to hear the case of two ethnic Haitian children who were denied Dominican birth certificates, Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic, “upheld human rights laws prohibiting racial discrimination in access to nationality and citizenship.”  The court also ordered the Dominican government to provide the birth certificates, but the Dominican Supreme Court later ruled that “Haitian workers were considered ‘in transit,’ and that their children were therefore not entitled to citizenship.”

Sonia Pierre, center, with Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama – 2010

1966 – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into law

1966 – The Lovin’ Spoonful release “Summer In The City”

1973 – Keiko Ihara born, Japanese race car driver, who has been racing internationally  since 2000

976 – The U.S. celebrates its Bicentennial – in New York, 225 sailing ships under 31 flags parade up the Hudson River

1997 – The Mars Pathfinder deploys Sojourner on Mars

2005 – A NASA space probe, Deep Impact, hits its comet target as planned in a mission to learn how the solar system formed

2010 – General David Petraeus formally assumes command of the 130,000 troops of the international force in Afghanistan

2011 – Adele releases her single “Set Fire to the Rain” in the U.K.  It became number one on the Billboard Hot 100

2012 – The discovery of particles consistent with the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider is announced at CERN

2013 – Because Hurricane Sandy severely damaged the Liberty Island dock and knocked out power in 2012, the Statue of Liberty had been closed while repairs were made; it reopens to the public on this day

2015 – A Russian cargo spaceship, Progress M-28M, successfully docked at the International Space Station, bringing 2.5 metric tons of fuel, oxygen, water, food, and other supplies to the U.S.-Russian team. The delivery came after 2 failed resupply missions, attempted by the Russians in April and by the U.S. in June

2019 – Utah State’s Museum of Anthropology hosted an exhibit highlighting works by key cartoonist and women’s rights activist Nina Allender, whose cartoons regularly appeared between 1913 and 1920 in The Suffragist, the weekly newspaper published by the National Women’s Party in Washington DC. She also designed the “Jailed for Freedom” pin given as a badge of honor to suffragists who had been arrested and jailed campaigning for the vote. The exhibit, “Women Speaking to Women: The Political Art of Nina Allender” ran from July through August 30

Jailed for Freedom pin – Sept 1, 1920 Suffragist cartoon – Nina Allender

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