July 28^th is

Buffalo Soldiers Day *

Waterpark Day

Milk Chocolate Day

World Hepatitis Day *

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MORE! Judith Leyster, Harry Bridges and Fahmida Riaz, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Canada –
Great Upheaval Commemoration Day *

Faroe Islands – Ôlavsøka Eve
(eve of St Olav’s Day, patron saint)

Peru – Día de la Independencia

San Marino – Fall of Fascism Anniversary

Spain – Cantabria (autonomous community):
Día de las Instituciones de Cantabria

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 On This Day in HISTORY

1364 – The Republic of Florence wins a resounding victory against Pisa at the Battle of Cascina, coming back from a defeat at Valdinievole in a battle with Pisa troops led by mercenary John Hawkwood

1456 – Jacopo Sannazzaro born, Italian poet, humanist and epigrammist; noted for Arcadia, a poetical prose work

1540 – Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister, is executed for treason, and 49-year-old Henry VIII takes 17-year-old Catherine Howard as his fifth wife – she was accused of committing adultery, and beheaded for treason just 19 months after the wedding

1609 – Judith Leyster born, Dutch painter during the ‘Golden Age’ of Dutch painting; her work was forgotten until 1893, when the Louvre purchased a purported ‘Frans Hals’ painting which turned out to a Judith Leyster painting

Self-Portrait by Judith Leyster, circa 1630

1794 – At the end of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just are executed by guillotine
in Paris

1809 – The Duke of Wellington’s combined British and Iberian troops defeat the French at Battle of Talavera

1821 – José de San Martín declares Peru’s independence from Spain

1844 – Gerard Manley Hopkins born, innovative English Victorian poet and Jesuit priest, whose major themes were nature and religion

1854 – The last all-sail U.S. Navy warship, USS Constellation, is commissioned

1855 – Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer, American philanthropist, art collector and patron, feminist and advocate for women’s suffrage, supporter of Alice Paul and patron of Edgar Degas

1866 – Beatrix Potter born, beloved English author-illustrator of Peter Rabbit and other children’s storybooks, naturalist and conservationist of the English Lake District

1866 – Buffalo Soldiers Day * – The U.S. Congress recognizes the contributions of the more than 180,000 black Americans who fought to preserve the Union during the Civil War, by establishing six regular Army regiments of black enlisted soldiers. Of those six units, the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments become two of the most highly decorated units in American military history

Buffalo Soldiers Charge by Frank McCarthy

1866 – U.S. Congress votes to commission Vinnie Ream to sculpt a statue of Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda; she is 18 years old, the youngest woman artist to receive a U.S. government commission

1867 – Charles Dillon Perrine born, American astronomer; discover of two of Jupiter’s moons; won the 1897 Lalande Prize; worked at the Lick Observatory in California (1893- 1909): director of the Argentine National Observatory  in Argentina (1909-1936) 

1868 – The 14^th Amendment to U.S. Constitution is certified, establishing citizenship of black males, giving them the right to vote and guaranteeing them due process of law

1874 – Alice Duer Miller, American author and poet, suffragist, known for satirical poems in her collection Are Women People? and the novel Come Out of the Kitchen

1879 – Lucy Burns born, American suffragist and women’s rights advocate, who formed the National Woman’s Party with Alice Paul; she attended Columbia University, Vassar College and Yale before becoming an English teacher at Brooklyn’s Erasmus High School (1904-1906), then, supported by her father, she continued her language studies in Germany at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin (1906-1909), and enrolled at Oxford to study English. It was during this time that she became involved with the woman’s suffrage movement after meeting the Pankhursts. She went to work for the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU – 1910-1912), and participated in organizing parades and demonstrations. She made numerous court appearances, charged with “disorderly conduct.” During one of her arrests in 1912, she met Alice Paul, also under arrest, at a London Police Station, and they decided to return to the U.S. and apply the tactics they had learned in England to the suffrage cause in America. Their partnership over the next eight years would make woman’s suffrage a national issue in the U.S., and pushed forward passage and ratification of the 19^th Amendment in 1920. Burns would endure more time behind bars and harsher treatment than any other American suffragist, including repeated violent forced feeding, and being chained overnight to her cell bars by her raised arms. She was one of the first people to define the term “political prisoner.” After Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Amendment, she was completely exhausted and said, “I don’t want to do anything more. I think we have done all this for women, and we have sacrificed everything we possessed for them, and now let them fight for it . . . I am not going to fight anymore.” She retired from political life, and devoted herself to Catholic charities and raising her orphaned niece

1887 – Marcel Duchamp born in France, American painter and chess player; his work is associated with Cubism and Dadaism

Sad jeune homme dans un train (Sad young man on a train) by Marcel Duchamp

1893 – Rued Langgaard born, Danish late-Romantic composer and organist

1896 – Miami FL becomes an incorporated city

1901 – Harry Bridges born in Australia, American labor leader

1901 – Rudy Vallee born, American singer and bandleader

1907 – Earl Tupper born, American inventor of Tupperware plastic containers

1908 – Dame Annabelle Rankin, Australian politician, second woman member of the Australian Senate, first woman from Queensland to sit in the Parliament, first woman appointed as Opposition Whip in the Senate, first Australian woman to have a feral portfolio (cabinet position) and first to head a foreign mission, to New Zealand

1909 – Malcolm Lowry born, English novelist, short story writer and poet

1914 – Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, igniting WWI

1915 – U.S. begins a 20-year occupation of Haiti

1917 – The National Association of the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Silent Protest Parade in New York City

1929 – Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis born, American cultural icon; First Lady and widow of John F. Kennedy, then married to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis; book editor for Doubleday and advocate for historic buildings preservation

1929 – Shirley Ann Grau born, American novelist and short story writer; her multi-generational novel, The Keepers of the House, won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

1932 – President Hoover orders U.S. Army troops to evict WWI “Bonus Army” from DC

1935 – First flight of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

1932 – Natalie Babbitt born, American author-illustrator of children’s and YA books; Tuck Everlasting and The Eyes of the Amaryllis

1935 – First flight of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

1939 – Judy Garland records Over the Rainbow for The Wizard of Oz

1939 – An Anglo-Saxon helmet is discovered during the excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, one of the most important artifacts ever found

1942 – Tonia Marketaki born, Greek film director and screenwriter; her first short film in 1967 resulted in her imprisonment by the Greek Military Junta (1964-1974); when released, she left Greece, and worked as an assistant editor in the UK, and director of educational films for farmers in Algeria. She came back to Greece in 1971, made three full-length films, Ioannis o Viaios (John the Violent), Krystallines Nyhtes (Crystal Nights), and I timi tis agapis (The Price of Love). She also directed a number of theatrical productions, and the TV series Lemonodasos. She died in 1994 at age 51

1945 – U.S Senate votes 89-2 to ratify the United Nations Charter; President Truman declares, “The action of the Senate substantially advances the cause of world peace.”

1946 – Fahmida Riaz born, Pakistani Urdu-language writer, poet, human rights activist, part of the progressive writers movement, and a feminist; she has published over 15 books of fiction and poetry, most considered controversial at the time, especially her second verse collection Badan Dareeda, regarded as too shockingly erotic and sensual for a woman poet. Founder and publisher of Awaz, a liberal and politically charged Urdu magazine, for which she was arrested and Awaz shut down. She was bailed out by a fan of her work, and sought asylum in India with her children and sister, where her husband, who had also been arrested, was able to join them after his release. They were in exile in India for seven years (1980-1987), before returning to Pakistan

1951 – Disney’s animated movie Alice in Wonderland is released

1965 – President Lyndon Johnson orders an increase of U.S. troops in Viet Nam from 75,000 to 125,000

1966 – Sossina M. Haile born in Ethiopia, Ethiopian-American chemist, whose family fled to America seeking asylum during the 1974 coup in Ethiopia, after her historian father was nearly killed. She is known for developing the first solid acid fuel cells, working in the field of sustainable energy technologies. Currently a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University and an editor for the Journal of Materials Research; previously at Caltech (1996-2015). NSF National Young Investigator Award (1994-1999); Humboldt Fellowship (1992-1993); Fulbright Fellowship (1991-1992); AT&T Cooperative Research Fellowship (1986-1992); 2001 J.B. Wagner Award of the High Temperature Materials Division of the Electrochemical Society; 2000 Coble Award from the American Ceramic Society; and 1997 TMS Robert Lansing Hardy Award

1967 – President Lyndon Johnson appoints Illinois Governor Otto Kerner as chair of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, called the Kerner Commission, to investigate the causes of the 1967 U.S. race riots in Los Angeles, Chicago and Newark, and make recommendations for preventing riots in the future

1971 – Ludmilla Lacueva Canut born, Andorran author of fiction and nonfiction, columnist for the Catalan-language newspaper Bondia; her first published book, Los pioneros de la hoteleria andorrana, a history of the hotel industry of Andorra, won the Research Prize from the General Council of Andorra, and became a local best-seller for Saint George’s Day, when it is traditional for Andorran women to give men a book

1973 – Summer Jam at Watkins Glen rock festival attracts 600,000 attendees

1984 – Summer Olympics (XXIII Olympiad) Opening Ceremonies in Los Angeles CA

1996 – “Kennewick Man”- prehistoric remains found near Kennewick, WA

1998 – Bell Atlantic and GTE announce a $52 billion merger that creates Verizon

2004 – The Democratic National Convention in Boston nominates Massachusetts Senator John Kerry for president

2005 – Provisional Irish Republican Army ends its 30-year Northern Ireland campaign

2009 – Tanzania Women’s Bank, under the leadership of Margaret Chaca, opens in Dar es Salaam. The idea started during the Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair in 1999. Women participants petitioned Tanzanian President H.E Benjamin Mkapa, asking that the government facilitate establishment of a women’s bank, so women could open checking and savings accounts, and apply for loans, more easily than at traditional banks, which were not geared for small accounts and microloans. It took eight years to get the bank listed as a Registered Financial Institution with the Tanzania Central Bank, and two more years before it opened its first office. It now has three more branches

Margaret Chaca

2009 – The Senate Judiciary Committee approves Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court

2016 – The earliest evidence of cancer is found in 1.7 million-year-old toe fossil from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa, published in South African Journal of Science

2016 – World Hepatitis Day * becomes part of the campaign by the World Health Organization (WHO) to prevent and control Viral Hepatitis; two resolutions on Viral Hepatitis have been adopted by the World Health Assembly, in 2010 and in 2014

2017 – Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif found guilty of corruption charges by Pakistan’s Supreme Court, disqualified for life from public office

2018 – In China, out of over 50 million court verdicts from 2010 to 2017 available publicly, only 34 focused on sexual harassment, according to a study by the Beijing Yuanzhong Gender Development Center. Only two of the 34 cases involving sexual harassment were brought by victims suing alleged harassers, and both of those cases were dismissed for lack of evidence. In fact, the majority of the 34 cases were brought by alleged harassers themselves, claiming breach of contract after they were dismissed by employers for sexual harassment, or for defamation-related reasons after accusations were made public by victims or employers. It’s not that sexual harassment isn’t a problem in China, as nearly 40% of women in China say they have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. The absence of court cases indicates instead the difficulties women face seeking legal redress for abuse. But the #MeToo movement is having some effect. In 2018, several university professors were accused on Chinese social media of sexually harassing female students, and a woman accused prominent anti-discrimination activist Lei Chuang of sexual assault. A slew of prominent journalists, intellectuals, and activists have since been accused on social media of sexual misconduct. Some of the accused made public apologies. One journalist, Shangguan Luan, wrote “given the lack of systemic redress,” China’s #MeToo movement is more about “easing depression” than “seeking accountability.” In a telling case, a woman said on July 25 after she reported to the police that prominent TV host Zhu Jun had sexually harassed her, police forced her to withdraw the complaint, claiming that Zhu, as host of the annual Spring Festive gala at the state media, had “enormous ‘positive influence’ on the society.” Soon after the exposé, posts about the case began to be removed from Chinese social media. Chinese law banning sexual harassment of women in the workplace doesn’t clearly define what is meant by sexual harassment, or make provisions creating a specific cause of action against harassment

Illustration by Hanna Barczyk for Foreign Policy

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