August 29th is

International Day Against Nuclear Tests *

According to Hoyle Day *

Chop Suey Day

Individual Rights Day *

More Herbs, Less Salt Day

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MORE! Elisabeth Irwin, Ishi and Jehan Sadat, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

India – National Sports Day
and  Telugu Language Day

Malta –
Martyrdom of St. John

Poland –
Municipal Police Day

Slovakia – Slovak Uprising Day

Ukraine – Miners’ Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

708 – Coins are minted in Japan for the first time from copper

1533 – Francisco Pizarro orders the killing of Atahualpa, the last Incan King of Peru

1619 – Jean-Baptiste Colbert born, French secretary under King Louis XlV

1632 – John Locke born, English philosopher and physician, “Father of Liberalism,” whose writings have a major influence on the U.S. Declaration of Independence.  Individual Rights Day * is set on August 29 in his honor

1728 – Maria Ana Sophia of Saxony born; as the wife of Maximillian III Joseph, she becomes Electress of Bavaria, and negotiates with Frederick II of Prussia to ensure Bavaria’s independence from Austria

1769 – Edmond Hoyle, author of A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, arbiter of rules for card and board games, dies – “According to Hoyle” Day * honors his memory

1786 – Shay’s Rebellion, armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers protesting high debt and tax burdens

1780 – Jean-Auguste Ingres born, French Neoclassical painter

Princess de Broglie by Ingres c.1852

1809 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. born, American physician, poet, essayist and humorist

1815 – Anna Ella Carroll born, American reformer, anti-slavery pamphleteer and lobbyist after freeing her own slaves in 1860; using the pen-name ‘Hancock,’ published articles in the National Intelligencer; defended Lincoln early in the Civil War, in her pamphlet, The War Powers of the General Government, against claims that by suspending writ of habeas corpus, imposing martial law and a naval blockade he violated the Constitution. She went to St. Louis in the fall of 1861, and gathered intelligence from riverboat captains that may have influenced changing the Union’s main invasion routes from the Mississippi River to the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers

1824 – Eliza Allen Starr born, American artist, art critic and educator, noted for books on Catholic art

1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction

1833 – British Factory Act passed, restricting work for women and 13-to-18-year-olds to 10 hour days

1842 – China and Great Britain sign Treaty of Nanking, ending the first Opium War, China expands ports open to foreign trade, and cedes Hong Kong as a crown colony

1848 – Albert Bartholome born, French sculptor; designer of the Croix de guerre

1862 – Maurice Maeterlinck born, Belgian poet, playwright and essayist; 1911 Nobel Prize; noted for L’Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird)

1869 – The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, the first mountain-climbing railway

1871 –  Florine Stettheimer born, American painter, designer and poet; hosted a salon in Manhattan where she exhibited her work; Crystal Flowers, a book of poetry, was published posthumously by her sister

Family Portrait II, by Florine Stettheimer – 1930s
(artist shows herself standing on far left)

1876 – Charles Kettering born, American automotive engineer; founder of Delco

1880 – Elisabeth Irwin born, American educator, psychologist and reformer, founder of the Little Red School House, a progressive school in New York City

1881 – Edvin Kallstenius born, Swedish composer

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the Reitwagen, first internal combustion motorcycle

1892 – Alexandre Koyré born in the Russian Empire, Jewish French philosopher who wrote on the history and philosophy of science. He went to Germany as a student in 1908, then went to Paris in 1912, to continue his studies there. He joined the French Foreign Legion when WWI broke out, then volunteered for a Russian regiment in 1916, fighting on the Russian Front. By 1922, he had earned his Doctorat ès letters, and began teaching at the École pratique des hautes etudes (EPHE) in Paris. In 1932 the EPHE created a Department of History of Religious Thought in Modern Europe for him to chair. While he retained this position until his death, during 1932-1934, 1936-1938, and 1940-1941, he taught at Fuad University in Cairo, then lived in New York City during the rest of WWII, teaching at the New School for Social Research. Koyré was general secretary and Vice President of the Institut International de Philosophie, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of the George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society, and of the Silver Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He died in Paris in 1964, at age 71

1898 – Preston Sturges born, American film director, screenwriter and playwright; The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels

1911 – Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the northeastern California wilderness

1915 –  Ingrid Bergman born, Swedish actress, American film star; winner, three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes and a Tony Award

1916 – U.S. passes the Philippine Autonomy Act

1920 – Charlie Parker born, American jazz saxophonist and composer

1924 – Consuelo Velázquez born, Mexican concert pianist, singer, and songwriter, lyricist of many popular songs including Bésame mucho

1924 – Dinah Washington born, American jazz and blues singer and pianist

1926 – Helene Glykatzi-Ahrweiler born in Greece, historian, first woman Principal of the Université de Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne in its 700 year history; UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador; member of the British Academy and the Academy of Athens

1930 – The last 36 inhabitants of Saint Kilda are evacuated to other parts of Scotland

1931 – Lise Payette born, French Canadian feminist, Parti Québécois politician, radio show editor and host, and columnist for the Journal de Montreal (2004-2007) and Le Devoir(2007-2016); Member of the National Assembly of Quebec (1976-1981), she served during that time as Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister of State for the Status of Women, and Minister of State for Social Development; she was responsible for the updating of the Civil Code of Quebec to allow two surnames for children; honored with the 1997 Florence Bird Award by the International Centre for Human Rights and Development, and made an Officer of the National Order of Quebec in 2001

1933 – Jehan Sadat born, teacher, former Egyptian First Lady, married to Anwar Sadat, instrumental in reforming Egypt’s civil rights laws and laws giving rights to women, headed the Egyptian delegation to UN International Women’s Conferences

1938 – Angela Huth born, English journalist, novelist, playwright and BBC presenter; she has published 3 collections of short stories and 11 novels, noted for her best-selling novel Land Girls, about the British women who did farm work during WWII taking the place of men who were soldiers; Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1978

1946 – Francine D. Blau born, American economist and Frances Perkins Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and professor of economics at Cornell University; first woman honored with the 2010 IZA Prize in Labor Economics for her “seminal contributions to the economic analysis of labor market inequality.” Also recipient of the 2001 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the American Economic Association Committee of the Status of Women in the Economic Profession, and the 2017 Jacob Mincer Award by the Society of Labor Economists for lifetime contributions to the field. Her books include Equal Pay in the Office, Gender and Family Issues in the Workplace, and The Economics of Women, Men and Work

1947 – Temple Grandin born, American professor of animal science at Colorado State University, and consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior. Grandin is a prominent and widely cited proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter. She is also a spokesperson for autism, one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to publicly share insights from her personal experience, inventor of a ‘hug box’ device which has a calming effect, and author of Emergence: Labeled Autistic, and Thinking in Pictures. She was originally diagnosed at the age of two as having ‘brain damage,’ which wasn’t confirmed until she was 64 years old, by cerebral imaging. Her mother was the first to hypothesize that she was autistic when Grandin was in her teens, but a formal diagnosis was not made until she was in her 40s. She has also been identified as an autistic savant

1949 – Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, First Lightning, in Kazakhstan. The same day, University of Illinois treats cancer patients for first time with nuclear device

1952 – Karen Hesse born, American childrens and YA author, and poet; winner of the 1998 Newberry Medal for her book Out of the Dust, and the 2012 Phoenix Award from the Children’s Literature Association for Letters from Rivka

1958 – U.S. Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs CO

1958 – Michael Jackson born, American Pop Singer

1965 – NASA’s Gemini V spacecraft splashes down in the Atlantic after 8 days in space

1966 – The Beatles last commercial concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park

1969 – Jennifer Crittenden born, American screenwriter and producer; noted for episodes for The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond and Seinfield. She was also an executive producer on Everybody Loves Raymond, and a producer on Seinfeld

1970 – Los Angeles, California: During the Chicano Moratorium demonstration against the Vietnam War,  journalist Rubén Salazar and two others are killed when LAPD police officers riot

1982 – Ruhila Adatia-Sood born, Kenyan television and radio presenter and  journalist of Indian heritage. On September 21, 2013, she was mortally wounded in the Westgate shopping mall shooting while hosting a cooking competition for children in the centre’s rooftop car park, and died on the way to the Aga Khan Hospital, one of the 71 people killed in the attack and subsequent fire. At the time of her death, at the age of 31, she was six or seven months pregnant with her first child, after being married in January 2012

1991 – The Supreme Soviet, the parliament of the U.S.S.R., suspended all activities of the Communist Party, bringing an end to the institution

1992 – U.N. Security Council agrees to send troops to Somalia to guard food shipments

1993 – The Vigário Geral massacre: in the Rio de Janeiro favela (slum) of Vigário Geral, members of a Rio Military Police death squad “Cavalos Corredores” (Galloping Horses), randomly shooting, kill 21 people. This was believed to be revenge for the killing of four police officers two days earlier, who were reportedly involved in the extortion of drug traffickers. Charges were initially brought against 28 military policemen, and another 24 police and civilian employees were charged later; under Brazilian law, the maximum penalty for any crime is 30 years, and anyone sentenced to more than 19 years in prison is automatically granted a retrial

1996 – Isaac Hayes sends letter to Bob Dole, demanding his presidential campaign stop using the Hayes song “Soul Man” with lyrics changed to “I’m a Dole Man”

2004 – India test-launches missile capable of carrying one-ton nuclear warhead

2005 – Hurricane Katrina makes landfall along Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Florida, killing over 1800 people, and causing over $115 billion in damages

2009 – U.N. General Assembly resolution 64/35 designates August 29 as International Day against Nuclear Tests *

2013 – Scientists at Vienna’s Institute of Molecular Biotechnology and Edinburgh University’s Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh,  Scotland, clone a human mini-brain (a cerebral organoid), using stem cells; the first time brain tissue development has been replicated in three dimensions – which could help with schizophrenia and autism neurological research

2015 – California lawmakers pass Assembly Bill 2888 to close a legal loophole that let a judge sentence sexual predator Brock Turner to just six months in jail and three years’ probation, after assaulting an unconscious woman behind a trash dumpster. When two students discovered him in the act, he tried to flee, but they tackled him, and pinned him down until police arrived. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of six years, because there was no penile penetration. Turner would only serve three months behind bars. California Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law, which imposes mandatory prison sentences for people convicted of raping or sexually assaulting someone who was unconscious, intoxicated or otherwise incapable of giving consent. Previously, the state only required prison time for rape or sexual assault by force

2019 – A new study published in the Lancet looked at long-term data from over 100,000 women who developed breast cancer after menopause. Half of the women used menopausal hormone therapy (MHT), and the study found that the longer they took the medicine the more likely they were to develop breast cancer. “This is a consensus of many researchers and many studies all around the world. These are important new results,” said Valerie Beral, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Oxford and one of the lead authors of the new study. Women have long been prescribed synthetic versions to replace the hormones that decline during menopause. The medications — usually delivered in a pill, but sometimes in a patch, gel, or injection — provide women either estrogen or a combination of estrogen and progesterone. For many women, they help to decrease symptoms of menopause, including osteoporosis.  There have been indications that MHT increased the risk of breast cancer since the early 200os, but this was the first study to look at factors like a woman’s age when she started using MHT, or the length of time she took MHT. Researchers found that, compared women who never used MHT, women who did take it had a significantly higher risk of developing invasive breast cancer. They estimated that 6.3% of women who never used MHT developed breast cancer, compared to 8.3% of women who used the combination drug continually for five years. That’s roughly one extra cancer diagnosis for every 50 users. The longer women used MHT, the greater their risk of breast cancer. The study also found that women who took the combination drug were more likely to develop cancer than women who took the estrogen-only drug.

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