September 2nd is

V-J Day II *

Grits for Breakfast Day

Blueberry Popsicle Day

Calendar Adjustment Day *

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MORE! Lili‘uokalani, Barack Obama and Salma Hayek, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Spain – Ceuta: Día de Ceuta 

Tibetan Community –
Democracy Day *

Vietnam – National Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

31 BC – Octavian’s forces defeat Mark Antony and Cleopatra’s allied galleys at Actium, sinking or capturing over 2/3 of their fleet – considered by some beginning of the end of the Roman Republic

A rather fanciful painting of The Battle of Actium by Lorenzo A Castro – 1672

44 BC – Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son with Julius Caesar as her co-ruler: Ptolemy XV Caesarion

44 BC – Cicero launches the first of 14 Philippicae (oratorical attacks) on Mark Antony

1192 – The Treaty of Jaffa is signed between Richard I of England and Saladin, leading to the end of the Third Crusade

1661 – George Bohm born, German Baroque composer and organist

1666 – The Great Fire of London burns for three days, destroying over 10,000 buildings, and killing 6 people

Great Fire of London, 1666  by unknown artist

1752 – Calendar Adjustment Day * commemorates the British Calendar Act of 1751: the Gregorian calendar becomes the official calendar of Britain and its American colonies in 1752, replacing the Julian calendar. However, there’s an eleven day difference between the two calendars, so on the evening of 2nd September 1752, Britain and the colonies went to sleep on 2^nd September and woke the next morning on 14th September.  Some citizens felt cheated and rioted, demanding their eleven days back!

1789 – The U.S. Treasury Department is established

1807 – The British Royal Navy bombards Copenhagen with fire bombs and phosphorus rockets to prevent Denmark from surrendering its fleet to Napoleon

1807 – Fredrika Runeberg born, Finnish novelist and journalist who primarily wrote in Swedish; a pioneer in Finnish historical fiction, and one of the first women journalists in Finland; she was the first Finnish author to critically analyze the status of women in the home and in Finnish society

1811 – The Royal Fredericks University founded (now University of Oslo) in Norway

1814 – Ernst Curtius born, German archaeologist; directed excavation of Olympia

Ernst Curtius – dig at Olympia – Zeus Temple c. 1875

1820 – Lucretia Peabody Hale born, American journalist and author; notable novels, Six of One by Half a Dozen of the Other and The Wolf at the Door

1821 –  Anne Whitney born, American sculptor, poet, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate; her statue of Samuel Adams is at Faneuil Hall in Boston and a copy is in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.. Other statues are at the Smithsonian Institute, Harvard University and the Boston Public Library; in 1875, her model for a statue of Charles Sumner won a blind competition but she was disqualified when the judges discovered she was a woman – they thought it was inappropriate for a woman to sculpt a man’s legs, even covered by trousers

Samuel Adams statute at Faneuil Hall –
shockingly without his lower limbs hidden!

1833 – Oberlin College is founded in Ohio

1838 – Lili‘uokalani born, the first queen regnant and last sovereign monarch of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i; song composer, “Aloha ‘Oe” is her best known song. She ascended to the throne after her brother’s death, in 1891, but was overthrown January 17, 1893, by American planters with the help of U.S. Marines, officially on the islands to “protect American interests.”  She was forced to abdicate in 1895, then held under house arrest at ‘Iolani Palace after an unsuccessful uprising attempted to restore her reign, until the U.S. annexed the short-lived Republic of Hawai‘i. She lived the rest of her life as a private citizen. Author of Hawaiʻi’s Story by Hawaiʻi’s Queen

1840 – Giovanni Verga born, Italian novelist, short story writer and playwright

1849 – Emma Curtis Hopkins born, American spiritual leader, author, theologian and feminist; part of the New Thought movement

1850 – Eugene Field Sr. born, American writer, best known for his children’s poetry and humorous essays; worked as a journalist and then city editor for the St. Joseph Gazette in Missouri (1875-1876) and after he married, arranged for all the money he earned to be sent to his wife, saying he had no head for managing money. After working in St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver (1876-1883), he moved to Chicago, where he wrote a humorous column, Sharps and Flats, for the Chicago Daily News (1883-1895). He had published his first poem in 1879, followed by over a dozen volumes of poetry. His most famous poems are for children: “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat” and “Little Boy Blue.”  He died of a heart attack in 1898 at age 45

1859 – Solar superstorm affects electrical telegraph service

1873 – Lily Poulett-Harris born, Australian women’s cricket pioneer and first famous player, and teacher; schooled by her father, a Church of England priest and head of the Hobart High School, but the family lived in nearby Peppermint Bay. In 1882, at age 9, she received a Level II mark prize. In 1884, Lily was allowed to sit the major exams as a “trial of strength” even though she was not eligible for a scholarship, and placed second. In 1885, her mother set fire to some brushwood and dry grass to drive out any snakes which might be hiding there, but the blaze flared up so quickly it caught her dress on fire. She screamed and tried to roll in the dirt, and 12-year old Lily, who had been on the beach nearby with her sisters, pulled off her wet bathing dress and wrapped it around her mother. Her older brother was a gifted athlete, excelling in football, running and cricket. Lily admired his skill, especially in cricket, and was herself a good horsewoman and cyclist. In 1894, she founded the Oyster Cove Ladies’ Cricket Club, the first women’s cricket club to be recorded by newspapers in the Australian colonies. She was unanimously elected captain, and other teams were founded, forming a league. The Oyster Cove team won many matches, considerably helped by the batting prowess of Poulett-Harris, whose average was 32.6, and in one notable game, she made 64 runs. She also bowled well. This success was all the more remarkable, since according to an article in The Mercury, “they all appear in prim summer dresses, and present a pretty picture.” In December, 1894, Poulett-Harris left Peppermint Bay to begin her teaching career, at the Ladies’ Grammar School and Kindergarten in Hobart. Her club presented her with a tea service at a farewell dinner. She still made frequent visits home, and sometimes played for her Oyster Cove team, until a fire the following year destroyed her family home, and most of her father’s papers. Lily Poulett-Harris died at the school where she taught in 1897, from tubercular peritonitis, just a month before her 24^th birthday. By the end of the 19^th century, cricket had become a very popular women’s competitive sport, and today Australia continues to have a thriving tradition of women’s cricket, including a national women’s team.

1882 – The first Labor Day * holiday was celebrated in the U.S. on Tuesday, September 5, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. It became a Federal holiday in 1894, now annually on the first Monday in September

1897 – McCall’s magazine publishes its first issue

1901 – Vice President Teddy Roosevelt quotes “Speak softly and carry a big stick” in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair

1908 – Ruth Petersson Bancroft born to Swedish immigrants, American landscape and garden designer; a pioneer in xeric gardens. Her family moved from Boston to Berkeley when she was a baby. She was an avid reader, and also often explored the hills around Berkeley, digging up small plants to replant in her backyard, her first garden. She enrolled at UC Berkeley in 1926, one of only two women in the school’s architecture program. But after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, she gave up architecture, and graduated in 1932 with a teaching certificate. She taught home economics at a school in Merced California (1932-1940). She met Philip Bancroft Jr on a blind date, and they were married in 1939. They moved to the Bancroft family farm in Walnut Creek California, which produced walnuts and Bartlett pears. She began planting flowers in beds, and later, succulents.  When Philip’s father died in the 1950s, the younger Bancrofts moved with their three children into the farm’s main house. In the 1960s, many of the trees fell victim to blackline, a fungal disease, so most of the land was sold, and rezoned for residential use. Her husband inherited three acres of empty land, which he gifted to her so she could expand her garden. His only requirement was that whatever she planted should use little water. Bancroft experimented with succulents and cacti, but most of the garden was killed by an unusually cold winter in 1972. She replanted. Word spread among garden designers and horticulturalists, and the garden became a field trip destination for local college classes. Francis Cabot, a Canadian plant collector, founded The Garden Conservancy in 1989, to help insure gardens with rare and valuable plants would be preserved and available for public viewing. The first garden the Conservancy opened to the public in 1992 was the Ruth Bancroft Garden. Ruth Bancroft lived to be 109 years old.

Ruth Bancroft – photo by Penni Gladstone

1911 – Lill Tschudi born, Swiss artist and printmaker, who produced over 300 linocuts, often featuring athletes, but also transportation scenes, workers and musicians

‘Life Class’ (1938) – linocut by Lill Tschudi  

1912 – Arthur Rose Eldred becomes the first BSA Eagle Scout

1917 – Cleveland Amory born, American critic, historian and journalist

1919 – Marge Champion born as Marjorie Belcher, dancer, most notably teamed with her husband Gower Champion in many MGM musicals, and choreographer; hired at age 17 by Walt Disney Studios as a dance model for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; animators copied her movements to make Snow White’s movement more natural-looking; she also modeled for the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and the lead Dancing Hippo in Fantasia

1924 – Rudolf Friml’s operetta Rose Marie premieres on Broadway

1929 – Dame Beulah Bewley born; British public health physician, specializing in pediatrics and preventative medicine, and later undertaking a Master of Science degree in social medicine in the 1960s, the only woman in her class at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; served on the Royal Society of Medicine’s section on Epidemiology
and Public Health, and worked in departments at King’s College Hospital Medical School, St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, and on the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK; president of the Medical Women’s Federation on the General Medical Council (1986-1987); made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2000, for her services to public health and her leading role in promoting equal opportunities for women in the field of medicine

1934 – Hilla Wobeser Becher born in Potsdam (in East Germany, 1945-1991), German conceptual photographer. She moved to West Germany in 1954. She met her husband, Bernhard Becher in 1957, and they began their collaboration in photography, which lasted until his death in 2007. They were jointly honored with the 2002 Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award in 2004. Hilla Becher died in 2015

Hilla and Bernhard Becher – 1985

1939 – Nazi Germany “annexes” the Free City of  Danzig

1945 – VJ Day II * – the formal Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed aboard the USS Missouri by Foreign Minister Shigemitsu

1946 – The Interim Government of India is formed, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, to begin the transition to full independence from British rule

1946 – Mary Brick Goudie born to Irish immigrants, Baroness Goudie of Roundwood, British Labour politician; member of the House of Lords since 1998; board member of Vital Voices, involved with promoting gender equity with both the G8 and G20; in 1971, she was the youngest woman elected to the Brent London Borough Council, where she worked on the Campaign for a Housing Aid Centre, and helped found a housing association; European director of public affairs for the World Wide Fund for Nature (1990-1995); appointed a life peer in 1998

1948 – Christa McAuliffe born, American teacher who dies in the Challenger space shuttle explosion Jan 28, 1986; selected to be the first teacher in space through the NASA  Teacher in Space Project

1949 – Moira Stuart born, the first African-Caribbean woman newsreader to appear on British television, working for the BBC since 1981, beginning as a production assistant; currently the newsreader on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2, and hosts a weekly radio music show featuring “timeless classics”

1954 – ‘Gai’ Waterhouse born as Gabriel Marie Smith; Australian horse trainer, granted an Australian Jockey Club license in 1992, and trained her first Group One (G1) winner the same year; she has since trained 132 G1 winners and won 7 Sydney trainers’ premierships; when Fiorente won the 2013 Melbourne Cup, she became the first Australian woman and 2^nd woman to train a winner of that race; inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2007, and is designated as an Australian National Living Treasure

1958 – The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) is signed into law to fund four years of science and technology study at all levels of U.S. educational institutions

1958 – Lynne Kosky born, Australian Labor politician, Minister for Public Transport (2006-2010) in the government of state of Victoria, and member of the Victoria Legislative Assembly for Altona (1996-2010); resigned due to poor health, and died in 2014 of toxic shock syndrome contracted after breast cancer surgery

1960 – Tibet’s first parliamentary election, observed by the Tibetan community as Democracy Day *

1960 – Kristin Halvorsen born, Norwegian socialist politician; Minister of Education and Research (2009-2013) and was the first woman to serve as the Norwegian Minister of Finance (2005-2009); Leader of the Socialist Left Party (1997-2012)

1966 – Salma Hayek born in Mexico, Mexican and American film actress, and a film and TV producer and director; founded her production company, Ventanarosa in 2000; her first project as a producer was the 1999 film,  El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba (No One Writes to the Colonel), which was Mexico’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award but was not among the nominees; also entered in the 1999 Cannes Film Festival; she co-produced 2002’s Frida, and was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance of the title role; in 2003, she produced and directed The Maldonando Miracle, for which she won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Directing of a Children/Youth/Family Special; an executive producer on Ugly Betty (2006-2010); UNICEF spokesperson for maternal and neonatal tetanus vaccinations, partnered with Pampers, which donated vaccine for every pack of their diapers sold

1970 – NASA cancels two Apollo moon missions, primarily because of the Apollo 1 fire, but also hardware delays and budgetary problems

1987 – Donald Trump spends almost $100,000 on a full-page ad in the NY Times to lambast the U.S. government’s foreign policy, for defending regions like the Persian Gulf and countries such as Japan “that can afford to defend themselves”

1990 – Transniestria * proclaims itself a Soviet republic, Mikhail Gorbachev says nyet

1995 – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame officially opens in Cleveland OH

2013 – Diana Nyad, at age 64, makes the first confirmed swim from Cuba to Key West, Florida, without a shark cage or swim fins

2013 – The replacement of the Eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opens; the new span, which replaced the section of the bridge badly damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, cost $6.4 billion USD

2015 – President Barack Obama becomes the first U.S. President (while in office) to visit the Arctic Circle, in Kotzebue, Alaska

2018 – A massive fire destroys most of the Paço de São Cristóvão, which houses the National Museum of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro. The museum held important archaelogical and anthropological objects, including the remains of the Luzia Woman, Marajoara vases and Egyptian mummies; almost 90% of the collection was destroyed

Paço de São Cristóvão – before the fire

2019 – The Council of Europe is calling on Finland to reform its rape laws and make lack of consent a criteria in addition to the use of violence. The human rights body said Finland’s legislation lagged behind international standards despite the country’s strong record in furthering gender equality. The council’s group of experts on action against violence against women and domestic violence “strongly encouraged” swift action in its first report on the country. The report said: “Rape continues to be categorised according to the degree of physical violence used or threatened by the perpetrator or a requirement to show that the victim was in a state of fear or helplessness and unable to defend herself or to formulate or express her will. The problem with this approach is that it does not fully capture the realities of women experiencing sexual violence and how they respond to threat . . .” The Finnish ministry of justice established a working group to recommend reforms.

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