September 9th is

“I Love Food” Day

Teddy Bear Day

Wiener Schnitzel Day

Wonderful Weirdos Day *

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Day

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MORE! Gertrude Stein, Gerard Sekoto and Sonia Sanchez, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Afghanistan – Martyrs’ Day

Malaysia – Birthday of His Majesty
Yang di-Pertuan Agong

Mauritius –
Père Laval Feast Day *

Micronesia –
Kosrae Liberation Day

North Korea – National Day

Tajikistan – Independence Day

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On This Day in History

9 AD – In the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, an alliance of 6 Germanic tribes led by Arminius ambushes and annihilates 3 Roman legions under Publius Quinctillus Varus

490 – Battle of Marathon on the Greek plain between the Athenians and the invading Persians. The Marathon race was named for the run from Marathon to Athens made by a messenger bearing news of the battle

1379 – The Treaty of Neuberg, splits the Austrian Habsburg lands between the Habsburg dukes Albert III and Leopold III

1488 – Anne De Bretagne, aged 12, becomes Duchess of Brittany, upon the death of her father, Francis II, Duke of Brittany, the last male of the House of Montfort

from Grandes Heures de Anne de Bretagne by illuminator Jean Bourdichon

1513 – James IV of Scotland, leading an invading army into Northumberland, is killed at the disastrous Battle of Flodden against an English army led by the Earl of Surrey, becoming the last monarch of the British Isles to die in battle

1543 – Nine-month-old Mary Stuart is crowned Queen of Scots at Stirling Castle

1731 – Francisco Javier Clavijero born, Mexican Jesuit teacher, scholar and historian; after the Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish colonies in 1767, he went to Italy, where he wrote La Historia Antigua de México, a ten-volume history of Mexico based on his extensive examinations of Aztec codices and books from the era of the Spanish conquest, which corrected many European misconceptions about Aztec culture and history

1737 – Luigi Galvani born, Italian physician and physicist, pioneer in bioelectromagnetics

1739 – The Stono Rebellion, also called Cato’s Conspiracy, begins in south Carolina, the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies, spearheaded by recently enslaved Africans. South Carolina’s Negro Act of 1740 bans the importation of slaves from Africa for the next ten years

1754 – William Bligh born, British admiral in command of the HMS Bounty; a terrible martinet, but a great navigator

1776 – The second Continental Congress officially uses “United States” to replace “United Colonies”

1834 – A mob attacks Prudence Crandall’s school for black women in Canterbury, Connecticut. She had already been arrested for breaking a local law against teaching “colored persons,’ and this attack forced her to close the school

1836 – Abraham Lincoln receives his license to practice law

1839 – John Herschel takes the first glass plate photograph

1850 – The Compromise of 1850 transfers a third of Texas’s claimed territory (now parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico Oklahoma and Wyoming) to U.S. control in return for federal government assuming $10 million of the pre-annexation debt of the failed Republic of Texas

1850 – Jane E. Harrison born, British classical scholar and linguist. She is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. She applied 19th-century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of ancient Greek religion in ways that have become standard. She has also been credited with being the first woman to obtain a post in England as a ‘career academic’. Harrison argued for women’s suffrage but thought she would never want to vote herself. Her mother died shortly after she was born, and Harrison was educated by a series of governesses, who taught her German, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew. She later expanded her knowledge to about sixteen languages, including Russian. She attended Newnham College, the progressive, recently established college for women at Cambridge. She graduated in 1879, then spent most of her professional life at there. While a lecturer in classical archaeology at Newnham (1880-1898), she served as vice president of the Hellenic Society (1889-1896). During her travels in Europe, she met the Hungarian-Austrian  archaeologist.Wilhelm Klein, who introduced her to Wilhelm Dörpfeld. and he invited her to participate in his archaeological excavations at Bronze Age sites in Greece. Harrison wrote numerous books on her chosen field, including Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature (1882), The Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Greece (1890), Introductory Studies in Greek Art (1895), Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903), Themis (1912), Ancient Art and Ritual (1913), and Epilogomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1921) 

1850 – Fremont Lawson born, American newspaper editor and publisher, of the Chicago Daily News, among others; a pioneer in establishing American correspondents living in foreign countries to gather news and report back to their U.S. newspapers

1850 – California is admitted as the 31^st U.S. state

The McChristian Bear Flag, circa 1850

1864 – Père Jacques-Désiré Laval, * a French Catholic missionary, dies after 23 years in Mauritius, during which he is credited with converting 67,000 people to Catholicism

1868 – Mary Hunter Austin born, American author, an early writer about nature in the U.S. Southwest; her classic book is The Land of Little Rain (1903) describes the fauna, flora and people, and their mysticism and spirituality, in the region between the High Sierra and the Mojave Desert of Southern California

1873 – Max Reinhardt born, Austrian stage and screen director

1877 – James Agate born, influential English drama critic for the London Sunday Times (1923-1947)

1878 – Adelaide Crapsey born, American poet, developer of the cinquain, a five-line poetic form inspired by Japanese poetry forms; she died of tubercular meningitis at the age of 36

1886 – The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is finalized

1892 – Edward Emerson Barnard sights the third moon of Jupiter, came to be called Amalthea, after a nymph in Greek mythology

1900 – James Hilton born, English Novelist; known for Lost Horizon, Random Harvest and Goodbye, Mr. Chips

1901 – Granville Hicks born, author, influential Marxist literary critic who resigned from the Communist Party in 1939 to protest the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact and became a democratic socialist; best remembered for his non-fiction Small Town

1903 – Phyllis A. Whitney born in Japan to American parents, American author of mysteries and romantic suspense novels for both adults and young readers

1904 – Mounted police are first used in New York City

1910 – Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas take up lifetime residence together. American writer and literary critic Edmund Wilson will comment in a letter to John Dos Passos that their relationship is “The most perfect example of human symbiosis I have ever seen.”

1913 – Gerard Sekoto born, South African artist

Yellow Houses – A Street in Sophiatown, by Gerard Sokoto, pictured right

1922 –The Turkish army under Kemal Atatürk marches into Smyrna, taking back control of the city from the Greeks, at the end of the Greco-Turkish War; an intentional fire will be set in the Greek and Armenian quarters of the city on September 13, with a death toll of over 15,000

1923 – Rosita Sokou born, Greek author, playwright, translator and one of the first women journalists in Greece

1926 – RCA incorporates NBC

1926 – Louise Abeita Chewiwi (E-Yeh-Shure – ‘Blue Corn’) Isleta Pueblo writer, poet and educator; her book of poems, I am a Pueblo Indian Girl, was published when she was 13 years old

1927 – Tatyana Zaslavskaya born, Russian economic sociologist, a theoretician of perestroika, and specialist in agriculture’s impact on economy and the sociology of the countryside; member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

1931 – Shirley Summerskill born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Halifax (1964-1983); Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs (1974-1979)

1932 – The Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay begins, a dispute over control of the Gran Chaco region

1932 – The movie Rain, starring Joan Crawford and Walter Huston, and based on W. Somerset Maugham’s short story, Miss Thompson, premieres in Hollywood

1934 – Sonia Sanchez born as Wilsonia Driver, influential African American poet, author and activist, associated with the Black Arts Movement; she published over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories and children’s books. Sanchez was honored with the Robert Frost Medal in 2001. She was involved in the Civil Rights Movement and is a supporter of the National Black United Front. She briefly joined the Nation of Islam in the 1970s, but left because of their views on women’s rights. She is an advocate for the rights of oppressed women and minorities. Sanchez was the first Poet Laureate of the city of Philadelphia (2012-2014)

1941 – Otis Redding born, American soul singer and songwriter

1948 – North Korea, the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, is created

1957 – Civil Rights Act of 1957 is enacted, primarily a voting rights bill, but also supported school integration

1960 – Kimberly Willis Holt born, American children’s author; When Zachary Beaver Came to Town won a 1999 U.S. National Book Award

1962 – An attempt is made to assassinate Kwame Nkrumah, first prime minister (1957-1960) and first president of Ghana (1960-1966)

1965 – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is established

1966 – The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson

1969 – In Canada, the Official Languages Act comes into force, making French equal to English throughout the Federal government

1969 – Natasha Stott Despoja born, Australian Democrats politician; Senator for South Australia (1995-2008), at age 26, she became the youngest woman to sit in the Parliament of Australia; Deputy Leader of the Democrats (1997-2001); Leader of the Australian Democrats (2001-2002); she didn’t stand for reelection to Parliament because of emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy and her frustration dealing with her party’s old guard (the party was formally deregistered in 2016 for not having sufficient members.) Despoja was later appointed as Ambassador of Australia for Women and Girls (2013-2016)

1971 – John Lennon’s LP “Imagine” is released

1971 – Prisoners seize control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, N.Y., beginning a four-day siege that claims 43 lives

1972 – Natasha Kaplinsky born, English newsreader for Sky News (2000-2002), BBC News (2002-2007) and currently working for ITV as a newsreader and programme presenter

1976 – Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung dies in Beijing

1982 – Conestoga 1 becomes the first successfully launched private rocket; carrying a payload of 40 pounds of water, it flies for 10.5 minutes, reaching sub-orbital flight at an elevation of 195 miles

1993 – Israeli and PLO leaders agree to recognize each other

1994 – Space shuttle Discovery lifts off on an 11-day mission

1997 – Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political ally, formally renounces violence during talks on Northern Ireland’s future

2000 – Austin TX celebrates Wonderful Weirdos Day as part of the “Keep Austin Weird” campaign which promotes local small businesses, but the movement is spreading – “Keep Portland Weird” bumper stickers have been sighted in Oregon

2003 – The Boston Roman Catholic Archdiocese agrees to pay $85 million to 552 people to settle clergy sexual abuse cases

2015 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes longest-reigning monarch in British history

2016 – A major fire at a food and cigarette packaging factory in Bangladesh on Saturday killed 23 people and wounded at least 24 more. Believed to be caused by a boiler explosion, the blaze started around 8 a.m. local time and was finally contained after several hours. Rescue efforts continued, as officials said more victims might still be trapped inside the damaged building. The factory belonged to Tampaco Foil, which listed Nestlé and British American Tobacco among its customers

2019 – In an article posted in the journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Karen M. Winkfield, MD, PhD says of her experiences as an intern: “Boston is a very diverse city with a large minority population of African Americans and Latino Americans, but the patient population at Harvard did not reflect that. During my second year of training, I went to the Boston City Hospital, and lo and behold, I saw patients of color in numbers that reflected the city’s makeup. I wondered why they weren’t accessing the wonderful medical resources at Harvard. And that was what began the other part of my career focused on health equity and access to care. ” She was on the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital for several years, and helped in developing the institution’s first comprehensive program in hematologic radiation oncology. “Along with that work, I felt it was important to engage the underserved minority communities and try to develop ways to improve access to quality care. I helped Mass General establish a program that explored methods to improve access to clinical trials and reduce disparities of care,” she declared. She became chair of the ASCO Health Disparities Committee, to address the needs of underserved minorities. She was recruited by Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for their Comprehensive Cancer Center. “My job as Director of the cancer health equity program is to make sure that everybody, no matter his or her race or financial status, has the same opportunity to be treated and cured of cancer. There are so many ways to improve cancer care among underserved communities, as long as we’re willing to partner with them and not be seen as an outside entity,” said Dr. Winkfield

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