September 14th is

Cream-Filled Donut Day

Drive Your Studebaker Day

Eat a Hoagie Day

Live Creative Day *

Galactic Space-Time Ripple Day *

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MORE! Lola de Tió, John Dobson and Constance B. Motley, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity – Holy Cross Exaltation/Holy Cross Day/Holy Rood Day *

Bolivia – Día de Cochabamba
(1810 Cochabamba uprising)

India – Hindi Divas
(celebrating the Hindi language)

Nicaragua – San Jacinto Day
(1856 Filibuster War battle)

Romania – Engineers Day

Ukraine – Mobilized Servicemen Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

AD 81 – Domitian, younger son of Vespasian, is acclaimed Emperor of the Roman Empire by the Praetorian Guard upon the death of his brother Titus – bad news for the Roman Senate, as he is adept at keeping the affection of the army and the people in an era of prosperity while severely curtailing their power – when Domitian is assassinated in AD 96, the Senate condemns his memory to oblivion

326 – Holy Cross Day * – Helena of Constantinople discovers the ‘True Cross’ and ‘Holy Sepulchre’ in Jerusalem

786 – “Night of the three Caliphs”: Harun al-Rashid becomes the Abbasid caliph upon the death of his brother al-Hadi, and al-Rashid’s son al-Ma’mun is born the same night

Harun al-Rashid

1032 – Emperor Daozong of Liao born, will reign for 46 years (1055-1101); the Sakyamuni Pagoda of Fogong Temple was completed in 1056, at the site of the Emperor’s grandmother’s home. It still stands today, a survivor of many earthquakes

Sakyamuni Pagoda – photo by John Roberts

1180 – Genpeo War: Battle of Ishibashiyama is won by forces of the Taira clan led by Oba Kegechika against a much smaller force of the Minamoto clan under by Minamoto no Yoritomo, who will become Shogun less than a decade later

1401 – Maria of Castile born, Queen of Aragon; though her health was delicate (she may have had epilepsy), she survived small pox, but was left permanent scars. She was betrothed at age seven to Alfonso V of Aragon, and they were married when she was 14, but her menstrual cycle did not begin until she was 16, so the consummation of the marriage was delayed, and she bore no children. The marriage was not a happy one, especially after she learned that her husband’s mistress had given birth to a son. Maria acted as regent twice, from 1420 to 1423, and then from 1432 to until her husband’s death in 1458, while Alfonso was off pursuing his claim to the throne of Naples, which he would later secure for his illegitimate son. Maria was left as de facto ruler to deal with frequent family squabbles between her brothers-in-law, and conflicts with burghers and peasants. When Alfonso lost the naval Battle of Ponza in 1435, he was captured, and Maria organized the funds to pay his ransom. Alfonso died in June 1458, but was followed by Maria in September 1458

1607 – End of the Nine Years War and the Old Gaelic Order: ‘The Flight of the Earls’ – Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Rory O’Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, with some ninety followers. leave Ulster, Ireland, for exile in Spain and Italy

1682 – Founding of Bishop Gore School, one of the oldest in Wales

1728 – Mercy Otis Warren born, American author, poet and historian, wrote one of the earliest histories of the American Revolution: History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution

1741 – George Friedrich Handel completes his Messiah for an orphan’s charity concert

1752 – First day in the British Empire under the Gregorian calendar

1760 – Luigi Cherubini born in Italy, French composer of opera and sacred music

1769 – Alexander von Humboldt born, German naturalist, geographer and explorer; laid foundations for fields of biogeography and geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring; his multi-volume treatise Kosmos helped form a holistic view of the Universe as a single interacting entity; first scientist to describe effects of human-induced climate change he observed in 1800 and 1831; the Humboldt Current, numerous geographic features, flora and fauna are named in his honor

1791 – The Papal States lose Avignon to Revolutionary France

1812 –As Napoleon’s army occupies the city, Moscow blazes for four days, destroying almost 75% of the buildings. Cause is disputed, but incendiarists interrogated by the French say they were under orders to burn “everything”

1816 – Mary Hall Barrett born, American book editor and letter writer; as a teenager, she began teaching Sunday school at a Universalist church; her parents, a brother and a sister all died of consumption (tuberculosis), and she nursed them devotedly, injuring her own health. She married John Greenleaf Adams in 1839, and edited the Sabbath-School Annual for three years, influencing well-known Universalist authors to contribute to the annual, before her health declined to the point she was unable to continue. She died in 1860. Memoir of Mrs. Mary H. Adams was published after her death

1829 – The Ottoman Empire signs the Treaty of Adrianople with Russia, ending the Russo-Turkish War

1843 – Lola Rodríguez de Tió born, Puerto Rican poet, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist. After her marriage in 1863 to Bonocio Tió Segarra, she became a writer and book importer, and published her first book of poetry, Mis Cantos (My Songs). She and her husband were banished twice for their political activities and writings advocating Puerto Rican independence from Spain. They lived in Venezuela and New York before settling in Cuba. In 1901, she was a co-founder and member of the Cuban Academy of Arts and Letters, and also served as an inspector of schools. Their home was a gathering place for Cuban intellectuals and politicians, and Puerto Rican exiles. She died in Havana in 1924, at the age of 81, leaving a legacy of books and patriotic poetry, including new revolutionary lyrics for the song “La Boriqueña.” In 2014, she was one of 12 Puerto Rican women honored with plaques in La Plaza en Honor a la Mujer Puertorriqueña (Plaza in Honor of Puerto Rican Women) in San Juan

1854 – Julia Magruder born, American novelist; several of her stories were serialized in the Ladies Home Journal; recipient of an award from the Académie Française

1856– Filibuster War: in Managua, Nicaragua at Hacienda San Jacinto * about 160 soldiers of the Legitimist Septemtrion Army led by Colonel José Dolores Estrada defeat 300 Nicaraguan mercenaries hired by William Walker, who wanted to create a slave-holding empire in Latin America. 

1857 – Alice Stone Blackwell born, suffragist, journalist and human rights activist; daughter of suffragist Lucy Stone (who pioneered keeping maiden name after marriage) and Henry Blackwell, abolitionist, and advocate for women’s equality and suffrage

1857 – Julia Barlow Platt born, American embryologist, activist and politician; after graduating from the University of Vermont in 1887, she did research at the Harvard Annex, founded in 1879, which was the only access for women to Harvard at the time; she was one of several women challenging the university’s anti-coeducational policies. Platt had to get her doctorate at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Her work demonstrating that neural crest cells formed the jaw cartilage and tooth dentine in Necturus maculosus  (mudpuppy embryos), was not believed by her contemporaries because it ran counter to their belief that only mesoderm could form bones and cartilage. Her hypothesis of the neural crest origin of the cranial skeleton gained acceptance only some 50 years later when confirmed by Sven Hörstadius  and Sven Sellman. Frustrated because she was unable to secure a university position, she became a civic activist in California, working to create two small marine protected areas, which became crucial to the recovery of Monterey Bay, and the rescue of sea otters from near-extinction. In 1931, she was elected as the first woman mayor of Pacific Grove California

1866 – George K. Anderson patents the typewriter ribbon

1867 – Charles Dana Gibson born, American artist and illustrator

The Greatest Game in the World – His Move by Charles Dana Gibson

1879 – Margaret Sanger born, American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse; popularized the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S.; founded organizations that evolve into Planned Parenthood Federation of America

1882 – Winnifred Mason Huck born, investigative journalist exposing abuses in the prison system; also a politician, the third woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress (R-IL 1922-1923) in a special election to take her father’s seat after his death

1887 – Karl Compton born, American physicist; president of M. I. T. (1930-48)

1897 – Margaret Rudkin born, American businesswoman, founder of Pepperidge Farm

1901 – U.S. President William McKinley dies of assassination gunshot wounds, and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as President

1902 – Alice Tully born, American operatic soprano, music promoter and philanthropist; on the boards for the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and the Juilliard School; recipient of the Handel Medallion

1910 – Rolf Lieberman born, Swiss composer, and Artistic Director of the Hamburg State Opera (1959-1973) and the Paris Opera (1973-1980)

1914 – Mae Boren Axton born, American songwriter, best known as co-writer with Tommy Durden of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Singer and songwriter Hoyt Axton was her son.

1915 – Carl Muench patents the first sound-absorbing material, made from cellulose fibers, for use as wall board

1915 – John Dobson born, amateur astronomer, inventor of the Dobsonian telescope, a low-cost, more easily transported Newtonian reflector telescope which he used to popularize astronomy when he made appearances as the “Sidewalk Astronomer,” and held workshops to teach people how to make their own telescopes all over the U.S. He was a co-founder of the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers

Examples of Dobsonian telescopes; center, John Dobson grinding a lens 

1917 – Russia is declared a republic

1918 – Cachao born as Israel López Valdés, Cuban double bassist and composer, known as co-creator of the mamba, and a master of descarga (musical improvisation)

1921 – Constance Baker Motley born, American lawyer, judge, politician and civil rights activist, first female attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, wrote original complaint in Brown v. Board of Education, first African American woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, first African American woman to be appointed as a federal court judge, recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal and the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP

1929 – Larry Collins born, American journalist, historian, and author; Newsweek Paris bureau; co-author with Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning?, Or I’ll Dress you in Mourning, and Freedom at Midnight

1930 – Romola Constantino born, Australian pianist who gave the first solo piano recital at the Sydney Opera House in 1973; also worked as a music critic for the Sydney Morning Herald, and as a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney; appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1978

1930 – Allan D. Bloom born, American philosopher and classicist; champion of the Great Books idea of education; author of the controversial book, The Closing of the American Mind, in which he protests the ousting of the classics of literature and philosophy from the curriculum

1934 – Sarah Kofman born, French philosopher, author and educator, wrote books on Nietzsche and Freud

1934 – Kate Millett born, American author, artist and activist, wrote the influential book Sexual Politics, advocate for women’s rights and mental health reform

1938 – First flight of the VS-300, its design based on Igor Silorsky patents

1940 – Congress passes Selective Service Act, the first U.S. peacetime draft

1941 – Joan Trumpauer Mulholland born, American civil rights activist, a white woman from Virginia whose activism as a student at Duke University was regarded as some form of mental illness, and she was taken for testing after her first arrest. She dropped out of Duke, and was one of the Freedom Riders on the Illinois Central train from New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested. They were incarcerated at Parchman Penitentiary, a prison with a reputation for violence, and the disappearance of several inmates. She and the other women were strip-searched and given vaginal exams. They were housed for two months on death row, in a segregated cell with 17 women and 3 feet of floor space per prisoner. She refused to pay bail and served more than her two month sentence because each day in prison took $3 off her fine of $200. She became the first white student at Tougaloo College in Jackson, and several attempts were made by local authorities to close down the school, but its charter predated the Jim Crow laws. She was one of the activists in the May 28, 1963 Woolworth lunch counter sit-in, where they were beaten and smeared with condiments. She was called a “white nigger” and dragged out of the store by her hair

1948 – Groundbreaking ceremony in NYC for United Nations world headquarters

1951 – Arrigo Barnabé born, Brazilian experimental musician-composer

1955 – Geraldine Brooks born, Australian American journalist and novelist. Her 2005 novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; her work as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal inspired her first book, the non-fiction Nine Parts of Desire

1959 – Soviet space probe Luna II is first man-made object on the moon when it crashes

1960 – OPEC founded by agreement between core members Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela

1962 – Bonnie Jo Campbell born, American novelist and short story writer; Once Upon a River and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters

1965 – Emily Bell born, British journalist and academic; Professor of Professional Practice at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism who previously worked for The Guardian and The Observer

1969 – The first day of the U.S. military Draft Lottery

1972 – TV series The Waltons premieres on CBS

1975 – Pope Paul VI declares Mother Seton a saint, the first saint born in the U.S.

1978 – Mork and Mindy premieres on ABC-TV

1981 – Katie Lee born, American cookbook author, food critic and novelist; known for her cookbook, The Comfort Table, and her novel, Groundswell

1984 – Joe Kittenger completes first solo balloon flight across the Atlantic Ocean

1985 – The longest bridge in Malaysia, Penang Bridge opens, connecting the island to the mainland

1999 – Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga join the United Nations

2000 – Microsoft releases Windows ME (millennium edition)

2001 – The FBI releases the names of the nineteen hijackers who were involved in the 9-11 terrorist attacks

2004 – Algerian Minister of Justice Tayeb Belaiz announces that the Algeria will press ahead with a controversial bill to improve women’s rights despite fierce opposition from Islamic parties

2015 – Galactic Space-Time Ripple Day * – In Livingston, LA, and Hanford, WA, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves * for the first time

2016 – The Census Bureau reports that the U.S. median household income had increased from $53, 700 in 2014 to $56, 500 in 2015, while the poverty rate went down over 1%. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed that Americans were “still poorer” than they had been 15 years before

2018 – In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau said the poverty rate in the U.S. was at 11.8%, down slightly from 2017, except for people aged 25 and older without a high school diploma, where the poverty rate increased to 25.9%. The poverty rate overall was higher in Southern and Southwestern U.S. states than in the northern Central states and New England

2019 – Max Stier, a former Yale University classmate of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, reportedly notified senators and the FBI during the justice’s confirmation process last year about a previously unreported sexual misconduct allegation involving the justice when he was a student at Yale. Stier reportedly said he saw Kavanaugh, a freshman at the time, at a drunken dorm party with his pants down when his friends then pushed his penis into a female student’s hands. It is unclear if Stier knew the female student, or if she has verified the incident as described. The FBI reportedly did not investigate the allegation, and Stier has declined to speak about it publicly, but The New York Times reports it corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Stier. Kavanaugh faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct during his confirmation process, most notably in testimony by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, professor of psychology. Her testimony cost her dearly, since Blasey Ford has been unable assume teaching since coming forward with allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh. She  has also received a number of death threats, and has continued to be harassed and threatened, so that she and her family have been forced to moved four times, and to hire private security for protection

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