September 30th is

Ask a Stupid Question Day

Hot Mulled Cider Day

Chewing Gum Day

National Mud Pack Day

International Translation Day *

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MORE! Thelma Terry, Cesar Chavez and Cecile Richards, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Botswana – Botswana Day

Canada – Orange Shirt Day *

Mexico – Father José María Morelos
(birthday of Revolutionary leader)

Poland – Boys Day

Sao Tome and Principe –
Agricultural Reform Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

737 – Battle of the Baggage: The Turgesh tribe drives back the Umayyad invasion of Khuttal (now part of Tajikistan), then follow them south of the Oxus River and capture their baggage train

1207 – Rumi born, Persian poet, Islamic scholar, and Sufi mystic

1530 – Girolamo Mercuriale born, Italian philologist and physician, noted for his work De Arte Gymnastica

1541 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his forces enter the territory of the Tula (or Tulia) people in present-day western Arkansas, encountering fierce resistance

1788 – The Pennsylvania Legislature elects the first two members of the U.S. Senate: William Maclay of Harrisburg and Robert Morris of Philadelphia

1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote)premiered at ‘Theater auf der Wieden’ in Vienna, Austria

1801 – Zacharias Frankel born, Bohemian rabbi and theologian; founder of Conservative Judaism

1802 – Antoine-Jerome Balard born, French chemist; discovered the element bromine

1814 – Lucinda Hinsdale Stone born, American educator, feminist, advocate for suffrage and education for women, abolitionist and literary club organizer, inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1983

1832 – Ann Reeves Jarvis born, American activist in public health education for women, to reduce infant mortality and death from disease. She organized the women in the mothers’ clubs to learn and then teach others the importance of sanitation, and to arrange for communities to help families stricken by illness. In what became West Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union, she urged club members to declare their neutrality, and aid both Union and Confederate soldiers.  The women gave food and blankets to men on both sides, and nursed the sick, when typhoid fever and measles broke out in the military camps. After the war, she and her club members hosted a “Mothers’ Friendship Day’ to bring families from both sides together in reconciliation. She was the mother who inspired Mother’s Day (her daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis, is the founder of the Mother’s Day holiday in the U.S.)

1846 – Dr. William Morton performs a painless tooth extraction using ether

1860 – Britain’s first tram service begins in Birkenhead, Merseyside

1875 –  Anne Henrietta Martin born, suffragist, author, and pacifist; first head of the history department of the University of Nevada (1897-1901); president of the Nevada Equal Franchise Society in 1912, and organized a campaign over sparsely populated deserts that convinced male voters to enfranchise Nevada women on November 3, 1914. This success led to her representation of the national movement as a speaker and executive committee member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Congressional Union. Martin helped organize voting women in the West in 1916 to challenge Democrats. She was one of the Silent Sentinels, the National Woman’s Party picketers for suffrage in front of the White House. On July 14, 1917, she was arrested and sentenced to Occoquan Workhouse, but pardoned a few days later by President Woodrow Wilson. Back in Nevada, Martin was the first woman to run for U.S. Senate in 1918, and again in 1920, but lost both races

1882 – Hans Geiger born, German physicist; introduced the Geiger Counter

1882 – First hydroelectric power plant begins operation in Appleton WI

1883 – Nora Stanton Blatch Barney born in England, American civil engineer, architect, suffragist and peace activist; in 1905, one of the first American women to graduate with a civil engineering degree, and the first junior member of the Society of Civil Engineers. Right after college, she wrote a paper on the water supply of Washington, DC which was a reference for studies on the transport of solids in liquids for over 50 years. In 1908, she married Lee De Forest, inventor of the radio vacuum tube, for whom she worked as a laboratory assistant until 1909, when they separated (they divorced in 1912). She was the granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1895 – Madagascar becomes a French protectorate

1897 – Charlotte Wolff born in Prussia, British physician and psychotherapist; her writings on sexology, especially lesbianism and bisexuality, are influential early works in the field

1901 – Thelma Terry born, American bassist, first woman instrumentalist to lead a notable jazz band, Thelma Terry and Her Play Boys, in the 1920s and 30s; a young Gene Krupa was one of her Play Boys early in his career

1906 – The Royal Galician Academy, Galician language’s biggest linguistic authority, starts working in Havana Cuba

1907 – McKinley National Memorial for the president dedicated in Canton, OH

1915 – A Serbian Army private becomes the first soldier in history to shoot down an enemy aircraft with ground-to-air fire

1924 – Truman Capote born, American author; Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood

1927 – W.S. Merwin born, American poet; U.S. Poet Laureate (2010); two-time Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner, 1971 and 2009; National Book Award for Poetry 2005

1929 – Carol Fenner born, American children’s author and illustrator; noted for Yolanda’s Genius, Gorilla-Gorilla and The Skates of Uncle Edward, which won an honor from the Coretta Scott King Awards

1929 – Leticia Ramos-Shahani born, Filipina diplomat, and politician; President Pro Tempore of the Senate (1993-1996); Philippines Senator (1987-1998); UN Assistant Secretary-General for Social and Humanitarian Affairs (1985-1987); Secretary-General of the 1985 World Conference on the UN Decade of Women in Nairobi Kenya; Philippine Ambassador to Australia (1981-1985)

1929 – Dorothee Sölle born, German theologian and author; noted for Suffering; Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God; The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance; and Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian. Coined the term “Christofascist” to describe extreme fundamentalists

1935 – Porgy and Bess premieres in Boston, Massachusetts, then goes on to Broadway

1935 – Boulder Dam (later renamed Hoover Dam), on the border between Arizona and Nevada, is dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt; it will begin operations in 1936

Boulder Dam generators

1938 –League of Nations outlaws “intentional bombings of civilian populations” but has no power to enforce it

1938 – British, French, German and Italian leaders agreed at a meeting in Munich that Nazi Germany would be allowed to annex Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland

1940 – Claudia Falconer Card born, American ethics and social philosopher and academic; taught at the University of Wisconsin from 1969 until 2015, and was UW-Madison’s Emma Goldman Professor of Philosophy, with teaching affiliations in Women’s Studies, Jewish Studies, Environmental Studies and LGBT Studies; her published work is regarded as essential to the study of 20th century feminism

1943 – The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) at Kings Point NY is dedicated

1946 – Nuremberg International Tribunal finds 22 top Nazis guilty of war crimes

1949 – After delivering 2.3 million tons of food to West Berlin despite the Soviet blockade, the Berlin Airlift ends

1950 – Laura Esquivel born, Mexican novelist, screenwriter and Morena Party politician; has served in the Chamber of Deputies (2012-2018); author of the bestseller Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)

1951 – The Red Skelton Show first airs on NBC-TV

1953 – The International Federation of Translators claims September 30 as International Translation Day * to pay tribute to the work of translators

1954 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world’s first nuclear reactor powered vessel

1954 – Julie Andrews makes her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend

1955 – Actor James Dean, age 24, is killed in a car crash in California

1960 – Julia Adamson born in Canada, British musician, composer, and founder-manager of Invisiblegirl Records and Invisible Girl Music Publishing

1960 – Nicola Griffith born in England, British-American novelist, essayist and short story writer; her first novel, Ammonite, won the 1993 James Tiptree, Jr and Lambda Awards, and Slow River won the 1997 Nebula Award for best novel

1960 – Blanche Lincoln born, American Democratic politician; U.S. Senator from Arkansas (1999-2011); Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the first district of Arkansas (1993-1997)

1962 – Black student James Meredith succeeds on his fourth try to register for classes at the University of Mississippi

1962 – The National Farm Workers Association, founded by Cesar Chavez, forerunner of United Farm Workers, holds its first meeting in Fresno CA

1965 – The 30 September Movement: an attempted coup against the Indonesian government, which is crushed by the military under Suharto and leads to a mass anti-communist purge, killing over 500,000 people

1966 – Albert Speer, Nazi armaments minister, and Baldur Von Schirach, Hitler Youth founder, are released from Spandau prison after completing 20-year sentences

1966 – Cat Stevens releases his first single “I Love My Dog”

1966 – The British protectorate of Bechuanaland declares its independence, and becomes the Republic of Botswana; Seretse Khama takes office as the first President.

1967 – Emmanuelle Houdart born in Switzerland, living in Paris, Swiss artist, illustrator, costume and textile designer, and author; contributor to French newspapers and magazines, including Libération and Le Monde

Ma mere by Emmanuelle Houdart

1968 – The first public showing of the Boeing 747 at the Boeing Everett Factory

1971 – Soviet Union and U.S. sign pacts to prevent accidental nuclear war

1976 – California enacts Natural Death Act, first U.S. right-to-die legislation

1977 – Because of budget cuts and dwindling power reserves, NASA’s Apollo program’s ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down

1980 – Israel issues new currency, the shekel, to replace the pound

1981 – Cecelia Ahearn born, Irish novelist whose books have sold over 25 million copies; noted for P.S. I Love You, and Where Rainbows End, which won the 2005 Corine Award; she was the co-creator of the TV series Samantha Who?, which starred Christina Applegate (2007-2009)

1982 – First episode of Cheers airs on NBC-TV

1985 – Téa Obreht born in Serbia, Serbian-American novelist and short story writer; her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction

1989 – Thousands of East Germans emigrate under NATO-Soviet Union accord

1990 – The Dalai Lama unveils the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights, a monumental sculpture, in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa – ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’

1991 – The Haitian military overthrows Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first freely-elected president

1997 – Bob Dylan releases his album Time Out of Mind

1997 – France’s Roman Catholic Church apologizes for keeping silent during persecution and deportation of Jews under pro-Nazi Vichy regime

2004 – Merck & Co. pulls Vioxx, its heavily promoted arthritis drug, from the market after a study finds it doubles the risk of heart attacks and strokes

2005 – Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten prints controversial Muhammad drawings

2013 – Orange Shirt Day * is started in Canada to raise awareness of the Indian residential boarding schools, funded by the Canadian government, but administered by Christian churches, to remove Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture, “to kill the Indian in the child.” Over the course of the system’s more than hundred-year existence, about 30 per cent of Indigenous children (some 150,000) were compelled to attend day schools, industrial schools, or boarding schools. School-related deaths are estimated to be between 3,200 and 6,000, and many former students have suffered from post-traumatic stress, alcoholism, and substance abuse, while others have committed suicide. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, started in 2008, issued a report in 2015 concluded that the system amounted to cultural genocide. The Prime Minister of Canada issued a public apology on behalf of the Government of Canada

2015 – Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee that secretly recorded videos which purported to show representatives of the organization negotiating to sell tissue from aborted fetuses were “outrageous,” “offensive and categorically untrue.” The videos fueled a conservative Republican effort to block Planned Parenthood’s $450 million in annual federal funding. Richards told the committee that Planned Parenthood’s policies on the use of fetal tissue for medical research “indeed go beyond the requirements of the law.” The so-called Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion group, had secretly recorded and then misleadingly edited the videos. Officials in twelve states initiated investigations into claims made by the videos, but none found Planned Parenthood clinics to have sold tissue for profit as alleged by CMP and other anti-abortion groups. An investigation by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee also found no evidence of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood. In March 2017, Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden and member Sandra Merritt were charged with 15 felonies in the State of California – one for each of the people whom they had filmed without consent, and one for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy. In June 2017, all the invasion of privacy charges (but not the criminal conspiracy charge) were dismissed with leave to amend. The State of California re-filed amended charges, and the prosecution on fraud charges continued in May 2019, after the California Supreme Court rejected a petition to halt legal action

2019 – Following a staff uprising, and enormous political and public pressure, BBC Director General Tony Hall emailed staff to announce he has overturned the decision to sanction BBC Breakfast host Naga Muchetty for her comment about Donald Trump’s tweet in July that four American women of color in the U.S. House of Representatives should “go home.” When asked by her co-host Dan Walker about Trump’s comment, Munchetty responded, “Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism.”

Dan Walker and Naga Muchetty

2019 – Amal Clooney, the UK special envoy on media freedom, said “there is a glaring gap in the international system of protection when it comes to establishing facts in a cross-section of situations that require proper investigation” including the targeted state killings of human rights defenders and journalists such as Jamal Khashoggi. She also said the UN special rapporteur Agnès Callamard, who undertook the UN’s investigation into Khashoggi’s murder, “had been forced heroically to manage a large-scale investigation with ridiculously few resources.” Callamard’s report accused Saudi Arabia of premeditated murder,  but she received no cooperation from Saudi Arabia in compiling her document. She found “every expert interviewed said it was inconceivable that an operation on this scale had been carried out without the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, being aware at a minimum of some sort of mission of a criminal nature directed at Khashoggi was being launched.” As the anniversary of Khashoggi’s murder approached, Callamard said her proposal for a standing UN investigatory mechanism that could act either in support of national actors undertaking investigations of targeted killings or establish an international inquiry was “meeting resistance from within the UN,” largely from leaders determined to defend national sovereignty. She proposed staging a UN session on media freedom at the G20 leaders summit in Riyadh next year. Callamard said, “World leaders have a duty to speak up against those that denigrate press freedom. I am not suggesting that they stop diplomatic relations, I am simply asking them to stand up or simply walk out when there is such a display of the violation of the values the UN stands for.”

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