(sources)

 


CLICK ON ANY DATE
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

 

Birthstone: Aquamarine
Flower: Jonquil
About March
Index
Notable Events
HOLIDAYS
St. Patrick's Day

 

 

BACK TO TOP

Index

 

 

BACK TO TOP

The month of March, known as Martius in the Roman calendar, was named to honor the Roman god Mars. It is believed the name of Mars came from the existence of an Etruscan god named Maris, who was the god of agriculture and fertility. Legends exist Mars was the father of the twins Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, who traditionally honored and paid tribute to him at the beginning of each spring season. Originally a god of fertility and agriculture, and protector of the land and its inhabitants, as the centuries passed, the farmers of Rome became soldiers of the Empire. Their god over the land went with them, and Mars became known as the god of war.

As time-keeping progressed from the Roman calendar to the Julian, even as March became the third month instead of the first, the season of the spring equinox remained acknowledged as the the beginning of the year. A gradual change moving the new year to January began with conversion to the Gregorian calendar in the 14th Century, although this was not immediately acknowledged. The American colonies celebrated the beginning of the year as 25 March until 1752, when Britain changed to the Gregorian calendar.

From the earliest evidence in human civilization, the onset of spring was the most revered of seasons. In the northern hemisphere, the sun crossing the vernal eqinox marked the beginning of the agricultural year, and was highlighted by ceremonies and festivities meant to encourage good weather, healthy crops, plentiful stocks, and safely protected land. Commonly recognized as a time when gusty winds gradually turn the cold winter to longer and warmer days, the beginning of spring continues to be a prominent cause for celebration of renewal and rebirth throughout many cultures and religions around the world.

 

BACK TO TOP
OBSERVANCES
  • American Red Cross Month
  • Cataract Awareness Month
  • Craft Month
  • Deaf History Month
  • Foot Health Month
  • Frozen Food Month
  • Humorists Are Artists Month
  • Irish-American Heritage Month
  • Music in Our Schools Month
  • National Nutrition Month
  • Peanut Month
  • Poison Prevention Awareness Month
  • Social Worker's Month
  • Women's History Month
  • Youth Art Month

STATEHOOD DAYS
03/01 Nebraska 1867
03/01 Ohio 1806
03/03 Florida 1845
03/04 Vermont 1791
03/15 Maine 1820

REMEMBERING
03/03 Alexander Graham Bell
03/09 Amerigo Vespucci
03/15 Andrew Jackson
03/15 Big Bird
03/14 Casey Jones
03/06 Casimir Pulaski
03/31 Cesar Chavez
03/26 Duncan Hines
03/06 Elizabeth Barrett Browning
03/23 Erich Fromm
03/19 Father John O'Sullivan
03/20 Fred Rogers
03/27 Gloria Swanson
03/24 Harry Houdini
03/16 Henny Youngman
03/17 James Bridger
03/03 James Doohan
03/21 Johann Sebastian Bach
03/04 Knute Rockne
03/13 L. Ron Hubbard
03/11 Lawrence Welk
03/14 Les Brown
03/22 Louis L'Amour
03/17 Nat "King" Cole
03/29 Oscar Mayer
03/26 Prince Kuhio
03/06 Ring Lardner
03/24 Roscoe Arbuckle
03/17 Rudolf Nureyev
03/22 Stephen Sondheim
03/02 Theodor Seuss Geisel
03/13 Uncle Sam
03/30 Vincent van Gogh
03/19 Wyatt Earp

 

  01

  • The Bewitching of Salem
    It was during the winter of 1692 when several girls in the Salem Village area began to have unexplained fit to which no physical evidence could be found. Because of the political and religious climate of that time, it was determined to be caused by nothing less than witchcraft. The first three people accused and arrested for the alleged afflictions were Sarah Good (a poor woman known for begging from her neighbors), Sarah Osburne (who was not a regular church attendee), and a slave from the Carribean named Tituba. These women were brought before the local magistrates on the complaint of witchcraft and interrogated for several days, starting on this day in 1692, then sent to jail. The witch hunt continued across four counties of colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned: 29 people were convicted of the capital felony of witchcraft; 19 of the accused were hanged; 1 man, refusing to enter a plea, was crushed to death under heavy stones; 5 of the accused died in prison. At its end marks the last time anyone in the United States was executed for witchcraft. Although speculative causes of the symptoms of those who claimed affliction range from air-borne and/or ingested disease to psychological conflicts regarding jealousy, fear, or simply winter boredom, the Salem Witch Trials remain highly visible in American culture, bringing to prominance the story of innocent people being accused and convicted on untrustworthy evidence.

  • Yellowstone National Park Day
    Located on a large plateau in the Rocky Mountains where the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho intersect, Yellowstone National Park is a majesty over 2 million acres of craggy peaks, lakes, canyons, geysers and hot springs, with a wealth of history, culture, extraordinary wildlife, and natural wonders. From the earliest ancestors of the Nez Perce, Crow, and Shoshone tribes, through the explorations of the legendary mountain man mountain Jim Bridger, to later surveys and observations, on this date in 1871, President Ulysses Grant signed into law the Yellowstone National Park Act (17 Stat 32), "dedicated and set aside (the land) as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people". This law created what is considered the world's 1st national park, which today draws over 3 million multi-national visitors per year.

  • World Civil Defence Day
    From an idea originating with the French Surgeon-General Georges Saint-Paul in 1931 Paris, the need was determined to set apart locations for victims of war. Known then as Geneva Zones, the idea evolved into ensuring not only medical facilities for the wounded and sick in combat, but also for protection of refugees, particularly women and children, and the elderly.
      After World War II, the aim became to prepare and develop these international safety zones during peacetime, and by 1958, the International Association of Geneva Zones became the International Civil Defence Organization, to include membership by individuals, associations, and corporations worldwide. Following its acceptance as an inter-governmental organization on this date in 1972 , the ICDO then took on the responsibilities of promoting studies and research on population protection matters, the coordination of efforts in the area of disaster prevention, and preparedness and intervention on a global basis, including natural and technical disasters in peacetime.
      Today, the International Civil Defence Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation which develops organisation and operational tactics required to ensure coordination between several organizations so that they can interact efficiently during disaster relief efforts. They also sponsor organized training sessions on disaster medicine open to doctors and nurses in global civil defence services, and World Civil Defence Day 2010 specifically pays tribute to the healthcare personnel who save lives and safeguard the health of populations confronted by disasters, whether natural or man-made.

  • Peace Corps Day

  • St. David's Day
    The national holiday of the Welsh, birthday of St David, patron saint of Wales

  • Ohio Admission Day
    Ohio became the 17th state in 1803: President Jefferson signed an act of Congress that approved Ohio's boundaries and constitution in February of 1803, but because no formal resolution was required at the time, it was an oversight undetected until 1952, when Congressman George Bender introduced a bill in Congress which retroactively admitted Ohio to the Union, effective 1 March 1803.

  • Nebraska Admission Day
    Nebraska became the 37th state in 1867

  • National Pig Day
  • Peanut Butter Lover's Day

  • In History:
    • 0001 Start of revised Julian calendar in Rome
    • 0293 Roman emperor Maximianus introduces tetrarchy
    • 0743 Slave export by Christians to heathen areas prohibited
    • 1260 Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, conquerors Damascus
    • 1457 Unitas Fratrum is established in the village of Kunvald, on the Bohemian-Moravian borderland; considered the 2nd oldest Protestant denomination
    • 1565 City of Rio de Janeiro is founded
    • 1587 English parliament leader Peter Wentworth confined in London Tower
    • 1591 Pope Gregory XIV threatens to excommunicate French king Henri IV
    • 1628 Writs are issued by Charles I of England that every county in England (not just seaport towns) pay ship tax by this date
    • 1642 Georgeana, MA (now known as York, ME) becomes the 1st incorporated US city
    • 1692 Witch hunt begins Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony
    • 1711 The Spectator begins publishing (London)
    • 1780 Pennsylvania becomes 1st US state to abolish slavery (for new-borns only)
    • 1781 Continental Congress adopts Articles of Confederation
    • 1784 E Kidner opens 1st cooking school, in Great Britain
    • 1785 Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture organized
    • 1790 1st US census is authorized
    • 1792 Presidential Succession Act passed
    • 1809 Embargo Act of 1807 repealed and Non-Intercourse Act signed
    • 1810 Georgetown College was chartered in Washington, DC, making it the 1st Roman Catholic institution of higher learning in the US
    • 1836 Convention of delegates from 57 Texas communities convenes in Washington-on-the-Brazos, TX, to deliberate independence from Mexico
    • 1845 President John Tyler signs a bill authorizing the US to annex the Republic of Texas
    • 1847 Michigan becomes 1st English-speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty (except for treason against the state)
    • 1854 SS City of Glasgow leaves Liverpool harbor and is never seen again
    • 1859 Present seal of San Francisco adopted (its 2nd)
    • 1864 Louis Ducos du Hauron patents movie machine (never built)
    • 1864 1st black woman to receive a medical degree, Rebecca Lee (US)
    • 1867 Howard University, Washington, DC, chartered
    • 1869 Postage stamps showing scenes are issued for 1st time
    • 1873 Remington and Sons in Ilion, NY, start production of the 1st practical typewriter
    • 1873 Henry Comstock discovers the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, NV
    • 1875 Congress passes Civil Rights Act; invalidated by Supreme Court, 1883
    • 1879 Library of Hawaii founded
    • 1890 1st US edition of Sherlock Holmes (A Study in Scarlet) publisher J B Lippincott Co
    • 1893 Diplomatic Appropriation Act, authorizes the US rank of ambassador
    • 1896 Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity
    • 1912 Albert Berry makes the 1st parachute jump from a moving airplane
    • 1912 1st US woman detective Isabella Goodwin, appointed in New York City
    • 1913 1st state law requiring bonding of officers and state employees (North Dakota)
    • 1913 Federal income tax takes effect (16th amendment)
    • 1928 Paul Whiteman & his orchestraestra record Ol' Man River for Victor Records
    • 1932 Son of Charles Lindbergh, Charles Augustus Lindbergh III, is kidnapped
    • 1936 Hoover Dam is completed
    • 1937 1st permanent automobile license plates issued (Connecticut)
    • 1937 US Steel raises workers' wages to $5 a day
    • 1941 Captain America appears in a comic book
    • 1941 1st US commercial FM radio station goes on the air (W47NV, Nashville, TN)
    • 1941 1st NFL commisioner Elmer Layden
    • 1949 Ripley's Believe It Or Not! debuts on television
    • 1953 Joseph Stalin collapses, having suffered a stroke; dies 4 days later
    • 1961 President John Kennedy asks for an Alliance for Progress and Peace Corps
    • 1968 NBC's unprecedented on-air announcement, Star Trek will return
    • 1968 Singers Johnny Cash (36) and June Carter (38) wed
    • 1968 Vatican City's Apostolic Constitution of 1967 goes into effect
    • 1969 Sergeant Pepper drops off the charts after 88 weeks
    • 1969 Jim Morrison arrested for exposing himself at Dinner Key Auditorium
    • 1969 New York Yankees Mickey Mantle announces his retirement from baseball
    • 1970 End of US commercial whale hunting
    • 1973 Honda Civic introduced
    • 1974 7 Presidential aides are indicted for their role in the Watergate break-in and charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice
    • 1974 George Harrison announces his concert tour of US in November
    • 1978 Charlie Chaplin's coffin is stolen from a Swiss cemetery
    • 1980 Voyager 1 probe confirms that Janus (moon of Saturn) exists
    • 1989 US becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty
    • 1996 New toll-free 888 area code introduced
    • 2002 Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off for mission STS-109, its final successful mission
    • 2002 US invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins in eastern Afghanistan
    • 2003 Management of the US Customs Service and the US Secret Service move to the US Department of Homeland Security

"Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on."
~ Frederic Francois Chopin (born 1810)

02
  • The Incredible Dr. Seuss
    Born on this day in 1904, Theodor Seuss Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss) was an American writer and cartoonist who wrote and illustrated 44 children's books, using a rhyming text with outlandish creatures to make reading a youthful pleasure for over 60 years. His early career began with his college newspaper, then graduated to a humor magazine, and on to nationals such as The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Vanity Fair, and Liberty. He became nationally famous from his advertisements for Flit (a common insecticide at the time), and supported himself and his wife through the Great Depression by drawing advertising for General Electric, NBC, Standard Oil, and many other companies. As World War II began, Dr. Seuss turned to political cartoons, drawing over 400 in two years as editorial cartoonist. He joined the Army in 1943 as commander of the Animation Dept of the First Motion Picture Unit where he wrote propaganda films that included Design for Death (a study of Japanese culture) that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1947, and Gerald McBoing-Boing, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject in 1950. After the war, Dr. Seuss returned to children's books, writing what many consider to be his finest works, including such favorites as If I Ran the Zoo, Scrambled Eggs Super!, On Beyond Zebra!, If I Ran the Circus, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. In 1954, Life magazine published a report on illiteracy among school children, prompting Seuss' publisher made up a list of 400 words he felt were important and asked Dr. Seuss to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words. Nine months later, Seuss, using 220 of the words given to him, completed The Cat in the Hat. At various times Seuss also wrote books for adults that used the same style of verse and pictures: The Seven Lady Godivas; Oh, The Places You'll Go!; and You're Only Old Once. He died in 1991, leaving a timeless legacy of entertaining style in drawing, verse rhythms, and imaginative characters, with a simplified vocabulary that continues to encourage readers of all ages. The Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden, located in his birthplace of Springfield, Massachusetts, features sculptures of Dr. Seuss and of many of his characters.

  • Read Across America
    The National Education Association (NEA) annually sponsors Read Across America, focusing the country's attention on how important it is to motivate children to read in addition to helping them master basic skills. NEA launched the Read Across America program in 1997. The nationwide reading celebration takes place each year on or near the birthday of Dr. Seuss, who epitomizes a love of learning.

  • Texas Independence Day
    A Texas State Holiday commemorating this day in 1836 when Texas declared its independence from Mexico and became the Republic of Texas

  • Boot Hill Day
  • Banana Cream Pie Day
  • Give Up Easily Day

  • In History:
    • 1717 The Loves of Mars and Venus becomes the 1st ballet performed in England
    • 1776 Americans begin shelling British troops in Boston
    • 1789 Last session of the Continental Congress is adjourned; Phillip Pell of New York was the sole member in attendance
    • 1789 Pennsylvania ends prohibition of theatrical performances
    • 1791 Long-distance communication speeds up with the unveiling of a semaphore machine in Paris
    • 1799 Congress standardizes US weights and measures
    • 1807 Congress passes an act to "prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the US from any foreign kingdom, place, or country"
    • 1817 1st Evangelical church building dedicated, New Berlin, PA
    • 1819 Territory of Arkansas organized
    • 1819 1st US immigration law
    • 1824 Interstate commerce comes under federal control
    • 1825 1st grand opera in US sung in English, New York City
    • 1829 New England Asylum for the Blind, 1st in US, incorporated, Boston
    • 1831 John Frazee becomes 1st US sculptor to receive a federal commission
    • 1853 Territory of Washington organized after separating from Oregon Territory
    • 1855 Alexander II becomes Tsar of Russia
    • 1861 Emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia: Tsar Alexander II signed the emancipation reform into law, abolishing Russian serfdom
    • 1861 Nevada Territory and Dakota Territory are organized as political divisions of the US
    • 1861 Government Printing Office purchases 1st printing plant, Washington, DC
    • 1863 Congress authorizes track width of 4'8Å“" for Union Pacific RR
    • 1867 Jesse James-gang robs bank in Savannah MO, 1 dead
    • 1867 Congress creates the Department of Education
    • 1867 Congress passed the 1st Reconstruction Act
    • 1868 University of Illinois opens
    • 1877 Congress declares Rutherford B Hayes the winner of the election even though Samuel J Tilden had won the popular vote on 7 November 1876 (Reconstruction ends)
    • 1893 1st federal railroad legislation passed; required safety features
    • 1899 President McKinley signs bill creating Mount Rainier National Park (5th in US)
    • 1901 Congress passes the Platt amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops
    • 1901 Hawaii's 1st telegraph company opens
    • 1903 In New York City the Martha Washington Hotel opens, becoming the 1st hotel exclusively for women
    • 1917 Jones-Shafroth Act grants Puerto Ricans, US citizenship
    • 1925 Secretary of Agriculture approves 1st list of US Numbered Highways
    • 1927 Babe Ruth becomes highest paid baseball player ($70,000 per year)
    • 1930 1st US indoor glider flight, St Louis Terminal Building
    • 1933 King Kong premieres at Radio City Music Hall & RKO Roxy NYC
    • 1939 Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected Pope and takes the name Pius XII
    • 1940 Elmer Fudd makes his debut in the cartoon Elmer's Candid Camera
    • 1946 Ho Chi Minh is elected the President of North Vietnam
    • 1949 Lucky Lady II (USAF B-50 Superfortress), completes 1st nonstop round-the-world flight at Fort Worth TX, covering 23,452-mis in 94 hours
    • 1950 Silly Putty invented
    • 1953 Academy Awards are 1st broadcast on television by NBC
    • 1959 Miles Davis holds the 1st recording session for Kind of Blue at Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York City
    • 1962 Wilt Chamberlain scores a legendary 100 points in a basketball game between the Philadelphia Warriors/NY Knicks at Hershey Sports Arena
    • 1969 In Toulouse, France the 1st test flight of the Concorde is conducted
    • 1970 Supreme Court ruled draft evaders can not be penalized after 5 years
    • 1972 Pioneer 10 spaceprobe is launched from Cape Canaveral, FL with a mission to explore the outer planets
    • 1974 1st class postage raised from 8¢ to 10¢
    • 1974 Grand jury concludes President Nixon is involved in Watergate cover-up
    • 1977 Bette Davis is 1st woman to receive Life Achievement Award
    • 1977 Future Tonight Show host Jay Leno debuts with host Johnny Carson
    • 1978 Czech Vladimir Remek becomes the 1st non-Russian or non-American to go into space, when he is launched aboard Soyuz 28
    • 1983 Compact Disc recordings developed by Phillips & Sony introduced
    • 1983 Final episode of M*A*S*H; 125,000,000 viewers
    • 1987 Chrysler acquires American Motors
    • 1989 Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century
    • 1990 Nelson Mandela elected deputy President of the African National Congress
    • 1991 Battle at Rumaila Oil Field brings end to the 1991 Gulf War
    • 1995 Yahoo! is incorporated
    • 1998 Data sent from the Galileo spaceprobe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice
    • 2002 US invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins, (ending on March 19 after killing 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, with 11 allied troop fatalities)
    • 2004 Voters in the US state of Georgia vote on a referendum concerning its Confederacy-derived flag

"Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age."
~ Theodor Seuss Geisel (born 1904)

03
  • National Anthem Day
    It began as a poem titled Defence of Fort McHenry written in 1814 by the poetic attorney, Francis Scott Key, after the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. On returning to shore, he gave the poem to his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph Nicholson, who realized the words fit a popular British drinking song (To Anacreon in Heaven by John Stafford Smith), and so the work was jointly distributed. It increased in popularity as renamed The Star-Spangled Banner through several newspaper publications, and by the end of the 19th Century was considered an American patriotic song. Generally played on American holidays (particularly the 4th of July), it was made the official flag-raising song in 1889, and opened baseball games during the late 1890s. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered that The Star-Spangled Banner be played at military and other appropriate occasions. But it was not until 1929 when Ripley's Believe it or Not! pointed out to the public that the United States had no official national anthem, that public interest rose it making it so. The public endorsement for its spirit of inspiration by influential conductor for American military and patriotic marches, John Philip Sousa, resulted in it being adopted as the national anthem of the United States on this date in 1931.

  • Bonza Bottler Day
    An excuse to celebrate every time the day and date are the same number. Originated by the late Elaine Fremont, who believed there weren't already enough holidays, came up with this new one, and even had it registered in Washington D.C. as a recognized holiday. The name came from a student in Australia where bonza and bottler are both Aussie slang for excellent. The mascot is the groundhog since 2-2 is Groundhog Day in the US. She did include in the description of the holiday when she registered it, that this party be alcohol-free. Elaine Freemont died in a 1997 interstate collision at the age of 44.

  • Florida Admission Day
    Florida became the 27th state in 1845

  • Open Wide Day

  • Remembering James Doohan
    Born James Montgomery Doohan in 1920 Vancouver, BC; best known for his role as Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott on Star Trek

  • In History:
    • 1639 Early settlement of Taunton, MA, is incorporated as a town
    • 1791 US Mint is created by the Congress
    • 1791 1st Internal Revenue Act (taxing distilled spirits and carriages)
    • 1801 1st US Jewish Governor, David Emanuel, takes office in Georgia
    • 1803 1st impeachment trial of a federal judge, John Pickering, begins
    • 1805 Louisiana-Missouri Territory forms
    • 1812 Congress passes 1st foreign aid bill (aids Venezuela earthquake vicitims)
    • 1813 Office of Surgeon General of the US Army is established
    • 1817 Mississippi Territory is divided into Alabama Territory and Mississippi
    • 1835 Congress authorizes a US mint at New Orleans, LA
    • 1837 Congress increases Supreme Court membership from 7 to 9
    • 1837 President Andrew Jackson and Congress recognizes Republic of Texas
    • 1842 1st US child labor law regulating working hours passed (Massachusetts)
    • 1843 Congress appropriates $30,000 "to test the practicability of establishing a system of electro-magnetic telegraphs" in the US
    • 1845 1st US law overriding a Presidential veto (John Tyler)
    • 1845 Congress authorizes ocean mail contracts for foreign mail delivery
    • 1847 Post Office Department authorized to issue postage stamps
    • 1849 Minnesota Territory organizes as a political division of the US
    • 1849 Gold Coinage Act authorizes $20 Double Eagle gold coin
    • 1849 Territory of Minnesota is organized
    • 1849 Department of the Interior established by Congress
    • 1851 Congress authorizes smallest US silver coin (3¢ piece)
    • 1853 Transcontinental railroad survey is authorized by Congress
    • 1855 Congress approves $30,000 to test camels for military use
    • 1863 Idaho Territory organizes as a political division of the US
    • 1863 Abraham Lincoln approves charter for National Academy of Sciences
    • 1863 Congress authorizes a US mint at Carson City, NV
    • 1863 Gold certificates (currency) authorized by Congress
    • 1865 Opening of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the founding member of the HSBC Group
    • 1865 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands established to help destitute free blacks
    • 1865 Congress passed the Act authorizing the use of the expression "In God We Trust" on our coins
    • 1871 Congress changes Indian tribes status from independent to dependent
    • 1871 Congress establishes the civil service system
    • 1873 Congress enacts the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" books through the mail
    • 1873 Congress authorizes federal departmental postage stamps
    • 1873 Congress and government raise own salary, retroactively
    • 1875 1st organized indoor game of ice hockey is played in Montreal, as recorded in The Montreal Gazette
    • 1875 Congress authorizes 20¢ coin, lasts only 3 years
    • 1879 1st female lawyer heard by Supreme Court (Belva Ann Bennett Lockwood)
    • 1879 US geological survey director authorized in Department of the Interior
    • 1885 American Telephone and Telegraph Company is incorporated in New York State
    • 1885 1st US state (California) establishes a permanent forest commission
    • 1885 Congress passes Indian Appropriations Act (Indians wards of federal government)
    • 1887 Anne Sullivan begins teaching 6-year old blind-deaf Helen Keller
    • 1891 Congress creates US Court of Appeals
    • 1893 Congress authorizes 1st federal road agency, in Department of Agriculture
    • 1899 George Dewey becomes 1st in US with rank of Admiral of the Navy
    • 1900 US Steel Corporation organizes
    • 1901 Congress creates National Bureau of Standards, in Department of Commerce
    • 1903 North Carolina becomes 1st state requiring registration of nurses
    • 1905 US Forest Service forms
    • 1910 J D Rockefeller Jr announces his retirement from managing his businesses so that he could devote full time to being a philanthropist
    • 1911 1st US federal cemetery with Union and Rebel graves opens (Missouri)
    • 1913 Ida Wells-Barnett demonstrates for female suffrage in Washington, DC
    • 1915 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NASA forerunner) created
    • 1919 1st international air mail service from US, Seattle, WA-Victoria, BC
    • 1921 Toronto's Dr Banting and Dr Best announce discovery of insulin
    • 1923 TIME magazine is published for the 1st time; cover shows the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Joseph Gurney Cannon
    • 1931 US officially adopts The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem
    • 1931 Cab Calloway records Minnie the Moocher (Jazz's 1st million seller)
    • 1933 Mount Rushmore National Memorial is dedicated
    • 1933 President Herbert Hoover signs the Norris-LaGuardia Act into law
    • 1934 John Dillinger breaks out of jail using a wooden pistol
    • 1938 Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia
    • 1939 In Mumbai, Mohandas Gandhi begins to fast in protest of the autocratic rule in India
    • 1955 Elvis Presley appears on television for the 1st time
    • 1959 San Francisco Giants officially name their new stadium Candlestick Park
    • 1959 1st US probe to enter solar orbit, Pioneer 4, is launched
    • 1965 Temptations My Girl reaches #1
    • 1966 James Goldman's Lion in Winter premieres in New York City
    • 1971 South African Broadcasting Corp lifts its ban on the Beatles
    • 1971 Winnie Mandela sentenced to 1 year in jail in South Africa
    • 1972 Sculpted figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee, and Stonewall Jackson are completed at Stone Mountain, GA
    • 1974 Roman Catholic and Lutheran officials reach an agreement for eventual reconciliation into one communion, marking the 1st agreement between the two churches since the Reformation
    • 1974 George Foreman KOs Ken Norton
    • 1976 Fleetwood Mac records Rumours, which will be a blockbuster album in 1977
    • 1985 Women Against Pornography award their "Pig Award" to Huggies Diapers, claiming that the television ads had "crossed the line between eye-catching and porn"
    • 1991 Amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers
    • 1992 President George H W Bush apologizes for raising taxes after pledging not to
    • 1995 In Somalia, the United Nations peacekeeping mission ends
    • 1998 Bill Gates testifies at Senate Judiciary Committee
    • 1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones begin their successful attempt to circumnavigate the world in a hot air balloon without stopping
    • 2005 Steve Fossett becomes the 1st person to fly an airplane around the world solo without any stops without refueling a journey of 40,234 km/25,000 mi completed in 67 hours and 2 minutes

"One day every major city in America will have a telephone."
~ Alexander Graham Bell (born 1847)

04
  • Remembering Levi Strauss / Blue Jeans Day
    Since its earliest references in the 1400s, denim fabric was first used by navy personnel around the world. Five hundred years later, blue jeans have become a wardrobe staple, with the average North American owning seven pairs. During the years of the California Gold Rush, a German dry goods merchant living in San Francisco named Levi Strauss (born on this day in 1829) was selling blue jeans under the "Levi's" name to the mining communities of California. One of his customers was a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth from the Levi Strauss and Co wholesale house, had an idea to use copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly. He contacted Strauss suggesting they both go into business together, and Levi Strauss and Company became the first to manufacture blue jeans in 1853. For nearly 100 years, jeans were a popular form of clothing for laborers, but adopted as casual wear by teenagers and young adults during the 1950s as a symbol of mild protest against conformity, and was considered by some older adults as disruptive. By the 1960s, both men's and women's jeans had the zipper down the front, and the wearing of blue jeans became more acceptable. Aside from the original jeans, there are ankle jeans, baggy jeans, carpenter jeans, skinny jeans; bell bottom, bootcut, wide leg, straight jeans; low-rise jeans, hip-huggers, relaxed Fit, phat pants, slinkies; and jorts.

  • United States Inauguration Day (1789 - 1933)
    Inauguration Day is the day on which the President of the United States is sworn in and takes office, beginning with the first inauguration for George Washington on 30 April 1789. For each Presidential inauguration after that, it was held every four years on the 4th day of March. President Washington's 2nd inauguration in 1793 is recorded as the shortest inaugural speech at 133 words. It was William Henry Harrison in 1841 who delivered the longest speech at 8,443 words. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the 1st President inaugurated in Washington, DC. James Madison, in 1809, was the first President inaugurated in American-made clothes. In 1849, Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in office on a Sunday, so the ceremony was held the following day. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to have his inauguration broadcast on radio in 1925. Ratification of the 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution changed the beginning of the President and Vice President's terms to noon on 20 January, beginning with Franklin Roosevelt's second term in 1937. The next Inauguration Day will occur on 20 January 2021.

  • Tavern Day
    Samuel Cole, his wife, Anne, and young son, John, were among the colonists immigrating to the Americas under the leadership of John Winthrop, who established the town of Boston in 1630. The town was begun along the irregular water front, with houses built inland toward a central square, where government, religion, marketing, and socializing brought the community to life. Although the dominant cultural force at the time was Puritanism, it was understood settlements needed a place for neighbors to gather, to socialize, and exchange news and opinions. It was also a Puritan belief that consumption of alcohol, and other types of debauchery behavior could be contained in such places (then called "ordinarys"), and within several years of colonization, governments began enforcing the idea each community must have at least one such place. Anne Cole died shortly after their arrival in the New World, and Samuel continued by becoming, on this date in 1633, the owner and operator of the first tavern in the American colonies, aptly named Cole's, in the center of the town commons. Known as the Corn Court during colonial times, legend has it that Cole's remained a tavern, remodeled, renamed, and rennovated through several owners, and the area itself maintained as a social gathering spot for the following 300 years.

  • Vermont Admission Day
    Vermont became the 14th state in 1791

  • World Day of the Fight Against Sexual Exploitation
    Recognized by the United Nations

  • Old Rock Day
  • Poundcake Day
  • Town Meeting Day

  • In History:
    • 0051 Nero, later to become Roman Emperor, is given the title princeps iuventutis (head of the youth)
    • 1215 King John of England makes an oath to the Pope as a crusader to gain the support of Innocent III
    • 1275 Chinese astronomers observe a total eclipse of the sun
    • 1519 Hernan Cortes arrives in Mexico in search of the Aztec civilization and their wealth
    • 1629 Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had the role of colonizing the Americas, is granted a Royal charter
    • 1633 Samuel Cole opens the 1st tavern in Boston, Massachusetts
    • 1774 1st sighting of Orion Nebula by William Herschel
    • 1778 Continental Congress voted to ratify both the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance with France; 1st treaties entered into by the US government
    • 1789 1st Congress begins regular sessions, Federal Hall, New York City
    • 1791 1st Jewish member of Congress, Israel Jacobs (Pennsylvania), takes office
    • 1791 President Washington calls the Senate into its 1st special session
    • 1792 Oranges were introduced into Hawaii
    • 1794 11th Amendment to the Constitution was passed by the Congress limiting the jurisdiction of the federal courts to automatically hear cases brought against a state by the citizens of another state; later interpretations expanded this to include citizens of the state being sued, as well
    • 1826 1st US RR chartered, Granite Railway in Quincy, MA
    • 1829 Unruly crowd mobs White House during President Jackson inaugural ball
    • 1837 Chicago is granted a city charter by Illinois
    • 1861 Confederate States adopt "Stars and Bars" flag
    • 1861 Abraham Lincoln inaugurated 16th President
    • 1861 President Lincoln opens Government Printing Office
    • 1873 New York Daily Graphic, 1st illustrated daily newspaper in US, published
    • 1877 Emile Berliner invents the microphone
    • 1881 California becomes 1st state to pass plant quarantine legislation
    • 1887 William Randolph Hearst, age 23, buys the San Francisco Examiner, and starts to build the Hearst newspaper empire
    • 1902 American Automobile Association is established in Chicago
    • 1909 President William Taft approves Congressional Gold Medals for the Wright brothers
    • 1909 US prohibits interstate transportation of game birds
    • 1913 1st US law regulating the shooting of migratory birds passed
    • 1913 Department of Commerce and Department of Labor are established by splitting the duties of the 10-year old Department of Commerce and Labor
    • 1913 New York Yankees are 1st to train outside US (Bermuda)
    • 1917 Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the 1st female member of the House of Representatives
    • 1921 EM Forster sets out on a passage to India to assume his duties as secretary to the Maharaja of the state of Dewas Senior
    • 1921 Hot Springs National Park created in Arkansas
    • 1923 Lenin's last article about Red bureaucracy was published in Pravda
    • 1924 Happy Birthday To You is published by Clayton F Summy
    • 1929 Charles Curtis becomes the 1st Native-American Vice President
    • 1933 Frances Perkins becomes US Secretary of Labor, 1st female member of the US Cabinet
    • 1933 Franklin Roosevelt, outlines his "New Deal" in his inauguration speech
    • 1936 1st flight of airship Hindenburg, Germany
    • 1945 In the United Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth, later to become Queen Elizabeth II, joins the British Army as a driver
    • 1946 The Voice Of Frank Sinatra, the 1st Frank Sinatra album ever, is released by Columbia Records
    • 1950 US Premiere of Walt Disney's animated film Cinderella
    • 1952 Ernest Hemingway completes his short novel The Old Man and the Sea
    • 1952 Ronald Reagan marries his 2nd wife, Nancy Davis, in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles
    • 1954 Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston announces the 1st successful kidney transplant
    • 1964 Jimmy Hoffa, President of the Teamsters, is convicted by a Federal jury of tampering with a Federal jury
    • 1966 John Lennon says The Beatles are "more popular than Jesus" which sparks controversy in the US
    • 1975 Charlie Chaplin is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of England
    • 1978 Chicago Daily News, founded in 1875, publishes its last issue
    • 1979 US Voyager I photo reveals Jupiter's rings
    • 1985 Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for AIDS, used since then for screening all blood donations in the US
    • 1989 Time, Inc and Warner Communications announce plans for a merger forming Time-Warner
    • 1995 Blind teenage boy receives a 'Bionic Eye' at a Washington Hospital
    • 1997 President Clinton bans federally funded human cloning research
    • 2006 Final contact attempt with Pioneer 10 by the Deep Space Network No response is received
    • 2009 Gordon Brown becomes the United Kingdom's 5th Prime Minister to address a joint session of Congress
    • 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meet in the West Bank

"One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it."
~Knute Rockne (born 1888)


05
  • World Day of Prayer 2021
    World Day of Prayer is a worldwide movement of Christian women of many traditions in more than 170 countries and regions who come together to observe a common day of prayer each year, and who, in many countries, have a continuing relationship in prayer and service. The origins of World Day of Prayer date back to 1812 when Christian women of the United States and Canada felt a need to encourage one another in sustaining their beliefs in prayer, and their mission work at home, and in other parts of the world. Armed with a vision of interdenominational Christian unity, by 1897, women of six denominations had formed the Women's Inter-Church Council for a united day of prayer for home missions. Organized through speaking engagements that provided women with local and global linkage, in prayer and information sharing, and in biblical reflection, an interdenominational Central Committee was organized to prepare publications, summer conferences, study days and courses, so that women could become informed about the lives of women in other parts of the world, and could study biblical foundations and vital issues related to mission work. A call for for united prayer and action resulted in the concept of a National Day of Prayer, adopted in 1927 to a World Day of Prayer. Celebrated annually on the first Friday of March.

  • The Sinews of Peace
    At Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the John Findley Green Foundation lecture series was established in 1936 to present speakers of international reputation promoting an understanding of economic and social problems of international concern. On this day in 1946, spectators watched the motor cavalcade travel from the train station in Jefferson City to the college in Fulton, carrying the Foundation's invited speaker, Winston Churchill. His invitation had been endorsed by his traveling companion, President Harry S. Truman. They attended a private luncheon at the home of Westminster's president before marching into the crowded gymnasium at the end of the long academic procession. Introduced by President Truman, Churchill presented what he titled the Sinews of Peace address, advocating a strong continued alliance between Britain and the United States, stressing the need for tight controls on the development of nuclear science, and urging support of various United Nations peace efforts. However, it was his dark picture of European development during that time of post-war power struggles that his speech became better known as his "Iron Curtain" speech, referencing an impending Soviet threat.

    "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent...in what I must call the Soviet sphere. ...Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts - and facts they are - this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace."

    Although the speech itself gave many accolades to the character of the Russian people, Churchill's speech was never published by the Soviet press. Stalin himself told his people about it through an article in Pravda, in which he described Churchill as a warmonger aiming at Anglo-Saxon world domination, and assured the world the Soviet Union was was capable of waging and winning another war. Stalin, in fact, had already begun preparations for a possible confrontation with the West, and used this speech to begin mobilizing the Soviet people against their former allies. From a small town in Missouri, the Cold War had begun.

  • Bridge Players Day
  • Say Hi to Mom Day
  • Stop the Clocks Day

  • In History:
    • 1179 3rd Lateran Council (11th ecumenical council) opens in Rome
    • 1496 England King Henry VII issued letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to discover of unknown lands
    • 1558 Smoking tobacco introduced in Europe by Francisco Fernandes
    • 1616 Copernicus "de Revolutionibus" placed on Catholic Forbidden index
    • 1623 1st American temperance law enacted, Virginia
    • 1750 1st American Shakespearean production Richard III, New York City
    • 1766 Antonio de Ulloa, the 1st Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrives in New Orleans
    • 1770 Boston Massacre: 5 Americans, including a black slave named Crispus Attucks, and a boy are killed by British troops in an event that would help start the American Revolutionary War 5 years later
    • 1821 James Monroe is inaugurated for a 2nd term as President
    • 1842 Over 500 Mexican troops led by Rafael Vasquez invade Texas, briefly occupy San Antonio and then head back to the Rio Grande
    • 1856 Georgia becomes 1st state to regulate railroads
    • 1868 A court of impeachment is organized in the Senate to hear charges against President Andrew Johnson
    • 1872 George Westinghouse patents the air brake
    • 1907 1st radio broadcast of a musical composition aired
    • 1917 Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated for a 2nd term as President
    • 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all US banks and freezing all financial transactions
    • 1933 In Germany, the Nazis win 44 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections
    • 1934 Mother-in-law's day 1st celebrated (Amarillo, TX)
    • 1935 Louis E. Ballast of Denver, CO files an application to register the trademark of the word "cheeseburger"
    • 1960 Elvis Presley ends 2-year hitch in US Army, honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant
    • 1970 Nuclear non-proliferation treaty goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations
    • 1995 Free Internet Chess Server was brought online and remains operational today
    • 1995 Graves of Czar Nicholas and family found in St Petersburg
    • 2006 Three 6 Mafia made history as they became the 1st African-American hip-hop group to win an Academy Award for Best Song and also became the 1st hip-hop artists to ever perform at the ceremony

"Girls are always running through my mind. They don't dare walk."
~ Andy Gibb (born 1958)


06
  • Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race 2021
    This highly competitive annual sled dog race in Alaska takes place each year on the first Saturday in March. Began in 1973 to test the best sled dog mushers and teams, covering 1,161 miles from Willow to Nome along the historical Iditarod Trail, this event commemorates the 1925 "Great Race of Mercy" when dogsleds reached Nome with emergency diphtheria serum.

  • Remember the Alamo
    The Battle of the Alamo, the most celebrated military engagement in Texas history was the first and last stand for the volunteers, led by South Carolina attorney Willian Barret Travis, meant to hold up Santa Ana's invasion on the north shore of the Rio Brazos to buy time for Sam Houston to build up his army. The garrison held out for 12 days. On this day in 1836, Day 13, the 189 Texas volunteers defending the Alamo died in a surprise, pre-dawn attack. While the battle was a victory for Santa Ana, the brave stamina of those holding their defensive position in the face of overwhelming odds became an inspirational battle cry for Texan independence, as Sam Houston's army prevailed at the Battle of San Jacinto the following April.

  • Remembering Casimir Pulaski
    Born on this day in 1745 Warsaw, Poland, Kazimierz Michal Waclaw Wiktor Pulaski of Clan Slepowron, commonly known as Casimir Pulaski, was a skilled military commander exiled from Poland in 1772 for revolutionary actions against the monarchy. He escaped to France, where he met an American representative named Benjamin Franklin, who gave him a letter of recommendation to General George Washington for a position with Continental Army.
          Emigrating to the American colonies and offering his military services, he was initially given the rank of brigadier general, but later chose to organize an independent corps, known as the Pulaski Cavalry Legion. In 1778, Congress approved the establishment of the cavalry and put Pulaski at its head. Remembered as a tough and demanding leader who trained his men in tested cavalry tactics, he often used his own money to supply the needed equipment and supplies. He died on this date in 1799, two days after being injured during the Battle of Savannah. Considered the "father of the American cavalry", in 1929, Congress passed a resolution recognizing 11 October of each year as General Pulaski Memorial Day, dedicated to Pulaski's memory and to the heritage of Polish-Americans.
          Pulaski is remembered throughout several states, naming after him counties, parks, streets, buildings, and other structures, including a US Navy submarine, and is honored so in his native country of Poland by a technical university and a museum dedicated to Polish-American history. Annual celebrations include the observance of General Pulaski Memorial Day in October, as well as Casimir Pulaski Day in March. In 2009, Congress passed a joint resolution, signed by President Obama, conferring honorary US citizenship on Pulaski (the 7th person so honored).

  • Dentists Day
    Dentists Day goes back to the invention of the 1st 'dental foot engine' in 1790 by George Washington's dentist

  • Stoneware Pottery Appreciation Day
  • Frozen Food Day
  • Brownie Pie Day
  • Chocolate Cheesecake Day

  • Remembering Elizabeth Barrett Browning
    Born 1806 Hope End in Ledbury near Great Malvern, England; acclaimed poet of the Victorian era

  • In History:
    • 1521 Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam
    • 1788 1st Fleet arrives to Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement
    • 1808 1st college orchestra in US founded, at Harvard
    • 1810 Illinois passes 1st state vaccination legislation in US
    • 1820 Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, but makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free
    • 1831 Edgar Allen Poe removed from West Point military academy
    • 1834 York, Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto
    • 1856 University of Maryland, College Park is chartered as the Maryland Agricultural College
    • 1857 Supreme Court rules in the Dred Scott v Sandford case
    • 1896 1st auto in Detroit, MI, Charles B King rides his "Horseless Carriage"
    • 1899 Bayer registers aspirin as a trademark
    • 1902 Census Bureau forms
    • 1940 1st US telecast from an airplane, New York City
    • 1946 Vietnam War: Ho Chi Minh signs an agreement with France which recognizes Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union
    • 1948 USS Newport News, the 1st air-conditioned naval ship, is launched from Newport News, VA
    • 1964 Prophet Elijah Muhammad officially gives Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali meaning "beloved of Allah"
    • 1966 Merci Cherie by Udo Jurgens (music by Udo Jurgens, text by Udo Jurgens and Thomas Horbiger) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1966 for Austria
    • 1967 Muhammad Ali is ordered by selective service to be inducted
    • 1967 Stalin's daughter Svetlana Allilujeva asks for political asylum in US
    • 1970 Cult leader and suspected murderer Charles Manson releases an album titled Lie: The Love And Terror Cult to help finance his defense
    • 1981 After 19 years presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time
    • 1997 Picasso's painting Tete de Femme is stolen from a London gallery, and is recovered a week later

"An optimist is a girl who mistakes a bulge for a curve."
~Ring Lardner (born 1885)


07
  • Operation Kohoutek
    Biela's Comet was first sighted in 1792 and tracked for the next 80 years, when it became apparent to scientists it had broken apart after a brilliant meteor shower appeared where the comet had been expected to cross in September 1872. Speculation these meteroites indicated the death of a comet lasted for another 100 years. It was on this day in 1973 that a Czech astronomer named Lubos Kohoutek, working in the German observatory at Hamburg-Bergedorf, was searching for remnants of Biela's comet when he discovered a new comet near the orbit of Jupiter. Submitting his find to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it was determined the new comet (named Kohoutek) was an exception to the general experience with comets.
        Discovered farther from the sun, earlier than any previously reported comet, it was determined Comet Kohoutek was exceptionally large, with an estimated nucleus is about 25 miles in diameter, sporting a 25° tail, and projecting a path that would pass within 13 million miles of the Sun. Its size and near approach to the sun indicated that it would be a dazzling event in the night sky as it passed within the visibility of Earth, expected in late December 1973.
        For the scientific community, this became an extraordinary opportunity to utilize the rapidly-advancing tools of space exploration in order to study the nature of comets, and their place within the structure of the universe. NASA'S Operation Kohoutek involved hundreds of scientists and millions of dollars in hardware, rockets, balloons, jets, orbiting astronomical observatories, robotic space probes, and Skylab astronauts, to view and study Comet Kohoutek as it passed. A NASA announcement in July confirmed a delay in launching the next Skylab crew in order to have the solar instruments manned as Comet Kohoutek swung around the Sun.
        The eager anticipation of the scientific community bubbling over this new opportunity from space was picked up by the media, which soon after adopted the catch phrase, "the comet of the century." It was to be bigger and brighter than Halley's comet; it might be visible in midday; a spectacular, spellbinding celestial sight; as bright as the full moon, with a tail stretching across a sixth of the sky; it would pass close to the Earth; and it would be at its brightest over the Christmas holiday. Planetariums around the world drew overflow crowds for Kohoutek shows. Telescopes, binoculars, and books with tips on celestial photographing became the hottest gift items. Comet hot-lines in many areas provided recorded information by telephone. A three-day cruise aboard the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth II was almost fully booked when it sailed from New York in early December, offering telescopes on the deck for early morning viewing of the comet, as well as comet lectures during the day (which included the astronomer who started it all, Lubos Kohoutek). Parapsychologists suggested worldwide personality disorders. Religious groups varied in opinion from the Second Coming to Doomsday.
        But as Comet Kohoutek approached, it became apparent earlier estimates were not exactly accurate. Astronomers noted Kohoutek had an outer layer of dust never stripped off by solar heating, making this its first visit to the hot inner sanctum near the Sun, and therefore more unpredictable than known comets, which are notoriously unpredictable. It was not the celestial display it had promised to be, and after its turn around the Sun, passed by again, visible from Earth only when winter clouds did not block the view, then only through binoculars or telescopes, and by most considered nothing more than a bright star. During a turbulent time in American history, as the Vietnam War was ending and the Watergate scandal was beginning, the global public wondered what happened to this well-publicized event, and the press felt it had been manipulated by NASA to turn public attention back to the space program. Some theorized it an attempt by the Executive Administration to divert media attention from the White House, renaming it Comet Watergate. NASA retained its position the dazzling part of the appearance of Comet Kohoutek was, and always had been, an unprecedented opportunity to observe and study the structure and origins of comets.

    "At a moment in history when mankind seems more inclined to look inward at parochial problems, Kohoutek is a reminder of great events - and even greater mysteries - far beyond earth."
    ~TIME Magazine

  • Cereal Day
  • Salt Water Day

  • In History:
    • 0161 Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius dies and is succeeded by co-Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, an unprecedented political arrangement in the Roman Empire
    • 0321 Roman Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire
    • 1530 King Henry VIII, whose divorce request is denied by the Pope, declares that he, not the Pope, is supreme head of England's church
    • 1644 Massachusetts establishes 1st 2-chamber legislature in colonies
    • 1778 Captain James Cook 1st sights Oregon coast, at Yaquina Bay
    • 1798 French army enters in Rome: the birth of the Roman Republic
    • 1801 Massachusetts enacts 1st state voter registration law
    • 1848 Great mahele (land division) is signed in Hawaii
    • 1850 Senator Daniel Webster gives his "Seventh of March" speech in which he endorses the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war
    • 1870 Cincinnati Red Stockings begin 8-month tour of Midwest and East
    • 1911 Revolution in Mexico
    • 1912 Roald Amundsen 1st announces to the world that his expedition has reached the South Pole, though they had arrived on 14 December 1911
    • 1914 Babe Ruth hit his 1st professional home run in Fayetteville, NC
    • 1914 Coca-Cola Bottler's Association formed
    • 1917 1st Jazz recording for the Original Dixieland Jass Band with the Victor Talking Machine Company released for sale
    • 1926 1st transatlantic telephone call (London-New York)
    • 1939 Glamour magazine begins publishing
    • 1939 Guy Lombardo and Royal Canadians 1st record Auld Lang Syne
    • 1967 Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa begins 8-year jail sentence at Lewisburg Federal Prison for defrauding the union and jury tampering (commuted 23 December 1971)
    • 1968 Vietnam War: 1st Battle of Saigon begins
    • 1973 Comet (Lubos) Kohoutek discovered at Hamburg Observatory
    • 1983 Nashville Network (TNN) begins broadcasting
    • 1989 Iran and the United Kingdom break diplomatic relations after a row over Salman Rushdie and his controversial novel
    • 1994 Supreme Court rules in Campbell v Acuff-Rose Music, Inc that parodies of an original work are generally covered by the doctrine of fair use
    • 1996 1st surface photos of Pluto (photographed by Hubble Space Telescope)
    • 1996 Magic Johnson is 2nd NBA player to reach 10,000 career assists
    • 1998 Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is fined for burning a cross in his garden and infringing air regulations in California
    • 2005 Mass protest outside the National Assembly of Kuwait building for women's voting rights in Kuwait
    • 2006 Apple Inc is granted the patent to the iPod
    • 2009 NASA's Kepler Mission, a space photometer which will search for extrasolar planets in the Milky Way galaxy, is launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

"Never slap a man who chews tobacco."
~ Willard Scott (born 1934)

08
  • International Women's Day
    First put forward at the turn of the 20th century, amid rapid world industrialization and economic expansion that led to protests, International Women's Day has become a major day of global celebration highlighting political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide, and to acknowledge the contribution of women to international peace and security. The first international women's conference was held in1910 Copenhagen, and by its second conference in 1911, International Women's Day was established as 8 March every year. It was first recognized as an official state holiday in the former USSR, and is still an official holiday in many countries across western Europe and Asia. Since 1977, the United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace continues to make the demand for women's rights and participation in the political and economic process a growing reality.

  • Farmer's Day
  • Peanut Cluster Day

  • In History:
    • 1618 Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion
    • 1702 Very unexpectedly, Anne Stuart, the sister of the childless Mary II, becomes Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland after the death of William III of Orange
    • 1775 Thomas Paine's African Slavery in America was published, being the 1st US article calling for the emancipation of all slaves and the abolition of slavery
    • 1817 New York Stock & Exchange Board is founded on Wall Street in New York City (shortened to its current name in 1863)
    • 1838 US mint in New Orleans begins operation (producing dimes)
    • 1854 Commodore Matthew C Perry's 2nd trip to Japan
    • 1855 1st train crosses 1st US railway suspension bridge, Niagara Falls
    • 1884 Susan B Anthony testifies before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives arguing for an amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote
    • 1887 Everett Horton, Connecticut, patents fishing rod
    • 1896 Volunteers of America forms (New York City)
    • 1908 Dutch utopist Frederick of Eden speaks in Carnegie Hall, New York City
    • 1910 Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of Paris France becomes 1st licensed female pilot
    • 1917 Senate adopts the cloture rule in order to limit filibusters
    • 1934 Edwin Hubble photo shows as many galaxies as Milky Way has stars
    • 1936 1st stock car race is held in Daytona Beach, FL
    • 1948 Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violated the Constitution
    • 1951 International Table Tennis Federation bans Egypt (for refusing to play Israel)
    • 1957 Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal
    • 1958 William Faulkner says US schools degenerated to become babysitters
    • 1959 Groucho, Chico, and Harpo's final TV appearance together
    • 1962 Beatles, with Pete Best, TV debut (perform Dream Baby on BBC)
    • 1965 3,500 US Marines arrive in South Vietnam, becoming the 1st American combat troops in Vietnam
    • 1968 Bill Graham opens the Fillmore East in New York City
    • 1968 6-year old Tommy Moore scores hole-in-one in golf (Hagerstown, MD)
    • 1971 Fight of the Century: Joe Frazier defeats Muhammad Ali in the 1st of three epic bouts Frazier defends the world Heavyweight title in a star-studded Madison Square Gardens
    • 1971 Radio Hanoi broadcasts Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner
    • 1972 1st flight of the Goodyear blimp
    • 1973 Eisenhower Tunnel, world's highest and the US longest, opens
    • 1978 1st radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4
    • 1983 President Ronald Reagan calls the Soviet Union an evil empire

"Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age
I discovered that I was not God."
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (born 1841)

9
  • See It Now
    The celebrity of Edward R. Murrow as a pioneer in broadcast journalism was already established when he and his business partner, Fred Friendly, made the transformation from radio to the new television industry when See It Now premiered on CBS in November of 1951. Maintaining the innovative magazine-style reporting from their popular radio show, Hear It Now, its TV adaptation broke the news standards of the time and set the path for the future of documentary news coverage. In a world of anchored news reporting, the show developed the industry's first autonomous news unit, and employed its own camera crew, which often filmed on location for unrehearsed interviews. See It Now became the first live broadcast coast-to-coast, with Morrow as its commentator set against a backdrop of studio monitors, microphones, and working crew. Rather than reporting the news, Murrow brought to the television audience insightful analyses of contemporary, and often controversial issues, using taped interviews, interposed with live studio commentary. From political coverage, through addressing the tensions of the nuclear age, bringing the Korean War home for Christmas, documenting the effects of the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, and examining the link between cigarettes and lung cancer, the show developed a hard-hitting reputation. Morrow's courage and commitment to delivering the news became most prominent when See It Now openly confronted the anti-Communist hysteria created by Senator Joseph McCarthy, airing the episode "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy" on this date in 1954. Utilizing audio and video segments of McCarthy's speeches and Senate hearing interrogations, it was the opinion of the See It Now creators the threat to American democracy was not in Commmunist infiltration, but in allowing McCarthy's continued persecutions and denials of Constitutional rights of those accused. Although the broadcast provoked an overwhelming, positive viewer response, Morrow's controversial approach to the news slowly cost him influence with network executives, as well as major sponsors. The show was eventually moved to Sunday afternoon to air as a series of specials, then discontinued production in 1958. See It Now left in its wake a solid foundation for responsible news program production, and Edward R. Murrow remains a legendary icon for honesty and integrity in news reporting.

  • Barbie Doll Day
    A woman named Ruth Handler, wife of a co-founder of the Mattel toy company, had trouble selling her idea for an adult doll until she found a toy model for her idea while travelling in Germany. Reworking the doll design, the final version was named Barbie (after Handler's daughter, Barbara). Wearing a zebra-striped swimsuit and a ponytail available as either blonde or brunette, Barbie made its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York on this date in 1959. Although Barbie has endured controversy, court battles, and relentless parody, the doll maintains an active multi-billion dollar enterprise in the toy industry.

  • Cabin Fever Day
  • Crabmeat Day

  • Remembering Amerigo Vespucci
    Born in 1454 Florence, Italy; explorer/map maker, chief navigator of Spain who is credited with demonstrating the New World was a separate continent

  • In History:
    • 1497 Nicolaus Copernicus 1st recorded astronomical observation
    • 1562 Kissing in public banned in Naples (punishable by death)
    • 1566 David Rizzio, the private secretary to Mary I of Scotland, was murdered in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland
    • 1697 Czar Peter the Great begins tour of West-Europe
    • 1765 After a public campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son; Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son had actually committed suicide
    • 1791 George Hayward, US surgeon, 1st to use ether
    • 1796 Napoleon Bonaparte marries his 1st wife, Josephine de Beauharnais
    • 1820 James Monroe's daughter Maria marries in the White House
    • 1841 Supreme Court rules in the Amistad case, concerning captive Africans who seized control of the slave-trading ship carrying them; court rules that they had been taken into slavery illegally
    • 1856 Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded in the Johnston Mansion House at University of Alabama
    • 1858 Albert Potts of Philadelphia patents the street mailbox
    • 1860 1st Japanese ambassador arrives in San Francisco en route to Washington, DC
    • 1873 Royal Canadian Mounted Police founded
    • 1889 Kansas passes 1st general antitrust law in US
    • 1932 1st Ford Flathead engine left the assembly line at Ford Motor Company
    • 1933 Congress begins its 1st 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation President Franklin Roosevelt submits the Emergency Banking Act to Congress
    • 1954 CBS television broadcasts the See It Now episode, A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy, produced by Edward R Murrow
    • 1954 1st local color TV commercial WNBT-TV (WNBC-TV) New York City (for Castro Decorators)
    • 1959 1st known radar contact is made with Venus
    • 1961 1st animal returned from space, dog named Blackie aboard Sputnik 9
    • 1964 Production began on the Ford Mustang in Dearborn, MI
    • 1974 Last Japanese soldier, a guerrilla operating in Philippines, surrenders, 29 years after World War II ended
    • 1975 Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins
    • 1976 1st female cadets accepted to West Point Military Academy
    • 1981 Ketchup is declared a vegetable, to help public schools in the USA with the balanced meal plan
    • 1981 Dan Rather becomes primary anchorman of CBS-TV News
    • 1987 Rock band U2 release the album The Joshua Tree
    • 1988 President Ronald Reagan presides at unveiling of Knute Rockne stamp
    • 2005 Dan Rather presents his final broadcast of the CBS Evening News
    • 2006 Liquid Water discovered on Enceladus, the 6th largest moon of Saturn
    • 2008 1st European Automated Transfer Vehicle, the Jules Verne, launched on a mission to supply the International Space Station
    • 2009 President Barack Obama lifts restrictions on embryonic stem cell research

"Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it
to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore.
The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book."
~ Mickey Spillane (born 1918)

10
  • Bell's Germ of A Great Invention
    Even as a young child, Alexander Graham Bell had a curious mind and showed skills of being a natural inventor. He spent much of his life studying the elements of sound and language, and an opportunity to see an early type of robot which simulated the human voice, turned Bell's thoughts to the possibilities of transmitting sound through electrical wires. Early progress led to a device he called a "harmonic telegraph" through which messages could be transmitted using a different pitch for each message. This work evolved into a "phonautograph," a pen-like machine that could draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations, which led him to believe it could be possible to correspond sound waves to electrical currents. Unfortunately he had no working model of his idea, but was able to find financing from two wealthy patrons, who also contributed a patent attorney named Anthony Pollok to the project. Bell and Pollok presented Bell's idea of transmitting the human voice by telegraph to the director of the Smithsonian Institution, who called it "the germ of a great invention" and encouraged Bell to keep to task. A chance meeting between Bell and an electrical designer named Thomas Watson resulted in getting the equipment needed to continue his experiments with acoustic telegraphy. A year later came a sound-powered telephone, able to transmit sound, but not clear speech. Realizing the project was near completion, Bell's financiers sent the patent attorney to file an application with the patent office for the telephone, and a patent was issued. It was on this day in 1876 that Bell experimented with a water transmitter, and was heard by Watson in an adjoining room to say the very first words spoken on a telephone, "Mr Watson - Come here - I want to see you". By the end of that summer, using an improvised wire strung up along telegraph lines, fences, and through a tunnel, Bell spoke to people in a telegraph office five miles away, proving long-distance transmissions were possible, and the telephone was born.

  • Money Day
    During the first year of the Civil War, it became important to solidify the banking system of the Union in order to meet wartime expenses. Introduced by Congressman Elbridge Spaulding (R-NY), a controversial bill making paper currency legal tender, payable on demand by the U.S. Treasury, was signed into law by President Lincoln on 25 February 1862. Commonly known as greenbacks, the co-existence of new and old forms of money was ended on this day in 1862 by amendments to the Legal Tendar Act which resulted in the old currency being taken out of circulation.

  • Blueberry Popover Day
  • Harriet Tubman Day
  • Raven Legend Day
  • Night of Power

  • In History:
    • 0241BC Battle of Aegusa: Roman fleet sinks 50 Carthagean ships
    • 1496 Christopher Columbus leaves Hispaniola for Spain, ending his 2nd visit to the Western Hemisphere
    • 1629 Charles I of England dissolves Parliament, starting the Eleven Years Tyranny in which there was no parliament
    • 1681 English Quaker William Penn receives charter from Charles II, making him sole proprietor of colonial American territory Pennsylvania
    • 1804 Formal ceremony is conducted in St Louis to transfer ownership of Louisiana Territory from France to the US
    • 1831 French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria
    • 1847 1st money minted in Hawaii
    • 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is ratified by the Senate, ending the Mexican-American War
    • 1849 Abraham Lincoln received Patent #6469 for a device to lift boats over shoals, an invention which was never manufactured; only President to do so
    • 1874 Purdue University (Indiana) admits its 1st student
    • 1880 Salvation Army of England sets up US welfare and religious activity
    • 1888 Heavyweight Boxing champion John L Sullivan draws Charlie Mitchell in 30 rounds
    • 1893 New Mexico State University cancels its 1st graduation ceremony, its only graduate Sam Steele was robbed and killed the night before
    • 1896 After Bob Fitzsimmons KOs much larger Jim Corbett to win world HW championship he says, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall"
    • 1902 US Court of Appeals rules that Thomas Edison did not invent the movie camera
    • 1910 Pittsburgh Courier, begins publishing
    • 1918 Warner Bros releases its 1st major film Four Years in Germany
    • 1926 1st Book-of-the-Month-Club selection is produced
    • 1948 1st civilian to exceed speed of sound-Herb H Hoover, Edwards AFB, CA
    • 1951 FBI director J Edgar Hoover declines post of baseball commissioner
    • 1964 US reconnaissance plane shot down over East Germany
    • 1969 James Earl Ray pleads guilty in murder of Martin Luther King Jr
    • 1971 Senate approves amendment lowering voting age to 18
    • 1972 1st black US political convention opens (Gary, IN)
    • 1977 Astronomers discover rings around Uranus
    • 1980 Willard Scott becomes the weather forecaster on the Today Show
    • 1982 Syzygy: all 9 planets on the same side of the Sun
    • 1982 US places an embargo on Libyan petroleum imports because of their support of terrorist groups
    • 1987 Holy See condemns the practice of surrogate motherhood, along with test-tube babies and artificial insemination

"Women might be able to fake orgasms.
But men can fake whole relationships."
~ Sharon Stone (born 1958)

11
  • Johnny Appleseed Day
    John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, lived from 1775 to 1845, and spent all of his adult life nurturing the frontier of Ohio and Indiana with apple trees. According to the only known contemporary story of him published in an 1871 issue of Harper's Magazine, he would find areas suitable for planting, then allowed settlers to buy the saplings for their farms. He did sell them on credit, but rarely collected more than by trading goods. A small, wiry man with long dark hair and a scanty beard, with keen black eyes that seemed to sparkle. Maintaining no home of his own but the wilderness, he was known as a simple man who travelled the countryside with no possessions, wore no shoes (even in the winter), was seen wearing only a sackcloth, and respected the earth and its creatures to the point he would sometimes not light a fire to protect the moths at night. Chapman was a welcome sight to each community and farm he might pass by, and was especially kind to the children. During his visits, he would distribute pages of the Bible, and often read with dramatic passion to families around the fireplaces. There is also a story of him during the War of 1812, where he raced from house to house warning the settlers of impending raids. Johnny Appleseed was a legend in his own time for his kind and generous ways, and known today as a leader in conservation. Johnny Appleseed Day is celebrated both 11 March and 26 September. The September date is Appleseed's acknowledged birthdate, but the March date is sometimes preferred because it is during planting season, even though it is disputed as the day of his death.

  • Remembering Lawrence Welk
    Born in 1908 Strasburg, ND; a German-American musician, accordionist, and bandleader with a style known as "champagne music"; host of The Lawrence Welk Show for 27 years

  • In History:
    • 0537 Goths lay siege to Rome
    • 0843 Icon worship officially re-instated in Aya Sofia Constantinople
    • 1302 Romeo and Juliet's wedding day, according to Shakespeare
    • 1665 New York approves new code guaranteeing religious rights to Protestants
    • 1702 1st regular English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant, is published in London; merged with the Daily Gazetteer in 1735
    • 1708 Queen Anne withholds Royal Assent from a militia Bill, the last time a British monarch vetoes legislation
    • 1779 Army Corps of Engineers for the US was authorized by Congress
    • 1810 Emperor Napoleon married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise
    • 1823 1st normal school in US opens, Concord Academy, Concord, VT
    • 1824 Bureau of Indian Affairs is created by the US War Department
    • 1892 1st public basketball game (Springfield, MA)
    • 1897 Meteorite enters the earth's atmosphere and explodes over New Martinsville, WV; debris causes damage but no human injuries are reported
    • 1926 Eamon da Valera ends leadership of Sinn Fein
    • 1927 Samuel Roxy Rothafel opens the Roxy Theatre in New York City
    • 1927 1st golden gloves tournament
    • 1930 President & Chief Justice William Taft buried in Arlington
    • 1941 FDR signs Lend-Lease Bill (lend money to Britain)
    • 1942 1st deportation train leaves Paris France for Auschewitz Concentration Camp
    • 1953 1st female army doctor commissioned (F M Adams)
    • 1953 American B-47 accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on South Carolina, the bomb doesn't go off due to 6 safety catches
    • 1963 Dr Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech
    • 1967 Pink Floyd releases their 1st song (Arnold Layne)
    • 1968 Otis Redding posthumously receives gold record for (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay
    • 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet leader
    • 1986 1 million days since traditional foundation of Rome, 4/21/753 BC
    • 1993 Janet Reno is confirmed by the Senate and sworn-in the next day, becoming the 1st female Attorney General
    • 1995 Sinn Fein party leader, Gerry Adams, arrives in US
    • 1996 EU Database Directive passed
    • 1997 Ashes of Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry are launched into space
    • 1997 Beatle Paul McCartney knighted Sir Paul by Queen Elizabeth II
    • 2003 International Criminal Court is founded in The Hague
    • 2011 To-hoku earthquake and tsunami, a 9.0-magnitude megathrust earthquake strikes off the coast of Japan

"As a political reporter questioning public officials, I say only half facetiously
that the only way to avoid being seen as a partisan is to be
equally viscious to everyone." ~ Sam Donaldson (born 1934)

12
  • The Fireside Chats
    Franklin Roosevelt was one of America's first politicians to utilize the growing medium of radio to speak directly to his constituents, beginning during his first term as Governor of New York in 1929. At the dawn of the Great Depression, as the nation was enduring severe economic crises, he began making these informal speeches as President with the intention of inspiring confidence in his governmental recovery programs, and encouraging a unified nation of active citizens. Known as the Fireside Chats, began on this day in 1933, President Roosevelt used a calm and reassuring voice to make his addresses accessible and understandable to ordinary Americans, using stories, anecdotes, and analogies to explain the complex issues facing the country. There were thirty Fireside Chats between 1933 and 1944, with topics ranging from the New Deal Program, the Recovery Program, Drought Conditions, Unemployment, and Economic Conditions, to the workings of politics, and through the early years of World War II. The Chats were relatively brief, ranging in length from fifteen to forty-five minutes, broadcast on all national networks around 10PM Eastern time to reach the most people. Sometimes beginning his talks with "Good evening, friends", referring to his audience in terms of "you" and "we," he constructed a sense of national identity, encouraged individual participation, and enabled Roosevelt to connect with the public in a way no other president had before, and few have since.

  • Girl Scouts Day
    Girl Scouting in the United States began on this date in 1912 when Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scout troop meeting of 18 girls in Savannah, Georgia. Coincidentally began during the heated years of the American suffragette movement, Low, who had met the Boy Scout founder, Baden-Powell, envisioned an organization that would bring girls out of their cloistered home environments to serve in their communities, as well as experience the outdoors.

  • World Culture Day
  • Employee Appreciation Day
  • Baked Scallops Day

  • In History:
    • 515BC Construction is completed on the Second Temple in Jerusalem
    • 1664 New Jersey becomes a colony of Britain
    • 1664 1st naturalization act in American colonies
    • 1737 Galileo's body moved to Church of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy
    • 1755 1st steam engine in America installed, to pump water from a mine
    • 1773 Jeanne Baptiste Pointe de Sable found settlement now known as Chicago
    • 1849 1st gold seekers arrive in Nicaragua en route to California
    • 1850 1st US $20 gold piece issued
    • 1860 Congress accepts Pre-emption Bill; free land in West for colonists
    • 1884 Mississippi establishes 1st US state college for women
    • 1894 Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the 1st time
    • 1894 Pittsburgh issues free season tickets for ladies on Tuesday and Friday
    • 1904 Andrew Carnegie establishes Carnegie Hero Fund
    • 1912 Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA) are founded in the US
    • 1913 Canberra, future capital of Australia, is officially named and construction of the new city begins (Melbourne remained temporary capital until 1927)
    • 1918 Moscow became the capital of Russia following the Revolution of 1917 (from St Petersburg after 215 years)
    • 1930 Mahatma Gandhi leads a 200-mile march known as Dandi March to the sea in defiance of British opposition, to protest the British monopoly on salt
    • 1945 New York is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment
    • 1947 Truman Doctrine is proclaimed to help stem the spread of Communism
    • 1951 Dennis the Menace comic strip appears in newspapers across the US for the 1st time
    • 1969 Paul McCartney marries Linda Louise Eastman in London
    • 1971 Rolling Stone Mick Jagger marries Bianca Perez Morena de Macias
    • 1987 Les Miserables opens at Broadway/Imperial NYC for 4000+ performances
    • 1994 Loch Ness monster photo by Marmaduke Wetherell is confirmed to be a hoax
    • 1994 Church of England ordains its 1st female priests
    • 2000 Pope John Paul II apologizes, during a public Mass of Pardons, for the sins of Catholics throughout the ages for violating "the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and [for showing] contempt for their cultures and religious traditions"
    • 2009 Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi is sentenced to 3 years in prison for throwing shoes at former President George W Bush
    • 2009 American businessman Bernard Madoff pleads guilty to 11 charges surrounding his $65-billion Ponzi scheme
    • 2009 Astronauts aboard the International Space Station briefly evacuate to a Russian escape pod as space debris passes

"People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't
get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family
before you're ready to settle down." ~ James Taylor (born 1948)

13
  • Uncle Sam's Birthday
    Uncle Sam is the national personification of the United States, usually depicted as a serious elderly man with white hair and a goatee, and dressed in red, white, and blue clothing that are the design elements of the United States flag. The origin of the name can be traced to a meat packer in Troy, New York named Sam Wilson who supplied rations to the US military during the War of 1812. It was an employee who made a joke of the Uncle Sam meaning for the "US" stamped on the packaging, and the story spread from there. The earliest known reference to Uncle Sam in the sense of the US government appeared in 1813 in the Troy Post, and the Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern Weekly on this day in 1852. Although the tale of Sam Wilson is disputed, Congress adopted a resolution in 1961 "Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives that the Congress salutes Uncle Sam Wilson of Troy, New York, as the progenitor of America's National symbol of Uncle Sam."

  • World Kidney Day
    Recognized by the United Nations

  • Good Samaritan Involvement Day
  • Jewelry Lovers Day
  • Plant a Flower Day

  • In History:
    • 1639 College at New Towne is renamed named Harvard College, after a young clergyman named John Harvard, who bequeathed the College his library of 400 books and half of his estate
    • 1656 Jews are denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam
    • 1677 Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000
    • 1781 Sir William Herschel sees "comet" (actually discovered Uranus)
    • 1790 John Martin, 1st American-born actor, performs in Philadelphia, PA
    • 1846 Ballinglass Incident: eviction of 300 tenants at the village of Ballinglass in Ireland during the Irish Potato famine
    • 1852 Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly
    • 1861 Jefferson Davis signs bill authorizing use of slaves as soldiers
    • 1862 US federal government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation
    • 1865 US Confederate Congress calls on black slaves for field service
    • 1868 Senate begins President Andrew Johnson impeachment trial
    • 1869 Arkansas legislature passes anti-Klan law
    • 1878 Oxford defeats Cambridge in their 1st golf match
    • 1881 Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him (Gregorian date: it was March 1 in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia)
    • 1884 US adopts Standard Time
    • 1897 San Diego State University founded
    • 1900 In France, length of a workday for women and children is limited to 11 hours by law
    • 1913 Kansas legislature approves censorship of motion pictures
    • 1923 Lee de Forest demonstrates his sound-on-film moving pictures (New York City)
    • 1925 Butler law in Tennessee prohibits the teaching of evolution
    • 1930 Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory
    • 1933 Banks in the US begin to re-open after the Presidentially-mandated "bank holiday"
    • 1933 Josef Goebbels becomes German minister of Information and Propaganda
    • 1942 Julia Flikke, Nurse Corps, becomes 1st woman colonel in US army
    • 1943 Baseball approves official ball (with cork & balata)
    • 1943 Failed assassin attempt on Hitler during Smolensk-Rastenburg flight
    • 1957 FBI arrests Jimmy Hoffa and charges him with bribery
    • 1961 JFK sets up the Alliance for Progress
    • 1961 Old type, black & white notes cease to be legal tender
    • 1961 Pablo Picasso (79) marries his model Jacqueline Rocque (37)
    • 1962 Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proposes a document, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks in Guantanamo Bay to Secretary of Defense Robert Mcnamara; proposal is scrapped and President John Kennedy removes Lemnitzer from his position
    • 1964 Young woman, Kitty Genovese, is murdered in front of multiple witnesses who all fail to help her, in an incident which shocks the world and prompts investigation into the Bystander effect
    • 1965 Jeff Beck replaces Eric Clapton of the Yardbirds
    • 1971 Allman Brothers Band record a concert in New York City that will be released as their classic live album At Fillmore East
    • 1974 Charles de Gaulle Airport opens near Paris France
    • 1975 Bernard Slade's Same Time, Next Year premieres in New York City
    • 1981 Attempt on Pope John Paul II by Mehemet Ali Agca
    • 1986 Microsoft has its Initial public offering
    • 1987 John Gotti is acquitted of racketeering
    • 1997 In Phoenix, AZ, the Phoenix Lights, one of the most widely witnessed UFO sightings, take place
    • 1997 India's Missionaries of Charity chooses Sister Nirmala to succeed Mother Teresa as its leader
    • 2003 Nature reports that 350,000-year old upright-walking human footprints have been found in Italy
    • 2012 After 244 years since its first publication, the Encyclopedia Britannica discontinues its print edition
    • 2013 Argentine Jorge Bergoglio is elected the 266th pope, 1st from the Americas, and takes the name Pope Francis I

"There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is seeing
something that isn't there." ~ L. Ron Hubbard (born 1911)


14
  • Spring Forward! DST begins @ 2am
    Began in 1918 as an effort to "preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States", Daylight Saving Time proved so unpopular, it was repealed in 1919. Roosevelt brought it back as "War Time" in 1942, then left it to the discretion of individual states after 1945. This obviously caused a lot of confusion for national industries (like transportation), and the quickly evolving field of broadcasting. It was the Uniform Time Act of 1966 that created Daylight Saving Time to begin on the last Sunday of April and to end on the last Sunday of October, amended in 1986 to begin on the first Sunday in April. The next generation of DST brings the Energy Policy Act of 2005, extending it month beginning in 2007, starting the second Sunday in March (spring forward) to the first Sunday in November (fall back).

    The Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes measures enforcing energy conservation throughout Federal and State levels, including bonuses for compliance, study and action on the Greenhouse Effect, and reduction of dependence on imported petroleum.
    ~Thomas on the Net

  • Pi Day
    Pi Day celebrates the mathematical constant p (pi). As p is approximately equal to 3.14159, 14 March at 1:59PM is commonly known as the Pi Minute; 1:59:26PM being the Pi Second. Albert Einstein's birthday also happens to be 14 March. Founded by Larry Shaw (the "Prince of Pi") in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium, the ritual began with staff and visitors marching around one of its circular spaces, and then consuming fruit pies. Including the singing of Happy Birthday to Einstein, today's celebrations include Pi rapping, Pi demonstrations, Pi films, and pizza Pi sampling.

  • Irish American Day
    Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who claim Irish ancestry and comprise approximately 15% of the US population. Proud of their heritage, Irish-Americans have brought to the Melting Pot that is America successful contributions in all aspects of American life, and are so honored by Presidential Proclamation during March as Irish Heritage Month.

  • Gold Record Day
    On this day in 1958, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the 1st gold record, Perry Como's Catch A Falling Star on RCA Victor Records

  • Save A Spider Day

  • Remembering Casey Jones
    Born John Luther Jones in 1864 southeast Missouri; legendary railroad engineer for the Illinois Central Railroad

  • In History:
    • 1644 England grants patent for Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island)
    • 1689 Scotland dismisses Willem III and Mary Stuart as king and queen
    • 1794 Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin; not validated until 1807
    • 1812 Congress authorizes war bonds to finance War of 1812
    • 1821 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church founded (New York)
    • 1862 Battle of New Bern NC: General Burnside conquers New Bern
    • 1870 California legislature approves act making Golden Gate Park possible
    • 1900 Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing US currency on the gold standard
    • 1903 Hay-Herran Treaty, granting the US the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the Senate; later rejected by the Colombian Senate
    • 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt issues an Executive Order making Pelican Island, in Florida, a "preserve and breeding ground for native birds," marking the birth of the National Wildlife Refuge System
    • 1910 Lakeview Gusher, the largest US oil well gusher near Bakersfield, CA, vented to atmosphere
    • 1913 John D Rockefeller gives $100 million to Rockefeller Foundation
    • 1923 President Warren Harding became 1st President file and pay income tax
    • 1931 1st theater built for rear movie projection (New York City)
    • 1933 Winston Churchill wants to boost air defense
    • 1935 36-Folsom becomes 1st line to use 1-man streetcars
    • 1936 Federal Register, 1st magazine of the US government, publishes 1st issue
    • 1937 Battle of the Century: Fred Allen and Jack Benny meet on radio
    • 1937 Pope Pius XI publishes anti-Nazi-encyclical Mit brennender Sorge
    • 1941 Xavier Cugat & his Orchestraestra record Babalu
    • 1948 Freedom Train arrives in San Francisco
    • 1950 FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives was formed
    • 1953 Nikita Khrushchev succeeds Malenkov as Secretary of Communist Party
    • 1954 Braves Henry Aaron homers in his 1st exhibition game
    • 1956 Satchel Paige signs with the Birmingham Black Barons (Negro League)
    • 1960 Wilt Chamberlain (Philadelphia) sets NBA playoff record of 53 points
    • 1964 Dallas jury sentences Jack Ruby to death for Lee Harvey Oswald murder
    • 1967 Body of President John Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery
    • 1968 CBS TV suspends Radio Free Europe free advertising because RFE doesn't make it clear it is sponsored by the CIA
    • 1983 OPEC cut oil prices for 1st time in 23 years
    • 1989 President George H W Bush bans import of assault weapons into the US
    • 1991 After 16 years in prison for allegedly bombing a pub in an Irish Republican Army attack, the "Birmingham Six" are freed when a court determines that the police fabricated evidence
    • 1992 Farm Aid V
    • 1992 Soviet newspaper Pravda suspends publication
    • 1995 Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the 1st American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle
    • 1995 1st time 13 people in space
    • 1997 68-year old Gordie Howe signs AHL contract with Syracuse Crunch
    • 1997 Olympics gold medalist Michael Johnson wins 67th James E Sullivan Award
    • 1997 President Bill Clinton trips and tears up his knee requiring surgery
    • 2004 Pope John Paul II becomes the 2nd-longest serving pope in history
    • 2004 Vladimir Putin is re-elected president of Russia, while the PSOE wins elections in Spain just days after terrorist attacks in Madrid
    • 2009 G20 meets in Horsham, West Sussex, England, to discuss the global financial crisis

"You are never too old to set another goal
or to dream a new dream." ~ Les Brown (born 1912)


15
  • Ides of March
    In the Roman calendar, the term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October. Popularized by a Shakespearean play, it is most commonly associated with the date Julius Caesar ignored a fortune-teller's warning of impending doom on the Ides of March and was stabbed to death on his way to the senate-house. It was also not a good day for Cao Cao, one of the greatest warlords of the Three Kingdoms Era of China, who also died on the Ides of March in 220AD, nor for Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, forced to abdicate on this day in 1917. Considered a modern metaphor for impending doom, the Ides of March appears as the subject in music, film, television, and video games. The day is also celebrated every year by the Rome Hash House Harriers with a toga run in the streets of Rome, in the same place where Julius Caesar was killed.

  • Big Bird's Birthday
    Star of the children's program Sesame Street since 1969, this infamous 8-foot, 2-inch yellow bird with a global fan-following, celebrated his 6th birthday with a special program created for a PBS pledge drive. Although it first aired in prime-time, it was on this date in 1991 the special appeared during the show's usual time slot. Starring with his best pal Snuffy, the two friends head to the skating rink for Big Bird's birthday, encountering an series of adventures along the way with guest stars Bo Jackson, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and Ray Charles. The show later became incorporated into the regular season after inserts were added to make it a 60-minute episode.

  • #1 Album Day
    Beginning in 1894, Billboard evolved from a trade paper for the amusement industry to an entertainment magazine, and began coverage of radio in the 1920s. By the 1930s, with the widespread development of the juke box, it started publishing the music charts, which continue as the most influential publications in the music industry. In 1940, Billboard's first Music Popularity Chart was calculated, which included single songs, usually determined by sales and airplay. Expanding its popular idea, it was on this day in in 1945, Billboard first published a Premier Album Chart, naming the nation's first #1 album as The King Cole Trio (Volume 1), featuring a rising young artist named Nat King Cole.

  • Fiscal Year
    For corporations in the US that use the calendar year as their fiscal year, the date on which the corporation must file its corporate income tax return

  • Maine Admission Day
    Maine became the 23rd state in 1820

  • International Day Against Police Brutality
  • World Consumer Rights Day
  • Pears Helene Day

  • In History:
    • 0044BC Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March
    • 1493 Christopher Columbus returns to Spain after his 1st trip to the Americas
    • 1672 Charles II of England issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence
    • 1729 Ceremony of Profession was held for Sister St Stanislaus Hachard at the Ursuline convent in New Orleans, thereby making her the 1st Catholic woman to become a nun in America
    • 1778 Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island discovered by Captain Cook
    • 1783 In an emotional speech in Newburgh, NY, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy; plea is successful and the threatened coup d'etat never takes place
    • 1812 1st Russian settlement in California, Ivan Kuskov with 25 Russians and 80 Native Alaskans arrives at Port Rumiantsev and proceeds north to establish Fortress Ross on the Russian River
    • 1855 Louisiana establishes 1st health board to regulate quarantine
    • 1867 Michigan becomes 1st state to tax property to support a university
    • 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings become the 1st pro baseball team
    • 1873 Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity is founded at Massachusetts Agricultural College
    • 1875 1st US cardinal invested (John McCloskey)
    • 1887 Michigan appoints 1st salaried game and fish warden in US (William Alden Smith)
    • 1892 1st escalator patented by inventor Jesse W Reno (New York City)
    • 1892 New York State unveils automatic ballot booth (voting machine)
    • 1897 1st indoor fly casting tournament opens, at Madison Square Garden
    • 1901 Horse racing is banned in San Francisco, last race 16 March
    • 1906 Rolls, Royce & Johnson form Rolls Royce Ltd
    • 1907 Finland is 1st European country to give women the right to vote
    • 1913 1st Presidential press conference (Woodrow Wilson)
    • 1913 Cleveland establishes 1st small claims court
    • 1916 General Pershing, 15,000 troops chasing Villa into Mexico, stays 10-months
    • 1917 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates himself and his son from the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar
    • 1919 American Legion forms (Paris, France)
    • 1922 1st southern radio station begins radio transmissions (WSB-AM, Atlanta, GA)
    • 1923 Lenin is hit with his 3rd stroke
    • 1930 1st streamlined submarine of US navy, USS Nautilus, launched
    • 1933 NAACP begins coordinated attack on segregation & discrimination
    • 1934 US Information Service opens
    • 1937 1st blood bank is established (Chicago, IL)
    • 1937 1st state contraceptive clinic opens (Raleigh, NC)
    • 1947 John Lee appointed 1st black commissioned officer in US Navy
    • 1948 Sir Laurence Olivier on the cover of LIFE magazine
    • 1953 World contact day
    • 1954 CBS Morning Show premieres with Walter Cronkite and Jack Paar
    • 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady opens in New York City
    • 1957 3rd nation to explode a nuclear bomb (Britain)
    • 1960 Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve established (1st underwater park)
    • 1960 National Observatory at Kitt Peak, Arizona dedicated
    • 1961 South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations
    • 1962 Wilt Chamberlain is 1st to score 4,000 points in an NBA season
    • 1963 Victor Feguer, a Federal prisoner, is put to death at the Fort Madison, Iowa prison This would be the last execution of a Federal prisoner until the execution of Timothy McVeigh in 2001
    • 1964 Liz Taylor's 5th marriage (Richard Burton)
    • 1965 President Lyndon Johnson, responding to Selma crisis, tells Congress "We shall overcome" while advocating the Voting Rights Act
    • 1965 TGIFriday's 1st restaurant opens in New York City
    • 1966 Racial riots erupt in the Watts section of Los Angeles
    • 1968 Diocese of Rome announces that it "deplored the concept", but wouldn't prohibit rock & roll masses at Church of San Lessio Falconieri
    • 1968 LIFE magazine calls Jimi Hendrix "most spectacular guitarist in the world"
    • 1968 US mint stops buying and selling gold
    • 1969 Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas resigns
    • 1971 CBS TV announces it is dropping Ed Sullivan Show
    • 1971 Chatrooms make their debut on the Internet
    • 1972 Assassination attempt on Governor George Wallace of Alabama
    • 1977 House of Representatives begin 90-day test of televising its sessions
    • 1984 John Lennon's single I'm Stepping Out is released (4 years after his death)
    • 1985 1st Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com)
    • 1989 Department of Veterans Affairs officially established as a Cabinet position
    • 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev is elected as the 1st executive President of the Soviet Union
    • 1991 Germany formally regains complete independence after the four post-World War II occupying powers (France, United Kingdom, US, and the Soviet Union) relinquish all remaining rights
    • 1998 Titanic defeats Star Wars for the #1 place in the North American domestic box office, grossing $471 million
    • 2004 Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar system so far observed
    • 2006 UN General Assembly votes to establish the Human Rights Council
    • 2009 Space Shuttle Discovery successfully launches from the Kennedy Space Center

"The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation
that would operate with perfect equality." ~ Andrew Jackson (born 1767)


16
  • Black Press Day
    Freedom's Journal was the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. Founded by African-American New Yorkers who sought to give black Americans a voice unheard in the mainstream press, it was a weekly publication from this date in 1827 to 1829, circulated in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe, and Canada. Freedom's Journal provided international, national, and regional information on current - events and contained editorials declaiming slavery, lynching, and other injustices. The Journal also published biographies of prominent African-Americans and listings of births, deaths, and marriages in the African-American community in New York. Edited by John Russwurm, Samuel Cornish served as co-editor during 1827, and continued publishing after Freedom's Journal with The Rights of All, published between 1829 and 1830. All 103 issues of the Freedom's Journal have been digitized by the Wisconsin Historical Society.

  • St. Urho's Day
    It is told St Urho, who lived in Finland before the last glacial period, banished from the vineyards a plague of grasshoppers feasting on the grapes. The day of 16 March, the day before St. Patrick's Day, tradition includes women and children dressed in purple and green, who gather around the shores and chant, while adult men, dressed in grasshopper green are driven back. The celebrations include song and dance, and the drinking of much grape juice. An urban legend of questionable origin, the stories seem to have risen from the area of Minnesota, with a large Finnish population, as far back as 1956. Through the antics of educators, business people, and retailers celebrating their Finnish origins, St Urho's Day eventually attracted widespread media attention. The legend of St. Urho has developed in many forms, with many humorous twists, and several entwining the legends of both St Urho and St Patrick, one result being the invention of an alcoholic drink named the Mickey Finn. While the existence of St. Urho, or of grapes and grasshoppers, has not been confirmed, St. Urho's Day has been recognized in all 50 states to honor Finnish-American heritage.

    The designation of St Urho as patron saint of the Finnish is particularly humorous because 82.5% of the Finnish population is affiliated with the Lutheran Church, which does not recognize the Feasts of Saints.

  • Freedom of Information Day
  • Liberty Day
  • Artichoke Hearts Day
  • Buzzard Day
  • Hiccup Day
  • Tumble Weed Day

  • In History:
    • 597BC According to certain archaeological calculations, the 1st conquest of Jerusalem by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar occurred In the Bible, the event is recorded in 2 Kings 24:1ff and in 2 Chronicles 36:5-8; also implied in the early chapters of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, replace Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king
    • 1345 Holy spirit glides above fire; "the miracle of Amsterdam" (legend)
    • 1621 Samoset, a Mohegan, visits the settlers of Plymouth Colony and greets them, "Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset" The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sign a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags which both sides kept for fifty years
    • 1690 French king Louis XIV sends troops to Ireland
    • 1802 US Military Academy West Point is established
    • 1802 US army Corps of Engineers established (2nd time)
    • 1829 Ohio authorizes high school night classes
    • 1830 London's re-organised police force (Scotland Yard) forms
    • 1833 Susan Hayhurst becomes 1st US woman grad of a pharmacy college
    • 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter is 1st published
    • 1861 Edward Clark became Governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, who was evicted from the office for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy
    • 1861 Arizona Territory votes to leave the Union
    • 1869 Hiram R Revels makes the 1st official speech by a black in the Senate
    • 1876 Nelly Saunders and Rose Harland fight 1st female boxing match (New York City)
    • 1882 Senate ratifies treaty establishing the Red Cross
    • 1900 Sir Arthur Evans purchases the land around the ruins of Knossos, the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete
    • 1916 US and Canada sign Migratory Bird Treaty
    • 1926 Robert Goddard launches the 1st liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, MA, goes 184'
    • 1930 USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) floated out to become a national shrine
    • 1934 Congress passes Migratory Bird Conservation Act
    • 1945 World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ends but small pockets of Japanese resistance persist
    • 1952 1st religious program on TV, This Week in Religion, debuted on Dumont television; the only ecumenical program of TV's early religious offerings, and ran for 2 years, last airing in October 1954
    • 1955 President Dwight Eisenhower upheld the use of atomic weapons in case of war
    • 1956 St Urho's Day is 1st celebrated
    • 1963 Puff The Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul, and Mary was released
    • 1966 Launch of Gemini 8, the 12th manned American space flight and 1st space docking with the Agena Target Vehicle
    • 1968 Vietnam War: In the My Lai massacre, between 350 and 500 Vietnamese villagers -men, women, and children -are killed by American troops
    • 1968 Robert F Kennedy announces Presidential campaign
    • 1970 Complete text of the New English Bible was published, simultaneously, by the Oxford and Cambridge Presses (the New Testament had been 1st published separately in 1961)
    • 1972 John and Yoko are served with deportation papers
    • 1974 1st performance at new Grand Ole Opry House at Opryland in Nashville, TN
    • 1985 Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut; not released until 4 December 1991
    • 1994 Tonya Harding pleads guilty to felony attack on Nancy Kerrigan
    • 1995 Mississippi formally ratifies the 13th Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery

"I've got all the money I'll ever need, if I die by four o clock."
~ Henny Youngman (born 1906)


17
  • St Patrick's Day
    Saint Patrick's Day is an annual feast day celebrating Saint Patrick, a patron saint of Ireland. It is a national holiday for the Irish people, and an international day celebrating Irish culture by people of Irish heritage (and many who are not), to include all things green, Irish food, green beer, and parades. The first civic and public celebration of Saint Patrick's Day in the 13 American colonies took place in Boston in 1737 when the Charitable Irish Society of Boston organized what was the country's first Saint Patrick's Day Parade. The first celebration of Saint Patrick's Day in New York City was held at the Crown and Thistle Tavern in 1756, and New York's first Saint Patrick's Day Parade was held on 17 March 1762 by Irish soldiers in the British Army. In 1780, General George Washington, commanding the Continental Army, allowed his troops a holiday on 17 March, which became known as the St. Patrick's Day Encampment. Originating in the Roman Catholic Church during the 17th century as a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland, in the mid-1990s the Irish government began a campaign to use Saint Patrick's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture by creating a 5-day national festival to bring its citizens together and internationally project the accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal.

  • Camp Fire Boys & Girls Founders Day
    In 1910 Luther Gulick and his wife Charlotte found Camp Fire Girls (now Camp Fire USA), formally announced in 1912

  • Evacuation Day
    (Boston only)

  • Ireland National Day
  • Submarine Day
  • World Maritime Day

  • Remembering James Bridger
    Born James Bridger in 1804 Richmond, VA; legendary scout/fur trader/mountain man responsible for early exploration and settlement of the American west

  • Remembering Nat "King" Cole
    Born Nathaniel Adams Coles in 1919 Montgomery, AL; award-winning American jazz singer-songwriter and pianist ; one of the first black Americans to host a television variety show

  • In History:
    • 0045BC In his last victory, Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger in the Battle of Munda
    • 0432 St Patrick, a bishop, is carried off to Ireland as a slave
    • 0624 Key victory by Muhammad over his Meccan adversaries in the Battle of Badr
    • 1577 Cathay Company is formed to send Martin Frobisher back to the New World for more gold
    • 1673 Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet begin their exploration of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river
    • 1753 1st official St Patrick's Day
    • 1755 Transylvania Land Co buys Kentucky for $50,000 from a Cherokee chief
    • 1756 St Patrick's Day is celebrated in New York City for the 1st time at the Crown and Thistle Tavern
    • 1762 1st St Patrick's Day parade in New York City
    • 1766 Britain repeals Stamp Act
    • 1804 Johann von Schiller's Wilhelm Tell premieres
    • 1833 Phoenix Society forms (New York City)
    • 1836 Texas abolishes slavery
    • 1845 Henry Jones patents self-raising flour
    • 1845 Rubber band patented by in Australia by Stephen Perry Bobstein
    • 1868 Postage stamp canceling machine patent issued
    • 1871 National Association of Professional Base-Ball players organized
    • 1894 US and China sign treaty preventing Chinese laborers from entering US
    • 1905 Franklin Roosevelt married his distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, in New York City
    • 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt uses term "muckraker"
    • 1917 Delta Phi Epsilon was founded at New York University Law School
    • 1931 1st St Patrick's Day parade held in the Irish Free State, reviewed by Desmond Fitzgerald
    • 1941 In Washington, DC, the National Gallery of Art is officially opened by President Franklin Roosevelt
    • 1950 University of California, Berkeley researchers announce the creation of element 98, which they name "Californium"
    • 1958 US launches the Vanguard 1 satellite
    • 1960 President Dwight Eisenhower signed a National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program which lead to the Bay of Pig invasion
    • 1963 Elizabeth Ann Seton of New York beatified (canonized in 1975)
    • 1965 Beatles announce their film is named 8 Arms to Hold on to You (Help)
    • 1970 Peter O'Malley becomes CEO of Los Angeles Dodgers
    • 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy is taken, as a former prisoner of war comes home to the US to reunite with his family
    • 1973 St Patrick's Day marchers carry 14 coffins commemorating Bloody Sunday
    • 1991 Irish Lesbians and Gays march in St Patrick Day parade
    • 2009 President Barack Obama meets Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Northern Irish First Minister Peter Robinson, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at the White House, where the front fountain was colored green for the day

"Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration."
~ Rudolf Nureyev (born 1938)


18

  • Lord Stanley's Mug
    The Stanley Cup, awarded annually to the National Hockey League champion, is the most coveted ice hockey championship trophy in the world. Commonly referred to as The Cup, The Holy Grail, or as Lord Stanley's Mug, it is named after Lord Frederick Stanley of Victoria, who became Governor General of Canada in June of 1888. After attending his first hockey game at Montreal's 1888 Winter Carnival, he and his family became major fans of the sport. Two of his sons eventually formed a new team, actively participated in the formation of what later became known as the Ontario Hockey Association, and made an appeal to their father to donate a trophy recognizing hockey championship. It was on this day in 1892 that Lord Stanley sent a message to the victory celebration for the 3-time champion Ottawa Hockey Club he would like to donate a cup to be given annually to the winning team. He then purchased a decorative bowl, forged in England, with the words "Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup" engraved on one side of the outside rim, and "From Stanley of Preston" on the other side. Originally, Lord made five preliminary regulations regarding trustees of the cup, ownership, team requirements, and general maintenance. The first Stanley Cup was presented in 1893 to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association for an undefeated season, but the Ottawa Generals challenged the decision because there had been no championship games scheduled, and because there had been no pre-season announcement of the rules on how the Cup was to be awarded. Consequently, the Cup trustees issued more specific rules on how the trophy should be defended and awarded, which remain today. However, Lord Stanley never saw a Stanley Cup championship game, nor did he ever present the Cup. Although his term as Governor General ended in September 1893, he was forced through a death in his family to return to England before the next season started. The original Cup is currently housed at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, and Stanley was inducted into the Canadian Hockey Hall of Fame in 1945 in the "Honoured Builders" category.

  • I Can Crochet Day
  • Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day
  • National Biodiesel Day

  • In History:
    • 1123 1st Latern Council (9th ecumenical council) opens in Rome
    • 1673 John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton sells his part of New Jersey to some Friends (Quakers)
    • 1766 British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act, which was very unpopular in the British colonies
    • 1818 Congress approves 1st pensions for government service
    • 1834 1st railroad tunnel in US completed, in Pennsylvania
    • 1850 Henry Wells and William Fargo form American Express in Buffalo
    • 1870 1st US National Wildlife Preserve (Lake Meritt in Oakland, CA)
    • 1874 Hawaii signs a treaty with the US granting exclusive trading rights
    • 1877 President Hayes appoints Frederick Douglass marshal of Washington, DC
    • 1881 Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opens (Madison Square Garden)
    • 1902 Enrico Caruso becomes 1st well-known performer to make a record
    • 1909 Einar Dessau uses a short-wave radio transmitter becoming the 1st radio broadcaster
    • 1922 In India, Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to 6 years in prison for civil disobedience; served only 2 years
    • 1922 1st public celebration of Bat mitzvah, for the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, is held in New York City
    • 1930 Pluto discovered by Clyde Tombaugh (US)
    • 1931 1st electric shavers go on sale in US (Schick)
    • 1959 President Dwight Eisenhower signs a bill into law allowing for Hawaiian statehood, which would become official on 21 August
    • 1961 Poppin' Fresh Pillsbury Dough Boy introduced
    • 1965 Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the 1st person to walk in space
    • 1966 Scott Paper begins selling paper dresses for $1
    • 1967 Beatles Penny Lane single goes #1
    • 1968 Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency
    • 1974 Most OPEC nations end a 5-month oil embargo against the US, Europe, and Japan
    • 1989 In Egypt, a 4,400-year old mummy is found in the Pyramid of Cheops
    • 1990 12 paintings, collectively worth $100 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA; the largest art theft in US history
    • 1995 Michael Jordan announces that he will come out of retirement and play for the Chicago Bulls once again
    • 1996 50,000 swimmers raise $15 million for charity during BT's Swimathon '96
    • 2003 British Sign Language recognised as an official British language
    • 2003 FBI agents raid the corporate headquarters of HealthSouth Corporation in Birmingham, AL on suspicion of massive corporate fraud led by the company's top executives
    • 2003 About $1 billion was taken from Iraq's Central Bank by Saddam Hussein and his family, just hours before the US began bombing Iraq, biggest bank robbery in history
    • 2005 Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is removed at the request of her husband, fueling a worldwide debate on euthanasia
    • 2005 1st Muslim Friday prayer led by a woman in a mixed-gender congregation was held in New York City, marking a break with a 1426-year Islamic tradition

"Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered."
~ John Updike (born 1932)

19
  • Father O'Sullivan's Swallows
    Cliff Swallows are small migratory birds that breed in large colonies, building conical mud nests, preferably beneath overhangs on cliffs and human structures, and consume a diet consisting primarily of flying insects. For centuries, the birds have spent winters in Goya, Argentina, then make a 6,000-mile trek north to San Juan Capistrano, California in the spring. Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in 1776 by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order and operated successfully until the late 19th Century, when it began to fall into a state of disrepair. In July of 1910, a Roman Catholic priest named Father John O'Sullivan was put in charge of the ruins of Mission San Juan Capistrano. A noted restoration specialist, the Father personally worked on the restoration efforts while he recovered from chronic tuberculosis. It was Father O'Sullivan who began documenting the annual habit of swallows nesting beneath the Mission's eaves and archways, from Spring through Fall, during his two decades in residence. Tradition has it that the main flock arrives on 19 March (coincidentally Father O'Sullivan's birthday, born 1874 Louisville, KY), and each year the City of San Juan Capistrano sponsors the Fiesta de las Golondrinas, a week-long celebration of this event. The birds fly south on 23 October.

  • Agriculture Day
  • Let's Laugh Day
  • Sparky The Fire Dog's Birthday
  • St Joseph's Day
  • Chocolate Caramel Day

  • Remembering Wyatt Earp
    Born Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp in 1848 Hartford, KY; legendary lawman, gambler, saloon-keeper, and miner in America's frontier West, best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the OK Corral

  • In History:
    • 1524 Giovanni de Varrazano of France sights land around area of Carolinas
    • 1628 Massachusetts colony founded by Englishmen
    • 1641 General Court ended which declared the Colony of Rhode Island a democracy; the Court also adopted a constitution granting religious freedom to all its citizens
    • 1687 Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, is murdered by his own men
    • 1748 English Naturalization Act passes granting Jews right to colonize US
    • 1822 Boston, MA, incorporated as a city
    • 1831 City Bank of New York becomes the site of the 1st bank robbery in US history ($245,000)
    • 1895 Los Angeles Railway established to provide streetcar service
    • 1915 Pluto photographed for 1st time (although unknown at the time)
    • 1916 8 American planes take off in pursuit of Pancho Villa, the 1st US air-combat mission in history
    • 1917 Supreme Court upheld 8-hour work day for railroad employees (Adamson Act)
    • 1918 Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time
    • 1920 Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles for 2nd time refusing to ratify League of Nations' covenant (maintaining isolation policy)
    • 1925 Angelo G Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) becomes a bishop
    • 1928 Amos & Andy debuts on radio (NBC Blue Network-WMAQ Chicago)
    • 1931 Nevada legalizes gambling
    • 1941 Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra record Green Eyes and Maria Elena
    • 1942 Thoroughbred Racing Association is established in Chicago
    • 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt orders men between ages 45 and 64 to register for non-military duty
    • 1954 Joey Giardello knocks out Willie Tory in round seven at Madison Square Garden in the 1st televised prize boxing fight shown in color
    • 1954 1st rocket-driven sled on rails was tested in Alamogordo, NM
    • 1962 Bob Dylan releases his 1st, self-titled album
    • 1964 Sean Connery's 1st day of shooting on Goldfinger
    • 1968 Howard University students seize administration building
    • 1969 Chicago 8 indicted in aftermath of Chicago Democratic convention
    • 1973 Dean tells Nixon, "There is a cancer growing on the Presidency"
    • 1974 Jefferson Starship begins their 1st tour
    • 1975 Pennsylvania is 1st state to allow girls to compete with boys in High School sports
    • 1977 Mary Tyler Moore Show TV Series final episode
    • 1979 House of Representatives begins broadcasting its day-to-day business via the cable television network C-SPAN
    • 1984 John J O'Connor named 8th Archbishop of New York
    • 1997 Supreme Court hears Communications Decency Act arguments

"Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." ~Wyatt Earp (born 1848)

20
  • Spring Equinox (First Day of Spring) 2021
    occurs in 2020 precisely at 9:37am UT (2:37am EST)

    9

  • Remembering Mister Rogers
    Fred McFeely Rogers, born on this day in 1928, was host of the internationally acclaimed children's television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, in production from 1968 to 2001. After Rogers received a BA in music composition in 195, he spent three years at NBC in New York working in the production staff for music-centered programming, and worked on Gabby Hayes' show for children. Becoming uncomfortable with commercial television, starting in 1954 he worked for the next seven years at WQED in Pittsburgh as a puppeteer on a local children's series, The Children's Corner, where he developed many of the puppets, characters, and music that would be used in his later work. During this period, he used his lunch breaks to study theology at the nearby Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Ordained in 1962, he was specifically assigned to continue his work with children's television. In 1963, Rogers moved to Toronto to develop a 15 minute children's television program for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a hit with children which lasted three years. He then acquired the rights to his program, and moved the show back to WQED, taking with him things he had developed, such as King Friday XIII, Curious X the Owl, Trolley, Eiffel Tower, and the tree, and castle. Distribution of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood began on 19 February 1968, and moved to PBS the following year for a 33-year run, becoming the longest running program on PBS. Following his death in 2003, he was honored by a House of Representative Resolution for his landmark show that "inspired, taught, and encouraged children, families, and adults with messages of love, peace, and comfort" and by the Senate for his contributions in creating "a nurturing, educational program for children emphasizing the value of every individual and helping children understand how they fit into their families, communities, and country."

  • International Day of the Francophonie
    Recognized by the United Nations

  • World Day of Theatre for Children and Young People
    Recognized by the United Nations
  • International Astrology Day
  • Smile Rejuvenation Day
  • Quilting Day
  • Great American Meat Out

  • In History:
    • 0141 6th predicted perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
    • 1345 Saturn/Jupiter/Mars-conjunction; thought "cause of plague epidemic"
    • 1525 Paris parliament begins pursuit of Protestants
    • 1602 United Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) forms
    • 1616 Walter Raleigh released from Tower of London to seek gold in Guyana
    • 1760 "Great Fire" of Boston destroys 349 buildings
    • 1816 Supreme Court affirms its right to review state court decisions
    • 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published
    • 1868 Jesse James Gang robs bank in Russelville, KY, of $14,000
    • 1886 1st AC power plant in US begins commercial operation (Massachusetts)
    • 1897 1st intercollegiate basketball game, Yale beats Pennsylvania 32-10
    • 1897 1st US orthodox Jewish Rabbinical seminary (RIETS) incorporates in New York City
    • 1914 1st international figure skating championship takes place in New Haven, CT
    • 1922 USS Langley is commissioned as the 1st US Navy aircraft carrier
    • 1935 Your Hit Parade made its debut on radio
    • 1942 General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: "I came out of Bataan and I shall return"
    • 1944 Mount Vesuvius, Italy explodes
    • 1948 With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the 1st telecasts of classical music in the US, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC
    • 1952 Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan
    • 1961 Beatles 1st night-time appearance at the Cavern nightclub in Liverpool, paid $42
    • 1963 1st "Pop Art" exhibition (New York City)
    • 1964 ESRO established, European Space Research Organization
    • 1969 President Nixon proclaims he will end Vietnam war in 1970
    • 1976 Patricia Hearst convicted of armed robbery
    • 1977 Parisians elect former Prime Minister Jacques Chirac as 1st mayor in a century
    • 1984 Senate rejects amendment to permit spoken prayer in public schools
    • 1987 Food and Drug Administration approves anti-AIDS drug AZT
    • 1987 NASA launches Palapa B2P
    • 1987 Soviet filmmakers arrive in Hollywood for an entertainment summit
    • 1990 Los Angeles Lakers retire Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's #33
    • 1995 Beatles song, Free As A Bird, with late John Lennon as lead singer, is released, 1st Fab Four single since their 1970 breakup
    • 1996 Erik and Lyle Menendez found guilty of killing their parents
    • 1997 Liggett Group, the maker of Chesterfield cigarettes, settled 22 state lawsuits by admitting the industry markets cigarettes to teenagers and agreeing to warn on every pack that smoking is addictive

"Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.”
~ Fred Rogers (born 1928)

21
  • World Poetry Day
    Convinced that the initiative for a worldwide event in support of poetry would give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements, World Poetry Day has been proclaimed by UNESCO as an annual observance on this day since 2000.

    "Today, 21 March, we are all being invited to celebrate World Poetry Day. In a world overwhelmed by noise and slogans, poetry brings us a different way of telling its history, with its dreams and its divisions, thanks to the diversity of the world's languages. With this celebration, UNESCO does not see itself as the mastermind of some commemorative ceremony. We simply wish to contribute to the free emergence of words, to be a catalyst for transmission, sharing and creativity. In its written or oral form, poetry may be an instrument of conservation, a living memory of peoples, a story of origins. Whether sacred or profane, poetry enlightens us with memorable words, to be cherished and handed down, both a challenge and an antidote to oblivion. But the act of poetry also represents dissonance and disproportion, trial and exorcism. Its modern and shifting vision allows for new associations and dissociations. As it plays with language structure, poetry displaces and condenses images and in so doing stimulates the imagination and creative freedom within us. Poetry thus involves a whole conception of history and culture that ties in with our desire to find a response to the contradictions of our time. I hope, therefore, that this Day will provide one and all with an opportunity to look again, without fetishism or amnesia, at the use we make of languages, heritage and memory. A day which can help us build a vital relationship between the memory of the past and the invention of new possibilities."
    ~Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of World Poetry Day

  • International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
    Recognized by the United Nations

  • World Down Syndrome Day
  • California Strawberry Day
  • Flower Day
  • French Bread Day

  • Remembering Johann Sebastian Bach
    Born in 1685 Eisenach, Germany; considered one of the greatest classical composers of all time

  • In History:
    • 1790 Thomas Jefferson reports to President Washington in New York City as Secretary of State
    • 1791 Captain Hopley Yeaton of New Hampshire becomes 1st commissioned officer in USN
    • 1843 Preacher William Miller of Massachusetts predicts the world will end today
    • 1844 Origin of Baha'í calendar starts here
    • 1851 Yosemite Valley discovered in California
    • 1865 Battle of Bentonville ends, last Confederate effort to stop Sherman
    • 1866 Congress authorizes national soldiers' homes
    • 1868 1st US professional women's club, Sorosis, is founded in New York City
    • 1871 Journalist Henry Morton Stanley began his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone
    • 1871 Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the German Empire
    • 1874 President Ulysses Grant's daughter Nellie marries in the White House
    • 1891 Hatfield marries a McCoy, ends long feud in West Virginia; it started with an accusation of pig-stealing and lasted 20 years
    • 1893 1st women's collegiate basketball game at Smith College
    • 1909 Moran and MacFarland (US) win Europe's 1st 6-day bicycle race (Berlin)
    • 1924 Mass Investors Trust becomes 1st mutual fund set up in US
    • 1928 Charles Lindbergh is presented the Medal of Honor for his 1st trans-Atlantic flight
    • 1933 Dachau, the 1st Nazi Germany concentration camp, is completed
    • 1934 Babe Didrikson pitches an inning in an A's-Dodgers exhibition game Walks 1, hits the next guy, 3rd guy hits into triple-play
    • 1935 Shah Reza Pahlavi formally asked the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran, which means 'Land of the Aryans'
    • 1947 President Truman signs Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to have allegiance to the US
    • 1952 1st rock and roll concert, Alan Freed presents Moondog Coronation Ball at old Cleveland Arena; 25,000 attend
    • 1961 Beatles 1st appearance at the Cavern Club in Liverpool; paid $42
    • 1962 Bear becomes the 1st creature to be ejected at supersonic speeds
    • 1963 Alcatraz, a federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, closes
    • 1964 UCLA completes undefeated NCAA basketball season (30-0)
    • 1970 1st Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto
    • 1980 On the season finale of the soap opera Dallas, the infamous character JR Ewing is shot by an unseen assailant, leading to the catchphrase "Who Shot JR?"
    • 1980 President Jimmy Carter announces a US boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
    • 1983 Only known typo on TIME magazine cover (control=contol), all recalled
    • 1984 Part of Central Park is named Strawberry Fields honoring John Lennon
    • 1985 Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen begins his circumnavigation in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research
    • 1989 Sports Illustrated reports allegations that tie baseball player Pete Rose to baseball gambling
    • 1993 Pope John Paul II declares Duns Scotus, a saint
    • 1995 New Jersey officially dedicates the Howard Stern Rest Area along Route 295
    • 1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the 1st to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon
    • 1999 Roberto Benigni wins 3 Academy Awards for La vita a bella

"When you are reading, someone has done a lot of work on your behalf,
someone has had ideas and has then written and corrected and
improved them so that they can be shared.”
~ Margaret Mahy (born 1936)

22
  • World Water Day
    World Water Day is an international day of observance and action to draw attention to the plight of the more than 1 billion people world wide that lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Recognized since 1993, World Water Day was designated by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development to bring attention to the world water crisis, and is part of a 10-year program, the 'Water for Life' Decade, to promote efforts to fulfill international commitments made on water and water-related issues by 2015. Studies have included water scarcity, water pollution, water disasters, and how water affects cultural growth in all areas around the world. The 2008 theme focused on the slow and insufficient progress made in global sanitation, relating to hygiene, sanitary facilities, water quality, wastewater treatment, and sewage systems.

  • Sing Out Day
    Celebrating the birthday of composer Stephen Sondheim, born on this day in 1930 New York City, a multi-award winning American musical and film composer and lyricist, considered one of the greatest artists in musical theater.

  • North American Wildlife Celebration
  • Bavarian Crepes Day
  • Roller Coaster Day
  • Goof-Off Day

  • In History:
    • 1556 Cardinal Reginald Pole becomes archbishop of Canterbury
    • 1621 Hugo de Grote escapes in bookcase from Loevenstein castle, Netherlands
    • 1622 1st Indian (Powhattan) massacre of whites, Jamestown, VA; 347 slain
    • 1630 Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables
    • 1638 Anne Hutchinson is expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent
    • 1733 Joseph Priestly invents carbonated water (seltzer)
    • 1765 Stamp Act passed: 1st direct British tax on colonists
    • 1778 Captain Cook sights Cape Flattery, in Washington state
    • 1784 Emerald Buddha was moved with great ceremony to its current place in Wat Phra Kaew, Thailand
    • 1794 Congress bans US vessels from supplying slaves to other countries
    • 1841 Cornstarch patented by Orlando Jones
    • 1861 1st US nursing school chartered
    • 1872 Illinois becomes 1st state to require sexual equality in employment
    • 1882 Edmunds Act adopted by US to suppress polygamy in the territories
    • 1894 1st playoff game for the Stanley Cup starts
    • 1895 1st display (a private screening) of motion pictures by Auguste and Louis Lumiere; 1st movie to an invited audience
    • 1903 New York Highlanders (Yankees) tickets 1st go on sale
    • 1903 Niagara Falls runs out of water because of a drought
    • 1914 World's 1st airline, St Petersburg Tampa Airboat Line, begins
    • 1923 1st radio broadcast of ice hockey is made by Foster Hewitt
    • 1933 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs into law a bill legalizing the sale of beer and wine
    • 1934 1st Masters golf championship began in Augusta, GA
    • 1935 Blood tests authorized as evidence in court cases (New York)
    • 1960 1st patent for lasers, granted to Arthur Schawlow & Charles Townes
    • 1963 Please Please Me, the 1st Beatles album, is released in the UK
    • 1965 Bob Dylan "goes electric," releasing his 1st album featuring electric instruments, Bringing It All Back Home
    • 1981 1st class postage raised to 18¢ from 15¢
    • 1993 Intel Corporation ships the 1st Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64 bit data path
    • 1995 Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in space
    • 1997 Tara Lipinski, age 14 years and 10 months, becomes the youngest champion of the women's world figure skating competition
    • 1997 Comet Hale-Bopp has its closest approach to earth
    • 2008 French Swimmer Alain Bernard sets the world record of 47.50 for the 100 m freestyle long course after winning the 2008 European LC Championships

"The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen,
health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to
your mind is yours forever." ~Louis L'Amour (born 1908)


23
  • A Good Time for A Beer
    Although consumption of alcoholic beverages had been a controversial issue as far back as early colonial times in the US, in 1920 it became a Federal crime to sell, manufacture, transport, and/or consume any intoxicating beverage greater than 0.5% alcohol. It was believed by its supporters that a nationwide prohibition banning alcohol would reduce or even eliminate many social problems, particularly drunkenness, crime, mental illness, and poverty, and would eventually lead to reductions in taxes. Thirteen years later it had become obvious not only did people continue to drink alcohol, the effects of this prohibition included a massive disrespect for the law, and created a bootlegging industry that specifically encouraged the growth of organized crime. By 1933, public opposition to prohibition had become overwhelming. On this day in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of 3.2% beer effective 7 April. Although this attempt was not enough to appease the general population, sending the lawmakers back to the drawing board, it is noted that after signing the Cullen-Harrison Act into law, Roosevelt stated "I think this would be a good time for a beer." Hopefully he waited until April.

  • World Meteorological Day
    The World Meteorological Organization, established on this day in 1950, is a specialized agency of the United Nations and is the authoritative voice on the state and behaviour of the Earth's atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces, and the resulting distribution of water resources. Celebrating its 60th year in operation 2010, the WMO involves 189 members from the worldwide meteorological community, and continues to play a leading role in international efforts to monitor and protect the environment.

  • Energy Education Day
  • Nice Fragrance Day
  • Toast Day

  • In History:
    • 1775 Patrick Henry delivers his famous speech "give me liberty or give me death" at St John's Church in Richmond, VA
    • 1806 After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" begin their arduous journey home
    • 1839 1st recorded use of "OK" as an abbreviation for "oll korrect" in the Boston Morning Post
    • 1840 John William Draper takes 1st successful photo of the Moon (astrophotography)
    • 1857 Elisha Otis's 1st elevator is installed at 488 Broadway, New York City
    • 1858 Streetcar patented (Eleazer A Gardner of Philadelphia, PA)
    • 1868 University of California is founded in Oakland, CA when the Organic Act is signed into law
    • 1882 Edmunds Act adopted by US to suppress polygamy in the territories
    • 1889 President Benjamin Harrison opens Oklahoma to white settlement starting 22 April
    • 1891 1st jazz concert was held at Carnegie Hall
    • 1896 New York State Legislature restricts Sunday sale of alcohol to hotels
    • 1901 Dame Nellie Melba reveals secret of her now famous toast
    • 1903 Wright Brothers apply for a patent for their 1st a "Flying Machine"
    • 1909 Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa; trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society
    • 1912 Dixie Cup invented
    • 1922 1st airplane lands at the Capitol in Washington, DC
    • 1923 Frank Silver and Irving Conn release Yes, We Have No Bananas
    • 1929 1st telephone installed in White House
    • 1940 1st radio broadcast of Truth or Consequences on CBS
    • 1957 US Army sells last homing pigeons
    • 1960 Explorer 8 fails to reach Earth orbit
    • 1962 John Kennedy visits San Francisco
    • 1965 Gemini 3 launched, 1st US 2-man space flight (Grissom and Young)
    • 1966 1st official meeting after 400 years of Catholic and Anglican Church
    • 1971 26th Amendment approved by Congress lowering the voting age to 18, sent to states for ratification
    • 1972 Evel Knievel breaks 93 bones after successfully clearing 35 cars
    • 1972 New York Yankees agree to continue playing ball in the Bronx
    • 1981 Supreme Court rules states could require, with some exceptions, parental notification when teen-age girls sought abortions
    • 1981 Supreme Court upholds law making statutory rape a crime only for men
    • 1983 President Ronald Reagan introduces "Star Wars" plan (SDI)
    • 1989 1,000-foot diameter Near-Earth asteroid misses the Earth by 400,000 miles
    • 1989 Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announce cold fusion at the University of Utah
    • 1994 Howard Stern formally announces his Libertarian run for New York Governor
    • 2001 Russian Mir space station is disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji
    • 2005 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, refuses to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube
    • 2006 Sony announces the end of Original Playstation's 11-year running manufacturing
    • 2010 President Barack Obama signed into a massive health care overhaul will for the 1st time guarantee insurance coverage as the right of every US citizen

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
~ Erich Fromm (born 1900)


24
  • The Original Amateur Hour
    At the dawn of the 20th Century, Edward Bowes was successfully working in realestate in San Francisco until a massive fire in 1906 ended his career. He decided to move east to New York City to explore other opportunities, and found the theatrical world quite lucrative. Working as a musical conductor, composer, and arranger, he was also able to produce Broadway shows, and eventually became managing director of New York's Capitol Theatre. What would become his best-known creation, Bowes hosted amateur nights on local radio stations before signing at WHN in 1934 with an increasingly popular show highlighting unknown talent titled Major Bowes and His Capitol Family. It was on this date 1935 that Chase and Sanborn began sponsoring the show on NBC, newly titled Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour, which moved a year later to the CBS Radio Network for the remainder of its 18-year run. It quickly became radio's best-known talent show, and one of the most popular programs broadcast in the United States. Featuring a variety of newly-discovered talent, many of whom went on to become major stars, it set the foundation for other talent/variety shows moving into the era of television, including Ted Mack and The Original Amateur Hour, the Gong Show, and American Idol.

  • International Day for Achievers
    Recognized by the United Nations

  • World Tuberculosis Day
    Recognized by the United Nations

  • Agriculture Day
  • Chocolate-Covered Raisin Day

  • Remembering Harry Houdini
    Born Ehrich Weiss in 1874 Budapest, Hungary; legendary magician/escape artist

  • Remembering Roscoe Arbuckle
    Born Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle in 1887 Smith Center, KS; best known as "Fatty" Arbuckle, pioneer in silent film industry, comedian, director, and screenwriter

  • In History:
    • 1603 James VI of Scotland also becomes James I King of England
    • 1629 1st game law passed in American colonies (Virginia)
    • 1664 Roger Williams is granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island
    • 1721 Johann Sebastian Bach opens his Brandenburgse Concerts
    • 1765 Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the 13 American colonies to house British troops
    • 1828 Philadelphia and Columbia Railway authorized (1st state owned)
    • 1837 Canada gives African men the right to vote
    • 1860 Clipper Andrew Jackson arrives in San Francisco, 89 days out of New York City
    • 1868 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company is formed
    • 1882 Robert Koch announces the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis (mycobacterium tuberculosis)
    • 1883 1st telephone call between New York City and Chicago
    • 1887 Oscar Straus appointed 1st Jewish ambassador from US (to Turkey)
    • 1898 Robert Allison of Port Carbon, PA becomes the 1st person to buy an American-built automobile when he buys a Winton that was advertised in Scientific American
    • 1900 New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck breaks ground for a new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn
    • 1930 1st religious services telecast in US (W2XBS, New York City)
    • 1932 1st US radio broadcast from a moving train (Belle Baker, WABC from Maryland)
    • 1934 Congress passes Tydings-McDuffie Act
    • 1937 National Gallery of Art established by Congress
    • 1941 Glenn Miller begins work on his 1st movie for 20th Century Fox
    • 1944 76 Allied officers escape Stalag Luft 3 (Great Escape)
    • 1947 Congress proposes 2-term limitation on the Presidency
    • 1947 John D Rockefeller Jr donates New York City East River site to the UN
    • 1949 Walter and John Huston become 1st father-and-son team to win Oscars (actor & director of Treasure of Sierra Madre)
    • 1955 1st seagoing oil drill rig placed in service
    • 1958 Elvis Presley joins the army (serial number 53310761)
    • 1960 US appeals court rules novel, Lady Chatterly's Lover, not obscene
    • 1962 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards perform as Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys
    • 1964 Kennedy half-dollar issued
    • 1965 Ranger 9, equipped to convert its signals into a form suitable for showing on domestic television, brings images of the Moon into ordinary homes before crash-landing
    • 1966 Selective Service announces college deferments based on performance
    • 1972 Great Britain imposes direct rule over Northern Ireland
    • 1973 Rock band Pink Floyd releases The Dark Side of the Moon
    • 1980 ABC's nightly Iran Hostage crisis program renamed Nightline with Ted Koppel
    • 1980 Capitol Records releases some rare Beatles tracks
    • 1982 5 congregations in the eastern San Francisco Bay area became the 1st to declare themselves publicly as sanctuary churches, in an effort to help refugees from Central America establish themselves in the US during political and military unrest in their native countries
    • 1984 Baltimore Colts abruptly packed the team's equipment into Mayflower Transit trucks, and moved to Indianapolis in the early morning hours
    • 1989 In Alaska's Prince William Sound, the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels of petroleum after running aground
    • 2006 Pope Benedict XVI adds 15 men to the College of Cardinals, in the 1st consistory of his Pontificate
    • 2009 US federal government announces a plan to increase security along its border with Mexico in order to combat Mexico's drug violence

"A man is nothing without his good name."
~ Roscoe Arbuckle (born 1887)


25
  • Bed-In for Peace
    John Lennon, internationally renowned musician, artist, and author, used much of his personal time and public influence as a peace activist. His affair and subsequent marriage to Japanese artist, Yoko Ono, received massive press coverage, which John and Yoko decided to use to the advantage of their cause promoting world peace by inviting the press to share their honeymoon suite every day from 10am to 10pm for a week, beginning on this day in 1969. Known to be outspoken and irreverent in nature, given to outlandish and somewhat provocative behavior, John and his bride spent the next seven days in bed discussing their message and views of peace, while the media covered it on newspapers, magazines, television, and radio around the world. They repeated this effort the following May in Montreal, from where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance" that would become the peace anthem for anti-war protesters. John later remarked: "We're sending out a message, mainly to youth, or to anybody interested in protesting against any form of violence.... We did the bed-in in Amsterdam ... just to give people the idea that there are many ways of protest.... Protest for peace in any way, but peacefully, 'cause we think that peace is only got by peaceful methods."

  • Waffle Day
    In Sweden, the feast of the Annunciation, Our Lady's Day, has come to be known as Waffle Day and traditionally falls on March 25, nine months to the day before Christmas

  • International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
    Recognized by the United Nations

  • Maryland Day
  • Chocolate Raisins Day
  • Lobster Newburg Day
  • Pecan Day

  • In History:
    • 0031 1st Easter, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus
    • 1300 Dante descends to the Inferno in The Divine Comedy (fictional)
    • 1306 Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland
    • 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh renews Humphrey Gilbert's patent to explore North America
    • 1609 Henry Hudson embarks on an exploration for Dutch East India Co
    • 1634 Lord Baltimore founded Catholic colony of Maryland
    • 1655 Protestants take control of Maryland at the Battle of the Severn
    • 1655 Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christian Huygens
    • 1668 1st horse race in America takes place
    • 1776 Continental Congress authorizes a medal for General George Washington
    • 1811 Percy Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for his publication of the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism
    • 1813 1st US flag flown in battle on the Pacific, frigate Essex
    • 1847 Pope Pius IX encyclical "On aid for Ireland"
    • 1857 Phonautograph patented
    • 1863 1st Army Medal of Honor awarded
    • 1865 Claywater Meteorite explodes just before reaching ground level in Vernon County, WI, fragments having a combined mass of 15kg are recovered
    • 1882 1st demonstration of pancake making (department store in New York City)
    • 1894 Coxey's Army, the 1st significant American protest march, departs Massillon, OH, for Washington, DC
    • 1913 Palace Theatre, home of vaudeville, opens in New York City starring Ed Wynn
    • 1916 Women are allowed to attend a boxing match
    • 1931 Scottsboro Boys (accused of raping a white woman) arrested in Alabama
    • 1934 Horton Smith win 1st Masters golf championship
    • 1937 It is revealed Quaker Oats pays Babe Ruth $25,000 per year for ads
    • 1938 1st US bred horse (Battleship) to win Grand National Steeplechase
    • 1939 Billboard Magazine introduces hillbilly (country) music chart
    • 1943 Jimmy Durante and Garry Moore premiere on radio
    • 1954 1st color TV was manufactured by RCA
    • 1955 US Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl as obscene
    • 1961 Elvis Presley performs live on the USS Arizona
    • 1961 Explorer 10 launched into elongated Earth orbit
    • 1961 Sputnik 10 carries a dog into Earth orbit; later recovered
    • 1965 Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr successfully complete their 4-day, 50-mile march from Selma, AL, to the capitol in Montgomery
    • 1966 Beatles pose with mutilated dolls and butchered meat for the cover of the Yesterday & Today album; it is later pulled
    • 1966 Supreme Court rules "poll tax" unconstitutional
    • 1967 Who and Cream make US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show
    • 1969 During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their 1st Bed-In for Peace in the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31)
    • 1970 Concorde makes its 1st supersonic flight (700 MPH/1,127 KPH)
    • 1971 Boston Patriots become New England Patriots
    • 1979 1st fully functional space shuttle orbiter, Columbia, is delivered to the John Kennedy Space Center to be prepared for its 1st launch
    • 1986 Supreme Court rules Air Force could ban wearing of yarmulkes
    • 1987 Supreme Court rules women/minorities may get jobs if less qualified
    • 1992 Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returns to Earth after a 10-month stay aboard the Mir space station
    • 1995 Boxer Mike Tyson released from jail after serving 3 years
    • 1996 1st new $100 bill goes into circulation

"Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours." ~Elton John (born 1947)
26
  • The 2020 Summer Olympics Torch
    After its traditional lighting in Greece, the 2020 Summer Olympics torch relay will begin in Naraha, Fukushima on 26 March 2020, to arrive in Tokyo for the Opening Ceremonies on 24 July.
    Due to the global threatening coronavirus, the 2020 Olympics were cancelled until 2021.

  • Prince Kuhio Day
    Prince Kuhio Day is an official holiday in the state of Hawaii, celebrated annually since 1949, commemorating the birth of Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana'ole on this date in 1871. A member of the royal family of Hawaii destined to someday take over the monarchy, his life took a turn when the monarchy was overthrown in 1893. After unsuccessful counter-revolutionary attempts to restore the monarchy, he left the islands with a new bride, and did not return until 1901. In the meantime, Hawaii had become a self-governing territory of the US. Kuhio decided to take an active role in politics, and was elected in a landslide victory to Congress as the Republican delegate in 1903. An educated man able to combine 19th Century American politics with traditional Hawaiian culture, Kuhio was a strong representative of his people, helping create local government at the county level still used today, and staffing the civil service positions with Hawaiian appointees. His most notable achievement was passage of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921, a land trust for homesteading by Native Hawaiians, allowing them self-sufficiency, and the preservation of the values, traditions, and culture of Hawaii. Kuhio also organized the Order of Kamehameha, which held the first observance of Kamehameha Day in 1904, helped found the Hawaiian Civic Club.

    "Kuhio clearly understood that forces beyond his control would forever change the nature and dynamics of how and by whom important decisions that intimately affected his people would be made -- and he was determined not to let others dictate Hawaii's future without a Hawaiian voice."
    ~Former Hawaiian Govenor John Waihee

  • Be a Mime Day

  • Remembering Duncan Hines
    Born in 1880 Bowling Green, KY; American pioneer of restaurant ratings for travelers

  • In History:
    • 1199 Richard the Lionheart is fatally wounded by a crossbow bolt during a siege in France, he dies 11 days later; the marksman, a french noble named Pierre Basile, is executed
    • 1602 Cape Cod named
    • 1790 Congress passes Naturalization Act, requires 2-year residency
    • 1830 Joseph Smith, 24, 1st published The Book of Mormon
    • 1845 Patent awarded for adhesive medicated plaster, precusor of bandaid
    • 1859 1st sighting of Vulcan, a planet proposed in a 19th-century hypothesis to exist in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun (invalidated by Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity)
    • 1863 Voters in West Virginia approve gradual emancipation of slaves
    • 1872 Thomas J Martin patents fire extinguisher
    • 1885 Eastman Film Co manufactures 1st commercial motion picture film
    • 1910 US forbid immigration to criminals, anarchists, paupers, and the sick
    • 1916 Birdman of Alcatraz receives solitary
    • 1926 1st lip-reading tournament held in America
    • 1936 Mary Joyce ends a 1,000 mile trip by dog in Alaska
    • 1937 Joe DiMaggio takes Ty Cobb's advice and replaces his 40 with 36 oz bat
    • 1937 Spinach growers of Crystal City, TX, erect statue of Popeye
    • 1953 Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine
    • 1955 Ballad of Davy Crockett becomes the #1 record in the US
    • 1956 Medic Alert Foundation forms
    • 1971 Benny Hill Show tops TV ratings
    • 1976 Queen Elizabeth II sent out the 1st royal email, from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment
    • 1979 Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin, and Jimmy Carter sign the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in Washington, DC
    • 1982 Groundbreaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is held in Washington, DC
    • 1982 Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder release Ebony and Ivory in the UK
    • 1989 1st free elections in USSR: 190 million votes cast; Boris Yeltsin wins
    • 1996 International Monetary Fund approves a $102 billion loan for Russia
    • 2000 Pope John Paul II, on his Millennium Pilgrimage to Israel, prays for forgiveness for the Vatican's failure to speak out during the Holocaust

"A woman is like a teabag. You can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water." ~ Nancy Pelosi (born 1940)
27
  • Passover 2021 Begins
    A Jewish observance beginning at Sundown, commemorates the Exodus, the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. In 2018, Passover begins sunset of 27 March to nightfall of Friday 4 April.

  • The Armless Aphrodite
    The Aphrodite of Milos, better known as the Venus de Milo, is one of the most famous sculptures from ancient Greece, carved from at least six to seven blocks of Parian marble. Pieces of the statue were initially discovered by a young farmer on the Aegean island of Milos in 1820, and with the help of a French naval officer, the piece was uncovered amid ancient ruins. Within two weeks, another French officer arranged to purchase it for the French ambassador to Turkey, but was unable to take it with him at the time. On arriving at their next port in Turkey, he sent someone back to retrieve it. In the meantime, the farmer was pressured into selling it to a priest who wanted it as a gift for a translator working for the Sultan in Constantinople. By the time the French representative returned, the statue was being loaded to a ship heading for Turkey, so the French representative persuaded the natives to honor the first offer instead. Venus de Milo was found with the arms, an apple in her raised left hand, the right hand holding a draped sash falling from hips to feet, although both hands were damaged and separated from the body. When French sailors had to fight for its possession, and as the statue was dragged across rocks to their ship, both arms were broken off, and the sailors refused to go back to search for them. The translator was not very happy about the reversal of the sale, and had the natives whipped, but was later reprimanded by the Sultan after the French ambassador complained to him about their mistreatment. As a statement of gratitude, the statue went to the French. The Venus de Milo was presented to King Louis XVIII in 1821, who presented the statue to the Louvre museum in Paris, where it still stands on public display.

  • Earth Hour 2021
    In 2007, the World Wildlife Fund, in partnership with the Sydney Morning Herald, inspired 2.2 million residents of Sydney, Australia, to turn off all non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour in order to bring public attention to the urgent need to take action on climate change. Scheduled annually on the last Saturday of March from 8:30pm to 9:30pm local time, the 2010 participation included 4,000 cities in 96 countries, involving not only personal households, but businesses, schools, government buildings, and national landmarks, including the Sydney Opera House, the Forbidden City, the Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Empire State Building, and the Las Vegas Strip.

    ** Earth Hour 2021 is 27 March from 8:30pm to 9:30pm local time **

  • A Lesson in Lacing
    While humans have been covering their feet from the elements for a very long time, the concept of shoelaces is a fairly modern one. The earliest drawings of shoes indicate they were more than likely made of hide and secured by a strip of leather or twine. A little more sophisticated method becomes evident in medieval paintings and artifacts around the 12th century, which shows lacing through a series of hooks or eyelets down the front or side of the shoe. While early forms of shoelaces were made of leather, cotton, jute, hemp, or other materials used in the manufacture of rope, modern shoelaces are made from synthetic fibers, making them more slippery and to easily come undone.
          There are different kinds of shoelaces, depending on the shoe, including boot, athletic, dress, hikers, leather, hockey, round, round braided, thick round, waxed, wide, curly, lock, and tyless. The small plastic or metal sheath on the end of shoelaces, called an aglet, is meant to keep the material from unraveling and make it easier to feed the lace through the eyelets. It is said, mathematically-speaking, there are almost 2 trillion ways to lace a shoe with six pairs of eyelets, but the most common methods are "Criss Cross Lacing" and "Straight Lacing." While this may seem a matter of choice in today's world, during WWII, the laces of soldiers often determined to which army they belonged. British soldiers employed straight lacing, while Japanese troops employed a criss-cross pattern, and the importance of correct lacing was thus emphasized to British troops as the difference between life and death.
          Shoelaces can be tied in an almost infinite number of ways. The most common involves two half knots tied one on top of the other into a bow, although there is also the Shoemaker's Knot, Better Bow Shoelace Knot, Surgeon's Shoelace Knot, and the Double Slip Knot. Shoelaces, a necessary requirement in today's shoe market, come with a variety of accessories. Hooks for tight lacing are used by skaters. Covers protect the laces where they could become a hindrance, especially in athletics, and lacelocks are a popular item for children's shoes. Laces for fashion statements come in a multitude of colors and prints, and can include charms, tags, or beads. Even though shoelaces have become the norm in shoe fastening, there is also a preference for Velcro strips, known as the "lazy man's shoelace."

  • Cherry Blossom Day
    Japanese cherry blossoms, which line the Tidal Basin of West Potomac Park in Washington, DC, not only represent the beginning of spring, but are believed to be an omen of good fortune, an emblem of love, and a metaphor for the fleeting nature of life.
          It was an American writer, photographer, and geographer associated with the National Geographic Society named Eliza Scidmore who tried for many years to bring cherry trees from Japan to Washington, and through her association with a botonist named David Fairchild (employed by the Department of Agriculture and also a member of the NGS), was able to gain the interest of First Lady Helen Taft in 1909. Fairchild initially imported flowering cherry trees to plant on his own property in Maryland, successfully tested their hardiness in the Washington area, and began to promote Japanese flowering cherry trees as the ideal type of tree to plant along avenues of the nation's capital. Scidmore began fund-raising to purchase the cherry trees to be donated to the city.
          When the Japanese consul learned the Japanese cherry trees had been selected, an offer of 2 thousand trees was made to be donated by Tokyo. Unfortunately on arrival, the trees were discovered to be infested with insects, roundworms, and plant diseases. The Department of Agriculture received official permission from President Taft for the trees to be destroyed, and the Secretary of State opened communications with the Japanese ambassador to avoid diplomatic setbacks. Expressing deep regret, new trees were donated. The seed for these trees were from the highest quality in Japan, grafted on specially selected understock, and the first two trees were planted in West Potomac Park on this day in 1912 by First Lady Helen Taft and Viscountess Chinda (wife of the Japanese ambassador). The US reciprocated in 1915 with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan.

    The National Cherry Blossom Festival has taken place since 1935 to commemorate the Japanese gift of cherry trees to the US on this date in 1912. Featuring a parade, street fairs, fireworks, cultural ceremonies and performances, this 2-week festival draws more than a million people each year to celebrate the cherry blossoms announcing springtime in the Capital.

  • World Theatre Day
    The Theatre of Nations began in 1954 when 10 nations (represented by 16 companies) gathered in Paris at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre for an international festival of drama. Officially established as an annual event the following year, the festival continued in Paris for the next 15 years becoming a major show-case for international theatre in the world. By the mid-1970s, International Theatre Institute (UNESCO) allowed the festival to rotate to various applicant cities, first in Warsaw, then to a series of other cities, and has since found expression on nearly all continents. World Theatre Day was created in 1961, introduced on behalf of the Finnish Centre of the International Theatre Institute, to commemorate the the opening date of the 1962 Theater of Nations season in Paris, and continues to be recognized throughout the world as a day to promote the international exchange of knowledge and practice in theatre arts.

  • Fly A Kite Day
  • Spanish Paella Day

  • Remembering Gloria Swanson
    Born Gloria Josephine May Swanson in 1899 Chicago, IL; a 5-foot tall silent film superstar, known for her talent as well as her sense of fashion, and was the most famous and photographed woman in the world

  • In History:
    • 1513 Explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights North America (specifically Florida) for the 1st time, mistaking it for another island
    • 1613 1st English child born in Canada at Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland to Nicholas Guy
    • 1794 Congress authorizes the President "to provide a naval armament" as the government establishes a permanent US Navy and authorizes the building of 6 frigates
    • 1834 Andrew Jackson is censured by the Senate for his actions regarding the US National Bank
    • 1836 1st Mormon temple dedicated (Kirtland, OH)
    • 1841 1st US steam fire engine tested, New York City
    • 1849 Joseph Couch patents steam-powered percussion rock drill
    • 1855 Abraham Gesner patents kerosene
    • 1860 M L Byrn patents "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" (corkscrew)
    • 1861 Black demonstrators in Charleston staged ride-ins on street cars
    • 1863 President Davis calls for this to be a day of fasting and prayer
    • 1866 Andrew Rankin patents the urinal
    • 1866 President Johnson vetoes civil rights bill; it later becomes 14th Amendment
    • 1912 1st Japanese cherry blossom trees planted in Washington, DC
    • 1914 1st successful blood transfusion (in Brussels)
    • 1920 Film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks wed
    • 1930 1st US radio broadcast from a ship at sea
    • 1931 Charlie Chaplin receives France's distinguished Legion of Honor
    • 1931 John McGraw says night baseball will not catch on
    • 1933 Polythene discovered by Reginald Gibson and Eric William Fawcett
    • 1939 1st NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: University of Oregon beats Ohio State 46-33
    • 1943 Blue Ribbon Town (with Groucho Marx) 1st heard on CBS Radio
    • 1952 Sun Records of Memphis begins releasing records
    • 1955 Steve McQueen makes his network TV debut (Goodyear Playhouse)
    • 1958 CBS Labs announce new stereophonic records
    • 1958 Nikita Khrushchev becomes Soviet premier and 1st Secretary of Communist Party
    • 1968 Japanese Trade and Cultural Center (Japan Center) dedicated in San Francisco
    • 1979 Supreme Court rules, 8-1, cops can't randomly stop cars
    • 1980 Mount St Helens becomes active after 123 years
    • 1985 Billy Dee Williams receives a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
    • 1987 Song Where the Streets Have No Name of U2 was 1st played on the rooftop of a Los Angeles liquor store
    • 1998 FDA approves Viagra
    • 2006 UN Commission on Human Rights holds its final meeting (replaced by the Human Rights Council)

"This ol' world has an immense capacity for inflicting and taking pain.
The last century has a body count that numbs the mind's capacity to take in the extent of suffering and sorrow that is our common inheritance and guilt."
~ John O'Farrell (born 1962)

28
  • The Buckeye Bullet
    Born in 1913 Alabama, grandson of a slave and the son of a sharecropper, James Cleveland Owens (better known as Jesse Owens) spent his youth in Ohio, working part-time jobs after school to help support his impoverished family. He had a special talent for running, noticed first by his junior high school track coach, and by the time he was in high school, he was beating world records in the 100-yard dash and long-jump. Attending Ohio State University, where he picked up a nickname as the "Buckeye Bullet", he won a record eight individual NCAA championships. By 1936, he was headed to Germany as a member of the US Olympic Team, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals. Living through an era of racial inequality, Jesse Owens knew he was the best in the world at something, and used it to his advantage all his adult life to encourage others. Overcoming segregation, racism and bigotry, he began to use his celebrity as a professional speaker. Using an old-fashioned, spellbinding delivery, he praised the virtues of patriotism, clean living, and fair play, as well as stressed the importance of religion, hard work, and loyalty. He also sponsored and participated in many youth sports programs in underprivileged neighborhoods. Owens was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1976, and posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Metal on this day in 1990 for his athletic achievements and humanitarian contributions to public service, civil rights, and international goodwill.

  • Black Forest Cake Day
  • Garden Seeds Day
  • Something on a Stick Day
  • Weed Appreciation Day

  • In History:
    • 0193 Roman Emperor Pertinax is assassinated by Praetorian Guards, who then sell the throne in an auction to Didius Julianus
    • 0845 Paris is sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collects a huge ransom in exchange for leaving
    • 1774 Britain passes Coercive Act against Massachusetts
    • 1776 Juan Bautista de Anza finds the site for the Presidio of San Francisco
    • 1794 Louvre opens to the public (although officially opened since August)
    • 1796 Bethel African Methodist Church of Philadelphia is 1st African-American church
    • 1797 Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire patents a washing machine
    • 1804 Ohio passed law restricting movement of Blacks
    • 1834 Senate censure President Jackson for taking federal deposits from Bank of US
    • 1845 Mexico drops diplomatic relations with US
    • 1866 1st ambulance goes into service
    • 1885 Salvation Army officially organized in the US
    • 1891 1st world weightlifting championship held
    • 1910 Henri Fabre becomes the 1st person to fly a seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion, near Martigues, France
    • 1922 1st microfilm device introduced
    • 1978 Supreme Court hands down 5-3 decision in Stump v Sparkman, a controversial case involving involuntary sterilization and judicial immunity
    • 1979 Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, a pump in the reactor cooling system fails, resulting in the evaporation of contaminated water causing a nuclear meltdown
    • 1990 President George H W Bush posthumously awards Jesse Owens the Congressional Gold Medal
    • 2000 Supreme Court unanimously curtailed police power to rely on tips to stop and search people

"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams into reality,
it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication,
self-discipline, and effort." ~Jesse Owens


29
  • Some Like It Hot
    Some Like It Hot is a 1959 comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. with an all-star supporting cast. The story is about two male musicians from Chicago who witness a mob hit, and decide the best way to escape is to cross-dress themselves into an all-girl orchestra heading for Florida. Legendary stories revolve about the actual film production, from Monroe's difficulties in not only remembering her lines, but showing up for work on time, or walking off the set whenever she became frustrated. Her delays and unprofessional behavior are said to have cost the production roughly half a million dollars. Co-star Tony Curtis, uncomfortable with his own costuming, was apparently unhappy with his working conditions as Monroe's love interest, quoted at the time saying she was "a mean little seven-year-old" and that he would rather be kissing Hitler than her in their love scenes, comments which he later denied. It was rising star Jack Lemmon who fully embraced the role, spending hours learning makeup tricks, taking tango lessons, and spending time with a professional female impersonator. Yet despite all the production challenges, Some Like It Hot became an award-winning box office sensation from its initial premiere in New York on this date in 1959. It won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy. Marilyn Monroe won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in Musical or Comedy, and Jack Lemmon for Best Actor in Musical or Comedy. Nominated for 6 Academy Awards, winning Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, it is believed to be one of the greatest film comedies ever made.

  • Have a Pickle Day
  • Lemon Chiffon Cake Day

  • Remembering Oscar Mayer
    Born Oscar Ferdinand Mayer in 1859 Neresheim, Germany; immigrant meat market man made good

  • In History:
    • 1632 Treaty of Saint-Germain signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629
    • 1638 Swedish colonists establish the 1st settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden (Swedish Lutherans)
    • 1799 New York passes a law aimed at gradually abolishing slavery in the state
    • 1806 Construction authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the 1st US federal highway
    • 1807 Planet Vesta is discovered
    • 1848 Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam
    • 1852 Ohio makes it illegal for children under 18 and women to work more than 10 hours a day
    • 1867 Queen Victoria gives Royal Assent to the British North America Act which establishes the Dominion of Canada on 1 July
    • 1867 Congress approves Lincoln Memorial
    • 1871 Royal Albert Hall is opened by Queen Victoria
    • 1882 Knights of Columbus, founded by Father Michael J McGivney, was chartered by the General Assembly of Connecticut; established as a lay fraternal society, encourages benevolence, patriotism and racial tolerance among its members
    • 1886 Chemist John Pemberton begins to advertise for Coca-Cola (with cocaine)
    • 1911 M1911 semi-automatic handgun designed by John Browning becomes the standard-issue handgun in the US Army, and is subsequently widely used in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War
    • 1912 Captain Robert Scott, blizzard-bound in a tent 18 km from the South Pole, makes last entry in his diary "the end cannot be far"
    • 1932 Jack Benny debuts on radio
    • 1943 Meat, butter, and cheese rationed in US during WWII
    • 1951 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage
    • 1961 23rd Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, DC to vote in presidential elections
    • 1961 After a 4Å“ year trial, Nelson Mandela is acquitted on treason charge
    • 1962 Jack Paar's final appearance on the Tonight Show
    • 1973 Last US troops left South Vietnam, ending America's direct military involvement in the Vietnam War
    • 1974 Mariner 10 becomes the 1st spaceprobe to fly by Mercury, launched 3 November 1973
    • 1976 8 Ohio National Guardsmen indicted for shooting 4 Kent State students
    • 1986 Beatle records officially go on sale in Russia
    • 1989 1st Soviet hockey players are permitted to play for the NHL
    • 1989 1st US private commercial rocket takes suborbital test flight (New Mexico)
    • 2004 Republic of Ireland becomes the 1st country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants

"Beer is not a good cocktail-party drink, especially in a home where you don't know where the bathroom is." ~ Billy Carter (born 1937)

30
  • What is A Great Game Show?
    Jeopardy! is an international television quiz game show based on trivia in topics, where offering the right question is the answer needed to make the winning money. The show was created in the early 1960s by Merv Griffin, who also wrote a 30-second piece of music heard during the show's Final Jeopardy! Round, and which later became its theme song. Jeopardy! originally premiered on NBC on this day in 1964, hosted by Art Fleming, who stayed with the show for the next 11 years, earning two Emmy Award nominations. The show went into syndication between 1974 and 1975, then returned with Fleming for a short run between October 1978 and March of 1979. It was revived again in September of 1984 with a new host named Alex Trebek, who continues with the show today. Over the years, the show has developed special games, including the Tournament of Champions (featuring five-time undefeated champions), Celebrity Jeopardy! (where celebrities play for charity), Kids Week (ages 10-12), Teen Tournament (high school students), and the College Championship. In 2004, ratings for Jeopardy! jumped 22% when a contestent named Ken Jennings maintained the position of champion for a total of 75 games, and walked away with $2,522,700 after losing an answer which involved H&R Block. He returned in 2005 for 3-game finale to the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, which pitted 144 former champions against each other, with two winners moving on to face Jennings. Although he added another $500,000 to his cash stash, he did lose to a player named Brad Rutter, who is the all-time highest winner of any game show with $3,270,102. Considered one of the greatest game shows of all time, Jeopardy! holds a record total of 27 Daytime Emmy Awards since 1984, including 11 for Outstanding Game/Audience Participation Show, and 4 won by host Alex Trebek for Outstanding Game Show Host.

  • Doctors Day
  • Seward Day

  • Remembering Vincent van Gogh
    Born Vincent Willem van Gogh in 1853 Groot-Zundert, Holland; Artistic pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism

  • In History:
    • 0240BC 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet
    • 1422 Ketsugan, Zen teacher, performs exorcisms to free aizoji temple
    • 1533 Henry VIII divorces his 1st wife, Catherine of Aragon
    • 1774 Great Britain orders the port of Boston closed in the Boston Port Act
    • 1778 Playwright Voltaire crowned with laurel wreath
    • 1822 Congress combined East and West Florida into Florida Territory
    • 1842 Ether was used as an anaesthetic for 1st time by Dr Crawford Long (Jefferson, GA)
    • 1858 Hymen Lipman patents a pencil with an attached eraser
    • 1867 Alaska is purchased for $72 million (about 2 cents per acre) and called "Seward's Folly" for its perceived lack of potential
    • 1870 15th Amendment passes, guarantees right to vote regardless of race
    • 1870 Texas becomes last confederate state readmitted to Union
    • 1889 John T Reid opens 1st US golf course (Yonkers, NY)
    • 1893 Thomas F Bayard becomes 1st US ambassador in Great Britain
    • 1910 Mississippi Legislature founded the University of Southern Mississippi
    • 1932 Amelia Earhart is 1st woman to fly solo cross the Atlantic
    • 1935 Newfoundland changes time to 3Å“ hours west of Greenwich, repeats 44 seconds
    • 1940 2nd NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: Indiana University beats Kansas 60-42
    • 1951 Remington Rand delivers the 1st UNIVAC I computer to the US Census Bureau
    • 1967 Cover picture of Beatles Sergeant Pepper is photographed
    • 1981 President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, DC, hotel by John Hinckley Jr
    • 1987 Vincent Van Gogh Sunflowers sells for record $397 million
    • 1990 Jack Nicklaus made his debut in the "Seniors" golf tournament

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series
of small things brought together." ~ Vincent Van Gogh (born 1853)


31
  • Dictating Good Taste
    The film-making business was in its birthing stages at the dawn of the 20th Century, and by 1915, the Supreme Court set its first ruling that motion pictures were not covered by the First Amendment, allowing cities to pass ordinances banning the public exhibition of "immoral" films. When the industry was shaken by major scandals during the 1920s, involving murder, drug use, and various forms of sexual misconduct, public outcry over perceived immorality, both in Hollywood and in the movies, led to the creation in 1922 of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association to oversee Hollywood production. Working with marginal success for several years trying to establish a set of moral standards for the movies, the advent of talking pictures in 1927 encouraged a more formal written code was needed. Encompassing what its administrators deemed appropriate, the basis for the code was that films should not be produced that would lower the moral standards of those who see it (such as making crime and other wrong-doing appealing). Leaving the loophole of "subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment" and " to the dictates of good taste", guidelines prohibited nudity and suggestive dances, excessive and lustful kissing, and references to sex perversion, sexually transmitted diseases, and childbirth. There was to be no obscene language, depiction of drug and alcohol use, detailed brutal killings, and methods of crime (such as safe-cracking or arson) were not to be explicitly presented. Ridicule of religion was forbidden, sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld, and the flag of the United States was to be treated respectfully. It was on this date in 1930 the Motion Picture Production Code was adopted, but no provisions were made for effective enforcement. An amendment to the Code was in 1934 which established the Production Code Administration, requiring all films to obtain a certificate of approval before being released.m For more than 30 years, major studios adhered to the code primarily because they preferred self-governing rather than Federal enforcement. During the mid- to late-60s, society changed in ways that made the code obsolete, and revisions were made in 1967 to the modern ratings system of G, M, R, and X. GP, PG, PG-13, and NC-17 ratings were added later.

  • Caesar Chavez Day
    Born in 1927 Yuma, AZ, Chavez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later named United Farm Workers), seeking to end racial and economic discrimination against migrant farm workers. Considered one of the most outstanding leaders of the 20th century, this day began in 2001 as a public holiday in California, has since spread to nine others (Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island), and is currently being lobbied to be named as a national holiday honoring his achievements for farm workers, civil rights, political representation for racial minorities, and environmental justice.

  • Thomas Mundy Peterson Day
    Thomas Mundy Peterson was a school custodian in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, who became the first African-American to vote in an election under provisions of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution on this day in 1970. Active in local politics, he was the first African-American in his community to hold elected office as County Commissioner, as well as the first of his ethnicity to serve on a jury.

  • Clams on the Half Shell Day
  • Coloring Crayons Day
  • Oranges and Lemon Day
  • Tater Day

  • In History:
    • 1774 Great Britain orders the port of Boston closed in the Boston Port Act
    • 1849 Colonel John W Geary arrives as 1st postmaster of San Francisco
    • 1850 US population hits 23,191,876 (Black population: 3,638,808)
    • 1854 Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade
    • 1861 Confederacy takes over mint at New Orleans
    • 1868 Chinese Embassy arrives aboard steamship China
    • 1870 Thomas P Mundy became 1st black to vote in a US election (Perth Amboy, NJ)
    • 1878 Jack Johnson is 1st black to hold a heavyweight boxing title
    • 1889 Eiffel Tower in Paris is inaugurated (commemorates French Revolution)
    • 1896 Whitcomb Judson, Chicago, IL, patents a hookless fastening (zipper)
    • 1906 Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the US (later National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the US
    • 1921 Albert Einstein lectures in New York City on his new theory of relativity
    • 1923 1st dance marathon takes place in New York City; Alma Cummings sets record of 27 hours
    • 1930 Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in motion pictures for the next 40 years
    • 1933 Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment
    • 1933 German Republic gives power to Hitler
    • 1948 Congress passes Marshall Aid Act to rehabilitate war-torn Europe
    • 1953 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare established
    • 1954 Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, established
    • 1955 Chase National (3rd largest bank) and Bank of the Manhattan Company (15th largest bank) merge to form Chase Manhattan
    • 1959 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum
    • 1963 Los Angeles ends streetcar service after 90 years
    • 1966 Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the 1st spaceprobe to enter orbit around the Moon
    • 1966 25,000 anti-war demonstrators march in New York City
    • 1967 Jimi Hendrix begins his tradition of burning his guitar
    • 1968 President Lyndon Johnson announces he will not seek re-election
    • 1971 William L Calley Jr sentenced to life for My Lai Massacre
    • 1972 Official Beatles Fan Club closes down
    • 1980 President Jimmy Carter deregulates banking industry
    • 1981 1st Golden Raspberry Awards: Can't Stop the Music wins
    • 1982 Rock group Doobie Brothers split up
    • 1992 USS Missouri, last active US Navy Battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, CA (launched in 1944)
    • 1994 Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the 1st complete Australopithecus afarensis skull
    • 1998 Netscape releases the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement; the project is given the code name Mozilla and would eventually be spun off into the non-profit Mozilla Foundation
    • 2005 Kuiper Belt object 2005 FY9 is discovered
    • 2007 In Sydney, Australia, 2.2 million people take part in the 1st Earth Hour

"It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well." ~Rene Descartes (born 1596)


SOURCES

"Kohoutek: Comet of the Century" TIME, 17 December 1973
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908347,00.html

ALAMO IMAGES: Changing Perceptions of a Texas Experience
http://www.humanities-interactive.org/texas/alamo/ex004_01a.html

Ancestors of Larry Lee HAKEL (Samuel Cole)
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com

Barbie
http://www.littledoll.com/id/id.html

Billboard Magazine Archives
http://www.billboard.com/#/archive

Camp Fire Boys and Girls
http://www.campfire.org

Comet Kohoutek, NASA
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4208/app.f.htm

Edward Bowes, Find A Grave Memorial
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=120

Earth Hour Global Site
http://www.earthhour.org

The Fascinating History of Billboard Magazine
http://www.events-in-music.com/the-fascinating-history-of-billboard-magazine.html

Freedom's Journal, Wisconsin Historical Society
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org

History of Early American Taverns
http://www.2020site.org/americantavern

International Decade for Action 'Water for Life'
http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/background.html

International Theatre Institute
http://www.iti-worldwide.org

National Cherry Blossom Festival
http://www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org/cms/index.php?id=390

Yellowstone National Park
http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm

National Women's History Project
http://www.nwhp.org

Official Site of the Iditarod
http://www.iditarod.com

Pi Day
http://www.piday.org

Prince Kuhio Day
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/hawaiianweb/holiday09.html

Read Across America
http://www.nea.org/readacross

See It Now
http://www.museum.tv

St Urho: Legendary Patron Saint of Finland
http://www.sainturho.com/menahgamn/menastatue.htm

Ultimate St. Urho Site, The
http://www.theminx.com/iss3vol2/legend.htm

Winston Churchill Memorial and Library
http://www.churchillmemorial.org

World Day of Prayer
http://www.worlddayofprayer.net

World Meteorological Organization
http://www.wmo.ch/pages/index_en.html


© Dwarf Designs 1998-2021
LAST UPDATED: 4/28/20