Today is the 3rd day of November. The name 'November' comes from the Latin for nine (novem), as it was the ninth month of the Roman calendar.
In Old English November was 'Windmonath' (wind month) or 'Blotmonath' (blood or sacrifice month) referring to the time of slaughter of farm animals.
The Dutch called it 'slachtmaand' (slaughter month); in Welsh it is 'Tachwedd', also meaning 'slaughter'.
The first Sunday of Advent is slightly more likely to fall in November than in December.
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| Advent wreath. By Micha L. Rieser - Wikipedia Commons |
In any given year, November starts on the same day of the week as March and ends on the same day of the week as August.
All Souls Day is a holy day set aside for honoring those baptized Christians who are believed to be in purgatory. The day is primarily celebrated in the Catholic Church, but it is also celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Anglican denomination.
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| All Souls' Day by William-Adolphe Bouguereau |
The Western celebration of All Souls' Day is on November 2 and follows All Saints' Day, which commemorates the departed who have attained the beatific vision.
According to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, Purgatory is a halfway house between heaven and earth where ones souls are cleansed so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. Protestants discount this teaching.
The Roman Catholic tradition of Purgatory has a history that dates back to the belief, found in Pre-Christian Judaism that prayer for the dead contributed to their afterlife purification. St Augustine of Hippo developed many Catholic doctrines including belief in purgatory, St. Ambrose of Milan spoke of a kind of "baptism of fire" which is located at the entrance to Heaven, and through which all must pass, at the end of the world and Pope St. Gregory the Great stated his belief in Purgatory adding however that the Purgatorial fire could only purify away minor transgressions, not "iron, bronze, or lead," or other "hardened" (duriora) sins.
The concept of purgatory was made official church doctrine at the 1274 Council of Lyons. The council wrote that Christians who had not shown sufficient repentance for their sin needed to be cleansed by purgatorial punishments. Furthermore, the council taught that these punishments could be relieved for oneself (or for those who had died) through “the sacrifices of Masses, prayers, alms, and other duties of piety.”
Today is All Saints' Day, a Christian solemnity celebrated in honor of all the saints of the church, whether they are known or unknown.
Below is All Saints' Day at a cemetery in Gniezno, Poland, the picture shows flowers and candles placed to honor deceased relatives.
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| By Diego Delso, Wikipedia |
In 609 Pope Boniface IV converted the Roman Pantheon into a Catholic church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and all martyrs. By the 7th century the commemoration of martyrs for the faith had become widespread and as time went on these celebrations came to include not only the martyrs but all saints.
In 837 Pope Gregory IV established the first celebration of All Saints' Day on November 1st to honor the saints, choosing the first day of November to counter a Celtic festival of the dead, known as Samhain celebrated the night before. However the festival did not die out and in medieval Britain it became known as All Hallows (All Saints) Eve, and later its Scottish equivalent Halloween became more widely used.
Today is National Bison Day Bison or buffalo are large, even-toed mammals. "Bison" is a Greek word meaning ox-like animal, while "buffalo" originated with the French fur trappers who called these massive beasts bœufs, meaning ox or bullock—so both names, "bison" and "buffalo", have a similar meaning.
The buffalo formed the mainstay of the economy of the Native Americans, providing them with meat for food, hides and fur for clothing and shelter, and sinew and horn for tools
In the 1800s, the westward-moving pioneers and railroad workers wantonly killed the huge animals by the thousands for food. Only the choicest pieces of the slaughtered buffalo, the hump and tongues, were cut out of the carcasses.
The near-extinction bison hunting in the 1800s was not only to gain food. The pioneers also wanted to restrict the American Indians' dominant food supply; herds were shot from trains and left to rot where they died.
By 1870s, the buffalo had been decimated east of the Mississippi River thus removing a major source of meat. The extension of railroads across the Great Plains had led to the destruction of the huge herds that foraged on the vast grasslands there.
The Buffalo Protection Act of 1894 was one of the earliest official recognitions of an endangered species problem in the United States. By the late 1880s fewer than a thousand bison were left on the continent, two thirds of them in Canada. The law to protect the few remaining in Yellowstone National Park was the first federal legislation that focused on conserving a once-vast wildlife resource.
The United States Senate has passed resolutions each year since 2013 making the first Saturday of November National Bison Day. The purpose of National Bison Day is to encourage celebration of the American Bison, also commonly known as the American buffalo. The species is acknowledged as the first American conservation success story, having been brought back from the brink of extinction by a concerted effort of ranchers, conservationists and politicians to save the species in the early 20th century. Bison can also play an important role in improving the types of grasses found in landscapes to the benefit of grasslands and hold significant economic value for private producers and rural communities.
President Barack Obama signed into law on May 9, 2016 the National Bison Legacy Act, which designated the bison as the official mammal of the United States.
Today is All Hallows' Eve. Hallow, in Old English, means "holy" or "sacred." Therefore, "All Hallows' Eve," or "Halloween" simply means "the evening of holy persons" and refers to the evening before All Saints Day celebrated on November 1.
The tradition of dressing up on Halloween originates from the Celts, who were known to wear costumes and masks to these festivals in an attempt to appease evil spirits, thought to bring problems to the living on Halloween.
To try and frighten off any superstitions, the Europeans began making lanterns from carved vegetables (predominantly turnips), lit by a candle inside. The "head" of turnips were used, with the belief that the head was the most powerful part of the body, containing the spirit and the knowledge.
The carving of pumpkins is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols today. However, it wasn't until the 1860s that the pumpkin became associated with Halloween - a tradition originating from North America, where pumpkins were readily available and much larger, making them easier to carve.
Halloween was brought to the USA by the Irish but the associations the Americans have with it such as black cats and witchcraft come from Africa.
Stroke is a condition where the blood supply to the brain is disrupted, resulting in oxygen starvation, brain damage and loss of function.
Hippocrates was first to describe the phenomenon of sudden paralysis that is often associated with a stroke. Apoplexy (an old-fashioned term for a stroke or stroke-like symptoms), from the Greek word meaning "struck down with violence", first appeared in Hippocratic writings to describe this phenomenon.
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| An image of Hippocrates on the floor of the Asclepieion of Kos |
Globally 1 in 4 adults over the age of 25 will have a stroke in their lifetime. 13.7 million people worldwide will have their first stroke this year and five and a half million will die as a result.
Stroke is leading cause of death and disability globally with 116 million years of healthy life lost each year to the disease.
Throughout the world, stroke is the second leading cause of death. It’s also the leading cause of disability.
World Stroke Day is observed on October 29 to underscore the serious nature and high rates of stroke, raise awareness of the prevention and treatment of the condition, and ensure better care and support for survivors
The first public performance of Reynaud's Théâtre Optique took place at the Grevin Museum in Paris on October 28, 1892. The show included three cartoons, the first of which was a 15-minute animation, Pauvre Pierrot, made from 500 hand-painted images, which was the first ever presentation of projected moving images to an audience.
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| A performance of Pauvre Pierrot as imagined by Louis Poyet |
National Peach Day is celebrated on August 27th every year. It is a day to celebrate the delicious and nutritious peach fruit, which is in season during the summer months.
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| White peaches |
Pit bull is a word used to describe several breeds of dog. They include the American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, American Bully and Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and dogs with a mix of these breeds. These dogs were bred by crossing bulldog and terrier breeds.
In 2007, National Pit Bull Awareness Day was created in the US to help undo the reputational damage done to pit bulls in the media. Each year, on October 26, American pit bulls are celebrated as loving, caring pets rather than the menacing, dangerous animals that they are mistakenly portrayed as.
Notable pit bulls include Pete the Pup, a character in the Little Rascals movies, Billie Holiday's companion "Mister", Helen Keller's dog "Sir Thomas", and President Theodore Roosevelt's Pit Bull terrier "Pete".
In August 2016, a stray pit bull in Georgia protected a woman from a knife attack. After his wounds healed, he was adopted and named Hero.
World Pasta Day was brought into existence as part of the World Pasta Congress on October 25, 1995. Each year on October 25, this organization uses World Pasta Day to promote the eating of pasta, along with its cultural and culinary importance.
There are over 600 different kinds of pasta available throughout the world. They are mostly available in two forms: fresh (like ravioli and canelloni) or dried (like spaghetti and penne).
The name pasta came from the Latin word for dough.
The first documented recipe for pasta is in the Italian book De arte Coquinaria per vermicelli e macaroni siciliani, (The Art of Cooking Sicilian Macaroni and Vermicelli) written by Martino Corno, chef to the powerful Patriarch of Aquileia in 1005.
Pasta that is sealed in the box can stay fresh for up to 10 years - Open pasta is only good for a few days.
The United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO) took place between April 25, 1945 and June 26, 1945 in San Francisco. On the last day of the conference delegates from 50 nations signed a charter creating the The United Nations Organisation — later known as the United Nations.
The United Nations Organisation did not instantly come into being with the signing of the Charter, since in many countries the Charter had to be subjected to parliamentary approval. It was finally ratified and established on October 24, 1945.
In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly declared October 24, the anniversary of the Charter of the United Nations, as which "shall be devoted to making known to the people of the world the aims and achievements of the United Nations and to gaining their support for" its work.
President Harry S Truman laid the cornerstone at the United Nations headquarters and called it a workshop of peace on October 24, 1949. Construction was completed three years later.
Today the United Nations consists of 193 member states and two observer states. The mission of the United Nation is to maintain international peace and security.
World Polio Day was established by Rotary International on October 24 to commemorate the birth of Jonas Salk, who led the first team to develop a vaccine against polio. On this day, around the world, global organisations such as the Rotary International and other similar clubs and organisations host several events and fund-raisers, with an objective to raise awareness about polio.
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| Polio vaccination in Egypt |
Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, has existed for thousands of years, with depictions of the disease in ancient art. Outbreaks reached pandemic proportions in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand during the first half of the 20th century. The 1952 U.S. polio epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis, with most of its victims being children.
Worldwide, polio has become much less common in the past few decades. In 1988, there were about 350,000 new cases of polio across 125 countries. Most of those cases were children under the age of 5, and the virus paralyzed many of them for life. But within six years, polio was wiped out in both North and South America. By 2019 there were fewer than 40 polio cases a year. And they were just in three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.
Mole is the SI unit of measurement used to measure the number of things, usually atoms or molecules. One mole of something is equal to 6.02214078×1023 of same things (Avogadro's number). The Avogadro constant is named after the Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856), who, in 1811, first proposed that the volume of a gas (at a given pressure and temperature) is proportional to the number of atoms or molecules regardless of the nature of the gas.
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| Amedeo Avogadro |
October 22 was designated International Stuttering Awareness Day in 1998. The day is intended to raise public awareness of stuttering, which affects one percent of the world's population.
The day is known as International Stammering Awareness Day in the UK and Ireland.
Stuttering and stammering are not quite the same: a stutter is an involuntary repetition of one letter, while a stammer is any speech-slowing defect.
The ancient Greek Demosthenes stuttered and was inarticulate as a youth, yet, through dedicated practice, using methods such as placing pebbles in his mouth, became a great orator of Ancient Greece.
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| Greek orator Demosthenes practicing oratory at the beach with pebbles in his mouth |
Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, suffered from a stammer – a condition shared by most of his siblings. He was bullied mercilessly at Rugby School because of his speech disorder. Dodgson carried his stammer into adulthood. He referred to it as his "hesitation" and it continued to plague him throughout his entire life.
National Reptile Awareness Day is celebrated in the US each year on October 21. The day promotes education, conservation, and appreciation for reptiles.
The name "reptile" comes from Latin and means "one who creeps". All living reptile species are cold blooded, have scaly skin, and can lay eggs on land.
Reptiles come in four varieties: turtles and tortoises; crocodilia (including alligators); lizards and snakes; New Zealand tuatara.
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| Wikipedia |
Nearly all reptiles are incapable of running and breathing at the same time. This is one of the reasons why they are ambush predators. Komodo dragons can only dash 30 feet (10m) before having to rest for breathing.
The president of the World Association of Chefs Societies Billy Gallagher created International Chefs Day in 2004, which is celebrated each year on October 20th. The day focuses on educating kids around the world about eating healthy and for chefs to pass on their knowledge and skills to the next generation.
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| Chefs in training at chef school in Oxford, England By © Jorge Royan |
The word "chef" is derived (and shortened) from the term chef de cuisine, the director or head of a kitchen.
England's King George II took such an interest in his food that he ordered every dish served to him to be labelled with the name of the chef who had made it.
Before ascending to the English throne as King George IV, the prince employed the most celebrated chef around, Marie-Antoine Carême. The sumptuous food cooked for him gave Prince George almost permanent indigestion and his gargantuan excesses exceeded any other royals.
The self-taught French chef Raymond Blanc came to Britain in his early 20s after being fired as a waiter at the Michelin-starred Le Palais de la Bière in Besançon. Blanc had upset the head chef by questioning his cooking and was hit by him with a frying pan.
Mary Edith Keyburn passed away on October 19, 2010, at the age of 95 with a gin and tonic at her side. Her favorite tipple had been smuggled into her hospital room in a water bottle and served in a teacup.
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| Gin and tonic. By NotFromUtrecht |
In 2010 of Mary Edith Keyburn's favorite drink, her family and friends founded International Gin and Tonic Day in her honor. Each year on October 19th gin-lovers can enjoy their favorite drinks in the time-honored tradition.
Gin and tonic was used to prevent and treat malaria in the 1800s. Tonic containing the anti-malarial drug quinine was very bitter, so gin was added to make it tasty.
It’s the quinine in gin and tonics that makes them glow in ultra-violet light.
The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million, or about 2 cents an acre on March 30, 1867.
The United States Senate ratified the treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska on April 9, 1867. It was passed by a single vote. The United States formally took possession on October 18, 1867, which is celebrated annually on October 18 in the state as Alaska Day.
Alaska's purchase was accomplished solely through the determined efforts of US Secretary of State William H. Seward. For many years afterward the land was mockingly referred to as "Seward's Folly" or "Seward's Icebox" because of its supposed uselessness.
It was not until after the discovery of gold that Alaska was given a governor and a local administration.
The first spreadsheet program Visicalc (for "visible calculator") was released for the Apple II on October 17, 1979. It was developed by Dan Bricklin of Software Arts, and was then produced for distribution by Personal Software.
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| An example VisiCalc spreadsheet on an Apple II |
Sales were initially brisk, with about 300,000 copies sold. It eventually sold over 700,000 copies in six years, and as many as 1 million copies over its history.
VisiCalc is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool, prompting IBM to introduce the IBM PC two years later.
Spreadsheet Day commemorates on October 17 every year the date that VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers, was released.
October 16th is World Food Day. It marks the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations on October 16, 1945.
Over 150 countries hold events each year marking World Food Day. One example is the World Food Day Sunday Dinners that Oxfam America sponsors in collaboration with several other non-profits
The day is celebrated widely by many other organizations concerned with food security, including the World Food Program and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Over 2 billion people do not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food.
Nearly 690 million people are hungry, up 10 million since 2019.
Only nine plant species account for 66% of total crop production, despite the fact that there are at least 30 000 edible plants.
Approximately 14% of food produced for human consumption is lost each year between the stages where it is grown or raised up to when it reaches the wholesale market. More food is wasted at the retail food and consumer stages.
Global Handwashing Day is celebrated every year on October 15th. It's a global advocacy day dedicated to promoting the importance of handwashing with soap as a simple yet effective way to prevent the spread of diseases.
Global Handwashing Day was initiated by the Global Handwashing Partnership (GHP) in August 2008 at the annual World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden with the first Global Handwashing Day took place on October 15, 2008. The date was appointed by the UN General Assembly.
Photo below shows Global Handwashing Day 2008 celebrations with celebrities at City Central School in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines.
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| By SuSanA Secretariat - https://www.flickr.com |
Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are more effective at battling some bacteria, like those causing staph infections. However, other bacteria are becoming more tolerant of such sanitizers, and regular hand washing with simple soap and water is the best solution for them. “It's the physical action of lifting and moving them off your skin, and letting them run down the drain.” said Lance Price, a professor at the George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health to NPR.
Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991. Over 92% of Ukrainian voters approved their country's independence as declared by the Ukrainian parliament.
In 1954, Crimea became part of Ukraine. 60 years later Russia was suspended from the G8 after its annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine is currently in a territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula.
A decree by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2014 decreed Defender of Ukraine Day to be a new holiday due to the Russian military intervention and decommunization in Ukraine. October 14 was chosen due to the Ukrainian historical tradition since the 12th century of honoring the Ukrainian army on that day. October 14 is also the Day of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Picture below shows President Poroshenko taking part in the events on the Day of the Defender of Ukraine
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| By Адміністрація Президента України, |
The United States Navy observes its birthday every year on October 13th
The Continental Congress established the Continental Navy (predecessor of the United States Navy) on October 13, 1775. With only two ships and a crew of eighty men, the main goal of the Continental Navy was to intercept shipments of British material and generally disrupt British maritime commercial operations during the Revolutionary War.
By the end of 1775, Congress had authorized the construction of 13 new frigates. Within a decade the war had ended and Congress had disbanded the Continental Navy and sold the remaining ships.
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| Continental ship Columbus with captured British brig Lord Lifford, 1776 |
To protect American merchant ships from Barbary pirates, Congress passed the Naval Act on March 27, 1794. It authorized the building of six frigates, which eventually became the U.S. Navy.
Two months after he set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain to try to find a new route to the Orient, Christopher Columbus made his first first landfall in the Americas. The Pinta, Niña, and Santa María landed on an island of The Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Columbus named the newly discovered island, "San Salvador" meaning, "Saint of Salvation", to express his thankfulness at landing safely. Today it is known as Watling Island.
The landing is celebrated as Columbus Day in the United States on the second Monday in October. Actual observance varies in different parts of the United States, ranging from large-scale parades and events to complete non-observance.
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| Columbus Day in Salem, Massachusetts in 1892 |
In some Latin American countries such as Mexico, October 12 is known as Día de la Raza or (Day of the Race). Other countries such as Spain refer the holiday as Día de la Hispanidad and Fiesta Nacional de España where it is also the religious festivity of la Virgen del Pilar.
In South Dakota and Wisconsin, Native American Day is a holiday celebrated across the United States in lieu of Columbus Day on October 12. Native American Day is aimed at changing the way people view Native Americans as well as honoring the cultural contributions of their communities to the respective state’s history, as well as to the overall country.
Today is Friday 13th! The superstitions surrounding Friday the 13th stem from Jesus' crucifixion, which occurred on a Friday. According to the National Geographic, the fear of the number of 13 was fueled by Judas, the 13th apostle at the Last Supper, who betrayed Jesus.
Medieval Christians thought Friday unlucky as the day of the crucifixion, and 13 has been thought unlucky since pre-Christian times, but the two were not linked until the 19th century.
The first reference to an unlucky Friday the 13th came in an 1869 biography of the composer Gioachino Rossini who died on Friday, November 13, 1868.
On Friday January 13, 2017 Finn Air's flight 666 left for HEL (Helsinki) at 13:00 on a 13-year-old aircraft. They arrived safely.
On November 4, 1958 Angelo Roncalli was elected pope. He chose his father's name, John, and became Pope John XXIII thus making his views known on the disputed legitimacy of the 15th century Pope John XXIII. He was crowned wearing the 1877 Palatine Tiara.
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| Pope John XXIII |
He was aged seventy-six when elected and was considered a caretaker pope but instead he ushered in a new era in the Roman Catholic Church. Within three months of his election as pope, John XXIII proclaimed to the world his plan for a Vatican Council Two. The idea was inspired, he declared, by the Holy Spirit to "aggriornamento" (which means "bring up to date").
At the Second Vatican Council, which began meeting on October 11, 1962, great movements were set in train. Celebration in Latin was replaced by the use of the local language, relations with other denominations were relaxed, the role of the laity was enhanced, and the pope was made more 'one among equals'. Also evangelization and the reading of the Bible by the laity was encouraged.
Pope Francis approved Pope John XXIII for canonization without the traditional second miracle required. Instead, Francis based this decision on John XXIII's merits for the Second Vatican Council.
The date assigned for the liturgical celebration of John XXIII is not June 3rd, the anniversary of his death as would be usual, but October 11th, the anniversary of his opening of the Second Vatican Council.
World Sight Day is an annual event, that is always held on the second Thursday of October. The day aims to focus global attention on blindness and vision impairment. It was originally initiated by the SightFirstCampaign of Lions Club International Foundation in 2000 and this year, World Sight Day is to be held on Thursday October 13, 2022.
The first guide dog training schools were established in Germany during World War I to enhance the mobility of returning veterans who were blinded in combat.
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| A blind man assisted by a guide dog in Brasília, Brazil. By Antonio Cruz |
Blind people smile like everyone else, even though they've never seen anyone else smile. It's just a natural human expression.
If you go blind in one eye, you only lose about one fifth of your vision, but all your sense of depth.
World Mental Health Day is observed on October 10 every year. It is an international day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma. The day was celebrated for the first time on October 10, 1992 at the initiative of World Federation for Mental Health Deputy Secretary General Richard Hunter.
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| Rally for World Mental Health Day 2014 in Salem, Tamil By Chinchu.c |
Mental disorders were described, and treatments developed, in Persia, Arabia and in the medieval Islamic world. The first psychiatric hospitals were was built by the Muslims including ones in Baghdad in 700AD, Cairo in 800 AD and in Damascus in 1270 AD. The physicians of the Islamic world invented and used a variety of treatments, including occupational therapy, music therapy, as well as medication.
The parents of Brazilian author Paulo Coelho were so concerned about his stated dream of being a writer that they put him in a mental institution three times. He wrote a book about it, Veronika Decides To Die, 35 years later.
13.6 million Americans live with a serious mental illness.
October 9th was first declared World Post Day at the 1969 UPU Congress in Tokyo.
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The Royal Mail was created by King Henry VIII of England in 1516. From then until 1840, postage in the UK was generally paid by the recipient rather than the sender.
Benjamin Franklin laid out the framework that would set up the American postal system. Franklin invested nearly 40 years to establish a reliable system of private communications in the colonies. He was appointed postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737 and then joint postmaster general of the colonies, a position he held until 1774 when he was fired for opening and publishing Massachusetts Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson's correspondence.
The United States Postal Service is the single largest employer of veterans (22% of the postal workforce) and nearly a third of the veterans are disabled.
Today is the fifth day of World Space Week, an annual holiday observed from October 4 to 10 in over 95 nations throughout the world. It marks the launch on October 4, 1957 of the first man-made satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit by the Soviet Union and the signing of the Outer Space Treaty on October 10, 1967.
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| Sputnik 1: The first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. |
World Space Week is officially defined as "an international celebration of science and technology, and their contribution to the betterment of the human condition."
In 2020, the theme for World Space Week will be "Satellites Improve Life."
The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, originally known as the Feast of Our Lady of Victory and later as the Feast of the Holy Rosary, is celebrated on October 7th in the General Roman Calendar. This feast day was established to commemorate the Christian victory at the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. During this battle, a fleet of Christian forces, led by the Holy League, defeated the Ottoman Empire's navy in the waters off the coast of Greece.
Pope Pius V attributed the Christian victory to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through the rosary, and he subsequently instituted this feast day in her honor. The rosary is a form of prayer in the Catholic tradition that involves the repetition of prayers and meditation on specific events in the lives of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.
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| Our Lady of the Rosary by Anthony van Dyck, between 1623 and 1624 |
Nederlanders and Germans fleeing religious persecution began settling in the colony of Pennsylvania at the invitation of William Penn, in 1683. German Quaker, and Mennonite immigrant families founded Germantown on October 6, 1683, marking the first major immigration of German people to America.
The settlement was inhabited by fifty-four German families who had accompanied Johan Printz to the Swedish settlement on the Delaware several years earlier and had resettled themselves.
Germantown was the birthplace of the American antislavery movement. The first anti-slavery petition in the New World was drafted in the home of Thönes Kunders of Germantown in April 1688. Kunders hosted the early Germantown Quaker meetings and the Christian group were already prominent in their condemnation of this inhuman trade, with the society's founder, George Fox, speaking strongly against it.
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| Thones Kunders's house at 5109 Germantown Avenue |
The founding of Germantown on October 6, 1683 was later to provide the date for German-American Day, a holiday in the United States, observed annually on October 6.
World Teachers' Day, also known as International Teachers Day, is an international day held annually on October 5 that acknowledges, evaluates, empowers, and appreciates teachers worldwide. First established in 1994, according to UNESCO, Teachers' Day celebrations are all about reminding society that "the right to education means the right to a qualified teacher.
‘Marking' was invented at Cambridge University in 1792 by a chemistry tutor called William Farish.
Before he became the frontman of The Police, Sting taught English, music, and football at St. Catherine's Convent School for two years in Cramlington, England. He wrote the hit single "Don't Stand So Close to Me" about a teacher who is attracted to one of his students.
Saint Francis of Assisi's feast day is observed on October 4th. Francis died on the evening of October 3, 1226 at the Church of St Mary of the Angels in Portinuncula Assisi. He was pronounced a saint by Pope Gregory IX 20 months later.
Many stories have been told of Francis' ability to charm wild animals. It was said that he would talk to the animals and they would talk back. In fact most of these stories originate from a book, The Little Flowers Of Saint Francis, which was written a century after his death.
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| Legend of St. Francis, Sermon to the Birds, upper Basilica of San Francesco d'Assis |
It was often reported that wild animals—rabbits, birds, even a wolf—became tame before Francis of Assisi. He especially cared for animals that were associated with Christ. If he saw a lamb being led off to slaughter, he would try to rescue it by pleading or trading for it.
In acknowledgement of his love for the countryside and wild creatures, Francis of Assisi was designated patron saint of ecology in 1980.
World Animal Day is celebrated annually on October 4, the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals.
World Smile Day was inaugurated in 1999 by Harvey Ball. It is held annually on the first Friday in October.
The catchphrase of World Smile Day is “Do an act of kindness. Help one person smile.”
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| Ball posing with a selection of Smiley merchandising Wikipedia |
An average woman smiles 62 times a day, the average man smiles only 8 times a day.
From 1949 to 1990, Germany was made up of two countries called the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) under a Christian Democrat coalition and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) under a communist regime.
During this time, Berlin was divided into a west and an east part. In 1961, East Germany started building the Berlin Wall between the two parts of Berlin.
On November 9, 1989, Communist-controlled East Germany opened checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany, and fall of communism in eastern Europe including Russia.
On October 3, 1990, The German Democratic Republic ceased to exist and its territory became part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the European Community, which later became the European Union.
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| The flag of unity at midnight of 3 October 1990 in front of the Reichstag |
October 3rd is now celebrated every year as German Unity Day.
Today is the second day of October.
The name "October" comes from the Latin oct for "eight". It was the eighth month of the year before January and February were added by the Romans to the beginning of the year.
The Anglo-Saxons called October Winterfylleth meaning the 'fullness' (not dirtiness) of winter. It signified the beginning of winter.
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| October, from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry |
The Welsh for October is Hydref (originally Hyddfref), a word signifying the distinctive sound uttered by cattle. In Catholic Europe in 1582, October had only 21 days. When countries changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the days from 5-14 October were omitted.
Six US presidents have been born in October, more than in any other month.
Sake Day ("Nihonshu no Hi" in Japan) is an annual event held on October 1 as a tribute to sake. Sake Day used to be regarded as only a national event in Japan, but is now a worldwide occasion. October 1 is traditionally the starting date of sake production in Japan.
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| Sake served in a clear glass |
Sake is the national beverage in Japan. It is often served there with special ceremony – gently warmed in a small earthenware or porcelain bottle called a tokkuri, and sipped from a small porcelain cup called a sakazuki.
Most sake is made from rice, water, kōji, and yeast. Small amounts of pure alcohol can be added at the end of production.
Jerome of Stridon, commonly known as Saint Jerome, was a Latin priest, theologian, and historian. His feast day is September 30.
In 405, Jerome completed the most important of his works; a version of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew text, Prior to Jerome's Vulgate, all Latin translations of the Old Testament had been based on the Septuagint not the Hebrew.
His Vulgate Bible became the standard Bible of the western world throughout the Middle Ages and the basis for many translations.
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| Saint Jerome by Matthias Stom, 1635 |
Jerome died near Bethlehem on September 30, 420. He is recognized as the patron saint of translators, librarians and encyclopedists.
In art, Jerome is often represented as one of the four Latin doctors of the Church along with Augustine, Ambrose, and Pope Gregory I.
"World Heart Day" was founded by the World Heart Federation in 2000 to inform people around the globe that heart disease and strokes are the world’s leading causes of death, It is celebrated on September 29 every year.
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| By Blausen Medical Communications, Inc |
Worldwide, 17.3 million people die every year from heart disease or stroke, which account for 31 per cent of all deaths.
Shoveling snow is a known trigger for heart attacks. Some hospitals even prepare for more cardiac related visits after a large snowfall.
Wenceslaus' feast day is celebrated on September 28.
Wenceslaus I (the "Good King Wenceslas" of the Christmas carol) became the duke of Bohemia in 921. Renowned for his piety, he founded many churches in Prague, including a rotunda consecrated to St. Vitus at Prague Castle, which exists as present-day St. Vitus Cathedral.
Duke Wenceslaus I of Bohemia was murdered on September 28, 935, when he was killed by nobles on his way to Mass at the church door. The people were outraged and regarded the martyred duke as a saint.
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| Murder of Duke Wenceslaus, Liber viaticus (14th century) |
Wenceslaus was posthumously declared to be a king by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, and later came to be seen as the patron saint of the Czech Republic.
The September 28 Wenceslaus feast day has been a public holiday in the Czech Republic since 2000, celebrated as Czech Statehood Day.
Tourism gives rural communities the ability to protect and promote their natural surroundings, as well as their culture and heritage. The United Nations World Tourism Organization has celebrated World Tourism Day as international observances on September 27th since 1980. This date was chosen as on that day in 1970, the Statutes of the UNWTO were adopted.
The modern tourist industry began on July 5, 1841, when Thomas Cook organized a trip from Market Harborough to Loughborough in the English Midlands for a temperance meeting.
The word "tourist" for individuals travelling for recreation has been in the English language since at least 1772. "Tourism" came into use in 1811 and "package holiday" in 1959.
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| Englishman in the Campagna by Carl Spitzweg (c. 1845) |
Today is Johnny Appleseed Day, a day that commemorates the birth of John Chapman – a pioneer nurseryman that was responsible for introducing apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman was born in Leominster, Massachusetts on September 26, 1774. His birthplace has a granite marker, and the street is called Johnny Appleseed Lane.
John became a frontier missionary and pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to the Great Lakes area. After collecting apple seeds from cider presses in western Pennsylvania he embarked on a long trek westward, walking barefoot, planting a series of apple nurseries from Pennsylvania to central Ohio and beyond.
He preached the gospel as he traveled, and during his travels he converted many Native Americans, whom he admired.
Today is National Lobster Day. Senators Susan Collins and Angus King of Maine drafted a joint resolution in 2014 designating September 25th of every year as National Lobster Day in the USA. The day is designed to recognize not only the lobster industry but also the men and women who work so hard in that industry to bring lobsters to America’s tables.
In colonial America, lobster wasn't exactly a delicacy. In fact eating lobster was considered a mark of poverty and that people would bury the shells to hide the fact that they were eating it.
Lobster was so cheap and plentiful it was often served to prisoners. They also used lobster as yard fertilizer and fishing bait.
In the early 1900s, Lobster was considered the “cockroach of the ocean” and was synonymous with the poor – often eaten regularly by the homeless, slaves and prisoners. It wasn’t until after World War II that lobster became considered a delicacy and a food associated with the aristocratic classes.
September 24th is Republic Day in Trinidad and Tobago.
Trinidad was a Spanish colony from the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1498 until Spanish governor Don José María Chacón surrendered the island to a British fleet under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1797.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Tobago changed hands among Spanish, British, French, Dutch and Courlander colonizers.
Trinidad and Tobago were ceded to Britain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens as separate states and unified in 1889.
Trinidad and Tobago received independence from the United Kingdom on August 31, 1962.
Republic Day in Trinidad and Tobago, a public holiday celebrating their becoming a republic in 1976 and ceasing to be a Commonwealth realm. Actually they did that on August 1, 1976. September 24 was when their first parliament met.
Today is Saudi National Day. The day is celebrated in Saudi Arabia every September 23 to commemorate the renaming of the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by royal decree of King Abdul Aziz Al Saud in 1932.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire continued to control or have a suzerainty over most of the Arab peninsula. King Ibn Saud united the Arab peninsular into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud.
On September 23, 1932, the regions of Hejaz and Nejd merged to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with Ibn Saud as the first monarch and Riyadh as the capital city.
The September equinox is the moment when the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator, heading southward. The September equinox usually occurs on September 22 or 23rd. Astronomers use the equinox to mark the transition from summer season to fall in the Northern Hemisphere, and the transition from the winter season to spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
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| Sunset at the equinox from the site of Pizzo Vento at Fondachelli Fantina, Sicily |
September 22 is the birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbit characters Bilbo and Frodo Baggins from his popular set of books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo was born in the year of 2890 and Frodo in the year of 2968 in the Third Age (1290 and 1368 respectively in Shire-Reckoning.) In recognition of these famous characters, this date has come to be known as "Hobbit Day."
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| Wikipedia |
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was published on September 21, 1937. The word 'hobbit' existed in English long before Tolkien, meaning a seed-basket or a local measure equal to two-and-a-half bushels
Peace Day, also known as the International Day of Peace, is observed annually on September 21. It was established in 1981 by the United Nations General Assembly to promote peace and non-violence around the world. In 2001, the UN strengthened its commitment to peace by designating the day as a period of global non-violence and ceasefire.
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| Peace Day logo By http://www.internationaldayofpeace.org/, Wikipedia. |
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| Independence day decorations in Republic Square, Yerevan By Armineaghayan |
Today (September 20th) is National Punch Day. Punch is a general term for a beverage containing various mixed drinks, often including fruit, fruit juice, and/or alcohol.
The state funeral service for Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realmstook place at Westminster Abbey at 11:00 on September 19, 2022, followed by a committal service later that day at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The Queen was interred in the King George VI Memorial Chapel at St George's.
International Talk Like a Pirate Day is celebrated on September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate. An observer of this holiday should greet friends not with "Hello, everyone!" but with "Ahoy, maties!" or "Ahoy, me hearties!" The day was born in 1995, when John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap'n Slappy), of Albany, Oregon were playing racquetball. One of them reacted to an injury with an outburst of "Aaarrr!", and the idea was born.
However, John Barrymore was the first Long John to use "arrr!" to mean "yes" back in 1934.
National Cheeseburger Day honors America’s favorite burger with a slice of cheese. It is celebrated each year on September 18th.
The first recorded sighting of the word 'cheeseburger' was on a 1928 menu for the Los Angeles restaurant O'Dell's. It listed a cheeseburger smothered with chili all for the price of 25 cents.
The trademark for the name "cheeseburger" was awarded to Louis Ballast of the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In, in Denver, Colorado in 1935.
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| A Burger King "Quad Stacker" cheeseburger, containing four patties and bacon |
On September 17, 1787, the Founding Fathers signed the American Constitution in Philadelphia. Constitution Day is an American federal observance that commemorates the adoption of the Constitution of the United States and those who have become United States citizens. It is normally observed on September 17.
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| Signing of the Constitution (1940 by Howard Chandler Christy) |
Today is Mayflower Day, which commemorates the day when the Pilgrim Fathers left Plymouth, England, and set sail on The Mayflower to the New World.
Today is Battle of Britain Day, the name given to the large-scale aerial battle that took place on September 15, 1940, during the Battle of Britain.
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| German Heinkel He 111 bombers over the English Channel 1940 |
Pope Gregory XIII introduced the modern calendar in 1582. In attempting to eliminate the difference between the date of the birth of Christ as it was then estimated and the errors that have been made and repeated ever since, the Pontiff removed all the days between the 4th and 15th of October of the current year. Roman Catholic countries including Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain quickly adopted the new system, but many people were upset as they felt the papacy has taken away 11 days of their lives.
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Two centuries later, the Gregorian calendar was adopted by Great Britain and the English colonies on September 14, 1752, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2nd).
The Gregorian calendar isn't perfect—its dates become one day off from Earth's seasons every 3,216 years.
Children's author Roald Dahl's birthday on September 13 is celebrated as "Roald Dahl Day" in Africa, the United Kingdom and Latin America in celebration of the author who wrote nearly 50 beloved books.
Roald Dahl was born in Wales on September 13, 1916. His sense of humor came early aged eight he and four friends got into trouble for putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers at the local sweet shop in a prank the boys named the Great Mouse Plot of 1924 .
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| Dahl in April 1954 |
National Video Game Day is a holiday that is celebrated on September 12th.
American physicists Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann were awarded a patent on December 14, 1948 for their "Cathode-ray tube amusement device," an oscilloscope featuring a set of knobs and switches. It was the first interactive electronic game.
Pong was commercially released by Atari, in November 1972. The first commercially successful video game, Pong was based on table tennis. Nolan Bushnell said it was a game ‘so simple that any drunk in any bar could play’.
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| Pong Pixiebay |
When the gaming industry was in its infancy during the mid 1970s, consoles were hard-wired to play one or two crude games such as Pong. Atari changed that in 1977 with the 2600, the first console to take an unlimited number of games cartridges, heralding the age of the PlayStation, Wii and the Xbox.
Patriot Day occurs each year on September 11 in the United States in memory of the people killed in the September 11 attacks of the year 2001.
Below, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney lead a moment of silence on the South Lawn with White House staff and families of victims of 9/11 on September 11, 2004.
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush proclaimed September 14, 2001, as a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001.
September 11 is now remembered as Patriot Day in the US in memory of those killed. The US flag is flown at half-staff at the White House and on all US government buildings and establishments throughout the world.
A moment of silence is observed to correspond with the attacks, beginning at 8:46 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time), the time the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
National TV Dinner Day is observed annually on September 10th.
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| A Swanson "Hungry-Man Country Fried Chicken" TV dinner. By Famartin |
C.A. Swanson & Sons of Omaha, Nebraska introduced the first TV dinner in 1954 to America. Executive Gerald Thomas came up with the idea when the company had half a million pounds of leftover turkey from Thanksgiving stored in ten refrigerated railroad cars. On a visit to a Pittsburgh distributor he noticed a box of metal trays that an airline was testing as a way to serve heated meals on international flights. He saw a future for the unwanted turkeys.
The Swanson TV dinner was roast turkey with stuffing and gravy, sweet potatoes and peas. It sold for 98 cents and came in an aluminium tray, so the diner could just open the box and heat the dinner in the oven. The cooking time was usually 25 minutes.
National Teddy Bear Day honors on September 9th the history of one of childhood’s favorite toys.
The teddy bear was named after Theodore Roosevelt. The American president's childhood nickname was "Teedie," but his adult nickname was "Teddy" (which he despised and considered improper, preferring "T.R.").
Theodore Roosevelt started the fashion for Teddy bears when during a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902, he refused to shoot a defenseless black bear that had been tied to a willow tree. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman picked up on the story, drawing a cartoon showing President Roosevelt with a bear, which ran in the Washington Post two days later.
An alert Brooklyn shop owner Morris Michtom saw the cartoon and created a tiny plush toy bear cub with his wife Rose's help. He sent it to Roosevelt asking the president for permission to use the name "Teddy." Roosevelt replied: "I don't think my name is likely to be worth much in the bear business, but you are welcome to use it."
After receiving permission to use Roosevelt's name, Michtom put a plush bear in the shop window with a sign "Teddy's bear" The sale of the bears was so brisk that Michtom created the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, which began making dolls in 1907 to complement its line of teddy bears.
Today is National Ampersand Day. National Ampersand Day is celebrated on September 8th each year to honor '&,' a Latin character and a logogram that depicts the conjunction 'AND.'
The symbol ampersand (&) was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, as taught to children in the US and elsewhere. It was seen as a ligature of the letters 'e' and 't' to form the Latin word 'et' meaning 'and'. So the alphabet would go X,Y,Z and And. An example may be seen in M. B. Moore's 1863 book The Dixie Primer, for the Little Folks. To distinguish it from the rest, children started to say 'and per say and' which later evolved into 'ampersand'.
On September 7, 1822, Prince Pedro declared the independence of Brazil from Portugal on the shores of the Ipiranga creek in São Paulo. After waging a successful war against his father's kingdom, he was acclaimed the following month as Pedro I, the first Emperor of Brazil. The Monument to Independence in São Paulo's Independence Park is located at the place where then-Prince Pedro proclaimed the independence of Brazil.
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| Prince Pedro declares the Independence of Brazi by Pedro Américo. |
Today is World Beard Day.
Today is the anniversary of The Victoria becoming the first known ship to circumnavigate the world.
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| A detail from a map of 1590 showing Victoria |
Today is the feast day of Mother Teresa.
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| Mother Teresa 1995 By Kingkong photo www.celebrity-photos.com |
Agnes Bojaxhiu (later to be known as Mother Teresa) was born on August 26, 1910 in Skopje (now the capital of the Republic of Macedonia), Ottoman Empire.
At the age of 12 Agnes Bojaxhiu already knew she wanted to be a missionary and her desire increased when local Jesuits, sent on missions of mercy to India, wrote enthusiastic letters back home about happenings in Bengal.
In 1928 the teenage Albanian arrived in India, where she joined the Loretto Convent in Darjiling. On September 10, 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling, she experienced what she later described as "the call within the call", directing her to leave the convent and devote herself to the sick and impoverished.
She began missionary work with the poor in 1948 and two years later on October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity. Over the next decades Mother Teresa's organization established schools and opened centers to treat the blind, aged, lepers, disabled and dying throughout the world.
On March 13, 1997 Mother Teresa resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity, and she died of a heart attack on September 5, 1997.
Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa at a ceremony on September 4, 2016 in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. Tens of thousands of people witnessed the ceremony, including 15 government delegations and 1,500 homeless people from across Italy. The anniversary of her death (5 September) is her feast day.
Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the electrical age.
The consecration took place on this day in 590 of Pope Gregory I (Gregory the Great).
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| By Meister des Registrum Gregorii. - Trier, Stadtbibliothek |
The Great Fire of London broke out on this day in 1666.
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| Ludgate in flames, with St Paul's Cathedral in the distance |
Today is the United States federal holiday Labor Day.
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| Illustration of the first American Labor parade held in New York City on September 5, 1882 |
Today is the first day of the month of September.
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| September, from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry |
Today is the anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Today is the anniversary of Hubert Booth patenting the first vacuum cleaner.
Today is the anniversary of Gottlirb Daimler patenting the first internal combustion motorcycle.
Today is the anniversary of Caleb B. Bradburn naming his beverage Pepsi Cola.
Today is the anniversary of the first play performed in the British North American colonies.
Captain James Cook set sail from England for the South Pacific on board HMS Endeavour on this day in 1768.
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| Cook's landing at Botany Bay in 1770 |
Today is the anniversary of Galileo demonstrating his first telescope.
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| Galileo showing the Doge of Venice how to use the telescope (fresco by Giuseppe Bertini) |
Today is the anniversary of the invention of potato chips (crisps in British and Irish English).
August 23 is celebrated as the Day of the National Flag in Ukraine.
King Charles I raised his standard in Nottingham on August 22, 1642, marking the beginning of the English Civil War.
On this day in 1921, AA Milne bought his son a teddy bear, which gave rise to his Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
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| Christopher Robin and Winnie-The-Pooh |
Today is Bernard of Clairvaux's feast day.
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| Bernard of Clairvaux, by Georg Andreas Wasshuber (1650–1732) |
National Aviation Day is celebrated each year on August 19 in the United States. The holiday was established in 1939 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who issued a presidential proclamation which designated the anniversary of Orville Wright's birthday to be a national observation that celebrates the development of aviation.
Orville Wright along with his brother, Wilbur Wright flew the first successful, albeit brief, "flying machine" in 1903.
Orville Wright's first flight in his Wright Flyer One at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was on December 17, 1903. It flew for 12 seconds at a height of 500 feet and covered 37,120 feet. The flight was witnessed by four men and a boy.
In May 1896, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel Langley had successfully flown an unmanned steam-powered fixed-wing model aircraft. For years, Orville argued with officials of the Smithsonian Institute over whether the Wrights or Langley had built the first plane. In 1942 the Smithsonian officials made a public apology to Orville.
Orville Wright was still alive when the sound barrier was broken in 1947 by Chuck Yeager in his Bell X-1 airplane.
Neil Armstrong took the wood from the propeller of the Wright Brothers' first plane to the moon.
Today is the anniversary of the founding of the German multinational corporation Adidas.
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| An Adidas Store in Vaughan Mills |
Today is the anniversary of the first steamboat service being inaugurated.
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| Illustration from an 1870 book |
August 16 is celebrated by many people around the world as Roller Coaster Day.
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| Looping the loop, Atlantic City, circa 1901 |
Today is a national holiday in India. August 15 is Independence Day commemorating the nation's independence from the United Kingdom.
In the early 1900s, millions of people peacefully started to protest against British control. In 1915 the lawyer Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa to his country of origin, India, a hero, and begun the struggle for Indian independence by non-violent co-operation.
The national anthem of India, "Jana Gana Mana," was first sung on December 27, 1911 during the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress.
On August 15, 1947, India peacefully became free and independent from the British Empire.
Today is the anniversary of Pakistan gaining independence from the British Empire.
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| Pakistan flag |
Today is the 13th day of the month of August.
August is named after Augustus, first Emperor of Rome who chose it as it was the month of his greatest triumphs. He died in August AD 14.
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| The statue known as the Augustus of Prima Porta, 1st century. By Till Niermann - Wikipedia Commons |
Until 8 BC, the Romans called August 'Sextilis' as it was the sixth month of their year.
The Anglo-Saxons called August by the name Weod-monath (weed month) as it is the month when weeds grow most rapidly.
Today is the anniversary of Isaac Singer receiving a patent for his sewing machine.
Today is the birthday of hip-hop music.
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| Herc spins records at a 28 February 2009 event |
Today is the anniversary of the opening of The Louvre Art Museum.
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| The Cour Carrée of the "Old Louvre". By King of Hearts - |
Today is the anniversary of the patenting of the diesel engine.
Today is International Cat Day.
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| Pixiebay |
Today is the anniversary of IBM dedicating the first program-controlled calculator.
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| Daderot at en.wikipedia |
Dehomag, a German subsidiary of IBM, was the main provider of computing equipment in Nazi Germany. It provided the German government with machines to conduct censuses and gave the Nazis a way of tracing Jews. The technology was used by the Gestapo to locate and arrest its victims.
The Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I) was the first program-controlled calculator. It was developed and built by IBM at their Endicott plant and shipped to Harvard in February 1944. The ASCC began computations for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships in May and was officially presented to the university on August 7, 1944.
IBM boasted in 1952 that each of their computers were equivalent to having 150 extra engineers with slide rules.
Today is the anniversary of the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima.
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| The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima |
Today is the anniversary of the first electric traffic signal system.
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| The first Electric Traffic Light in Bucharest c1924. |
Today is the anniversary of the opening of the first supermarket.
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| King Kullen headquarters in Bethpage. By Americasroof |
Today is the anniversary of Christopher Columbus setting sail on his first voyage to the New World.
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| Columbus' first voyage. By Keith Pickering |
Palos is also the site of the Rábida Monastery where Columbus consulted with the Franciscans about his plans for organizing an expedition of discovery.
He based his calculations for his 1492 journey on Biblical scripture, in particular the second book of Esdras in the Apocrypha.
Columbus’ mission was gold and the gospel, to fill up the Spanish coffers, (he was being sponsored by the Spanish monarchy) and convert the eastern people (he mistakenly though he had landed on an island near Japan).
The Pinta, Niña, and Santa María made their first landfall when they landed on one of the Bahamas islands, 71 days after leaving Spain.
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Cannae when the Carthaginian army led by Hannibal, defeated a numerically superior Roman army.
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| Hannibal and his men crossing the Alps |
The Second Punic War between Carthage and the Roman Republic broke out in 218. Hannibal marched an his army of 38,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry over the Pyrenees and the Alps into Italy.
After crossing the Alps, Hannibal's army swept through North Italy winning three dramatic victories—Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae. The latter battle took place on August 2, 216 BC. The Carthaginian commander distinguished himself for his ability to determine his and his opponent's strengths and weaknesses, and to play the battle to his strengths and the enemy's weaknesses—and won over many allies of Rome.
Hannibal's army included 38 elephants. It was not unusual to use elephants in war in Hannibal's day. The big charging jumbos frightened the enemy and their height allowed the archers to survey the whole battlefield. In addition they were relatively speedy with a maximum speed of 18 mph and only needed around five gallons of water per mile.
Hannibal occupied much of Italy for 15 years, but a Roman counter-invasion of North Africa forced him to return to Carthage, where he was decisively defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama on October 19, 202 BC.
Hannibal caused great distress to many in Roman society. Hannibal became such a figure of terror that whenever disaster struck, the Roman senators would exclaim "Hannibal ante portas" ("Hannibal is at the gates!") to express their fear or anxiety.
Today is the anniversary of the discovery of oxygen gas
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| Equipment used by Priestley in his experiments |
In 1773, the Earl of Shelburne asked the scientist Joseph Priestley to serve as tutor for his children, and librarian for his Calne, Wiltshire estate. The position left ample free time for the research that would earn him a permanent place in scientific history.
On August 1, 1774 Priestley discovered a colorless, odorless tasteless gaseous element by heating mercuric oxide using the sun's rays, whilst staying at Bowood House in the capacity of Librarian to the Earl of Shelbourne. He christened it "Dephlogisticated air". Priestley speculated that one day "Dephlogisticaed air" might become a luxury.
Lavoiser named the chemical element from two Greek roots, “oxys” (acid) and “genes” (producer) as he thought mistakenly that all acids contained oxygen.
Priestley published his findings in 1775 in a paper titled "An Account of Further Discoveries in Air" which was included in the second volume of his book titled Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. Because he informed the world first, Priestley is usually given priority in the discovery of oxygen.
Today is the anniversary of the last Volkswagen Beetle rolling off the assembly line.
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| 1949 Volkswagen "split rear window" Sedan |
The result was the Volkswagen ("people's car" in German) Beetle, which was designed by Ferdinand Porsche and a team of engineers. A handful were made, but by the time the Wolfsburg factory was finished in 1938, World War II was starting and the company concentrated on making military vehicles instead.
Mass production of the Volkswagen Beetle did not actually begin in Germany until after the war in 1945 when the United Kingdom army reopened the Wolfsburg factory.
Originally known as the Volkswagen Type 1, the car’s curves and rounded top led to its being nicknamed the 'Bug.' Volkswagen themselves started referring to the car as the VW Beetle in the late 1960s.
The last original Beetle, #21,529,464 was assembled and immediately retired on July 31, 2003, in Puebla, Mexico, at the Volkswagen de Mexico manufacturing plant. It can now be found at Volkswagen's AutoMuseum.
The Beetle was in production between 1938 and 2003, a whopping 65 years, the longest a vehicle has been produced in history.
National Cheesecake Day is observed annually on July 30th.
In Greece, cheesecake was considered to be a good source of energy, and there is evidence that it was served to athletes during the first Olympic games in 776 B.C.
Ancient Greek brides and grooms were known to use cheesecake as a wedding cake.
New York-style cheesecake, with its signature simple cream cheese and egg yolks make-up, was created in the 1900s by German immigrant Arnold Reuben.
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Gravelines when English naval forces defeated the Spanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France.
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| English ships and the Spanish Armada, August 1588 |
Philip planned to invade England, seize the throne from Elizabeth I and restore the power of the Catholic Church. He wanted to punish England for its support of Dutch Protestants fighting against the Spanish rule and for Francis Drake's plundering of Spanish possessions in America and Cadiz.
In late May 1588 a fleet of 130 ships under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia set sail from Lisbon with the purpose of escorting an army to invade England. The plan was to stop in the Netherlands and pick up an additional 17,000 troops from the Duke of Parma. Unfortunately half of the ships were heavy, badly equipped galleons that were difficult to maneuver and they had insufficient firepower. The English fleet consisted of 226 smaller more maneuverable vessels with a naval gun that was easier and faster to load.
On reaching the English Channel, the fleet was met by the English ships and caused them to scatter to north France. In the ensuing Battle of Gravelines on July 29, 1588 Lord Howard's tactics of sending in fireships forced the Spanish to break formation and abandon its rendezvous with Parma's army, who were blockaded in harbor by Dutch flyboats.
The Armada managed to regroup and withdrew into the North Sea with the English fleet harrying it up the east coast of England. The fleet was disrupted during severe storms in the North Atlantic and a large number of the vessels were wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Of the initial 130 ships over a third failed to return.
The defeat of the Armada marked the beginning of the decline of Spanish power.
Today is the anniversary of the first potato being brought to the United Kingdom.
The 16th century Spanish invaders in South America first came across the potato when entering a Colombian village from which the inhabitants had fled. They originally thought they were truffles.
The Spanish introduced the potato to Europe. They became a standard supply item on the Spanish ships as it was noticed that the sailors who ate potatoes did not suffer from scurvy.
Thomas Harriot was credited with bringing the first potato to Britain on July 28, 1586. The mathematician, astronomer and translator had just returned from Sir Walter Raleigh’s English colony on Roanoke Island in modern-day North Carolina, where he had made detailed studies of the wildlife.
Despite their use by Spanish sailors most Europeans were originally suspicious of them, in part because people realized that the potato is a member of the nightshade family, all of which are very poisonous.
By the late 17th century the Irish had recognized the food value of potatoes and became the first country in Europe to plant them as a staple food crop rather than using it primarily as animal fodder. And in 1719 the first permanent potato patches in North America were established near Londonderry, New Hampshire.
Today is the anniversary of the maiden flight of the first commercial jet airliner
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| Comet prototype at Hatfield Aerodrome in October 1949 |
The German Hans von Ohain developed the concept independently. He wrote in February 1936 to aircraft designer Ernst Heinkel, telling him of the design and its possibilities. The first turbojet aircraft to fly was the Heinkel He 178 V1, first prototype of the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, in August 1939 in Rostock, Germany.
Developed and manufactured by de Havilland at its Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, their Comet 1 prototype made its maiden flight on July 27, 1949 out of Hatfield Aerodrome. The flight lasted 31 minutes.
BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) operated the first commercial jet service with the de Havilland Comet jetliner. It made its maiden flight with fare-paying passengers and inaugurated scheduled service from London to Johannesburg in May 1952.
The Comet was a hit with passengers as flights were about 50 percent faster than on advanced piston-engined aircraft such as the Douglas DC-6 (490 mph for the Comet compared to the DC-6's 315 mph), and a faster rate of climb further cut flight times.
Today is the anniversary of Marie Curie's marriage to fellow scientist Pierre Curie.
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| Pierre and Marie Curie |
At first Marie hesitated before agreeing to marry Pierre. They eventually wed in a civil ceremony in Sceaux, France on July 26, 1895 as "Pierre belonged to no religion and I did not practice any" (she later wrote). Instead of a bridal gown, Marie chose a dark blue dress.
Throughout their marriage, the Curies were very much in love and had equal partnership in the laboratory. Like Marie, Pierre was obsessed with science and hard work.
Marie Curie along with her husband, Pierre, won the Nobel prize for physics for their discovery of radioactivity in 1903. Originally Marie's name was left off the winners’ list but Pierre insisted she be included. She thus became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.
Pierre Curie died in a street accident in Paris in April 1906. Crossing the busy Rue Dauphine in the rain, he slipped and fell under a heavy horse-drawn cart. He was killed instantly. Marie went into a deep mourning and took a long time to recover.
Today is the anniversary of the coronation of King James I of England.
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| Portrait after John de Critz, c. 1606 |
As Queen Elizabeth I was the last of Henry VIII's descendants, James was seen as the most likely heir to the English throne through his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor, who was Henry VIII's oldest sister. In March 1603, with the Queen clearly dying, her chief minister Sir Robert Cecil sent James a draft proclamation of his accession to the English throne.
After succeeding Elizabeth I on the English throne, James left Edinburgh for London, promising to return every three years (a promise he did not keep). Local lords received him with lavish hospitality along the route and James was amazed by the wealth of his new land and subjects. When he entered London just over a month later, he was mobbed by a crowd of spectators.
His English coronation took place on July 25, 1603, with elaborate allegories provided by dramatic poets such as Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson. Below is "England and Scotland with Minerva and Love," an allegorical work of the Union of the Crowns by Peter Paul Rubens.
James had been a popular and successful monarch in Scotland, but the same was not true in England. He was unable to deal with a hostile English Parliament; the refusal on the part of the House of Commons to impose sufficiently high taxes crippled the royal finances. His taste for political absolutism, mismanagement of the kingdom's funds and cultivation of unpopular favorites established the foundation for the English Civil War.
Simón Bolívar Day is celebrated in Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, and Bolivia on July 24th commemorating the Birth Anniversary of the most powerful leader in South America.
When Simon was fourteen, Don Simón had to abandon the country, as he was accused of being involved in a conspiracy against the Spanish government in Caracas. Thus, Simon entered the military academy of the Milicias de Veraguas, which his father had directed as colonel years earlier. Through these years of military training, he developed his fervent passion for armaments and military strategy, which he later would employ on the battlefields of the wars of independence.
For a time Bolívar was part of Napoleon's retinue during which he witnessed the coronation of the French Emperor in Notre Dame, and this majestic event left a profound a impression upon him. From that moment he wished that he could emulate similar triumphant glory for the people back home in Venezuela.
Venezuela was the first country in the region to start the struggle against Spanish rule. A group of Caracas Creoles including Simón Bolívar deposed the Spanish colonial regime led by Captain General Vicente Emparán on April 19, 1810 and established the First Republic of Venezuela.
Bolivar freed much of South America from Spanish occupation. On December 17, 1819 he proclaimed the republic of Gran Colombia, comprising the territories of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru, western Guyana and northwest Brazil.
America's first lighthouse was authorized on July 23, 1715.
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| Boston Lighthouse by Karl Bodmer, 1839 |
The first lighthouse in America was authorized for construction by the Massachusetts legislature at Little Brewster Island, to mark the entrance to Boston, Massachusetts, harbor on July 23, 1715. The Boston Light was ready for use by mid-September of the following year.
A tonnage tax of 1 penny per ton charged to vessels moving in or out of Boston Harbor, paid for maintaining the light.
The first keeper of Boston Light was George Worthylake. He was paid £50 a year to keep the beacon lit from sundown to sunrise. Worthylake drowned, along with his wife and daughter, when returning to the island in 1718.
The stone structure weathered 60 years of lightning strikes and gale-force winds before the British Army blew up the tower and completely destroyed it during the American Revolutionary War.
The current lighthouse dates from 1783, is the second oldest working lighthouse in the United States (after Sandy Hook Lighthouse in New Jersey).
Ratcatcher's Day is celebrated on June 26 or July 22, commemorating the myth of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Even though the Pied Piper of Hamelin is just a myth, the town of Hamelin's records state that many children disappeared from the town around the time of the story. The town chronicle even wrote in 1384 "It is 100 since our children left".
In the account of the story by the Brothers Grimm, June 26, 1284 was the day the rat-catcher led the children out of Hamelin. However, Robert Browning’s poem "The Pied Piper Of Hamelin" gives the date as July 22, 1376.
Belgian National Day is the national holiday of Belgium commemorated annually on July 21. It marks the anniversary of the investiture of King Leopold I, the country's first monarch, in 1831.
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| Celebrations for National Day in Brussels in 1856 |
International Chess Day is celebrated annually on July 20.
Chess had evolved in India by the 6th century AD as a game of war: to illustrate and rehearse army movements.
The Persians adopted the game of chess from India, and when the Arabs conquered Iran, they made chess part of their life and carried it wherever they went. That is how, with the spread of Islam, chess also extended as far West as Spain, as far North as Turkistan, as far East as the Malayan Islands, and as far South as Zanzibar.
The word "checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah-Mat," which means the king is dead.
The International Chess Day is celebrated on July 20, the day the International Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded, in 1924. The day has been celebrated by many of the 605 million regular chess players around the world since 1966 after it was established by FIDE.
The first Wimbledon lawn tennis final took place on July 19, 1877.
The inaugural Wimbledon Tennis Championship was held to raise money for repairs to The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis club's pony-drawn lawn roller. The competition was held July 9-19, 1877 and was solely as an amateur competition. Men's singles was the only event that took place with 22 men competing for a 12-guinea prize, plus a silver challenge cup valued at 25 guineas. Entrants had to pay a guinea (£1.05) each.
Just 200 peple turn up to the first Wimbledon lawn tennis final at the original venue in Worple Road. They paid a shilling each to watch Spencer Gore stroll past William Marshall 6-1, 6–2, 6–4.
The Wimbledon women's event began seven years later in 1884 with a a field of thirteen competitors. Playing in a white corset and petticoat, 19-year-old Maud Watson defeated her older sister Lilian Watson 6–8, 6–3, 6–3 in the final.
Nelson Mandela International Day (or Mandela Day) is an annual international day in honor of Nelson Mandela, celebrated each year on July 18.
Nelson Mandela International Day was officially declared by the United Nations in 2009 with the first UN Mandela Day held on his birthday, July 18, 2010.
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| Mandela in 2008 By South Africa The Good New |
He studied law at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and opened the first black legal firm in South Africa, with fellow lawyer Oliver Tambo in 1952. Mandela gave free legal counsel to many blacks.
Nelson Mandela was arrested in August 1962 near the South African town of Howick for conspiring to overthrow the state. He was detained wearing a chauffeur’s uniform — just one of the disguises he used while on the run, when he was dubbed the ‘Black Pimpernel.’
He served 27 years in prison and, upon his release in 1994, he became South Africa's first black chief executive, an office he served for five years.
Mandela was able to forgive those who allowed him to languish in a tiny prison cell for 27 years to which the up-and-coming lawyer had been sentenced because of his determination to win justice for South Africa's oppressed black community.
World Emoji Day is celebrated on July 17th each year.
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| A colored Emoji from Noto project, released under Apache license |
Scott Fahlman, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, was the first to suggest using emoticons in messages sent on computer networks. In September 1982, he posted the first documented emoticons :-) and :-( on the Carnegie Mellon University Bulletin Board System.
Emojis were first created in 1999 in Japan by Shigetaka Kurita for use in electronic messages and on web pages. He was part of the team working on NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile Internet platform.
In 2016, New York’s Museum of Modern Art added the original 176 emojis, designed in 1999, to its permanent collection
The word emoji has been used in Japanese since 1928 but according to the Oxford Dictionary was first seen in English in 1997.
The Amazon.com online shop was launched on July 16, 1995 by Jeff Bezos, originally selling only books, but has since extended to selling CDs, videos, DVDs, toys and games, computer software, electronic items, clothes, furniture and food.
The first book sold on Amazon.com was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. Australian software engineer John Wainwright, who was based in California, was a friend of Amazon's first employee Shal Kaphan. In April 1995, he got the opportunity to place the first non-company order from Amazon.com for the book, which explores the mechanisms of intelligence through computer modeling. Bezos later named a building after Wainwright to honor the occasion.
By 2000 Amazon claimed 17 million customers in over 160 countries, and was one of the world's most visited Web sites, but had not yet made a profit. The company recorded its first net profit of $5 million in the fourth quarter of 2001 and reported profits of $359 million in 2005.
In 2015, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the United States by market capitalization.
The first banknotes in Europe were issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco on July 15, 1661.
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| A Yuan dynasty printing plate and banknote with Chinese and Mongol words. |
The first banknotes in Europe issued by Stockholms Bancos became popular very quickly simply as they were much easier to carry than the large copper daler, especially for making large payments (a note could be sent in an envelope - previously the large coins had to be transported by horse and cart).
The colony of Massachusetts issued the first paper money in America in 1690. It was a temporary experiment of banknote issue carried out by Sir William Phips as the Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay to help fund the war effort against France.
Today is the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in Paris. It is commemorated each year on July 14 as Bastille Day, the national day of France.
The members of the Third Estate were angry that they were being taxed the most when they were the poorest group of people. The Third Estate decided to break away and start the National Assembly, their own assembly where every member would get a vote.
Many Parisians thought King Louis XVI, was going to try to shut down the National Assembly. At the Café de Foy in Paris, political journalist Camille Desmoulins while standing on a table brandishing two pistols, roused his countrymen with a cry of “Aux armes, citoyens”. Two days later, on July 14, 1789, the Bastille prison was stormed and fell, and the French Revolution begun.
Just seven prisoners were ‘liberated’ when the Bastille prison in Paris was stormed — four forgers, two lunatics and one sex offender.
The National Convention began the Reign of Terror, a ten-month period of systematic repression and mass executions by guillotine of perceived enemies within the country. The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris), and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.
The French Revolution was the first attempt to introduce a secular state. As part of the revolutionaries wholesale attack on the Church, religious nursing communities were abolished and charities nationalized. The revolutionaries confiscated the finances of religious organizations, which affected many of the institutions ran by the church for the sick or injured.
National French Fry Day is celebrated each year on July 13th.
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| A cast iron chip pan with aluminum basket by Hayford Peirce |
In A Tale Of Two Cities (1859), Charles Dickens refers to “Husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil”. This is the earliest known reference to potato chips in English. But the term “French-fried potatoes” was first seen in 1856.
French Fries are not called that in France. They are known as frites, patates frites, or pommes frites in French.
Around seven per cent of the potatoes grown in the USA end up in french fry bags sold by McDonald’s.
The Twelfth, also known as Orangemen's Day, is an annual Protestant celebration that takes place on July 12th in Northern Ireland and some other parts of the world where Orange Order lodges exist. It commemorates the victory of the Protestant King William III (William of Orange) over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
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