“The capacity to combine commitment with
skepticism is essential to democracy.”
— Mary Catherine Bateson,
American author and
cultural anthropologist
______________________________________________________
NOVEMBER is:
Aviation History Month
National Gratitude Month
Native American Heritage Month
______________________________________________________
November 14th is:
National Speakers Association Spirit Day: November 14, 1973 – the National Speakers Association was founded in 1973 by Cavett Robert, who was born on November 14, 1907, so he is honored by the association on Spirit Day
Pickle Appreciation Day: Americans consume a phenomenal 5,200,000 pounds of pickles each year. This day was first observed in 1949, with encouragement from the Pickle Packers Association.
Operating Room Nurse Day: 1989 — established by the Iowa state Governor, Terry Edward Branstad, appreciation of nurses who work in operating rooms.
Spicy Guacamole Day:
______________________________________________________
Columbia – Day of the Columbian Woman: November 14, 1967 – The Columbian Congress declares the “Day of the Columbia Woman” in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the death of ‘La Pola’, Policarpa Salavarrieta, a Neogranadine seamstress-turned-spy for the revolutionary forces fighting against the Spanish who was caught and executed
Policarpa Salavarrieta —
watercolor by
José María Espinosa
Guinea Bissau – Readjustment Movement Day
India – Children’s Day
Indonesia – Mobile Brigade Day: — 1946 — This Indonesisian brigade, now Korps BrigadeMobil/Brimob, is reorganized from the Pasukan Polisi Istimewa (special police troops) to suppress military conflicts and attempted coups d’etat. The Pasukan Polisi Istimewa was a militarized police force organized in 1945 to disarm remnants of the Japanese Army, and protect Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, called Batavia before the country became independent
Romania – Dobruja Day (1878 incorporation of Northern Dobruja)
______________________________________________________
1449 – Sidonie of Poděbrady born, she and her twin sister Catherine were Bohemian princesses. In 1464, Sidonie was married at age 14 to Albert, the son of Frederick II, Elector of Saxony. Four months later, he became Albert III, Duke of Saxony, when his father died, and Sidonie became Duchess consort of Saxony, and later Margravine consort of Meissen. She was against warfare and violence, refusing to accompany Albert when he started wars against Groningen and Friesland, and protested by removing their children from the court to Albrechtsburg Castle. Many of her letters of correspondence have been preserved, in which she pleads for the release of prisoners. In September 1500, Albert died, leaving Sidonie a widow. She withdrew from the Saxon court and spent the rest of her years in Tharandt, near Dresden, where she died in February 1510 at the age of 60.
1501 – Anna of Oldenburg born, Countess consort of East Frisia who became Regent of East Fresia (1540-1561) as the guardian of her sons during their minority. She tried to maintain religious tolerance, allowing Catholics and Spiritualists to practice their faith. Only under pressure from Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, did Baptism become forbidden in East Frisia in 1549. Anna also founded the police force (1545) and reformed the legal system in East Frisia. Next to its administrative tasks, the Chancellery was given judiciary tasks. Councillors and legal scholars were added to the Chancellery to carry out these tasks. The Chancellery was mostly a court of appeals, but would also act a court of first instance in cases involving the nobility. In 1558, Anna abolished the law of primogeniture (the firstborn son’s right of succession), and established that each of her three sons would share power. This was an attempt to maintain religious balance, and to limit the growing influence of Sweden during protracted negotiations for the marriage of her eldest son Edzard and princess Katharina Vasa of Sweden, which finally took place in 1559. When Count John II “the Mad” of Harlingerland seized a strip of East Frisian land, she took her case to the Reichskammergericht and to the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle. The Circle arrested John, who had made many enemies, and he died in captivity in 1562. Anna’s division of power was not a success. Her middle son died in 1566, and the remaining brothers were locked in a power struggle, which weakened their rule, but strengthened the nobility, and the citizens of Emden, center of the Protestant Reformation in East Frisia. Anna died in September 1575 at the age of 73.
1666 – The first experimental blood transfusion takes place in Britain, between two dogs
1719 – Leopold Mozart born, Austrian violinist, composer, and conductor; father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1765 – Robert Fulton born, American engineer and inventor
1770 – Scottish explorer James Bruce arrives at the source of the Blue Nile at Lake Tana in northwest Ethiopia – but which European got there first is disputed
1805 – Fanny Mendelssohn born, German pianist and composer who composed over 460 pieces of music, mostly lieder and piano pieces. Her younger brother was Felix Mendelssohn, and a number of her pieces were published under his name because of her family’s reservations, and the societal bias against women. In 1846, she published a collection of songs under her own name as Opus 1. She died of a stroke in 1847, at age 41
1832 – New York City’s first streetcar begins operation – it is horse-drawn and carries 30 people
1840 – Claude Monet born, French Impressionist painter
Haystack: End of Summer by Claude Monet
1851 – Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is published in the U.S.
Opening lines of Moby Dick – illustration by Rockwell Kent
1856 – Madeleine Lemoyne Ellicott born, American woman suffragist; she wanted to be a doctor, but her father disapproved, so she studied chemistry at Rushe Medical School, and the Polytechnic in Zurich Switzerland. But after her return, she was unable to find an American school which would accept a woman student in the field. She turned to the cause of women’s rights, especially getting the vote. Ellicott was one of the organizers of the Pan-American Conference of Women in 1922. She was a founding member of the League of Women Voters in 1920, then founded the LWV chapter in Maryland, serving as its president for 20 years. Ellicott also campaigned for the creation of a Juvenile Court system in Maryland. She died in 1945, at age 88.
1878 – Julie Manet born, French painter, artist’s model, art collector and diarist, Growing Up with the Impressionists
Self-Portrait with Laërtes the Dog
by Julie Manet
1881 – Opening day of Charles J. Guiteau’s trial for assassinating U.S. President Garfield
1889 – Jawaharlal Nehru born, Indian independence leader; India’s first Prime Minister (1947-1964)
1889 – Queen Victoria approved a Royal Charter creating the British South Africa Company (BSAC), the final step in the formation of Zambesia, giving almost sovereign powers to the BSAC, headed by Cecil Rhodes. In October 1888, King Lobengula of the Matabele (Ndebele) had signed the Rudd concession with C.D. Rudd, a partner of Rhodes, by which, in return for a thousand Martini-Henry rifles, 100 000 rounds of ammunition, £1200 annually and a steamboat with guns, Lobengula had given Rhodes and his partners a monopoly of all the metals and minerals in his kingdom and the right to mining companies to do anything necessary to further their operations. When Lobengula later discovered what the concession really meant, he tried to renounce it, but the British Government paid no heed to him. After 1894 the country was renamed Rhodesia in honour of Rhodes. Known as Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980
1889 – Pioneering journalist Nellie Bly (born Elizabeth Cochrane) begins her challenge: to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg’s record, going around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes
1900 – Aaron Copeland born, American composer; Copeland has had a major impact on the “American Sound” in orchestral music
1903 – The U.S. Women’s Trade Union League is established after it became clear at a Boston meeting of the American Federation of Labor that the AFL had no intention of including women within its ranks. Labour leaders Mary Kenney O’Sullivan and Leonora O’Reilly, with settlement workers Lillian Wald and Jane Addams, helped found the WTUL, and by 1904 the organization had branches in Chicago, New York City, and Boston. From the beginning the organization had a strong reformist agenda, working to provide working women with educational opportunities while also striving to improve working conditions. The organization achieved its greatest successes during the presidency of social reformer Margaret Dreier Robins. From 1907 to 1922, under Robins’s leadership, the organization fought for an eight-hour workday, the establishment of a minimum wage, the end of night work for women, and the abolition of child labour. During the garment industry strikes of 1909-1911, league members marched side by side with striking workers and helped set up strike funds. After the disastrous 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in New York City, league members conducted a four-year investigation of factory conditions that helped establish new regulations. The league was seriously weakened by financial problems during the Great Depression, and never fully recovered. In 1950, the WTUL had to be dissolved
1906 – Louise Brooks born, actress, dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, and silent film starin American and German films (Pandora’s Box and Diary of aLost Girl, both for G.W. Pabst in 1929); her iconic bobbed hairstylewas much copied by her fans in the 1920s. Her career began a downslide in the1930s, and she went through a period of obscurity, alcoholism and suicidaldepression in New York before being “rediscovered” in 1953 by French filmhistorian Henri Langlois. Brooks began a new career as a film critic, and herbook Lulu in Hollywood was published in 1982. She died of aheart attack in 1985, at age 78
1910 – Aviator Eugene Burton Ely makes the first takeoff from a ship in a Curtiss pusher, from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in Hampton Roads, Virginia
1918 – Czechoslovakia becomes a republic
1920 – MaryGreyeyes born, a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation and the first FirstNations woman to join the Canadian Armed Forces, serving in the CanadianWomen’s Army Corps (1942-1946); a publicity picture of her in uniform brought hermuch attention; at the end WWII, Indigenous people who served in the Canadianmilitary were offered the choice to give up their treaty rights and Indianstatus in return for the right to vote, and she was urged to visit a pollingstation and have her picture taken voting, but she pointed out the unfairnessof the voting laws and refused. First Nations people didn’t get the right to vote in Canada until 1960
Mary Greyeyes - Canadian WWII publicity photo
1922 – Veronica Lake born, American actress whose long ‘peek-a-boo’ hair was so copied that she changed her hairstyle during WWII to help prevent women working in wartime factories from catching their hair in the machinery. Her struggles with alcohol hurt her later career. In 1946, she earned a pilot’s license, and later flew solo between Los Angeles and New York. Noted for her frank memoir, co-written with Donald Bain, Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake
1934 – Catherine McGuinness born, Irish jurist and politician; represented the University of Dublin in the Seanad Éireann (Ireland’s Senate – 1979-1981 and 1983-1987); first woman Judge of the Circuit Court (1994-1996); Judge of the High Court (1996-2000); Judge of the Supreme Court (2000-2006); President of the Law Reform Commission (2005-2011); Member of the Council of (2012-2019)
1935 – Franklin Roosevelt announces that the Philippines have become a free commonwealth after approval of their new constitution. The Tydings-McDuffie Act plans for the Philippines to be completely independent by July 4, 1946
1935 – King Hussein of Jordan born, reigned from 1953 to 1999
1939 – Wendy Carlos, born as Walter Carlos, American trans musician and composer noted for electronic music and film scores, particularly featuring the Moog synthesizer
1940 – WWII: German planes bomb Coventry, England, destroying most of the town
1943 – Assistant Conductor Leonard Bernstein, age 25, debuts with the New York Philharmonic, fills in for ailing Bruno Walter prior to a national broadcast concert
1944 – Karen Armstrong born, British author, former nun and commentator; a former Roman Catholic religious sister; noted for her books on comparative religion and as a writer and presenter for BBC Channel Four; A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
1944 – Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra record “Opus No. 1” for RCA Records
1946 – Emily Greene Balch, co-founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, becomes a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. She donated her share of the Nobel Peace Prize money to WILPF. As a delegate to the International Congress of Women at The Hague in 1915, she had played a prominent role in several important projects: as a founding member of the Women’s International Committee for Permanent Peace, later renamed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; prepared peace proposals for consideration by the warring nations; served on a delegation, sponsored by the Congress, to the Scandinavian countries and Russia to urge their governments to initiate mediation offers; and wrote, in collaboration with Jane Addams and Alice Hamilton, Women at The Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results (1915)
1950 – Sarah Radclyffe born, British film producer; co-founder of Working Title Films; noted asexecutive producer on Caravaggio, Wish You Were Here, A World Apart, LesMisérables (1998 version), and The War Zone
1954 – Condoleezza Rice born, American Republican politician; second woman to be U.S. Secretary of State (2005-2009)
1956 – The USSR crushes the Hungarian uprising
1956 – Babette Babich born, American philosopher; known for studies of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Anders, Adorno, and Hölderlin, and work in aesthetics, including philosophy of music, life-size bronzes in antiquity (Greek sculpture), and continental philosophy, especially the philosophy of science and technology. Babich has also made substantive contributions to scholarly discussion of the role of politics in institutional philosophy (the analytic-continental divide) as well as gender in the academy
1960 – Six-year old Ruby Bridges becomes the first black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school, in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2005, formerly all-white William Frantz Elementary School was put on the National Register of Historic Places
The Problem We All Live With’ — painting by Normal Rockwell of six-year-old Ruby Bridges on her way to school, being escorted by US Marshalls because of the threats against her
1961 – The Elvis Presley film Blue Hawaii premieres
1968 – Yale University announces it is going co-educational
1969 – Apollo 12 blasts off from Cape Kennedy FL on the second manned moon mission
1970 – Santana releases Black Magic Woman
1972 – Blue Ribbon Sports becomes Nike
1977 – The inquest into the death while in police custody of Black Consciousness leader Steven Biko opens in Pretoria, South Africa
1983 – The British government announces that 96 Tomahawk cruise missiles, part of a planned NATO deployment, have arrived at Greenham Common air base; thousands of protesting women who have camped outside the gate stage a lie-in
1986 – The SEC fines Ivan Boesky $100 million for insider stock trading
1994 – U.S. experts visit North Korea’s main nuclear complex for the first time under an accord that opened such sites to outside inspections
1995 – The U.S. government institutes a partial shutdown, closing national parks and museums while most government offices operate with skeleton crews, due to lack of funds because President Clinton vetoed the spending bill sent to him by the Republican-controlled Congress which brutally slashed funding for Medicare, education, the environment, and public health
1999 – The United Nations imposes sanctions on Afghanistan for refusing to hand over terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden
2007 – Buildings in Kaixian, China are demolished to make way for the Three Gorges project – the urban area, dating back 1,800 years, is submerged under the Three Gorges reservoir by October 2008
2017 – Australians overwhelming supported gay marriage in a historic non-binding vote, clearing the way for Parliament to make same-sex marriage legal in the country. In the survey, 61.6 percent voted yes and 38.4 percent voted no, officials announced. Turnout was 79.5 percent. “The Australian people have spoken, and they have voted overwhelmingly ‘yes’ for marriage equality,” said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Supporters burst into cheers in public squares as the result was announced. “Finally I can be proud of my country,” said Chris Lewis, 60, an artist from Sydney. “No” advocate Lyle Shelton, a Christian lobbyist, said he would “accept the democratic decision.”
2019 – Representativesin the Ohio state legislature, Ron Hood and Candice Keller,sponsored House Bill 413 which, among other provisions, sought to legally recognize unborn fetuses as people, and define abortion as murder, according to a news release from the Right to Life Action Coalition of Ohio, obtained by The Washington Post. Anyone who performs an abortion, according to the release, would be “subject to already existing murder statutes.” It was referred to the legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee, which to date has taken no further action. Laws that were already in effect in Ohio: Require a patient to receive state-directed counseling designed to discourage them from having an abortion, and a 24 hour waiting period before the procedure. Counseling must be provided in person and must take place before the waiting period begins,necessitating two trips to the facility. Health plans offered in the state’s health exchange under the Affordable Care Act can only cover abortion in cases of life endangerment, or in cases of rape or incest; public funding is available for abortion only in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest. A parent of a minor must consent before an abortion is provided. Most patients must undergo an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion, since the provider must test for a fetal heartbeat. Abortion maybe performed at 20 or more weeks post-fertilization (22 weeks after the last menstrual period) only in cases of life endangerment or severely compromised health — based on the assertion, inconsistent with scientific evidence and rejected by the medical community, that a fetus can feel pain at that point in pregnancy. Abortion clinics are required to meet unnecessary and burdensome standards related to their physical plant, equipment and staffing
2019 – In Florida, a state Senate committee delayed a vote on legislation that would require minors to obtain parental consent before receiving an abortion, but the delay appeared temporary, even though similar legislation passed in 1988 was ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court under the Florida state constitution’s right to privacy, which is stronger than in the U.S. Constitution. But Republican Governor Ron DeSantis appointed three new justices to the court shortly after taking office in January 2019, and Republicans see the court’s shift to the right as an opportunity to pass anti-choice legislation
2020 – Donald Trump came closer to admitting that he lost the U.S. presidential election, suggesting “time will tell” but stopping short of a formal concession to president-elect Joe Biden. In his first public remarks since his defeat was announced, Trump appeared to catch himself making a slip of the tongue as he discussed the possibility of a Biden administration imposing a national lockdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic. “Ideally we won’t go to a lockdown,” Trump told reporters in the White House Rose Garden. “I will not go – this administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully the – whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration will be.” Trump added: “I guess time will tell. But I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.”
______________________________________________________
