On This Day May 12th

 OTD

May 12th is the one-hundred-fifteenth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 234 days remain until the end of the year.

 

Events

1588 – French Wars of Religion: Henry III of France flees Paris after Henry I, Duke of Guise, enters the city, and a spontaneous uprising occurs.

1593 – London playwright Thomas Kyd is arrested and tortured by the Privy Council for libel.

1780—American Revolutionary War: British forces took Charleston, South Carolina in the Continental Army's most significant defeat.

1846 – The Donner Party of Pioneers departs Independence, Missouri, for California on a year-long journey of hardship and cannibalism.

1926 – The Italian-built airship Norge became the first to fly over the North Pole.

1949 – Cold War: The Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin.

 

Birthdays

1755 – Giovanni Battista Viotti, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1824)

1812 – Edward Lear, English poet and illustrator (d. 1888)

1850 – Henry Cabot Lodge, American historian and politician (d. 1924)

1880 – Lincoln Ellsworth, American explorer (d. 1951)

1907 – Katharine Hepburn, American actress (d. 2003)

1910 – Dorothy Hodgkin, English biochemist, crystallographer, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994)

1925 – Yogi Berra, American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 2015)

1937 – George Carlin, American comedian, actor, and author (d. 2008)

1977 – Maryam Mirzakhani, Iranian mathematician (d. 2017)

 

Holiday Highlight

Mother's Day

Celebrations go back to ancient times when Greeks and Romans held festivals honoring the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele. However, the early Christian festival known as “Mothering Sunday stands as the modern precursor. This European tradition fell on the fourth Sunday in Lent. Many believed the faithful would return on this day to their “mother church”— the main church near their home — for a particular service. The Mothering Sunday tradition shifted over time into a more secular holiday where children would give their mothers flowers and other gifts. This custom would blend into the American Mother’s Day in the 1930s and 1940s.

American author and poet Julia Ward Howe, who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” became the editor of Woman’s Journal, a widely-read suffragist magazine, in 1872. She wrote an “Appeal to Womanhood Worldwide,” the Mother’s Day Proclamation. The document asked women to fight for world peace following the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. Howe then launched a failed attempt to start a “Mother’s Day” celebration on June 2. Two decades later, Howe suggested a Mother’s Day celebration every July 4. This also failed to take hold but set the stage for a future attempt.

Anna Jarvis successfully initiated Mother’s Day after her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died in 1905. Jarvis noted that Mother’s Day should contain a “singular possessive” (hence the apostrophe) so each family might honor its own mother — as opposed to all mothers. Jarvis, who neither married nor had children, organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration in May 1908. A Philadelphia department store owner named John Wanamaker lent his financial support to the cause. That same month, thousands attended a Mother’s Day event at one of Wanamaker’s stores.

Jarvis soon lobbied to make Mother’s Day a national holiday — urging prominent Americans to join the effort. By 1912, many states, towns, and churches had adopted Mother’s Day as an annual event. Jarvis also started the Mother’s Day International Association. President Wilson would soon establish the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day in 1914. Hallmark began selling Mother’s Day cards in the early 1920s.

Jarvis’ love affair with the holiday she worked so hard to start did not last, and she eventually grew to resent its commercial appeal. As florists and greeting card companies began to cash in, she soured on the idea of a national day — urging people to stop buying flowers, cards, and candies. Jarvis spent most of her wealth hiring attorneys to file lawsuits against groups using the term “Mother’s Day.” She even persuaded the federal government to remove it from the calendar.

 

Holidays And Observance

International Awareness Day

International Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Day

International Nurses Day

Limerick Day

Mother's At the Wall Day

Mother's Day

National Fibromyalgia Awareness Day

National Hospital Day

National Nutty Fudge Day

National Odometer Day

National Veal Ban Action Day 

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