On this date in 1766 the English Parliament did a good thing – for which to my knowledge they never got the credit. They repealed the 1765 Stamp Act, one of the “egregious” actions for which they and King George were criticized by the American colonists. In 1834 six farm laborers in England were sentenced to be deported as convicts to Australia for having the gall to form a union. They were later pardoned and returned to England between 1836 and 1839 after mass protests. Again the British righted a wrong, and it only took a short time. In 1942 the War Relocation Authority was established in the US to facilitate the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans, and it took the US government over 40 years to even admit that it was wrong and attempt to compensate those harmed.
In weather news, the Tri-State Tornado hit Missouri, Illinois and Indiana killing 695 people in 1925. In 1944, during WWII, Mt Vesuvius erupted, killing only 26, but causing thousands to flee their homes, and damaging dozens of Allied bombers – nature’s revenge perhaps? And in 1953 an earthquake in western Turkey caused the deaths of over 1,000 people.
A president and vice president were born on this date: VP John C Calhoun (1782)who served with Andrew Jackson, but later resigned and ultimately supported the Confederacy in his native South Carolina. President Grover Cleveland (1837) served in the Civil War for the Union and is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. This was also the birth date for British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (1869), who is remembered chiefly for his appeasement of Hitler.
Three musicians share this date -Russian romantic pianist and composer Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov (1858), African- American country singer Charley Pride (1934), and Fame/Flashdance singer and actor Irene Cara(1959) who sadly just passed in 2022. This date was also the birthday for a psychic (Edgar Cayce 1877), a winemaker (Ernest Gallo, 1909), a civil rights activist (Fred Shuttlesworth, 1922, co-founded the SCLC), and an Olympic speedskater (Bonnie Blair, 1964).
This date was the passing day for the first British Prime Minister – Robert Walpole (1745), American gardener and missionary Johnny Appleseed (1845), and the German psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm(1980).
The day is recognized as Rememberance of COVID-19 victims by Italy, which was one of the earliest and hardest hit countries of the pandemic.
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