World Turtle Day

And so it began, the accordion music. We can blame it on Cyrill Demian of Vienna, who was granted the patent for it in 1829. In 1995 the first version of the computer programming language Java was released. And one repository of these and other historical facts, the New York Public Library, was dedicated in 1911.

Several agreements and official governmental arrangements were started or came into force on this date in history. The Good Friday Agreement, bringing peace in Northern Ireland, was accepted by referendum in 1998. The Kyoto Protocols, concerning climate change, were accepted – a sufficient number of ratifications – when ratified by Iceland. And the Finish Parliament met for the first time in 1907.

In 1960 the May 22nd earthquake created a tsunami that hit Hawaii on May 23rd, killing 61 people in Hilo. In 2006 Mt Cleveland, a stratovolcano in Alaska erupted. And in 1934 the notorious bank robbers Bonny Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed in a police ambush, ending their crime spree.

The originator of biological nomenclature, Swedish physician, botanist and zoologist, Carl Linnaeus, began exploring his world in 1707. In 1910 both comedian Scatman Carothers and bandleader Artie Shaw stepped onto the world stage. And Russian chess grandmaster Anatoly Karpov(1951) and Moog synthesizer inventor Robert Moog (1934) started flexing their talented fingers on this date.

This was the day the world said goodbye to Scottish pirate William Kidd (1710), American fur trapper and explorer Kit Carson (1868), Norwegian playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen (1906), Standard Oil founder John D Rockefeller (1937), and “Bond, James Bond” actor Roger Moore (2017).

And if you feel trapped or comfortable in your shell, know that it is World Turtle Day.