Aug 27, 2012
First Day of School 2012 [Israel]
Aug 27, 2012
First Day of School 2012 [Israel]
Sep 15, 2012
Adolfo Bioy Casares' 98th Birthday
Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, diarist, and translator. He was a friend and frequent collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and is the author of the fantastic fiction novel The Invention of Morel.
Sep 15, 2012
Costa Rica Independence Day 2012
Sep 18, 2012
202nd anniversary of the First Government Assembly in Chile
Government Assembly of the Kingdom of Chile, also known as the First Government Junta, was the organization established to rule Chile following the deposition and imprisonment of King Ferdinand VII by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Sep 21, 2012
Edgar Valter's 84th Birthday
Edgar Valter was an Estonian graphic artist, caricaturist, writer and illustrator of children's books, with over 250 books to his name, through 55 years of activity. His most famous work is Pokuraamat [The Poku Book].
First published in 1994, Pokuraamat tells the tale of Pokus. A poku is a grass mound that grows in south-eastern Estonian bogs. In the book, Valter interprets pokus as animated childlike creatures, the grass actually being their golden head hair, which grows down to their feet. Its central theme is emphasizing the need to respect and to live in harmony with nature.
Pokuraamat was the first book that was both written and illustrated by Edgar Valter. In 1996, the book won the prestigious Nukits Competition award for best children book of the year.
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 07:13 AM.
Sep 23, 2012
Saudi Arabia National Day 2012
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is a country in Western Asia constituting the vast majority of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of approximately 2,150,000 km2 [830,000 sq mi], Saudi Arabia is geographically the largest sovereign state in Western Asia, the second-largest in the Arab world [after Algeria], the fifth-largest in Asia, and the 12th-largest in the world.
The territory that now constitutes Saudi Arabia was the site of several ancient cultures and civilizations. The prehistory of Saudi Arabia shows some of the earliest traces of human activity in the world. The world's second-largest religion, Islam, emerged in modern-day Saudi Arabia.
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 09:35 AM.
Sep 28, 2012
David Unaipon's 140th Birthday
David Ngunaitponi, known as David Unaipon, was an Aboriginal Australian man of the Ngarrindjeri people, a preacher, inventor and author. Unaipon's contribution to Australian society helped to break many Aboriginal Australian stereotypes, and he is featured on the Australian $50 note in commemoration of his work. He was the son of preacher and writer James Unaipon.
Unaipon spent five years trying to create a perpetual motion machine. In the course of his work he developed a number of devices. He was still attempting to design such a device in his seventy-ninth year.
Other inventions included a centrifugal motor, a multi-radial wheel and a mechanical propulsion device. He was also known as the Australian Leonardo da Vinci for his mechanical ideas, which included pre World War I drawings for a helicopter design based on the principle of the boomerang and his research into the polarisation of light and also spent much of his life attempting to achieve perpetual motion.
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 07:26 AM.
October 3, 2013
German Reunification Day 2013
Oct 1, 2013
Childrens Day 2013 [Guatemala]
Oct 8, 2013
William John Swainson's 224th Birthday
William John Swainson FLS, FRS, was an English ornithologist, malacologist, conchologist, entomologist and artist.
Oct 10, 2013
Leyla Gencer's 85th Birthday
Ayşe Leyla Gencer was a Turkish operatic soprano.
Gencer was a notable bel canto soprano who spent most of her career in Italy, from the early 1950s through the mid-1980s, and had a repertoire encompassing more than seventy roles. She made very few commercial recordings; however, numerous bootleg recordings of her performances exist. She was particularly associated with the heroines of Donizetti.
Oct 12, 2013
Children's Day 2013 [Brazil]
Oct 14, 2013
Katherine Mansfield's 125th Birthday
Kathleen Mansfield Murry was a prominent modernist writer who was born and brought up in New Zealand. She wrote short stories and poetry under the pen name Katherine Mansfield. When she was 19, she left colonial New Zealand and settled in England, where she became a friend of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Lady Ottoline Morrell and others in the orbit of the Bloomsbury Group. Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 1917 and she died in France aged 34.
Oct 15, 2013
Friedrich Nietzsche's 169th Birthday
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade.In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. Nietzsche died in 1900.
Oct 18, 2013
Azerbaijan Independence Day 2013
The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence from the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918 and became the first secular democratic Muslim-majority state. In 1920, the country was incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic/AzerbaijanSSR. The modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the USSR in the same year.
The government of Azerbaijan has set the development of Azerbaijan as an elite tourist destination as a top priority. It is a national strategy to make tourism a major, if not the single largest, contributor to the Azerbaijani economy. These activities are regulated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan. There are 63 countries which have visa-free score. E-visa – for a visit of foreigners of visa-required countries to the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 08:37 AM.
Nov 3, 2013
Panama Independence Day 2013
Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a transcontinental country in Central America and South America, bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The capital and largest city is Panama City, whose metropolitan area is home to nearly half the country's 4 million people.
Panama was inhabited by indigenous tribes before Spanish colonists arrived in the 16th century. It broke away from Spain in 1821 and joined the Republic of Gran Colombia, a union of Nueva Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela. After Gran Colombia dissolved in 1831, Panama and Nueva Granada eventually became the Republic of Colombia. With the backing of the United States, Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903, allowing the construction of the Panama Canal to be completed by the US Army Corps of Engineers between 1904 and 1914. The 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties agreed to transfer the canal from the United States to Panama on December 31, 1999. The surrounding territory was first returned in 1979.
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 09:31 AM.
Nov 4, 2013
Shakuntala Devi's 84th Birthday
Shakuntala Devi was an Indian mathematician, writer and mental calculator, popularly known as the "Human Computer". Devi strove to simplify numerical calculations for students. Her talent earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records. However, the certificate for the record was given posthumously on 30 July 2020, despite Devi achieving her world record on 18 June 1980 at Imperial College, London. Devi was a precocious child and she demonstrated her arithmetic abilities at the University of Mysore without any formal education.
Nov 7, 2013
Albert Camus's 100th Birthday
Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44 in 1957, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.
Camus's novels and philosophical essays are still influential. After his death, interest in Camus followed the rise [and diminution] of the New Left. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, interest in his alternative road to communism resurfaced. He is remembered for his skeptical humanism and his support for political tolerance, dialogue, and civil rights.
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 08:53 AM.
Nov 7, 2013
Ary Barroso's 110th Birthday
Ary de Resende Barros, better known as Ary Barroso, was a Brazilian composer, pianist, soccer commentator, and talent-show host on radio and TV. He was one of Brazil's most successful songwriters in the first half of the 20th century. Barroso also composed many songs for Carmen Miranda during her career.
Nov 7, 2013
Rafael Pombo's 180th Birthday
José Rafael de Pombo y Rebolledo was a Colombian poet born in Bogotá. Trained as a mathematician and an engineer in a military school, Rafael Pombo served in the army and he traveled to the United States of America as Secretary of the Legation in Washington. After completing his diplomatic assignment, he was hired by D. Appleton & Company in New York to translate into Spanish nursery rhymes from the Anglo-Saxon oral tradition. The product of this work, more than a translation, was a transformative adaptation published in two books under the titles Cuentos pintados para niños and Cuentos morales para niños formales.
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 09:04 AM.
Nov 12, 2013
Leon Štukelj's 115th Birthday
Leon Štukelj was a Yugoslav gymnast of Slovene ethnicity, Olympic gold medalist and athlete.
He is a noted figure in Slovenian sporting history. Štukelj is one of the first Slovene athletes to have risen to the very top of his sport, where he remained right from the World Championships in Ljubljana in 1922 all the way to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, at which point he finished his competitive gymnastics career.
Štukelj competed at seven major international competitions and won a total of twenty medals: eight gold, six silver, and six bronze. At the Olympic Games alone he won six medals: two gold medals [counted for Yugoslavia] in Paris in 1924, one gold medal and two bronze in Amsterdam in 1928, and a silver medal in Berlin in 1936.
Nov 15, 2013
Emil Racoviță's 145th Birthday
Emil Gheorghe Racoviță was a Romanian biologist, zoologist, speleologist, and Antarctic explorer.
Together with Grigore Antipa, he was one of the most noted promoters of natural sciences in Romania. Racoviță was the first Romanian to have gone on a scientific research expedition to the Antarctic. He was an influential professor, scholar and researcher, and served as President of the Romanian Academy from 1926 to 1929.
There are two caves based after him. One is the Emil Racoviță Cave [ro], located in Criva, Briceni; with an area of 50 hectares [120 acres], it is the largest cave in Moldova and the third longest cave in Europe. The other one is the Racoviță Cave [ro], located in Iabalcea, Caraș-Severin County.
In 2006, the first Romanian Antarctic exploration station was named the Law-Racoviță Station.
Poșta Română issued several stamps in his honor: 55 bani and 1.20 lei stamps in 1958, a 55 bani stamp in 1968, a 4 lei stamp in 1985, a 2 lei stamp in 1986, a 4.50 lei stamp in 1997, and a 1.60 lei stamp in 2007. The last one is part of a series of four stamps commemorating 100 years since the foundation by Racoviță of the first biospeleology institute in the world.
In 2018, on the 150th anniversary of Racoviță's birth, the National Bank of Romania put into circulation a commemorative silver coin with a face value of 10 lei.
Nov 18, 2013
Latvia Independence Day 2013
After centuries of German, Swedish, Polish-Lithuanian and Russian rule, which was mainly executed by the Baltic Germanaristocracy, the Republic of Latvia was established on 18 November 1918 when it broke away from the German Empire and declared independence in the aftermath of World War I. However, by the 1930s the country became increasingly autocratic after the coup in 1934 establishing an authoritarian regime under Kārlis Ulmanis. The country's de facto independence was interrupted at the outset of World War II, beginning with Latvia's forcible incorporation into the Soviet Union, followed by the invasion and occupation by Nazi Germany in 1941, and the re-occupation by the Soviets in 1944 to form the Latvian SSR for the next 45 years. The peaceful Singing Revolution started in 1987, and ended with the restoring of de facto independence on 21 August 1991. Since then, Latvia has been a democratic, unitaryparliamentary republic.
Nov 18, 2013
Morocco Independence Day 2013
Since the foundation of the first Moroccan state by Idris I in 788 AD, the country has been ruled by a series of independent dynasties, reaching its zenith in the 11th and 12th centuries under the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties, when it encompassed parts of Iberia as well as part of northwestern Africa. Beginning in the 15th century, the Portuguese Empire extended to include parts of Morocco: Portugal conquered territory along the Moroccan coast and founded settlements some of which endured into the 18th century. Morocco was the only country in northwest African to escape occupation by the Ottoman Empire. The Alaouite dynasty, which rules Morocco to this day, seized power in 1631. The country's strategic location near the mouth of the Mediterranean eventually attracted the interest of European powers: In 1912, Morocco was divided into French and Spanish protectorates, with an international zone in Tangier. It regained its independence and reunified in 1956, and has been relatively stable and prosperous [by regional standards] since then: Today, it has the fifth largest economy in all of Africa.
Nov 18, 2013
Juan Carlos Castagnino's 105th Birthday
Juan Carlos Castagnino was an Argentine painter, architect, muralist and sketch artist.
André Lhote, traveling across Europe perfecting his art and in the company of Georges Braque, Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso, among others. Castagnino returned to Argentina in 1941, where he enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires and obtained a degree in architecture. He received numerous awards in subsequent years, including the Grand Prize of Honor of the Argentine National Hall [1961], the Medal of Honor at Expo '58 [Brussels, 1958], and a special mention for his drawings at the II Mexico CityBiennale of 1962. His illustrations for a EUDEBA [University of Buenos Aires Press] edition of José Hernández's Martín Fierro [the national poem of Argentina], gained wide recognition.
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 09:30 AM.
Nov 19, 2013
Helena Zmatlíková's 90th Birthday
Helena Zmatlíková was a Czech illustrator, especially of children's books. For her works she received numerous awards. She also participated in the 1958 World Exhibition.
Nov 20, 2013
Selma Lagerlöf's 155th Birthday
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was a Swedish author and teacher. She published her first novel, Gösta Berling's Saga, at the age of 33. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she was awarded in 1909. Additionally, she was the first woman to be granted a membership in the Swedish Academy in 1914
Last edited by 9A; 04-09-2021 at 01:22 PM.
Nov 24, 2013
Teacher's Day 2013 [Turkey]
Nov 30, 2013
Saint Andrew's Day 2013
Dec 2, 2013
Carlos Merida's 122nd Birthday
Carlos Mérida was a Guatemalan artist who was one of the first to fuse European modern painting to Latin American themes, especially those related to Guatemala and Mexico. He was part of the Mexican muralism movement in subject matter but less so in style, favoring a non-figurative and later geometric style rather than a figurative, narrative style. Mérida is best known for canvas and mural work, the latter including elements such as glass and ceramic mosaic on major constructions in the 1950s and 1960s
Dec 3, 2013
Carlos Juan Finlay's 180th Birthday
Carlos Juan Finlay was a Spanish and Cuban epidemiologist recognized as a pioneer in the research of yellow fever, determining that it was transmitted through mosquitoes Aedes aegypti.
Dec 4, 2013
Gae Aulenti's 86th Birthday
Gae Aulenti was a prolific Italian architect, whose work spans industrial and exhibition design, furniture, graphics, stage design, lighting and interior design. She was well known for several large-scale museum projects, including the Musée d'Orsay in Paris with ACT Architecture, the Contemporary Art Gallery at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the restoration of Palazzo Grassi in Venice, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco with HOK. Aulenti was one of the few women designing in the postwar period in Italy, where Italian designers sought to make meaningful connections to production principles beyond Italy. This avant-garde design movement blossomed into an entirely new type of Italian architecture, one full of imaginary utopias leaving standardization to the past.
Dec 5, 2013
Fyodor Tutchev's 210th Birthday
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev was a Russian poet and diplomat. Tyutchev is one of the most memorized and quoted Russian poets. Occasional pieces, translations and political poems constitute about a half of his overall poetical output.
Dec 10, 2013
Milan Rúfus' 85th Birthday
Milan Rúfus was a Slovak poet, essayist, translator, children's writer and academic. Rúfus is the most translated Slovak poet into other languages.
Rúfus, whose works have been translated into more than 20 languages, had been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature multiple times beginning in 1991. He became the first winner of the international Crane Summit Award for poetry 2008, introduced in Bratislava on his birthday, 10 December 2008. As part of the award, his poems have been translated into Chinese.
In 1998, a minor planet 33158 Rúfus was named after him.
Dec 13, 2013
Kristian Birkeland's 146th Birthday
Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland was a Norwegian scientist. He is best remembered for his theories of atmospheric electric currents that elucidated the nature of the aurora borealis. In order to fund his research on the aurorae, he invented the electromagnetic cannon and the Birkeland–Eyde process of fixing nitrogen from the air. Birkeland was nominated for the Nobel Prize seven times.
Dec 25, 2013
Salah Jahin's 83rd Birthday
Muhammad Salah Eldin Bahgat Ahmad Helmy was a leading Egyptian poet, lyricist, playwright and cartoonist.
Dec 30, 2013
Daniil Kharms' 108th Birthday
Daniil Kharms was an early Soviet-era avant-gardist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist.
Jan 9, 2014
Simone de Beauvoir's 106th Birthday
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
Jan 9, 2014
Haim Nachman Bialik's 141st Birthday [born 1873]
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
Jan 10, 2014
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's 217th Birthday
Baroness Anna Elisabeth Franziska Adolphine Wilhelmine Louise Maria von Droste zu Hülshoff,[1] known as Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, was a 19th-century German poet, novelist, and composer of Classical music. She was also the author of the novella Die Judenbuche.
Jan 15, 2014
Sofia Kovalevskaya's 164th Birthday
Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya, born Sofya Vasilyevna Korvin-Krukovskaya , was a Russian mathematician who made noteworthy contributions to analysis, partial differential equations and mechanics. She was a pioneer for women in mathematics around the world – the first woman to obtain a doctorate [in the modern sense] in mathematics, the first woman appointed to a full professorship in northern Europe and one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. According to historian of science Ann Hibner Koblitz, Kovalevskaia was "the greatest known woman scientist before the twentieth century".
Jan 15, 2014
Josip Vandot's 130th Birthday [born 1884]
Josip Vandot was a Slovene writer and poet who wrote mainly for young readers.Vandot is best known for the creation of the character Kekec, a brave and clever shepherd boy from the highlands of his home region, the Karawanks and Julian Alps.
Jan 15, 2014
The 255th anniversary of the British Museum
Jan 20, 2014
Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2014
Jan 21, 2014
Grandmother's Day 2014
Jan 22, 2014
Grandfather's Day 2014
Jan 27, 2014
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's 200th Birthday
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was a French architect and author who restored many prominent medieval landmarks in France, including those which had been damaged or abandoned during the French Revolution. His major restoration projects included Notre-Dame de Paris, the Basilica of Saint Denis, Mont Saint-Michel, Sainte-Chapelle, and the medieval walls of the city of Carcassonne. His later writings on the relationship between form and function in architecture had a notable influence on a new generation of architects, including Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Antoni Gaudí, Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright
Jan 31, 2014
Chinese New Year 2014
Feb 7, 2014
2014 Winter Olympics
The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXII Olympic Winter Games
and commonly known as Sochi 2014, was an international winter multi-sport event that was held from 7 to 23 February 2014 in Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia. Opening rounds in certain events were held on 6 February 2014, the day before the opening ceremony.
Last edited by 9A; 04-10-2021 at 05:00 AM.
Feb 10, 2014
Raicho Hiratsuka's 128th Birthday
Hiratsuka Raichō was a writer, journalist, political activist, anarchist and pioneering Japanese feminist.
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