On June 19

On this day in ...
... 1910 (100 years ago today), the 1st Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington. Among those credited with its establishment (prior post) is a then-28-year-old woman, Sonora Smart Dodd (left), whose father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, had cared for her and her 5 younger brothers after their mother, Ellen Cheek Smart, died in 1898. The hearing in 1909 of a sermon about Mother's Day inspired Dodd's work toward the honoring of fathers as well. "In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the third Sunday of June as Father's Day. In 1972, President Nixon established a permanent national observance of Father's Day to be held on the 3rd Sunday of June each year." This year -- not only in the United States, but also in other countries, from Argentina to the United Kingdom -- Father's Day is tomorrow. (It's today in Bulgaria.)

(Prior June 19 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 30

On this day in ...
...1972, the United States ended "nearly two weeks of heavy bombing" of North Vietnam by order of President Richard M. Nixon. The White House announced that National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger would go back to Paris to resume peace talks with Vietnamese diplomats. The Paris Peace Accords would be formally signed less than a month later, on January 27, 1973, at the ceremony depicted above right (credit).

(Prior December 30 posts are here and here.)

On July 24

On this day in ...
1959 (50 years ago today), during a visit to an American exhibition in the Soviet Union, U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon (near left) got into a tense discussion with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (far left) about the merits of communism versus capitalism; their dispute became known as the "kitchen debate." (photo credit) The exhibition, which mirrored a Soviet exhibit that had taken place in the United States earlier that year, was intended to show Soviets facets of American life, such as homes, fashions, and cars. The discussion became heated after the 2 leaders were shown into the American model kitchen and Nixon said that even the washing machines, toasters, and juicers on display were common purchases American workers could afford, implying that the new gadgets were not readily available in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev replied,

'We have all these things in our new flats."

1920, Bella Abzug (right), American feminist, lawyer and politician, was born in the Bronx, New York. In the 1970s, Abzug served as the representative for the West Side of Manhattan for 3 Congressional terms. On her 1st day as a representative she called for an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam. She fought for national health insurance, money for day care centers, and housing. She cosponsored the Equal Rights Amendment, and she was one of the 1st members of Congress to call for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon. In the words of a colleague,

'She was one of the most exciting, enlightened legislators that ever served in the Congress.'

After leaving the House in January 1977, Abzug worked for women's rights for another 20 years, founding an international women's group that worked on environmental issues. She died on March 31, 1998. (photo credit)

(Prior July 24 posts are here and here.)

On December 28

On this day in ...

... 1973 (35 years ago today), U.S. President Richard M. Nixon signed into law the Endangered Species Act. It lists 2 categories of protected species, "threatened" and "endangered," and empowered 2 agencies, the Fish and Wildlife Service (logo at right) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service (NOAA), to implement protections. "In July of 2008, there were a total of 1,238 threatened or endangered animals protected under the act; and a total of 747 threatened or endangered plants protected under the act."

... 1522, a daughter, Margaret, was born out of wedlock to Charles V, then the Holy Roman Emperor, and Johanna Maria von der Gheest, a servant of a Flemish nobleman. Raised by aunts who were governors of the Netherlands, Margaret (left) -- known as Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands -- governed the Netherlands in the name of her brother until her resignation in 1567. The Roman Catholic regent's rule was marked by erratic treatment of heretics.

On October 31

On this day in ...

... 1883 (125 years ago today), Marie Laurencin was born in Paris. Her mother sent the teenaged Marie to Sèvres, home of a famed porcelain-painting factory. When she returned to Paris she entered an art academy and became acquainted with artists who would form the Cubist School, among them Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Guillaume Apollinaire. Her own paintings featured "mainly lyrical motifs like graceful, dreamy young girls in pastel coloring and soft shading," a "color-sensitive inventiveness" that "leads to a variation of repetitions of form and motifs." "During World War I Laurencin took refuge in Spain where, feeling painfully exiled, she produced few works. " In addition to her paintings, Laurencin is known for designing sets for Serge Diaghilev's ballets and for illustrating a 1930 edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. She died in Paris in 1956. (credit for photo of Laurencin; credit for her 1923 painting, "Portrait of Mademoiselle Chanel")

... 1968 (40 years ago today), in a televised speech dubbed an "October Surprise," U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he was halting "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective the next day. Five days later, Johnson's preferred successor, his Vice President Hubert Humphrey, lost the Presidential election to Richard M. Nixon (right), the Republican who had served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Vice President in the previous decade. The Vietnam War continued for another 7 years.

On April 28

On this day in ...
... 1932, researchers announced the discovery of the 1st effective vaccine for yellow fever, a sometimes fatal disease apparently so named because the skin of some of its victims becomes jaundiced. Discoverer Max Theiler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1951. Carried by mosquito from human to human(virus at left), "yellow fever has increased in the last two decades of the 20th century and is again a serious public health issue."
... 1970, the United States notified Cambodian officials of the decision of President Richard M. Nixon "to approve and assist the South Vietnamese sweep into Cambodia, with the objectives of saving the Government of Premier Lon Nol and destroying Communist hideouts in Cambodian territory," the New York Times reported. U.S. involvement in Cambodia ended, as we've posted, with defeat in the same month 5 years later. After U.S. withdrawal Lon Nol (right), who'd overthrown Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk in March 1970, went into exile in Hawaii.

On this day

On February 28, ...
... 1972, the week-long visit of Richard M. Nixon to the People's Republic of China, the 1st ever by a U.S. President, ended with the signing of the Shanghai Communiqué. In it Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai set the groundwork for deeper relations between the 2 countries. During his visit the President also had met Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-Tung; for a detailed account of the visit and all that preceded it, check out Nixon and Mao (2007) by Oxford historian Margaret MacMillan.
... 1971, the all-male electorate in Liechtenstein voted against women's suffrage in the principality, which is situated between Switzerland and Austria. The vote was 1,867 to 1,817. Women would win the right to vote in 1984. (map credit)

On January 17, ...

... 1997, in an "unexpected" move, Ireland's High Court "granted the first divorce in modern Irish history." The decree was issued more than a month before the date that statutes enabling divorce -- enacted pursuant to a constitutional change that had been "narrowly approved" 14 months earlier by "voters in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country" -- were to have taken effect.
... 1996, "the black Congresswoman and scholar who stirred the nation with her Churchillian denunciations of the Watergate abuses of President Richard M. Nixon," Barbara Jordan, died in Texas from pneumonia brought on as a complication of leukemia. Jordan (left) had been born 59 years earlier in Houston, the daughter of a minister and a domestic worker. She attended segregated public schools and an all-black university before earning her law degree from Boston University, then returning home to Texas to set up a law practice. In the course of her career Jordan: was elected, in 1966, Texas' 1st African American state Senator, then, later, the 1st woman and 1st African American Texan elected to Congress; and, as shown in this video clip below, became in 1976 the 1st African American woman to give a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Upon her death the New York Times called Jordan "one of American politics' pioneer black women." (photo credit)

On November 7, ...

... 1920, famine broke out in China. According to a report of the period, the catastrophe claimed 500,000 or more lives in a two-year period and displaced many, many other Chinese children, women, and men.
... 1973, the War Powers Resolution, legislation mandating a congressional role in U.S. military actions, became U.S. law after Congress overrode Richard M. Nixon's veto of 2 weeks earlier. Section 3 provided:

The President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situation where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and after every such introduction shall consult regularly with the Congress until United States Armed Forces are no longer engaged in hostilities or have been removed from such situations.

On May 31, ...

... 1933, Madeleine Bordallo, a Democrat, who serves as Guam’s delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, was born in Graceville, Minnesota.
... 1969, "[s]ometime between eight at night and three the next morning," newlyweds Yoko Ono and John Lennon, "along side a roomful of people including Timothy Leary, Toronto Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, musician Petula Clark, and members of the Canadian Radha Krishna Temple," recorded "Give Peace a Chance," an instant favorite of anti-Vietnam War protesters. The session (right) brought to an end their 8-day bed-in at Montréal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel, footage of which is available here.
... 1973, in action that bears special relevance in light of current congressional debate on constraining U.S. President George W. Bush's conduct of the Iraq War, by amendment to a defense appropriations bill, the Senate defied President Richard M. Nixon and voted to stop funding U.S. bombing of Cambodia, which had begun secretly 3 years earlier. The vote followed similar House of Representatives action earlier in the month. Nixon acceded to pressure and stopped the bombing 3 months later.