Category Archives: Humanist Calendar

Calendar Project: August 2015

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August 2015 BAH Short List

US Cavalry takes charge of Yellowstone Park protecting it for two generations from commercialization.

In August 1886, after the downfall of Superintendent Carpenter from his criminal attempt to profit off of park lands, Sheridan ordered a company of the First Cavalry to take charge of the park.  They had the means to enforce the rules and regulations of the park, and they ably administered Yellowstone for the next thirty-two years.

Martin Luther King Jr. gave the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in 1963.

“I Have a Dream” is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, the speech was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.[1] (from wikipedia)

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream

Other calendars

Full BAH Research

August

Name & Event Reason important to Secular Humanism Calendar Month
Sheridan protecting Yellowstone. Yellowstone[edit] The protection of the Yellowstone area was Sheridan’s personal crusade. He authorized Lieutenant Gustavus Doane to escort the Washburn Expedition in 1870 and for Captain John W. Barlow to escort the Hayden Expedition in 1871. Barlow named Mount Sheridan, a peak overlooking Heart Lake in Yellowstone, for the general in 1871.[50] As early as 1875, Sheridan promoted military control of the area to prevent the destruction of natural formations and wildlife.[51]   In 1882, the Department of the Interior granted rights to the Yellowstone Park Improvement Company to develop 4,000 acres (1620 hectares) in the park. Their plan was to build a railroad into the park and sell the land to developers. Sheridan personally organized opposition to the plan and lobbied Congress for protection of the park; including expansion, military control, reducing the development to 10 acres (4 hectares), and prohibiting leases near park attractions. In addition, he arranged an expedition to the park for President Chester A. Arthur and other influential men.[52] His lobbying soon paid off. A rider was added to the Sundry Civil Bill of 1883, giving Sheridan and his supporters almost everything for which they had asked. In 1886, after a string of ineffectual and sometimes criminal superintendents, Sheridan ordered the 1st U.S. Cavalry into the park. The military operated the park until the National Park Service took it over in 1916.[51]   President Ulysses S. Grant, on March 1, 1872, signed into law a bill making an area mostly in the Northwest corner of Wyoming Territory larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined into this nation’s first national park.   Sheridan is mentioned favorably in The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, Episode I, for his work saving Yellowstone National Park:[53]   Grinnell’s fight against the railroad interests was soon joined by an unlikely ally—General Philip Sheridan, a cavalry hero of the Civil War and celebrated Indian fighter, who was now commander of the U.S. Army for much of the West. Sheridan even suggested that Yellowstone should be expanded to provide greater protection for the elk and buffalo. The idea was immediately opposed by Western politicians who believed that Yellowstone was already too big.   In Washington, Grinnell, Sheridan and Missouri Senator George Vest took on the railroad lobby directly, calling for an investigation into the park contracts, proposing the expansion of Yellowstone, and trying to write park regulations concerning hunting into law. While the bill to expand Yellowstone failed, Congress did appropriate $40,000 for its maintenance; however, funds to maintain the park were stripped away in August 1886. It seemed Yellowstone would have to fend for itself.   Sheridan’s headstone at Arlington National Cemetery. The inscription faces Washington, D.C. Coming to the rescue, Sheridan dispatched Troop M of the First United States Cavalry to take control of Yellowstone. —Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea August, Cavalry take over park management   Sheridan’s plan generally succeeded, and Yellowstone became a national park in fact.  After one failed attempt to pass Sheridan’s plan, Vest pushed the bill through as a rider on the Sundry Civil Appropriations Bill signed March 3, 1883 64 (see  Sundry Civil Bill for 1883 ).  The final version of the act added no more land to Yellowstone, but it called for everything else that Sheridan wanted.  Furthermore, Chester A. Arthur became the first President to visit the park in the summer of 1883.  Arthur and his party of dignitaries–cabinet members, senators, governors, and others–left Yellowstone impressed enough that they did not stand in the way of the execution of the law. 65 In August 1886, after the downfall of Superintendent Carpenter from his criminal attempt to profit off of park lands, Sheridan ordered a company of the First Cavalry to take charge of the park.  They had the means to enforce the rules and regulations of the park, and they ably administered Yellowstone for the next thirty-two years. 66 Sheridan’s ironic mission to save Yellowstone’s wildlife and protect it from the dominating interests of private enterprise succeeded.
Coast Guard Day Coast Guard Day (Established in 1790) August 4, 1790
  Thomas Edison received a patent for the mimeograph machine in 1876. August 8, 1876
  Transcontinental Railroad completed, 1869. August 15, 1869
Mosquito Day   August 20
  National Park Service Established 1916. 25 August 1916
American Civil Rights Movement Dream DayMartin Luther King Jr. gave the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in 1963. 28 August, 1963
  Thurgood Marshall took a seat on the Supreme Court, 1967. 30 August 1967

UN Proclomations & Observances 2015 10 October

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UN Proclomations & Observances 2015 11 November

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UN Proclomations & Observances 2015 12 December

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UN Proclomations & Observances 2015 02 February3

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Calendar Project: Overview

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Some general reminders about the project. First, we decided to limit the nominees this time to people who have passed on.  This was for two reasons, one is to limit the scope.  The other was to limit our likelihood of copyright issues over images used.  I would add, that by delving into history, we show the depth and breathe of the movement and how critical humanists have been to getting us to where we are today. Second, what you are seeing are names and people nominated by other BAH members.  These are the names or events in the actual post. Third, I have focused on events and achievements for picking the months.  There are a lot of ways we can go and a lot of different calendars we can do.  I just personally think that it is what you do that counts and by focusing on events and not something random like a birthday. Finally, there are a lot of calendars we can do as we move this project forward.  The focus right now is to be able to tell a story for each month.  I am willing to listen to other nominees for any month, but we need a story with the nominees at this point.  So if you have a nominee, please provide information about the nominee or event or achievement and why it is relevant to the month.  

Calendar Project: February 2015

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Here are the suggestions for January.  We are trying to avoid birthdays and focus an important event.

February 2015 – BAH Suggestions

Publication of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony completed in February 1824.

The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (sometimes known simply as “the Choral”), is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best-known works of the repertoire of classical music.[1] Among critics, it is almost universally considered to be among Beethoven’s greatest works, and is considered by some to be the greatest piece of music ever written.

  • Publication of article identifying DNA as the hereditary material of biology. Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty

In their paper “Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types: Induction of Transformation by a Deoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III”, published in the February 1944 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Avery and his colleagues suggest that DNA, rather than protein as widely believed at the time, may be the hereditary material of bacteria, and could be analogous to genes and/or viruses in higher organisms.[1][2] Please comment below if you prefer one of these or suggest someone or an event for January.  Below are some places to look. Anti-Defamation League ADL 2015 02 February Freedom from Religion Foundation FFRF Calendar 02 United Nations Observations UN Proclomations & Observances 2015 02 February3

February Full BAH Research Listing

Name & Event Reason important to Secular Humanism Calendar Month
Samuel Clements “Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” ― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer   The main premise behind Huckleberry Finn is the young boy’s belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong. Hemingway also wrote in the same essay: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”[64]   February Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or, in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885
Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty The Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment was an experimental demonstration, reported in 1944 by Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty, that DNA is the substance that causes bacterial transformation, in an era when it had been widely believed that it was proteins that served the function of carrying genetic information (with the very word protein itself coined to indicate a belief that its function was primary). It was the culmination of research in the 1930s and early 1940s at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research to purify and characterize the “transforming principle” responsible for the transformation phenomenon first described in Griffith’s experiment of 1928: killed Streptococcus pneumoniae of the virulent strain type III-S, when injected along with living but non-virulent type II-R pneumococci, resulted in a deadly infection of type III-S pneumococci.   In their paper “Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types: Induction of Transformation by a Deoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III“, published in the February 1944 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Avery and his colleagues suggest that DNA, rather than protein as widely believed at the time, may be the hereditary material of bacteria, and could be analogous to genes and/or viruses in higher organisms.[1][2] February 1944   Publication date
Beethoven Composition of Ninth Symphony completed [edit] The Philharmonic Society of London originally commissioned the symphony in 1817.[5] The main composition work was done between autumn 1822 and the completion of the autograph in February 1824.[6] The symphony emerged from other pieces by Beethoven that, while completed works in their own right, are also in some sense sketches for the future symphony. The Choral Fantasy Opus. 80 (1808), basically a piano concerto movement, brings in a chorus and vocal soloists near the end to form the climax. As in the Ninth Symphony, the vocal forces sing a theme first played instrumentally, and this theme is highly reminiscent of the corresponding theme in the Ninth Symphony (for a detailed comparison, see Choral Fantasy). Going further back, an earlier version of the Choral Fantasy theme is found in the song “Gegenliebe” (“Returned Love”), for piano and high voice, which dates from before 1795.[7] According to Robert W. Gutman, Mozart’s K. 222 Offertory in D minor, “Misericordias Domini”, written in 1775, contains a melody that foreshadows “Ode to Joy”.[8] Premiere[edit] Although his major works had primarily been premiered in Vienna, Beethoven was eager to have his latest composition performed in Berlin as soon as possible after finishing it, since he thought that musical taste in Vienna had become dominated by Italian composers such as Rossini.[9] When his friends and financiers heard this, they urged him to premiere the symphony in Vienna in the form of a petition signed by a number of prominent Viennese music patrons and performers.[9] Beethoven was flattered by the adoration of Vienna, so the Ninth Symphony was premiered on 7 May 1824 in the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna, along with the overture The Consecration of the House (Die Weihe des Hauses) and three parts of the Missa solemnis (the Kyrie, Credo, and the Agnus Dei).   February 1824 finished   Premiered in May    
Upton Sinclair The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelistUpton Sinclair (1878–1968).[1] Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the lives ofimmigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Many readers were most concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper. The book depicts working class poverty, the absence of social programs, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.”[2] Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business.[3] He first published the novel in serial form in 1905 in the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, between February 25, 1905, and November 4, 1905. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. It was published as a book on 26 February 1906 by Doubleday and in a subscribers’ edition.[4] A film version of the novel was made in 1914, but it has since become lost.   February   Publication of the Jungle was in the socialist newspaper, Appeal to Reason, between February 25, 1905, and November 4, 1905.

 

ADL 2015 09 September

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ADL 2015 10 October

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ADL 2015 11 November

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