Kite in Flight

It is National Kite Flying Day so I led with a picture of a kite flying, specifically a Swallow Tailed Kite.  It is, of course, possible that they meant "Toy Kite Flying Day", but presumably they would've said that, non?

Kites are chordate animals of the class Aves (boids), order Accipitriformes and family Accipitridae.  As might be expected, nomenclature continues to change and evolve and there is also some conflict or confusion as to some specific types, such as the Swallow Tailed Kite pictured above, which is of either the Subfamily Elaninae or the Subfamily Pernina,  Genus Elanoides, species  forficatus.  According to da wiki, current overall status is as follows:

By 2015, genetic research showed that many of the kite genera are related to honey-buzzards, and that the tiny bat hawk (Machaerhamphus or Macheirhamphus) is actually related to the huge harpy eagles. Several of the large kites are related more closely to the Buteo hawks (buzzards) than to the group of "true" kites and sea-eagles.

Boyd[6] places the "true" milvine kites (Milvus and Haliastur) with the sea-eagles in tribe Milvini within Buteoninae. This results in the following arrangement (genera in parentheses are not generally called kites):

Elaninae: Gampsonyx, Chelictinia, Elanus.
Perninae: Chondrohierax, Leptodon, Elanoides, (Pernis), Hamirostra, Lophoictinia, (Henicopernis).
Buteoninae
Harpagini: Harpagus.
Milvini: Haliastur, Milvus, (Haliaeetus, Icthyophaga).
Buteonini: many genera, including the kites Ictinia, Rostrhamus, and Helicolestes.
Ictinia is near-basal, after the Old-World genus Butastur. Rostrhamus and Helicolestes form a clade with the black-collared hawk (Busarellus) and the crane hawk (Geranospiza).

I haven't checked that with any serious sources, like Cornell, because busy, but assume it is more or less close since birders would be all over it if it weren't.  Like all birds, they play an important role in the environments in which they may be found, which is why I am surprised that the US would assign a day to them, but perhaps it goes back to the Nixon years, like the Clean Air Act

Toy Kites, fwiw haven't always been toys, but have from time to time been used in warfare and other commercial endeavors.  The famous French War Kite comes to mind.  I recall seeing references to several instances of their use in conjunction with cameras for both military and commercial surveillance as well as for purely recreational and even scientific purposes during the past few years. On second thought, since this is a US holiday, maybe it is about toy-kites, to honor their history of use in warfare.  Ah well, whatever ...

Seventh Crusade It is the anniversary of the 7th Crusade battle of Mansurah, where the Crusaders got their ass whipped. The remnants of the Crusader forces chose retreat over surrender only to be annihilated at the Battle of Fariskur.  This was the last substantial Crusade into Egypt.  The Crusader's never recaptured and in effect ceded Jerusalem.  At least one of the fallen, an English kniggit named William II Longespée is viewed as a martyr by the English.

Yet Another Crusade, in the US  Today is the anniversary of the passage of the Dawes Act, yet another attack on and continuation of the genocidal war by the US and its colonial predecessors upon the indigenous population of North America.

 The Orangeburg Massacre  At least eight (out of a dozen) South Carolina Highway Patrol officers fired into a crowd of Black student demonstrators on the SCSU campus with carbines, shotguns and handguns killing three and wounding at least 27.

On this day in history:

1250 – Seventh Crusade Battle of Al Mansurah, Crusaders lost bigly
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1575 – Leiden University was founded

1693 – The College of William & Mary was granted a charter by King William III and Queen Mary II.

1817 – Las Heras crossed the Andes with an army to join San Martín and liberate Chile 

1865 – Delaware refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

1879 – Sandford Fleming first proposed adoption of Universal Standard Time 

1887 – The Dawes Act authorizes the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into individual allotments.

1904 – Dutch Colonial Army's Marechaussee regiment led by General G.C.E. van Daalen committed  genocide against the Acehnese and Bataks people.

1910 – The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated

1915 – The Birth of a Nation premiered in L.A.

1922 – President Harding brought the first radio set into the White House
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1950 – The Stasi, was established with powers that the Feebs envy to this day
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1963 – Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba were outlawed by the Kennedy administration.

1963 – The Iraq Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim was overthrown by the Ba'ath Party.

1968 – A Police attack on black students from South Carolina State University who were protesting racial segregation at the town's only bowling alley, left three or four dead in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

1971 – The NASDAQ stock market index opens for the first time.

1971 – South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos.

1974 – After 84 days in space, the last crew of Skylab 4 returned to Earth.
1978 – Proceedings of the United States Senate were broadcast on radio for the first time.

1993 – General Motors sued NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigged two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups could easily catch fire in certain collisions and NBC settled the lawsuit the next day.

1996 – The U.S. Congress passed the unconstitutional Communications Decency Act.

2013 – A blizzard disrupted transportation and left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada.

Born this day in:

Billboards, billboards, drink this, eat that, use all manner of things, everyone, the best, the cheapest, the purest and most satisfying of all their available counterparts. Red lights flicker on every horizon, airplanes beware; cars flash by, more lights. Workers repair the gas main. Signs, signs, lights, lights, streets, streets.

~~ Neal Cassady

120 – Vettius Valens, astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer
412 – Proclus, mathematician and philosopher
1577 – Robert Burton, melancholy priest, physician, and scholar 
1807 – Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, sculptor and zoologist
1825 – Henry Walter Bates, geographer, biologist, and explorer
1828 – Jules Verne, author, poet, and playwright
1834 – Dmitri Mendeleev, chemist and periodic academic
1850 – Kate Chopin, author
1860 – Adella Brown Bailey, politician and suffragist 
1876 – Paula Modersohn-Becker, painter
1878 – Martin Buber, philosopher and academic
1899 – Lonnie Johnson, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1903 – Greta Keller, singer and actress
1906 – Chester Carlson, physicist and lawyer who invented Xerography 
1911 – Elizabeth Bishop, poet and author
1914 – Bill Finger, author and screenwriter who co-created Batman 
1926 – Neal Cassady, beat, author, merry prankster, and poet
1932 – John Williams, pianist, composer, and conductor
1933 – Elly Ameling, soprano
1937 – Joe Raposo, pianist and composer
1940 – Ted Koppel,  journalist
1941 – Tom Rush, American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1942 – Terry Melcher,  singer, songwriter, and producer
1947 – J. Richard Gott, astronomer and academic
1948 – Dan Seals, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1955 – John Grisham, lawyer and author
1957 – Karine Chemla, historian of mathematics and sinologist
1958 – Marina Silva, environmentalist and politician
1961 – Vince Neil, singer, songwriter, and actor
1964 – Arlie Petters, mathematical physicist and academic
1971 – Mika Karppinen, drummer and songwriter
1981 – Myriam Montemayor Cruz, singer
1985 – Jeremy Davis, bass player and songwriter

Died this day in:

“variety is life; uniformity is death”

~~ peter kropotkin

1250 – William II Longespée, Crusader revered as a martyr (How sick is that?)
1709 – Giuseppe Torelli, violinist and composer
1749 – Jan van Huysum, Dutch painter
1856 – Agostino Bassi, Italian entomologist and academic
1907 – Hendrik Willem Bakhuis Roozeboom, chemist and academic
1910 – Hans Jæger, philosopher, anarchist, and activist
1921 – Peter Kropotkin,  anarchist, socialist, revolutionary, economist, sociologist, historian, zoologist, political scientist, philosopher, zoologist, geographer, and philologist
1928 – Theodor Curtius, chemist
1957 – Walther Bothe, physicist and academic
1957 – John von Neumann, mathematician and physicist
1960 – J. L. Austin, philosopher and academic
1960 – Giles Gilbert Scott, architect and engineer, designed the Red telephone box 
1975 – Robert Robinson, chemist and academic
1979 – Dennis Gabor, physicist and engineer
1990 – Del Shannon, singer, songwriter ,and guitarist
1992 – Denny Wright, British guitarist
1994 – Raymond Scott, pianist, electronic instrument inventor, and composer
1998 – Halldór Laxness, author, poet, and playwright
2004 – Julius Schwartz, comic book editor
2006 – Elton Dean, saxophonist, songwriter, and producer
2008 – Ruby Garrard Woodson, educator and cultural historian
2012 – Wando, singer and songwriter
2012 – Luis Alberto Spinetta, singer and songwriter
2014 – Nancy Holt, sculptor and painter
2017 – Peter Mansfield, physicist

Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
International Epilepsy Day
National Kite Flying Day  (Birds)
Opera Day (It must be a pretty good browser to get its own Day, no?, Seriously, it is Subject to EU rules, so it might be worth a try)
 
Clean Out Your Computer Day (No, don't take the cover off and remove stuff)
Oatmeal Monday (sadly, not "The Oatmeal" Monday - https://theoatmeal.com/)
National Kite Flying Day  (Toys)
Propose Day (propose what? Peace? Another War? A new Freeway? WTF!)

Music goes here, iirc, well, With apologies