~~  Empty_Room

International Day of the Disappeared, stems from the work of a Costa Rican NGO to draw attention to the problem of secret imprisonment, forced disappearances and abduction in a number of Latin-American countries, which is a global problem and now a global day.  The problem is a modern one only insofar as the concealment.  Soldiers and sailors have long failed to return without certainty of the time and place of their demise because of circumstances, but generally rulers have openly tortured and killed rebels and dissidents, the inquisition took whomever they wanted openly, conquistadores and colonists of all stripes openly slaughtered all those who stood in their way or resisted. At some point the perpetrators either wished to conceal culpability, or instill population wide terror by doing these things in secret and, in Latin America it became a signature of a certain type of government.

Guatemala was one of the first countries where people were disappeared as a generalized practice of terror against a civilian population. Forced disappearances was widely practiced by the United States-backed military government of Guatemala during the 36-year Guatemalan Civil War.[84] An estimated 40,000 to 50,000 individuals were disappeared by the Guatemalan military and security forces between 1954 and 1996. The tactic of disappearance first saw widespread use in Guatemala during the mid-1960s, as government repression became widespread when the military adopted harsher counterinsurgency measures. The first documented case of forced disappearance by the government in Guatemala occurred in March 1966, when thirty Guatemalan Party of Labour associates were kidnapped, tortured and killed by the security forces; their bodies were put in sacks and dumped at sea from helicopters. This was one of the first major instances of forced disappearance in Latin American history.[85] When law students at the University of San Carlos used legal measures (such as habeas corpus petitions) to require the government to present the detainees at court, some of the students were "disappeared" in turn.[86]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_disappearance]

Soon, of course, it became old hat, in Colombia and during Operation Condor and in Pinochet's Chile, etc.  It is precisely because it is old hat that it very probably will never change, but pointing it out and reminding everybody of its existence as a global problem is perhaps a good start.

Frankenstein Day is, of course, a celebration of the birthday of Mary Shelley. There are many lessons to be learned from her book Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,. With any luck we shall all someday learn them, but I'm personally not banking on it.

Beach Day was created in part to encourage people to clean up beaches in order to protect marine mammals and sea birds. FWIW, it also protects other marine life like sea turtles and fish.  Sounds like a good idea to me.

On this day in history:

AD 70 – Titus ended the siege of Jerusalem after destroying Herod's Temple.

1791 – HMS Pandora ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef 8/29 and  sank 8/30
 

1813 – "Red Stick" Creeks stormed fort Mims, AL and killed the militia and colonists
 

1873 - Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discovered the archipelago of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Sea.

1909 – Charles Doolittle Walcott discovered fossils in the Burgess Shale

1916 – Ernest Shackleton finished rescuing his men stranded on Elephant Island in Antarctica.

1917 – Vietnamese prison guards at the Thái Nguyên penitentiary mutinied  against local French authority.

1918 – Fanni Kaplan shot Vladimir Lenin, leading to the Red Terror.

1963 – The Moscow–Washington hotline went operational

1967 – Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1981 – Iran's President and Prime Minister were assassinated in a terrorist bombing committed by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq terrorist organization

1984 – The Space Shuttle Discovery took off on its maiden flight

1992 – The Ruby Ridge standoff ended with Randy Weaver's surrender

Born this day in:

The beginning is always today.

~~       Mary Shelley

1609 – Artus Quellinus the Elder, sculptor
1627 – Ito Jinsai, philosopher
1716 – Capability Brown, landscape architect
1748 – Jacques-Louis David, painter and illustrator
1797 – Mary Shelley, novelist and playwright
1812 – Agoston Haraszthy,  founded Buena Vista Winery
1852 – Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, chemist and academic
1852 – J. Alden Weir, painter and academic
1855 – Evelyn De Morgan, painter
1871 – Ernest Rutherford, physicist and chemist
1883 – Theo van Doesburg, artist
1884 – Theodor Svedberg, chemist and physicist
1901 – Roy Wilkins, journalist and activist
1906 – Olga Taussky-Todd, mathematician
1907 – Leonor Fini, painter, illustrator, and author
1907 – Bertha Parker Pallan, archaeologist
1907 – John Mauchly, physicist and co-founder of the first computer company
1909 – Virginia Lee Burton, author and illustrator
1912 – Edward Mills Purcell, physicist,
1912 – Nancy Wake, captain and resistance fighter
1918 – Ted Williams, baseball player and manager
1919 – Maurice Hilleman, microbiologist and vaccinologist
1919 – Kitty Wells,  singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1923 – Barbara Ansell, physician and author
1924 – Kenny Dorham, singer, songwriter, and trumpet player
1928 – Johnny Mann, singer, songwriter, and conductor
1929 – Guy de Lussigny, painter and sculptor
1935 – John Phillips, singer and songwriter and guitarist
1941 – John McNally, singer and guitarist (The Searchers)
1943 – Robert Crumb, illustrator, cartoonist, and author
1944 – Molly Ivins,  journalist and author
1948 – Fred Hampton, activist and revolutionary, assassinated by cops & FBI
1953 – Horace Panter, bass player
1955 – Jamie Moses, guitarist

Died this day in:

It is human nature to instinctively rebel at obscurity or ordinariness.

~~        Taylor Caldwell

1928 – Wilhelm Wien, physicist and academic,
1940 – J. J. Thomson, physicist and mathematician
1941 – Peder Oluf Pedersen, physicist and engineer
1948 – Alice Salomon, social reformer
1963 – Guy Burgess, spy
1970 – Abraham Zapruder, amateur filmmaker
1985 – Taylor Caldwell,  author
1995 – Sterling Morrison,  guitarist and singer
2004 – Fred Lawrence Whipple, astronomer and academic

Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
International Day of the Disappeared
Frankenstein Day
Slinky Day
National Beach Day

Music goes here, iirc, well, With apologies

Kitty Wells

.

Kenny Dorham

Johnny Mann
???

John Phillips

John Mc Nally

Horace Panter

Jamie Moses

Stirling Morrison

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?