Tagged: Datebook

Do you like turtles? Then today is a cause to celebrate! The American Tortoise Rescue sponsors the 12th annual World Turtle Day today, as an observance to protect turtles, tortoises, and their habitats. 

On this day one year ago, a catastrophic EF5 multiple-vortex tornado, with a width of one mile ripped threw the southern part of Joplin, Missouri. With winds over 200 miles an hour, it raked eastward across the city and onto rural portions of Jasper and Newton counties. 

Michelangelo's Pieta is housed in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, commissioned for the French cardinal Jean de Billheres in 1498, to be his funeral monument. It's a famous masterpiece, renown for its classic beauty and naturalism, and emotionally moving scene of the body of Jesus resting in the lap of his mother Mary after the Crucifixion. It's also the only piece Michelangelo ever signed. 

Well before the Civil War, Rhode Island established the first law in North America regulating slavery. On this day, as part of the Acts and Orders of the General Court of Warwick, blacks or whites forced to serve another must be freed after 10 years upon arrival in Rhode Island. The fine: 40 pounds (money, not flesh). 

The Buttonwood Agreement took place on this day in 1792, signed by 24 stock brokers on the sidewalk of 68 Wall Street, under a buttonwood tree. Their constitution was drafted in 1817, and began the New York Stock & Exchange Board, now called the New York Stock Exchange. 

Louis "Studs" Terkel may be best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, his radio program, and for his 1985 book The Good War, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.