Today is Day 335 of 2024
St. Andrew's
Day
Patron saint of Scotland.
Feast day of St Andrew the
Apostle.
Brother of Simon Peter and like
him a fisherman.
Andrew was the first disciple of Christ.
People used to
sign documents with an X if they couldn't sign their name.
Then they
would kiss the X and promise by St Andrew, whose cross the X resembled,
to abide by their oath.
Over the years, an X on a letter
came to mean a kiss.
The Christian ecclesiastical year begins on Advent Sunday which
is always the nearest Sunday to St Andrew's day, whether before or
after.
1667
Author Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's
Travels) born in Dublin, Ireland.
1825
Painter William-
Adolphe Bouguereau born in La Rochelle, France.
1835
Author Mark
Twain, the pen name of Samuel L. Clemens, (
Huckleberry Finn), born in Florida, Missouri.
1874
British
statesman Winston
Churchill born in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England.
1907
Historian Jacques Barzun
born in Créteil, France.
1909
Blues singer
and guitarist Robert Nighthawk
born in Helena, Arkansas.
1912
Film
director/writer, photographer Gordon Parks born in
Fort Scott, Kansas.
1915
Blues
performer Brownie
McGhee born in Knoxville, Tennesse.
1924
Shirley Chisholm
born in Brooklyn, New York.
She was the first African American woman
elected to the United States Congress.
The first major-party black
candidate for President of the United States.
The first woman to run
for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
1929
TV's Dick Clark born in
Mount Vernon, New York.
1930
Watergate
bungular, lawyer and radio host G. Gordon Liddy
born in Brooklyn, New York.
1936
Yippie
activist Abbie
Hoffman born in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The Crystal Palace, originally built to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, is destroyed by fire in Hyde park, London.
1937
Director Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) born in
South Shields, Tyne and Wear, England.
1940
Lucille Ball marries
Desi Arnaz in
Greenwich, Connecticut.
1943
Film director
Terrence
Malick (Badlands) born in
Ottawa, Illinois.
1951
Poet Elizabeth Bishop arrives in Rio aboard a freighter out of New York.
She planned on staying two-weeks and ended up staying 16 years.
1979
The Wall, a rock opera
and concept album by Pink Floyd is
released.
1982
Michael Jackson
releases his sixth solo album -
Thriller.