Saturday 26 October 2024 Calendar with holidays, observances and special days

Make a Difference Day

British police officers carry a teddy bear in their cars to help comfort kids who are scared after an accident. That’s really awesome! If you’re a police officer in India..→

Holidays and observances

• Accession Day (Jammu and Kashmir, India)
• Angam Day (Nauru)
• Armed Forces Day in Benin
• Day of Mourning in Libya (in memory of the victims of Italian colonization)
• Engineer's Day in Tunisia
• Fête de la Gastronomie in Mainz
• International Burn Prevention Day
• Intersex Awareness Day
• National Day against Acquired Brain Injury in Spain
• National Day in Austria (celebrates the anniversary of the Declaration of Neutrality in 1955)
• National Milk Day in Bolivia
• National Mincemeat Day and National Pumpkin Day in USA

Events

• In 2017 NASA reports an object, named A/2017 U1, that is believed to be the first known interstellar asteroid or comet to pass through our Solar System.
• In 2017 a study by the University of Melbourne finds that sea levels could rise 1.3m globally unless coal power ends by 2050.
• 2001 – The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.
• 1970 – Muhammad Ali faces off against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta, Georgia for the first time after Ali's three-year hiatus from evading to be drafted in the Vietnam War.
• 1958 – Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from New York City to Paris, France.
• 1944 – World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends with an overwhelming American victory.
• 1943 – World War II: First flight of the Dornier Do 335 "Pfeil".
• 1936 – The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.
• 1912 – First Balkan War: The Ottoman occupied city of Thessaloniki, is liberated and unified with Greece on the feast day of its patron saint Demetrius. On the same day, Serbian troops captured Skopje.
• 1813 – War of 1812: A combined force of British regulars, Canadian militia, and Mohawks defeat the Americans in the Battle of the Chateauguay.
• 1776 – Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
• 1775 – King George III of Great Britain goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorizes a military response to quell the American Revolution.
• 1774 – The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia.
• 1377 – Tvrtko I is crowned the first king of Bosnia.

Births

• 1994 – Allie DeBerry, American model and actress. Farm as Paisley Houndstooth, Shake It Up as Destiny, Lazer Team as Mindy and True Jackson, VP as Cammy.
• 1989 – Dre Kirkpatrick, American football player. D'Andre Lawan "Dre" Kirkpatrick (born October 26, 1989) is an American football cornerback for the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League (NFL).
• 1987 – Shawn Lauvao, American football player. He played college football at Arizona State.
• 1986 – Schoolboy Q, German-American rapper. Quincy Matthew Hanley (born October 26, 1986), better known by his stage name ScHoolboy Q, is an American rapper and songwriter based in South Central Los Angeles, California.
• 1985 – Monta Ellis, American basketball player. Monta Ellis (/ˈmɒnteɪ/ MON-tay; born October 26, 1985) is an American former professional basketball player who played twelve seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
• 1984 – Amanda Overmyer, American singer-songwriter, was the eleventh place finalist on the seventh season of American Idol.
• 1984 – Sasha Cohen, American figure skater. Champion.
• 1978 – CM Punk, American wrestler, mixed martial artist, and actor. Phillip Jack Brooks (born October 26, 1978), better known by the ring name CM Punk, is an American mixed martial artist and retired professional wrestler.
• 1978 – Dave Zastudil, American football player. He played college football at Ohio, and was drafted in the fourth round of the 2002 NFL Draft by the Baltimore Ravens.
• 1977 – Jon Heder, American actor and producer. He has also acted in the films The Benchwarmers, School for Scoundrels, Blades of Glory, Mama's Boy, When in Rome, and Walt Before Mickey as Roy Disney, and provided voice talents in the animated films Monster House, Surf's Up and Pinocchio, as well as the Napoleon Dynamite animated series.
• 1977 – Marisha Pessl, American author. Marisha Pessl (born c. 1977/1978) is an American writer known for her novels Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Night Film, and Neverworld Wake.
• 1973 – Seth MacFarlane, American voice actor, singer, director, producer, and screenwriter. Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (/məkˈfɑːrlɪn/; born October 26, 1973) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, comedian, and singer.
• 1971 – Anthony Rapp, American actor and singer. Anthony Deane Rapp (born October 26, 1971) is an American actor and singer known for originating the role of Mark Cohen in the Broadway production of Rent.
• 1971 – Jim Butcher, American author. He wrote the contemporary fantasy The Dresden Files, Codex Alera and Cinder Spires book series.
• 1970 – Dian Bachar, American actor, director, and screenwriter. Dian Bachar (/ˈdiːən bəˈhɑːr/; born October 26, 1970 in Denver, Colorado) is an American actor most notable for his roles in various films by or starring his friends Trey Parker and Matt Stone, such as Cannibal! The Musical (George Noon), Orgazmo (Ben Chapleski) and his most famous role as Kenny "Squeak" Scolari in 1998's BASEketball, as well as making the occasional appearance on South Park.
• 1967 – Keith Urban, New Zealand-American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He found work as a session guitarist before starting a band known as The Ranch, which recorded one studio album on Capitol Nashville and charted two singles on the US Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
• 1966 – Jeanne Zelasko, American journalist and sportscaster. Jeanne Zelasko (born October 26, 1966) is a U.S. journalist and sportscaster who is currently working for "The Beast" AM980 KFWB and Fox Sports West in Los Angeles County, California.
• 1963 – Natalie Merchant, American singer-songwriter and pianist. She remained with the group for their first seven albums and left it to begin her solo career in 1993.
• 1963 – Ted Demme, American actor, director, and producer (d. 2002), was an American director, producer, and actor.
• 1962 – Jack Morelli, American comic book professional and author. Jack Morelli (born October 26, 1962) is a comic book letterer and author, also credited under the name John Morelli.
• 1961 – Dylan McDermott, American actor. He is best known for his role as lawyer and law firm head Bobby Donnell on the legal drama series The Practice, which earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama and a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
• 1961 – Gerald Malloy, American lawyer and politician. Oct. 26, 1961) is a Democratic member of the South Carolina Senate, representing the 29th District since 2002.
• 1959 – Paul Farmer, American anthropologist and physician. He is co-founder and chief strategist of Partners in Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty.
• 1957 – Bob Golic, American football player and radio host. Robert Perry Golic (born October 26, 1957) is an American former college and professional football player, television actor, radio personality and sports commentator.
• 1956 – Rita Wilson, American actress and producer. Wilson has performed on Broadway, and has produced several films, including My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002).
• 1954 – D. W. Moffett, American actor and director. Donald Warren Moffett (born October 26, 1954) is an American actor known for the recurring role of Joe McCoy on the NBC series Friday Night Lights, as Dean Winston on NBC/The WB series For Your Love, as John Kennish on the ABC Family series Switched at Birth and as Elliott in the TVLand sitcom Happily Divorced.
• 1953 – Joe Meriweather, American basketball player and coach (d. 2013). Meriweather (born October 26, 1953 – October 13, 2013) was an American professional basketball player.
• 1953 – Keith Strickland, American guitarist and songwriter. He was born in Athens, Georgia.
• 1952 – Bobby Bandiera, American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Bandiera and his band (The Bobby Bandiera Band) have backed Bruce Springsteen at benefit concerts.
• 1952 – David Was, American singer-songwriter and producer. David Jay Weiss, known as David Was, is an American musician.
• 1951 – Bootsy Collins, American singer-songwriter and bass player. William Earl "Bootsy" Collins (born October 26, 1951) is an American musician and singer-songwriter.
• 1951 – Julian Schnabel, American painter, director, and screenwriter. Schnabel directed Before Night Falls, which became Javier Bardem's breakthrough Academy Award-nominated role, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was nominated for four Academy Awards.
• 1951 – Tommy Mars, American keyboard player. Tommy Mars (born Thomas Mariano on October 26, 1951) is an American keyboard player known for his work with Frank Zappa.
• 1948 – Toby Harrah, American baseball player and coach. Harrah played for the Texas Rangers both before (Washington Senators era) and after their 1971 franchise shift.
• 1947 – Hillary Clinton, American lawyer and politician, 67th United States Secretary of State & 44th First Lady of the United States. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (née Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, writer, and public speaker.
• 1946 – Pat Sajak, American journalist, actor, and game show host. Pat Sajak (/ˈseɪdʒæk/ SAY-jak, born Patrick Leonard Sajdak; October 26, 1946) is an American television personality, former weatherman, and talk show host, best known as the host of the American television game show Wheel of Fortune.
• 1945 – Jaclyn Smith, American actress and producer. She reprised the role with cameo appearances in the films Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) and Charlie's Angels (2019).
• 1945 – Nancy Davis Griffeth, American computer scientist and academic. In 2014, she is a professor at Lehman College of The City University of New York and is modelling biological systems in computational biology.
• 1945 – Pat Conroy, American author (d. 2016), was an American author who wrote several acclaimed novels and memoirs; his books The Water is Wide, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, were made into films, the latter 2 being Oscar nominated. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature.
• 1941 – Steven Kellogg, American author and illustrator. Steven Castle Kellogg (born October 26, 1941 in Norwalk, Connecticut) is an American author and illustrator who has created more than 90 children's books.
• 1936 – Shelley Morrison, American actress, was an American theater and television actress, who was best known for her role as maid Rosario Salazar in the NBC comedy Will & Grace, which she played from 1999 to 2006. She was also a regular performer on the sitcom The Flying Nun, playing Sister Sixto, a nun known mostly for mangling the English language, and she had a recurring role in the soap opera General Hospital in 1982.
• 1935 – Gloria Conyers Hewitt, American mathematician and academic. Her main research interests were in Group Theory and Abstract Algebra.
• 1935 – Mike Gray, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2013), was an American writer, screenwriter, cinematographer, film producer and director.
• 1934 – Hot Rod Hundley, American basketball player and sportscaster (d. 2015), was an American professional basketball player and television broadcaster. Hundley was the number 1 pick of the 1957 NBA draft by the Cincinnati Royals out of West Virginia University.
• 1933 – Andrew P. O'Rourke, American judge and politician (d. 2013), was a judge and politician from New York State. A Republican, he served as the County Executive of Westchester County, New York from 1982 to 1997.
• 1927 – Warne Marsh, American saxophonist (Supersax) (d. 1987), was an American tenor saxophonist. Born in Los Angeles, his playing first came to prominence in the 1950s as a protégé of pianist Lennie Tristano and earned attention in the 1970s as a member of Supersax.
• 1922 – Madelyn Dunham, American grandmother of Barack Obama (d. 2008), was the American maternal grandmother of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. She and her husband Stanley Armour Dunham raised Obama from age ten in their Honolulu, Hawaii, apartment, where on November 2, 2008, she died two days before her grandson was elected President.
• 1921 – Joe Fulks, American basketball player (d. 1976), was an American professional basketball player, sometimes called "the first of the high-scoring forwards". He was posthumously enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978.
• 1920 – Sarah Lee Lippincott, American astronomer and academic. She was professor emerita of astronomy at Swarthmore College and director emerita of the college's Sproul Observatory.
• 1919 – Edward Brooke, American captain and politician, 47th Massachusetts Attorney General (d. 2015), was an American Republican politician. In 1966, he became the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate.
• 1919 – Frank Bourgholtzer, American journalist (d. 2010), was an American journalist and television correspondent.
• 1916 – Boyd Wagner, American colonel and pilot (d. 1942), was an American aviator and the first United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) fighter ace of World War II.
• 1915 – Ray Crawford, American racing driver, fighter ace, test pilot, and businessman (d. 1996), was an American fighter ace, test pilot, race-car driver and businessman.
• 1914 – Jackie Coogan, American actor and director (d. 1984), was an American actor and comedian who began his movie career as a child actor in silent films.
• 1913 – Charlie Barnet, American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader (d. 1991), was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader.
• 1912 – Don Siegel, American director and producer (d. 1991), was an American film director and producer. His name variously appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel.
• 1911 – Mahalia Jackson, American singer (d. 1972), was an American gospel singer. Possessing a contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel".
• 1911 – Sid Gillman, American football player and coach (d. 2003), was an American football player, coach and executive. Gillman's insistence on stretching the football field by throwing deep downfield passes, instead of short passes to running backs or wide receivers at the sides of the line of scrimmage, was instrumental in making football into the modern game that it is today.
• 1910 – John Krol, American cardinal (d. 1996), was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, having previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland (1953–61).
• 1902 – Henrietta Hill Swope, American astronomer and academic (d. 1980), was an American astronomer who studied variable stars. In particular, she measured the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid stars, which are bright variable stars whose periods of variability relate directly to their intrinsic luminosities.
• 1902 – Jack Sharkey, American boxer and referee (d. 1994), was an American world heavyweight boxing champion.
• 1899 – Judy Johnson, American baseball player and coach (d. 1989), was an American professional third baseman and manager whose career in Negro league baseball spanned 17 seasons, from 1921 to 1937. Slight of build, Johnson never developed as a power threat but achieved his greatest success as a contact hitter and an intuitive defenseman.
• 1884 – William Hogenson, American sprinter (d. 1965). Hogenson (October 26, 1884 – October 14, 1965) was an American athlete and sprinter, who competed in the early twentieth century.
• 1883 – Napoleon Hill, American philosopher and author (d. 1970), was an American self-help author. He is known best for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937) which is among the 10 best selling self-help books of all time.
• 1883 – Paul Pilgrim, American runner (d. 1958). He competed at the 1904, 1906 and 1908 Olympics and won three gold medals, in 1904 and 1906.
• 1874 – Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, American philanthropist, founded the Museum of Modern Art (d. 1948), was an American socialite and philanthropist. Through her marriage to financier and philanthropist John D.
• 1865 – Benjamin Guggenheim, American businessman (d. 1912). He died aboard RMS Titanic when the ship sank in the North Atlantic Ocean.
• 1860 – Frank Eaton, American marshal and author (d. 1958), was a scout, Indian fighter, and cowboy.
• 1854 – C. W. Post, American businessman, founded Post Foods (d. 1914). W." Post (October 26, 1854 – May 9, 1914) was an American inventor, breakfast cereal and foods manufacturer and a pioneer in the prepared-food industry.
• 1803 – Joseph Hansom, English architect and publisher, designed Birmingham Town Hall (d. 1882), was a prolific English architect working principally in the Gothic Revival style. He invented the Hansom cab and founded the eminent architectural journal, The Builder, in 1843.
• 1794 – Konstantin Thon, Russian architect, designed the Grand Kremlin Palace and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (d. 1881), was an official architect of Imperial Russia during the reign of Nicholas I. His major works include the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the Grand Kremlin Palace and the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow.

Deaths

• 2015 – Leo Kadanoff, American physicist and academic (b. 1937)
• 2015 – Willis Carto, American activist and theorist (b. 1926)
• 2014 – Gordy Soltau, American football player and sportscaster (b. 1925)
• 2013 – Doug Ireland, American journalist and activist (b. 1946)
• 2012 – Alan Kirschenbaum, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1961)
• 2012 – John M. Johansen American architect, designed the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre (b. 1916)
• 2010 – Glen Little, American clown (b. 1925)
• 2009 – George Naʻope, American singer and dancer (b. 1928)
• 2009 – Teel Bivins, American lawyer and politician, 18th United States Ambassador to Sweden (b. 1947)
• 2009 – Troy Smith, American businessman, founded Sonic Drive-In (b. 1922)
• 2008 – Delmar Watson, American actor and photographer (b. 1926)
• 2008 – Tony Hillerman, American journalist, author, and educator (b. 1925)
• 2007 – Arthur Kornberg, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize (b. 1918)
• 2007 – Friedman Paul Erhardt, German-American chef and television host (b. 1943)
• 2006 – Tillman Franks, American bassist and songwriter (b. 1920)
• 2005 – Keith Parkinson, American illustrator (b. 1958)
• 1999 – Eknath Easwaran, Indian-American author and educator (b. 1910)
• 1999 – Hoyt Axton, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (b. 1938)
• 1994 – Wilbert Harrison, American singer and guitarist (b. 1929)
• 1989 – Charles J. Pedersen, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1904)
• 1986 – Jackson Scholz, American runner (b. 1897)
• 1984 – Gus Mancuso, American baseball player and coach (b. 1905)
• 1978 – Alexander Gerschenkron, Ukrainian-American historian, critic, and academic (b. 1904)
• 1972 – Igor Sikorsky, Ukrainian-American engineer and academic, founded Sikorsky Aircraft (b. 1889)
• 1962 – Louise Beavers, American actress (b. 1902)
• 1957 – Gerty Cori, Czech-American biochemist and physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1896)
• 1952 – Hattie McDaniel, American actress and singer (b. 1895)
• 1932 – Margaret Brown, American philanthropist and activist (b. 1867)
• 1931 – Charles Comiskey, American baseball player and manager (b. 1859)
• 1930 – Harry Payne Whitney, American businessman and horse breeder (b. 1872)
• 1902 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American activist (b. 1815)
• 1866 – John Kinder Labatt, Irish-Canadian brewer, founded the Labatt Brewing Company (b. 1803)
• 1864 – William T. Anderson, American captain (b. 1838)