5 years ago today, Oklahoma writer Joy Harjo was named the first Native American US Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms (after Robert Pinsky). Harjo is a citizen of the Muscogee Nation. Harjo has taught in numerous United States universities, performed internationally at poetry readings and music events, and released seven albums of her original music. Harjo is the author of ten books of poetry, and three children's books, The Good Luck Cat, For a Girl Becoming, and most recently, the national best-seller Remember. READ some of her poetry… (2018)

Harjo at the Library of Congress, 2022 – Shawn Miller, CC 0.0.

Harjo published her first volume in 1975, titled The Last Song, which consisted of nine of her poems. Harjo has since authored ten books of poetry, including her most recent, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years.

She uses the traditions of Native American oral storytelling to approach composing a poem, starting with sounds rather than images when preparing to write. The below is entitled Invisible Fish.

Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone. Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks, carrying the dreamers’ decendants, who are going to the store.

MORE Good News on this Day in History:

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher who, as a young man invented a mechanical calculator and later philosophized that “all men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone,” was born (1623)

The first official baseball game was played— with the New York Nines defeating the N.Y. Knickerbockers 23–1 in Hoboken, New Jersey (1846)

The U.S. Congress prohibited slavery in United States territories, nullifying the Dred Scott Case (1862)

After surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate, The Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress outlawing all segregation on the basis of race (1964)

Edgar Winter’s No.1 hit ‘Frankenstein’, named because of how many cuts and patches were contained in the original studio tape, earned a Gold record (1973)

EU nations agreed to lift their sanctions against Cuba, in the hope of encouraging democracy on the island (2008)

114 years ago today, the German transportation company DELAG launched the inaugural service aboard the airship, Deutschland. It was the first time a zeppelin-style airship had ever carried paying passengers, and despite its loss 18 days later, the company tweaked the design and carried on building a revenue stream. By the week before World War II, DELAG had logged over 3,000 hours of flight time on its routes. 

People watching the landing of Zeppelin LZ 127 – Grombo CC 3.0.

By that time, Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft, or DELAG, meaning German Airship Travel Company, had transported a total of 34,028 passengers on 1,588 commercial flights; over these trips, the fleet had accumulated 172,535 kilometers across 3,176 hours of flight.

DELAG regained itself after almost total disaster during the war, and the Treaty of Versailles that followed. However in 1925, the company had returned to running transatlantic routes, including one from Hamburg to America years before aircraft had the capacity to do so. The airship also performed numerous record-breaking flights, including a successful circumnavigation of the globe

Following the rise of the Nazis, the German government wanted to use zeppelins for their own purposes, such as propaganda machines, and so they set up their own DZR nationalized zeppelin company, driving DELAG, which wanted to continue serving passenger transport needs, into a state of limbo until eventually their airships were scrapped for parts. (1910)

121 years ago today, Lou Gehrig was born. Playing first baseman across 17 seasons in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees, Gehrig was renowned for his prowess as a hitter and for his durability, which earned him his nickname “the Iron Horse”. He was an All-Star seven consecutive times, a Triple Crown winner once, an American League Most Valuable Player twice, and a member of six World Series champion teams. He had a career .340 batting average, .632 slugging average, and a .447 on-base average. He hit 493 home runs and had 1,995 runs batted in (RBI).

In 1939, Lou Gehrig was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and he still has the highest ratio of runs scored plus runs batted in per 100 plate appearances (35.08) and per 100 games (156.7) among Hall of Fame players. Gehrig, who wore the number 4, was the first MLB player to have his uniform number retired by a team.

It seemed as if 100 years of America's past-time would go by without a pair of his records being broken. He played in 2,106 games consecutively, a streak which ended on May 2nd 1939, when he voluntarily took himself out of the lineup due to symptoms from his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease). That record would stand until 1995 when it was broken by Cal Ripken Jr.

Gehrig held the record of most career Grand Slams at 23, which wouldn't be broken until a much more ‘roided-up Alex Rodriguez passed that marker in 2013. (1903)

Happy Juneteenth Day, historically known as Emancipation Day, commemorates the day African Americans first heard about the end of slavery 155 years ago today—after it was announced by Union Army General Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas.

Originating in Galveston, Juneteenth is celebrated annually on June 19 across the South and other parts of the U.S. since 1866.

Juneteenth celebration of Emancipation Day in Texas in 1900

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared an end to slavery in the Confederate States four years earlier, but was still legal and practiced in two Union border states—until 1865, when ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished chattel slavery nationwide. Interestingly, Indian Territories that had sided with the South, especially the Choctaw, were the last to release those enslaved. (1866)

 

And, on this day in 1978, Garfield, first appeared as a comic strip.

Created by Jim Davis, it chronicles the life of Garfield the cat, his owner Jon, and Odie the dog, with topics ranging from the orange tabby’s laziness and obsessive eating, Jon’s need for coffee, and disdain of Mondays and diets.

As of 2013, the strip was syndicated in roughly 2,580 newspapers, holding the Guinness World Record for being the world's most widely syndicated comic strip and earning up to a billion dollars a year from merchandising, books, films, and television. WATCH a Garfield and Friends clip, “What Happened to my Lasagna?”

 

Also, on this day in 1954, another animated cartoon character,  The Tasmanian Devil voiced by Mel Blanc, first debuted in movie theaters.

In the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes short Devil May Hare, Taz meets Bugs Bunny who spends the day tricking the snorting, snarling beast with a bubble-gum chicken, a decoy deer, a giant slingshot, and finally a classified ad for a lady Devil he places in the Tasmanian Post-Dispatch.

Portrayed as a ferocious, but dim-witted carnivore with a short temper, Taz is also sweet at times. Spinning like a tornado, he eats anything in his path, but Taz does have one weakness: he can be calmed by music—and easily dealt with. In 1991, Taz got his own show, Taz-Mania, which ran for four seasons and cast him as the main hero protagonist.

Happy 74th Birthday to Ann Wilson, singer and co-founder of Heart, the first successful female-driven hard-rock band.

2012 photo By Angela George, CC license

Born in San Diego to a concert pianist and choir-singing mother, and a former musician-singer who once led the U.S. Marine Corps band, Ann's younger sister Nancy was also musical, and became Heart’s guitarist.

The powerful soprano and her sister became famous for songs like Crazy on You and Magic Man, from the band's 1976 debut album, Dreamboat Annie. After several other top selling LPs, and hits like Barracuda, the band tallied worldwide sales of 35 million albums.

Ann continues to tour and play music, and though she launched a solo project in 2015 called The Ann Wilson Thing! Heart, her sister Nancy said she wants to record new Heart songs. The duo is hoping to keep things moving forward in 2021 with new music. WATCH her 2020 Mental Health Quarantine Tips… (1950)

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