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Senator Strom Thurmond

A filibuster lasting 24 hours and 18 minutes was conducted on August 28–29, 1957, by Democratic U.S. senator Strom Thurmond (pictured), intended to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He read the election laws of each U.S. state, Supreme Court decisions, and George Washington's Farewell Address. The bill's power to protect the voting rights of African Americans had already been significantly watered down by Senate Democrats, but Thurmond saw the bill as "cruel and unusual punishment" and felt more intervention was needed. In filibustering the bill, Thurmond went against a prior agreement among Senate Democrats and therefore received backlash from some members of his own party in addition to the disapproval of Republicans. Despite this, the filibuster was wildly popular among citizens of the South. The filibuster ultimately failed to change any votes in the Senate and the bill was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower less than two weeks later. (Full article...)

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Lauren Mitchell

... that in 2010, Lauren Mitchell (pictured) became the first Australian female artistic gymnast to win a world title?
... that an incident in the Tailhook scandal involved party goers who accidentally dislodged an eighth-floor window pane while "mooning" the crowd below?
... that Tigor Silaban vowed to work far from Jakarta and not to open a private practice?
... that 17 State Street, near the southern end of New York City's Manhattan Island, was described as "quite literally a beacon for Lower Manhattan"?
... that Esther Cuesta was an undocumented migrant in the United States long before she was elected to represent about 800,000 Ecuadorian migrants?
... that "Arnold's Christmas", now considered one of the most memorable episodes from the animated series Hey Arnold!, was almost rejected by network executives because it depicted the Vietnam War?
... that the 1948 novel The Corner That Held Them uses subversion of history that includes a nun who enjoyed the Black Death?
... that Brad White was a potato farmer who went on to play six years in the National Football League?

In the news

João Lourenço

Floods in Pakistan kill more than 1,100 people and over 700,000 livestock.
Incumbent president João Lourenço (pictured) and his party, the MPLA, are declared winners of the Angolan general election.
William Ruto is elected President of Kenya.
In Giza, Egypt, a church fire spreads to a nursery, killing 41 people, including at least 18 children.

On this day

August 29: Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist (Catholicism, Anglicanism)

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

1350 – Hundred Years' War: Led by King Edward III, a fleet of 50 English ships captured at least 14 Castilian ships and sank several more at the Battle of Winchelsea.
1842 – Under the Treaty of Nanking, an "unequal treaty" that ended the First Opium War, the Chinese island from which Hong Kong would grow was ceded to Britain.
1903 – Slava, the last of five Borodino-class battleships, was launched by the Imperial Russian Navy.
1984 – Followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (pictured) began deliberately infecting people in The Dalles, Oregon, with Salmonella in the first and largest bioterrorist attack in United States history.
1996 – Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801 crashed on approach to Svalbard Airport, Norway, killing all 141 on board.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (b. 1809)
Lale Andersen (d. 1972)
Ingrid Bergman (b. 1915; d. 1982)

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IU

The Melon Music Award for Album of the Year is an award presented by the South Korean entertainment company Kakao M at the annual Melon Music Awards since the inaugural online ceremony in 2005. The award is based on data collected from the South Korean music platform Melon, and honors artists who have had exceptional performance during the recording year. From 2005 to 2008, Melon Music Award winners were announced online, but no album accolade was presented in 2007 or 2008. The ceremony was held live in Seoul beginning with the 2009 awards, with Album of the Year becoming one of the ceremony's grand prizes. As of the 2021 awards, the criteria for the accolade currently consist of digital sales and streaming figures (60 percent), evaluation from a panel of judges (20 percent), and online voting (20 percent). As of 2021, the award has been given to nine artists, with BTS, IU (pictured), 2NE1, and Busker Busker each having won more than once. The most recent recipient is IU, for her 2021 album Lilac. (Full list...)

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Henrietta Rodman (August 29, 1877 – March 21, 1923) was an American educator and feminist who was active in advocating on behalf of married women teachers for their right to promotion and maternity leave. She taught English and was a vocational counselor at Wadleigh High School for Girls in New York City. Opposed to the school board's restrictive policies on married women teachers, she married a psychologist friend, Herman de Fremery, in 1913, and announced it to the press, saying: "If the married state affects a woman's work, the authorities can mark her accordingly. If it does not affect her work, and if she is as good a teacher as she was before, she deserves promotion, if it comes to her." Rodman threw crowded dinner parties in her top-floor apartment; Mary Hunter Austin recalled attending one such dinner, and meeting James Weldon Johnson there. This photograph of Rodman was taken around the early 1910s.

Photograph credit: Bain News Service; restored by Adam Cuerden

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