What’s Happening Today?

International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD). Also known as International Stammering Awareness Day in the UK and Ireland, the day is intended to raise public awareness of the issues faced by millions of people – one percent of the world's population – who stutter, or stammer. Every year, stuttering communities and associations around the world get together, put on events and campaign to highlight how certain aspects of society can be difficult for people who stammer; to challenge negative attitudes and discrimination; and to debunk myths that people who stammer are nervous or less intelligent.

ISAD also celebrates the many notable figures who stammer who have made a mark on the world now and throughout history in the fields of science, politics, philosophy, art, cinema and music.

Fechner Day. The Day celebrates the German experimental psychologist, philosopher, and physicist. An early pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics, he inspired many 20th-century scientists and philosophers. He is also credited with demonstrating the non-linear relationship between psychological sensation and the physical intensity of a stimulus via the formula: S = K ln I, which became known as the Weber–Fechner law.

What Happened Today?

1. In 1797,  French balloonist André-Jacques Garnerin became the first person to jump with a parachute. He jumped out of a balloon over Parc Monceau in Paris using a silk parachute that he made himself.

2. In 1884, the International Meridian Conference adopted Greenwich, England as the initial longitudinal meridian. 26 countries participated in the conference which was held in Washington, D.C. In addition to making the meridian passing through the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude or 0-degree longitude, the conference also defined a universal day which would “begin for all the world at the moment of mean midnight at the initial meridian, coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that meridian; and is to be counted from zero up to twenty-four hours”.

3. In 1962, the new Prime Minister of Uganda Apollo Milton Obote visited the White House, Washington, D.C. for the first time and met President John F. Kennedy of the United States of America in the White House Cabinet Room.

Birthdays

1. 1949 – Arsene Wenger, FIFA Global Director of Football and former Arsenal F.C Manager who led them to the unbeaten Premier League season in 2003/2005.

2. 1962 – Shaggy, Jamaican reggae and dancehall artiste.

3. 1992 – Solomon Mutai, Ugandan long-distance runner and Moses Oloya, Uganda Cranes football player.

Sources: Wikipedia, checkiday & bornglorious.com

Picture credit: GIS Geography