October 3rd is National Children’s Health Day. The Full Hunter’s Moon ( or Moon of the Falling Leaves) happens around October 9th. Indigenous Peoples Day, formerly Columbus Day, is acknowledged October 10th. Halloween continues to be an important holiday for children and families as we explore tricks, treats, dress up, pretending, darkness, monsters and cultural landscapes of fear and transformation.
In the natural world October is a time when animals and plants show their ability to adapt to the changing conditions that mark the transition from Summer to Fall. Shorter, colder days, less food available, and the coming of Winter all provide ample challenges and opportunities for plants and animals to utilize long term adaptations and adopt specific changes in behavior. The leaves of the deciduous trees changing color and eventually falling provide the backdrop for everything else. October is a wonderful time of year to explore the senses with children and connect with the changes that are going on all around them in the natural world.
October 1st
Common Loons start to migrate
World Vegetarian Day
“Trail of Years” begins as Cherokee people are forcibly removed from east of the Mississippi to Oklahoma in 1838
Thalidomide, an anti-nausea drug that was prescribed for morning sickness was launched in 1957, and was finally withdrawn after five years after it was determined that it caused birth defects
First State Fair Open in Pittsfield Massachusetts in 1810
Free Speech Movement launched at U.C. Berkeley https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/free-speech-movement/
October 2nd
Redbacked salamanders will look for hibernacular, places to hibernate, in decaying root systems as it gets colder, but will continue to forage for food as long as the temperature stays in the 40s
Thurgood Marshall sworn in as the first African American Supreme Court Justice in 1967
Peanuts, by Charles Schulz, was printed for the first time in 1950
Groucho Marx, American comedian and actor, b. 1890
Franklin Rosemont, Surrealist poet, founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group, street speaker, historian, radical publisher, b. 1943
October 3rd
Bull Moose advertise their presence and desire to mate by soaking their dewlaps in their own urine
United States National Child Health Day ( first Monday in October)
John Gorrie, invented cold-air process of refrigeration, b. 1803
October 4th
Red-Winged Blackbirds change their diet from insects to seeds
Robert Lawson, illustrator of The Story of Ferdinand the Bull and Mr Popper’s Penguins and wrote Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Ben Franklin, b. 1892
Donald Sobol, writer of the Encyclopedia Brown series follows the many adventures of the boy detective who uses observation and deduction to solve different mysteries which the reader is encouraged to solve for themselves, b. 1924
Edward Stratemeyer, children’s author and publisher, wrote over 1,300 books himself and created many well known fictional book series such as The Bobbsey Twins, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, b. 1862
Anarchist newspaper The Alarm published in Chicago by Albert Parsons, in 1879
Yom Kippur ( Jewish) begins at sundown
World Animal Day
Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in 1957
October 5th
Bears Head Tooth Fungi Fruiting
Clive Barker, genre busting horror/fantasy writer, author of the exquisite young adult series, Abarat, b. 1952
Louise Fitzhugh, author of the Harriet the Spy Series and several young adult novels some of which were refused by her publishers because they were too controversial (one lost manuscript featured adolescent girls fall in love), b. 1952
Monty Python’s Flying Circus makes its debut in 1969
Shawnee Chief Tecumseh killed in the War of 1812, in 1813
Louis Lumiere made the first motion picture in 1895, invented camera equipment for making movies and a projector, b. 1864
October 6th
Hermit Thrushes Migrating
Porcupines climb trees to eat acorns and beechnuts that are ripe enough to eat but not mature enough to fall from the tree yet
Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights activist, b. 1917
Jason Lewis, succeeded in the first human powered attempt to circumnavigate the world, taking 4, 883 days, in 2007
October 7th
Eastern Chipmunks storing food for winter
Allen Ginsberg reads Howl publicly for the first time in San Francisco in 1956
World Habitat Day
Mathew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming was beaten robbed and left to die, in 1998
R.D. Laing radical anti-psychiatrist, b. 1927
Louis Leakey archaeologist who convinced other scientists that Africa was the best place to look for evidence of human origins, b. 1903
October 8th
Slugs lay small pearly white eggs
R.L. Stine, author of the incredibly popular “Goosebump” series of scary stories for young readers, b.1943
In 1998, CIA report reveals CIA ignored Nicaragua Reagan backed contra imports of cocaine into the US that started the crack scourge in Los Angeles
US invades Afghanistan in the wake of 9-11 in 2001
The first internal pacemaker was implanted into Arne Larsson in 1948
Francesco Ferrer, radical educator, opens his Modern School, in Barcelona Spain, in 1901
Frank Duryea, inventor who made the first car built and operated in the US, b. 1869
October 9th
Canada geese start migrating
Hunter’s Full Moon
John Lennon, musician, lyricist, cultural leader, b. 1940
October 10th
New England Asters provide bees with late season nectar
James Marshall, prolific one of a kind children’s author who created the two lovable hippos, George and Marshall, the Fox series, The Stupids, and many retellings of classic folktales, b. 1942
Daniel San Souci, children’s author and illustrator of beautiful books about animals sometimes in realistic and sometimes in fantasy settings, b. 1948 https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/daniel-san-souci-2/
Indigenous People Day/formerly Columbus Day
World Mental Health Day
The Outer Space Treaty was agreed upon by the space exploring nations declared that outer space and all celestial bodies were the common heritage of all humankind, in 1967
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian, Ogoni environmental activist, b. 1941
October 11th
Yellow-Orange Fly Agaric Mushroom Fruiting
Russell Freedman, author of many wonderful biographies for young people, including Abe Lincoln, Marion Anderson, Confucius, and the The Wright Brothers, b. 1929 https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/daniel-san-souci-2/
Electric vote recorder, Edison’s first invention, patented in 1868
October 12th
Woodchucks heading to winter burrows
Carolee Schneemann, feminist, performance artist, neo-Dadaist, Fluxus body artist, b.1939
Arawak and Carib people, and Columbus and his people “discover” each other in 1492 and the rest is history
October 13th
Crickets courting, mating and laying eggs
Paddington Bear, the creation of children’s author Michael Bond, makes his debut in “A Bear Called Paddington,” in 1958
Lenny Bruce, stand up comic, social rebel, b. 1925
October 14th
Oak apple galls developing
Uprising in Sobibor concentration camp in Poland-11 guards killed and 200 prisoners escape in 1943
Bill Sanders, cartoonist, newspaper man, provocateur, speaker of truth to power, b. 1930
Chuck Yeager flies faster than the speed of sound in the Bell X-1 airplane, in 1947
Winnie-the-Pooh makes his literary debut, in 1926
Martin Luther King receives the Nobel peace Prize in 1964
Hannah Arendt, German American political philosopher who coined the phrase “the banality of evil” and who plumbed the depths and heights of what it means to be human, b. 1906
October 15th
Bumble Bees are basking
Barry Moser, author, illustrator, water colorist, and master of the woodcut, who brings classics like Alice and Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Dante’s Inferno, and Frankenstein back to life, and beautiful children’s books populated with animals and the natural world, b. 1940 https://www.rmichelson.com/illustration/barry-moser/
Black Panther Party founded and the 10 point program drafted in 1966
Friedrich Nietzsche, radical philosopher, violent polemicist, poet, aphorist, who saw the nihilism at the heart of Western culture and argued for the transvaluation of all values based on an affirmation of this life, this earth, b. 1844
Michel Foucault, philosopher, sociologist, historian of ideas, political activist who relentlessly explored the interrelationships of knowledge and power, b. 1926
“I Love Lucy” airs for the first time in 1951
World’s first manned balloon flight lasted 4 minutes in France, in 1783
October 16th
Striped Skunks raiding Eastern Yellow Jackets Nests
John Brown attacks Harper’s Ferry ammunitions depot in 1859
Million Man March where 800,000 Black men marched in Washington, DC in 1995
World Food Day
Tommie Smith and John Carlos give the Black Power Salute while receiving a gold and silver medal count at the 1968 Olympics
Oscar Wilde, wit, dandy, gay, Irish playwright, essayist, writer of The Individual Man Under Socialism, and The Portrait of Dorian Gray, b. 1854
Henri Saint-Simon, French, utopian socialist theorist, b. 1760
Walt Disney Company founded in 1923
Matt Nagle born a quadriplegic became the first person to use a computer interface to control his movement, b. 1979
October 17th
Big Brown Bats enter hibernation
October 18th
Damselflies and Dragonflies still mating and eating eggs
Shel Silverstein, famously idiosyncratic, hilarious and observant poet and cartoonist for children ( and adults), author of Where the Sidewalk Ends, Falling Up, and The Giving Tree, b. 1932
Moby Dick is published in 1851
D.T. Suzuki, Buddhist philosopher, b. 1870
Henri Bergson, French philosopher of multiplicity, heterogeneity, continuity and community, b. 1859
Puerto Rico becomes U.S. colony, ceded from Spain, in 1898
Clean Water Act enacted in 1972
October 19th
Easter Box Turtles Hibernating
Ed Emberley, perhaps unfairly neglected because of the progressive education dogma about not teaching drawing to children, artist/author of the incredibly inviting “Drawing Book” series, and many delightful books for young children like “Go Away Big Green Monster”, b. 1931
Phillip Pullman, author of the deliciously mysterious Golden Compass/ Dark Materials fantasy books for young adults, b. 1946
First African-Americans elected to the House of representatives in 1870
Streptomycin, the first line of defense against tuberculosis, is discovered in 1943
October 20th
Deciduous Trees’ leaves changing colors and falling
Nikki Grimes, African American, essential, beloved, children’s, tweeners, and young adult poetry, fiction and non-fiction author, of Bedtime for Sweet Creatures, Bronx Masquerade, Make Way for Dyamonde Diamond, Its Raining Laughter and many , many others, b. 1950, https://www.nikkigrimes.com/bookpage1.html
John Dewey, philosopher of pragmatism, educator, “father” of progressive education, b. 1859
Crockett Johnson, author the Harold and the Purple Crayon books and illustrator of The Carrot Seed, b. 1906
Arthur Rimbaud, Gay French poet, imagistic Romantic poet, complicated relationship with Verlaine, b. 1854
October 21st
Giant Puffball mushrooms fruiting
Janet Ahlberg, author illustrator (along with her husband) of over 100 books for young children that invite them into a profoundly inviting, safe, beautiful and enchanting world, b. 1944 https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/childrens-article/where-to-start-with-janet-and-allan-ahlberg-s-books
Ursala LeGuin, author of the Earthseas series for young adults, science fiction writer that rigorously explores and reimagines what it means to be human, and a literary and philosophical moral compass for me personally, b.1929
October 22nd
225,000 Black students boycott the Chicago Public Schools to protest segregation in 1963
Flu epidemic kills over half a million people in the United States and 21 million people worldwide, in 1917
October 23rd
Funnel Weaving Spiders weave last webs of the year
Laurie Halse Anderson, author of quirky, moving, funny children’s books, and tough, earnest, books for young adults that explore topics like high school life, sexism, eating disorders, and sexual violence, b.1961
Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, non-fiction author of many books about explorers, Ladies First: 40 Daring Women Who Were Second to None, and a biography of the Dalai Lama, and the Lily B. Series, b.1964
NAACP sends an appeal to the world through the United Nations to address United States human rights violations against African-Americans
Katie Lee, folksinger, photographer, environmental activist, b. 1919
October 24th
Diwali Festival of Lights ( Hindu, Jain, Sikh)
International Day of Climate Action
United Nations formed in 1945, ratified by the five permanent members and the 46 member states
Antony van Leeuwenhoek, known as the father of microscopy because of the advances he made in microscope design and use, b. 1632
First transcontinental telegraph system was completed making it possible to transmit coast to coast messages rapidly, 1861
October 25th
Eastern Coyotes howling
Fred Marcellini, re-illustrated E.B. White’s “The Trumpet of the Swans” and illustrator/reteller of classic fairytales like Puss and Boots and The Steadfast Tin Soldier, b. 1936
New Moon
Youth March for integrated Schools led by Jackie Robinson, Coretta Scott King, Harry Belafonte and Bayard Rustin, in 1957
Pablo Picasso, painter, cubist, sculptor, b. 1881
October 26th
Steven Kellog, author illustrator of zany, hilarious children’s picture books like The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash, Is Your Mama a Llama, and Parents in the Pigpen, Pigs in the Tub, b. 1946
Eric Rohmann, author of My Friend Rabbit and gorgeous, mind-blowing books about animals that depict them up close and vibrantly alive like Giant Squid and HoneyBee: the Busy Life of Apis Mellifera, b.1956
First infant to receive an organ from another species ( heart from a baboon) , 1984
October 27th
Diving Beatles remain active through fall and winter
U.S. prison population exceeds 1,000,000 for the first time in 1994 and tops out at 2.1 million the highest rate in the world
New York City Subway operation begins in 1904
October 28th
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels published in 1726
Sustainability Day ( 4th Wednesday of October)
Jonas Salk, American doctor and researcher, inventor of the polio vaccine
October 29th
Gray catbirds migrating South ending up anywhere between Southern New England to Panama
Supreme Court rules that schools must desegregate “immediately” rather than with “all due deliberate speed” in 1969
Hurricane Sandy hits the US’s eastern coast in 2012
October 30th
Fisher Cats, instead of eating fish, primarily feed on small mammals , rabbits and porcupines
Martin Luther King arrested and jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1967
Oberlin College becomes the first to admit women students in 1838
October 31st
Bears make stick perches high in trees to eat beech nuts, leaves, buds and catkins
World population reached 7 billion in 2011
In 1992, Pope John Paul 11 acknowledges error committed by the Catholic Church in the way they handled Galileo Galilei in the 17th century
Martin Luther posts 95 theses, launches Reformation, in 1519
Halloween
Helping Children Overcome Their Fears of the Monster Under the Bed https://www.verywellfamily.com/fear-of-monsters-under-bed-4584321
Charlie and Suzanne get married!!!!!!!!!!!
