Marilyn Monroe or Bertha Benz?

Jade demonstrates the star jump at a Target Fitness Retreat

I’m creating a special calendar for the academic year. Containing dance photos it will be printed because in this digital age, printed things are special. It will be part of the fund-raising for the non-profit that has kept me so silent these last few months, and as part of that I thought it would be nice to give people the opportunity to buy beautiful, affordable and useful gift.

While it won’t surprise you to hear that the non-profit is related to dance, I’m not going to tell you more yet. Meanwhile I need your help in deciding the most appropriate anniversaries to celebrate in a calendar. Designed for children and young adults of the Google Generation, it contains some of my favourite images of dance and dancers from all over the world. I want to include a different and interesting anniversary on each day.

By interesting I mean the type of things I would have liked to have learned at school and already known at university. I want them quirky, to have made difference to our culture, related to things that the schools curriculum doesn’t necessarily cover, that people take for granted, that reflect part of our society or are simply fun.

To make them relevant to English speakers whatever their culture I need your feedback for dates that my research has revealed has no clear choice.

For flavour, here are some anniversaries that I plan to include:

• the patent of the first electric washing machine because it signalled a change in many working womens’ lives,
• when a coeleocanth was caught because of all the implications and because they had been thought to be extinct,
• when sweet rationing ended because it’s hard for most of us to imagine 10 years of any kind of rationing,
• when the Windrush landed because I am still annoyed that my own school curriculum didn’t cover such an important event.

I’ve found more than one anniversary on some dates and am hoping that you will help me decide which one is most appropriate. Here’s the first, it’s a simple poll but if you have a better idea please put it i the comments.