Reasons To Be Cheerful 18

Cheer up! Milk lasts longer.

Even in these dark times, there are some reasons to be cheerful. I don't miss the olden days. Radio 3 announcers talk spontaneously now and are not confined to reading index cards. And milk has quietly become much more long-lasting.

Towards the end of the eighties Colin Shaw of the Broadcasting Standards Council issued a mandate: ‘Although the half undressed woman has been a staple element in farce and light entertainment shows, the convention is becoming increasingly offensive to a growing number of people and should be used only sparingly … It’s not as funny as it was to have half-naked girls chased across the screen by a dirty old man. Attitudes have changed.’ (Beautiful Idiots and Brilliant Lunatics: A Sideways Look at Twentieth-Century London, Rob Baker)

1966 50 years ago, a girl refused to marry her rapist, leading to the abolishment of reparatory weddings. In Italy. In 1981. (Dries Allaert ‏@3_esse In 1996 rape became a criminal offence, rather than an attempt on a person’s honour.)
1966 White Australia policy ends.

1985 Irish Family Planning Act legalises sale of contraceptives for over-18s without a prescription from selected outlets. In 1992 an updated version makes contraceptives available to all citizens aged 17 years and greater. It remains the contraceptive law on the Irish statute books today.

1990 Closed shops become illegal in the UK.
1993 Wandsworth Prison gallows dismantled.
1996 Last Magdalen laundry in Ireland closes.

May 2016 Nepal ends traditional animal sacrifice event.

Dec 2016 Just overheard: 'Brits are eating FAR more sugar & its giving us diabetes!!!'  Actually UK sugar consumption has been falling for decades. (James Wong ‏@Botanygeek)

Dec 2016 Malta is first country to criminalise “gay conversion therapy”.
Dec 2016 Major league baseball bans cross-dressing hazing rituals.

Dec 2016 Indian high court bans sale of alcohol at roadside shops, and alcohol advertising on highways.
Dec 2016 Beds are being removed from Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital.

2016 UK unemployment fell by 16,000 to 1.62 million in the three months to October, says the ONS.

Jan 1 2017 London’s first female fire commissioner appointed
2017 The Catholic Church is struggling to find enough men to become priests.

2017 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ruled in favour of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, stopping plans for uranium mining in the Black Hills.

2017 The Marines admit women for the first time.
2017 UAE outlaws keeping wild animals as pets.


MORE REASONS
There's an Ebola Vaccine now.
Child Mortality - Down across the globe.
+9% survival rate in pacreatic cancer sufferers.
Gene responsible for ALS found.
Volunteers in India planted 50 Million trees in 24 hours.
Suicide rates down globally.
The ozone layer is repairing itself.
The Rabbinical assembly issued a resolution affirming the rights of trans and non conforming individuals.
Wild tigers numbers up.
Giant Pandas - no longer endangered.
A solar powered plane did a world trip.
Global Malaria down by 60%.
Measles eradicated from the Americas.
93% of the world's children learned to read and write.
Every major grocer and fast food chain in the US pledged to use cage free eggs only by 2025.
Wild wolves back in Europe. Owoo!
Sea World no longer breeding captive killer whales.
Global aid up by 7%.


LESS THAN
Dec 2016 Chad votes to criminalise homosexuality.
2017 Russian parliament gives approval to bill decriminalizing domestic violence
Indian women still need a husband or father’s signature to get a passport.

In Dial M for Murder, the two men go off to a boys-only dinner and Grace Kelly is left at home to darn stockings, stick cuttings into a book, and maybe listen to a play on the radio.

The great and the good of the art world were present that night. Except one, Dr Consuelo Sanz-Pastor, the Inspector of Museums in Spain. Dr Sanz-Pastor, who had actually accompanied the Prado pictures to Britain and had also played a major part in arranging the exhibition, was absent because she was a woman and, as the Daily Express stated rather casually in the article, the Royal Academy ‘never breaks with its all-male tradition’. In 1967, the Royal Academy invited Harold Wilson, the prime minister, to their annual dinner to be held on 27 May. Wilson wrote back saying: ‘I’d love to come, but with Jennie Lee.’ The Royal Academy agreed with his request that he would come but only if he was accompanied by his arts minister, and thus, for the first time since 1769, a woman was present at a Royal Academy dinner. (Beautiful Idiots and Brilliant Lunatics: A Sideways Look at Twentieth-Century London, Rob Baker)

More here, and links to the rest.