Today we celebrate a plastic toy camera, it is World Toy Camera Day. This day is observed annually on October 21st.
World Toy Camera is an annual celebration of plastic cameras that were never intended for serious use. In the era of the digital world, you can find different types and brand of digital cameras but is intended for professional use, but you can also find toy cameras made for kids who love to mimic adults of being a professional photographer like the VTech toy camera that amazingly can take real pictures too.
This day is not just for plain toy camera but for cameras that are outdated but still has the capacity to take photos. It may sound ridiculous, but you might be surprised that there are a lot of events honoring this festive occasion.
During the early times, cameras are made with plastic casing like Polaroid and Kodak cameras but they take regular pictures. This camera uses rolls of film that need to be developed to produce pictures. Nowadays, photos are digitally made by DSLR cameras and photos are saved digitally in a digital storage drive then sent for print.
But we cannot forget the past and celebrate this day by finding one of your old cameras or toy camera that can take photos even in black and white or even those instant cameras and start posting your projects on social media to show your creativity. Share on social media what type of old toy camera did you have using #WorldToyCameraDay.
1921 President Harding publicly condemns lynching
On October 21, 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivers a speech in Alabama in which he condemns lynchings—illegal hangings committed primarily by white supremacists against African Americans in the Deep South.
Although his administration was much maligned for scandal and corruption, Harding was a progressive Republican politician who advocated full civil rights for African Americans and suffrage for women. He supported the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill in 1920. As a presidential candidate that year, he gained support for his views on women’s suffrage but faced intense opposition on civil rights for blacks. The 1920s was a period of intense racism in the American South, characterized by frequent lynchings. In fact, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) reported that, in 1920, lynching claimed, on average, the lives of two African Americans every week.
During the 1920 presidential campaign, Harding’s ethnicity became a subject of debate and was used by his opponents to cast him in a negative light. Opponents claimed that one of Harding’s great-great-grandfathers was a native of the West Indies. Harding rebuffed the rumors, saying he was from white “pioneer stock” and persisted in his support of anti-lynching laws. Although the anti-lynching bill made it through the House of Representatives, it died in the Senate. Several other attempts to pass similar laws in the first half of the 20th century failed. In fact, civil rights for blacks were not encoded into law until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
(excerpted from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/harding-publicly-condemns-lynching)
