MARCH 01
Articles of Confederation
The ratification of the Articles of Confederation took place on this day 233 years ago. Our first constitution, established in 1781 (eight years before the current Constitution), created a weak central authority, allowing restrictive suffrage requirements. For example, only 16 percent of Massachusetts’ population was eligible to vote in the 1780s.
MARCH 18
Chairperson Janet Yellen’s First Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee Meeting
Last year, 16 of the 177 central bank chiefs around the world were female.
The Census Bureau projects that this decade the Spanish-speaking population will increase twice as fast as that of English-only speakers.
MARCH 31
Cesar Chavez Day
The iconic Chavez is renowned for founding the nation’s only agriculture union in 1962. Today, 31 percent of laborers and supervisors have less than a ninth-grade education, compared to six percent for farm managers and three percent for the U.S. workforce overall.
APRIL 05
Afghanistan Presidential Election
Forty-six percent of respondents to a 2013 national survey of Afghans said men should be involved in women’s voting decisions; 90 percent said everyone should have equal rights under the law, regardless of gender.
APRIL 11
First Day of Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival
In 2012, the Southern California festival grossed $47 million, with 158,387 attendees. The average concert ticket price nationwide increased from 1996 to 2012 by nearly 270 percent (from $26 to $69)—more than five times the inflation growth rate over that period.*
APRIL 21
25th Annual Billboard Latin Music Conference and Awards
The number of Spanish-language radio stations in the U.S. doubled in the last decade. The Census Bureau projects that this decade the Spanish-speaking population will increase twice as fast as that of English-only speakers.
This post originally appeared in the March/April 2014 issue of Pacific Standard as “Datebook.” For more, subscribe to our print magazine.
*UPDATE — March 06, 2014: We originally implied that the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival began in 1996, and that the average ticket price increased 270 percent from the inception of the festival. The festival began in 1999, and that percentage was in relation to concert prices nationwide.
