31 May

On 31st May each year WHO celebrates World No Tobacco Day, highlighting the health risks associated with tobacco use and advocating for effective policies to reduce consumption. Tobacco use is the second cause of death globally (after hypertension) and is currently responsible for killing one in 10 adults worldwide.

The World Health Assembly created World No Tobacco Day in 1987 to draw global attention to the tobacco epidemic and its lethal effects. It provides an opportunity to highlight specific tobacco control messages and to promote adherence to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Tobacco use is the number one preventable epidemic that the health community faces.

World No Tobacco Day 2011
Theme: The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
The World Health Organization (WHO) selects "The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control" as the theme of the next World No Tobacco Day, which will take place on Tuesday, 31 May 2011.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) is the world's foremost tobacco control instrument. The first treaty ever negotiated under the auspices of WHO, it represents a signal achievement in the advancement of public health. In force only since 2005, it is already one of the most rapidly and widely embraced treaties in the history of the United Nations, with more than 170 Parties. An evidence-based treaty, it reaffirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health and provides new legal dimensions for cooperation in tobacco control.

World No Tobacco Day 2011 will be designed to highlight the treaty's overall importance, to stress Parties' obligations under the treaty and to promote the essential role of the Conference of the Parties and WHO in supporting countries' efforts to meet those obligations. The Conference of the Parties is the treaty's central organ and governing body.

The world needs the WHO FCTC as much as, if not more than, it did in 1996 when the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an international framework convention on tobacco control. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death. This year, more than 5 million people will die from a tobacco-related heart attack, stroke, cancer, lung ailment or other disease. That does not include the more than 600,000 people – more than a quarter of them children – who will die from exposure to second-hand smoke. The annual death toll from the global epidemic of tobacco use could rise to 8 million by 2030. Having killed 100 million people during the 20th century, tobacco use could kill 1 billion during the 21st century.

As with any other treaty, the WHO FCTC confers legal obligations on its Parties – that is, on the countries (and the European Union) that have formally acceded to it.

Among these obligations are those to:

Protect public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.
Adopt price and tax measures to reduce the demand for tobacco.
Protect people from exposure to tobacco smoke.
Regulate the contents of tobacco products.
Regulate tobacco product disclosures.
Regulate the packaging and labeling of tobacco products.
Warn people about the dangers of tobacco.
Ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
Offer people help to end their addiction to tobacco.
Control the illicit trade in tobacco products.
Ban sales to and by minors.
Support economically viable alternative to tobacco growing.

The treaty also recognizes the importance of international cooperation and of helping low- and middle-income countries to meet their treaty obligations.

The campaign will focus on the following key message: that countries must fully implement the treaty to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke.

Other key messages will include:

The treaty embodies the desire and commitment of scores of governments and millions of people to have a tobacco-free world.
The Parties to the treaty should fulfil their obligation to fully implement it.
Individuals should encourage and help their governments to fulfil that obligation.
The treaty should be duly appreciated by institutions and individuals alike as a landmark in the history of public health and the world's foremost tobacco control instrument.
WHO and the Conference of the Parties stand ready to help countries meet their obligations under the treaty and its related guidelines.
The treaty has already proved its efficacy in the fight against tobacco.

Nevertheless, as the Secretariat of the treaty explained in its recent Reports of the Parties and global progress in implementation of the Convention: key findings, "Implementation rates continue to vary substantially between different policy measures."

More must be done for the treaty to reach its full potential, as the Parties themselves recognize. At their recent meeting in Punta del Este, Uruguay, they urged all countries to ratify the treaty, to fully implement its provisions and to adopt its guidelines. Furthermore, they reaffirmed their commitment to prioritize the implementation of health measures designed to control tobacco consumption.

On World No Tobacco Day 2011, and throughout the following year, WHO will urge countries to put the treaty at the heart of their efforts to control the global epidemic of tobacco use.

By heeding WHO's call, countries will enhance their ability to significantly reduce the toll of tobacco-related diseases and deaths in line with their treaty obligations

Events May 31

1279 BC – Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.
455 – Emperor Petronius Maximus is stoned to death by an angry mob while fleeing Rome.
526 – A devastating earthquake strikes Antioch, Turkey, killing 250,000.
1223 – Mongol invasion of the Cumans: Battle of the Kalka River – Mongol armies of Genghis Khan led by Subutai defeat Kievan Rus and Cumans.
1578 – Martin Frobisher sails from Harwich, England to Frobisher Bay, Canada, eventually to mine fool's gold, used to pave streets in London.
1578 – King Henry III lays the first stone of the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), the oldest bridge of Paris.
1669 – Citing poor eyesight, Samuel Pepys records the last event in his diary.
1678 – The Godiva procession through Coventry begins.
1775 – American Revolution: The Mecklenburg Resolutions are allegedly adopted in the Province of North Carolina.
1790 – Alferez Manuel Quimper explores the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
1790 – The United States enacts its first copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790.
1790 – French Revolution: the Revolutionary Tribunal is suppressed.
1805 – French and Spanish forces begin the assault against British forces occupying Diamond Rock
1813 – In Australia, Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth, reached Mount Blaxland, effectively marking the end of a route across the Blue Mountains.
1854 – The civil death procedure is abolished in France.
1859 – The clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, which houses Big Ben, starts keeping time.
1862 – American Civil War Peninsula Campaign: Battle of Seven Pines or (Battle of Fair Oaks) – Confederate forces under Joseph E. Johnston & G. W. Smith engage Union forces under George B. McClellan outside Richmond, Virginia.
1864 – American Civil War Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor – The Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee engages the Army of the Potomac under Ulysses S. Grant & George G. Meade.
1866 – In the Fenian Invasion of Canada, John O'Neill leads 850 Fenian raiders across the Niagara River at Buffalo, New York/Fort Erie, Ontario, as part of an effort to free Ireland from the United Kingdom. Canadian militia and British regulars repulse the invaders in over the next three days, at a cost of 9 dead and 38 wounded to the Fenian's 19 dead and about 17 wounded.
1884 – Arrival at Plymouth of Tawhiao, King of Maoris, to claim protection of Queen Victoria
1889 – Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam break sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
1902 – Second Boer War: The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the war and ensures British control of South Africa.
1909 – The National Negro Committee, forerunner to the NAACP, convenes for the first time.
1910 – Creation of the Union of South Africa.
1911 – The hull of the ocean liner RMS Titanic is launched.
1911 – President of Mexico Porfirio Díaz flees the country during the Mexican Revolution.
1916 – World War I: Battle of Jutland – The British Grand Fleet under the command of Sir John Jellicoe & Sir David Beatty engage the Kaiserliche Marine under the command of Reinhard Scheer & Franz von Hipper in the largest naval battle of the war, which proves indecisive.
1921 – Tulsa Race Riot: A civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, the official death toll is 39, but recent investigations suggest the actual toll may be much higher.
1924 – The Soviet Union signs an agreement with the Peking government, referring to Outer Mongolia as an "integral part of the Republic of China", whose "sovereignty" therein the Soviet Union promises to respect.
1927 – The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.
1929 – The first talking cartoon of Mickey Mouse, "The Karnival Kid", is released.
1935 – A 7.7 Mw earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan: 40,000 dead.
1941 – A Luftwaffe air raid in Dublin, Ireland, claims 38 lives.
1941 – Anglo-Iraqi War: The United Kingdom completes the re-occupation of Iraq and returns 'Abd al-Ilah to power as regent for Faisal II.
1942 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy midget submarines begin a series of attacks on Sydney, Australia.
1961 – The Union of South Africa becomes the Republic of South Africa.
1961 – In Moscow City Court, the Rokotov–Faibishenko show trial begins, despite the Khrushchev Thaw to reverse Stalinist elements in Soviet society.
1962 – The West Indies Federation dissolves.
1962 – Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel.
1970 – The Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people are killed.
1971 – In accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30.
1973 – The United States Senate votes to cut off funding for the bombing of Khmer Rouge targets within Cambodia, hastening the end of the Cambodian Civil War.
1977 – The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System completed.
1981 – Burning of Jaffna library, Sri Lanka, It is one of the violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the twentieth century.
1985 – 1985 United States-Canadian tornado outbreak: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 76 dead.
1991 – Bicesse Accords in Angola lay out a transition to multi-party democracy under the supervision of the United Nations' UNAVEM II mission.
2005 – Vanity Fair reveals that Mark Felt was Deep Throat.
2009 – Anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder shoots and kills physician George Tiller during church services in Wichita, Kansas.
2010 – In international waters, armed Shayetet 13 commandos, intending to force the flotilla to anchor at the Ashdod port, boarded ships trying to break the ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip, resulting in 9 civilian deaths when teams of IHH activists on the MV Mavi Marmara attacked them with knives and metal rods and abducted one of the soldiers.

Holidays and observances

Anniversary of Royal Brunei Malay Regiment (Brunei)
Castile–La Mancha Day (Castile–La Mancha)
Christian Feast Day:
Petronella
Hermias
May 31 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Visitation of Mary (Western Christianity)
World No Tobacco Day (International)