World Day for Laboratory Animals Is Born

On April 24, 1979, Britain's National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) established an annual day of commemoration for animals used in laboratory experiments. The date wasn't random: it was the birthday of Lord Hugh Dowding, the RAF Air Chief Marshal who commanded Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain and then, after the war, became NAVS president and gave impassioned speeches against animal experiments in the House of Lords. Dowding was a vegetarian who believed animals shouldn't be made to suffer for human convenience, and NAVS had already put his name on a research fund in 1973 to bankroll science that didn't need a single animal. A year after the first observance, in 1980, a young Ingrid Newkirk brought it to the United States as PETA's first World Day for Laboratory Animals protest, and the day has kept spreading ever since.