Today is World Environment Day. It's hard to read that without thinking about the destruction of the Gulf Coast of the US. http://www.unep.org/wed/2010/english/
It is Richard Scarry's birthday, someone many of us loved as children, as did our children.
Tomorrow marks the 66th anniversary of D-Day.
Various other landmarks are coming up in June, although it's hard to think what could possibly top June 10, celebrated as Ball Point Pen Day.
« Last Edit: Jun 9, 2011, 3:23pm by bixaorellana »
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 25,288 Location: Mexico
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #2 on Jun 5, 2010, 6:18pm »
*smirk*
I was hoping that would pull you in!
Interesting to see that even waaaay back in 1980, the balloons weren't blown up by mouth.
Come back one day when you're feeling perkier and expound on balloons, please. Floating along in one has got to be the most incredible sensation. It would be interesting to know about all the technical parts, too.
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #3 on Jun 5, 2010, 7:35pm »
Already done that!! Dear bixa, feel free to order my book, "Let's go for a Balloon Ride" from amazon.com
It's kind of a children's story, but it does get into some of the details of how it all works, so it's more for kids a little older. I would love for you to read it and tell me what you think!
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 34,431 Location: Paris, France
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #4 on Jun 5, 2010, 8:20pm »
There is a tethered hot air balloon in the Parc André Citroën in Paris, and I keep telling myself I have to go up in it some day. It rises to about the level of the top of the Eiffel Tower on cables and then it is slowly pulled back down.
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #5 on Jun 6, 2010, 2:52pm »
Hey, k2 I'd love to see a picture of that.
That's actually how I learned to fly a balloon. My ex would take the paying passengers on their hour-long flight cross country, I would follow in the chase van, then when he landed he would stabilize the balloon so that I could jump into the basket and he would let the passengers out, then we would put the neighborhood kids/people into the basket and I would take them up about about tree-top level and hang there for awhile. We used two or three very long rolls of seat-belt material as tether lines. I would do this for an hour or so till the propane tanks were empty, then we would pack it up and go home.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 25,288 Location: Mexico
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #7 on Jun 7, 2010, 3:28pm »
Yes, June 6 was D-Day. It was mentioned in the OP, but the mention of the the impending Ball Point Pen Day probably dazzled everyone too much to notice it.
June 7 isn't anything official, although there are some interesting birthdays today -- Prince, Tom Jones, and Louise Erdrich, among others.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 3,548 Location: Montréal
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #8 on Jun 7, 2010, 6:27pm »
Even though D-Day was one of the turning points in the War, I think too many people (civilians as well as troops) were killed that day for it to really be "celebrated", it was always more "commemorated"; a lot of us will remember the important commemoration of the 50th anniversary.
I was correcting an essay in English by an Italian historian friend who also speaks French and German fluently, but not much English at the time. One of the worst bloopers was something about "celebrations of the Holocaust". Of course he meant commemorations - I had to explain to him that only neo-Nazis would "celebrate" such a thing.
I was thinking of the 66th of D-Day (Jour J in French) and ruefully musing that the 65th was probably the last commemoration of any size, like the 65th of VE-Day this year, because few remain who were participants and actually remember it. I have a friend who was in the Resistance in Normandy, but of couse he is very old now. He was very, very young back then as of course some of the troops were too.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 25,288 Location: Mexico
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #9 on Jun 8, 2010, 7:06am »
Well, June 8 is a celebration which will be painful this year: World Oceans Day.
msnbc.com updated 5:45 p.m. CT, Mon., June 7, 2010
Conservation groups, schools, businesses and governments across the globe are planning events and activities Tuesday to celebrate the world’s oceans, a day of tribute tinged by worry over the impact of a devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The United Nations recognizes June 8 as World Oceans Day. The “holiday” was officially celebrated for the first time last year, though the concept of a day to pay homage to the world’s oceans was first proposed in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
This year, the Deep Horizon spill that has been gushing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf has raised concerns over how human activity can imperil the waters that people live and feed off. The Gulf of Mexico, the world’s 11th-largest body of water, connects to the Atlantic Ocean, the second-largest ocean that covers roughly one-fifth of the Earth's surface. Scientists and environmentalists fear the spill could affect the marine food chain for years, if not decades.
Dia dos Namorados (Valentine's Day) in Brazil from Wikipedia In Brazil, the Dia dos Namorados (lit. "Day of the Enamored", or "Boyfriends'/Girlfriends' Day") is celebrated on June 12, when couples exchange gifts, chocolates, cards and flower bouquets. This day was chosen probably because it is the day before the Festa junina (Saint Anthony's day), known there as the marriage saint, when traditionally many single women perform popular rituals, called simpatias, in order to find a good husband or boyfriend. The February 14's Valentine's Day is not celebrated at all, mainly for cultural and commercial reasons, since it usually falls too little before or after Carnival, a major floating holiday in Brazil — long regarded as a holiday of sex and debauchery by many in the country[41] — that can fall anywhere from early February to early March.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 25,288 Location: Mexico
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #12 on Jun 15, 2010, 3:04pm »
Yesterday was Flag Day in the US, something I understandably spaced out.
On June 15, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill establishing the Boy Scouts of America.
Today is also Nature Photography Day. I think AnyPorters know the right way to celebrate that!
June is, among other things, Perennial Gardening Month and Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. Visit the What's in Bloom thread in Putting Down Roots to observe and share perennial beauty. And you can go to South America to see an amazing turnout for the Gay Pride Parade in São Paulo.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 34,431 Location: Paris, France
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #13 on Jun 17, 2010, 8:31am »
On 17 June 1885, the kit for assembling the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York in 214 crates. The statue was finally inaugurated on 28 October 1886 by President Cleveland.
Joined: Feb 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 25,288 Location: Mexico
Re: Celebrating today « Reply #14 on Jun 20, 2010, 1:07pm »
When I was a young teenager there was an article in the Sunday Parade magazine about the statue, the sculptor, and the model, who was still alive at the time. The article made a great impression on me. I knew the statue was a gift from France and had even seen it, but I don't think until that time I'd realized its hugeness nor the logistics of its delivery and assembly.
The earliest record of Fathers Day was found in the ruins of Babylon. A young boy named Elmesu carved a Fathers Day message on a card made out of clay nearly 4,000 years ago. He wished his Babylonian father good health and a long life.
Fathers Day is not celebrated on the same date throughout the world, but happy fathers day to all to whom it's pertinent today, or even if it's not.
Argentina - the third Sunday in June
Australia - the first Sunday in September
Belgium - St. Joseph's Day & the second Sunday in June
Brazil - the second Sunday in August
Bulgaria - June 20
Canada - the third Sunday in June
Chile - the third Sunday in June
Denmark - the second Sunday in November
Finland - the second Sunday in November
France - the third Sunday in June
Germany - Ascension Thursday (40 days after Easter)
Japan - the third Sunday in June
Lithuania - the first Sunday in June
Netherlands - the third Sunday in June
New Zealand - the first Sunday in September
Norway - the second Sunday in November
Portugal - St. Joseph's Day March 19
Spain - St. Joseph's Day March 19
Sweden - the second Sunday in November
Taiwan - August 8 ( in the Mandarin dialect of the Chinese language which many people speak in Taiwan, the numbers for this date – 8/8 – make the sound "ba ba"...and that is the same sound as the word father!)
Thailand - December 5 (This is the birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej)
France's Fête Nationale (often just called 'le quatorze juillet') commemorates the Fête de la Fédération which was held exactly one year after the storming of the Bastille -- on 14 July 1790. It celebrated the creation of the constitutional monarchy and even Louis XVI was a happy participant.
After the end of the official celebration, the day ended in a huge popular feast. It was also a symbol of the reunification of the Three Estates, after the heated Estates-General of 1789, with the Bishop (First Estate) and the King (Second Estate) blessing the people (Third Estate).
In the gardens of the Château de La Muette, a meal was offered to 22,000, before balls took place. People drank, danced, sang and toasted. The organisation went up to deciding of the price of the filles du Palais-Royal (prostitutes). The feast ended on the 18 July.
In Germany and Italy, the French Revolution was rather well considered by urban bourgeoisie, impregnated with the ideas of the Lumières of the Enlightenment: Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, D'Alembert and others.
In Britain, the movement was welcomed by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (possibly because it was weakening his hereditary foe). His opponent, Liberal Charles Fox said before the Parliament of Westminster: "Never before was made such a great step toward freeing Humanity."
Unfortunately, things degenerated a bit in the subsequent years, and the Reign of Terror began.
France's Fête Nationale, commemorating the Fête de la Fédération was created by a parliamentary vote on 6 July 1880, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Bastille.
Thanks for this. I guess the calendar people in the US need an update...they all say Bastille Day,at least mine do,and what we were taught. But,considering all the other crap in the history books they told us...
•1752 - The Liberty Bell arrives in Philadelphia. •1894 - Great Hinckley Fire. •1939 - Germany invades Poland. •1951 - The ANZUS Treaty is signed. •1983 - Korean airliner shot down. •1985 - A joint American-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic. •1997 - Diana driver was drunk and speeding. •1969 - Bloodless coup in Libya. •1991 - The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is released in North America. •2004 - The Beslan school hostage crisis begins.
I'm reading a non-fiction book about Poland during WWII. It's almost unimaginable that WWII began 71 years ago. Its history continues to resonate through the lives of at least my generation, the children of the people alive during that time.
Re: the Titanic, 25 years later -- A little over a week ago, a scientific expedition set off with the intention of "virtually" raising the Titanic. Story
« Last Edit: Sept 1, 2010, 7:28pm by bixaorellana »
That is lovely. In the 1970's, Paris was like a South American city with all of the refugees from Chile, Brazil and Argentina, among other countries. Since Franco and Salazar's successors were still in power in Spain and Portugal, those countries were not an option for the South Americans. In the 1980's, most of them were able to return home. I miss them, but I am happy that they did not have to spend their entire lives in exile like some other countries.
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