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March 11
The great thing about being a tiny nation sandwiched between Russia and Germany is that you get to celebrate so many Independence Days! Lucky Lithuanians. Here it’s only March and the country celebrates its third independence-related holiday of the year! Lithuania’s main Independence Day is February 16, which celebrates the day in 1918 that the Council of Lithuania declared itself finally independent of both Russia and Germany during the chaos of World War …Read more 
February 27 Independence does not mean PeaceA common theme in decolonization. When Western powers depart from their former colonies, old claims over the newly-independent territory resurface, and neighboring powers assert that the new nation was a territory prior to its European annexation. Morocco and Western Sahara are neighbors but their history is like night and day. Morocco was an independent nation back when America was still a colony of Britain. Morocco was one of the first nations to recognize the …Read more 
February 18 Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a man-child was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte. So begins Alex Haley’s classic Roots: the Saga of an American Family. The book and subsequent mini-series reawakened the American consciousness to the history of slavery and the black experience in America. It’s actually The Gambia, not Gambia. Inclusion of the article “The” in …Read more 
February 17 Happy Birthday Kosovo!
Although it’s not all that happy. The newborn nation is still in the throes of economic devastation and ethnic violence. Nor do we know yet if February 17 will continue to be celebrated as the young nation’s independence holiday. Or for that matter, if Kosovo actually is independent. The State Assembly in Kosovo’s capitol of Pristina declared its independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008. Since that time over 50 …Read more February 16 “The Council of Lithuania in its session of February 16, 1918 decided unanimously to address the governments of Russia, Germany, and other states with the following declaration: “The Council of Lithuania, as the sole representative of the Lithuanian nation, based on the recognized right to national self-determination, and on the Vilnius Conference’s resolution of September 18-23, 1917, proclaims the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania, founded on democratic principles, with Vilnius as its capital, and declares the …Read more 
February 4
Sri Lanka has always been an island shrouded in mystery. According to journalist William McGowan: Even those living in Sri Lanka for many years felt its fundamental impenetrability; the longer you lived there, the more you realized you’d never really know it… It was a country, after all, that Arab traders had once named Serendip, for its aura of accidental good fortune…If serendipity were to strike the island now, I’m afraid the dose …Read more 
January 31
Over 40 years ago the small island of Nauru was granted its independence from Australia. According to People and the Earth: Basic Issues in the Sustainability of Resources and the Environment, Nauru is the only nation in the world whose economy is based on bird droppings. “Nauru survives by the mining of the natural fertilizers that were produced over many millennia by the interaction of bird droppings (guana) with marine sediments exposed at the …Read more
January 13
“One of the most important battles in Europe’s modern history was fought and won in Vilnius 16 years ago.” Carl Bildt, Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister, January 2007 In the late 1980′s a “Singing Revolution” swept through the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Thousands of citizens coalesced night after night in each of the republics to sing national songs that had been banned under the Soviet regime. (Latvia, Lithuania and …Read more |
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