St. Valentine gets all the credit for bringing lovers together in the Northern Hemisphere, but in Brazil, that honor goes to Saint Anthony.
St. Anthony is the patron saint of Lisbon, Portugal, as well as of lovers and newlyweds. He died on June 13, 1231 in Padua, Italy, at the age of 36. The eve before his feast day in early June is the perfect time for Brazilians to celebrate with their special someone. Especially since in Brazil, February 14 falls smack dab in the middle of Carnival season and people have enough holidays to worry about without getting in a passive-aggressive fight with their girlfriend because they forgot to get a gift.
So next time your sweetheart is upset that you totally flaked on Valentine’s Day, surprise her on June 12th by explaining how you were waiting for the real lovers’ day: Dia dos Namorados.
And if that doesn’t fly (and it won’t), break out Bardanza.
Open your hands,
Give me the roses
You brought just for me.
Open your heart,
Write me a poem,
Read me the best part
Of our story.
I am still here,
Contemplating your sweetness,
Expecting your caress.
Open all the doors,
Here is the key…
Open the windows too,
Touch my soul again,
Say “I love you”…
Open up yourself to me
Forgive my mistakes,my madness,
I couldn’t stand your silence.
I couldn’t stand your coldness…
Today is one of the few American holidays to honor royalty. (Don’t forget January 8th’s Birthday of the King!) June 11th is King Kamehameha Day, honoring King Kamehameha the Great, who united and ruled the Hawaiian island chain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Kamehameha was a grandson of a chief who ruled much of the big island of Hawaii, but Kamehameha’s succession was not forthcoming. Instead Kamehameha was appointed the guardian of Kuaka`ilimoku, the local god of war, in 1782.
In the 1880’s, Kamehameha battled against his cousin Kiwala’o for control of the big island, and eventually emerged victorious. In 1795 he had captured the islands of Oahu and Maui as well. Attempts to capture Kauai and Ni’ihau eluded the great king for years, due to epidemics and rebellions at home. In 1810 Kamehameha negotiated control of the last two islands, uniting the chain with himself as ruler. For his military expertise, Kamehameha is sometimes called the “Napoleon of the Pacific.”
King Kamehameha statue, photo by J. Messerly
As ruler, Kamehameha codified the legal system and set in place a legacy of stability that would prevent foreign occupation up until the end of the 19th century.
King Kamehameha died on May 8, 1819. Kamehameha Day was proclaimed in his honor by his great grandson, also King Kamehameha, in 1871. It’s been a Hawaiian holiday for nearly 140 years.
The feats of Arms, and famed heroic Host
from occidental Lusitanian strand,
who over the waters never by seaman crossed
fared beyond the Taprobane-land (Ceylon)
forceful in perils and in battle-post,
with more than promised force of mortal hand…
Os Luíadas
June 10 is Portugal’s National Day, aptly known as “Portugal Day” or Dia de Portugal. Actually it’s longer, but few go around saying, “Happy Day of Portugal, Camões, and the Portuguese Community!”
Portugal Day marks the death of writer, historian and adventurer Luís de Camões in 1580.
Camões wrote the Portuguese national epic Os Lusíadas , a history in verse of the Iberian nation and the era of discovery.
Compared to his writings, little is known of Camões’ real life. He was banished from Lisbon in 1546, supposedly because of an affair with a lady of the court. He served in the military for two years in Morocco, where he lost his right eye. He returned to Lisbon where the king (John III) pardoned him for injuring an officer in a street brawl; then spent 17 years in exile from his homeland, living in Goa, India and Macau, China. During these years he conceived of and wrote much of Os Lusíadas. Legend tells us he survived a shipwreck in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, keeping his manuscript dry by swimming with one arm and holding it above the water with the other.
Luis de Camões - he ain't winking
(The word “Lusiadas” stems from the tribe that occupied Portugal in ancient times, and refers to the Portuguese.)
Camões presented his masterpiece to King Sebastian in 1572 and won a small royal pension. However, he spent the end of his life in in a Lisbon poorhouse.
The year of Camões’ death, King Philip of Spain claimed the throne of Portugal after the disappearance of King Sebastian at the Battle of Alcácer Quibir. Portugal remained under Spanish control for sixty years.
Today, citizens of Portugal get the day off, the President addresses the nation, and Portuguese around the world gather to celebrate their homeland and their heritage.
Anniversary of the Ascension of King Abdullah II – June 9;
Army Day / Anniversary of the Great Arab Revolt – June 10
King Abdullah II of Jordan was not selected as Crown Prince until January 24, 1999, just two weeks before the death of his father. Previously the king’s brother had been heir apparent (and it was speculated that had the king lived longer, Abdullah’s younger half-brother would have been made heir). As it was, upon the king’s death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Adbullah became the king of Jordan on February 7, 1999. A separate enthronement ceremony was held on June 9 so that…
“future anniversaries of King Abdullah’s accession would not clash with events marking the death of his father.” — (Jordan Crowns New King, June 1999 — BBC.)
• • •
Jordan is known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Hashemites descend from Hashim ibn Abd Manaf, the great grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad, through the Prophet’s daughter Fatimah. Hashim means “cuts into pieces. It sounds like a guy you wouldn’t want to mess with, but Hashim earned his nickname benevolently…
King Abdullah II’s father, King Hussein (1935-1999), once said of the Hashemites…
“We are the family of the prophet and we are the oldest tribe in the Arab world.” (Hussein CNN obit.)
• • •
King Abdullah II studied in England and the United States as well as Jordan. In fact he recently established King’s Academy in Jordan in the spirit of his alma mater, Massachusetts’ Deerfield Academy, even hiring the boarding school’s headmaster to lead it.
He served in several capacities in the Jordanian military, including as Commander of Special Operations, and had attained the rank of Major General when he assumed responsibilities as monarch.
Jordan’s geography and history places it in a unique place in Middle Eastern and Western diplomacy. Like his predecessor, King Abdullah has played a key role in the Palestinian-Israeli relations. In a recent speech commemorating the dual anniversaries of the Great Arab Revolt (Army Day) and his 1999 inauguration, the King responded to military personnel who criticized naturalization of Palestinians for fear doing so could weaken plans for a Palestinian state.
“You should be sure that we will not accept, under whatever circumstances, a solution for the Palestinian question at the expense of Jordan. Also, Jordan will not have any role in the West Bank. At the same time, we will not give up our historical role and duty in supporting our Palestinian brethren until they set up their independent state on their national soil.” — King Abdullah II
The West Bank was part of Jordan until the Six Day War in 1967. Over half of Jordan’s population are of Palestinian extraction, including the King’s wife, Queen Rania, who was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents.
The King’s mother is Princess Muna al-Hussein, born Antoinette Gardiner in Suffolk, England. She met King Hussein on the set of Lawrence of Arabia and converted to Islam; the two were married from 1961 to 1971 and had four children.
Today the Kentucky Historical Society celebrates the life of Daniel Boone, American pioneer and legendary folk hero.
Daniel Boone was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the—wait no—mixing up my folk heroes here. Boone was born in Eastern Pennsylvania, not Tennessee, but like Davy Crockett he was indeed raised in the woods so he knew every tree. No record of when he killed his first bear, but he was an expert hunter/trapper by age twelve.
Boone had two siblings who scandalized the Quaker world by marrying “worldlings”, ie. non-Quakers. This scandal may or may not have contributed to the family’s decision to move further west to the Shenandoah Valley and then to North Carolina in 1751. He married Rebecca Bryan five years later, and fought in the French and Indian War.
Legend has it that an American beech tree in Tennessee still bears Boone’s handiwork. The pioneer supposedly carved “D. Boon cilled a bar [killed a bear] on this tree in the year 1760”. (www.inhs.illinois.edu)
June 7 was chosen as Boone Day because it marks the supposed anniversary of the pioneer’s entry into Kentucky in 1767.
Two years later, Boone’s friend, a trader named John Findley, asked Boone to help him explore the unchartered wilderness, and Boone obliged.
Boone’s most famous trek may have been through 200 miles of Virginian wilderness to the Cumberland Gap, a journey immortalized by Caleb Bingham in his 1851 painting. Thousands of settlers later followed Boone’s path to make their way inland toward the Kentucky River.
Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers the Cumberland Gap, Caleb Bingham, 1851
“Daniel Boone Day will be one of the features of the week, during which there will be sewing bees, apple parings, corn huskings and old-fashioned dances.”
That Boone Day, however, was celebrated on June 15th.
By 1922, the Kentucky Historical Society extended a cordial invitation to readers and friends “to attend Boone Day exercises on June 7”, the traditional anniversary of the day in 1767 that Boone first explored the backwoods of what is now Kentucky.
[And no, despite his penchant for journeying out to the middle of nowhere, Boone had nothing to do with the term “Boondocks”. That comes from the Tagalog word bondoc, which means mountain and was brought to the U.S. by military personnel in the Philippines.]
June 6 marks the anniversary of the 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy that precipitated the long and brutal campaign to liberate Western Europe from Nazi power.
The invasion, also known as Operation Overlord, involved the landing of approximately 160,000 Allied troops, including U.S., U.K, Free French, Canadian, and Australian forces, in a single day along the heavily fortified Normandy coast. The day was scheduled to be June 5, but unfavorable weather conditions forced the landing back a day.
Contrary to popular belief, D-Day doesn’t stand for Debarkation Day.
“In fact, it does not stand for anything. The ‘D’ is derived from the word ‘Day.’ ‘D-Day’ means the day on which a military operation begins.”
Operation Overlord referred to the entire operation from the initial assault on June 6 to the crossing of the River Seine on August 19. Operation Neptune referred the beginning of the invasion, covering the assault on the beaches, and ended on June 30.
Then there was the lesser known “Operation Fortitude”. Operation Fortitude entailed a massive invasion through the narrowest point in the English Channel by the “First US Army Group” led by General George S. Patton.
D-Day: Invasion
Operation Fortitude was, needless to say, entirely made-up. A fictitious assault created to mislead the Germans into thinking the invasion would occur at another location. Secrecy was essential as the Germans had 55 divisions at their command in France, and the Allies could only land a maximum of 8 at any one time. Keeping the world’s largest invasion a secret was a feat almost as remarkable as the invasion itself. It required the Allies win complete dominance over UK airspace—Allied air forces suffered tremendous losses in the two months before the invasion in order to make this so. It required the UK to ferret out all German spies within their ranks and region and to force known spies to send misinformation back home.
The deception went so far as to set up a fake base for the “First U.S. Army Group” in England opposite the suspected landing site, complete giant rubber tanks, cardboard weapons, a paper mache oil pump, and scripted radio chatter.
D-Day: Wounded by the Chalk Cliffs
General Patton was an obvious choice for the fictitious assault. The Germans assumed Patton—one of the U.S. most capable generals—could lead such an operation. However, Patton had been disciplined for a “slapping” incident, something the Germans found difficult to believe was true. (It was.)
“Fortitude succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Long after June 6th, Hitler remained convinced that the Normandy Landings were a diversionary tactic to induce him to move his troops away from the Pas-de-Calais…He therefore kept his best units in readiness there, until the end of July…”
Within five days, over 325,000 troops had landed in Normandy.
The exact number of casualties and soldiers killed on D-Day itself are difficult to ascertain due to the large scale and complexity of the operation, and the conditions under which it was fought. Traditional estimates put the number of Allied casualties at 10,000 with the number of deaths accounting for a quarter of that. More recent estimates have put the number of dead alone at over 4400, a little over half of that figure Americans.
D-Day: German Troops Surrender
“These men came here — British and our allies, and Americans — to storm these beaches for one purpose only, not to gain anything for ourselves, not to fulfill any ambitions that America had for conquest, but just to preserve freedom… Many thousands of men have died for such ideals as these… but these young boys… were cut off in their prime… I devoutly hope that we will never again have to see such scenes as these. I think and hope, and pray, that humanity will have learned… we must find some way… to gain an eternal peace for this world.”
5th day of 5th lunar month
June 23, 2012
June 6, 2011
June 16, 2010;
Duanwu is often called Double Fifth, because it falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, but it’s more commonly referred to as the Dragon Boat Festival, after its most famous annual event.
Almost as famous are the delicious special foods prepared for this date. The traditional dish, zongzi, is a triangular rice ball stuffed with sweet or savory fillings, and wrapped in bamboo leaves. The Duanwu beverage of choice is a special realgar yellow rice wine.
The inspiration for the holiday comes from the death of one of China’s first great poets, Qu Yuan. Qu Yuan was a political advisor in the late forth century BC who urged his king to unite with other kingdoms against the rising state Qin. However, jealous and corrupt political opponents counseled the king against the advice of Qu Yuan, who was accused of treason and forced into exile. It was during this exile that Qu Yuan traveled the country gathering and recording local folklore and legends. When Qin did eventually attack and capture the capital city of Ying, Qu Yuan composed one of his greatest works, “Lament for Ying”. He then committed suicide by tying himself to a rock and jumping into a river.
The local fishermen tried to keep the fish from eating Qu Yuan’s body by throwing food into the water. Over time this became a tradition. Later a legend gained credence that Qu Yuan was killed by a great underwater dragon.
Qu Yuan
The Maoist government banned celebrations of Duanwu in 1949. It wasn’t until only a few years ago that the Chinese government officially reinstated three of the country’s most popular holidays: Tomb Sweeping Day, Mid-Autumn Festival and Duanwu.
It would be hard to describe Tonga in a word, but you could do worse than ‘exceptional’. Over the past two hundred years, the remote archipelago has stubbornly been the exception in the Pacific rather than the norm.
Though it was a British protectorate until 1970, Tonga is the only Pacific island nation never to have been formerly colonized. It’s the only nation in the region continuously governed by its indigenous population. And it’s the last Polynesian monarchy, making it one of only five members of the Commonwealth of Nations to have its own monarch.
Located about 3,000 kilometers east of Australia, Tonga consists of 171 islands.
Tonga is one of the smallest countries in the world, both in terms of area and population. At 747 sq. km, its landmass is roughly one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County and it has 1/100th the population.
Its life expectancy is 73–quite long for the region. And for our Moscow readers, the lowest temperature ever recorded in Tonga was 48 F/8.7 C.
That’s not to say Tonga is without problems. In addition to widespread poverty, public demands for reducing royal power have met stiff resistance. And its not hard to see why. Over the past two hundred years, Tonga’s monarchs have been the core force in maintaining its highly autonomous status and development.
Tonga has been inhabited since about 2500 BC. Oral history recalls the sovereign line dating back a thousand years. But there are no written records of Tongan history before Captain Cook’s landings in the 1770s. Cook called the place the “Friendly Islands” based on the population’s hospitality and his positive exchanges with the locals.
King George Tupou I
The first king of Tonga as we recognize it today was King George Tupou I. Tupou is believed to have been born in 1793. As a chieftain, he consolidated power over the disparate island groups.
“From a small, disputed inheritance in the Ha’apai group in 1820, his ambition to reunite Tonga after its civil wars which had begun in the 1780s led him first to the conquest of Ha’apai in 1826; he secured the inheritance of Vava’u in 1833, and the inheritance of the Tu’i Kanokupolu title which nominally gave him Tongatapu in 1845, and thus made him king of all Tonga.”
He had abolished serfdom in Vava’u—part of Tonga—back in the 1830s. In 1862 he took two more extraordinary steps. Not only did he create a parliamentary system of government, he also…
“…abolished the system of semi-serfdom that had previously existed and established an entirely alien system of land tenure whereby every Tongan male, upon reaching the age of 16, was entitled to rent for life at a nominal fee a plot of bush land (api) of 8.25 acres, plus a village allotment of about three-eighths of an acre for his home.”
For these and more sweeping changes, the first modern king is Tonga’s national hero. The anniversary of the Tupou’s coronation in 1875 is celebrated in December, but June 4 is Tonga’s National Day. It remembers both the anniversary of the the abolishment of serfdom in 1862 and the end of Tonga’s status as a British protectorate over a century later.
