Today's celebrations 29th August

Today is...

Nut Spas in Russia

Slovak National Uprising Day in Slovakia

Today's celebrations August 22nd

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National Flag Day in Russia

Today's celebrations 19th August

Today is...

Apple Spas in Russia

Day of the Failed August, 1991 Coup in Russia

Independence Day in Afghanistan

National Aviation Day in the United States of America

Revolution of 1945 in Vietnam

Birth of Crown Princess Mette Marit in Norway

Montserrat Annual Pilgrimage in Montserrat

Dance around the world: waltz, ballet, Bachata, B-boying

Waltz

The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance from around the 16th century with evidence of it found in several European countries including France, Germany, Austria and England.



Ballet

Ballet is a formalized kind of performance dance, which originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France, England, and Russia as a concert dance form.





Bachata

Bachata is a style of dance that accompanies the music of the same name. It has its origins in the Dominican Republic.The dance is a four-step beat achieved with a walking Cuban hip motion, and a unique “pop”.



B-boying (Breakdance)

B-boying, commonly referred to as breakdancing, is a style of dance that was created, and developed as part of hip-hop culture among African Americans, and later on Latino American youths in New York City.

Today's celebrations May 16th!

Today is...

Red Hill holiday in Russia

Get to know Russian music!

Here are the top 5 Russian songs in the music charts at the moment. We are by no means saying that this is all there is to Russian music, this is just what the Russian public are loving at the moment!

Nyusha - Ne Perebivay / Нюша - Не перебивай



5ivesta family зачем



Aslan feat. Marina - Где ты (Radu Sirbu remix)



Инфинити - Замечталась (официальный клип)



ВАЛЕРИЯ - Капелькою

Today's celebrations May 9th!

Today is...

Celebration of War Veterans Day in Azerbaijan

Liberation Day in Guernsey and Jersey

Memorial Day of Victims of World War II in Latvia

Mother's Day in Belarus

National Heroes Day in Moldova

VE Day in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Victory & Peace Day in Armenia

Day of Memory and Honour in Uzbekistan

Victory Day in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro, Russia, Taijikistan, Turkmenistan and the Ukraine

Today's celebrations May 2nd!

Today is...

2nd day of Labor in Russia and Slovenia

Dos de Mayo in Spain

King's Birthday in Lesotho

National Flag Day in Poland

Brothers and Sisters Day in the United States of America

British Evacuation Day in Libya

Libya celebrates the anniversary of the evacuation of British military forces in the country in 1970 after the British government agreed to pull out its troops from Tobruk “Al Adam” (present day, Jalal Abdulnasir Base), the air base they established after the Second World War broke out.

At the end of the Second World War, Libya associated much of its foreign policies in the West especially the United States and Great Britain while maintaining full diplomatic relations with Italy, Greece, France and the dissolved Soviet Union.

The military coup led by Muammar al-Gaddafi in 1969 resulted in the decision to close the American and British military bases in Libya and hoped to nationalize most of government’s properties including the fossil fuels resources and other commercial businesses in the country. Moreover, Gaddafi’s temporarily embargoed the transport of oil to the US and other countries in the west as a means to convince the Western nations to halt the political and military support they were giving Israel in 1973.

The last British troops left Libya in 1970 marking this day as one of the important turning points in Libya’s colonial history. Today, this is celebrated as British Evacuation Day. British Evacuation Day is considered to be one of the most important holidays in Libya but it isn’t celebrated with festivities inasmuch as how religious holidays in Libya are celebrated. The employed consider this day as a time off from work.

Information from:

http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/libya-british-evacuation-day/

http://www.bank-holidays.com/pop_up_holidays.php?fete_id=4092&pays_id=218&jour_sem=5&annee=0&id_langue=2

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/libya_pop_1974.jpg

Who is Kim Il-Sung?

Kim Il-sung was a Korean communist politician who led North Korea from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1994.He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death. He was also the General Secretary of the Workers Party of Korea. During his tenure as leader of North Korea, he ruled the nation with autocratic power and established an all-pervasive cult of personality. North Korea officially refers to Kim Il-sung as the "Great Leader" and he is designated in the constitution as the country's "Eternal President". His birthday is a public holiday in North Korea.

The Communist Party of Korea had been founded in 1925, but had been thrown out of the Comintern in the early 1930s for being too nationalist. In 1931, Kim had joined the Communist Party of China. He joined various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China, and in 1935 he became a member of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a guerrilla group led by the Communist Party of China. Kim was appointed the same year to serve as political commissar for the 3rd detachment of the second division, around 160 soldiers.Kim was appointed commander of the 6th division in 1937, at the age of 24, controlling a few hundred men in a group that came to be known as “Kim Il Sung’s division.” Kim’s division only captured a small Japanese-held town just across the Korean border for a few hours, it was nonetheless considered a military success at this time, when the guerrilla units had experienced difficulty in capturing any enemy territory. This accomplishment would grant Kim some measure of fame among Chinese guerrillas, and North Korean biographies would later exploit it as a great victory for Korea. Kim was appointed commander of the 2nd operational region for the 1st Army, but by the end of 1940, he was the only 1st Army leader still alive.Kim became a Captain in the Soviet Red Army and served in it until the end of World War II.In later years, Kim would heavily embellish his guerrilla feats in order to build up his personality cult. He was portrayed as a boy-conspirator who joined the resistance at 14 and had founded a battle-ready army at 19. North Korean students are taught that this Kim-led army singlehandedly drove the Japanese off the peninsula.

Kim arrived in North Korea on August 22 after 26 years in exile. His Korean was marginal at best; he'd only had eight years of formal education, all of it in chinese. In September 1945, Kim was installed by the Soviets as head of the Provisional People’s Committee. He was not, at this time, the head of the Communist Party.During his early years as leader, he assumed a position of influence largely due to the backing of the Korean population which was supportive of his fight against Japanese occupation.One of Kim’s accomplishments was his establishment of a professional army, the Korean People's Army (KPA) aligned with the Communists, formed from a cadre of guerrillas and former soldiers who had gained combat experience in battles against the Japanese and later Nationalist Chinese troops. From their ranks, using Soviet advisers and equipment, Kim constructed a large army skilled in infiltration tactics and guerrilla warfare.Kim also formed an air force, equipped at first with ex-Soviet propeller-driven fighter and attack aircraft.

In 1948, Kim persuaded the Soviets not to allow the UN north of the 38th parallel, believing he could not possibly win a free election. As a result, a month after the South was granted independence as the Republic of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed on September 9, with Kim as premier. On October 12, the Soviet Union declared that Kim's regime was the only lawful government on the peninsula. The Communist Party merged with the New People's Party to form the Workers Party of North Korea (of which Kim was vice-chairman). In 1949, the Workers Party of North Korea merged with its southern counterpart to become the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) with Kim as party chairman.By 1949, North Korea was a full-fledged Communist dictatorship. All parties and mass organizations were cajoled into the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, ostensibly a popular front but in reality dominated by the Communists. Around this time, Kim built the first of many statues of himself and began calling himself "the Great Leader."

After the Korean War, Kim launched a five-year national economic plan to establish a command economy, with all industry owned by the state and all agriculture collectivised. The nation was founded on egalitarian principles intent on eliminating class differences and the economy was based upon the needs of workers and peasants. The economy was focused on heavy industry and arms production. Both South and North Korea retained huge armed forces to defend the 1953 ceasefire line, although no foreign troops were permanently stationed in North Korea.

Kim's hold on power was rather shaky. To strengthen it, he claimed that the United States deliberately spread diseases among the North Korean population. While Moscow and Beijing later determined that these charges were false, they continued to help spread this rumor for many years to come. He also conducted North Korea's first large-scale purges in part to scare the people into accepting this false account.Victims often simply disappeared into the growing network of prison camps.

During the 1950s, Kim was seen as an orthodox Communist leader, and an enthusiastic satellite of the Soviet Union. His speeches were liberally sprinkled with praises to Stalin. However, he sided with China during the Sino-Soviet split, opposing the reforms brought by Nikita Khrushchev, whom he believed was acting in opposition to Communism. He distanced himself from the Soviet Union, removing mention of his Red Army career from official history, and began reforming the country to his own radical Stalinist tastes.

From the mid-1960s, he promoted his self-developed Juche variant of communist national organisation. The Juche is the official state ideology of North Korea. It teaches that "man is the master of everything and decides everything," and that the Korean people are the masters of Korea's revolution. According to Kim Jong-il's On the Juche Idea, the application of Juche in state policy entails the following:

1. The people must have independence in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense.
2. Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction.
3. Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country.
4. The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action.

The Juche outlook requires absolute loyalty to the revolutionary party and leader. In North Korea, these are the Workers' Party of Korea and Kim Jong-il, respectively.

A new constitution was proclaimed in December 1972, under which Kim became President of North Korea. By this time, he had decided that his son Kim Jong-il would succeed him, and increasingly delegated the running of the government to him. At the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim publicly designated his son as his successor.

By the early 1990s, North Korea was nearly completely isolated from the outside world, except for limited trade and contacts with China, Russia, Vietnam, and Cuba. Its economy was virtually bankrupt, crippled by huge expenditures on armaments, with an agricultural sector unable to feed its population, but state-run North Korean media continued to lionize Kim. On July 8, 1994 at age 82, Kim Il-sung collapsed from a sudden heart attack. After the attack Kim Jong-il ordered the team of doctors who always were at his father's side to leave, and insisted that only the best be flown in from Pyongyang. Hours passed as the elder Kim lay near death in a room with his son, when the doctors finally arrived, the elder Kim was too far gone and died despite efforts to save him. Many claim Kim Jong-Il did this to ensure his father's death and his rise to power 3 years later.

There are over 500 statues of Kim Il-sung in North Korea. Some statues have been destroyed by explosions or damaged with graffiti. Kim Il-sung's image is prominent in places associated with public transportation, hanging at every North Korean train station and airport.It is also placed prominently at the border crossings between China and North Korea. His portrait is featured on the front of all recent North Korean one banknotes.

Information from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung#Leader_of_North_Korea

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/02_04/BowDownAP_468x293.jpg

What is Yuri's Night

Yuri's Night is an international celebration held on April 12 every year to commemorate two separate space exploration milestones. Firstly 45 years ago, when Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter outer space. Then 20 years later the USA launched the Space Shuttle which was designed to carry a larger crew and large volumes of cargo to orbit.

The goal of Yuri's Night is to increase public interest in space exploration and to inspire a new generation of explorers. Driven by space-inspired artistic expression and culminating in a worldwide network of annual celebrations and educational events, Yuri's Night creates a global community of young people committed to shaping the future of space exploration while developing responsible leaders and innovators with a global perspective. These global events are a showcase for elements of culture that embrace space including music, dance, fashion, and art.

On 2010 event there will be 162 parties in 57 countries on 7 continents and 2 worlds. You too can set up a party here: Start a party

Information taken from:

http://yurisnight.net/about/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri's_Night

Today's Celebrations April 12th!

Today is...

Cosmonaut's Day in Russia

National Redemption Day in Liberia

Yuri`s Night All over the world!

The Diary of a Mail Order Bride

In Russia there are 10.5 million more women than men and the competition has led them to have the biggest mail order agency in the world. This documentary looks at what it is like to meet a mail order bride, to marry one and to live with one.

51 year old Dave has been dating Alexandra for 3 years since she contact him online and they are now engaged. Alexandra has just graduated with a degree in civil law and is a qualified nurse. While she has been studying Dave has been sending her £60 a week which is more than the average Russian wage. Dave has only met up with Alexandra 5 times in Russia and she has never come to Britain. But now, Alexandra is giving up her law career and coming to start a new life with Dave in Britain in a small village of 1200 people. After being rejected once and trying for months, Alexandra was granted a fiance visa which allows her to stay in Britain for 6 months to test the water before marrying Dave. Dave's daughter Anna is the same age as Alexandra. Anna is not very happy about her Dad sending Alexandra money. Alexandra cannot speak very much english and Anna says she doesnt understand how you can love someone who cant speak to. Dave had been single for 7 years before meeting Alexandra and spent their whole relationship lobbying for her to come and live with him.On her first day, Alexandra says that she is already certain she wont stay the full 6 months. The house is untidy, dirty, she doesnt like the colours of the walls and a lot needs fixing. She adds however tht "its important to see how Dave lives and learn the traditions here as the cuture seems so different. I'd like to see it." Taken on her first day out in Britain, she says the air smells like poo (the village is near to fields of cows) and while eating lunch in a pub, adds that the British cannot cook. She says she likes the atmosphere in the village and realised that Dave likes alcohol more than the Russians, saying 'this was a big surprise and not a pleasant one'. On Alexandras 3rd day in Britain she is starting to feel very homesick and becomes very angry when Dave goes for a pint when she is in the kicthen making him lunch. Alexandra has decided that she is going back to Russia. Although her visa is for 6 months, after 4 weeks she leaves. Alexandra and Dave haven split up but she is not going to return to the UK. Dave's daughter Anna has decided not to see him since Alexandra came to the UK.When Alexandra leaves, Dave is very upset, saying 'I love her so much, probably more than anyone before'.

Over 800 British men a year apply for visas for their Russian brides. 46 year old David hopes to become one of these men. He has been married twice before and has two sons. After his second divorce, he dated women from Poland, Slovakia and Lithuania until he heard about the Russian marriage websites. On one he met Liuda who is a 22 year old restaurant manager. After being in contact for 7 months, Liuda and David met up for the first time and on their 4th day together, they got engaged. Although they have only met once they planned to marry in 2 months. However Liuda's family disapprove of their engagement and in a week David will travel to Siberia to try and convince Luida's family to let them marry. Luida only broke the news of her engagement 6 weeks ago and her family are in shock. Luida's 16 year old sister says 'they only met for four days and they dont speak the same language, they cant understand each other'. David goes over for lunch, but David doesnt speak a word of Russian and the family do not speak english so they cannot communicate very well. The next day David agrees to sit down with Luida's parents to address their concerns about her going to England and this time they get the help of an interpreter. Afterwards, they give their blessing to the marriage. They will be getting married in Prague because Luida cannot come to the UK without a visa. Luida and Dave have known each other for a year, met twice and seen each other for 8 days.Dave has paid for a £700 wedding package and Luida has paid all of her travel expenses.After the wedding and asked how they feel, Dave says "fine, fine" and "when she speaks more english I think it will be better because we'll be able to understand each other more".

Rod is a 51 year old man from Texas who has come to St. Petersburg Russia on a find love tour. Rod wants to get married but his longest relationship was in his 30's for 4 years. He printed off the profiles of his 20 favourite girls from the website in preparation for his trip. He is on the tour with 15 other men who are all white, aged between 37-62 and all bar two are American. They will be going to specially organised parties where the ratio of men to women is 1 - 10. ONe evening Rod goes on a date with a woman he met on the dating website, Svetlana. After a 3 hour date, Rod went back to his hotel. He spent £240 on Svetlana, including a new mobile phone. Realising she only wanted his money, Rod didnt see her again. At the social, there are 150 women to 15 men, 75% of whom are graduates and 50% of whom are under 30. He meets a particular tall blonde woman called Irena and is instantly smitten but then she gets a better off and turns cold on Rod. 20 minutes later he leaves the social with 2 other girls. At the end of his trip, Rod leaves without having met anyone. He decides to return to St Petersburg in a few months to start his search afresh.

Luicda's visa was approved and she is now living in the UK with David.Rod returned to St. petersburg but remains single. Alexandra and Dave have split up. He has since found out that she had been receiving money from another foreign man.

If you live in the UK, you can watch this documentary here

Who is Chiang Kai-shek?

Chiang Kai-shek (October 31, 1887 – April 5, 1975) was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He was an influential member of the Kuomintang (KMT, the Chinese Nationalist Party) and Sun Yat-sen's (a Chinese revolutionary and political leader) close ally. He became the commandant of Kuomintang's Whampoa Military Academy and took Sun's place in the party when the latter died in 1925. In 1928, Chiang led the Northern Expedition to unify the country, becoming China's overall leader. He served as chairman of the National Military Council of the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 to 1948. Chiang led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which the Nationalist Government's power severely weakened, but his prominence grew.

Chiang's Nationalists engaged in a long standing civil war with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After the Japanese surrender in 1945, he attempted to eradicate the CCP. Ultimately, bolstered by support from Soviet Russia, the CCP defeated Chiang, forcing the Nationalist government to retreat to Taiwan, where martial law was continued while the government still tried to take back mainland China. Chiang ruled the island with an iron fist as the President of the Republic of China and Director-General of the Kuomintang until his death in 1975.

Chiang's legacy has been target of heated debates because of the different views held about him. For some, Chiang was a National Hero that led the victorious Northern Expedition against the Beiyang Warlords in 1927 and contributed to unify China and subsequenly led China to ultimate victory against Japan in 1945. Some blamed him (often unjustly) for not doing enough against the Japanese forces in the lead-up to and during the Second Sino-Japanese War, preferring to keep his armies to fight the communists, or merely waiting and hoping that the Americans would get involved. Some also see him as a champion of anti-communism, being a key figure during the formative years of the World Anti-Communist League. During the Cold War, he was also seen as the leader who led Free China and the bulwark against a possible communist invasion. However, Chiang presided over purges, political authoritarianism and graft during his tenure in mainland China, and ruled throughout a period of imposed martial law and White Terror in Taiwan. His governments were accused of being corrupt from before he even took power in 1928. He also allied with known criminals like Du Yuesheng for political and financial gains. Some opponents charge that Chiang's effort in developing Taiwan was mostly to make the island a strong base from which to one day return to mainland China, and that Chiang had little regard for the long term prosperity and well-being of the Taiwanese people.

Today, Chiang Kai-shek's popularity in Taiwan is divided along political lines, enjoying greater support among KMT supporters. He is generally unpopular among DPP voters and supporters. In sharp contrast to his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, and to Sun Yat-sen, his memory is rarely invoked by current political parties, including the Kuomintang.

In the US and Europe, Chiang was often perceived negatively as the one who lost China to the communists. His constant demands for Western support and funding also earned him the nickname of "Generalissimo Chiang Cash-My-Cheque". Finally, he has been criticized for his poor military skills. He would often issue unrealistic orders, or persistently try to fight unwinnable battles, leading to the loss of his best troops.

In recent years, this view however has started to change. He is now increasingly perceived as a man simply overwhelmed by the events in China, having to fight simultaneously communists, Japanese and provincial warlords while having to reconstruct and unify the country. His sincere, albeit often unsuccessful attempts to build a more powerful nation have been noted by scholars such as Fenby or Mitter. The latter wrote that, ironically, today's China is closer to Chiang's vision than to Mao's one. He argues that the Communists, since the 1980s, have essentially created the state envisioned by Chiang in the 1930s. Mitter concludes by writing that "one can imagine Chiang Kaishek's ghost wandering round China today nodding in approval, while Mao's ghost follows behind him, moaning at the destruction of his vision".

Information from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek#Death

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen

All About April Fools Day!

What is April Fool's Day?

April Fool's Day, also known as All Fools Day, is always celebrated on April 1st and marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication. Traditionally, in countries such as the UK, Australia and South Africa the jokes only last until noon, and someone who plays a trick after noon is called an "April Fool". Elsewhere, such as in Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Korea, The Netherlands, and the USA, the jokes last all day.

Where does it come from?

The origin of April Fools' Day is unknown. One likely theory is that April Fool's Day comes from the Persian tradition of Sizdah Bedar, which is believed to be the oldest prank-related tradition in the world still alive, celebrated by Persians as far back as 536 BC. Another theory is that the modern holiday was first celebrated soon after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar; the term referred to someone still adhering to the Julian Calendar, which it replaced. In many pre-Christian cultures May Day (May 1) was celebrated as the first day of summer, and signalled the start of the spring planting season. An April Fool may have been someone who did this prematurely. Another possible origin lies in the fact that when King Charles IX of France officially changed the first day of the year from April 1 to January 1, some of his subjects continued using the old system.

The best April Fool's of all time

The Museum of Hoaxes lists the top 100 April Fool's day hoaxes of all time, and we have picked our top 10. If you want to see the full list, click here.

1. 1976: The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.
2. 1996: The Taco Bell Corporation announced it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke. The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known, he said, as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
3. 1959: The residents of Wellingborough, England woke to find a trail of white footprints painted along the main street of their town. At the end of the trail were the words, "I must fly."
4. 1974: Residents of Sitka, Alaska were alarmed when the long-dormant volcano neighboring them, Mount Edgecumbe, suddenly began to belch out billows of black smoke. People spilled out of their homes onto the streets to gaze up at the volcano, terrified that it was active again and might soon erupt. Luckily it turned out that man, not nature, was responsible for the smoke. A local practical joker named Porky Bickar had flown hundreds of old tires into the volcano's crater and then lit them on fire, all in a (successful) attempt to fool the city dwellers into believing that the volcano was stirring to life. According to local legend, when Mount St. Helens erupted six years later, a Sitka resident wrote to Bickar to tell him, "This time you've gone too far!"
5. 1915: On April 1, 1915, in the midst of World War I, a French aviator flew over a German camp and dropped what appeared to be a huge bomb. The German soldiers immediately scattered in all directions, but no explosion followed. After some time, the soldiers crept back and gingerly approached the bomb. They discovered it was actually a large football with a note tied to it that read, "April Fool!"
6. 1965: Politiken, a Copenhagen newspaper, reported that the Danish parliament had passed a new law requiring all dogs to be painted white. The purpose of this, it explained, was to increase road safety by allowing dogs to be seen more easily at night.
7. 1997: An email message spread throughout the world announcing that the internet would be shut down for cleaning for twenty-four hours from March 31 until April 2. This cleaning was said to be necessary to clear out the "electronic flotsam and jetsam" that had accumulated in the network. Dead email and inactive ftp, www, and gopher sites would be purged. The cleaning would be done by "five very powerful Japanese-built multi-lingual Internet-crawling robots (Toshiba ML-2274) situated around the world." During this period, users were warned to disconnect all devices from the internet. The message supposedly originated from the "Interconnected Network Maintenance Staff, Main Branch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology." This joke was an updated version of an old joke that used to be told about the phone system. For many years, gullible phone customers had been warned that the phone systems would be cleaned on April Fool's Day. They were cautioned to place plastic bags over the ends of the phone to catch the dust that might be blown out of the phone lines during this period.
8. 1993: Westdeutsche Rundfunk, a German radio station, announced that officials in Cologne had just passed an unusual new city regulation. Joggers going through the park would be required to pace themselves to go no faster than six mph. Any faster, it was felt, would unnecessarily disturb the squirrels who were in the middle of their mating season.
9. 1993: The China Youth Daily, an official state newspaper of China, announced on its front page that the government had decided to make Ph.D. holders exempt from the state-imposed one-child limit. The logic behind this decision was that it would eventually reduce the need to invite as many foreign experts into the country to help with the state's modernization effort. Despite a disclaimer beneath the story identifying it as a joke, the report was repeated as fact by Hong Kong's New Evening News and by Agence France-Presse, an international news agency. Apparently what made the hoax seem credible to many was that intellectuals in Singapore are encouraged to marry each other and have children, and China's leaders are known to have great respect for the Singapore system. The Chinese government responded to the hoax by condemning April Fool's Day as a dangerous Western tradition. The Guangming Daily, Beijing's main newspaper for intellectuals, ran an editorial stating that April Fool's jokes "are an extremely bad influence." It went on to declare that, "Put plainly, April Fool's Day is Liar's Day."
10. In 1994 National Public Radio's All Things Considered program reported that companies such as Pepsi were sponsoring teenagers to tattoo their ears with corporate logos. In return for branding themselves with the corporate symbol, the teenagers would receive a lifetime 10% discount on that company's products. Teenagers were said to be responding enthusiastically to this deal.

April Fool.... Wait.... No it isn't!

The frequency of April Fools' hoaxes sometimes makes people doubt real news stories released on April 1. Below are some events that were taken to be April Fools jokes, but weren't!

• The April 1, 1946 Aleutian Island earthquake tsunami that killed 165 people in Hawaii and Alaska resulted in the creation of a tsunami warning system (specifically the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre), established in 1949 for Pacific Ocean countries. The tsunami in question is known in Hawaii as the "April Fools' Day Tsunami" due to people drowning because of the assumptions that the warnings were an April Fools' prank.
• In 1979, Iran declared April 1 its national Republic Day. Thirty years on, this continues to be mistaken for a joke.
• On April 1, 1984, singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father. Originally, people assumed that it was a fake news story, especially considering the bizarre aspect of the father being the murderer.
• Gmail's April 2004 launch was widely believed to be a prank, as Google traditionally perpetrates April Fools' Day hoaxes each April 1. Another Google-related event that turned out not to be a hoax occurred on April 1, 2007, when employees at Google's New York City office were alerted that a ball python kept in an engineer's cubicle had escaped and was on the loose. An internal e-mail acknowledged that "the timing…could not be more awkward" but that the snake's escape was in fact an actual occurrence and not a prank.
• On April 1, 2009, A school was almost burned to the ground in the Danish town Albertslund; apparently, the fire department refused to believe that the news was true the first two times that people called to report it.
• Also on April 1, 2009, a Virus/Worm was called Conficker and spread to millions of computers and releasing personal info and deleting files. This was supposed to be a joke, but random computers throughout America were hit. Before this happened, news media like, NBC, Fox News, ABC and CBS told the viewers to install firewalls and updates to their Windows Computers before it hit.

Information from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools'_Day

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/P60/

The Russians Are Coming

This channel 4 documentary follows Russian international property broker Dina Karpova, who is capitalising on Russia's love for all things English. Dina is an agent to the super-rich in Russia, who want their children to attend the top British schools and so high-tracking them into British high society. Dina says “our clients do want to go to top schools, they do want their kids to be with best British families and be friends with them. There is not one company in Russia that works with top schools or prepares children to go to top schools. The only choice is me.” There are, however, school agents in the Middle East and Asia doing all they can to get their students into schools in the UK. “Competition is fierce, there is no question about it. Now a lot of british schools cap the number of foreign students. You compete with a lot of asian kids who are breeded like racehorses to get into the system".

Dina found this niche in the market when her own son, Ivan, began boarding at Westminster, one of the best public schools in England. Ivan, who speaks with a British accent, boards at Westminster while Dina lives in Moscow. Ivan had a very cosmopolitan upbringing. She wanted to expose him to a lot of culture so he lived in Russia in his early years, then the US and now Britain.

Dina on the other hand had a very different upbringing to Ivan. She wasn’t allowed to speak to foreigners. Her parents were physicists working on top secret nuclear weapons for the government. She had a serious lack of freedom but had a high standard of living. She graduated as an aerospace engineer but the breakdown on communism in the 1990s brought down her privileged life as they were owed a years worth of salary by the government, they had sold everything and had no money. She moved to new York and became a successful businesswoman.

According to Dina “it is quite a trend now in Russia to send your children to England” and “our clients want to match the culture, they don’t want to be seen as Russians”. Charles, an educational consultant that works with Dina, said “traditionally a lot of the great schools have educated a lot of the ruling families so that culture is there and the new Russians are doing their very best to replicate the lifestyles of the tsarists elite and part of that is being educated in the west”. Dina's client in the documentary wants his 11 year old son and stepson to go to a British public school. Dina sends her clients children on a residential course that would introduce them to the English aristocracy and teach them how to blend in. First they learn how to play polo. Dina tells them that if they play polo they will become part of high society. Then they learn how to shoot and one of the teachers messed up the boys room and then instructed them how to clean it and keep it when they are staying at a persons house, like showing them how their bed should be made and what to do after having a bath. They also had intensive academic training to help with the entry exams for the schools. They are also taken with their parents to visit Stowe, one of the top public boarding schools. They are shown around the school by a student who also moved from Russia and soon fall in love with it. The boys and their parents then go on to visit many other schools. The boys receive a conditional offer from one of the public schools and so if they achieve the needed results in January, they will move from Russia to England to attend the school. Charles says “it never ceases to amaze me how brave they are, coming to a new country often speaking only a few words of the language and having to adapt”.

Looking into the future, Dina predicts “that Britain is going to play a huge part in Russian future and I think that is a fantastic thing because these kids will merge the cultures, they’re not going to fight”. Charles adds that “Britain is an extraordinary country in the way that we can integrate so many different people from ethnic backgrounds”.

Image is of Stowe School in Buckinghamshire.

If you live in the UK, you can watch this documentary here

Greek Independence Day

After centuries of unsuccessful uprisings and failure of the Ottoman Empire to assimilate and convert the Greeks, The War of Independence began in 1821 rising up against 400 years of occupation and oppression by the Ottoman Turks. The origin of the Turkish occupancy began in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople (currently referred to as Istanbul). During the dark years of the Ottoman occupation, thousands were killed and tortured for attending church or teaching their children culture, history and language. It was the Greek Orthodox Church that helped to retain their very identity by the institution of Crypha Scholia (Hidden Schools).

The celebration of Greek Independence Day on March 25th draws inspiration from one of the holiest days for Greek Orthodox Christians, the Annunciation of the Theotokos. This is the day that the Archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would bear a child. Bishop Germanos of Patras seized the opportunity by raising the banner of revolution, in an act of defiance against the Turks and marked the beginning of the War of Independence. These freedom fighters, or klephts as they were called, of Greece sacrificed much for their country. Kolokotronis, Nikitara, Karaiskakis, Bouboulina, and Mpotsaris are some of the heroes of the revolution.

During this period there was a strong maritime tradition on the islands of the Aegean which, together with the emergence over the 18th century of an influential merchant class, generated the wealth necessary to found schools, libraries and pay for young Greeks to study at the universities of Western Europe. It was there that they came into contact with the radical ideas of the European Enlightenment, the French Revolution and romantic nationalism. Educated and influential members of the large Greek diaspora, such as Adamantios Korais and Anthimos Gazis, tried to transmit these ideas back to the Greeks, with the double aim of raising their educational level and simultaneously strengthening their national identity.

The struggle for independence was supported abroad by intellectuals of the day. In addition to the Secret Society of Friends (Filiki Etaeria) and the Sacred Band (Ieros Lohos) prominent world figures including Lord Byron of England, Daniel Webster and Dr. Samuel Gridly Howe of the United States raised the interest level among Europeans and Americans.

The Peloponnese (a region in southern Greece), with its long tradition of resistance to the Ottomans, was to become the heartland of the revolt. The crucial meeting was held at Vostitsa (modern Aigion), where chieftains and prelates from all over the Peloponnese assembled on 26 January. There, the klepht captains declared their readiness for the uprising, while most of the civil leaders presented themselves sceptical and demanded guarantees about a Russian intervention.

On 17 March, 1821, war was declared on the Turks by the Maniots in the town of Areopoli. An army of 2,000 Maniots advanced on the Messenian town of Kalamata, which fell to the Greeks on 23 March. On the same day, Andreas Londos, a Greek primate (bishop), rose up at Vostitsa. On March 28, the Messenian Senate, the first of the Greeks' local governing councils, held its first session in Kalamata. On 22 March, the revolutionaries declared the Revolution at the square of Agios Georgios in Patras, in the presence of archbishop Germanos. On the next day, the leaders of the Revolution in Achaia sent a document to the foreign consulates explaining the reasons of the Revolution. On 23 March, the Ottomans launched sporadic attacks towards the town while the revolutionaries drove them back to the fortress.

By the end of March, the Greeks effectively controlled the countryside, while the Turks were confined to the fortresses. Many armatoloi in Central Greece had joined the Filiki Eteria. When the revolution erupted they took up arms alongside the revolutionaries. The first region to revolt in Central Greece was Phocis on 24 March. In Boeotia, Livadeia was captured on 29 March, followed by Thebes two days later. The Ottoman garrison held out in the citadel of Salona, the regional capital, until April 10, when the Greeks took it. Cretan participation in the revolution was extensive, but it failed to achieve liberation from Turkish rule due to Egyptian intervention. The final major engagement of the war was the Battle of Petra, which occurred north of Attica. Greek forces under Demetrius Ypsilantis, for the first time trained to fight as a regular European army rather than as guerilla bands, advanced against Aslan Bey's forces and defeated them. The Turks would surrender all lands from Livadeia to the Spercheios River in exchange for safe passage out of Central Greece.

From November 15 to 20, 1821, a council was held in Salona (present-day Amfissa) in which the main local notables and military chiefs participated. Under the direction of Theodoros Negris, they set down a proto-constitution for the region, the "Legal Order of Eastern Continental Greece", and established a governing council. A month later, a national legislative assembly was formed at Epidaurus, consisted almost exclusively of Moreot notables. The Assembly composed the first Greek Constitution and appointed the members of an executive and a legislative body that were to govern the liberated territories.

On 21 December 1828 the ambassadors of the United Kingdom, Russia, and France met in the island of Poros, and prepared a Protocol, which provided for the creation of an autonomous state ruled by a monarch. Under the pressure of Russia, the Porte finally agreed on the terms of the Treaty of London of 6 July 1827, and of the Protocol of 22 March 1829. Soon afterward, the United Kingdom and France conceived the idea of an independent Greek state, trying to limit the influence of Russia on the new state. Russia was not delighted by the idea, but could not reject it, and, consequently, the three powers finally agreed to create an independent Greek state under their joint protection, and concluded the Protocols of 3 February 1830.

The consequences of the Greek revolution were somewhat ambiguous in the immediate aftermath. An independent Greek state had been established, but with Britain, Russia and France claiming a major role in Greek politics, an imported Bavarian dynast as ruler, and a mercenary army. The population of the new state numbered 800,000, representing less than one-third of the 2.5 million Greek inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire. In the long-term historical perspective, this marked a seminal event in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. For the first time, a Christian subject people had achieved independence from the Ottoman rule and established a fully independent state, recognized by Europe. The Greek Revolt legitimized the concept of small ethnically-based nation-states and emboldened nationalist movements among other Christian subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire. The Serbs, Bulgars and Romanians would all subsequently fight for and win their independence, while the Armenians would fail as even in their traditional homeland they were outnumbered five-to-one by Muslims (Turks and Kurds).

The flag of Greece has not changed since the revolution. The white cross in the upper left hand corner covering one fourth of the flag signifies the important role of the Greek Orthodox Church in the formation of the Hellenic Nation. The blue and white alternating stripes represent the sea and the relentless waves of the Aegean. According to legend, the Goddess of Beauty Aphrodite emerged from these waves. There are nine stripes representing each letter of the Greek word for freedom, Eleftheria.

Information from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_War_of_Independence#Central_Greece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_II

http://www.helleniccomserve.com/greekindependence.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopoli

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_(religion)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnese

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