Every Day Is Special

July 3 – Danish West Indies Emancipation Day

Posted on July 3, 2017

Slavery is an ugly practice, and the African slave trade and slavery-buttressed agriculture and mining in the Americas was particularly ugly.

Notice that I said "the Americas," plural, not "America." I'm talking about the slave trade and slave labor in North and South America, including Central America and the Caribbean. Here are just a few of the countries whose economies once depended partly on African slave labor:

Cuba,

Brazil,

Bahamas,

Venezuela,

Belize,

Haiti,

Dominican Republic,

Suriname,

Mexico,

Colombia,

Guyana,

and of course the United States, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The U.S. Virgin Islands used to be the Danish West Indies - three Caribbean islands ruled by Denmark from the mid-1700s to the early 1900s. Danes brought enslaved Africans to the islands to work the sugar plantations.

The blowing of the conch signaled the
beginning of the rebellion led by Gottlieb.

A freed slave and skilled craftsman named Moses Gottlieb, who lived on St. Croix, went by the name General Buddhoe. Apparently he organized a lot of the slaves on the western end of the island, and together they marched on the town of Fredericksted. This rebellion caused the Governor-General of the Danish colony to emancipate (free) all of the slaves.

Because emancipation was announced in Fredericksted, this town is nicknamed Freedom City.

Check out Freedom City:

Even though a large part of the economy of the modern
U.S. Virgin Islands is tourism, Fredericksted only
gets around 15 cruise ships in the busiest month of the
year (January), compared to 3 to 8 cruise ships PER
DAY, in January, in nearby St. Thomas!

Stilt walking!

Also on this date:

Festival of Ceridwen

Anniversary of the first actor to play Superman

Compliment Your Mirror Day

Anniversary of the first modern strawberries

“Dog Days" begin

Independence Day in Belarus

Earth at aphelion

Idaho's Statehood Anniversary

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

July 2 – Happy Birthday, Ralph Hancock

Posted on July 2, 2017

Today we turn our attention to a gardener.

Well...not just a gardener - a landscaper and landscape gardener! Ralph Hancock, who was born in Cardiff, Wales, on this date in 1893, is also credited as an author, for he wrote a book about - you guessed it! - gardening. He is not credited as a soldier, although he fought in both World War I and World War II!

(Actually, fighting WWII was a family affair, since both of Hancock's grown sons also fought - one, tragically, died in battle - and Hancock's wife volunteered to drive ambulances during the London Blitz. The youngest child of the family, Sheila, was only 11 when war was declared; she was sent to friends in the United States to stay safe.)

Anyway, back to the thing that Hancock is famous for: gardens. He built rooftop gardens and sunken gardens, rock gardens and water gardens, formal gardens and themed gardens. He created gardens in the United Kingdom and the United States, and he created gardens for some really famous people, like Princess Victoria and the Rockefellers.

Check out some of his gardens:

Formal gardens...located on a rooftop
(above and below).

Hancock lived so long ago, we can see most
of his gardens in black and white or colorized
B&W photos, or colorful drawings, rather
than in beautiful HD color photos.

Some of Hancock's gardens have vanished;
others are in the "this is all that remains"
category (like the one above); still others
have been maintained in or restored
to their original glory.

These last two photos are not from
one of Hancock's gardens, but they are
examples of features that Hancock
commonly used.

Above, a herringbone-pattern brick path.
Below, a moon gate.

Also on this date:

Second Half of the Year Day

World UFO Day

Flag Day in Curacao

Anniversary of the invention of water skiing

Anniversary of the beginning of the “Golden Age of Airships”

Tamil Professor Kandasamypillai Kanapathipillai's birthday

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

July 1 - Emancipation Day in Sint Eustatius

Posted on July 1, 2017

Today is a day of celebration, of ceremonies and great food and get-togethers - all in honor of the 1863 emancipation of slaves on this Caribbean island.

If you’ve never heard of Sint Eustatius, also known as Statia, you’re not alone. This teeny island is less than a fourth the size of my smallish California city - and the population is fewer people than the students at my high school! It is not an independent nation, but is rather a “special municipality” of the Netherlands.

Where Sint Eustatius is known, it’s known for a nice tropical-rain-forest hike down into the crater of an extinct volcano known as the Quill, and for diving among the 200 shipwrecks and pristine coral reefs and anchors and volcanic pinnacles.

Above, the Quill.
Below, view of the inside of the Quill's crater -
the crater looks like a tropical rainforest, mostly
because it is covered by a tropical rainforest!

Here are some things that surprised me:

Even though Sint Eustatius is a part of the Netherlands, and the official language is Dutch, most people speak English most of the time!

Sint Eustatius provided the first (or possibly second) international recognition of the independence of the United States of America, on November 16, 1776. An American brig came into port on the island, and the ship’s captain announced his arrival by firing a 13-gun salute (13 for the 13 colonies, of course). International protocol was to salute a sovereign flag back with two fewer guns, and that is what Sint Eustatius’s governor ordered: an 11-gun salute.

Apparently this acknowledgement of the “rebel” American’s sovereignty really angered Britain. Even more anger was caused by the fact that merchants on Sint Eustatius eagerly sold weapons and supplies to the American army. One Brit complained in Parliament that, if Sint Eustatius had sunk into the sea before the Revolutionary War even started, the United Kingdom “would have already dealt with George Washington”! Starting in late 1780, Britain and the Netherlands fought a war over these and other issues.

By the way, in 1939 U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt visited Sint Eustatius and presented them with a brass plaque declaring America’s gratitude for the “First Salute.”