Showing posts with label Panama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Panama. Show all posts

July 24 - Simón Bolívar Day in much of "Latin America"

   Posted on July 24, 2022     


This is an update of my post published on July 24, 2011:



Simón Bolívar was, quite simply, The Liberator!

Well, make that El Libertador!


Along with José de San Martín, Bolívar led South Americans during their struggle to win independence from Spain. He was instrumental in gaining independence for Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panama. (Panama is part of Central America, which is part of North America, rather than South America.)



Since today is Bolívar's birthday (he was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on this date in 1783), he is celebrated today in Latin America. Apparently the biggest celebrations are in Ecuador and Venezuela; there is food and music, there are military and national-costume parades, and there are flags and battle reenactments.

A short biography of Simón Bolívar can be found here.

This statue of Simon Bolivar is
located in Washington, D.C.
I read that it is the
tallest statue in the city!




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August 15 - Panama Canal!

 Posted on August 15, 2021


This is an update of my post published on August 15, 2010:


After ten years of work, the 48-mile (77-km) Panama Canal was finally completed. 

And, on this date in 1914, the Panama Canal was officially opened.

It linked the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and cut in half the trip from the East Coast of the U.S. to the West Coast.



That's huge!

You know what else was huge? Digging the canal! It was a huge and difficult engineering project. The French tried to build a canal in the same location in the late 1800s, and 21,900 workers died (mostly from tropical diseases) before they finally gave up the effort. The U.S. canal construction wasn't as deadly, but 5,600 workers lost their lives before the canal was finished.




Did you know...?

It takes from eight to ten hours to travel the canal.



At each elevation, a ship has to wait in each lock until the
water level has been raised or lowered to the level of the next lock.


The maximum size of ship that can use the canal is called Panamax.



Although the Pacific Ocean is west of the Atlantic, crossing from the Pacific to the Atlantic involves going the opposite you would think: from (south)east to (north)west. This is because the narrow chunk of land where the canal is built is a sort of “S” curve.



Word Play

Do you know what a palindrome is? It is a word or phrase that reads the same backwards or forwards. The words “mom” and “level” are both palindromes.

The Panama Canal is the subject of one of the longest and most famous palindromes:

A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL – PANAMA



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December 8 – Mother's Day in Panama

Posted on December 8, 2019


Happy Mother's Day to all the moms in Panama!


Mothers in Panama are receiving flowers, gifts, and cards that express the gratitude and love of their children.

Many nations celebrate Mother's Day in the springtime or summer, but folks in Panama celebrate it on the same day as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

What's that feast all about?

In many forms of the Christian religion, there is a story that a Jewish woman named Mary conceived the baby Jesus even though she was a virgin (of course, I am using the English names for both Mary and Jesus). The story explains that later Mary married Joseph, and they had children together, but Jesus was special. Joseph was not his father, this story tells us, and indeed Jesus had no human father; in a way, God was Jesus's father, and in another way, Jesus was God.

In one form of the Christian religion, called Catholicism, there is another, similar story: Mary's conception was meddled with by God so that she was born without "original sin." This is often confused with the idea of a virgin birth, but it's different. Basically, the idea of Mary's "immaculate conception" is the idea that, even though she had a human mom and dad, Mary was special; she was born sinless, pure, better than other humans because of God's meddling at the moment of her conception.

Many nations of the world celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as a holiday. These nations include some from Latin America (such as Chile and Panama), some from Asia (like the Philippines and Macau), some from Africa (like Seychelles and Equatorial Guinea), and some from Europe (like Spain and Liechtenstein). From my research, it seems that Panama is the only nation that coupled this feast day with its Mother's Day celebration.





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