Every Day Is Special

July 22 – Anniversary of an Anthem

Posted on July 22, 2015

On this date in 1893, a 33-year-old woman took a carriage ride up Pikes Peak in Colorado. The last six miles to the summit of the mountain she and her travel

companions traversed by burro. They stood at the top and looked down all around...

The woman was amazed by the beauty spread before her. She felt she truly understood for the first time just how beautiful America was.

The woman was Katharine Bates.

She and her dear friend and housemate Katharine Coman were both professors at Wellesley, and they were excited that they had been hired to teach summer classes at Colorado College. They welcomed the chance to travel to the West!

The two Katharines traveled by train, crossing Massachusetts and New York visiting the gorgeous Niagara Falls, traveling through forested areas and across plains planted with wheat and other crops, crossing several other states including Illinois and Kansas, and finally reaching Colorado Springs.

Pikes Peak, seen above Garden of the Gods

If you have never seen it, Colorado Springs is gorgeous! Not only does the 14,000-foot Pikes Peak loom over the landscape, but so do an assortment of marvelous red stone towers now called Garden of the Gods.

Naturally, the two young professors traveled about, seeing the sights, whenever they weren't in the classroom.

Garden of the Gods
(above AND below)

Actually, the college arranged for the visiting professors the carriage trip up Pikes Peak. The view from the summit never failed to please visitors.

However, in the case of Katharine Bates, the landscape didn't just please, it inspired. Along with all the images of America from her train voyage, Bates felt a poem well up inside her, and she hurried to write down the words that night:

O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!

Halcyon skies!

God shed His grace on thee,
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife,
When once or twice, for man's avail,
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain,
The banner of the free!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

The fruited plains!

Bates improved her poem twice in her life. The 1913 version is the one that is familiar to me:

From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!

God shed his grace on thee

And crown thy good

With brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

By the way...

Bates's poem was first published on Independence Day 1895.

The music was written separately, by a man named Samuel Ward, in 1882.

The poem and music were put together and published as "America, the Beautiful" in 1910.

Also on this date:

Spoonerisms Day

Pied Piper Day

Casual Pi Day

Revolution Day in the Gambia

National Tree Planting Day in the Central African Republic

Birthday of the king of Swaziland

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

July 21 – Anniversary of an Arson

Posted on July 21, 2015

On this date more than 2,000 years ago, a man named Herostratus wanted to become widely known. It's too bad he wasn't amazingly skilled at athletics or art, because then perhaps he would have poured his ambition into those fields. But apparently he couldn't come up with a better plan for achieving fame than to destroy something important!

What could he destroy that would immortalize his name? Herostratus decided on the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

This building was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Artemis is the Ancient Greek goddess of the hunt (and is now linked to the Roman goddess Diana). This particular temple was built in what is today part of Turkey. It was built about a thousand years before Herostratus's time, but in the 7^th Century BCE, the building had been destroyed by a flood. It was finally reconstructed after a decade of work around 550 BCE.

Herostratus set fire to the Temple on this date in 356 BCE.

Although portions of the Temple (including all those columns) were built out of marble – and stone doesn't burn! – Herostratus burned down the Temple by setting fire to the wooden roof beams.

After he did his criminal act, Herostratus didn't try to run away – he proudly claimed credit for the arson. It was obvious that the crime was a sick attempt to achieve notoriety, so the Ephesian authorities didn't just punish Herostratus by executing him, they also TRIED to make sure that nobody else ever did a horrible crime just to have his or her name immortalized. The authorities forbid any mention of Herostratus's name, and they threatened to execute anyone who broke that rule! (A bit harsh, I feel!)

But their idea didn't work. The historian Theopompus wrote about Herostratus's deed, including naming the villain, and Herostratus's infamy lives on to this day!

(Some scholars say that Herostratus was not the arsonist's name - that, indeed, the law against uttering his name worked, after all, and that we have no idea of the name of the man who destroyed the Temple. If that is the case, then Herostratus is the term we use to replace the real name.)

Ever since then, Herostrat has meant a criminal who would do anything for notoriety, in German; also, Herostratic fame in English means “fame at any cost.” An example of is the fellow who murdered musician John Lennon just so that he would be famous, so that people would know his name. (And I refuse to add to people knowing his name by giving it here!)

Science fiction author David Brin says that we should not be making into household names the monsters who blow up buildings and shoot school kids and do other horrible acts. He thought that, the more infamy we heap upon these sick individuals – the more TV coverage and specials, the more magazine covers, the more interviews of the criminals and their families and former schoolmates – the more OTHER people will be inclined to try to garner notoriety for themselves.

Of course, there is going to be news coverage about horrible crimes, but Brin suggests that we resist the urge to splash the images of the criminals around, and that, instead of making their names famous, we refer to them as something like “Doofus # __.”

I agree with Brin. There is an organization with a similar idea called "No Notoriety: No Name. No Photo. No Notoriety."

What do you think?

By the way...

Check out the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World here and here, and the current list of the New7Wonders of the World over here and the Seven Wonders of the Modern World here.

Also on this date:

Liberation Day in Guam

Kinderzeche in Bavaria

Independence Day in Belgium

Victor Schoelcher Day in Martinique

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

July 20 – Birthday of Crown Prince Haakon of Norway

Posted on July 20, 2015

Haakon Magnus is the heir apparent to the Throne of Norway – which means that he is next in line when his father, King Harald V, steps down or dies.

At age 42, Haakon actually has an older sister, Princess Martha Louise. It seems surprising in this day and age that the royal line goes through male heirs only, but that's how it is in Norway. Actually, I was surprised to read that Norway's royalty isn't as much just a figurehead as so many other kings and queens are these days.

Norway is a constitutional monarchy with state power divided between the Parliament (called the Storting), the King and his Council, and the Supreme Court.

Still, the political leader of Norway – and the head of the government of Norway – is the Prime Minister.

And although Norway's Constitution grants executive powers to the King, they are almost always actually done by the King's Council, and even those on the Council, while in theory appointed by the King according to his own judgement, have since the late 1800s been mostly chosen by the elected governmental officials.

Crown Prince Haakon has official duties, and he chooses cultural events and artists to patronize and promote. He established an organization called Global Dignity, promoting the right of every human on earth to lead a dignified life. One of the things the organization has worked on recently is the effort to end cyber-bullying.

A quote from the Global Dignity website is, "In a world where it seems no-one agrees on anything, a world where politics divides, religion divides, and race and even cultural borders seem to divide, dignity is something that everyone can agree on."

Norway is Way North!

I was interested to read that Norway's length and geography meant that it had more different kinds of habitats than almost any other European country, because I figured that any country that far north (it's one of the northernmost nations in the world) and that mountainous (it's one of the most mountainous countries in Europe) would have mostly just snow and ice, seals and reindeer. However, more than 60,000 different species in Norway and its waters reflects more biodiversity than I had thought!

One thing that mountainous countries with lots
of melting snow and ice tend to have is gorgeous
waterfalls... And, oh yeah, this is gorgeous!

I always think of Norway as a nice long dollop of land similar to Sweden in shape, but a close up of any portion of a map of Norway reveals an incredibly complex, rugged coastline with deep indentations and fjords plus more than 50,000 islands!

Norway's fjords are famous and beautiful!

The popular movie Frozen is supposed to be set in Arendelle, but Kristoff's clothing and reindeer are reminiscent of the Sami people of northern Norway.

When I think of North and Norway, I think of the Northern Lights. Gorgeous!

Also on this date:

Independence Day in Columbia

Guelaguetza Festival in Oaxaca

Writer Petrarch's birthday

Moon Day (here and here)

Woodie Wagon Day

"Peace and Freedom” Day in North Cyprus

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

July 19 – Sandinista Revolution Day in Nicaragua

Posted on July 19, 2015

I am not wanting to delve too heavily into the basis of this holiday. Suffice to say that the Sandinistas were a leftist (communist) group that organized in Nicaragua during the 1960s and 1970s to liberate the nation from the Somoza family dictatorship.

The Sandinistas were able to overthrow Somoza – but he destroyed a lot of his nation as he fled, AND he stole all of the nation's money in the treasury, as well!

The Sandinistas were idealistic, and they did make some important improvements in Nicaragua (including cutting back the percentage of people who couldn't read). However, most people still faced crippling poverty, and as the Sandinistas continued to rule the country, they did a few things such as closing down a newspaper that had been critical of one aspect of the government – things that made some observers worry that they were becoming more like the government that they had replaced.

I'm ashamed to say that my own nation, the U.S., meddled in some horrible ways with Nicaragua, funding the Contras who in the 1980s began to form a counter-revolution movement. The war between the Contras and the Sandinistas killed tens of thousands of people.

There were some bumps and struggles between then and now, but modern-day Nicaragua is a more stable representative democratic republic. And since 2007. Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega has served as president.

Now that it's stable....

Nicaragua wasn't nearly as commonly visited as nearby Costa Rica, because for years people worried about revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries shooting it out in the jungles. But now that the country has become more stable, many adventurous tourists are traveling to the country to:

Hike volcanoes