1831 Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction
1885 Gottlieb Daimler invents motorcycle
Anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising (against the Nazis) – see 17th July
Raksha Bandhan/Rakhi (2015 – full moon. Hindu sisters tie a rakhi thread on their brothers’ wrists to symbolise love and devotion) – make friendship bracelets!
1963 Martin Luther King gives his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech
Onam (2015): Harvest festival, Kerala, India. The mythical king Mahabali visits from the underworld.
Vamana, an avatar of Vishnu (the creator/destroyer), is also celebrated.
The Pookalam (flower carpet) is made over several days, starting yellow and adding a new couple of colours every day.
A little pandal is hung over it, and two earthern square pyramids representing Mahabali and Vamana either side, also decorated with flowers.
They have an onam sadya, or feast, of up to 15 curries served on plaintain leaves.
There is lots of dancing, like the Kummattikali, a colorful-mask dance, sometimes around a procession of elephants.
The Kathakali dance re-enacts legends.
Pulikali, or Kaduvakali, has dancers painted like tigers.
There’s a Vallamkali, or snake boat race.
People buy new clothes and put rice flour batter on their doors as a welcome sign.
Ghost Festival (China, 2015)
The Hungry Ghost Month began at the start of the lunar calendar month – in 2015 it began on 14 August. On that day all the ghosts were let out of the underworld to wander the land of the living. People venerate their ancestors by putting their photos out with food and incense. There are lots of taboos to avoid the ghosts bothering you.
At the festival they have another bout of feeding the ghosts, as they must be very hungry after wandering for two weeks.
Moldova Independence Day (from USSR, 1991): Moldovians consider themselves Romanians really. It was first founded as a Hungarian principality in 1352 by the Transylvanian ruler Dragoş and gained independence from Hungary in 1359.
Stephen the Great defended Moldova against the Ottoman Empire, but it became a tributary to the Turks in 1538. In 1812 the Ottoman Empire gave Moldova to Russia.
Stephen III
The western part became part of Romania in 1859; the rest was Besserabia. Besserabia tried to become independent after WWI, but Russia said no; and instead it became the Moldovian Autonomous Soviet State Republic under Soviet ‘influence’.
To try and distract Moldovans from their idea of really belonging to Romania, Russia made them write ‘Moldovian’ in Cyrillic to distinguish it from Romanian, which is written in the Latin alphabet.
Moldova has the world’s biggest wine cellar – it’s basically a city with roads.
http://www.moldova.org/cricova-the-largest-underground-wine-cellar-in-the-world-19083-eng/
1994 man gets bionic heart – so play doctors and nurses and learn a bit about how your heart works.
1989 Voyager 2 makes its closest approach to Neptune
Uruguay Independence Day (from Brazil, 1825) – see 18th July
Liberation of Paris (WWII from Germany, 1944)
La Tomatina (Bunol, Spain)
Janmashtami (2016: birth of Krishna. Pots of buttermilk are hung high up and people form human pyramids to smash them (dahi handi) and people reenact Krishna’s youth (Rasa lila).
79 A.D. Mount Vesuvius erupts and covers Pompeii with ash
1932 Amelia Earhart first woman to fly across America
Liberia Flag Day
Ukrainian Independence Day
(Photo Credit: armstrongeconomics.com)
Neoliithic Ukrainians lived in houses made of mammoth bones (45,000 B.C.)!
Between 700 and 200 B.C. it was part of Scythia (Greece’s name for nomadic people in the Pontic Steppe, Central Asia and Eastern Europe). Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and Byzantium built colonies on the northeastern shore of the Black Sea.
Then came the Goths, then the Huns in the 370s and then in the 7th century the Ukraine was part of Old Great Bulgaria. By the end of the century the Khazars (nomadic Turks) were in charge.
Vladimir being baptised; fresco in Vladimir Cathedral.
Western Ukraine, Belarus and a bit of Russia then became Kievan Rus’ under the Varangians (Vikings). In the 10th-11th centuries this was the most powerful state in Europe. Vladimir the Great converted Kievan Rus’ to Byzantine Christianity.
Unfortunately Mongols totally destroyed Kievan Rus’ in 1240.
In 1253 Danylo Romanovych/Daniel I of Galicia managed to reunite all the land again and became King of all Rus’.
Thennnn Lithuania took it and later Polish people colonised the not-very-popular-anyway northern and central Ukraine, and a Genghis Khan descendant, Haci I Giray, took southern Ukraine – the Crimea and steppes – and made it into the Crimean Khanate. This was one of the strongest powers in Eastern Europe, even invading and devastating Moscow in 1571 – imagine anyone trying that today!
In 1569 Poland and Lithuania formed a Union and Lithuania gave a load of its Ukraine to Poland. They called their land Polish Ruthenia and converted the gentry to Catholicism; the peasants didn’t like them and turned to the Cossacks for (armed) help. The Cossacks formed a state called the the Zaporozhian Host, which was against Polish rule but as they also kept out the Tatars and Turks, Poland let them stay.
In 1500-1700 the Tatars (northwestern Turks) kept raiding the south of the Khanate for slaves, taking 2 million in this period from Russia and the Ukraine.
In 1657-86 Russia, Poland, Turks and Cossacks fought for control of the Ukraine in ‘The Ruin’. This ended with Russia and Poland splitting the Ukraine between them, east and west.
In 1700-21 there was the Great Northern War, where Russia allied with Denmark-Norway and Saxony-Poland-Lithuania against the Swedish Empire. The Cossacks took the (losing) side of the Swedes.
In the 1770s-90s Russia, Prussia and Austria decided to split Poland between them in the Partitions of Poland, to make things ‘fairer’ (Poland’s army was too weak so it didn’t really get to say what it thought was fair), and the Polish-Lithuanian bits of the Ukraine went to Russia and Austria.
The Russian Empire took the Crimean Khanate in 1783, near the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1768-74).
It seems that in WWI Ukrainians picked their own sides, with a lot fighting for Russia and some fighting for Austria-Hungary. Before the war was over, in 1917 the Russian Revolution got rid of the emperor and created the Soviet Union led by Bolsheviks (Marxists).
Ukraine emerged from the ensuing Russian civil war (1917-20, the Bolshevik Red Army against the White Army) as loads of little states, and by the time it officially became an independent country within the Soviet Union in 1922, it had lost half its land to Belarus, Moldavia, Poland and Russia.
As the Ukraine had suffered a lot during the civil war, plus a 1921 famine, Russia supported a renaissance in Ukrainian culture and arts, and funded universal healthcare, education and women’s rights. Shame about Stalin.
In the 1930s Stalin brought in agricultural collectivisation, in which all the peasants had to donate their farms and animals to the Soviet cause and meet quotas. All the food they produced was taken by police to feed the rest of the country, and if they didn’t meet the quota, they did not receive any food themselves. 10.5 million Ukrainians starved to death in the Great Famine, which Ukraine terms a genocide. Under the Great Terror, Ukrainian artists and intellectuals were killed or put in concentration camps.
At the start of WWII, Hitler invaded Poland and Russia and Germany divided Poland between them. This meant Poland’s Ukrainian territories were reunited with the Ukraine. Romania also gave its Ukrainian bits back.
After Stalin, some Ukrainians hoped the Nazis would liberate them. But it soon turned out the Nazis were mean too. The Ukrainian Insurgents Army formed in 1942, which was basically just anti-everyone, killing any Polish people left in the Ukraine and then fighting Russia for independence until the 1950s.
Most of WWII was fought on the Eastern Front, so the Ukraine was left fairly devastated, but once Stalin died in 1953 Soviet Russia emphasised its friendship with the Ukraine, giving them back Crimea and investing 20% of the USSR’s budget, making its industry and technology very powerful.
In 1986 the area contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster affected 2.2 million Ukrainians.
On 24 August 1991 the Ukraine declared itself independent, and totally got rid of its nuclear weapons. It then had a recession, losing 60% of its GDP and huge inflation, but eventually stablised with a new currency, the hryvnya (named after the currency used by medieval Kievan Rus’)
In 2013 the president decided not to join the EU and to side with Russia instead. This led to protests in western Ukraine, which got more violent after the government tried to bring in an anti-protesting law. Then they had new elections, and brought in a pro-EU president. This upset eastern Ukraine – the Crimea where a lot of people speak Russian already. The Russian military got involved, and NATO. The Crimea had a referendum and declared itself independent. Meanwhile ‘local militia’ (groups of armed men not affiliated with anyone) are running around the rest of Ukraine killing people and taking over government buildings.
The Ukraine is the largest country in Europe and is right in the centre. It has a low birth rate and the population is shrinking by 150,000 every year.
Uruguay Nostalgia Night (radio and and events for nostalgic music)
1858 Darwin publishes theory of evolution
Estonia Restoration of Independence Day (from Russia, 1991) – see 23rd June
Morocco Revolution du Roi et du Peuple – see 18th November
Akshay Urja diwas (renewable energy day in India – here’s a song called the Energy Blues)
World Mosquito Day (commemorating the day Dr Ronald Ross discovered they transmit malaria in 1897)
Hungarian National Day (Feast of St Stephen):
Originally inhabited by Celts, Hungary was invaded by the Roman Empire, then the Huns. In the 9th century the area was mainly inhabited by Avars and Slavs.
A man called Árpád, the founder of Hungary, led a group of Hungarians (Uralic-speakers from the Ural mountains) to settle in the Carpathian basin in 895.
King St Stephen
Árpád’s great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000 AD, converting the country to a Christian kingdom. He made Latin Hungary’s official language, which it remained until 1844!
They did well for a while, creating a personal union with Croatia, invading Translyvania, leading the Fifth Crusade into the Holy Land (poor Israel/Palestine) with largest royal army in Europe, and King Béla III was more wealthy than the English or French monarchies.
In 1241-2 the Mongols invaded and half of Hungary’s 2 million population were killed. The Mongol’s second invasion in 1285 was repelled as Hungary had built loads of stone forts and walls inbetween.
In 1301-1490 Hungary had some strong kings, like Louis the Great who was also King of Poland, and Sigismund who also became Holy Roman Emperor. King Matthias built the world’s second greatest library (after the Vatican’s), the Bibliotheca Corviniana. They defeated Wallachians, Ottomans, Polish and Germans, and conquered parts of Austria and Bohemia.
Hungary warred against the Turks for about 150 years, and in 1541 it was divided into three parts, Royal Hungary (north-west), the Principality of Transylvania (east) and the Pashalik of Buda (central). Then the Pope, the Holy Roman Empire, Polish-Lithuania, the Venetian Republic and Russia joined up into the Holy League and defeated the Turks in 1684 and Hungary was united again, under Austro-Hungarian Habsburg rule.
In 1703 there was an uprising against the Habsburg kings; then there were the Napoleonic Wars and the Emperor was forced to reconvene the Diet of Hungary (lol), otherwise known as parliament. This brought in modernising reforms despite the Habsburgs best efforts to ignore them.
In 1848 Hungarian revolutionaries demanded a Hungarian government in Buda-Pest, and generally more independence and equality, and the Hungarian parliament rewarded them by giving ethnic minorities equal rights. The Austrian army came in to defeat the Hungarian army; at first they couldn’t, but then they asked Russian Tsar Nicholas I, the ‘Gendarme of Europe’, to help. Then Hungary surrendered, and Austria executed the rebel-generals, now known as the 13 Martyrs of Arad. But then in 1867 Austria decided to let Hungary have its own parliament (but it still had to share Austria’s monarch).
After the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo (in Bosnia-Herzegovina), Austria-Hungary came into WWI on the (losing) side of Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey. Afterwards, Hungary gained independence from Austria.
The new Prime Minister, Mihály Károlyi, got rid of Hungary’s army. Hungary was split up: Romania took Transylvania and east Hungary; Czechoslovakia took the north, and Serbia and France took the southern bits. In 1920, when the Treaty of Trianon was drawn up, Hungary lost 71% of its territory and two thirds of its population. Hungarians found themselves ethnic minorities in other countries; industry was separated from national resources, and it lost its only sea-port.
Following the Munich Agreement, in which Europe was trying to appease Hitler, Germany and Italy helped Hungary get bits of its old land back. In 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union; Hungary joined in after Russia bombed Hungary’s cities. In 1944 Hungary tried to surrender to the Allies but was taken over by Nazis instead. 440,000 Jews were deported.
The Russian army encircled Budapest in December and two months later Hungary surrendered. Hungarians were put back in Hungary from Czechoslovakia; Slovaks were deported to Czechoslovakia; and Germans were sent back to Germany. All tidied up.
Hungary then became a Communist satellite state, militarised, industrialised and forced to pay war reparations. Hundreds of thousands of dissenters were executed or put in concentration camps.
In 1956 Hungary tried to have a revolution. Imre Nagy took over as prime minister and promised a liberal and transparent society; then the Soviet army came in and killed anyone who got in the way. Nagy was executed two years later.
Then János Kádár was put in power, and tried to normalise everything and make it a bit more liberal, which helped. In 1989 Hungary became a democracy and took down the barbed wire separating it from Austria. This was the first tear in the Iron Curtain. They became part of the EU in 2004.
Hungary is home to the largest thermal water cave system and the second largest thermal lake in the world (Lake Hévíz), the largest lake in Central Europe (Lake Balaton), and the largest natural grasslands in Europe (the Hortobágy National Park). Hungary invented the Rubiks Cube and the biro, named after László Bíró.
Ways to celebrate Hungary’s national day are: go swimming! Listen to Franz Liszt. Eat goulash.
1939 the first Soap-Box Derby (car-racing using cars made of soap boxes): so build a go-kart or buy a kit or build one for a doll,
1883 Coco Chanel born: so make perfume
National Aviation Day (after Orville Wright’s birthday, US) – so make paper aeroplanes!
I also love these plane catapults:
Afghanistan Independence Day:
Afghanistan had one of the world’s earliest farming communities, from 50,000 years ago. From 3,000 B.C. it began to have urban civilisation; from 2,000 B.C. Central Asian semi-nomadic people came across.
Zoroastrianism was born here (a religion in which all good and creation comes from the god Ahura Mazda, with evil forces or druj opposing him).
Alexander the Great conquered the area, and his succeeding Seleucid Empire gave it to the Indian Mauryan Empire in an alliance treaty. This brought Buddhism.
Then a whole bunch of other empires fought over and ruled the area. During the Islamic Golden Age Afghanistan was one of the main centres of Islam; but then Genghis Khan caused such devastation that many people reverted to rural society.
Later a man named Mir Wais Hotak overthrew the Persians and Khan’s descendants. His son, Mahmud, sacked the capital of Persia and declared himself king, but the Persians weren’t impressed and the dynasty was ousted.
In 1738 Iranian Nader Shah invaded, and a 16-year-old, Ahmad Shah Durrani, led an Afghan army to conquer India, Pakistan and parts of Iran.
But the Persians and Sikhs kept coming back to invade and take bits, and 21 Khan brothers divided up the rest of the Afghan empire once the leader Fateh Khan died.
Then the Brits came in the Great Game, vying with Russia to own Central Asia. We never conquered Afghanistan but we helped Abdur Rahman Khan to power and then stuck our nose in all the politics until they gained independence from us in 1910.
From 1919 King Amanullah Khan started to modernise the country, with better international relations, education for all, no slavery, etc. But he also dared to abolish the burqa and set up mixed-sex schools, so rebels made him abdicate.
Afghanistan wasn’t involved in WWII and didn’t take sides in the Cold War, so, like the child of divorced parents got spoilt by both Russia and America who competed to help build infrastructure there.
But from 1978 a Communist party seized power, leading to civil war with America funding the guerrilla forces, while the Soviets accidentally got involved in government and fighting most of the civil war until 1989. After they pulled out, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran got involved.
In 1994 the Islamic State government finally got control, stopped the fighting and introduced democracy (although the Taliban said no, they don’t believe in democracy).
The next year the Taliban began shelling civilians, with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia’s support. They managed to take Kabul and then destroyed women’s rights.
From 1996 the al-Quaeda, headed by Bin Laden, joined up with Taliban and Pakistan forces to fight Massoud. Massoud was killed in a suicide attack two days before the al-Quaeda attacked the World Trade Centre in 2001, and Bin Laden took full responsibility for it.
By December the Taliban government was toppled. Since then coalition forces have tried to rebuild Afghan infrastructure.
Nag Panchami (2015): Brahma, Hindu god of creation, had four wives. The first gave birth to devas (gods), the second to garudas (bird-like creatures), the third to nagas (cobra-like gods), and the fourth daityas (giants). In this festival Hindus worship the nagas. Married women and girls go out to ant hills, said to be cobras’ homes, and pray to the Snake God for their family’s wellbeing. They make an offering of milk, sometimes with wood apple leaves, honey, white flowers and saffron. Some milk is brought home for the family as a blessing. Sisters dip a flower in the milk, put it on their brother’s back, light a candle and give him a present. This is a good day to learn about cobras.
Luxembourg City Kermesse/Schueberfouer (2016: a big 20-day funfair celebrating Luxembourg’s patron saint’s day)
World Photo Day – so let the kids play with a camera and choose their favourite shots for prints.
1868 helium discovered: here’s how helium balloons work; here’s Five Fun Things to do with a Helium Balloon and here’s how to make a balloon float without helium.
Thailand Science Day
1908 the first animated cartoon, Fantasmagorie, shown – so make a flip-book
1959 Miles Davis ‘Kind of Blue’, bestselling jazz single of all time
1786 Davy Crockett born
San Martin Day (liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru)
Gabon Independence Day: Gabon was originally inhabited by Pygmies then by Bantu-speakers.
They traded with Europeans from the 15th century; explorers became colonialists and in 1910 it became part of French Equitorial Africa.
Independence was kind of achieved in 1960, but the first dictator, M’ba, was heavily supported by France and since him the dictators have been a bit… dictatory. But they have oil and a low population.
Indonesian Independence Day (from Japan, 1945):
Indonesia is made up of about 17.500 islands. It was first inhabited 1.5 million years ago by a kind of human called the Java Man (Homo erectus).
42,000 years ago Homo sapiens arrived with boat-building, sailing and fishing skills.
Trade with India brought Buddhism and Hinduism from the 7th century; Islam came from the 13th century.
From 1512 Portugal and then the Netherlands came to monopolise trade.
The Dutch held on until the Japanese kicked them out in World War II, after which Indonesia claimed independence.
Becoming anti-Communist and therefore supported by the US, Indonesia has more recently become more democratic.
Try a wayang kulit (shadow puppets), badminton and football.
Esala Perahera starts (2015 – Sri Lankan Buddhist festival with decorated elephants)
Around the World with the Kids 
