From the category archives:

US

HISTORY OF PRESIDENTS’ DAY
During my lifetime, two American holidays got consolidated into one. In 1971, both Lincoln’s Birthday on February 12 and Washington’s Birthday on February 22 became a single Federal holiday, Presidents Day — alternately spelled President’s Day or Presidents’ Day — to be observed on the third Monday in February, to honor [...]

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HISTORY OF THE SUPER BOWL
The Super Bowl, also known as simply Superbowl — a territory acquisition athletic contest played upon a fixed agrarian grid using as a token an inflated porcine prolate spheroid — is the most important holiday of the year in America. Some will say that it is a secular holiday, others argue [...]

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History of Martin Luther King Jr.

by Bill Petro on January 15, 2010 · 0 comments

in Audio, History, Holidays, US

HISTORY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
Born on January 15, 1929, we celebrate a holiday in honor of a man who was not a president, nor an explorer, nor a saint, rather he was a Baptist minister and an American leader of the 1960s civil rights movement who was named after the Protestant Reformer [...]

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION – 1863
Following the initial Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations of George Washington, John Adams and James Madison, there were no further Presidential proclamations for this day until Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day during the Civil War, but it was not initially in November. Instead [...]

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GEORGE WASHINGTON’S THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION – 1789
The first President of the United States began a Presidential tradition of making a Thanksgiving proclamation, following those issued previously by the Continental Congress between 1777 to 1784:
“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for [...]

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HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING: FRIENDLY INDIAN?
We’ve all heard the story of how the Pilgrims, landing in Massachusetts on the Mayflower in 1620, were ill equipped to survive the harsh winters of the New World. We’ve also heard how they met a Native American Indian of the Pawtuxet tribe named Squanto who befriended them, taught them how [...]

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History of Thanksgiving: the secular and the sacred

by Bill Petro on November 22, 2009 · 4 comments

in US

HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING
The origin of Thanksgiving Day has been attributed to a harvest feast held by the Plymouth Colony. In 1621, Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony proclaimed a day of “thanksgiving” and prayer to celebrate the Pilgrims’ first harvest in America the year after their arrival on the merchant ship Mayflower. The picture [...]

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