Archive for June 2021
History of Independence Day: Was the Declaration of Independence really signed on July 4, 1776?
HISTORY OF INDEPENDENCE DAY Independence Day or the Fourth of July celebrates the adoption by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, of the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the severance of the allegiance of the American colonies to Great Britain. It is the most significant secular holiday in the United States, observed in all the…
Read MoreHistory of the Summer of Love — 1967: Part 4, Rock & Roll
HISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: PART 4, ROCK & ROLL It was twenty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play They’ve been going in and out of style But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile Rock & Roll in the late ’60s was exemplified when The Beatles released…
Read MoreHistory of the Summer of Love — 1967: Part 3, Drugs
HISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: DRUGS When I was a Resident Assistant at Berkeley in the early ’70s, a local police officer I knew gave me a tour down Telegraph Avenue. He told me: “All the major drug deals on the West Coast go down within a two block stretch of Telegraph…
Read MoreHistory of the Summer of Love — 1967: Part 2, Sex
HISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: PART 2, SEX “Make love, not war,” and the call for “free love” represented a cultural shift in mores. Even The Beatles sang that “All You Need Is Love.” If the ’60s was the time of the “sexual revolution,” the natural question is: who won? There were…
Read MoreHistory of the Summer of Love — 1967: Part 1 – Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll
HISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK & ROLL The Summer of Love was fifty-four years ago, the Summer of 1967, with its epicenter in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It was a summer of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Both San Francisco and Liverpool celebrated it in 1997. While…
Read MoreHistory of The Beatles All You Need Is Love
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HISTORY OF ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE On June 25, 1967, The Beatles released the song “All You Need Is Love.” At that time, they participated in the Our World TV show, which used the recently constructed satellite system and broadcast their performance across the globe. Beatles drummer Ringo Starr said later, “It was the…
Read MoreHistory of St. John the Baptist Day
HISTORY OF ST JOHN THE BAPTIST DAY The Feast of St. John the Baptist, or the Nativity of St John the Forerunner, sometimes called St. John the Baptist Day, is celebrated on June 24 in many places around the world, though not much in the United States, as we’ll see below. Celebration of the Feast…
Read MoreScience of the Summer Solstice
SCIENCE OF THE SUMMER SOLSTICE The word Solstice comes from the Latin solstitium, meaning “Sun, standing-still.” This year the Summer Solstice occurs on June 20 at 21:44 UTC, Coordinated Universal Time, or Zulu Time, or roughly Greenwich Mean Time. Greenwich, England, is the prime meridian — the zero point for longitude lines. Why is UTC the…
Read MoreHistory of Father’s Day: the Beginning
HISTORY OF FATHERS DAY [NOTE: I wrote a more extended and more serious version of this article for CBS.com a couple of years ago. It has been published on their network of sites for major cities around the country. You can find an example here.] Origin of Fathers Day The celebration of Father’s Day…
Read MoreHistory of Juneteenth: and the Emancipation Proclamation
HISTORY OF JUNETEENTH June Nineteenth, or Juneteenth, marks the celebration of the emancipation of African-American slaves in Texas in 1865. While the annual celebration started in Texas the following year in 1866 — and became an official Texas state holiday there in 1980 — this formerly obscure holiday is now observed across the United States…
Read MoreHistory of Flag Day
HISTORY OF FLAG DAY June 14 is the day the United States celebrates Flag Day. While it may not be as widely celebrated as other American holidays, it is one of the oldest. It was resolved by the Second Continental Congress in 1777, even before the conclusion of the American War of Independence, the Revolutionary…
Read MoreHistory of D-Day: 77 Years Ago
HISTORY OF D-DAY Why has D-Day captured the imagination of American consciousness for three-quarters of a century? On Twitter, the hashtag is #DDay77 Seventy-seven years ago, on June 6, 1944, the Allies launched an offensive on the Normandy coast of France to liberate continental Europe from the Nazi German occupation. D-Day was the largest invasion by…
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