Category: Holidays

Cinco de Mayo

5/5/2022

Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

A Cinco de Mayo celebration in ST. Paul, Minnesota. "Cinco26" by Rena Dehler-Rena Dehler. Licensed under CC by SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

While Cinco de Mayo is not officially a holiday, many U.S. communities celebrate Mexican culture and heritage on May 5 with parades, mariachi music, street festivals, and much more. Most celebrants, though, would probably not be able to tell you what really happened on that date.

     After thrusting off centuries of Spanish rule in 1821, Mexico endured several decades of economic and political instability. In 1861, Mexican president Benito Juárez suspended payment of his country’s debts to France, Spain, and Great Britain. The three countries immediately sent warships to Mexico. Juárez negotiated with Spain and Britain and their ships went home. But French emperor Napoleon III saw an opportunity to expand his country’s colonial empire and landed troops at Veracruz. They planned on capturing Mexico City, the capital. The French army at that time was generally regarded as the world’s finest and anticipated little difficulty in reaching its objective.

  With the Civil War having just begun, the US government couldn’t divert resources to Mexico. The first target of the invaders was the small town of Puebla de Los Angeles. More than six thousand French troops, supported by cannons, assaulted a ragtag army of inexperienced, ill-equipped Mexican defenders about half that size on May 5, 1862. Somehow the Mexicans overcame their disadvantages and defeated the French.

The following year Napoleon dispatched more than 30,000 soldiers to Mexico. They seized control and installed Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian as emperor of Mexico.

     When the Civil War ended in 1865, the US leaned on France to leave Mexico. The final French troops departed two years later. Mexican forces seized Maximilian and executed him.

Today Cinco de Mayo barely causes a ripple in Mexico outside of the province of Puebla. It is not a national holiday so nearly everyone goes to work as usual.

It’s a much bigger deal in the United States, which may be fitting. Some historians believe that if the French had not been defeated at Puebla de Los Angeles and seized Mexico City, Napoleon would have made an alliance with the Confederate States. The Civil War was not going well for the Union at that time and French assistance could well have swung the conflict in the South’s favor. The result would have been two separate nations.

The Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862

Map showing Veracruz, the site of the French invasion. Mexonline.com

Maximilian’s bullet-ridden shirt, Mexonline.com

Jim Whiting has written a biography of the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortés. To some people, he was heroic. Even though he was greatly outnumbered, he was able to defeat the Aztec Emperor Montezuma and conquer the Aztec empire centered in modern-day Mexico. To others, including many Mexicans, he was a villain because he destroyed the Aztecs way of life. They believed he was a cruel man. He was also a symbol of Spanish domination. For more information, click here.

Whiting, Jim. "Cinco de Mayo." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 4 May 2018,
www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/Cinco-de-Mayo.

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May Day

4/29/2022

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Cheryl Harness

She’s historical!

For some of us, spring begins when you can go outside in your shorts and not get cold legs. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, spring’s official start is at the vernal equinox, when the sun shines directly on the earth’s equator. For me, here in Missouri, that was March 20, 5:45 P.M. CDT. The autumnal equinox arrives in September— when spring begins in the southern hemisphere! But I digress from today’s theme: May Day. For thousands of years, it’s been a day for celebrating spring, But that’s not all it’s been.

     Since the oldest olden days, winter-weary people have gloried when the weather warms and the cold earth comes back to life. Some of their ancient festivals still happen every spring, such as Sham el Nissim, in Egypt. In India, on Holi, dancing Hindus still shower one another with colors; and Iranians still fix a special supper at Norooz, as did their ancient Persian ancestors.

     When the Roman armies invaded ancient Britain, in 55 B.C.E. they brought along their spring holy day, Floralia, when they gathered bouquets of flowers for their goddess, Flora. The Celts, who’d been living in Britain for years, celebrated the earth mother’s reawakening with dances and bonfires at Beltane, around the end of April. Over the years, the holidays blended into May Day, a time for giving gifts of flowers and dancing about a Maypole, strung with ribbons.

Then, in the 1880s, May Day celebrations changed. It was like this: For decades, factory owners had been making their employees work anywhere from 10 to 16 hours a day, six days a week (even children!), often in unsafe, nasty conditions. The workers were sick of it! They organized themselves into labor unions. At a Chicago gathering, in 1884, they started a worldwide movement for an 8-hour workday. With a huge demonstration in the city, on May 1, 1886, May Day came to be the first Labor Day, a day of parades. It’s still celebrated as International Workers’ Day in many countries.

But one more thing happened, in 1923. Because ‘May Day’ sounds like the French phrase, ‘m’aidez’ or ‘help me,’ a London radioman turned it into an international distress call. So if you hear “Mayday! Mayday!” on your radio, no one’s wishing you ‘Happy Spring!’ Someone’s in trouble! And once he or she is saved, I’ll bet he or she would like to have some pretty flowers.

May Day festivities at National Park Seminary in Maryland, 1907. Celebrations were common at women's colleges and academic institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Wikimedia Commons

A maypole at a Renaissance Fair in Tuxedo Park, New York. Wikimedia

International Workers' Day began a celebration of laborers and the working classes but later the date was adopted by anarchists, socialists, and communists and other groups. It occurs every year on May Day. "Socialists in Union Square, N.Y.C." May 1, 1912. The Library of Congress

Cheryl Harness is the author and illustrator of Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women. One of the 100 Ladies is the great and heroic labor union activist "Mother" Mary Harris Jones. She was born on May Day, 1830. Click here to find out more about about Mary, and about a lot of other great Americans.

MLA 8 CItation
Harness, Cheryl. "May Day." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 1 May 2018,
www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/May-Day.

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World Penguin Day

4/25/2022

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Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

Who doesn’t like penguins? Their waddling gait is fun to watch. They have little fear of humans so it’s easy to get next to them. Penguin movies such as Happy Feet and The Penguins of Madagascar are box office hits.

World Penguin Day on April 25 focuses attention on these loveable flightless fowl. Some people dress up in black and white clothing. Many read books about penguins or watch penguin movies.

I was fortunate to get up close and personal to thousands of penguins during a trip to Antarctica. As our ship neared the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula—the closest point to the southern tip of South America which had been our departure point—we marveled at how effortlessly they skimmed through the water beside us. Soon we marveled at another characteristic. We were at least two or three miles offshore when the harsh odor of the poop generated by all those penguins wafted over the ship.

We relished the opportunity to go ashore and wander through their rookeries. There were lots of juveniles, covered with gray fuzz that would eventually fall off and be replaced by their characteristic black and white plumage. None of them seemed to mind our presence.

But we had several harsh reminders that we weren’t in a zoo. Several century-old stone huts provided shelter for explorers who slaughtered hundreds of penguins to eat during the long, harsh Antarctic winters. Skuas, nasty predatory birds, routinely feed on penguin chicks. We saw the discarded remains of several skua meals. Danger can also come from the depths. A couple of times we observed large seals relaxing on ice floes with bright red stains next to them.

The saddest sight came one afternoon when we took a Zodiac inflatable boat to shore. A penguin stood forlornly on top of a small ice floe, a leopard seal thrashing the water next to it. We asked our guide if we could rescue the doomed bird. He shook his head. “The water is too rough,” he said. “Too much chance of falling in if anyone tried to step out onto the floe. And you don’t want to be anywhere near an angry half-ton leopard seal that feels his dinner is being taken away from him.”

On our way back to the ship, there was no sign of the lone penguin. We had to accept that we couldn’t interfere in the natural course of things.

Although all penguin species are native to the Southern Hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin live so far south.

An Adélie penguin feeding its young

Greenpeace invites you to celebrate World Penguin Day and also to join the campaign towards its protection. You can learn more by visiting this website: ttp://act.gp/wpd2013.

All images ©Jen Goode

Jim Whiting has written more than 100 titles and edited another 150 or so, with subjects ranging from authors to zoologists and including classical musicians and contemporary pop icons, saints and scientists, emperors and explorers. Many of his books have received glowing reviews.
He's also ventured into a number of classrooms and served as a presenter at writers' conferences, conveying the enthusiasm for writing and for a good story that still animates him. Check out his work here.

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "World Penguin Day." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 25 Apr.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/World-Penguin-Day.

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April Fool's Day

4/1/2022

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Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

Baseball fans were fascinated by an article in Sports Illustrated magazine just before the start of the 1985 major league baseball season. It profiled Hayden Siddhartha “Sidd” Finch, a rookie pitcher who was in spring training with the New York Mets. According to the article, he could throw a baseball at a top speed of nearly 170 miles per hour. That was twice as fast as many other pitchers. Photos accompanying the article showed Finch with his excited teammates. Teams that would be playing the Mets contacted the league office. They feared that their batters would be in danger when Finch was on the mound.

There was, however, a problem with the article. “Finch” in the photos was actually Joe Berton, an Illinois junior high school art teacher. The article’s subtitle provided a clue about its real purpose: “He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga —and his future in baseball.” The first letters spell “Happy April Fool’s Day—ah Fib.”

The issue was dated April 1.

The Sidd Finch saga is one of the best-known hoaxes that occur every year on April Fool’s Day. It’s not clear when the custom of playing tricks on this day originated, or even why. The first clear reference seems to come in 1561, in a work by Belgian poet Eduard De Dene. A nobleman orders his servant to run silly errands on April 1. De Dene was almost certainly making a reference to a custom that was already well-established.

By the end of the following century, it had spread to England. In 1698, a London newspaper reported that “Yesterday being the first of April, several persons were sent to the Tower Ditch to see the Lions washed.” This was a prank that city dwellers played on bumpkins from rural areas. There were no lions, nor was there any washing.

In Scotland, April Fool’s Day actually became two days. The first day was “hunting the gowk” (a gowk was a cuckoo bird, a symbol of fools), sending people on ridiculous errands. Then came Tailie Day, which involved pinning tails or “kick me” signs on people’s butts.

It’s not clear when April Fool’s Day came to the United States. But today Americans love “celebrating” it. So if someone tells you a story that seems like a hoax or a joke, check the calendar. If it’s April 1, someone is probably fooling you.

On 1 April 1957, the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. Huge numbers of viewers called BBC wanting to know how to get their own tree

The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Needless to say, the legislature received hundreds of calls from around the world.

Taco Bell Corporation took out an ad that ran in six major newspapers on 1 April 1996, announcing it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called in to express their anger.

Crack! It's going, going, it's gone! Professional players make it look easy to hit a home run. But without science, they’d be left in the batter’s box. In The Science of Hitting a Home Run, you can take a closer look at the science that makes a home run possible. Check this and Jim's many other titles out at his website.

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "April Fool's Day." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 30 Mar.
2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/April-Fools-Day.

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International Waffle Day

3/25/2022

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Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

French Waffles. Yum!

Today is International Waffle Day!

It originated in Sweden, probably due to confusion between the Swedish words Våffeldagen (Waffle Day) and Vårfrudagen (“Our Lady’s Day”), which also falls on March 25. Vårfrudagen marks the Annunciation, when the archangel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that she will become the mother of Jesus Christ. Despite this coincidence, International Waffle Day has no religious significance. In Sweden, the date is the traditional start of spring and Swedes (and many people throughout the world) celebrate by—you guessed it—eating waffles.

Historians date the origin of waffles back to the ancient Greeks, who cooked flat cakes called obleios between two hot metal plates. In the 1200s, an unknown European craftsman invented plates with the honeycomb pattern that characterize waffles. Waffles reportedly came to the New World in 1620 with the Pilgrims.

Americans also celebrate National Waffle Day on August 24. On this date in 1869, Cornelius Swartwout received the first U.S. patent for a waffle iron. Designed for use on top of coal-burning stoves, it consisted of a cast-iron griddle and cover joined by a hinge. A handle and clasp prevented the cook from being burned. When the batter was poured in, it would cook for a few minutes and then the iron would be flipped over to cook the other side. The widespread use of electricity in the early 1900s resulted in the development of the electric waffle iron, making it easy to produce one of the most popular breakfast foods.

Waffles have another distinction. About 1971, University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman was experimenting with new soles for running shoes. He wanted something to provide traction and stability, yet lighter in weight than current models. Looking at his wife’s waffles gave him an idea. He poured rubber into her waffle iron and let it cook for a few minutes. He removed it, let it harden, then cut it to the proper shape. His experiments ruined the waffle iron, but they resulted in a new shoe called the Waffle Trainer. Bowerman joined businessman Phil Knight, one of his former runners, and founded the Nike Shoe Company to market the Waffle Trainer. The shoe created a sensation among runners of all levels of ability. Today Nike is almost synonymous with running shoes and other athletic footwear.

A North American Belgian style electric waffle maker. Wikimedia

Track and field coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. Over his career, he trained 31 Olympic athletes, 51 All-Americans, 12 American record-holders, 22 NCAA champions and 16 sub-4 minute milers.

The original Bowerman waffle iron is in very bad shape having resided in a rubbish heap for a number of years after the rubber waffle escapade. But it is now safely ensconced at Nike’s corporate headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.

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