Memorial days

When I was still attending high school, History and geography were not among my favorite subjects though I was doing well. Later on, I became quite familiar with memorial dates. However, I never memorized a third of them.

It all started when in 2001 I was the SRC Chairperson in my university, Facultés Catholiques de Kinshasa. One of the innovations my term brought was to run at least twice a month, one conference on an international event or world memorial days. Since then, I have been closely watching events such as world water day, world tree day, world health day, etc.

The month of April for instance, reminds us about some very important world day celebrations:
v The World Health Day: 7th
v The World Parkinson Day, 11th ,
v On the 17th , we celebrate the World Prayers Day, world Peasant Struggles Day as well Hemophilia Day,
v And many others,

For today the 14th, my record shows me no great celebrations. However, some events that coincidently happened in this very same date are worth to be remembered. They are religious, political, and social tragic or joyful events:

v 1191 Consecration of pope Celestin III;
v 1865 American president, Abraham Lincoln, wounded on an attempt of coup. He died on the following day;
v 1907 an earthquake destroys a area within the city of Acapulco in Mexico;
v 1907 François Duvalier, "Papa Doc", self proclaimed president of Haiti and ruled for life,
v 1912 the Titanic hurt an iceberg, few hours later it was tragic, 1 513 dead;
v 1942 birth of Valeri Brumel, an athlete, Olympic champion who won the high jump in 1964 and break the record 6 consecutive times;
v 1945 Canadians soldiers arrive to the city of Arnhem and liberate the Netherlands;
v 1945 Americans bombard Tokyo and the King Palace.
v 1972 South Africa is excluded from the Davis Cup because of Apartheid.
v 1986 the famous French female philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir died;
v 2002 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is back to power after a failed attempt of coup by de Pedro Carmona;
v 2005, I, Cyrille graduated for my postgraduate diploma in Social welfare at Wits;

Look at how the very same day brings either happiness or catastrophes. That’s life!