New Year’s resolution: Save the planet.
Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving. It’s that time of year when we get together with our families and eat all the turkey we can fit in our stomachs.
http://www.brainpopjr.com/socialstudies/holidays/thanksgiving/
In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Many Americans believe that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621, when the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people shared a three-day feast together. Actually, the Pilgrims did not view this as a Thanksgiving celebration, but more as a celebration of the harvest and a token of appreciation. The Wampanoag played a pivotal role in the Pilgrims’ survival of their first winter in the New World. Thanksgiving did not become an official American holiday until the time of the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln thought it was a way to bring people together.
The term pilgrim refers to a person who travels for a religious purpose. The Pilgrims we associate with Thanksgiving were a group of people who lived in England in the late 1500s. They were a deeply religious group and struggled with the pagan traditions and beliefs of sixteenth-century England. The Pilgrims wanted more religious freedom and moved to Holland. Later a group of Pilgrims decided to start a colony in the New World. There they thought they could live life as they saw fit. There was already a successful colony in Virginia, and in 1620 a group of 102 Pilgrims set out on the Mayflower and sailed to the New World.
Storms caused the ship to go off course and the Mayflower was unable to reach anywhere near the colony in Virginia. Instead they landed in what is known today as Massachusetts, in a town they called Plymouth. The Pilgrims arrived cold and sick; many members of their group did not survive the voyage. There were abandoned Native American settlements and burial grounds in the area and several Pilgrims tried to scavenge for food and supplies.
Native Americans had lived in the area for hundreds of years. Squanto was a member of the Patuxet tribe, part of the Wamapanoag Confederacy. When previous European settlers came to the area, he and many of his people were kidnapped and forced into slavery. For nine years, Squanto was enslaved in England, where he learned English. When he returned to his homeland in 1614, he and other Native Americans were kidnapped again and sent to Spain. Friars saved a few of the Native Americans and converted them to Christianity. Squanto finally returned home again in 1619 only to discover that most of his tribe and other tribes in the area had died of smallpox, a disease European settlers had brought with them to the New World.
When the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, they were not prepared for the coming winter. Eventually, Squanto helped the Pilgrims survive by teaching them where to fish and hunt and how to raise crops. The Pilgrims accepted Squanto because of his ability to speak English. Squanto’s motive to help these European settlers still remains unclear and some historians believe he acted out of self-interest and caused strife within his tribe. Though the facts remain unclear, Squanto’s story embodies the Thanksgiving spirit.
After the first harvest, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag shared a three-day feast together. Historians are not sure what was served at this feast, but they do know what food was available to the people, including deer, seal, lobster, fish, wild turkey, corn, pumpkin, cabbage, and root vegetables such as parsnips, radishes, and carrots. Foods that many people traditionally associate with Thanksgiving, such as pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes were not served at the first harvest celebration.
http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/
Happy New Year!
December 1st, 2010. World AIDS Day.
Today is World Aids Day. The World Health Organization established World AIDS Day in 1988 to provide governments, nationals AIDS programs, faith organizations, community organizations and individuals with an opportunity to raise attention on the global AIDS epidemic.
November 25th, 2010
International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer
16 September
Secretary-General’s Statement on the Occasion of the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer
16 September 2010
In 1994, the UN General Assembly proclaimed 16 September the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, commemorating the date of the signing, in 1987, of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (resolution 49/114).
States were invited to devote the Day to promote activities in accordance with the objectives of the Protocol and its amendments. The ozone layer, a fragile shield of gas, protects the Earth from the harmful portion of the rays of the sun, thus helping preserve life on the planet. More.
UNITED NATIONS
Summit on the Millennium Development Goals
20-22 September 2010
With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to attend a summit in New York on 20-22 September 2010 to accelerate progress towards the MDGs Visit the Summit website!
The outcome document for the MDG Summit was adopted by the General Assembly by consensus on 22 September. It includes an action agenda for achieving the Goals by 2015.
Read the press release with highlights of the commitments made at the Summit!
The Universe
The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum (Washington) maintains the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world. It is also a vital center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics.
The National Air and Space Museum offers a variety of free educational programs for families, school groups and the general public.
If you want to know the way they explain the origin of the Universe, click here.
Esta página tiene las siguientes subpáginas.
