Occasional Digest

A’ashura was an ancient Judaic feast day of celebration and atonement. It is traditionally the day when the prophet Musa (Moses) freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and a day associated with Jesus’ ascension to heaven. It is believed that God saved the prophet Nuh (Noah) and his companions from the genesis flood on this day.

It is better known these days for mourning the martyrdom of Hussain ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) at the Battle of Karbala in the year 61 AH (AD 680).

Sunni Muslims believe that Moses fasted on this day to demonstrate his gratitude to God for the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. According to Sunni traditions, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) fasted on this day and encouraged others to fast.

While the word ashura means ‘tenth’ in Arabic and literally translated, means “the tenth day”; Islamic scholars differ on the reason for the naming.

Asure or Noah’s pudding is a dessert of Turkish origin composed of cereals and dried fruits. It is a tradition served on the day of Ashura.

The Turkish legends say that this dish was made by prophet Noah himself when the ark landed on the mountains of Ararat in the Armenian highlands on the 10th day of Muharram. As the ark was stuck in the Biblical flood for days, the food supplies were getting scarce. To prevent people from starving, Noah made a mixed porridge with all the leftover ingredients in the ark and fed his people.

As mentioned, many people fast during the day of Ashura, so it makes sense to have such a flavorful and nutritious packed dish to break the fast.

Asure is prepared in large pots and distributed amongst neighbours. According to Islamic scholars, 40 houses in each direction is comprises of a neighbuorhood.

THE parents of a teenager who opines on Bertolt Brecht and Brutalist buildings wish he would drink cider and vomit at bus stops like his peers.

Inge and Dave, not their real names, hoped their 15-year-old son Julian, who refuses to be referred to as ‘Jules’, was only going through a phase when he began blasting Shostakovich’s 7th through his speakers while ostentatiously flicking through books about Kandinsky.

Sue said: “We were prepared for vaping. We weren’t prepared for him wearing a black – sorry, charcoal – turtleneck while lecturing us on power structures in colonialist literature.

“When we worried about him mixing with the wrong crowd, we didn’t think it would be the attendees at a seminar on Composing Sonic Futures at the Barbican. We blame ourselves for calling him Julian.

“He downs a double espresso before school. He calls football ‘bread and circuses to pacify the proletariat’. He’s 15. He should be unconscious in a hedge, not telling the neighbours that their hedge is an outdated expression of English class anxiety.

“He scoffed at a man wearing Stone Island on the bus for ‘performing masculinity through consumer branding’ which is risky when he’s built like a bookmark.

“I was cleaning his room when I felt something under the mattress. It was Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation.Annotated. Colour-coded tabs. I sat on the bed and wept. You hear about this stuff as a parent, but never think it’ll happen to you.”

Jules said: “Mum and Dad have suggested a lads’ holiday with my friends. A Bauhaus walking tour in Berlin beckons.”

Usually, a saint’s feast day is celebrated on the day that the saint died. St. John along with the Virgin Mary are the only two saints whose birthdays are celebrated.

St. John’s death (August 29th) is also marked by Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

The feast day of Saint John the Baptist was a popular feast day in many European countries. One reason for this was that its timing coincided nicely with much older pagan holidays that celebrated the summer solstice. It is still celebrated as a religious feast day in several countries, such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and has echos in other holidays such as the Swiss National Day – a central theme in the celebrations is the lighting of bonfires.

It was thought that the Summer solstice was a time when spirits roamed freely, so bonfires were lit to ward off and protect from the evil spirits. Later on, the solstice was seen as a time when witches or even dragons needed to be kept at bay with a bonfire.

John the Baptist is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River. Most scholars agree that John baptized Jesus by wading into the water with Jesus from the eastern bank of the river.

John is probably best known for foretelling of the Messiah, which in the New Testament predicted the coming of Jesus.

According to the Gospel of Mark, John is imprisoned by Herod for denouncing Herod’s incestuous marriage. John condemned Herod for marrying Herodias (his niece) in violation of Old Testament Law. After Herodias’s daughter Salome has danced before Herod, he grants her a favour. Herodias tells her to ask for the head of John the Baptist, which is delivered to her on a plate.

St. John the Baptist is the patron Saint of Turin.

His feast day is also celebrated in Quebec as the Fete Nationale du Quebec.

John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) was a Venetian explorer and navigator. Inspired by Columbus’ recent voyages to the west, Cabot received funding from Henry VII of England to explore for new lands in 1496. Cabot made his first expedition in the summer of 1496, leaving from Bristol, England, but he ran into bad weather and short of supplies, he turned back to England.

The second expedition left Bristol on 2 May 1497 in a ship called ‘Matthew’ and made landfall somewhere on the coast of North America on 24 June 1497 (St. John’s Day). This discovery marked the first Europeans to set foot on the North American continent since the Vikings in the 11th century.

Though historians have argued where exactly Cabot made landfall, in 1997 the Canadian and UK governments designated Cape Bonavista in Newfoundland as the official place of Cabot’s landing.

Discovery Day had been a statutory holiday from 1962 until 1992, when it was removed from the Shops Closing Act.

Since 1997, Discovery Day has also been known as Cabot 500 Day marking the 500th anniversary of the discovery.

THAT sickly, ingratiating grin isn’t for everyone. It isn’t for you. It seems to specifically be for women employed to serve him, like these:

Waitresses

Over she comes, asking if you’d like more drinks, and there his face goes. His voice drops an octave, his mouth contorts into a strange shape and his eyes meet hers with full force. He knows you’re sitting there but can’t help simper about how wonderful the Aperol spritz he was just whinging about is. She doesn’t react. She sees this every day.

Flight attendants

Children are less needy for attention than boyfriends on long-haul flights. She’s forced to endure his requests for pillows and flight information and has to remind him to fasten his seatbelt every time because it means she looks at his crotch. He spends eight hours with an insincere smirk screwed to his face, swapping it for a face like a slapped arse the moment he disembarks.

Nurses

Nursing staff are under enough pressure without having to deal with a man with an unnatural beam fixating on them. You can’t visit an elderly relative without him flashing a sordid smile at every one that passes and boasting of his own good health which, given the circumstances, is pretty f**king tasteless.

Police officers

There’s a little back-and-forth going here: his soulless smile is acknowledging her power over him but finding it sexy, while she’d love to club him unconscious but isn’t allowed. You’re the witness to this unsavoury interaction and keep being glanced at as if the nauseating expression on his face is your fault, rather than a borderline sex crime.

Barmaid

The woman pulling pints is the female worker your boyfriend saves his creepiest smile for. Because he’s in a pub, he thinks there’s an extra level of sickly behaviour allowable. Fortunately an in-built resistance to pervy boyfriends is part of the job and she ignores his fixed grim becoming a little more grotesque with each pint. She isn’t paid enough.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the longest night of the year takes place on June 21st, the winter solstice. Since ancient times, knowledge of the changing seasons was vital to farmers in the region. No more so, than in the harsh highlands of the Andes. The winter solstice marked a welcome end to Winter and also the start of the new agricultural season.

The word Solstice comes from the Latin ‘solstitium’ meaning ‘Sun stands still’ because the movement of the Sun’s path north or south appears to stop before changing direction

At key places such as Tiwanaku, the imposing megalithic structures are said to have been designed with astronomical dates in mind, such as the Gate of the Sun, whose markings are meant to represent the solstices and equinoxes. Even today, the ruins at Tiwanaku is the main venue for marking the solstice with thousands of Bolivians and tourists coming to see the early morning sunrise on June 21st.

The new declaration of the new holiday has not been without its opponents. Only 20% of the population of Bolivia would be considered ethnically Aymaran, so it has been questioned as to why the whole country, consisting of over 30 ethnic groups, gets a holiday to mark this regional cultural event. Others have pointed out that there is little evidence that the Aymarans celebrated the winter solstice.

As Aymara New Year a national holiday, all public and private institutions, companies and schools will be closed on this day.

A 45-YEAR-OLD who exclusively dates women in their 20s while claiming they are ‘emotionally mature’ does not seem to have any male friends of that age.

Marketing consultant Anthony, not his real name,  was explaining the 20-something women he dates provide ‘fresh perspectives’, ‘wisdom beyond their years’ and ‘a refreshing lack of emotional baggage and cellulite’ when asked why all his male friends are his age.

He said: “Young women are fascinating. Goddesses who introduce me to new music, new ideas and it’s so cute that they don’t remember 2004.

“But young men? They mature later. They’re still filming themselves falling off things. What would we even talk about? Football? I prefer more intellectual pursuits, like telling 22-year-olds about my Porsche while staring at their cleavage.

“A 27-year-old woman is an old soul but still refreshingly carefree and not weighed down by the cynicism of age. That won’t happen for another three years. But a 27-year-old bloke is a f**king moron.

“His brain won’t even finish developing for another eight years. A 25-year-old woman, meanwhile, has an original outlook on life and incredibly firm…opinions. Firm opinions.”

“Any young girl – sorry, woman – who dates me recognises that she’s too sophisticated for guys her own age. Though if she turns me down she’s too immature to realise what’s good for her.”

The national flag of Argentina dates from 1812. It is a triband, with three equally wide horizontal bands of light blue, white and light blue. In 1818, a ‘ Sun of May’ was added to the center.

The flag with the sun is the Official Ceremonial Flag. The flag without the sun is considered to be the Ornamental Flag. While both versions can be said to be the national flag, the ornamental version must always be hoisted below the Official Ceremony Flag.

During the Argentine War of Independence General Belgrano was leading a battle near Rosario. He noticed that both the Crown’s forces and the independence forces were using the same colors (Spain’s yellow and red).

After realizing this, Belgrano created a new flag using the colors that were used by the Criollos during the May Revolution in 1810.

Though Argentina has one of the most recognizable national flags, the original flag was quite different from the current one: it had two vertical stripes, one blue and the other one white.

The flag was first flown, on February 27th 1812, on the Batería Libertad, by the Paraná River.

TRIED to spice things up with dirty texts and been rebuffed? Here’s how to move onto a much safer topic: the British weather.

Tell your partner they misunderstood

When you asked if she was wet, what you meant was ‘due to the downpour we just had’. If you requested shower pics, you meant her in a charming mac caught in an April shower. Sadly you have now condemned yourself to receiving and commenting on ‘adorable’ pictures of her whenever she gets caught in the rain. Get ready with those ‘likes’.

Show concern

You only wanted to know what he was wearing to make sure it was climate-appropriate. The same with telling him he was ‘hot’. You just were trying to persuade him to wear a sun hat and cooling lightweight clothing. How could you worrying about heatstroke and dehydration be misconstrued as sexual? Shore up this gaslighting by asking if he’s ever been treated for sex addiction.

Blame the seasons and your allergies

Alright, you were a bit forward, but it’s the weather. The warmer temperatures have caused the flowers to bloom and release pollen and it’s made you delirious with hayfever. So let’s talk about that and not that dick pic you sent. Admitted this is the first case of hayfever to have the same effects as malaria, but you don’t have many options. Maybe you can convince her you accidentally dropped your phone down your trousers? No, that’s just as bad.

Turn your dirty talk into a weather report

For example: ‘After a warm front, things have turned rather chilly. There’s been a sharp drop in enthusiasm and earlier projections of heavy activity have now been downgraded to light drizzle at best. Conditions are tense but stable. Expect a long dry spell ahead.’ See, this is like a spoof weather report on a comedy show! Ha ha ha! Is he laughing? No, he’s thinking about dating someone less weird.

Never speak of what happened again

Like a sunny spell, your attempt at being sexy came and went and now you’re back to gloom and small talk. Both of you should bury this awkward memory and only talk about the weather from now on. It’s the British way.

On January 1st 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared the end of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation. Two and half years later, and two months after the end of the Civil War, Union troops arrived in Galveston on June 19th 1865 to find that news of the proclamation had not yet reached Galveston and that people were still being held as slaves in Texas.

The leader of the Union Troops, General Gordon Granger then formally announced the emancipation from the balcony of the former Confederate Army headquarters.

Granger’s order was based loosely on Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. (The Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional, wasn’t ratified until December 6, 1865.) The order first declared that the formerly enslaved were free based on “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property” between Black people and those who had presumed legal ownership of them.

The reason why the news about the emancipation took so long to reach Texas is subject to speculation. One theory is that the messenger who was originally sent with the news had been killed before he reached Texas. A more likely scenario is that the local slave owners simply held onto the information, ignoring the emancipation order.

This day is a public holiday in most Islamic countries and this year’s date for New Year in each country along with the name of the day in that country is shown in the table of countries to the right.

Islamic New Year represents the starting point of the Muslim era as it coincides with the Hijrah, the Prophet’s journey from Mecca to Medina on the first of Muharram in 622 CE.

Prophet Mohammed needed to relocate because somebody had intentions to execute him. Consequently, the Prophet chose to go to a town known as Yathrib, some 320 km north of Mecca. Yathrib is known today as Medina, in modern-day Saudi Arabia, which translates to ‘the city’.

Hijrah gave freedom from suffering for the Muslims in Mecca. When the Prophet emigrated to Medina, Muslims there were indirectly saved from further persecution by the Meccan pagans. 

After the Hijrah, it was then declared by the Prophet in the Constitution of Medina that Muslims are a universal brotherhood with a unique identity in faith and ideology.

Umar ibn Al-Khattab, a close companion of Prophet Muhammad and the second caliph, subsequently adopted Hijrah as the reference point for the Islamic calendar, either in 638 CE or 639 CE. 

The customs of Awal Muharram vary from country to country, though they generally involve attending various religious activities, spiritual singing and religious meetings. The traditions and customs for Muharram also vary between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

For both, the marking of the beginning of the new year is usually quiet, unlike New Year’s celebrations associated with other calendars. It is a time for Muslims to reflect on the passing of time and their own mortality. 

IT’S only a matter of hours until office chat turns to what people are doing at the weekend. But probably keep these plans to yourself:

Passing out shitfaced

Besides being too revealing, the fact that you’ll be drunkenly falling to the floor in a puddle of your own puke is a given. You might as well tell your coworkers you’ve got a fun weekend of breathing lined up. No need to explicitly admit you’re a lush, so just give a vague impression and say you’re meeting friends for a drink. They’ll fill in the rest with their imaginations.

Gooning for 48 hours

Kink shaming be damned, embarking on a two-day wankathon is disturbing in and of itself. Telling your colleagues about it will only make things worse as you’ll have to explain what gooning is to team members who aren’t as online or perverse. They always wondered if you were a tragic, sex-starved loser, but there’s no need to confirm their suspicions in graphic detail.

Crying over the state of your life

Just because you work in an open-plan office doesn’t mean you need to be open about your emotional wellbeing. So what if you’re going to spend Sunday evening curled up in the fetal position sobbing over the terrible choices that have led to your shit life? Everyone else does it; they just have the decency to talk about some tedious film they’re going to watch instead.

Embarking on an affair

Keep this to yourself to protect the health and safety of your colleagues. The most exciting discussions they have are about the printer’s ink levels and KPI forecasts, so telling them that you’re planning to sneak off to a Travelodge to shag your mate’s missus senseless will cause them to pass out from excitement. Instead fob them off with some bollocks about going for a roast.

Spending quality time with your loving family

Not everyone in your office is lucky enough to have found love and reproduced, you inconsiderate bastard. Donna from accounts will put on a brave face if you talk about these plans, but she’ll scurry off to the loo for a massive cry when you’re not looking. Just say you’re going to watch the football, nobody really gives a shit what you’re doing anyway.

Iceland was proclaimed an independent republic on June 17th 1944.

Iceland actually gained independence from Denmark much earlier, on December 1st 1918 with the signing of the Act of Union with Denmark. The Act recognised Iceland as an independent state under the Danish crown.

The formation of the republic in 1944 was based on a clause in the 1918 Act which allowed for a change to the relationship between Iceland and Denmark in 1943.

Due to the German occupation of Denmark in 1943, a vote on the revision to the Act was delayed until after the Second World War finished.

The referendum was held in at the end of May 1944. Voters were asked whether the Union with Denmark should be abolished and whether to adopt a new republican constitution. Both measures were approved with more than 98% in favour and a voter turnout of 98.4%.

Although he would have preferred a different outcome in the referendum, King Christian X of Denmark sent a letter on June 17th 1944 congratulating Icelanders on forming their Republic.

The June 17th date was already a significant date in Iceland’s history as it is the birthday of Jón Sigurdsson who was the leader of the 19th century Icelandic independence movement which led to the 1918 Act of Union. Sigurdsson died in Copenhagen in 1879.

June 17th, was therefore chosen as Iceland’s National Holiday as a fitting date to mark the Independence from Denmark, the proclamation of the Icelandic republic and to recognize Jón Sigurdsson’s efforts toward Icelandic independence.

The day has been a legal public holiday since 1971, though it had been a tradition for most employers to give their workers a day off since 1945.

The full title of the holiday is ‘The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus’. In Spanish, it is known as ‘El Sagrado Corazón de Jesús’. 

In the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church it is a feast day 19 days after Pentecost and the second Friday after Corpus Christi. Like other holidays in Colombia that are based on a Catholic event, the holiday is celebrated on the Monday after the actual date. 

The Feast of the Sacred Heart is devoted to the physical heart of Jesus as a symbol of his divine love for all humanity. 

The devotion to the Sacred Heart developed in the middle ages out of worship to the scared wounds that Jesus received during his crucifixion. The devotion became more widespread in the seventeenth century when a French nun, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque said she learnt of the devotion from Jesus during several apparitions. The devotion to the Sacred Heart then spread across Spain due to the work of the Jesuits. This meant that the Spanish brought this tradition to their colonisation of Latin America. 

In 1902, Colombia was officially consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and this remained in the constitution until 1991.

ALL homeworkers are completing their allotted tasks and attending meetings entirely naked, they have confirmed.

Across the country, anyone working from home is typing with their laptop mere inches from their exposed, perspiring genitalia and will not mention it if you do not ask.

Jordan, not his real name, said: “In a heatwave you should open windows at night and keep curtains closed by day. And with all the curtains closed only a fool’s wearing underpants.

“If you’re in an office? You’ve got air-con as reward for your sweaty frottering commute. I don’t have that luxury. I’m forced to use more primal methods.

“No, I will not be turning my camera on for the meeting. I think we both know why, and I urge you not to press the issue. It wouldn’t just be the background that needed blurring.

“I’m clocking in, I’m doing my job, there will be no complaints about the quality of my work. What does it matter to you I’m doing it as naked and unashamed as Adam and Eve before the serpent? ROIs are ROIs.”

Office manager Joanna, not her real name, said: “So you mean in the call with Sally this morning, she was nude? I’m not sure how I feel about that. She’s got massive tits.”

Sunday 14 June Liberation Day in Falkland Islands

On April 2nd 1982, Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands. Argentina asserted that the islands are Argentine territory.

Three days later, the British government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force before making an amphibious assault on the islands.

The conflict lasted just over ten weeks and ended with an Argentine surrender on June 14th, returning the islands to British control.

In total, 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel, and three Falkland Islanders died during the hostilities.

ONCE it was the next big thing, now you can’t even Freecycle it. Were you one of the visionaries who bought a piece of the future that turned out to be a dusty piece of crap?

VR headsets

We’ve only been hearing how revolutionary these are for 30 years or so. A decade ago you gave in and decided you wanted to venture into virtual realms and experience bold new realities. Okay, porn, you wanted VR porn. What you got instead was a boring rock-climbing simulation and a phenomenally severe migraine.

3D television

You watched Avatar in the cinema and were seduced by the possibilities. Okay, porn, you wanted 3D porn. But blue extraterrestrials plugging their ponytails into plants were the only 3D content available and it turns out Avatar isn’t as rewatchable as Titanic or Terminator 2. Also you kept losing the glasses.

Nutribullet

A purchase you believed would make you a smoothie-guzzling Adonis which, with hindsight, you should have asked Amazon to deliver direct to the back of your kitchen cupboard. Nothing but a messy ballache which produced unpleasant tasting drinks with disturbing, slimy textures. Also you’re not all that keen on fruit.

Segway

Slow, difficult to ride, dangerous and deeply uncool: the Segway was a compilation of all the ways in which a vehicle can be bad. It didn’t revolutionise getting from A to B. It’s now exclusively associated with obese Americans travelling between urban tourist sites that can be walked around if you haven’t breakfasted on links in syrup.

Peloton

You were never going to get fit when the gym was a 15-minute drive away. Exercise classes in the spare room? Perfect. Then came an astonishingly fast transition from cycling while watching a class, to cycling while watching Netflix, to lying on the sofa while watching Netflix. The subscription’s lapsed. The Peloton remains, silently judging you.

Robot vacuum cleaner

It seemed such a wonderful solution; you go to bed, set the little fellow running and wake up to a lovely clean room. Until you get one and discover waking up means growling ‘Where’s the f**king hoover?’ before retrieving it from whatever corner or sofa it’s stuck under. You’ve gone back to your Henry and you swear he looks smug.

Saint Anthony of Padua (August 15th 1195 – June 13th 1231) was a Portuguese Catholic priest and Franciscan friar who became a saint in 1232 and was made a Doctor of the Church in 1946.

Also known as Anthony of Lisbon, he is the patron saint of Portugal as well as the patron saint of people who lose things and of children.

St. Anthony of Padua was born in Lisbon, Portugal to a wealthy family; his father was a captain in the Royal army. He was ordained as a priest and became inspired after meeting five Franciscan friars who were on their way to Muslim Morocco to preach the Gospel. A few months later he discovered that the monks were martyred and he joined the Franciscan order to follow in their path, adopting the name of Anthony, after Anthony the Great, who was one of the first monks and noted for his travels in desert lands.

Anthony’s life was changed when he was almost accidentally forced into giving a sermon. This uncovered his great gift for making speeches which led to Saint Francis asking him to travel around Italy preaching the Gospel which he did. He converted many people and became famed for his sermons.

Many miracles are assigned to Saint Anthony and he is often referred to as the ‘The Saint of Miracles’ or ‘the Wonder Worker’.

He was canonized less than a year after his death by Pope Gregory IX on May 30th 1232. This is the second-fastest canonization ever.

THE sun is shining, out-of-office is on, it’s a perfect time to read a good book but you don’t want to. Use one of these excuses to squint at your phone instead:

‘The text’s too small’

After several attempts to use a two-finger gesture to zoom in, you irritably decide that with all its densely-packed words in daunting paragraphs, lack of tabs and unwillingness even to impose a comforting pop-up, this book is refusing to meet you halfway. What are you meant to do, get your glasses? They’re all the way inside. F**k that.

‘Too many pages’

The comforting endless scroll of social media means you have no idea how much you’re reading, even when you’re an hour deep into a Reddit thread about Heated Rivalryships. Books, on the other hand, can’t even be held without revealing an intimidating number of pages and exhausting you before you even start, so you don’t.

‘There’s no comment section’

When you come across a villain online there immediately follows a long comment section where hundreds agree on what a monumental arsehole they are. Bad guys in books require you to make your own judgement and then stick with it all the way to their eventual comeuppance. Justice is delayed too long when you’re ready to condemn now.

‘It’s too slow’

Page after page of description of some bloody Victorian workhouse. Can’t they just jump-cut between one paragraph and the next? Include explanatory captions? Couldn’t this be condensed down to a 15-second Instagram reel? What was Charles Dickens thinking, not pivoting to short-form video?

‘There’s no tits in it’

Social media these days has, like all other media, discovered the lowest common denominator and it’s boobs. Novels? You’ll struggle to find one which has an actual picture, even in medical textbooks. Compare that to any app. Even LinkedIn has tits these days.

Since 1991, this holiday in the world’s largest country has changed its name twice. It was originally called ‘Independence Day’, though it was not a national holiday.

According to some surveys, many Russians still think that this holiday is Russia’s Independence Day, but the holiday has never had such a name in official documents. According to the survey of Levada Center in May 2003, 65% of the respondents named the holiday the Independence Day of Russia.

In 1994 Boris Yeltsin declared it a national holiday. The day was renamed to the catchy ‘Day of the adoption of the Declaration of Sovereignty of the Russian Federation’ with the intention of commemorating the renewed independence of the country, the creation of the post of President, the adoption of the historical national flag, and a new national anthem

On February 1st 2002, it was officially renamed to Russia Day.

THE Spanish tourist board is encouraging Britons to visit this summer for a good chuckle at all those miserable because they cannot be in Dubai.

As thousands of former influencers and the wealth-adjacent are forced to spend summers in a less glamorous location due to an inconvenient war, ordinary people are invited for a cheap holiday in someone else’s misery.

Holidaymaker Mr Hunt, not his real name, said: “You can see them congregating in beachfront cafes, bitching about how low the skyscrapers are or that 30 degrees isn’t hot enough.

“My girlfriend and I settled in next to them, luxuriating in their complaints that you can’t get a decent gold leaf coffee anywhere. It’s so relaxing hearing them fall silent as a Mercedes S-Class goes by, swallowing their bitter regret they’re not in it.”

Ray, not his real name from Venezuela, owner of Inspector Morse-themed bar One More Shot said: “We get them in here, moaning none of the hotel pools are infinite, disappointed their cocktails don’t cost three figures.

“We put an influencer on stage to bitch that she couldn’t hire a gold-plated Lamborghini anywhere so how could she make content and it was harming her hustle. The regulars were in stitches. Far better than the Chubby Brown tribute we’d booked.”

Former Dubai resident Hannah, not her real name, said: “How can it be a holiday without a Prada store? Why has this crowd gathered? What’s schadenfreude? Is it a German watch brand? Are they up for a collab?”

There is some uncertainty as to when King Kamehameha was born with several years between 1736 and 1761 being proposed. What is known is that he was the son of a high chief of a tribe on Hawaii. The name “Kamehameha” means “the lonely one.”

Kamehameha is noted for uniting the Hawaiian Islands in 1810 and becoming Hawaii’s first king. He ruled until his death in 1819.

King Kamehameha I established ‘Ke Kānāwai Māmalahoe’, or Law of the Splintered Paddle, which assured that every man, woman and child would be able to travel safely and in peace, with the right to ‘lie down to sleep by the roadside without fear of harm’. This has become a model for modern human rights for the treatment of civilians during times of war. It comes from an incident when a fisherman hit the King with a paddle during a military expedition. Kamehameha ruled that the fisherman had only been protecting his land and family.

Kamehameha Day was established in 1872 by King Kamehameha V, the great-grandchild of Kamehameha, as a national holiday to honor the memory of Kamehameha.

All state and county offices on the Big Island and throughout the state will be closed on June 11th in observance of the holiday on Kamehameha Day. Public transport may run on a modified schedule.

Since 1901, it has been a tradition to drape leis (Hawaiian floral garlands) from the statues of the King on the islands.

There is also a floral parade that features a young man dressed in a replica of the king’s ceremonial cloak and helmet. Other events include Hawaiian music, dance, and traditional arts and crafts.