On This Day: June 28th … Strange Holidays
Tau Day
National Paul Bunyan Day
Christopher Street Day
International Body Piercing Day
Just gonna do what I do when I do it.
National Paul Bunyan Day
Paul Bunyan was a gigantic lumberjack of American Folklore. According out folklore, Paul Bunyan and his blue ox "Babe" lived and travelled around country. He is best known for his logging feats.
Paul Bunyan is "credited" with many deeds. Among his more legendary feats:
He created logging in the U.S.
He scooped out the great lakes to water Babe, his ox.
He cleared the entire states of North and South Dakota for farming.
He trained ants to do logging work. They were, of course, Carpenter Ants.
Babe's large footprints created Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. (This was always a favorite of mine.)
Celebrate Paul Bunyan Day in a giant way. Learn more about Paul and his tales. Spread the tales around. They are best told by word of mouth around a campfire.
The correct spelling of his name is "Paul Bunyan" . Some references have him spelled as Paul Bunyun.
French Canadians were believed to have originated Paul Bunyan during the Papineau rebellion of 1837. While he may have been created in Canada, Paul Bunyan quickly became a huge American legend. Many of the tales of Paul Bunyan originated in lumberjack industry and logging communities. Like all good folklore, it was passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. Over campfires, his legend grew, and tales were created. Written tales emerged in the early 1900's.
"Ten people who speak, make more noise than 10,000 who are silent."
—Napoleon Bonaparte.
Tau Day
All you mathematicians, one could say this is your day to rejoice.
The first known use of tau was approximated by Archimedes in the third century. He was born in the Greek city-state of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. Archimedes was known as one of the greatest scientists of the classical age, who, among many other things,
calculated pi to the most precise value known. Pi is defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter as is tau, but some believe that Archimedes’ work would have been all the better if he had relied more on tau than pi.
During the eighteenth century, Leonhard Euler used the Greek letter π to represent the ratio of pi itself and for many years it has remained as the quintessential constant circle. This helped people understand circles, triangles, and other principles of geometry. It was a useful device that served its purpose well, but a new voice would define it as inelegant a couple of centuries later.
The tau movement was founded by the former University of Utah math professor Robert Palais who believed that tau simplified the math. Palais noticed that something was off with pi when calculating the sine of π/2 and the image he saw didn’t add up to the calculations. From this, he knew that pi wasn’t the way. Palais published his findings in a 2001 article titled “π is Wrong” in the “Mathematical Intelligencer.” He noted that Euler went back and forth between tau and pi, but pi became the accepted constant. Palais then proposed tau was superior and he used the pi symbol with an extra leg to represent it, and it eventually became an uppercase T.
On June 28, 2010, “The Tau Manifesto” launched at the same time as the first Tau Day. “The Tau Manifesto” was a book written by Michael Hart that was dedicated to the lesser-known number. In it, pi is referred to as unnatural and confusing. Pi compares a circle’s circumference with its diameter, and many mathematicians are disinterested in this quantity whereas tau is the number that connects a circumference to that quantity. The day is used to celebrate all of mathematics, but tau specifically still has an uphill battle in receiving recognition.
Christopher Street Day
This will read as somewhat of a mini-novella, but it is a true story of struggle and acceptance of how Gay Pride Day started—and transformed the world.
Commonly referred to as CSD, is held in memory of the Stonewall Riots, the first big uprising of LGBT people against police assaults that took place at the Stonewall Inn, a bar on Manhattan, New York City's Christopher Street in the district of Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969.
At the time, homosexual acts remained illegal in every state except Illinois, and bars and restaurants could get shut down for having gay employees or serving gay patrons. Most gay bars and clubs in New York at the time (including the Stonewall) were operated by the Mafia, who paid corruptible police officers to look the other way and blackmailed wealthy gay patrons by threatening to “out” them.
Police raids on gay bars were common, but on that particular night, members of the city’s LGBT community decided to fight back—sparking an uprising that would launch a new era of resistance and revolution.
On the Tuesday before the riots began, police conducted an evening raid on the Stonewall, arresting some of its employees and confiscating its stash of illegal liquor. As with many similar raids, the police targeted the bar for operating without a proper liquor license.
After the raid, the NYPD planned a second raid for the following Friday, which they hoped would shut down the bar for good.
After midnight on an unseasonably hot Friday night, the Stonewall was packed when eight plainclothes or undercover police officers (six men and two women) entered the bar. In addition to the bar’s employees, they also singled out drag queens and other cross-dressing patrons for arrest. In New York City, “masquerading” as a member of the opposite sex was a crime.
More NYPD officers arrived on foot and in three patrol cars. Meanwhile, bar patrons who had been released joined the crowds of onlookers that were forming outside the Stonewall. A police van, commonly known as a paddy wagon, arrived, and police began loading Stonewall employees and cross-dressers inside.
Accounts vary over exactly what kicked off the riots, but according to witness reports, the crowd erupted after police roughed up a woman dressed in masculine attire (some believe the woman was lesbian activist Stormé DeLarverie) who had complained that her handcuffs were too tight. People started taunting the officers, yelling “Pigs!” and “Copper!” and throwing pennies at them, followed by bottles; some in the crowd slashed the tires of the police vehicles.
After some time had passed, Sirens announced the arrival of more police officers, as well as squadrons of the Tactical Patrol Force (TPF), the city’s riot police. As the helmeted officers marched in formation down Christopher Street, protesters outsmarted them by running away, then circling the short blocks of the Village and coming back up behind the officers.
Finally, sometime after 4 a.m., things settled down. Amazingly, no one died or was critically injured on the first night of rioting, though a few police officers reported injuries.
The next night, The Stonewall Inn reopened (though it wasn’t serving alcohol). More and more supporters showed up, chanting slogans like “gay power” and “we shall overcome.”
Again the police were called out to restore order, including an even larger group of TPF officers, who beat and tear gassed members of the crowd. This continued until the early hours of the morning, when the crowd dispersed.
Now, to cut to the chase, With Stonewall, the spirit of ’60s rebellion spread to LGBT people in New York and beyond, who for the first time found themselves part of a community. Though the gay rights movement didn’t begin at Stonewall, the uprising did mark a turning point, as earlier “homophile” organizations like the Mattachine Society gave way to more radical groups like the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA).
But it was at the Stonewall Inn, June 28, 1970, where the first Gay Pride March started from. It covered 15 blocks and had thousands of people walking as well in support of the one year anniversary on the attack of the Stonewall Inn.
This set off a movement that spread like wildfire around the globe, and has only grown stronger in their struggles for equality among the sexes, and equal rights that every person has.
And now you know the story.
There is an annual European LGBTQ celebration generally held during the second half of July and demonstrations are held in various cities across Europe for the rights of LGBTQ people, and against discrimination and exclusion. It is Germany's and Switzerland's counterpart to Gay Pride or Pride Parades. Austria calls their Pride Parade Rainbow Parade. The most prominent CSD events are CSD Cologne, Germany and Zürich in Switzerland, and Berlin Pride, CSD Hamburg,
More Strange Holidays Coming!