Tomorrow it is Saint Patrick Day, the most important holiday forfor Irish people who
will cerlebrate wearing green clothes and a shamrock (from seamróg, meaning summer
plant).
wherever there are Irish people, they celebrate this holiday:
Chicago river is 156 miles long, it runs through the downtown of Chicago with 45
bridges.
On every St. Patrick Day Chicago the river is dyed
green.
There are parades and parties all over the world, since Irish people have left their island and settled in different countries of the world. Learn why Irish people left their island.
Shrove Tuesday is called Pancake Day in Britain because it is an old tradition to eat pancakes that day.
Today it is Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent starts. Click if you want to know how is this day celebrated in England. Pancake races are held along the country, this is a particular kind of race in which people run tossing pancakes in frying pans at the same time (it is great fun!).
Watch the video and learn how to cook pancakes, they are similar to our filloas:
Carnival is a great holiday here, but it is is the greatest holiday in Brazil too and the Carnival in Rio is famous in the whole world. Click to see the Rio Carnival pictures from The Guardian newspaper. Click here to know about Carnival in some other places.
And the Carnival in Venice:
Tomorrow is February 14th, the most romantic and important day of the year for people in love.
It is
known as Saint Valentine's Day, or Valentine's Day for short. This day we usually send a card to someone special.
This card is called a "Valentine".
"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate" Charles Dickens.
The man in the picture is Charles Dickens. Today is his birthday, he would be 200 years old if he were alive. So, Have a happy birthday!
His novels show the appalling conditions of life of poor people in Victorian times. Reading his books you will have a dramatic description of the poorest neighborhoods in London.
Some fast facts about his life and Dickens' London map if you want to explore it. Listen to or download some of his books. Time Out takes you to visit London places related to Dickens. Click and play: a BBC game about Dickens and London in his time. The Guardian has a gallery of pictures of London spot related to him.
The little match girl is a Christmas story by Hans Christian Andersen. It is about a little girl who sells matches during New Year's Eve, it is really cold in the street, so she decides to strike one match after another to get warm. Then she gets some visions of the things that she does not have (a Christmas tree,a holiday feast, her grandmother...).She finds a shooting star in the sky and remembers her grandmother who loved her a lot.
I know it is a sad story for Christmas, I hope you have a great time this season and enjoy a lot but I would like you remember those people who are not so happy as you are.
We are 7 billion on Earth, more humans than ever and still growing.
Here you have an interesting web on the matter:
The world at seven billion is an interactive of the BBC, you can write the date of your birth and know your number on Earth. Just write the date and clikc on "go". Then you click on "next" and get more info on the topic. Click to see how many are 7 billions.
And National Geographic has a video that make us think about what 7 billion people mean:
I know that Halloween is one of your favourite days, you enjoy wearing masks and listening to horror stories or going "trick or treating" along the street.
There is a video and a song for you and some more Halloween activities for you: Follow the link and watch a video about Halloween. Click if you want the lyrics.
Do you need a mask? click here and enjoy. Or watch a Halloween video.
Greenwich Mean Time started to work on 13 October 1884. But, what is Greenwich Mean Time? Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the time reference of the world and it was established in 1884 at the International Meridian Conference, when it was decided to place the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, England. That was because as commerce expanded through railway and seafaring it became neccessary to reach a worldwide decision about time.
Once the decision was taken you can travel to Greenwich (near London), see the imaginary line that divides the world and take the picture of both your feet placed in two different time zones. Naturally this is an arbitrary line (and that thing does not happen with parallels which can be defined by the rotational axial of the Earth).
Watch the video from National geographic about Christopher Columbus.This video is here to remember the long and difficult journey that Columbus made from Spain to America (although he died without believing that he had discovered a new land.
As you already know we celebrate this journey on 12 October.
Follow the link if you want to learn more:
BBC famous people:his life.
A Hounted House is nearly a tradition in Halloween, you will be safe next Halloween if you first find the ingredients for a magic spell, don't worry, the British Council has already thought about it.
Follow the link to the British Council game.
Review your Halloween vocabulary, you only have to click on the image and listen (switch on your loudspeakers first). Here you can find loads of activities. And click here if you need a Halloween mask.
If you want to read some
Have a scary Halloween day!
And now learn about Loreena McKennit and her opinion about Santiago:
Loreena McKennitt : read some pages of her diary with her views about Santiago
Just performed in Santiago de Compostella in the Galician area of Spain...misty and lush as we arrived from more arid areas of the country; clearly Celtic territory in the language andmusic, and a place I must visit again soon...We arrived a day early; band et alii went for a wonderful Sunday lunch and then wandered over to the cathedral to observe the wonderful faces on the Portico.
In Santiago again - Santiago de Compostella (St. James in the Field of Stars)...had occasion to return to Galicia and Santiago sooner than I'd thought...I learned the story behind the city. Supposedly the remains of St. James arrived mysteriously in the village of Padron (which we visited...lovely line of trees along the waterway leading to the place where the relics were found) and interred here in Santiago...
Loreena McKennitt is from Canada and this is her composition "Santiago" based in traditional Galician music:
Enjoy your Bonfire night (that is the way it is called in Ireland) and remember that this day is not only celebrated in Galicia.
Meet Antonio Mancinelli, the oldest barber in the world,
You can read along if you want (a transcript is provided).
And he is not the only one, watch and listen to the oldest graduate in college in the world:
Now that you have watched and listened to both golden agers, answer the questions about Nola Ochs (no transcript this time).
"At the present time, it is still too early to say whether this is a large-scale diversionary attack or the main effort" German Army - Morning Report for the 6th June 1944
On the very early hours of the 6th of June of 1944 allied troops landed in Normandy and so they invaded the North of France. That day is usually called The D-Day although the code name of the whole operation was Operation Overlord.
This landing was the beginning of the end of the war, that conflict affected not only troops, they say it was the war with the highest number of casualties, civilian many of them.
Click if you want to see an animated map of the places where the invasion took place, just follow the link and click on play.
And if you believe that war is something from the past, here you have some figures from today: 1.366,350 is the number of Iraqi people who died since the US invaded the country. 4,718 is the number of US military personnel who died in Iraq.
"History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history." Clarence Darrow
Although Election Day in most European countries take place on Sundays, it is a British tradition to go to the polls on a Thursday as today. If you follow the link above, there is a BBC presentation about how to vote. I know you know what voting is, but maybe you learn some new words.
Those candidates elected are called MP (that stands for Member of Parliament). Click to see how the British Parliament works.
Click to see newspapers front pages.
Who leads the polls? It seems that the next PM (Prime Minister) will be the Tory James Cameron. Gordon Brown is the Leader of the Labour Party and the PM at the moment.
Nick Clegg is the Liberal Democrats candidate, this is the first time the polls predict Clegg and the LB in the second place in number of seats in Westminster.
And if you want to visit the British Parliament, enjoy this virtual tour.
