A term coined by psychologist Carl Jung to describe what he called “meaningful coincidences,” synchronicity is the experience of two or more causally unrelated events that are conceptually similar and have very little chance of occurring t…
Serendipity –Â noun – the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
synonyms: chance, happy chance, accident, happy accident, fluke
Defined as the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident, the w…
On February 5, 1990, Pakistanis protested against Indian rule in an armed uprising. More than 80,000 Kashmiris lost their lives during the demonstrations. Pakistan People’s Party Government leader Benazir Bhutto responded by declaring the day a p…
Photo by Forest Service, USDA
This is a raucous salute in Bishop, California, to that workhorse of the ages, the mule. Mule Days was started in 1969 by mule-packers who wanted to have a good time and initiate their summer packing season. Now about 5…
Burning Man is a counterculture festival held in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, conceived by Larry Harvey in 1986 to honor the Summer Solstice. It has since become a populist phenomenon, where participants set up a temporary “city,” cre…
The motto E Pluribus Unum (Latin for “One from many”) was approved for use on the Great Seal of the United States in 1782, but was never adopted as the national motto through legislative action. The motto of the United States itself is In God We Trust, proclaimed by Congress and signed into law by …
The Lim Festival is an alternating-song contest, held in the commune of Lung Giang, about 18 miles from Hanoi, in the Bac Ninh Province of Vietnam. This is a courtship event, in which girls and boys of different villages carry on a singing courtship di…
These late-January festivities mark a highlight in the ceremonial year at San Ildefonso Pueblo near Santa Fe, New Mexico. January 23 is the pueblo’s feast day, celebrated with a special church service and dances, such as the Buffalo, Coma…
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a museum dedicated to archiving the history of rock music. It was created in 1983 but did not have a home until 1995, when it opened its Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, after civic leaders pledged $65 million in publi…
The Palermo stone is the largest known fragment of an ancient Egyptian stele containing the earliest extant historic annals. It was engraved around the 25th century BCE and includes a hieroglyphic listing of the kings of ancient Egypt, the years of th…
Not always – but most of us will smile at the sight anyway. A favorite of young and old alike for its vivid color and cheery song, the American robin is the state bird of Connecticut, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
We thi…
Overview Black Friday is an annual shopping event observed in the United States on the Friday after Thanksgiving, during which most major retailers open early and offer a variety of promotional sales and discounts, to mark the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Since 2005, it has remained the busiest shopping day of the entire…
At the Bonden (or Bonten) Festival at Yokote in the Akita Prefecture of Japan, each district of the city has a team of young men to carry its bonden in a race to the Asahiokayama-jinja shrine.
The bonden is a ten-foot bamboo pole, draped with heavy clo…
The son of two slaves, Richard Allen (1760-1831) was born in Philadelphia on this day. By the time he was 26 years old, he had saved enough money to buy his way out of slavery, and soon after that he established America’s first African-American …
Kovacs was an American comedian. He turned to television after studying acting and writing, and he did much of the performing, writing, and producing for his three series—Time for Ernie, The Ernie Kovacs Show, and Kovacs Unlimited. He utilized …
The USS Philadelphia was a 36-gun frigate that ran aground in October 1803 while blockading the coast of Tripoli. After some consideration, the Americans decided that the ship was too powerful a weapon to remain in enemy hands and sent a party of soldiers to recapture the ship and burn it. In carrying out…
A midwinter civic festival held in Ottawa, Canada, Winterlude is primarily a celebration of winter sports. The Rideau Canal, which has been referred to as “the world’s longest skating rink,” is nearly eight kilometers (five miles) lon…
Grant performed with an acrobatic comedy troupe in England before he found parts in stage musicals. After he made his film debut in 1932, his debonair charm, good looks, and distinctive voice made him a popular star in sophisticated comedies such as B…
There is a church in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, known as Our Lord of the Happy Ending (bonfim). Today during the Bonfim Festival, hundreds of Brazilian women dress in the traditional white dresses of colonial Bahia and form a procession to the church. Th…
Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician. He started out with the Second City comedy troop in his hometown of Chicago, Illinois, in 1971, achieved national recognition in National Lampoon’s Lemmings in 1973, and joined Saturday Night…
This three-day celebration in Adairsville, Georgia, commemorates the storied Civil War locomotive chase that came on April 12, 1862, after the Yankee spy, James J. Andrews, stole the Confederate engine named “The General.” William A. Fuller…
The Hala Festival has been held in Kuwait every year since 1999 to celebrate the coming of spring and to promote Arab culture and the local economy. The festival begins with an opening carnival and parade, culminating in a lavish fireworks display. Ove…