Independence Day is a public holiday in the African island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe on July 12th each year.
This is the National Day of São Tomé and Príncipe and commemorates the country's independence from Portugal on this day in 1975.
The first people to inhabit these two islands in the Gulf of Guinea were the Portuguese. The first landed on São Tomé, the larger of the two islands on December 21st (Saint Thomas' Day, hence the name) 1471.
They found the islands' rich volcanic soil a good basis to support sugar plantations. The plantations were manned by African slaves and 'undesirables' from Portugal.
In 1974, the so-called Carnation Revolution in Portugal brought an end to the dictatorial regime and also a new approach to its overseas territories.
São Tomé and Príncipe gained its independence from Portugal on July 21st 1975, making it the second-smallest country in Africa. The smallest is another island nation on the other side of the continent - Seychelles.
The Republic of Kiribati celebrates its Independence Day on July 12. It is the country’s national day that commemorates the independence of Kiribati from the United Kingdom in 1979.
Kiribati is a small island country in the central Pacific Ocean. In 1788, the British Captain Thomas Gilbert crossed the islands. They were later named the Gilbert Islands after him. Great Britain established its protectorate over the Gilbert Islands and the neighboring Ellice Islands in 1892.
In 1916, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands became a Crown colony. After WWII, the colony’s transition to self-determination began. The Ellice Island gained independence as Tuvalu, while the Gilbert Islands became the independent Republic of Kiribati on July 12, 1979.
Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III GCSI GCMG GCIE GCVO PC (02 November 1877 – 11 July 1957) was the 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili religion. He was one of the founders and the first permanent president of the All-India Muslim League (AIML). His goal was the advancement of Muslim agendas and protection of Muslim rights in India. The League, until the late 1930s, was not a large organisation but represented the landed and commercial Muslim interests of the British-ruled 'United Provinces' (as of today Uttar Pradesh).He shared Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's belief that Muslims should first build up their social capital through advanced education before engaging in politics. Aga Khan called on the British Raj to consider Muslims to be a separate nation within India, the so-called 'Two Nation Theory'. Even after he resigned as president of the AIML in 1912, he still exerted major influence on its policies and agendas. He was nominated to represent India to the League of Nations in 1932 and served as President of the League of Nations from 1937–38.
John Quincy Adams (11 July 1767 – 23 February 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams also served as an ambassador, and as a member of the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives representing Massachusetts. He was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second US president from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and in the mid-1830s became affiliated with the Whig Party.
World Population Day is celebrated on July 11 of every year. World Population Day is entirely about raising awareness about the global population issues like the importance of family planning, including poverty, gender equality, maternal health, and human rights. The growing population is a major concern as the world getting crowded will have higher repercussion on natural resources which sustains all the living organisms. The unrestrained growth in population has already started to exhibit the devastating effects on the world natural resources which are receding at a fast depletion rate. So World Population Day is a perfect day to raise awareness among the peoples about the issues of the Global population.
Sunil Manohar Gavaskar born 10 July 1949, often known as Sunny Gavaskar, is a former Indian international cricketer who played from the early 1970s to the late 1980s for the Bombay cricket team and Indian national team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest Test batsmen and best opening batsmen in Test cricket history,[citation needed] Gavaskar set world records during his career for the most Test runs and most Test centuries scored by any batsman. He held the record of 34 Test centuries for almost two decades before it was broken by Sachin Tendulkar in December 2005. He was the first person to score centuries in both innings of a Test match three times. He was the first Test batsman to score 10,000 Test runs in a career and now stands at number 12 on the group of 13 players with 10,000-plus Test runs.
Gavaskar is a recipient of the Indian civilian honours of the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan.He was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009.In 2012, he was awarded the Col CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award for Cricket in India.
Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (10 July 1682 – 23 February 1719) was a member of the Lutheran clergy and the first Pietist missionary to India.
Ziegenbalg was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony, on 9 July 1682 to poor but devout Christian parents: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg Sr. (1640–1694), a grain merchant, and Maria née Brückner (1646–1692). Through his father he was related to the sculptor Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel, and through his mother's side to the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He showed an aptitude for music at an early age. He studied at the University of Halle under the teaching of August Hermann Francke, then the center of Pietistic Lutheranism. Under the patronage of King Frederick IV of Denmark, Ziegenbalg, along with his fellow student, Heinrich Plütschau, became the first Protestant missionaries to India. They arrived at the Danish colony of Tranquebar on 9 July 1706.
A stamp album is a book, often loose-leafed (to allow for expansion), in which a collection of postage stamps may be stored and displayed
Albums are the nearly universal means for keeping stamps, used for both beginners' and world-class collections, and it is common to characterise the size of a collection by its number of albums.
The arrangement of stamps on an album page depends on the taste of the collector and the purpose of the collection. A collection with "one of each" stamp may have rows of stamps packed onto each page, while a specialist's page might have a dozen examples of the same type of stamp, each captioned with a description of printing details or colour shades. Traditional page creation was done by hand with pen and ink; in recent years page layout software and computer printers have become popular. AlbumEasy, available free, for Windows, Mac and Linux, is an example of one of the many page layout programs.
A stamp album is a book, often loose-leafed (to allow for expansion), in which a collection of postage stamps may be stored and displayed. Many collectors buy preprinted albums and pages, which are produced by several manufacturers. The gamut ranges from worldwide albums, with only enough spaces for the common stamps and a few more, to one-country albums with spaces for every type of stamp known. The usual format is to print a black-and-white picture of the stamp in each space, reduced in size so that a real stamp will cover it up, and add a thin frame around the stamp. Captions range from minimal mentions of perforation or watermark, up to a paragraph giving a little background on the stamp's subject. Album pages are almost always one-sided; two-sided pages save space, but require interleaving sheets to prevent stamps from catching on each other. Pre-printed albums come in various formats where the collector can mount a used stamp with a hinge, create a pocket for the individual stamp using a pre-cut mount to stick to the page, or the easiest type called a "hingeless album" system where the pre-printed album page includes a place to put your postage stamp.
One of the first albums was the Stanley Gibbons “V.R.” published in the early 1870s. This was followed by the “Improved”, and then the illustrated “Imperial” albums. Present-day makers include Safe, Lighthouse (Leuchturm), Lindner, Palo, Scott, and White Ace. Once collectors have started using a particular brand, they have a strong incentive to stay with it, and the manufacturers offer annual updates for the stamps issued during the previous year.
In the earliest albums, stamps were adhered to the pages, using either their own gum (as if put on an envelope) or glue. Stamp hinges were introduced soon after, allowing stamps to be removed without major damage to either the stamp or the album page. In the second half of the 20th century, stamp mounts were introduced. Mounts typically hold the stamp between two layers of plastic, with the front layer transparent, and are attached to an album page, allowing the stamp to be displayed without an adhesive touching the stamp. When properly used, mounts allow the stamp to be removed from the album in the same condition in which it was inserted. An album in which the mounts are affixed at the factory, either as mounts for individual stamps or as larger strips, is called "hingeless".
Source : Wikipedia
Wyoming, constituent state of the United States of America. Wyoming became the 44th state of the union on July 10, 1890. It ranks 10th among the 50 U.S. states in terms of total area. It shares boundaries with six other Great Plains and Mountain states: Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Colorado to the south, Utah to the southwest, and Idaho to the west. Cheyenne, the capital, is located in the southeastern corner of the state.
The word Wyoming is derived from a Delaware word meaning “land of vast plains,” an apt description of the state’s spacious natural environment, which is home to nearly as many pronghorn as people.
Philip V (19 December 1683 – 9 July 1746) was King of Spain from 1 November 1700 to his abdication in favour of his son Louis on 14 January 1724, and then again from his reaccession to the throne upon his son's death, on 6 September 1724, to his own death on 9 July 1746.
Before his reign, Philip occupied an exalted place in the royal family of France as a grandson of King Louis XIV. His father, Louis, Grand Dauphin, had the strongest genealogical claim to the throne of Spain when it became vacant in 1700. However, since neither the Grand Dauphin nor Philip's older brother, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, could be displaced from the succession to the French throne, the Grand Dauphin's maternal uncle (Philip's granduncle) King Charles II of Spain named Philip as his heir in his will. It was well known that the union of France and Spain under one monarch would upset the balance of power in Europe, and that other European powers would take steps to prevent it. Indeed, Philip's accession in Spain provoked the 13-year War of the Spanish Succession, which continued until the Treaty of Utrecht forbade any future possibility of unifying the French and Spanish crowns while confirming his accession to the throne of Spain.
Philip was the first member of the House of Bourbon to rule as King of Spain. The sum of his two reigns, 45 years and 21 days, is the longest in modern Spanish history.
