Happy Birthday to Central African Republic!

Tajik young women during Navrūz (Persian New Year). They are holding sprouting plants which symbolize rebirth. *Photo from Wikipedia September 9 is Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Tajikistan from USSR in 1991. The area has been ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenid Empire, Sasanian Empire, Hephthalite Empire, Samanid Empire, Mongol Empire and Timurid dynasty. The Tajik people came under Russian rule in the 1860s. The Basmachi revolt, an uprising against Russian Imperial and Soviet rule by the Muslim peoples of Central Asia, broke out in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was quelled

Junkanoo celebration in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. Junkanoo is a street parade with music, dance, and costumes across the Bahamas every Boxing Day (December 26) and New Year’s Day (January 1). *Photo from Wikipedia July 10 is Independence Day, celebrates the independence of the Bahamas from the United Kingdom in 1973. The Bahamas became a British Crown colony in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy. After the American War of Independence, the Crown resettled thousands of American Loyalists in the Bahamas; they brought their slaves with them and established plantations on land grants. Africans constituted the

Traditional chiefs in Ghana in 2015. *Photo from Wikipedia March 6 is Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Ghana from the UK in 1957. The territory of present-day Ghana has been inhabited for millennia, with the first permanent state dating back to the 11th century. Numerous kingdoms and empires emerged over the centuries, of which the most powerful was the Kingdom of Ashanti. Beginning in the 15th century, numerous European powers contested the area for trading rights, with the British ultimately establishing control of the coast by the late 19th century. Following over a century of native resistance, Ghana’s current