Happy Birthday to Panama!

Gibraltar from the air. *Photo from Wikipedia September 10 is Gibraltar National Day. It commemorates Gibraltar’s first sovereignty referendum of 1967, in which Gibraltarian voters were asked whether they wished to either pass under Spanish sovereignty, or remain under British sovereignty, with institutions of self-government. An Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltar from Spain in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession on behalf of the Habsburg claim to the Spanish throne. The territory was subsequently ceded to Great Britain “in perpetuity” under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. During World War II it was an important base for the Royal

School children in Cameroon *Photo from Wikipedia January 1 is Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Cameroon from France in 1960. Portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area Rio dos Camarões (“Shrimp River”), which became Cameroon in English. Cameroon became a German colony in 1884 known as Kamerun. After World War I, the territory was divided between France and the United Kingdom as League of Nations mandates. The Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) political party advocated independence, but was outlawed by France in the 1950s, leading to the Cameroonian Independence War. In 1960,

A women’s dance from Vanuatu, using bamboo stamping tubes. *Photo from Wikipedia July 30 is Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Vanuatu from the United Kingdom and France in 1980. Vanuatu was first inhabited by Melanesian people. The first Europeans to visit the islands were a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Fernandes de Queirós, who arrived on the largest island in 1606. As the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies had been unified under the king of Spain in 1580 (following the vacancy of the Portuguese throne, which lasted for sixty years, until 1640, when the Portuguese monarchy was restored), Queirós