Happy Birthday to Panama!

The central business district of Tallinn, the capital and largest city of Estonia. *Photo from Wikipedia August 20 is Restoration of Independence Day, re-declaration of the independence of Estonia from the Soviet Union in 1991. Following centuries of successive Teutonic (The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem), Danish, Swedish, and Russian rule, Estonians experienced a national awakening that culminated in independence from the Russian Empire towards the end of World War I. In the aftermath of the war and the Russian revolutions, the Estonian Declaration of Independence was issued in February 1918. During World

Dominican kids taking classes. *Photo from Wikipedia February 27 is Independence Day, celebrates the first independence of Dominican Republic from Haiti in 1844. Christopher Columbus landed on the Western part of Hispaniola, in what is now Haiti, on December 6, 1492. The island became the first seat of the Spanish colonial rule in the New World. The Dominican people declared independence in November 1821 but were forcefully annexed by their more powerful neighbor Haiti in February 1822. In 1844, Dominican independence was proclaimed and the republic, which was often known as Santo Domingo until the early 20th century, maintained its

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