Happy Birthday to Panama!

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

Podgorica, the capital and largest city of Montenegro. *Photo from Wikipedia July 13 is Montenegro’s Statehood Day. It is a holiday that occurs every year on July 13 in Montenegro to commemorate the day in 1878 on which the Berlin Congress recognized Montenegro as the 27th independent state in the world, and that in 1941 the Montenegrins staged an uprising against the Nazi occupiers and sided with the partisan communist movement. The Congress of Berlin (or Berlin Congress; June 13 – July 13, 1878) was a meeting of the representatives of the Great Powers of the time (Russia, Great Britain,

View of Angkor Wat, one of the largest religious monuments in the world. *Photo from Wikipedia November 9 is Independence Day, which celebrates the independence of Cambodia from France in 1953. In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name “Kambuja”. This marked the beginning of the Khmer Empire which flourished for over 600 years, allowing successive kings to control and exert influence over much of Southeast Asia and accumulate immense power and wealth. The Indianized kingdom built monumental temples including Angkor Wat, now a World Heritage Site, and facilitated the