Did you know?
Today, May 22nd is:
National Maritime Day The day chosen to commemorate the contribution of American commercial shipping is, appropriately, the day on which the Savannah
left its home port in Georgia in 1819 to attempt the first
steam-propelled crossing of the Atlantic. So unusual was it to see a
steam-powered vessel in those days that when the Savannah
passed the naval station at Cape Clear, Ireland, the authorities
thought she was on fire and quickly dispatched a royal cutter to assist
her. In reality, the Savannah was equipped with sails and only relied on her engines for about 90 hours of the journey.
It was President Franklin D. ROOSEVELT who first proclaimed May 22
as National Maritime Day in 1933. Since that time observations of this
day have grown in popularity, particularly in American port cities.
Ships are opened to the public, maritime art and essay contests are
held, and parades and band concerts are common. Environmentalists
sometimes take advantage of the attention focused on the country’s
maritime heritage on this day to draw attention to pollution and
deterioration of maritime environments, particularly in large
commercial ports like New York City. From Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary |
Quotation of the Day
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Government
Franklin D. Roosevelt "Governments
can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us
that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of
the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a
Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent
omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." from Respectfully Quoted |
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