This day is largely about Freedom. I've entered Dominion Day (oops, Canada Day) as the holiday below, but July is historically a popular month for starting independent countries, at least from the first up to Bastille Day on the 14th. Most of the quotations for the next few days will be on the subject of freedom and the responsibilities and burdens that accompany it.
Not only did Canada gain sovereign status today, in 1960 Ghana became in independent republic within the Commonwealth. The same day, Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland merged to form the independent Somali Democratic Republic. Two years later, the Kingdom of Burundi and the Republic of Rwanda gain independence.
Not all nations are created peacefully like Canada was. Our birthday today is that of a French soldier who played a key role in the US revolution and a mixed role in the revolution in his own country - he spent part of it in prison. The Battle of Gettysburg was a major turning point in the US Civil War, leading to freedom for slaves.
1543 - With Henry VIII hoping to secure peace in Scotland so that he might go to war against France, England and Scotland signed the Peace of Greenwich, providing for the marriage of Prince Edward Tudor and Mary, Queen of Scots. The happy couple was not consulted, Edward was six years old, Mary was only seven months old.
1863 - General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia (75,000 strong) attack Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, meeting the Union Army of the Potomac (85,000 troops) under General George Gordon Meade. Both generals are West Point graduates, it's the first major battle north of the Mason-Dixon line, and chronologically the half-way point of the US Civil War.
1937 - The world's first telephone emergency service came into operation in London, with a klaxon and flashing red light at the switchboards to announce an incoming call to 999. With rotary-dial phones that choice of numbers may have seemed slow, but it was still 31 years before the first US system was installed in 1968.
1944 - The Bretton Woods Conference, the common name for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, opens. In the following three weeks the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development are planned, treaties are ratified the following year, and the institutions are operating in 1946.
1974 - Isabel Peron is sworn in as president of Argentina following the death of her husband Juan Peron. She is the first female chief of state in the Americas, but rules for less than two years - deposed by a military junta in March 1976.
Canada Day, The Dominion of Canada - Celebrates the 1867 passage of the British North America Act creating the Canadian government, first observed in 1868, officially declared a holiday as "Dominion Day" in 1879, with the name changed to Canada Day in 1982. Traditionalists assert that the new name is banal and anemic, reflecting political correctness and historical revisionism, and was passed in the House of Commons without benefit of the minimum legal quorum.
1725 - Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, French soldier - Born at Vendôme, France, joined army at 16 as ad to Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, served with some distinction, rose to rank of lieutenant general, Louis XV sent him and 6,000 regulars to support US revolution, arriving Newport, Rhode Island in July of 1780. Served as both diplomat of France and a general under George Washington, helped plan battle of Yorktown which ended the war. Returned to France, became a marshal of France in 1791, commanded the Army of the North in French revolution, resigned after a dispute, was imprisoned during the Reign of Terror and narrowly avoided the guillotine. Napoleon restored his rank and he was decorated with the Cross of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1804. Rochambeau dictated his extensive memoirs (two volumes published in France 1809, American experiences translated and published 1838) and died at Thoré on 10 May 1807.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
- John F. Kennedy
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is
the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
- William Pitt
Many politicians ... are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident
proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use
their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool ... who resolved not to
go into the water till he had learned to swim.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay
Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
- William Pitt
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