June 21 - World Handshake Day

"One day an old man told me the following words: 
'My son, place your hand here in the sea and you are united with the whole world.'
These wise words led to an idea, a vision especially after the tsunami disaster. 
Now, as I am 55 years old, I would like to forward this old man's vision, 
a vision that helps taking away the fear of those that have been
so terribly affected by the latest disaster. 
Place your hand in the sea and shake hands with the whole world, feel united."- Ivan Župa

Today we celebrate the 5th annual World Handshake Day. The aim of the World Handshake Day Project is the symbolic transfer of love, gratitude, and positive energy to earth and all its living beings.

Today is also National Aboriginal Day, Atheists Solidarity Day, Go Skateboarding Day, National Daylight Appreciation Day, National Flip Flop Day, Summer Solstice, World Humanist Day, and Take Your Dog to Work Day!

Here are some interesting things that happened on this day in history:

- Galileo Galilei was forced by Inquisition to "abjure, curse, & detest" his Copernican heliocentric views in 1633.

- The first edition of the Québec Gazette/La Gazette de Québec was published in 1764, by William Brown and Thomas Gilmore.
- The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants, were hanged at the Schuylkill County and Carbon County, Pennsylvania prisons in 1877.
- The 1st Ferris wheel premiered in Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893.
- Cree, Beaver, Chipewyan and Slavey Indians ceded territory south and west of Great Slave Lake in northern Alberta to the federal government in Treaty No. 8 in 1899.
- Broadcasting pioneer Edward Rogers, whose alternating-current radio tube revolutionized the home radio-receiver industry throughout the world, was born in Toronto in 1900.

- Sherlock Holmes began his "Adventure of Mazarine Stone" in 1903.
- Tiny Broadwick became the 1st woman to parachute from an airplane in 1913.
- A Mounted Police troop charged a demonstration of strikers in Winnipeg in 1919. Two strikers were killed and 20 were wounded.

- In 1940, the National Resources Mobilization Act responded to the public clamour for a more effective Canadian war effort that arose in the wake of the stunning German victories in Belgium and France. Also in 1940, Parliament passed the National Resources Mobilization Act, providing for the conscription of able-bodied men for home defence. It was amended in 1942 by Bill 80, giving the government power to conscript for overseas service.
- Aboriginal Jeannette Lavell, who married a non-Indian and lost her legal status as an Indian, which led to censure of Canada by international human-rights groups, was born in Wikwemikong, Ontario in 1942.
- 33 1/3 RPM LP records were introduced in 1948, with 78's planned to be phased out by Dr Peter Goldmark of Columbia Records.
- Ellen Louks Fairclough became the first woman to be appointed to the federal Cabinet in 1957. Also in 1957, John Diefenbaker was sworn in as Prime Minister.

- Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" opened in 1975.
- Section 28 (outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality in the United Kingdom) was repealed in Scotland in 2000, with a 99 to 17 vote.
- SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded space-plane to achieve spaceflight in 2004.
- Pluto's newly discovered moons were officially named Nix & Hydra (when it was still a planet, of course ;)

Stay tuned for our next, "On This Day in History"!