h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Come on Bob. What year were you you born in

What Bob said. The Normans had Norse, not Frankish, origins.

<BB<

It was the Danes / Dutch who first invaded Norfolk 800,000 years ago. The place hasn't been the same since. They just walked in. No border controls. Nigel would have thrown a wobbler.

I would have no problem at all in celebrating the end of the war. We may have got the better of it, but a win? With 70,000,000 dead on all sides, I'm not so sure.

PP.

The Dutch celebrate the day that they were liberated.
It still so happens that VE Day, the day that the whole of Europe was liberated, slips by unrecalled by the majority of people born after that date. The anniversary of VJ Day has yet to come.

Not *exactly* the whole of Europe ... some countries got Stalinism substituted for Nazism. Hardly liberation.

There were major commemorations a few years ago - beacons lit and stuff - actually that might have been 1995 for the 50th anniversary. But I don't think it's something to keep on commemorating.

Mol

>I blame the beaker people<

Noooooo, the muppets are loooovely

Hey Orcus, It's not the muppets, but you might be interested in this new BBC production, currently being filmed in the land of Pastey:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2014/furchester-cbeebies-release

I'da called the Furchester Hotel by a more interesting name
like the Furchester Arms.

~jwf~

Russia takes the opportunity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27334038
The ration book could been the key to longevity, like many others alive today I lived through WW2 and had close relatives who served in WW1.

Well we know who does celebrate it
http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2014/may/09/moscows-victory-day-parade-in-pictures?CMP=twt_fd

and of course the views of the "Great Leader"
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/09/vladimir-putin-war-anniversary-fascism?CMP=twt_gu

Very true. If you'd told a Norman he was French, you'd have got the same reaction as if you told a Glaswegian he was English.

Oops! That was in response to post 20. I didn't notice the second page.

Listen, I hate to argue the point here, but I really don't think VE Day *is* the MOST important day in living memory. To be perfectly honest with you, I think that honor has to go to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Then the moon landing gets a strong third place. After that it gets contentious.

I'm inclined to agree. It's not something I thought I'd live to see, and to have it happen in my (comparative) youth was really something.

That was a reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The moon landing happened when I was a nipper.

Year after year, I have to explain to my colleagues (who are German and Italian) why the 8th May is a public holiday in France. And the 11th November come to that.

Can't think why.

The fall of the Berlin wall - or re-unification of Germany - is certainly celebrated here (on 3rd October, not on 9th November, which is when it actually happened, for reasons I can explain, if you like, but it would make this sentence too long). Mind you, most people under 30 have no idea why we celebrate the 3rd October. They can't imagine what it was like as a divided country.

TC,

in my home state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (for all not in the know, that is a sandy area of communist Germany), May 8th is, in fact, commemorated as per state constitution.

What with me coming from both that state and therefore from Eastern Germany, where May 8th was a national holiday, I was very surprised that none of my (West German) colleagues at work had an idea what I was talking about when I mentioned it. The one other colleage with Eastern roots knew exactly, on the other hand...

I was born three years *after* VE Day, in a country that was still fighting the Japanese in the Pacific after Europe was liberated. Come to think about it [after seeing "Railway Man"], there were British prisoners of war under Japanese control for months after VE Day.

I'm not saying we shouldn't celebrate the ends of wars, but as time goes by there are more and more wars to commemorate the ends of. Or the beginnings of, in the case of the Fourth of July in the U.S. A cluttered calendar is the only likely event given enough time. Armistice Day/veterans Day to celebrate the end of World War II. Memorial Day, to remember the men and women who died in the U.S. Civil War. Pearl Harbor Day [not an official holiday, but remembered by those who had relatives involved n the second World War]. The French have Bastille Day. The Russians have May 1st.

if so much time had not elapsed, there might be countries that celebrate Oct. 25 as Agincourt Day and Oct. 14 as Battle of Hastings Day [which might have to be shifted ten days in order to line up with the Gregorian calendar].

The calendar could quite easily fill up with holidays, and individual holidays would lose whatever impact they have left..

"The fall of the Berlin wall - or re-unification of Germany - is certainly celebrated here (on 3rd October, not on 9th November, which is when it actually happened, for reasons I can explain, if you like, but it would make this sentence too long)."

Why?