Education

  June has long been recognized as LGBTQ Pride Month, in honor of the   Stonewall riots , which took place in New York City in June 1969. During Pride Month, it is not uncommon to see the rainbow flag being proudly displayed as a symbol for the   LGBTQ rights movement . But how did that flag become a symbol of LGBTQ pride? It goes back to 1978, when the artist Gilbert Baker, an openly gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag. Baker later revealed that he was urged by  Harvey Milk , one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S., to create a symbol of pride for the gay community. Baker decided to make that symbol a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride. As he later said in an interview, “Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, as I say, to get out of the lie. A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying, ‘This is who I am!’” Baker s...

  New York City: the Big Apple New York, New York © TimeHacker/Fotolia New York City  is known by many nicknames—such as “the City that Never Sleeps” or “Gotham”—but the most popular one is probably “the Big Apple.” How did this nickname come about? Although uses of the phrase are documented in the early 1900s, the term first became popular in the 1920s when John J. Fitz Gerald, a sports writer, started a column about horse racing called “Around the Big Apple.” However, it wasn’t until a tourism campaign in the 1970s that the nickname came to be synonymous with New York City. Geneva: the Peace Capital Palace of Nations The Palace of Nations has served as the headquarters of the League of Nations and the United Nations Office at Geneva, Switzerland. AdstockRF Geneva , the second most populous city in Switzerland, is a city known for its diplomacy. Geneva is not only home to the European headquarters for the  United Nations  but also where international organizations, ...

  The first full year of auto racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was 1910. Races were held over the weekends of   Memorial Day   (then called Decoration Day), the   Fourth of July , and   Labor Day . However, attendance fell off over the summer. The speedway’s management felt there had been too much racing, and the decision was made to do just one long race in 1911. The Fourth of July was considered, but Decoration Day was chosen for several reasons. The Decoration Day races had been the most successful of the 1910 season. Local farmers typically took a break in late May after “haying” (baling hay). Decoration Day was then a fixed holiday occurring on May 30. Because many people worked on Saturday, the first Indianapolis 500 was held on Decoration Day itself, which  occurred on a Tuesday in 1911 . Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Five hundred miles was chosen as the distance for the race because, based on the speed of racing automobiles in 1911, such a ...

  Colorful uplifting parades with floats and celebrities, joyous festivals, workshops, picnics, and parties are among the principal components of   LGBTQ Pride Month , also called   Gay Pride , which is celebrated in June in the   United States   and elsewhere around the world. Pride Month commemorates years of struggle for civil rights and the ongoing pursuit of equal justice under the law for the   lesbian ,   gay ,   bisexual ,   transgender , and   queer   community, as well as the accomplishments of LGBTQ individuals. But why is Pride Month celebrated in June? The organized pursuit of LGBTQ rights in the United States reaches back to at least 1924 and the founding of the Society of Human Rights in Chicago by Henry Gerber. But  the event that catalyzed the LGBTQ rights movement came in June 1969 in  New York City ’s  Greenwich Village , at the Stonewall Inn . In the early morning hours of June 28, police raided th...