Chinese New Year 4709, or  in the Western calendar, is the Year of the Metal Rabbit. The Rabbit represents the fourth year in the 12 year cycle of the Chinese zodiac. Like the houses of the zodiac in Western astrology, the animals of Chinese astrology are thought by many to dictate personality traits or, in the wider scope of things, even impact world events in any year they rule. Rabbits, and those born under compatible signs, will likely benefit from luck or good fortune during a Rabbit year — i.e., in 1915, 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, or 2011.

                                                                                                

            

           

          

                            

                

 

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Labour Day in Canada is celebrated on the first Monday of September. It originally gave workers the chance to campaign for better working conditions or pay. The day is now part of a long weekend for many Canadians and Americans Traditionally, Labour Day was an occasion to campaign for and celebrate workers' rights during parades and picnics organized by trade unions. These still play a role in Labour Day for some Canadians, but many people see the first Monday in September as an opportunity to take a late summer trip, perhaps to their country cottage, or enjoy the company of family or friends at picnics, fairs, festivals and fireworks displays. For teenagers and other students, the Labour Day weekend is the last chance to celebrate with a party or to go on a trip before school re-opens for the new academic year. Canadian football fans may spend a large proportion of the weekend watching the Labour Day Classic matches live or on television. The Labour Day Classic consists of three games between high ranking teams in the Canadian Football League. One match is played on the Sunday before Labour Day and two on Labour Day.

Labour Day was originally celebrated in the spring but it was moved to the fall after 1894. A similar holiday, Labor Day is held on the same day in the United States of America. Canadian trade unions are proud that this holiday was inspired by their efforts to improve workers' rights. Many countries have a holiday to celebrate workers' rights on or around May 1.

The last long weekend of the summer--Labour Day in Canada, and Labor Day in the United States is celebrated with a variety of events, festivals, parades and end of summer beach picnics. This year Labour Day lands on Monday September 5th sepember 2011. Shoppers can take advantage of back to school bargains in many designated tourist destinations allowed to open over the Labour Day Public Holiday....check local jurisdictions before heading out. Most banks, liquor stores, and government offices are close.

                                                                       

                 

                       

To mark the 75th anniversary of the BMW 328's debut, the Bavarian automaker introduced the BMW 328 Hommage concept car at the Villa d'Este Concours d'Elegance. BMW has used the concours at Lake Como to introduce similar retro-themed show cars before, and this year's effort is clearly aimed at the recapturing the racing heritage of the 328 2-seater that bowed in the 1930s.

British singer's "Back to Black" album will re-enter the Billboard album chart at No. 9, with 37,000 albums sold in the United States in the past week. Those figures come from Nielsen SoundScan data released late Tuesday. Her debut album "Frank" sold 7,000 copies. All but a fraction of those sales were digital downloads."Back to Black" hadn't sold that many copies in three years.There were also 111,000 digital tracks of Winehouse's music sold over the past week - a 2,000 percent increase. The most downloaded Winehouse song? Her most famous one, "Rehab."Winehouse died of unknown causes at her London home on Saturday. She was 27, and had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for years.

     

Moscow on Thursday declared it is now "the era of the Soyuz" after the US shuttle's last flight left the Russian system as the sole means for delivering astronauts to the International Space Station. Far less glamorous than the horizontal-landing winged shuttle, the principle of Russia's Soyuz rocket and capsule system for sending humans into space has changed little since Yuri Gagarin became the first man in orbit in 1961. But after the successful landing of the US Space Shuttle Atlantis Thursday drew the curtain on the 30-year US space shuttle programme, it is now the only vehicle which can propel astronauts towards the ISS. "From today, the era of the Soyuz has started in manned space flight, the era of reliability," the Russian space agency Roskosmos said in a statement. Roskosmos expressed its admiration for the shuttle programme, which it said had delivered payloads to space indispensable for construction of the ISS. "Mankind acknowledges the role of American space ships in exploring the cosmos," it added.But Roskosmos also used the occasion to tout the virtues of the Soyuz (Union) spacecraft, which unlike the shuttle lands on Earth vertically with the aid of parachutes after leaving orbit. It said that there was a simple answer to why the Soyuz was still flying after the shuttles retired -- "reliability and not to mention cost efficiency."It lashed out at what it said were foreign media descriptions of the Soyuz as old spaceships, saying the design was constantly being modernized.Russia has this year started using the modernized TMA-M version of the Soyuz, which is lighter and uses a digital rather than analogue computer.Like NASA, Russia is also looking at a new generation spacecraft but Roskosmos said much time was still needed to prove the craft had the same level of safety as the Soyuz.

A fatal crash on China's high-speed train network could scuttle Beijing's ambitions to sell the technology overseas and could also hit its existing rail exports, analysts said Wednesday. Shares in Chinese rail and train builders have fallen sharply since the accident which killed at least 39 people and injured 200, and raised questions over Beijing's rush to develop the world's biggest high-speed rail network. Initial reports blamed Saturday's collision on a lightning strike that knocked out power to the first train, which was then rammed from behind by a second express, crushing some carriages and shunting others off a viaduct. The incident has badly shaken public faith in the rail system, especially the high-speed network which has been plagued by corruption allegations and repeated delays caused by power shortages.

                

                           

                              

                                                                   

                                

                      

      

   

                      

                                   

                   

                                 The person who was to become St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Wales about AD 385. His given name was Maewyn, and he almost didn't get the job of bishop of Ireland because he lacked the required scholarship. Far from being a saint, until he was 16, he considered himself a pagan. At that age, he was sold into slavery by a group of Irish marauders that raided his village. During his captivity, he became closer to God. He escaped from slavery after six years and went to Gaul where he studied in the monastery under St. Germain, bishop of Auxerre for a period of twelve years. During his training he became aware that his calling was to convert the pagans to Christianity. His wishes were to return to Ireland, to convert the native pagans to Christianity. But his superiors instead appointed St. Palladius. But two years later, Palladius transferred to Scotland. Patrick, having adopted that Christian name earlier, was then appointed as second bishop to Ireland. Patrick was quite successful at winning converts. And this fact upset the Celtic Druids. Patrick was arrested several times, but escaped each time. He traveled throughout Ireland, establishing monasteries across the country. He also set up schools and churches which would aid him in his conversion of the Irish country to Christianity. His mission in Ireland lasted for thirty years. After that time, Patrick retired to County Down. He died on March 17 in AD 461. That day has been commemorated as St. Patrick's Day ever since. Much Irish folklore surrounds St. Patrick's Day. Not much of it is actually substantiated. Some of this lore includes the belief that Patrick raised people from the dead. He also is said to have given a sermon from a hilltop that drove all the snakes from Ireland. Of course, no snakes were ever native to Ireland, and some people think this is a metaphor for the conversion of the pagans. Though originally a Catholic holy day, St. Patrick's Day has evolved into more of a secular holiday. One traditional icon of the day is the shamrock. And this stems from a more bona fide Irish tale that tells how Patrick used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity. He used it in his sermons to represent how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit could all exist as separate elements of the same entity. His followers adopted the custom of wearing a shamrock on his feast day. The St. Patrick's Day custom came to America in 1737. That was the first year St. Patrick's Day was publicly celebrated in this country, in Boston. Today, people celebrate the day with parades, wearing of the green, and drinking beer. One reason St. Patrick's Day might have become so popular is that it takes place just a few days before the first day of spring. One might say it has become the first green of spring.
                                                            

                                                                                         

                                              

                                      

                              On 31st oct. 2010

                

                 

                       Did you know ?? Halloween (also spelled Hallowe'en) is an annual holiday celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints. It is largely a secular celebration but some have expressed strong feelings about perceived religious overtones. Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America during Ireland's Great Famine of the 1840s.The day is often associated with orange and black, and is strongly associated with symbols like the jack-o'-lantern. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, ghost tours, bonfires, visiting haunted attractions, pranks, reading scary stories, and watching horror films.

                                                

                      

                                                     21st  April 2011  

                    

                                              

Maundy Thursday, also known as Holy Thursday, Covenant Thursday, Great & Holy Thursday, and Thursday of Mysteries, is the Christian feast or holy day falling on the Thursday before Easter that commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles as described in the Canonical gospels. It is the fifth day of Holy Week, and is preceded by Holy Wednesday and followed by Good Friday.  The date is always between 19 March and 22 April inclusive. These dates in the Julian calendar, on which Eastern churches in general base their calculations of the date of Easter, correspond throughout the 21st century to 1 April and 5 May in the more commonly used Gregorian calendar. The Mass of the Lord's Supper initiates the Easter Triduum, the three days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday that commemorate the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus.  It is normally celebrated in the evening, when according to Jewish tradition Friday begins.  Maundy Thursday gets its name from the Latin word mandatum, which means "commandment." Near the end of the Last Supper, after Judas had departed, Christ said to His disciples, "A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

                                                 

                                                                  

Good Friday (from the now obsolete senses pious, holy of the word "good"),also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, is a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triuumon the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and may coincide with the Jewish observance of Passover.

Based on the details of the Canonical gospels, the Crucifixion of Jesus was most probably on a Friday (John 19:42). The estimated year of Good Friday is AD 33, by two different groups, and originally as AD 34 by Isaac Newton via the differences between the Biblical and Julian calendars and the crescent of the moon. A third method, using a completely different astronomical approach based on a lunar Crucifixion darkness and eclipse model (consistent with Apostle Peters reference to a "moon of blood" in Acts 2:20) points to Friday, 3 April AD 33

                            

    

                                                                            NATIONAL TRAIN DAY : MAY 7, 2011

            

                        

                 

                                                  

                                                                                                                                         

         

                                              

 Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feastwhich always falls on the Sunday before Easter Sunday.  The feast commemorates an event mentioned by all four Canonical Gospels Mar 11:1-11 Matthew 21:1-11  Luke 19:28-44, and John 12:12-19: the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the days before his Passion. It is also called Passion Sunday or Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion.In many Christian churches, Palm Sunday is marked by the distribution of palm leaves (often tied into crosses) to the assembled worshipers. The difficulty of procuring palms for that day's ceremonies in unfavorable climates for palms led to the substitution of boughs of box, yew, willow, or other native trees. The Sunday was often designated by the names of these trees, as Yew Sunday or by the general term Branch Sunday.According to the Gospels, before entering Jerusalem, Jesus was staying at Bethany and Bethphage, and the Gospel of John adds that he had dinner with Lazarus  and his sisters Mary and Martha. While there, Jesus sent two disciples to the village over against them, in order to retrieve a donkey that had been tied up but never been ridden, and to say, if questioned, that the donkey was needed by the Lord but would be returned. Jesus then rode the donkey into Jerusalem, with the Synoptics adding that the disciples had first put their cloaks on it, so as to make it more comfortable. The Gospels go on to recount how Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and how the people there lay down their cloaks in front of him, and also lay down small branches of trees. The people sang part of Psalm 118 - ...Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, David . ... (Psalms 118:25-26. Where this entry is supposed to have taken place is unspecified; some scholars argue that the Golden Gate is the likely location, since that was where it was believed the Jewish messiah would enter Jerusalem; other scholars think that an entrance to the south, which had stairs leading directly to the Temple, would be more likely (Kilgallen 210