NELSON MANDELA DEATH

Nelson Mandela, who guided South Africa from the shackles of apartheid to multi-racial democracy and became an international icon of peace and reconciliation, died Thursday at age 95.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-nelson-mandela-dead-20131205,0,6266118.story

Nelson Mandela death: World reaction

People around the world have been reacting to the news that South Africa's first black president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela has died, aged 95.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25250082

HALLOWEEN

http://claracamp-englishclub.blogspot.com.es/search?q=HALLOWEEN

ABU ABDALLAH MUHAMMAD XII ( BOABDIL)

A forensic for Boabdil

• A group of researchers believe they have found in Fez the tomb of the last king of Granada
• The expert Basque Etxeberria and filmmaker Francisco Javier Balaguer lead inspections.

http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2013/04/04/actualidad/1365096820_289142.html

Abu `Abdallah Muhammad XII (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد الثاني عشر‎ Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad al-thānī ‘ashar) (c. 1460 – c. 1533), known as Boabdil (a Spanish rendering of the name Abu Abdullah), was the twenty-second and last Nasrid ruler of Granada in Iberia. He was also called el chico, the little, or el zogoybi, the unfortunate. Son of Abu l-Hasan Ali, sultan of the Emirate of Granada, he was proclaimed sultan in 1482 in place of his father, who was driven from the land.

Muhammad XII soon after sought to gain prestige by invading Castile. He was taken prisoner at Lucena in 1484. Between 1484 and 1487, he was held prisoner. Power returned to his father and then in 1485 to his uncle Muhammed XIII, also known as Abdullah el Zagal.

He only obtained his freedom and support to recover his throne in 1487 by consenting to hold Granada as a tributary kingdom under Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of Castile and Aragon, and not to intervene in the Siege of Málaga (1487), in which Málaga was taken.

1487 saw the fall of Baeza, Málaga and Almería. 1489 saw the fall of Almuñécar and Salobreña. By the beginning of 1491, Granada was the only Muslim-governed city in Spain.

In 1491, Muhammad XII was summoned by Ferdinand and Isabella to surrender the city of Granada, and on his refusal it was besieged by the Castilians. Eventually, on 2 January 1492, Granada was surrendered. In most sumptuous attire the royal procession moved from Santa Fe to a place a little more than a mile from Granada, where Ferdinand took up his position by the banks of the Genil.

Boabdil surrenders the keys of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs. 

La Rendición de Granada de Francisco Pradilla (1882).

Legend has it that as the royal party moved south toward exile, they reached a rocky prominence which gave a last view of the city. Muhammad XII reined in his horse and, surveying for the last time the Alhambra and the green valley that spread below, burst into tears. When his mother approached him she said :"Thou dost weep like a woman for what thou couldst not defend as a man."ابك اليوم بكاء النساء على ملك لم تحفظه حفظ الرجال Ibki l-yawma bukā'a n-nisā'i ʿalā mulkin lam taḥfuẓhu ḥifẓa r-rijāl

The farewells of King Boabdil at Granada

Alfred Dehodencq

The spot from which Muhammad XII looked for the last time on Granada is known as "the Moor's last sigh" (el último suspiro del Moro).

Muhammad XII was given an estate in Laujar de Andarax, Las Alpujarras, a mountainous area between the Sierra Nevada and the Mediterranean Sea, but he soon crossed the Mediterranean to Fes, Morocco.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_XII_of_Granada

MARGARET THATCHER DIES

Margaret Thatcher's death 
evokes polarized reaction

British politician had strong admirers, equally vocal opponents.

Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher has died "peacefully" at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke while staying at the Ritz hotel in central London.

David Cameron called her a "great Briton" and the Queen spoke of her sadness at the death. Lady Thatcher was Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990. She was the first woman to hold the role.

She will not have a state funeral but will be accorded the same status as Princess Diana and the Queen Mother.The ceremony, with full military honours, will take place at London's St Paul's Cathedral.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22067155
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher

28-F. THE DAY OF ANDALUSIA

http://claracamp-englishclub.blogspot.com.es/search?q=ANDALUC%C3%8DA

ATTEMPTED COUP D'ETAT 1981

23-F was an attempted coup d'état in Spain that began on 23 February 1981 and ended on the following day. It is also known as El Tejerazo from the name of its most visible figure, Antonio Tejero, who led the failed coup's most notable event: the bursting into the Spanish Congress of Deputies by a group of 200 armed officers of the Guardia Civil during the process of electing Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo to be the country's new Prime Minister. King Juan Carlos I gave a nationally televised address denouncing the coup and urging the maintenance of law and the continuance of the democratically elected government. The coup soon collapsed. After holding the Parliament and cabinet hostage for 18 hours the hostage-takers surrendered the next morning without having harmed anyone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23-F
http://www.antropologiavisual.net/2006/spanish-contemporany-history-on-tv-the-tejero%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Ccoup-d%E2%80%99etat%E2%80%9D-feb-1981/

VALENTINE`S DAY

Valentine's Day is celebrated on 14th February, the feast day of St. Valentine. It is a traditional celebration in which lovers, partners and married couples express their love and affection for each other. In some countries it is known asThe Day of Lovers or The Day of Love and Friendship.

Saint Valentine

http://www.fun-learning-spanish.com/diadesanvalentin.html

DAY OF INNOCENT SAINTS

The Day of the Innocent Saints falls on the 28th of December. It is a festivity of religious origin. It is celebrated today as a fun and lighthearted day in which jokes are played on family and friends .It is the Spanish equivalent of April fools' day! 

The Day of the Innocents is a commemoration of Christianity: the killing of all children under two years born in Bethlehem (Judea), ordered by King Herod to get rid of the newborn Jesus of Nazareth .

Massacre of the Innocents is the biblical narrative of infanticide and gendercide by Herod the Great, the Roman appointed King of the Jews. The historicity of the incident is "an open question that probably can never be definitively decided", but according to the Gospel of Matthew. Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. 

Massacre of the Innocents - by Pieter Pauwel RUBENS

The number of infants killed is not stated, however the Holy Innocents have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents

BOXING DAY

Boxing Day is the 26th December and is a national holiday in the UK and Ireland.

The exact etymology of the term "boxing" is unclear. There are several competing theories, none of which is definitive.The European tradition, which has long included giving money and other gifts to those who were needy and in service positions, has been dated to the Middle Ages, but the exact origin is unknown. It may come from a custom in the late Roman/early Christian era, wherein metal boxes placed outside churches were used to collect special offerings tied to the Feast of Saint Stephen, which in the Western Church falls on the same day as Boxing Day.

In Britain, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year.This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663. This custom is linked to an older English tradition: Since they would have to wait on their masters on Christmas Day, the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts and bonuses, and sometimes leftover food

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_Day
http://britishfood.about.com/od/christmas/p/boxingday.htm
http://gouk.about.com/od/whatsonindecember/qt/boxing_day.htm

THE BRITISH MONARCHY AND CHRISTMAS

The Christmas Broadcast

Each year at 15:00GMT on Christmas Day, The Queen's Broadcast to the Commonwealth (popularly known as 'The Queen's Speech') is broadcast.

http://www.royal.gov.uk/LatestNewsandDiary/Visitsandevents/TheRoyalFamilyandChristmas.aspx

HUMPTY DUMPTY

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English language nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. Though not explicitly described, he is typically portrayed as an egg. The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from the early nineteenth century and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs. Its origins are obscure and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings.

Humpty Dumpty was a colloquial term used in fifteenth century England describing someone who was obese. This has given rise to various, but inaccurate, theories surrounding the identity of Humpty Dumpty. The image of Humpty Dumpty was made famous by the illustrations included in the 'Alice through the looking glass' novel by Lewis Carroll. However, Humpty Dumpty was not a person pilloried in the famous rhyme!

The character of Humpty Dumpty was popularised in the United States by actor George L. Fox (1825–77).
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty
http://www.rhymes.org.uk/humpty_dumpty.htm

Lyrics

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

THE 14 EIGHT THOUSANDERS

All 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks are located in the Himalaya or the Karakoram ranges in Asia. According to Everestnews.com, only 14 climbers have reached the summits of all 14: Reinhold Messner (Italy) was first, followed by Jerzy Kukuczka (Poland), Ehardt Loretan (Switzerland), Carlos Carsolio (Mexico), Krzysztof Wielicki (Poland), Juan Oiarzabal (Spain), Sergio Martini (Italy), Park Young Seok (Korea), Hang-Gil Um (Korea), Alberto Inurrategui (Spain), Han Wang Yong (Korea), Ed Viesturs (U.S.), Alan Hinkes (British), and Silvio Mondinelli (Italy). I’ve always admired how some of the tallest mountains on Earth stitch even the most beautiful clouds, but I never had the curiosity to research and see which are the biggest mountain peaks, how people call them or exactly how tall they are. For those that don’t know, here is a list with world’s top 14 highest and a few details on each one. 

They’re all eight-thousanders.

Watch the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD6i8ExkIDc

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ENGLISH

• The most common letter in English is "e".
• The most common vowel in English is "e", followed by "a".
• The most common consonant in English is "r", followed by "t".
• Every syllable in English must have a vowel (sound). Not all syllables have consonants. 
• Only two English words in current use end in "-gry". They are "angry" and "hungry".
• The word "bookkeeper" (along with its associate "bookkeeping") is the only unhyphenated English word with three consecutive double letters. Other such words, like "sweet-toothed", require a hyphen to be readily readable.
• The word "triskaidekaphobia" means "fear of Friday the 13th". It also means "superstition about the number thirteen" in general.
• More English words begin with the letter "s" than with any other letter.
• A preposition is always followed by a noun (ie noun, proper noun, pronoun, noun group, gerund).
• The word "uncopyrightable" is the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once.
• A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet is called a "pangram".The following sentence contains all 26 letters of the alphabet: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." This sentence is often used to test typewriters or keyboards.
• The only word in English that ends with the letters "-mt" is "dreamt" (which is a variant spelling of "dreamed") - as well of course as "undreamt" :)
• A word formed by joining together parts of existing words is called a "blend" (or, less commonly, a "portmanteau word"). Many new words enter the English language in this way. Examples are "brunch" (breakfast + lunch); "motel" (motorcar + hotel); and "guesstimate" (guess + estimate). Note that blends are not the same as compounds or compound nouns, which form when two whole words join together, for example: website, blackboard, darkroom.
• The word "alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bēta.
• The dot over the letter "i" and the letter "j" is called a "superscript dot".
• In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign.
• In English, the @ symbol is usually called "the at sign" or "the at symbol".
• Some words exist only in plural form, for example: glasses (spectacles), binoculars, scissors, shears, tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pyjamas (but note that clothing words often become singular when we use them as modifiers, as in "trouser pocket").
• The shortest complete sentence in English is the following. "I am."
• The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat" meaning "the king is helpless". 
• We pronounce the combination "ough" in 9 different ways, as in the following sentence which contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

         http://www.englishclub.com/audio/ough.mp3

• The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".
• The only planet not named after a god is our own, Earth. The others are, in order from the Sun, Mercury, Venus, [Earth,] Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
• There are only 4 English words in common use ending in "-dous": hazardous, horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.
• We can find 10 words in the 7-letter word "therein" without rearranging any of its letters: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

                                                 ----------------------------------------------

• There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. 
• English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. 
• Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
• Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. 
• And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? 
• If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? 
• One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? 
• If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? 
• In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? 
• Have noses that run and feet that smell? 
• English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. 

HALLOWEEN

Halloween or Hallowe'en (a contraction of its original title "All Hallows' Evening") also known as All Hallows' Eve is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows. Most scholars believe that All Hallows' Eve was originally influenced by western European harvest festivals and festivals of the dead with pagan roots, particularly the Celtic Samhain.Others maintain that it originated independently of Samhain.

Typical festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (also known as "guising"), attending costume parties, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films.

How did Halloween come about in Spain?

Halloween is more popular in the north of Spain due to ancestral links with celtic ancestors who arrived in this region around 3,000 years ago. Despite mixing with the indigenous Iberian culture, a great interest came about in holidays and celebrations imported from the Celtic world.

How do they celebrate Halloween in Spain?

Although Halloween is still a relatively new phenomenon in Spain, the Spanish people go all out for celebrating it to the maximum as with any kind of fancy dress festival. You will see many more people dressed up in outrageous costumes and parading the streets in larger groups than you would ever see in England. It is more popular in the north of Spain and celebrated much more in larger cities where you are bound to be invited to a costume party or see posters advertising them everywhere. Most shops and cafes have baskets of treats outside for trick or treaters.

Along Galicia’s northern coast it is traditional to carve pumpkins, light bonfires and consume “quemadas” fire water infused with herbs – claimed to be an ancient drink originating from the Celtic people a symbolic act to burn off bad luck and the negative energy associated with Halloween.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

Activities for halloween

http://www.juegos.com/juegos/halloween/halloween.html

2012 PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARDS

The Prince of Asturias Awards (Spanish: Premios Príncipe de Asturias) are a series of annual prizes awarded in Spain by the Prince of Asturias Foundation to individuals, entities or organizations from around the world who make notable achievements in the sciences, humanities, and public affairs. The prize was established on 24 September 1980 by the twelve year-old Felipe, Prince of Asturias, heir to the throne of Spain, "to consolidate links between the Principality and the Prince of Asturias, and to contribute to encouraging and promoting scientific, cultural and humanistic values that form part of mankind's universal heritage." The awards are presented in Oviedo, the capital of the Principality of Asturias, at a ceremony presided by Felipe, Prince of Asturias.

A sculpture, expressly created for the prize by Spanish sculptor Joan Miró, is presented yearly to the recipients of the prize.

http://www.fpa.es/en/2012-special

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Asturias_Awards

HAPPY 40th BIRTHDAY, PRINCESS LETIZIA

http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/21706/happy-40th-birthday-princess-letizia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letizia,_Princess_of_Asturias

'THE RED' (LA ROJA): SPAIN NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM

'Unique, magical and unrepeatable': Spain's treble success will NEVER be repeated, says Iniesta

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_national_football_team 

THE OLYMPIC GAMES

The modern Olympic Summer Games are among the world's largest and most-watched sporting events. Every four years athletes from across the globe gather for weeks of intense competition for the glory of a prestigious Olympic gold medal, resulting in exciting triumphs and gut-wrenching failures that live on for years in the hearts and minds of both die-hard sports fans and casual observers. While the Games came under increasingly heavy criticism in the late 20th century for their turn away from pure amateurism and toward the growth of corporate sponsorships, the underlying drama of athletic competition at the highest level continues to captivate billions of people every Olympiad.

http://www.britannica.com/olympics/reflections/browse?browseId=303285

GARCÍA LORCA: "THE FITH AT FIVE"

Lorca is reborn  in Fuente Vaqueros each June 5.

A few metres from the room where his mother gave him birth, Federico is "reborn" on Tuesday in Fuente Vaqueros, where 114 years later unpublished documents retrieved a sample of the magazine "Gallo" and pays tribute to former first voice of the "5 at 5" which paid tribute to Lorca in 1976.

http://www.canalsur.es/portal_rtva/web/noticia/id/209893/lorca_renace_en_fuente_vaqueros_cada_5_de_junio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Garc%C3%ADa_Lorca

QUEEN'S DIAMOND JUBILEE

60 years of history in the UK, the world and the Royal Family

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/the_queens_diamond_jubilee/9308110/Diamond-Jubilee-Queen-voted-favourite-monarch-of-all-time.html

Interactive Queen's timeline.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/the_queens_diamond_jubilee/9305109/Queens-Diamond-Jubilee-timeline-60-years-of-history-in-the-UK-the-world-and-the-Royal-Family.html