vivapinas

February 2 – Candlemas Day: the meaning of the very last day of Christmas

Candlemas is a Christian holy day commemorating the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. It falls on 2 February, and it is the very last day of Christmastide (Christmas and Epiphany Season). Although it is customary for Christians to remove Christmas ornaments on the Twelfth Night (Epiphany), many other Christian countries that wait until February 2nd to do…

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Sunday’s date is a rare palindrome that hasn’t happened in over 900 years

A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward as forward, such as madam, racecar, or the number 10801. Sentence-length palindromes may be written when allowances are made for adjustments to capital letters, punctuation, and word dividers, such as “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!”, “Was it a car or a cat I saw?” or…

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A heartbreaking open letter from a Wuhan resident: “Not all Chinese are bad people”

The open letter of a young woman posted via Facebook highlighting the challenges the Wuhan people are facing now has gone viral, with thousands of people sharing her observations and heartbreak. Ms Helen Chen referred to people saying that the city’s residents deserved what had befallen them and called that “heartbreaking”. In her open letter,…

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