The First of July

In 1643, the Westminster Assembly gathered a council of divines and Parliament to restructure the State Church after Henry VIII ushered Scottish Presbyteries and Congregationalists, leaving Anglicans with their Bishops.

Presbyters are clergy elders who prevail over the assertive congregations that want autonomy from the reign of clerics, particularly the Roman system where the word of the Bishop guides faith and order. Presbyterians and Puritans later dominated the New World landscape vs. the Episcopal Tories. Not surprising that the Methodists and Episcopalians say “Amen” in the same space in Saipan.

America in 1863 began the Battle of Gettysburg. Robert E. Lee marched through the Shenandoah Valley north to Gettysburg where he expected to wipe the Union soldiers before marching towards New York. He was rudely interrupted.

The bloody encounter was a turning point of the U.S. Civil War; Union soldiers kept their pride and survivors got Abe Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

The British North America Act of 1867 ushered Canada’s Constitution, creating Canada Day that got Canucks singing “O Canada” a century later.

In 1898, T. Roosevelt’s Rough Riders trumped Spain in the Battle of San Juan Hill in Santiago de Cuba birthing America’s imperial itch that took grunts fresh from Indian territories still in their woolens to the tepid waters of Agaña Harbor, Bay de Manila, and an early Mi Lai in the hills of Samar.

In 1921 the Chinese Communist Party was founded. In 1922, the U.S. Great Railroad Strike began on a union workers’ protest, disrupted rail traffic but resulted in hiring of strikebreakers. The unions were chastened.

The U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 restricted the immigration of Chinese labor while Canada’s Parliament echoed the sentiment 1923, totally suspended immigration of all Chinese. The U.S. repealed the Act in 1943 when China became an ally in WWII.

The ’60s saw Somalia’s independence, ending Elizabeth II’s Head of State role in Ghana as President Kwame Nkrumah began a Pan-African push. Rwanda and Burundi came along.

In the aftermath of the ’60s revolution of youth-women-universities-minorities-business-third-world countries, the first Gay Pride in London paraded and has done the same annually ever since. SCOTUS just rendered U.S. recognition of same-sex marriages (also, Obamacare) and the GOP is on the defensive again.

China ended British presence in Hong Kong 1997, but met massive protest in 2003 for its anti-sedition legislation and electoral reforms on the legislative agenda. Xianggang, Mandarin for the Cantonese Hong Kong, “fragrant flower,” emerged; Macau is known now as Aomen. In 2006, China opened its efficient state-of-the-art Qinghai-Tibet rail traffic. It’s constructing rails of rapid transit like the Beijing-Shenyang line that is normally five hours on the fast line, to two on a Maglev when completed.

All the above were on the first of July but laña, the day is just the mid-year mark in the Gregorian calendar to our ordinary beachcomber on Saipan. Attend a barbecue and fireworks on the Fourth of July. Biba! © 2015 Saipan Tribune