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The Story of Mother's Day
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While many countries of the world celebrate their own Mother's Day at different times
throughout the year - Costa Rica celebrates it
the 15th of August - there are some countries such as Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia,
Colombia and Belgium which also celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May.
The earliest Mother's Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honor of Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. During the 1600's, England celebrated a day called "Mothering Sunday". Celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent (the 40 day period leading up to Easter*), "Mothering Sunday" honored the mothers of England.
During this time many of the England's poor worked as servants for the wealthy. As most jobs were located far from their homes, the servants would live at the houses of their employers. On Mothering Sunday the servants would have the day off and were encouraged to return home and spend the day with their mothers. A special cake, called the mothering cake, was often brought along to provide a festive touch.
As Christianity spread throughout Europe the celebration changed to honor the "Mother Church" - the spiritual power that gave them life and protected them from harm. Over time the church festival blended with the Mothering Sunday celebration . People began honoring their mothers as well as the church.
In the United States Mother's Day was first suggested in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe (who wrote the words to the Battle hymn of the Republic) as a day dedicated to peace. Ms. Howe would hold organized Mother's Day meetings in Boston, Mass ever year.
In 1907 Ana Jarvis, from Philadelphia, began a campaign to establish a national Mother's Day. Ms. Jarvis persuaded her mother's church in Grafton, West Virginia to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary of her mother's death, the 2nd Sunday of May. By the next year Mother's Day was also celebrated in Philadelphia.
Ms. Jarvis and her supporters began to write to ministers, businessman, and politicians in their quest to establish a national Mother's Day. It was successful as by 1911 Mother's Day was celebrated in almost every state. President Woodrow Wilson, in 1914, made the official announcement proclaiming Mother's Day as a national holiday that was to be held each year on the 2nd Sunday of May.
Investment
operation in Costa Rica took in hundreds of
millions, then it all fell apart
To begin somewhere in the middle, there is this
question:
Why did Peter K. Blume, a lawyer at the Downtown
Pittsburgh law firm Thorp Reed & Armstrong,
write a threatening letter to the president of Costa
Rica in March?
Turns out it was a bit of hardball lawyering, one
of many strange developments in a tale of greed,
fraud and accusation playing out for the past year
in Costa Rica.
At the center of the story is a ton of money,
maybe $1 billion, that no one can find, and a
bespectacled investment guru named Luis Enrique
Villalobos, who has become an international
fugitive. >More
Uncertainty
and pessimism
Two guests
have become almost fixed at Costa Rican hotels in
recent weeks, uncertainty and pessimism.
The hotel sector admits that after a marked increase
in the arrival of foreign visitors the first two
months this year, occupation began to decline
steadily.
Although the Easter Week vacation brought a new peak
in occupation, mainly by locals, hotel managers fear
that the sequels of the war in Iraq will influence
the sector negatively, just as they did when the
conflict was in earnest.
Central
America: One destination
After years
of failures, the Central American nations finally
achieved the goal of promoting themselves as a joint
destination for tourists. TACA Airlines - that
comprises the major Central American carriers- joint
the efforts of the region's tourist authorities by
promoting the motto: "Central America, so
small... so great" on its fleet, tickets,
stands, magazines, and other materials.
The head of the Costa Rican Bureau of Tourism (ICT
in Spanish) admitted that the process to unify
interests has not been easy, but now that it is
underway it is expected to grow strong by the
day.
Lowering rates as part of the promotion pack and the
opening of a joint office in Madrid, Spain, are
among the first major joint steps taken by the
Central American nations to promote themselves as
one tourist destination.
Movies:
'Matrix Reloaded' Sets Records for Wagering
Zap2it.com - It's
simply another indication that "The Matrix
Reloaded" is going to be big, really big,
when a casino based in Costa Rica is seeing more
betting going on over the new Warner Bros. film than
any ever before it.
Even though the movie
doesn't open until May 15, "The Matrix
Reloaded" has shattered previous records
for movie props at BoDog.com.
"Our movie props
don't normally garner a lot of attention from our
bettors," says BoDog president Rob Gillespie.
"Normally we see $1,000 to $2,000 in wagers on
any movie prop we have, but what we're seeing with 'The
Matrix Reloaded' is truly unbelievable."
As of Friday morning
(April 9) BoDog had accepted nearly $24,000 in
wagers on three individual props for the box office
totals for the most highly anticipated blockbuster
of the summer season.
"This movie has
had an incredible amount of hype, and that’s a big
part of why we've seen this increase,"
Gillespie says. "But at the same time betting
on movies and their box office totals in general is
becoming extremely popular."
Players can wager on
the total opening day box office, total opening
three-day weekend box office and the number of days
to $100 million in box office sales.
"Previously the
record for wagers was just over $2,200 and that was
on the 'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,'"
says Gillespie. "But the amount of handle we've
had on the 'Matrix' props has absolutely
blown that away."
The majority of the
wagering has happened in the last week.
"When an action
movie gets a cover story on Time Magazine, it's
doing something right," says Gillespie.
"Given the amount of hype the movie will get in
the next week we expect to take upwards of $40,000
on these props."
BoDog.com is an
International Sportsbook and Casino located in Costa
Rica.
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