📚🍃DAILYS MONDAY AUGUST 9TH🧍‍♀️🧎‍♀️

📚National Book Lovers Day – August 9, 2021📚

Books are the purest form of escapism. They can take you to any time, place, or culture. In honor of National Book Lovers Day August 9, we put away our smartphones, pull out a good book and simply read. (Well, an audiobook will suffice too.) From clay tablets to today’s eBooks, literature has played a crucial role in preserving cultures, educating the masses, and storytelling. Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century printing press, anyone, not just royalty, monks or landed gentry, could read and own books. But, alas, there was no overnight shipping. Today, join a book club or re-read a favorite novel because National Book Lovers Day rocks!

📚HISTORY OF NATIONAL BOOK LOVERS DAY📚

Book Lovers Day appreciates the medium that has withstood and preserved its importance in time — literature. Our love for books knows no bounds — someday we’ll write a book on it.

The modern book is made by binding paper, but before the invention of paper, books came in the form of tablets, scrolls, and engravings. Every civilization had its own way to document events. Some time in 3500 B.C., the Mesopotamians would make markings on clay tablets using a pointed device, made from the stem of the reed plant, called the calamus. These writings on the moist clay were called ‘cuneiform.’ Approximately 20,000 of these tablets were discovered in modern-day Iraq.

Paper was invented in China in the 1st century A.D. By experimenting with various materials such as hemp, fishnets, and the mulberry plant, Ts’ai Lun invented the first paper. With time, printing on woodblocks also became the go-to way of reproducing books in China. The ancient scrolls dating back to the 4th century B.C. are considered the first ‘books,’ but by today’s definition, the oldest surviving compiled book is “The Diamond Sutra” which was published in China on May 11, 868.

Hardback books ruled the market at the start of the 20th century, with a certain prestige associated with the hard bindings of books. But from 1937 onwards, paperbacks rose in popularity, paving the way for digests, pulp fiction, and pocket-friendly books.

Advancement in computers and technology led to the digitization of books, with the first book sold in CD format in the 1980s, “The New Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia.”

🍃Islamic New Year – August 9, 2021🍃

The Islamic New Year — also known as the Arabic New Year or Hijri New Year — is the first day of Muharram, the first month in the Islamic calendar. The first year of this calendar began in Gregorian CE 622 when the Prophet Muhammad emigrated from Mecca to Medina with his people.

In the Islamic calendar, days begin at sunset. The event falls on a different day every year because the Islamic year is 11 to 12 days shorter. As rituals and prayers mark the occasion, Muharram is known as the month of remembrance and is sacred to Muslims across the world.

🧍‍♀️🧎‍♀️National Women's Day – August 9, 2021👩‍💼👩‍⚕️

On August 9, 2021 we get to celebrate National Women’s Day. This South African holiday is celebrated every year on a weekday. Women have had a long history of oppression, but every fight gets us one step closer to freedom and equality.

HISTORY OF NATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

On August 9, 1956, there was a staged march on the Union Buildings of Pretoria. Over 20,000 women of all races attended the march in order to protest against the Urban Areas Act of 1950 amendments. This law required all South Africans defined as “black” to carry an internal passport that served to maintain segregation, control urbanization, and manage migrant labor during the apartheid.

The protest was led by Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, and Sophia Williams. The women left 14,000 petitions at the office doors of the prime minister. 100,000 signatures were left outside the prime minister’s door as well as a thirty-minute silent protest. After the silent protest, songs were sung to honor the event, to make sure their voices were heard. The song they sang was composed specifically for the event, titled “Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo” which translates to “Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock.”

It was a peaceful protest but it made a difference, because of it we have National Women’s Day. The day wasn’t actually made a holiday until 1995. The day brings attention to the issues African women faced then and still face today, including domestic violence, workplace sexual harassment, unequal pay, girls not being allowed to go to school, and no-help parenting. In 1994, women had very low representation within Parliament, with just nearly 2.7%. Women within the national assembly were at 27.7%. After the creation of this public holiday, the numbers nearly doubled, with women now having 48% representation all throughout the country’s government.