Day of Black Consciousness in Brazil

The Day of Black Awareness is celebrated annually on November 20 in Brazil as a day on which to reflect upon the injustices of slavery (from the first transport of African slaves to Brazil in 1594) and to celebrate the contributions to society and to the nation by Brazilian citizens of African descent. It takes place during the Week of Black Awareness.
The day is marked on the anniversary of the death of Zumbi dos Palmares (1655–1695), the last leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares.
Members of the organization "Black Movement" (the largest of its kind in the country) organize educational and fun events involving mainly children of African descent. Their focus during these events is to dissolve the perception of Africans' inferiority in society. Other "hot topics" in the black community during the Day of Black Awareness are the assimilation of African-Brazilian laborers with Caucasian-Brazilian and other laborers, ethnic identity, and black pride.
Black Awareness Day has been celebrated since the 1960s and has only amplified its events in the last few years. 13th of May is now a holiday (Brazilian Abolishment of Slavery).

By: Milena M. Spiller

The World Trade Center
Story
Height: 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415 meters)
Owners: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Architect: Minoru Yamasaki, Emery Roth and Sons consulting
Engineer: John Skilling and Leslie Robertson of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson
Ground Breaking: August 5, 1966
Opened: 1970-73; April 4, 1973 ribbon cutting
Destroyed: September 11, 2001
The World Trade Center was more than its signature twin towers: it was a complex of seven buildings on 16-acres, constructed and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ). The towers, One and Two World Trade Center, rose at the heart of the complex, each climbing more than 100 feet higher than the silver mast of the Empire State Building.

Construction of a world trade facility had been under consideration since the end of WWII. In the late 1950s the Port Authority took interest in the project and in 1962 fixed its site on the west side of Lower Manhattan on a superblock bounded by Vesey, Liberty, Church and West Streets. Architect Minoru Yamasaki was selected to design the project; architects Emery Roth & Sons handled production work, and, at the request of Yamasaki, the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson served as engineers.

The Port Authority envisioned a project with a total of 10 million square feet of office space. To achieve this, Yamasaki considered more than a hundred different building configurations before settling on the concept of twin towers and three lower-rise structures. Designed to be very tall to maximize the area of the plaza, the towers were initially to rise to only 80-90 stories. Only later was it decided to construct them as the world's tallest buildings, following a suggestion said to have originated with the Port Authority's public relations staff.

Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les Robertson worked closely, and the relationship between the towers' design and structure was clear. Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented heights, the engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extended across to a central core. The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all.

Also unique to the engineering design were its core and elevator system. The twin towers were the first supertall buildings designed without any masonry. Worried that the intense air pressure created by the buildingsâ high speed elevators might buckle conventional shafts, engineers designed a solution using a drywall system fixed to the reinforced steel core. For the elevators, to serve 110 stories with a traditional configuration would have required half the area of the lower stories be used for shaftways. Otis Elevators developed an express and local system, whereby passengers would change at "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, halving the number of shaftways.

Construction began in 1966 and cost an estimated $1.5 billion. One World Trade Center was ready for its first tenants in late 1970, though the upper stories were not completed until 1972; Two World Trade Center was finished in 1973. Excavation to bedrock 70 feet below produced the material for the Battery Park City landfill project in the Hudson River. When complete, the Center met with mixed reviews, but at 1,368 and 1,362 feet and 110 stories each, the twin towers were the world's tallest, and largest, buildings until the Sears Tower surpassed them both in 1974..

By: Milena Spiller

"While skin color is more important than the brightness of the eyes will be war."

-Bob Marley     

 By Joana

Halloween Food

Because Halloween comes in the wake of the yearly apple harvest, candy apples (known as toffee apples outside North America), caramel or taffy apples are common Halloween treats made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts.

 At one time, candy apples were commonly given to children, but the practice rapidly waned in the wake of widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples in the United States. While there is evidence of such incidents, they are quite rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant because of the mass media. At the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free X-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy.

 One custom that persists in modern-day Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays, the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish: báirín breac), which is a light fruitcake, into which a plain ring, a coin and other charms are placed before baking. It is said that those who get a ring will find their true love in the ensuing year. This is similar to the tradition of king cake at the festival of Epiphany.



By Joana

The Twin Towers

September 11, 2001 is a date sadly remembered by one of the biggest terrorist attacks of history - the fall of the Twin Towers. Much is talked about the attack, but how much do you know about the Twin Towers?

The Twin Towers was located in the World Trade Center, a site for various buildings from Lower Manhattan, New York City - US. The Twin Towers were the landmark of the site, being the most important building from there, and were opened in April 4, 1973. They were considered one of the 3 biggest building in the world. With the attacks of September 11, not only the Twins Towers were destroyed, but several other building were damaged as well - which were eventually destroyed. The complex is currently being rebuild though, with five new skyscrapers and a memorial to the causalities of the attack. So far, one of them has been completed - the others are expected to be ready before 2020. The image above shows the original World Trade Center in March 2001.

By Pietro B. Trombini

Don't judge by the color. One can't choose how he will be born. Before anything else, we are people.

November 20 - the Black Awareness day

By Pietro B. Trombini

The Day Black Awareness

The Day Black Awareness

The Day of Black Awareness is celebrated annually on November 20 in Brazil as a day on which to reflect upon the injustices of slavery and to celebrate the contributions to society and to the nation by Brazilian citizens of African descent. It takes place during the Week of Black Awareness.

In what place is that?

The states with the largest number of cities that have joined the holidays are Mato Grosso and Rio de Janeiro. It is noteworthy that the Bahia state with the largest contingent of black population in the country, does not have the date as a holiday in any city

  

Why November 20? 

The date of November 20 was chosen because it marks the death of Zumbi dos Palmares. He was killed in 1695 after being denounced by a fellow and captured by the Portuguese. The day also recorded the end of the Quilombo dos Palmares, the largest in the country, located in Alagoas. The site came to house more than 30 000 blacks. In the last Assembly of the Congress of Black Women and Black Men, held in Sao Paulo, many leaders, including participating in the Union of Black Equality proposed that the November 20 to become a national holiday.

By: Vitor Magagnin