July 10th: Bahamas Independence Day

Bahamas Independence Day - from Britain in 1973. Ten things you might not know about the Bahamas.

1. The country consists of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 rocks (according to the Governor of the Bahamas in 1864.) It is situated in the Atlantic Ocean, Southeast of the US state of Florida and North of Cuba.
2. The Bahamas was the first place Columbus landed in in the New World. Before that, the Lucayan people lived there. The Spanish shipped many of these people to Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) as slaves, where many of them died from the harsh conditions and new diseases to which they had no immunity. The islands were virtually deserted after that until a group of British Puritans called the Eleutherian Adventurers settled on one of the islands in 1648, calling it Eleuthera (from the ancient Greek word for freedom). The Bahamas used to be a haven for pirates until the British clamped down on them and claimed the islands as a British colony in 1718. Later still it became a haven for freed African slaves from the USA. Their descendants make up most of the population today.
3. The name of the country derives from the Spanish baja mar ("shallow water or sea" or "low tide") reflecting the shallow waters there.
4. The highest point, Mount Alvernia (formerly Como Hill) on Cat Island is just 63 metres (207 ft) high.
5. The Bahamas is home to the deepest blue hole in the world, Dean’s Blue Hole, West of Clarence Town, on Long Island, which plungers 202m into the sea, and the longest known underwater cave system, in Lucayan National Park, on Grand Bahama Island.
6. The Flag is a Black equilateral triangle against the mast, superimposed onto a horizontal background made up of three equal stripes of aquamarine, gold and aquamarine. Aquamarine and gold represent the sun and the sea, and the triangle represents a vigorous and determined people developing the resources granted to them by the Sun and sea. The tiny percentage of white people who live there sometimes joke that they are represented by the thread that holds the flag together. If the flag is flown with the triangle facing up or pointing to the left instead of to the right, this is a sign of distress.
7. The national bird is the Flamingo (The ratio of flamingos to people on Great Inagua is 61:1); the national fish is the marlin and the national flower is the yellow elder (a native flower which blooms all year round). The motto is "Forward, Upward, Onward Together." The national sport is sloop sailing.
8. On Boxing Day, New Year's Day and Independence Day (July 10th), the people celebrate with a parade called a junkanoo. Nobody is sure where the name comes from, but the tradition is thought to date from when slaves in the Bahamas were given time off from the plantations around Christmas, and would celebrate with African dance, music, and costumes. People wear costumes made of crepe paper and the best costumes win prizes. Music is played on goatskin Drums (and more recently with tom-tom drums or bongo drums), brass bands and shaking cow bells. The band The Baha Men are from the Bahamas and they play a modernised style of Bahamian music called junkanoo. They are known for their hit, Who Let the Dogs Out?
9. The capital is Nassau on New Providence Island. Some interesting snippets about the capital - it only has two traffic lights; the octagonal public library building used to be a prison; and its best known tourist attraction is a staircase. The staircase was carved out of limestone by slaves. It is called Queen's Staircase and was named for 65 years of Queen Victoria's reign. It has 65 steps and passes a waterfall.
10. After Edward VIII abdicated, he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas, a post he held for four and a half years. He didn't particularly enjoy his time there but was praised at the time for his efforts to relieve poverty. Less well received were his yachting excursions with Axel Wenner-Gren, who the British Foreign Office thought that Wenner-Gren was a close friend of the Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring of Nazi Germany (although it turned out this was not the case).