U.S. Embassy in Austria

Emancipation Proclamation Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) dates to June 19, 1865, the day U.S. General Gordon Granger announced to the enslaved people of Galveston, Texas, that they were officially free. Two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Granger's decree marked the end of slavery in the rebellious Confederate […]

Independence Day (July 4) “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” – words written on the Liberty Bell Signing of the Declaration By the middle of the 1700s, the 13 colonies that made up part of England’s empire in the New World were finding it difficult to be ruled by a […]

Labor Day (First Monday in September) Eleven-year-old Peter McGuire sold papers on the street in New York City. He shined shoes and cleaned stores and later ran errands. It was 1863 and his father, a poor Irish immigrant, had just enlisted to fight in the Civil War. Peter had to help support his mother and […]

In the fifteenth century most people believed the world was flat. People laughed at or jailed others who dared think that the world was in the shape of a globe. There were educated persons, however, who reasoned that the world must be round. An Italian named Christopher Columbus was bold enough to push this notion. […]

Veterans Day (November 11) In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, the world rejoiced and celebrated. After four years of bitter war, the Allied powers a signed a cease-fire agreement (an armistice) with Germany at Rethondes, France on November 11, 1918, bringing World War I to a close. […]

Thanksgiving (Fourth Thursday in November) We celebrate Thanksgiving along with the rest of America, maybe in different ways and for different reasons. Despite everything that’s happened to us since we fed the Pilgrims, we still have our language, our culture, our distinct social system. Even in a nuclear age, we still have a tribal people.” […]