I dreamed it was THURSDAY

São Tomé Day is a public holiday in the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe on December 21st each year. This holiday commemorates the arrival of the first Europeans to the island of São Tomé on this day in 1471. The traditional dates for the arrival of the Portuguese are December 21st 1471 for São Tomé and January 17th 1472 for Príncipe.

Both islands were uninhabited when the Portuguese arrived. It was decided that the islands would make good bases from which to trade with the African mainland and the first successful settlement of São Tomé was established in 1493 with Príncipe being settled 7 years later.

However, this wasn’t some idyllic new colony. The islands were stocked with African slaves and degredados (“undesirables” sent from Portugal), all of whom were forced to work on sugar plantations.

São Tomé and Príncipe achieved independence on 12 July 1975. Interestingly, Principe is where an experiment by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington during a solar eclipse on May 29, 1919 proved Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.