Today is Saint Lucia National Day. It marks the Feast Day of Saint Lucia, the patron saint of the island.
The Windward Island now known as Saint Lucia was first discovered by Europeans in the late 15th or early 16th century. The first settlers were French and they named the island after Saint Lucia.
Saint Lucy (Lucia) of Syracuse was a young Christian martyr who died during the Diocletianic Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire in 304 AD. According to legend, she converted to Christianity after an angel appeared to her. Lucy dedicated her life to Christianity and started giving away her family’s wealth to the poor and needy. She was betrothed to a man from a pagan family and when he heard that Lucy was giving away his dowry, he reported her to the authorities. Refusing to honor the Roman gods, she was put to death. She is one of the best known virgin martyrs, along with Agatha of Sicily, Agnes of Rome, Cecilia of Rome and Catherine of Alexandria.
Her Latin name derives from the same as that for light – lux, and this made her feast day a popular day as it fell on the Winter Solstice in the Julian calendar – the longest night of the year, when you want all the light-based help you can get.
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Today is the birthday, in 1952, of Berton Averre, lead guitarist with the Los Angeles rock band The Knack who scored the 1979 US No.1 single ‘My Sharona’. Their album Get the Knack became one of the most successful debuts in history, selling over one million copies in less than two months and spending five weeks at No.1 on the Billboard album chart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbr60I0u2Ng
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