Brazil (Rio Grande do Norte) : public and bank holidays, closure of banks, stock exchanges, school vacations

Secular holiday : Chicago, Saturday May 1st, 1886: 350,000 workers go on strike to call for an 8-hour working day. Industries are paralyzed nationwide. On Monday, as demonstrations go on, the police open fire. On Tuesday, Chicago is again on strike. Following a bomb launched against them, the police shoot again. 12 dead, of which 7 policemen. 8 anarchists will be condemned and executed. In 1889, the Socialist International Movement met in Paris and declared this day international workers' day . The Soviets will follow suit, just as the Nazis. In France, under the Vichy regime (1940-1944), the celebration is renamed Labour Day .

cards/flowers : Mother’s day has evolved in many countries in different ways. This is because mother’s day has different origins in different countries and therefore occurs on different days in the year. One school of thought claims that this day emerged from the custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. Mother worship which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and Rhea, the wife of Cronus, was held on March 15 to March 18 around Asia Minor. They insist that this custom spread around the world. Mothering Sunday is the celebration of motherhood in the United Kingdom. It is also known as Mid-lent Sunday, Rose Sunday and Laetare Sunday. It originally comes from the Victorian practice of allowing servants to return home to visit their mothers on this day. In the United States, Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 - October 17, 1910) was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet. Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 and quickly became one of the most popular songs for the Union during the American Civil War. After the war she focused her activities on the causes of Pacifism and women’s suffrage. In 1870 she was the first to proclaim Mother’s Day, with her Mother’s Day Proclamation. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson approved Mother’s Day in 1914

Catholic : Commemorates the Last supper. Pope Urban IV ordered the observance of such a feast in 1264, and in the following century it became universal in the Western Church. For six hundred years that feast was observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, but in 1970 the new Roman Missal, while retaining that day for some countries, provided that in others the feast be observed on the Sunday after Trinity. the actual celebration is moved to the nearest weekend.

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Secular holiday : In 1807, Napoleon's army marched on Lisbon. Two days before the invasion, the Portuguese Prince Regent set sail for Brazil. On arrival, he made Rio de Janeiro the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve; Brazil became the only New World colony to serve as the seat of a European monarch. In 1822 the Prince Regent's son, who had been left behind to rule the colony when his father returned to Portugal, pulled out his sword and yelled the battle cry 'Independência ou morte!' (independence or death). Portugal was too weak to fight its favourite son, so Brazil became an independent empire without spilling a drop of blood.

Secular holiday : Mártires de Cunhaú e Uruaçuu - The Blessed Martyrs of Natal were a group of 30 Brazilian Roman Catholic individuals – two of them priests – killed in southern Brazil in massacres that a large group of Dutch Calvinists led. One priest was a Brazilian Jesuit missionary, while the other priest was an evangelizer himself. The others were all lay Catholics, most of them anonymous members of the Church, and some of them being children. [Wikipedia]

Secular holiday : Our Lady who Appeared refers to a statue of the Virgin Mary located in the Basilica of Aparecida in Aparecida, and patroness of Brazil. One of the most visited places in the Catholic world.

Secular holiday : Information: Some government agencies are closed; banks may close half-day or even the full day.

Catholic or protestant : This is an ancient festivity that has been much transformed through the years,but which was intended in prehispanic Mexico to celebrate children and the dead. This holiday is a time when Mexican families remember their dead and the continuity of life. The original celebration can be traced to the Aztec civilization, in the month of Miccailhuitontli, presided by the Lady of the Dead , goddess Mictecacihuatl and dedicated to children and the dead. This celebration is also observed in other countries in Latin América. Families visit the graves and engage in sprucing up the gravesite, decorating it with flowers, setting out and eating a festive picnic.

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Banks only : Zumbi dos Palmares was a warlord in the independent kingdom of Palmares. This kingdom had been founded in the seventeenth century by slaves insurgents in the north-eastern Brazil. This day celebrates the first liberation of slaves. Established as a federal public holiday in 2007.

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