Free Children of the Days by Eduardo Galeano Page A

lead the struggle for Botswana’s independence. And in 1966 he became the country’s first president, elected by a wide majority in a clean vote.
    That was when he received, in London, the title of Sir.

September 30
I NTERNATIONAL T RANSLATION D AY
    From the south of Veracruz a boy set out to seek his fortune.
    Upon his return years later, his father wanted to know what the boy had learned.
    The son answered, “I am a translator. I learned the language of birds.”
    Then a bird sang and the father demanded, “If you aren’t a damned liar, tell me what that bird said.”
    The son refused. He pleaded that he’d better not, that you wouldn’t want to know, but his father would not relent. So he translated the bird’s song.
    The father grew pale. And he kicked his son out of the house.

October 1
E MPTIED I SLAND
    â€œThere will be no indigenous population except seagulls,” declared an internal British government memo.
    And in 1966 they kept their word.
    All the inhabitants of the island of Diego Garcia, minus the seagulls, were expelled under threat of bayonets and gunfire.
    The British then leased the emptied island to the United States for half a century.
    This paradise of white sand in the middle of the Indian Ocean became a military base, a station for spy satellites, a floating prison and torture chamber for suspected terrorists, and a staging ground for the annihilation of countries that deserve to be punished.
    It also has a golf course.

October 3
C URLING THE C URL
    In 1905 German hairdresser Karl Nessler invented the permanent wave.
    His experiments nearly incinerated the head of his long-suffering wife, a martyr to science, before Karl at last found the formula for making perfect curls and keeping them that way for two whole days in reality, and for several weeks in the advertising.
    Then he took on a French name, Charles, to give his product some style.
    Over time, curls became a privilege not only of women.
    A few men dared.
    We baldies did not.

October 4
W ORLD A NIMAL D AY
    Until some time ago, many Europeans thought animals were demons in disguise.
    The execution of bedeviled beasts by hanging or by fire was a public spectacle as popular as the burning of Satan-loving witches.
    On April 18, 1499, in the French abbey of Josaphat near Chartres, a three-month-old pig was tried in court.
    Like all pigs, he had neither soul nor reason and was born to be eaten. But instead of being eaten he ate: he was accused of having had a child for lunch.
    The charge was not based on any evidence.
    Yet the little pig was still found guilty. Lacking proof, prosecuting attorney Jean Levoisier, a graduate in law and chief magistrate at the monastery at Saint-Martin de Laon, revealed that the devouring had taken place on Good Friday.
    Then the judge passed sentence: capital punishment.

October 5
C OLUMBUS’S F INAL V OYAGE
    In 1992 the Dominican Republic finished building the most unusual lighthouse in the world, one so tall its beams disturb God’s sleep.
    The lighthouse was erected in homage to Christopher Columbus, the admiral who pioneered European tourism in the Caribbean.
    Before the inaugural ceremony, Columbus’s ashes were removed from Santo Domingo’s cathedral and transported to a new mausoleum at the foot of the lighthouse.
    While the ashes were en route, the president’s younger sister Emma Balaguer died suddenly after touring the lighthouse, and the stage on which Pope John Paul II was to give his blessing collapsed.
    Some malevolent minds considered this further proof that Columbus brings bad luck.

October 6
C ORTÉS’S F INAL V OYAGES
    In 1547 when he felt death tickling his backside, Hernán Cortés instructed that he be buried in Mexico in the convent at Coyoacán, to be built in honor of his memory. When he died, the convent was still a maybe and the deceased was obliged to stay in a series of homes in Seville.
    At last he found passage