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News18
15-05-2025
- General
- News18
International Day Of Families 2025: Wishes, Quotes, History And Significance
Last Updated: International Day of Families 2025: The day seeks to raise global awareness about the challenges families face and promote initiatives that support their well-being, International Day Of Families 2025: Observed every year on May 15, International Day Of Families was established by the United Nations General Assembly to recognise family's pivotal role as the cornerstone of society. The day also seeks to raise global awareness about the challenges families face and promote initiatives that support their well-being and development. International Day of Families 2025: History The International Day of Families was officially declared by the United Nations in 1994, following a series of resolutions aimed at supporting the social and economic well-being of families worldwide. The groundwork for this observance was laid in December 1989, when the UN adopted Resolution 44/82, highlighting the importance of family stability. This commitment was further reinforced by Resolution 46/92 in December 1991, which emphasised the need to address the changing social and economic structures impacting families globally. Finally, on September 20, 1993, the General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/47/237, formally designating May 15 as the International Day of Families. The day serves to raise awareness of family-related issues and to celebrate the vital role families play in building cohesive, supportive, and resilient communities. International Day of Families 2025: Significance This day emphasises the importance of families in creating a supportive and nurturing environment for all members. It serves as a platform to address the social, economic, and demographic challenges that families face globally, promoting the idea that strong families contribute to healthier and more sustainable communities. International Day of Families 2025: Wishes International Day of Families 2025: Quotes 'The world, we'd discovered, doesn't love you like your family loves you."– Louis Zamperini. 'No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love."– William Butler Yeats 'Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten."– David Ogden Stiers. 'Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."– George Burns. 'Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.– Anthony Brandt. 'What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family."– Mother Teresa. 'Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family."– Peter Pearsall. 'There's nothing that makes you more insane than family."– Jim Butcher. 'Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life!"– Albert Einstein 'Family and friends are hidden treasures, seek them and enjoy their riches."– Wanda Hope Carter. Family – the heart of every happy life. Happy International Day of Families! Blessed to have a family that loves unconditionally. Families are the roots of love and the wings of dreams. Home is where my family is. Happy International Day of Families! #FamilyFirst Celebrating the beautiful chaos that is family. Family – my first love, my forever strength. Happy International Day of Families! Strong families build a strong world. A house is made of walls, a home is made of love. Together is our favourite place to be. Celebrating the people who make life truly worthwhile. Happy International Day of Families! Family: my first team, my forever strength. Here's to the little moments, big memories, and the people who make it all beautiful. Happy Family Day! Today, I pause to honour the love, laughter, and lessons my family has gifted me. Family is where life begins and where love never ends. Happy International Day of Families! The only place where life truly makes sense – is in the arms of family. #ForeverGrateful Cherishing the unbreakable bonds that hold us steady through every twist and turn. To the ones who walk with us through every season of life – this day is for you. Because of them, I never walk alone. Happy International Day of Families! To the people who make every day brighter and every burden lighter – thank you, family. Watch CNN-News18 here. The News18 Lifestyle section brings you the latest on health, fashion, travel, food, and culture — with wellness tips, celebrity style, travel inspiration, and recipes. Also Download the News18 App to stay updated! tags : International Day of Families lifestyle Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: May 15, 2025, 07:00 IST News lifestyle International Day Of Families 2025: Wishes, Quotes, History And Significance
Irish Examiner
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Lady Gregory, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, to be memorialised with statue at her former home
One of Ireland's most famed dramatists, who co-founded the Abbey Theatre, is set to be immortalised with a statue on the site of her former home. A sculpture of Lady Gregory, born Isabella Augusta Persse in 1852, will be erected at Coole Park, Co Galway. The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), which now owns the site that had previously been owned by Lady Gregory, said it wanted to commission a monument to 'this great Irish literary pioneer' with a picture of her sitting under a tree to be the inspiration of the work. The Coole Park nature reserve lies west of Gort across an area of around 400 hectares. But in the early 20th century, the unassuming area was one of the centres of the Irish literary revival. Lady Gregory's home played host to the likes of William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge and Sean O'Casey over the years. HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading Lady Gregory had had an interest in literature from a young age and was introduced to London society, literature and the arts by her husband Sir William Gregory of Coole. When he died in 1892, Lady Gregory began to devote much of her time to writing, learned the Irish language and began spending time in the Aran Islands. The Abbey Theatre in Dublin around 1930. It was co-founded by Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats. File photo:She translated Irish mythologies from Irish to English such as the stories of Cuchulainn and the Children of Lír. After meeting Yeats in the 1890s, they became lifelong friends and collaborators. They were among the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre in 1904, a significant point in the Irish literary revival. In its tender documents, the NPWS said that Coole Park would be a fitting place for a statue of Lady Gregory given how she frequently mentioned it as her home and sanctuary, and how so many literary giants also came there for inspiration. She wrote: 'These woods have been well loved, well tended by some who came before me, and my affection has been no less than theirs. The generations of trees have been my care, my comforters. Their companionship has often brought me peace.' The life-size sculpture will be made in either bronze or stone, and the NPWS will consider whether it will be included as part of the walking trail in the walled garden at Coole Park. It said that the estimated, indicative budget for the project is €70,000. It also expects to award a contract to build the sculpture in the coming weeks, with delivery expected by the end of May 2026.
The Guardian
28-01-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Are we at a turning point in world history?
In 1919, at the height of a global crisis that resulted from the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, the devastation of the first world war, and the collapse of Europe's great continental empires, Irish writer William Butler Yeats penned his famed warning to humanity, mourning the end of the old world: 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.' His words were recently invoked by Joe Biden, addressing the United Nations general assembly. Today, just as then, he warned, the world is facing a critical historical juncture: 'I truly believe we are at another inflection point in world history where the choices we make today will determine our future for decades to come.' The then president took the opportunity to offer some historical reflections. He recalled the global upheaval of the early 1970s, when he was first elected senator, at the height of the cold war, with wars raging from the Middle East to Vietnam, and a crisis simmering at home: 'Back then, we were living through an inflection point, a moment of tension and uncertainty.' Throughout the 20th century, humankind had resolved major watershed crises. Today, with escalating wars from eastern Europe to the Middle East and with deepening divisions in our societies, it was time again, he urged, for concerted action. It was not the first time that Biden had historicized our time as an 'inflection point' in world history. It has, in fact, become one of his signature political concepts, invoked in various speeches. 'I've said many times, we are at an inflection point,' he declared in his last foreign policy speech last week. 'The post cold-war era is over. A new era has begun.' Many agree. The talk of 'inflection points' has been echoed across the global political arena, as world leaders, among them European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, have adopted it to warn about the current geopolitical moment. The world today – marked by the global surge of autocratic powers and anti-democratic forces, the territorial conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Taiwan, the climate crisis, and a new unpredictable industrial revolution fueled by artificial intelligence – appears to be at a historic watershed. It is a moment that historian Adam Tooze dubbed as a 'polycrisis'. The phenomenon is not new, of course. Throughout history, the world has been rocked by major crises – political turmoil, wars and the downfall of great powers – which appeared earthshattering at the time. And, routinely, contemporaries have declared them historical 'turning points'. The most striking of such events in modern history is the French Revolution, which fundamentally challenged the world's old monarchical order. 'In two minutes the work of centuries was overturned,' the French revolutionary and writer Louis-Sébastien Mercer celebrated in 1789. 'Palaces and houses destroyed, churches overturned, their vaults torn asunder.' Even the critics of the revolutionary upheaval did not try to deny its profound historical significance. 'The French Revolution is the most astonishing thing that hitherto happened in the world,' conservative commentator Edmund Burke acknowledged in 1790. 'Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity and all sorts of crimes jumbled together.' In his lectures on the philosophy of history, given at the University of Berlin between 1822 and 1831, only a few decades after the storming of the Bastille, GWF Hegel noted that the significance of the French Revolution, with its 'external expansion', had been 'world historical'. The turmoil of the revolutionary era, contemporaries agreed, was a critical historical juncture. Disillusionment followed. The turbulence of 1848 in Europe (and beyond) was also widely considered an inflection point. Revolutionaries across the continent celebrated that it was ushering in a new era of national awakening. Similarly, the years of the first world war were seen by contemporaries as a turning point of humanity. Woodrow Wilson considered it as a struggle that would 'make the world safe for democracy'; HG Wells called it 'the war to end war'. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lenin claimed that the time had come for revolutionaries across 'all countries and nations throughout the world' to change the course of history. Major mistakes made at that moment, from the ill-fated Versailles Treaty to the ill-conceived League of Nations, paved the way for the next catastrophe. The second world war was routinely understood by wartime leaders as an inflection point, the 'finest hour', that would be decisive in the triumph of democracy over tyranny. The end of the war, with the creation of the UN, Bretton Woods, Nato, and the European Coal and Steel Community, was hailed as a new era in the west, paving the way to prosperity. Likewise, the fall of the Berlin Wall seemed to spell the 'end of history'. Francis Fukuyama, in these pages, pondered whether the fundamental transformations of the time, which had engulfed 'many regions in the world', would affect 'world history'. The triumph of liberalism was soon challenged by a global Islamist resurgence, an autocratic China and a revanchist Russia. The attacks of September 11 were seen by many contemporaries as another turning point. 'For America, 9/11 was more than a tragedy,' George Bush remarked. 'It changed the way we look at the world.' More generally, turning points or inflection points are major events in history that profoundly reshape our lives. One central characteristic of them is their irreversibility, as, afterwards, it seems impossible to return to the status quo ante. Unsurprisingly, political leaders, past and present, have also routinely invoked them, with some urgency, as ways to mobilize support for their cause. This has also allowed them to give their own time (and themselves, as actors or witnesses) historical significance. Overall, inflection points, past and present, need to be taken seriously. Major moments in history have had irreversible consequences. Yet, we should be cautious not to obsess too much about the events as such. In fact, the fixation on turning points risks overlooking their deeper causes. To understand them, we need to take a sober look at the underlying structural transformations that produce them. In the end, 'turning points' are always, at best, merely optical markers on the surface, the 'crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs', as the historian Fernand Braudel put it. The major transformations and changes, the tectonic shifts, in history are always processes which evolve over decades and then become visible through certain events, or turning points. Historians have long studied historical turning points. This has involved questions about the significance or insignificance of certain events. It has also, more importantly, involved criticism of the search for (and the very idea of) turning points, based on the old controversy over the importance of 'events' (and sudden changes) versus 'structures' (and slow changes over time) in history. Historians have traditionally tended to look at earth shattering events – wars, crises, revolutions, diplomatic deals – and the deeds of powerful individuals. This research reached its peak in the 'great man' history of the 19th-century historism centered on the German historian Leopold von Ranke. The concentration on great 'events' provoked some criticism at the time, voiced by a wide range of scholars, most notably historian Karl Lamprecht, economist Gustav Schmoller, and sociologist Max Weber, who pointed to the importance of deeper social, economic and political transformations in shaping history, and the pitfalls of the idea of turning points. One of the most prominent of the critics was Karl Marx, who in his 1852 essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte famously declared: 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.' The most crushing criticism of the focus on events as turning points in history, however, came from the scholars of the French Annales school, such as Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel, who were interested in the deeper material and mental structures below the surface of events. In his 1949 magnum opus The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Braudel, who coined term 'structural history', explored the history of the Mediterranean on three levels: first, the history of the natural environment – geographical and geological conditions – which barely change over time; second, the social, economic and political structures, which slowly evolve, shaped by the natural environment; and third and least importantly, the events caused by human action, shaped by the conditions created by the first two levels. While environmental transformations and changes in social, economic and political structures must be studied over long periods, across generations, centuries, even millennia – the longue durée – events can be studied within frameworks of days, weeks, or years – the courte durée. Braudel expressed deep mistrust about any fixation on dramatic short-term events – turning points – in conventional history writing. At first sight, he agreed, the past looks like a series of individual events. Yet, great political events and military defeats are actually much less significant on closer look. Sudden historical breaks are almost impossible. A focus on the surface, he warned, obscures the political, economic, social structures that make them possible. Indeed, there are many examples of turning points that turned out to be less momentous when studied as mere expressions of structural transformations. The year 1789 is impossible to understand without taking into account the deeper intellectual transformations, most notably the shifting ideas about society and the state rooted in the Enlightenment, and the profound material changes which led to tensions between nobility, clergy and commoners. Similarly, the moment of 1914 cannot be understood without considering the structures of international affairs, including secret diplomacy, and the rise of nationalism in the long 19th century. The turning point of 1989, likewise, was caused by the deepening economic stagnation of the Soviet Union, generational changes in Eastern Bloc leadership, and global ideological shifts. To understand September 11, we need to be aware of the long history of nativism, Islamism and anti-westernism in the global south. And so on. In all these cases, we need to grasp the underlying conditions if we are to understand the turning points they produced. Histories of great power politics, most notably Paul Kennedy's masterful Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, have long alluded to the deeper natural, economic and military structures that have created war and peace. To be sure, the focus on structures did, in turn, provoke some criticism. Some historians have argued that an idea of history in which individuals are prisoners of structural laws does not leave much room for human agency. Also, we, as humans and readers, prefer narratives involving human agency – stories of heroes and anti-heroes – and dramatic events. Looking for (or reading about) deeper structures is far less enjoyable. It is therefore unsurprising that history books on turning points – wars and global crises – continue to rank at the top of our bestseller lists. There are now even books on specific years declared historical turning points by their authors: 1917, 1979 and so on. Some of them do show that the study of turning points can also take into account deeper causes. One of the most striking is Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices on the inflection points of the second world war, such as Britain's decision to fight Nazi Germany, Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, which carefully addresses the structural conditions and constraints under which wartime leaders operated. Indeed, events and structures are not mutually exclusive. We should, in every case, acknowledge the relevance of both. As historian Reinhart Koselleck once noted: 'The processual character of modern history cannot be comprehended other than through the reciprocal explanation of events through structures, and vice versa.' Structural economic, social and political conditions shape events. But on some junctures, events, such a political revolutions or major wars, can profoundly shape structures. The rare occasion when an event gains structural significance constitutes a historical inflection point. Today, world leaders are right to warn that we are facing such a historical inflection point, a global crisis. Yet, to fully understand it, to resolve it, we must not ignore its deeper structural causes, which often reach back to the end of the cold war and beyond. Among them are the resurgence of nationalism, cultural nativism, and revanchism, now shaping political cultures around the world; unchecked neoliberal excess and exploitation, creating unsustainable inequalities; and the erosion of a rules-based international order, undermined by both liberal and illiberal powers over the last decades – all fueling wars and dividing societies. Noticing that we are at an inflection point is not enough. To overcome it, we need to tackle these underlying structural problems, which inevitably will be a slow process, not a dramatic deed. History is a long game. David Motadel is an assistant professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science
