Welcome to the Tweet Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweet Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Welcome back to Tweet Trends Trends. Today I am on it. It's Thursday and this is going out on Thursday.
But anyway, today is school day of non-violence and peace. Have you ever heard of this day before? Well, if not, let me tell you what I learned about it. Let's get started.
So today we're talking about school day of non-violence and peace. And I've never heard of this day before. So I tried to look it up to see what I could find out about it. And I wasn't very successful.
I didn't find a whole lot. And that's when I realized that the acronym for the day is nothing like the name. The acronym actually has two. It's D-E-N-I-P or D-E-N-Y-P.
And this stems from the Spanish name for the day, which is Dia Escolar de la Nópiolencia y la Paz, which is nothing more than the English version translated to Spanish. But anyway, so before I even got that far in my research, I was really sad to think that somebody had to think that we needed a day like this, like, oh my gosh, like this is just really sad. And then that's when I realized this day isn't about what I thought it was about at all, not even a little bit. So it was founded back in 1964 and has observed in schools all around the world on the anniversary of the death of Mahatma Gandhi.
And the message behind it is universal love, non-violence, and peace. As you can probably guess, I thought this day was initially created because of the issue we've been having with school shootings here in the United States. So I decided I would do some research on that as well. And what I found was that the earliest known shooting on a school property in the United States happened in a place near present day Green Castle, Pennsylvania, on July 26, 1764.
Basically, the school master, whose name was Enoch Brown, along with nine or 10 children, were killed. And there were only two children that were present that day that survived. Now, since then, incidents have taken place in schools. But the next known mass shooting took place on April 9, 1891.
That's over 120 years later, when a 70-year-old man fired a shotgun at a group of students in the playground of St. Mary's Parochial School in New York, causing minor injuries to several of the students. Now, I feel bad to say this, but it felt good to read that back then, the majority of attacks involved stabbing with knives or hitting with stones. Guns really weren't an issue.
Now, were there gun incidents between the first one I told you about in the second? Yes, there were. However, they were onesies, two zis. A lot of times it was the teachers that were getting the business.
So I don't know if people felt really strongly about their education back then. But the thing for me is that you know they had guns back then. You know, they were protecting themselves from wild animals way back. So you know they had guns.
But somehow, people knew the appropriate use for them, the appropriate storage. They knew not to let their kids play around with them. Like I said, every now and then, somebody did kind of take things into their own hands. But it wasn't like what we've been seeing lately.
And so where it felt weird to say that it felt good to see that that people were getting stabbed and hit with rocks back then instead. I don't know. I guess at a different time. Now, yesterday's rocks and knives are today's AKs.
That's really sad. So the creator of this day, Hispanic poet, he was influenced by a disciple of Gandhi and his book titled Return to the Sources. Now he felt that a day like this would be the starting point for a path to building character based on principles of tolerance, harmony, solidarity, respect for human rights, peace, and nonviolence. Now if you like the timing of this day, it's perfect as it comes on the tail end of the MLK holiday where that we celebrate here in the United States.
And it's a precursor to Black History Month, which starts in about two days. And so while we're on the topic of Black History Month, let's make sure that we're teaching the complete history and not just the trauma and the struggle of it all. Everybody likes to focus on slavery and Jim Crow and that kind of things. But let's stop for a moment and focus on the higher points, like civic engagement, creativity, and liberation of Black people as we go through and celebrate our Black History Month.
So my goal in all of this is to help you out by sharing what I can throughout the month and beyond. I'm going to try to turn this into a thing. So keep an ear and an eye out. You know where to find me.
Hashtag Tweet trends. That was today's episode. Thank you for listening. And I hope you enjoyed it and learned a little something too while you were here.
Do me a favor, though. Head on over to Twitter and follow me at hethat. That's at h-d-y-e-v-e-t-e, or just look for the hashtag Tweet trends. Before you go, just a reminder that universal love is better than egoism.
Nonviolence is better than violence. And peace is better than war. Have a great weekend. And I'll see you back here again on Tuesday.