June 17th is World Desertification and Drought Day, World Karate Day, World Scavenger Day and World Tessellation Day. In different years, events spanning different eras and spheres — from medieval battles to modern political decisions — took place on this day.
World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought
This day was established by the United Nations in 1994 after the adoption of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The task of this day is to draw attention to land degradation, increasing droughts and related social, economic and environmental problems.
Desertification is not only the transformation of lands into deserts in the literal sense, but also the gradual degradation of fertile soils due to erosion, depletion, overgrazing, water scarcity, climate change, and irrational agricultural practices. According to UN estimates, up to 40% of land resources in the world are already in a state of degradation. Every year, humanity loses millions of hectares of fertile soil, which threatens both food security and the stability of life for millions of people, especially in the regions of Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Southern Europe.
The topic becomes especially relevant in connection with climate change. An increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts directly affects crops, water supply, forest fires, and increased population migration. According to projections, more than 135 million people could be forced from their homes by 2050 due to land degradation.
The main goal of the UN Convention is not only to stop degradation, but also to restore fertile lands by changing farming methods, soil moisture conservation, reforestation, erosion control, combating harmful irrigation and soil salinization.
Interesting facts
The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has been ratified by 197 states — almost the entire world, which makes it one of the most massive international environmental agreements.
According to the UN, one hectare of fertile land is degraded every 1-2 seconds in the world.
Economic losses from soil degradation reach about 10% of global GDP annually.
Saudi Arabia is currently implementing the world’s largest artificial reforestation project in desert regions.
China’s “Green Wall” (an afforestation project along the northern desert borders) has slowed down the expansion of the Gobi Desert.
Land degradation causes up to 30% of global food losses due to reduced crop yields.
World Karate Day
This day is dedicated to a key moment in the history of this sport – the official inclusion of karate in the program of the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo 2020. This was the first recognition of karate as an Olympic discipline, although the martial art has a centuries-old history of development long before its sports status.
Karate originates from the island of Okinawa, which even before joining Japan had close cultural ties with China and Southeast Asia. The basis of karate is a combination of local techniques of hand-to-hand combat and Chinese wushu. Initially, karate was formed in the conditions of the ban on carrying weapons for the common population – Okinawan masters developed self-defense techniques focused on close combat without the use of weapons.
In the 20th century, karate began to actively spread outside Okinawa. The first official public display of karate took place in Japan in 1922 with the participation of Gitin Funakoshi, a man called the “father of modern karate.” It was Funakoshi who laid the foundations of the Shotokan style, which today is considered basic for most schools.
Since the second half of the 20th century, karate has been rapidly expanding beyond Japan. After the Second World War, it began to be actively studied in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. Karate enters mass culture through the cinema – it is thanks to Hollywood and Asian cinema that karate has become recognizable in the world even among people who are far from martial arts.
The Olympic debut of karate in Tokyo 2020 became historic not only because the sport returned to its homeland, but also because for the first time the entire structure of karate (kata and kumite) received international sports regulations under the control of the IOC.
Interesting facts
Translated from Japanese, “karate” means “empty hand” – emphasizing the unarmed nature of this art.
In elementary Okinawan schools, it was forbidden to practice karate without the master’s permission. Teachings were taught in limited student groups, and some techniques were kept secret even within families.
The first karate was taught without belts and a color system of rank. Gradation by belt colors is a later borrowing from judo, which was popularized by the same master Jigoro Kano.
After World War II, karate began to be taught at American military bases in Japan. It was thanks to the American military that karate actively spread in the USA in the 1950s and 1960s.
Bruce Lee, although he himself practiced other disciplines, included many karate techniques in his own Jet Kung Do school. It was also thanks to the films with his participation that karate became massively popular in the cinema of the 1970s.
Olympic karate competitions in Tokyo 2020 gathered participants from more than 80 countries. The youngest champion was the Japanese Ryo Kiyona (19 years old), who won “gold” in the kata discipline.
Karate still preserves two parallel traditions: sports karate under the auspices of the WKF (World Karate Federation) and traditional schools that do not participate in sports tournaments, but adhere to old fighting techniques.
In Okinawa, there are still several ancient karate schools that practice rare original styles that are not represented in international championships.
World scavenger day
This is an unofficial but important date that reminds of the daily work of workers who are responsible for the sanitary condition of cities, garbage removal and waste sorting. Although their work usually remains almost invisible, it is on these people that the elementary life of settlements depends: from the prevention of unsanitary conditions to the stable operation of waste management systems.
The profession of a scavenger covers a much wider range of duties than simple garbage removal. In many countries, workers in this sector are responsible for the separate collection, processing, transportation of hazardous waste, the logistics of sorting centers, the disposal of organic residues and the monitoring of environmental safety in the area of responsibility. The importance of this work became especially acute during the COVID-19 pandemic, when scavengers continued to work in difficult conditions of increased sanitary risks.
In many countries, work in the waste management sector is considered one of the riskiest types of urban occupations due to exposure to hazardous materials, high injury rates and severe physical exertion.
Interesting facts
According to estimates by the International Labor Organization, more than 20 million people work in the field of waste management in the world, a large number of whom are informal collectors of recyclable materials in developing countries.
In New York, scavengers are officially considered one of the city’s most dangerous occupations — the risk of injury is higher than that of police officers and firefighters.
Modern garbage trucks in many countries are equipped with on-board computers, GPS systems, weight sensors and automatic control of waste compaction.
Japan is one of the leaders in the world in terms of waste management culture: in Tokyo, garbage collectors often undergo professional customer service ethics, and there are a minimum of bins on the streets, as each resident independently disposes of household waste according to a strict sorting schedule.
The first systems of centralized waste removal in Europe began to work in the 19th century after outbreaks of epidemics, when landfills in cities caused mass diseases.
In Switzerland, there is a system of “bags with a tax” – people pay extra for each official garbage bag, which encourages to reduce waste as much as possible and increase sorting.
In Iceland, in 2023, for the first time, garbage truck routes in the capital were fully automated with the help of artificial intelligence to optimize transportation.
World Tesselation Day
This day is dedicated to the art of creating patterns from geometric shapes that cover the plane without gaps or overlaps. The term “tessellation” comes from the Latin tessella, a small square tile that was used in ancient mosaics.
Although at first glance tessellation seems to be mainly an aesthetic phenomenon, its foundations lie in exact mathematics, in particular in geometry, group theory and combinatorics. The principles of tessellation are actively used in architecture, art, graphic design, computer graphics, crystallography and even in modern 3D printing materials and technologies.
Tessellations gained special development in the works of the Dutch artist Maurits Escher, who in the 20th century created visual compositions from mathematically complex patterns, where figures are transformed, creating the illusion of limitless transitions. His work made tessellation known far beyond mathematics and art.
In modern research, tessellations are used in the theory of packing, optimization of area distribution, in the analysis of nanostructures, in the modeling of molecular lattices in physics, as well as in the construction of algorithms for computer graphics and generative art.
Interesting facts
In 1968, mathematicians Berger and Wang discovered the first aperiodic tessellation, which never repeats the same pattern but covers a plane without gaps, was a breakthrough in mathematics.
One of the most famous aperiodic tessellations is the Penrose tiling, named after the physicist Roger Penrose. They have become a symbol of irregular, but strictly regular structures in quantum physics and crystallography.
Tessellations occur in nature: for example, in the form of honeycombs (hexagonal tessellation), in the structure of turtle shells, fish scales, the texture of the skin of reptiles, and also in the arrangement of cells in many tissues.
Mauritz Escher, not having a mathematical education, independently arrived at complex principles of symmetry, which were later described in detail by professional mathematicians after his exhibitions.
Modern architects use tessellations when designing ventilation facades, acoustic panels and roofs of complex geometry, where uniformity of load distribution is required.
Tessellations are actively used in artificial intelligence: some generative art algorithms build complex textures based on the principles of mathematical tessellations.
Historical events on this day
1462 In 1910, the Wallachian master Vlad III Tepes, known by the nickname Dracul, attempted to assassinate the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. The attack was unsuccessful, and Vlad was forced to retreat from Wallachia. He inherited the nickname Dracul from his father, Vlad II. The history of Vlad III’s reign became one of the sources of the image of Count Dracula in world culture.
1885 In 2008, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor, a gift from France to the United States of America. The monument was created by the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, and the structural elements were developed by the engineer Gustave Eiffel. The statue was transported by sea disassembled into 350 parts, which were later assembled on the spot.
1917 The II All-Ukrainian Military Congress, which lasted until June 23, began in Kyiv. During his work, the autonomy of Ukraine was proclaimed as part of the future democratic Russia. This congress became an important stage in the formation of Ukrainian statehood during the period of the Central Rada.
1940 The Red Army entered Latvia and Estonia, effectively occupying these countries. This was part of the implementation of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, concluded between the USSR and Nazi Germany, which led to the loss of independence of the Baltic states for a decade.
1944 Iceland officially declared itself a republic after the end of the period of union with Denmark. The country declared independence based on the results of a referendum, taking advantage of the fact that Denmark was under Nazi occupation at that time.
1950 In 1990, in Chicago, doctor Richard Lawler performed the first successful human kidney transplant in history. The operation lasted only 45 minutes, but initiated the development of modern transplantology. Although the transplanted kidney worked for only a few months, the very fact of the intervention was a breakthrough in surgery.
1953 A mass anti-communist uprising began in East Germany. Workers took to the streets of Berlin with demands for economic and political reforms. The Soviet army brutally suppressed the demonstrations using tanks. The events of June 17, 1953 became a symbol of resistance to totalitarianism in Eastern Europe.
1955 the first flight of the Soviet Tu-104 passenger jet took place in It was one of the first serial jet airliners in the world. Its appearance enabled the USSR to reach a new level of passenger aviation, almost at the same time as the British De Havilland Comet.
2008 In 2008, the Mozilla Foundation organized the Download Day 2008 campaign, the goal of which was to set a record for the number of program downloads over the Internet in one day. This program became the Mozilla Firefox 3 browser. The record was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records.
2022 The European Commission officially recommended granting Ukraine the status of a candidate for membership of the European Union. This decision became an important step on the path of European integration of Ukraine in the conditions of a full-scale war.
