today’s holiday: Frankenmuth Bavarian Festival

Frankenmuth Bavarian Festival

Religious leaders in Bavaria sent a group of 15 Franconians to Michigan‘s Saginaw Valley in 1845 to set up a mission for the Indians. The settlement, known as Frankenmuth, retained its Bavarian roots and soon attracted other German immigrants. The Frankenmuth Bavarian Festival, held in June each year to celebrate the town’s German heritage, features a dance tent resembling a German biergarten with German dance bands and beverages, as well as farm tours, arts and crafts displays, a parade featuring the festival’s Bavarian Princess, and well-known entertainers of German origin. More… Discuss

Today’s Birthday (July 9):Franz Boas (1858)

Franz Boas (1858)

Boas was a German-American anthropologist. Trained in physics, he was part of an early scientific expedition to Baffin Island, where he turned to studying Eskimo culture. He is largely credited with establishing anthropology as an academic discipline in the US, and his achievements in anthropology are virtually unrivaled. It is largely because of his work that anthropologists today attribute human differences to cultural, rather than genetic, factors. Who were some of his famous students? More… Discuss