Our first "foreign" holiday today - Guy Fawkes Day. From what I can tell thus far, it's a week of burning stuff and blowing stuff up - so we're down with that! We don't get the day off, but I'm looking forward to checking out a firework display tonight.
Here's the official scoop:
Guy Fawkes Day actually originated in England after the failed 'Gunpowder Plot' of 1605.
Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes, was raised in York and converted to Catholicism after his mother married a Catholic.
After fighting with Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformers, Fawkes travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England. However he was unsuccessful.
In the early 1600s, Fawkes was part of a plan to assassinate King James I in order to restore a Catholic monarch to the English throne.
Fawkes' expertise with gunpowder made him a key component to the plot, which took around 18 months of planning. But Fawkes was arrested at midnight on November 4, 1605, just hours before the assassination attempt.
He was captured beneath the House of Lords, and 36 barrels of gunpowder were found stacked in the cellar directly below where the King would have sat during the opening of parliament the following day. Fawkes was tortured before he eventually confessed. He jumped to his death from the scaffold of where he was to be hanged, just before his execution. Fawkes' effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire with a fireworks display to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot.
