UNIVERSITIES, INDEPENDENCE AND LIBERTY

Today the 28^th of October is a foundation day for a couple of Universities.

On the 28^th October 1538, during the reign of Charles I of Spain, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, located in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, was established. It was created by the Papal Bull In Apostolatus St Thomas Aquinas Culminates with the name of University. With this act by Pope Paul III it became the first university in the Western Hemisphere.

Prior to its conversion into a full university, the institution had been a Studium Generate (seminary), founded in 1518 and operated by the Dominican Order.

Just two years short of a century later, on the 28^th October 1636, a vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first college in what would become the United States. That college is known today as Harvard University. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country. Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

The amended flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand, 

New Zealand’s first flag, gazetted in 1835 

and based on the design selected in 1834.

Yet another declaration of independence. The United Tribes of New Zealand was a loose confederation of Māori tribes based in the north of the North Island. The confederation was convened in 1834 by British Resident James Busby. Busby was sent to New Zealand in 1833 by the Colonial Office to serve as the official British Resident, and was anxious to set up a framework for trade between Māori and Europeans, the Māori chiefs of northern part of the North Island agreed to meet with him in March 1834. Rumors began spreading that the Frenchman, Baron Charles de Thierry, was going to set up an independent state at Hokianga. The United Tribes declared their independence on 28 October 1835 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbour, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on 28^th of October, 1886. The statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue has become an icon of freedom and of the United States.

It also has a plaque on it honouring the poet Emma Lazarus, with the text of her poem “The New Colossus”, part of which reads:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,


The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.


Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,


I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Is that performance writing or what?