Great Union Day (Romanian: Ziua Marii Uniri, also called Unification Day) occurring on December 1, is the national holiday of Romania. It commemorates the assembly of the delegates of ethnic Romanians held in Alba Iulia, which declared the Union of Transylvania with Romania.
This holiday was set after the 1989 Romanian Revolution and it marks the unification of Transylvania, but also of the provinces of Bessarabia and Bukovina with the Romanian Kingdom, in 1918.
Prior to 1918, the national holiday of Romania was set to be on May 10, which had a double meaning: it was the day on which Carol I set foot on the Romanian soil (in 1866), and it was the day on which the prince ratified the Declaration of Independence (from the Ottoman Empire) in 1877.
In Communist Romania, the date of the national holiday was set to August 23 to mark the 1944 overthrow of the pro-fascist government of Marshal Ion Antonescu.
Read more about Great Union Day: Alba Iulia National Assembly
Famous quotes containing the words union and/or day:
“Every good cause gained a victory when the Union troops were triumphant. Our final victory was the triumph of religion, of virtue, of knowledge.... During those four years, whatever our motives, whatever our lives, we were fighting on God’s side. We were doing His work. What would this country have been if we had failed?”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“This Day, whate’er the Fates decree;
Shall still be kept with Joy by me:
This Day then, let us not be told,
That you are sick, and I grown old,”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)