222 years before America's Founding Father's were celebrating liberation from England, Leiden was celebrating liberation from Spain on October 3, 1574. The city had been besieged by the Spaniards for many years. The Prince of Orange finally decided to cut the dikes to flood out the Spaniards: "Better a drowned land than a lost land." Wikipedia doesn't mention how many Dutch drowned, but the strategy worked and the Spaniards fled. Since 1575 a celebration of Thanksgiving has been held on every October 3rd with a memorial service, market, parade and carnival.Here you see that we liberated the kids from school and were on our way to our favorite canal restaurant for a good view of the parade.
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