Find out what's going on any day of the year, anywhere across the globe! The world’s date book since 1957, Chase's is the definitive, authoritative, day-by-day resource of what the world is celebrating and commemorating. From national days to celebrity birthdays, from historical anniversaries to astronomical phenomena, from award ceremonies and sporting events to religious festivals and carnivals, Chase's is the must-have reference used by experts and professionals—a one-stop shop with 12,500 entries for everything that is happening now or is worth remembering from the past. Completely updated for 2021, Chase's also features extensive appendices as well as a companion website that puts the power of Chase's at the user's fingertips. 2021 is packed with special events and observances, including National days and public holidays of every nation on Earth The 400th anniversary of the Plymouth pilgrim Thanksgiving The 200th independence anniversary from Spain of its Central and South American colonies. The 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre Scores of new special days, weeks and months Birthdays of new world leaders, office holders, and breakout stars And much more! All from the reference book that Publishers Weekly calls "one of the most impressive reference volumes in the world."

This ribbon is up-tilted all along its western edge to form the coastal range defending the long central valley. It is lightly creased transversely where, from east to west, streams fed with snow-water drain down from the Andean peaks. Below the fortieth degree of south latitude the ribbon is twisted and ragged, with the tilted edge half sunk in stormy waters. Thirty times as long as it is wide, Chilean territory runs from the seventeenth to the fifty-sixth degree of south latitude, for, with a Pacific coast measuring nearly three thousand miles the average breadth is no more than ninety. It is a land of extreme contrasts; of great violence, of great serenity: but whether harsh or smiling, Chile is a stimulating, a promising land holding the mind and the heart. It is a breeder of men and women of forcible character. To the north lie the tawny and burning deserts where not so much as a blade of grass grows without artificial help, where no rain falls, year after year, where every form of life is an alien thing. In the south are broken, rocky islands and inlets, matted forests of evergreen trees with their feet in eternal swamps, of furious gales and cruel seas, where turquoise glaciers creep into the dark fiords. Eastward stands the great barrier of the Andes, snow-covered for half the year, with proud peaks rising at least eight thousand feet higher than the head of Mont Blanc. To the west, Chile looks out upon a waste of waters, with New Zealand as the nearest great country. Shut in or defended by these barriers from each point of the compass, it is plain that Chile has had no sisters closely pressing upon her threshold. One might reasonably expect to find here a race possessing characteristics in common with island folk, a homogeneous people with a distinct nationality. Today, when all natural barriers have been overthrown by mechanical transport, no nation escapes exterior influence, but the Chilean does certainly retain the islander’s self-contained habit, physical hardihood, and power of assimilating rather than yielding to aliens. I do not think that the modern Chilean owes his traits so much to inheritance from the Araucanian as to the fact that he has been nurtured in the same cradle, for, without doubt, here is a personality and attitude of mind that distinguishes the man of Chile from his continental brothers. Between the forbidding lands of the extreme north and far south and the frontiers of mountain and sea, lies fertile Chile—fruitful, gentle, brisk, well-watered. Nitrate and copper have their great populated camps, but they are artificial towns; the Magellanic city of Punta Arenas has a firmer root, but both north and south are new, and have received rather than produced. The Central Valley of Chile is the great garden of South America, one of the most enchantingly lovely, the most frankly friendly, regions in all the world. It seems as though nature had deliberately tried to compensate here for the arid and the stormy end of the belt by showering beauty upon the intervening strip. There is none of that strange illusory quality, the sense of living in a mirage, that attends upon tropical regions. Central Chile is fresh, dewy-bright, with the familiar sweetness of the temperate zones of western Europe. Here are fine cattle, sheep and horses, pleasant orchards of pears and plums and apples; olive groves and grapevines; the long green lines of wheat fields, the spires of the poplars, the blackberry hedges edged with gorse and bracken and purple-headed thistles, are all familiar. The stock of the farms, every kind of crop—except those invaluable American contributions to the world’s list of foods, maize and potatoes—were introduced from overseas, but they have long been absorbed into the economic life of Chile. If the visitor is lulled into forgetfulness of his real milieu by the sight of neat wooden fences, by the bramble-bordered and fern-edged lane, he is recalled by the sudden glimpse of a shining white cone suspended in the transparent air, the snowy head of a far volcano. Or he may see in the thicket beside the road a trail of copihue with its bright rosy bell, or note that the farmer, ruddy-cheeked and bright-eyed, riding a fine horse along a deep muddy road, wears a gay poncho and a pair of enormous silver spurs.

Squeezed between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide--not a country that lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler discovered when she traveled alone from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. Eloquent, astute, nimble with history and deftly amusing, Travels in a Thin Country established Sara Wheeler as one of the very best travel writers in the world.

Find out what's going on any day of the year, anywhere across the globe! The world’s date book since 1957, Chase's is the definitive, authoritative, day-by-day resource of what the world is celebrating and commemorating. From national days to celebrity birthdays, from historical anniversaries to astronomical phenomena, from award ceremonies and sporting events to religious festivals and carnivals, Chase's is the must-have reference used by experts and professionals—a one-stop shop with 12,500 entries for everything that is happening now or is worth remembering from the past. Completely updated for 2020, Chase's also features extensive appendices as well as a companion website that puts the power of Chase's at the user's fingertips. 2020--a leap year--is packed with special events and observances, including National days and public holidays of every nation on Earth The total solar eclipse The 100th anniversary of US women's suffrage (19th Amendment passed) The 75th anniversary of the end of WWII and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven The 100th birth anniversary of Ray Bradbury The 50th anniversary of the Beatles' break up The Tokyo Olympic Games Scores of new special days, weeks and months, such as International Go-Kart Week, National Goat Yoga Month or National Catch and Release Day Birthdays of new world leaders, office holders, and breakout stars And much more! All from the reference book that Publishers Weekly calls "one of the most impressive reference volumes in the world."

Augusto Pinochet, commander-in-chief of Chile’s army, rose to power in 1973 when he participated in a military coup to overthrow the president, Salvador Allende. Allende was a Socialist, and the upper classes and the military feared that Socialism would lead to a takeover of the country by the Communist Soviet Union. On September 11 of that year, the military attacked the presidential palace, and Allende committed suicide. Pinochet took charge of the junta formed to rule, naming himself president. Military personnel controlled all phases of the government and industry, and the junta shut down the Congress. National police were stationed on almost every block to enforce curfews and keep order, arresting thousands of Socialists and other “enemies of the state.” Many were tortured, many were exiled or fled into exile, and many just disappeared. The secret police even assassinated opponents outside the country. Pinochet ruled the country with an iron fist for seventeen years even as he brought reforms that stabilized the economy. Increasing unrest and economic problems eventually forced him from office. He was arrested when in Great Britain a few years later and charged with murder and other crimes against humanity. Released for medical reasons, he returned to Chile. He died there in 2006, under indictment for murder and other crimes. Read this book to learn how a trusted military leader became a ruthless dictator, all in the name of protecting his country.