There are questions that are not asked often but never fail to make heads scratch whenever they are asked. One of them being “how did this place get its name?” Today, we will attempt to answer this question with regards to the origins behind the names of the cities and town (yes, as in one town) that comprise Metropolitan Manila. Some of the information that will be shared here may be of common knowledge to some, but it is still worth knowing. Who knows, you may be asked about in in a game show or something. 😉
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Discovering the birthplace of Philippine television
October 23, 1953 is a milestone event in the history of Philippine mass media, and of Philippine television in particular. This date is now being celebrated as the birth date, so to speak, of television in the Philippines. The idea of television in the Philippines was something seriously thought about since after World War II as the country was trying to rebuild after the destruction it experienced. In fact it was the dream of an American engineer named James Lindenberg that the country would be the first in Asia to have the first television broadcast through the company he founded in June 13, 1946: the Bolinao Electronics Corporation. (BEC)
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commemorating the first shot of the Philippine-American war
At this time, we marked the 111th anniversary of the outbreak of the Filipino-American war, part of a chain of events that began way before of how we ended up being screwed by the Americans who were in the processing of building their own colonial empire and became their “little brown American brothers” regardless of the positives and negatives that were borne out of these events. For those who at least still remember those lessons in Philippine history way before, we were told that the Filipino-American war began on February 4, 1899 when an American soldier named Willie Grayson fired that first shot. Depending on which book you read, Grayson…
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the most awkward-looking Rizal ever
Today marks another commemoration of the martyrdom of the Philippines’ national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. And being the country’s national hero, you can never escape his name and image almost everywhere you go, from the streets you traverse to the matches you use. Then again, he is THE national hero so there’s not much one can do about that. That principle will also apply whenever we come to see him standing in front of some town plaza or municipal/city/provincial hall in his trademark long black overcoat and, sometimes, holding a book or two on his chest as if he was about to sing the National Anthem. This particular monument of…