August 12: World Elephant Day, Youth Day

Today, on August 12, animal rights activists and wildlife lovers in many countries of the world can join the events on the occasion of the World Elephant Day, UNN writes.

It is believed that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were about 26 million elephants in Africa. Massive uncontrolled hunting of these animals for ivory led to the fact that in the early twentieth century the number of elephants in Africa fell to 1.5 million. Today, the number of elephants in Africa does not exceed 500 thousand.

To preserve the elephant population, a ban on ivory trade was introduced in 1989. But this did not apply to ivory stockpiles created before 1989.

In nature, there are African and Asian elephants. African elephants are divided into savannah elephants, which live in a large area of Africa, and forest elephants, which live in tropical forests.

Asian elephants are smaller than their African relatives, have smaller ears and shorter tusks, a convex curve of the back, their skin is less wrinkled, and covered with short hairs.  

Elephants live up to 80 years on average. An African elephant can eat 200 kilograms of plant food and drink the same amount of liquid per day. An Asian elephant eats and drinks half as much.

Today you can also join the International Youth Day and the Youth Day in Ukraine. International Youth Day was initiated by the United Nations and first celebrated in 2000.

For a long time in Ukraine, according to Soviet tradition, Youth Day was celebrated on the last Sunday of June. For the first time, Youth Day was celebrated on August 12 in 2022.

The UN defines youth as people aged 15 to 24. Today, there are 1.2 billion people in the world aged 15 to 24, or 16% of the world's population. It is expected that by 2030, the number of this age group will grow by 7%.

At the same time, each country sets its own age limits for people who are called youth. In particular, according to Ukrainian law, this category includes people aged 14-35. However, there are proposals to lower the age threshold to 29 years.

As of January 1, 2022, almost 10 million people aged 14 to 35 lived in Ukraine  , accounting for 24.3% of the total resident population of Ukraine.

Young men accounted for 51.3% of this number, and young women for 48.7%.

On August 12, you can celebrate the Day of Vinyl Records.

The first single-sided records appeared in the late nineteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were about 3,000 titles of gramophone records in the world, with a total circulation of more than 4 million copies.

In 1903, the first double-sided record was released. In 1948, the first long-playing record was released in the United States. In the late 50s, the production of stereo records was launched. In 1962, flexible records were introduced in France.

In the 80s, records began to lose competition to more compact audio cassettes and CDs.

15 years ago, the vinyl fashion returned. Record sales were growing every year. In 2022, 41 million records were sold in the United States, and 33 million CDs.

Currently, vinyl records account for 71% of all revenues from the sale of physical music formats.

According to the church calendar, today is the Day of Remembrance of the Holy Martyrs Photius and Anicetas, who lived in the time of the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

The men professed Christianity. For this, by order of the ruler, they were captured and subjected to severe torture.

According to legend, they wanted to burn Photius and Anykita alive, but the fire left their bodies unharmed. Then they were beheaded.

On August 12, Thomas, Fyodor, Anton, Arkady, Ilya, Leonid, and Sergey celebrate their name days.