Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Easy English Podcast by Understandable English.
I'm Oliver and today we are going to be talking about the 5th of November.
And you might wonder, hmm, Oliver, why specifically are we talking about the 5th of November?
Why this date?
Well, in the UK, every year there is big celebrations and it is quite a special day, I would say for a specific reason, and today I'm going to explain a little bit about this day and what people celebrate, and chances are you've probably not heard of it before, or maybe you didn't know why people celebrated on this day.
So the 5th of November is also known as Guy Fawkes Day, or sometimes called Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night.
That gives you a bit of an idea of what people do.
And it really simply remembers a failed assassination attempt that happened more than 400 years ago.
So what is an assassination attempt?
So that is when someone or people try to kill someone or people.
So really attempted murder, trying to kill someone.
And this day, Guy Fawkes Day or November 5th, remembers a plot or a plan to kill people that failed.
So it didn't work.
It wasn't successful.
So this story took place on November the 5th in the year 1605.
Wow, that was quite a long time ago, over 400 years ago.
And what happened was there was a guy called Guy Fawkes literally a guy and also a group of radical English Catholics.
So when someone is radical, they are quite extreme.
They're very intense or strong about what they believe.
And of course, Catholicism and being a Catholic, it's a type of Christianity.
And at the time, in the UK, the king was Protestant, which is another type of Christianity.
And at this time, let's say they didn't really get along.
There was a lot of fighting and disagreement.
So Guy Fawkes and this group of radical English Catholics they tried to assassinate, to kill the king, King James I, the Protestant king of England.
And they tried to do this by blowing up Parliament's House of Lords.
So that big, beautiful building in London where the House of Lords meet, they wanted to explode it.
So to blow us up with explosives.
Can you imagine?
So you might wonder why.
You know why did they feel so strongly that they wanted to actually kill the king?
So at the time the king was very strict against Catholics or Catholicism.
The previous queen was too.
The king made very clear that he did not support Catholics and Catholicism.
He said that it was a superstition.
So not like a real religion.
And he told all of the Catholic priests, so the heads of the church, to leave England.
And he also was worried that the number of Catholics was increasing.
So he made a lot of maybe difficult laws for Catholics to try to stop them from practicing their faith or their belief.
And that made a lot of them very angry.
And this group, including Guy Fawkes, had had enough and they decided they wanted to kill the king and put someone else on the throne.
So to replace him.
So eight other men joined Guy Fawkes and they planned to blow up the king.
And also this plan is known as the Gunpowder Plot because they used gunpowder.
Plot simply means plan.
So they took big barrels of gunpowder and they managed to sneak it underneath the House of Lords.
So underneath the Houses of Parliament.
And the plan was that Guy Fawkes would light the fuse so he would take the fire and put it to the explosives.
And then he would escape by boat.
And it would blow up the House of Lords and the House of Commons, killing the king and also anyone else who was there at the time.
However, just before this event was to happen in the Houses of Parliament, an anonymous letter so a letter who we don't know who wrote it was sent to the authorities, so to the police, to tell them about the plot.
Saying, like, this is what's happened and this is what is being planned and what will happen next.
And to this day, no one knows who wrote this letter.
And on the day so, on November 4th at midnight, Guy Fawkes was caught underneath the Houses of Parliament with matches in his pocket and the barrels of gunpowder beside him.
The explosives.
And he was arrested, and so were his co-conspirators, so the people that were planning this with him, and all of them were killed, so they all died.
Some of them died in a shootout with english troops and the others were executed, so they were punished with death.
So after the plot was revealed, the plan and it was stopped, Londoners began lighting celebratory bonfires.
A bonfire is maybe a big pile of wood that they light on fire to celebrate.
And in January 1606, Parliament made a law that designated November 5th as a day of Thanksgiving.
And actually, this holiday was also celebrated in the United States.
And they used to burn an image of the Pope, so the head of the Catholic Church.
But over time, the tradition died out in the United States.
So by the 19th century or so, it wasn't celebrated anymore.
Whereas in the UK, in Britain especially, it's not so popular in Northern Ireland.
But in Britain, the holiday or celebration changed.
So now it's more about a time to get together with friends and family.
Maybe to light some fireworks, light bonfires to go to a parade and to burn maybe, an image of Guy Fawkes.
So, like a wooden Guy Fawkes.
So that is basically the history of this holiday and what it is, so why people celebrate it and what they do.
But um, just very quickly, i want to remind um the link for the patreon is in the description below.
If you would like to support me and this project and get a load of bonus episodes and news in easy english, as well as bonus content podcasts, lots of stuff, click the link below and you can go and check it out.
But thank you so much for listening and let me know maybe in the comments of this podcast have you heard of the 5th of November celebrations?
Do you have anything like this similar in your country as well?
Maybe you light bonfires, use fireworks.
What celebrations do you do these types of things?
I know.
In the UK, of course, we have Halloween as well, which I forgot.
I didn't make a podcast about, but I have before a couple of years ago.
We also do, of course, New Year's celebrations, with maybe fireworks as well, but also this strange one, Guy Fawkes Day.
So yeah, let me know in the comments below.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have an amazing day.
Goodbye.
