Happy Bastille Day!

Today is Bastille Day in France. If you know anything about French history, or just the lyrics from "Bastille Day" by Rush, then you know this was the milestone event of the French Revolution (well, the most famous French revolution at least, the one that got rid of King Louis XVI) and is a holiday to France what Independence Day is to the US.

Eric Lurio over at the Huffington Post gives a good write up of the day, including the fact that the storming of the Bastille resulted in the freeing of a grand total of seven prisoners and that ol' Louis XVI brought about his own downfall with economic policies that bankrupted the country.

Meanwhile Germany's Der Spiegel reports that the favored way of commemorating Bastille Day, aside from the big military parade down the Champs-Élysées, is for young people across the country to riot. Mostly the rioters are immigrant youth fed up with being denied jobs and educational opportunities based solely on their ethnicity (some say that putting a north African-sounding name on a resume is a sure way not to get a job). Der Spiegel says that in the early morning of the 14th, more than 300 cars were torched across France, a seven percent rise from last year despite an increased police presence on the streets.