After the slow start, electric trams rapidly became very popular; by 1903, there were 300 electric tramcars in London, which carried 800,000 passengers over Whitsun weekend in 1903.
Whitsun |
Absalon's last military exploit came in 1184, off Stralsund at Whitsun, when he soundly defeated a Pomeranian fleet that had attacked Denmark's vassal, Jaromar of Rügen.
Since 1981 the society has organised the Königstein railway festival (Bahnhofsfest Königstein) every year at Whitsun, when the Königsteiner Bahn between Frankfurt-Höchst and Königstein im Taunus is operated.
Each year, between Ascension and Whitsun, a Western town is built here in which Western and Indian clubs recreate the atmosphere of the Wild West for a few days under authentic conditions.
In Tudor times church-ales were held on Sundays; gradually the parish-ales were limited to the Whitsun season, and these still have local survivals.
Earlier there were no school holidays, in 1820 there were four weeks in August, one week at Christmas and Easter, and a week at Whitsun was added in 1824.
The term is a mis-nomer, based as it is on Captain Cook’s naming of what is now known as the Whitsunday Passage (in Cook’s Journal, Whitsunday’s Passage) in the belief that the passage was discovered on Whitsunday, The Sunday of the feast of Whitsun or Pentecost in the Christian liturgical year, observed 7 weeks after Easter.