Day of the Airborne Forces in Russia

Airborne Forces Day is a professional military holiday in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, celebrated on August 2 annually.

The birthday of this holiday goes back to August 2, 1930. On that day a 12 member paratrooper unit was parachuted for performing a tactical task at military exercises of the Moscow Military District. It was considered a remarkable achievement, and the decision to pass a holiday was made. In 2020 Russian Airborne Forces had celebrated 90 years of its existence.

If you ask Russians about the features of this holiday, they'll say “fountains” ⛲. And that's right, because one of the most common activities that takes place on this holiday (apart from getting wasted 🍾) is bathing in fountains performed by the guests of honor. I still can't wrap my head around this, because there's also a rule of closing all fountains on this day... Probably the measures and their outcome don't really live up to expectations after all 🤷 If the swim was good enough, a fist fight is likely to follow. So much fun! 🚁

As you can see, this holiday is no March 8, and you need to be seriously prepared to participate in it. As for other events, they don't really differ from any other patriotic holiday. Some of them include demonstrations of paratroopers, concerts, charity events, festivals, crafts fairs and souvenirs exhibition and sale. Solemn speeches about the challenges of the past and the bright prospects of the future. Awards and congratulations. I would also include coping and pasting the emoji from this collection to your social media posts. Unfortunately, Unicode hasn't yet created a parachute emoji, so we had to do with an umbrella ☂