Tomorrow (on Monday 28th October) you don’t have classes. That’s nice, right? But have you wondered why? Keep reading to know the reason!
The area of Czechoslovakia (today the Czech Republic and Slovakia) had been a part of Austro-Hungarian Empire till the WWI. Before this war, there had been nationalist movements in both, the Czech lands and Slovakia. Despite the Czech area being an industrialised region and Slovakia being mainly an agricultural-based country, the two regions took the opportunity to become a new nation.
With the end of the WWI, Czechoslovakia was created, and its independence was proclaimed on 28th October 1918 on the Wenceslas square in Prague. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk became the very first president of the country and stayed in his post for seventeen years.
The first law establishing Czechoslovakia was written and signed in the evening of 28th October 1918 by the members of the Czechoslovak National Council: Antonín Švehla, Alois Rašín, Jiří Stříbrný, Vavro Šrobár and František Soukup, later known as “men of 28th October”.