Good morning! 
It’s Wednesday, 10 March 2021 (W10/D69/296 rem)
Today is: 
International Bagpipe Day
Love them or hate them. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground when talking about the bagpipes and their plaintive wail. Regardless of your feelings toward the traditional Scottish “musical” instrument, we celebrate International Bagpipe Day today!
International Bagpipe Day was created after an idea by Andy Letcher, the Bagpipe Society’s publicity officer and was first celebrated on 10 March 2012.
As he imagined ways of promoting the diversity of bagpipes to the greater public, PhD student Cassandre Balosso-Bardin thought to organise a bagpipe conference.
The first International Bagpipe Conference launched International Bagpipe Day world wide as it gathered scholars, musicians and instrument makers from all around the globe. International Bagpipe Day is now celebrated every year all around the world, including here in South Africa.
If you aren’t familiar with this ancient instrument, bagpipe is a term that means a wind instrument that uses enclosed reeds to produce sound. Air feeds the reeds with a constant flow of air from a reservoir in the form of a bag. In each area that it is found, the bagpipe may change in sound and shape. This is an ancient instrument and is claimed to be represented on a Hittite slab dated to 1000 BC!
Bagpipes have a long history that spans the ages and spans many regions. It is an instrument that has weathered the test of time and surely deserves to be honored on International Bagpipe Day!
Perhaps one of the finest ways to appreciate the bagpipes is when they are brought together in massed military band formations. Here’s one of the most famous occasions and examples of this, in the ancestral home of the bagpipes:
And because you never knew you needed it, but realise now that your life has been incomplete without it, I give you bagpipe Thunderstruck, with flames!! 
Have a wicked good Wednesday! 