National Unity Day

Yemen celebrates Unification Day on May 22nd as a national holiday. Yemen's National Day commemorates the country's unification in 1990. The modern-day Yemen region has been an important location since antiquity, essentially establishing a long land bridge between North Africa and Asia.

Yemen became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1538. They were expelled in the 17th century but returned in 1849 to the north. The British colony of Aden and the Aden Protectorate were created in 1839, covering roughly two-thirds of the current-day Yemeni territory. On November 30th, 1967, South Yemen declared independence, and in 1970, it became a Marxist communist republic. Following the Ottoman Empire's collapse in 1918, the other half of modern-day Yemen formed the Kingdom of Yemen, which was renamed the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962. On May 22, 1990, Ali Abdallah Saleh, the president of the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen), announced the merger of the two countries.

When: May 22nd