Today is Liberation Day in San Marino. Americans remain woefully misinformed about San Marino. (American remain woefully misinformed about most countries that aren’t located between Canada and Mexico.)
It’s not only Liberation Day in San Marino, but, it’s also the feast day of St. Agatha –
(patron saint of breast cancer survivors, but again, I digress …)
About seventeen-hundred years ago, during an epic game of hide and seek, Marinus the Stonemason ran up Mount Titano in Italy to hide from the Roman Emperor Diocletian. It was a good hiding spot and he was never found. He started his own country to pass the time, and the Republic of San Marino survives to this day, an island of foreign nationals in the middle of Italy.
Citizens of are not San Mariners. They are Sammarinese.
https://www.insidethegames.biz/media/image/165624/o/qxW4wiq42oiCKqbt
The population of San Marino is about 25,000. The population of San Marino, California, is about 13,000.
The California town was named in 1878 by James de Barth Shorb, who had built his home there and didn’t think people would go for Shorbtown. Instead, he named it after the Maryland town in which he’d been born.
That was reportedly San Marino, Maryland, which the California town’s website claims to have been named “for the tiny European republic.”
There is no Maryland town named San Marino. (If there is, they haven’t yet made their presence felt on Google.) Foul play is obviously afoot.
Proceed with caution.
The Haus of Dcaligari 