里祖托角城堡酒店, 意大利 Le Castella at Capo Rizzuto, Italy (© mRGB/Shutterstock)

里祖托角城堡酒店, 意大利 Le Castella at Capo Rizzuto, Italy (© mRGB/Shutterstock)

Arrr! Can you talk like a pirate?

Ahoy matey! Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day so we present to you a fortress that was really used to defend against pirates. Arr! This is Le Castella, a magnificent fortress on the Calabrian coast of Italy. For centuries it served as a defense against warring nations and rampaging pirates from the Ottoman Empire. Legend holds (and what good pirate story doesn't start that way?) that in 1536, an Algerian pirate nicknamed Redbeard stopped by here on one of his many European raiding sprees and wreaked havoc on this fortress. Gazing upon these rock walls, it’s easy to imagine area soldiers at battle with Redbeard and his pirate ships. Can you see the canons firing? Smell the plumes of smoke? Hear the clink-clink of sword on sword?

As for Talk Like a Pirate Day, the idea for such a day was dreamed up in 1995 by a couple of Oregon guys and became an unofficial holiday after writer and humorist Dave Barry helped make it go viral. Now every year on September 19, people all over the world raise their cups of grog and shout, ' Aye, aye!' Well, in our imagination, at least.

啊！你能像海盗一样说话吗？

喂，伙计！今天是国际海盗日，所以我们向你们展示一座真正用来抵御海盗的堡垒。啊！这是勒卡斯特拉，意大利卡拉布里亚海岸上一座宏伟的堡垒。几个世纪以来，它一直是对抗交战国家和奥斯曼帝国猖獗的海盗的屏障。传说（还有什么好的海盗故事不是这样开始的？）在1536年，一个绰号为“红胡子”的阿尔及利亚海盗在欧洲的一次疯狂袭击中路过这里，对这座堡垒造成了严重破坏。看着这些岩石墙，很容易想象区域士兵与红胡子及其海盗船作战的情景。你能看到大炮开火吗？闻到烟味了吗？听到剑对剑的叮当声吗？

至于像海盗一样的谈话日，这一天的想法是1995年由俄勒冈州的两个家伙构想出来的，在作家兼幽默作家戴夫·巴里的帮助下，这一天成为了一个非官方的节日。现在，每年的9月19日，全世界的人们都会举起他们的酒杯，高呼“耶，耶！”至少在我们的想象中。