“Bastille Day” is how you say, “4th of July” in the metric system.

This video explains Bastille Day in less than 3 minutes.

America has the best party holidays because we have a day to misappropriate the culture of another country.  The event we commemorate doesn’t have to be significant in the country we parody, and the traditions don’t have to be authentic.  It’s a great system. 

The Irish get St. Patrick’s Day, Mexico gets Cinco de Mayo and France gets Bastille Day.

Every country should have a holiday to celebrate itself and to commemorate a defining historical event.  

In America, we have the 4th of July or more formally, Independence Day to commemorate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.  It established for the first time in world history a new nation based on the First Principles of the rule of law, unalienable rights, limited government, the Social Compact, equality, and the right to alter or abolish oppressive government.

In France, they have Bastille Day, which commemorates the storming of the Bastille in 1789.  By storming this mostly empty fortress-prison, the mob freed all seven prisoners.  Four of them were guilty of forgery, one was an Irish lunatic imprisoned at the request of his family, another was an assassin who tried to kill King Louise XV several decades before and one deviant aristocrat.

So, okay France, you go with the historical events that you’ve got.  It makes sense that the French refrain from calling it “Bastille Day”, and prefer the “French National Day”.