Dear Hypatia fans, Three days ago "Hypatia Day" petition reached 300 votes mark and I was preparing to share these news with you. But due to masterly advertisement by several friends at their websites, during Thursday and Friday alone, the petition gained extra 100 votes, so we are currently at 400+ votes. (Compare: the pace during the previous 11 months was 1 vote per day on average!) The current statistics stands as follows: 45 (11% of) signers are professional historians of astronomy and 10 (2.5%) are scientists of other professions. 35 countries are represented and five continents. Let me also share with you my vision of the petition's future. It might be bright -- though not necessarily in this year as I hoped a year ago. Last year I contacted UNESCO officials and understood them in a way that one country must accept Hypatia Day on the national level before it will be considered by UNESCO. Meantime, two Canadian MPs contacted me, though each has his/her own reason not to promote the petition. If I understood correctly, any MP has a right to argue a worthy case before the Canadian Parliament - once per two years. So someone should forsake his/her constituency and pick up this matter as his/her own, which is unlikely. Maybe Canada is not the best place to initiate the petition but it can be a starting point from where it may spread around the world. I offered our colleagues from Greece to initiate a similar petition but their response was lukewarm. On the other side, no one of us would be too eager to sign multiple petitions here and there, so we can deplete our forces this way. However, if someone knows MP in his/her country who can pick up the issue and bring it to the fruition, I shall pass him/her all the details of this venture: the arguments, the list of signers etc. N.B.! Today the rate of support dropped down to the pre-miracle level, so please consider a way to attract a new group of supporters to impress lawmakers by numbers. 500 votes within our reach and can be a good starting platform to realize the intermediate goal. Ari Belenkiy Vancouver BC Canada