Steve's Famous On This Day

The OK Corral 26 October

2005-10-26T09:15:00.000Z

On the morning of this day, 26 October, in 1881, a Wednesday, a 30 second long gun battle took place in lot 2, in block 17, behind the corral, in Tombstone, Arizona. In that brief thirty seconds, Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp, and Doc Holliday fought against Billy Claiborne, Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Billy Clanton, and Ike Clanton.

Both McLaurys and Billy Clanton were killed by some of the thirty shots that were fired and the gunfight at the OK Corral found its place in American history.

Like so much legend, especially American legend, the gunfight was in fact little more than the culmination of a sordid struggle for power between rival gangs. The Earps were seen by their enemies as badge-toting pimps who ruthlessly enforced the business interests of the town while the Clantons and their cowboy crowd were viewed by their enemies as cattle rustlers, thieves, and murderers. The likely truth is that both groups were a bunch of nasty self-seeking crooks who should all have been exposed on a hillside at birth.

The two groups would probably have continued in pointless bickering for years but two events took place which bought matters to a head.

In March 1881 there was a stagecoach robbery, in which two people were killed and the prime suspect escaped from jail. This, as everyone who has ever watched a Western film knows, was nothing new, and this event would probably have been forgotten except that, for some little understood reason, the improbably named tart ‘Big Nose Kate’, made accusations that her paramour, Doc Holliday, had robbed the stagecoach. Like many such women before and since, she later recanted.

Coincidentally, Wyatt Earp, a chum of Doc Holliday, was standing for election as sheriff of Cochise County. In a crass attempt to grab the moral high ground he decided to coerce Ike Clanton to help arrest some of the men accused in the robbery – and thereby get his pal Doc Holliday off the hook. Ike, knowing a wind-up when he saw one, decided not to take part.

These two events resulted in the animosity between the Earps and Clantons growing.

Bickering ensued and during the morning of October 26 reports of the cowboys going about the place toting guns were rife, with Ike Clanton saying he was going to shoot down the Earps.

Virgil Earp, ever the diplomat, decided to pour petrol on troubled waters and enforce the town's little used law which said that all firearms had to be checked in with local authorities. He decided to approach Ike Clanton's group to demand they give up their guns.

Accompanied by his brothers Morgan and Wyatt, and soon by Holliday, they strode (no doubt with that bow-legged gait much loved in westerns) to the vacant lot near the corral. Virgil Earp shouted "Throw your hands up, I want your guns" at which point everyone and his dog opened fire.

Virgil and Morgan were seriously wounded, while Holliday received minor wounds. Wyatt remained standing. Ike Clanton, who had pushed more than anyone else for a showdown, was, ironically, unarmed and ran away. Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers Frank and Tom were killed.

There you have it; a legend or just another tawdry day in the wild west?

St Crispins Day 25 October

2005-10-25T10:00:00.000Z

The 25th of October is St Crispins Day and on this day in 1415, Henry V, King of England, together with 1000 men-at-arms, 5000 archers and a couple of thousand armed peasants gave the flower of French aristocracy and an army of around 12000 a rattling good biffing at the battle of Agincourt.

Henry's success has been attributed to the success of his archers, armed with the immensely powerfull longbow and armour-piercing bodkin tipped arrows against the heavily armoured French. We English know that in fact, this, the greatest victory in English history, was achieved by simply having at the, to quote Mr Simpson, "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".

I believe that old Bill Shakespeare's rendition of Henry's stirring tonic for the troops said it better than I ever could:

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

The Most Famous Song In The World. 12 October

2005-10-12T15:46:00.000Z

On this day, 12 October in 1609,probably the most famous song ever written was published by Thomas Ravenscroft, an English composer, theorist and editor. He is best known (although never very well known) as a composer of rounds and for compiling collections of folk music.

Some of the music he compiled has acquired astonishing fame, even though his name is rarely, if ever, associated with it. His most famous piece was published in a collection of works entitled Deuteromelia. He published also a book of psalms as well as two other collections of songs. Many of his works are now long forgotten but they include 11 anthems, 3 motets for five voices and four fantasias for viols.

Three Blind Mice, see how they run.

The Great Hurricane of 1870 10 October

2005-10-10T10:00:00.001Z

Whilst no-one would wish to under-estimate the havoc caused by the recent hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Stan, spare a thought for this day, 10 October, in 1870 when the 'Great Hurricane of 1870' (this was in the days before hurricanes were given friendly names like Stan or Ida) smashed its way through the Caribbean. The 'Great Hurricane of 1870' was reckoned to be the deadliest hurricane of all time. There is no accurate figure of the number killed in the storm but about 22,000 people died when the storm swept over Martinique, St. Eustatius and Barbados between October 10 and October 16. Thousands more were killed at sea.

The historians amongst you will recall that 1870 was the middle of the American Revolution and, as a consequence, British and French fleets that were contesting for control of the area were very heavily damaged. The British fleet commanded by Admiral George Rodney, which was en route from New York to the West Indies, was dispersed by the storm. Only 12 ships eventually arrived at Barbados and eight of 12 surviving warships were a write-off and their crews were mostly drowned.

The British sent someone to survey the damage and he found that the destruction was so great that he (mistakenly) assumed that an earthquake had occurred at the same time as the storm. Barbados was almost completely leveled and almost every family living on the island lost a family member in the storm.

So don't come moaning to me about them Delta blues.

The Boys Brigade 4 October

2005-10-04T09:47:00.000Z

On this day, 4 October, in 1883, the first ever Company of the Boys Brigade was formed by Sir William Alexander Smith at the Free Church Mission Hall, North Woodside Road, Glasgow. The Boys Brigade was the earliest of all youth organisations and was set up as a non-denominational Christian youth organization. Initially, the Brigade was based on military traditions and a simple rosette was worn as an identifying uniform. This was later replaced by the simple use of a belt, haversack and pillbox cap (a popular military cap of the day) worn over the boys' everyday clothing. The pillbox cap was used into the 1960s, long after it had fallen out of use in the British Army, when it was replaced with a field cap.

The Brigade was one of the earliest organisations that promoted camping for leisure - an activity that was previously rarely used outside the military. An early admirer of the Brigade was Lord Baden-Powell who as Vice President of the Boy's Brigade used it alongside initiatives in schools, particularly Eton, to promote the idea of scouting and outdoor pursuits and early examples of scouting were seen in Boys' Brigade scouting awards and Baden Powell latter and even specialized Boys' Brigade Scout sections who wore a blue uniform with shorts and the distinctive 'Smokey Bear' hat traditionally identified with the Scouts that Baden-Powell later went on to form.

The Boys' Brigade motto is "Sure and Steadfast" and the old logo is an anchor placed over a Greek Cross. Although now fairly rare, there are still to be found a few older images of the motto in which the motto is spelled "Sure and Stedfast". The anchor comes from a phrase in The Bible, from the Epistle to the Hebrews, Chapter 6, Verse 19: 'Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast'. The Greek cross, sometimes referred to as the Geneva cross in the style of that used by the Red Cross, was added when the Brigade merged with the Boys' Life Brigade in the 1920s. The modern version of the Boys' Brigade logo is a very sad looking 'BB' in a box - a masterpiece of dullness for what was once a hugely dynamic organisation.

Hung Drawn and Quartered 3 October

2005-10-03T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 3 October, in 1283, the last native Welsh Prince of Wales, Dafydd ap Gruffydd, had imposed upon him the dubious honour of becoming the first person in history to suffer the punishment of being "hanged, drawn and quartered" for treason against 'Longshanks' - King Edward I. The execution of Dafydd effectively ended Welsh independance and left Edward free to concentrate on biffing the rebelious Scots. William Wallace suffered a similar fate twenty years later.

To be hanged, drawn and quartered was the penalty reserved for treason. It was introduced by Longshanks because treason was deemed more heinous than murder and other capital crimes - this remained the view of subsequent Monarchs for six centuries (Monarchs are, as you all know, noted liberals). The punishment was reserved for male traitors - women found guilty of treason in England were let off lightly and merely burnt at the stake. The extraordinarily cruel punishment of hanging drawing and quartering was finally abolished in England in 1870, whilst burning at the stake was abolished in 1790.

The punishment, for those of you who don't know, was designed as much for deterence as punishment.

The hapless culprit was:

Dragged on a hurdle (a wooden frame) to the place of execution.
Hung by the neck, but taken down before death.
Disembowelled, and the genitalia and entrails burned before the victim's eyes. The heart was the last organ to be removed and was shown to the victim before the entrails were burned.
Beheaded and the body divided into four parts (quartered).
Typically, the resulting five parts (i.e., the four quarters of the body and the head) were gibbetted (put on public display) in different parts of the city or town to deter other would-be traitors.

Apart from Dafydd ap Gruffydd, other famous victims of this punishment include Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot to assassinate James I, and Edward Marcus Despard and his six accomplices for plotting to assassinate George III.

And people moan about ASBOs.

Mad Cows and Englishmen - Michaelmass Madness 29 September

2005-09-29T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, the 29 September (Michaelmass Day) in 1997 British scientists established a link between a human brain disease and one found in cows. The stunning conclusion of two major studies was that a new version of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (vCJD), was caused by eating BSE-infected meat. At that time 21 people in the UK were suffering from the disease. I have written elsewhere on the early causes of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow disease" and the studies proved that the two diseases were caused by the same infectious protein. It was also discovered that the risk of humans becoming infected with vCJD depended on their having a genetic makeup that included a combination of genes called "M-M".

On this day in 1997 there had already been 18 human deaths from vCJD. Two months after these findings, a selective cull of cattle at most risk to the disease was started, and a 'beef on the bone' ban introduced. Since then there have been 139 deaths due to vCJD and there are 5 people who are still alive who are known to be dying of the illness. There are still an unknown number of people who may be incubating the disease - conceivably as many as the 32% of the population of Britain (about 19 million people) who have the "M-M" gene combination - but numbers have been declining since a peak in 2000. Hundreds of thousands of cattle have been culled to try and eradicate the disease.

Bells of Balanggiga

2005-09-28T10:00:00.000Z

At Warren Air Force base outside Cheyenne, in the USA, there are two bells. The bells were taken as war booty from the church in Balanggiga, in Samar, in the Philippine Islands by US forces in retaliation for an uprising that took place there on this day, 28 September 1901, during the Philippine-American war.

There are, differing accounts of what actually took place. US historians, mainly in the person of one Joseph L. Schott, give a colourful account of Filipino mothers smuggling machetes about the village in coffins, small boys giving the signal to attack the defenceless American soldiers whilst they ate breakfast and American soldiers being mercilessly wiped out by hordes of vicious screaming Filipino madmen, armed to the teeth with bolo knives, picks and shovels - a massacre in other words. Others have questioned this view and suggested instead that the uprising was simply an ongoing part of the, largely guerilla, Filipino attempt at achieving liberation and Statehood and some have stated the view that the townspeople of Balanggiga rose up out of fear under the US occupation of their town.

If you were to ask yourself what you would do under similar circumstances you might, I suspect, be able to guess at the truth.

What seems to be nearest to the truth is that Company C of the US 9th Infantry were occupying the town at the time and Valeriano Abanador, the police chief, initiated the attack by assaulting Private Adolph Gamlin, who was on guard. Some undetermined time after this, a bell in the church tower was rung - which may or may not have been a signal for the other townsfolk to join battle.

Abanador grabbed Gamlin's rifle and as he did so, two other men killed the guards outside the convent and municipal hall. Other townspeople, armed with machetes, picks and shovels, (against the infantry's rifles) collapsed the US army's Sibley tents that were pitched in front of the municipal hall, entered the hall and made their way to the second floor. At the same time, other men in the church broke through into the convent through a connecting corridor and attacked and killed the officers who were billeted there. At the same time, an attack on the mess tent and the two barracks got underway.

This is where the plan came unstuck. With their meagre forces split into three, the townspeople had too few attackers to ensure success.

Some of the US soldiers who had been penned up in the barracks, were able to retake the municipal hall, arm themselves and fight back. At about the same time, Adolph Gamlin recovered consciousness, found a rifle and caused considerable casualties among the people outside the municipal hall.

Faced with immensely superior firepower (i.e. guns) and a rapidly degrading attack, Abanador ordered a retreat. The 9th Infantry survivors, being in insufficient numbers to hold the town, escaped by sea, after which the townspeople returned to bury their dead, then abandoned the town.

36 US soldiers were killed during the attack (including all of the commissioned officers). 26 US infantry men survived although only 4 were not wounded. On the townspeoples' side, there were 28 deaths and 22 were wounded.

Public demand in the U.S. for retaliation became a major issue, so President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the pacification of Samar. In six months, General 'Jake' Smith transformed Balanggiga into a 'howling wilderness.' He ordered his men to kill anybody capable of carrying arms, including ten-year-old boys. Smith particularly ordered Major Littleton Waller to punish the people of Samar for the deaths of the American troops. His exact orders were: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn, the better you will please me."

On or about October 25th, the 11th Infantry took two of the town's bells, these, according to Schotts account being the device that was used to launch a co-ordinated attack, and returned with them to the United States in 1904 to then-Fort Russell (now AFB Warren). The bells were finally abandoned there in 1913. A third, smaller bell, (probably the one that was rung during the uprising), according to Jim Beane, a former 9th Infantry sergeant, was later crated up and sent to Madison Barracks in New York. It is now with the 9th Infantry in Korea.

The Phillippine government have made repeated attempts to have the bells returned with no succces.

Probably becauase the US won, neither General Smith nor Major Waller were ever bought to account for war crimes - which is a bit of a surprise - to say the least.

Balanggiga - Massacre or just part of a heroic bid for freedom - what do you think?

Yanks Biffed at Pulang Lupa 13 September

2005-09-13T10:00:00.000Z

In December 1898, the U.S. purchased the Philippines and other territories from Spain at the Treaty of Paris for 20 million US dollars. The US had plans to make the Philippines an American colony - which is a bit of a cheek for a nation that was and is, supposedly, against colonialism.

The people of the Philippines, who had had been fighting for their independence from Spain since 1896, rightly, had a different idea, and had already declared their independence on June 12. The US response, was to send, on August 14, 11,000 ground troops to occupy the Philippines. This was the start of The Philippine-American War and 129,000 more US troops were soon to follow. (We might ask, a century later, if the US has learned anything at all from history?)

On this day, September 13, in 1900 at Pulang Lupa, which is in Torrijos on Marinduque island in the Philippines, resistance fighters and guerrillas led by Colonel Maximo Abad inflicted a crushing defeat on a detachment of the US 29th Infantry, who were commanded by Captain Devereux Shields. The battle began when Abad and his men surrounded the infantrymen and fired a volley into the soldiers. Shields, realising that he was almost completely surrounded, ordered a retreat. But before his forces got far, Colonel Abad led a charge against the Americans. The result of the charge was a short but extremely vicious hand to hand fight, with Abad's men making use of their native machete - the bolo. The Americans took very heavy casualties, and retreated further. The guerrillas pursued and harried the Americans as they fled. The battle lasted all that day and into the early morning of the next day, when Captain Shields and his surviving men attempted to surrender en masse. But as they did, Abads men fired upon them and hacked them up with bolo knives. Many experts consider this the most bloody engagement of the war. Unfortunately, while it was undoubtedly one of only a few confidence-boosting victories for the Filipinos, it could not avert the inevitable defeat, which came, finally in 1913.

A very nasty, unnecessary and bloody war, the US lost some 4,324 American soldiers with 2,818 wounded. The Philippine Constabulary - in support of the US occupation, suffered 2,000 casualties, of which over a thousand were fatalities. In contrast, the Philippine military deaths are estimated at 20,000, while civilian deaths numbered around 1,000,000. The high casualty figures suffered by the people of the Philippines were due mostly to the superior arms and numbers of the Americans who were utterly merciless in suppressing what they viewed as an insurrection.

I wonder, if the US had not have won (since history is written by the victors), would the world have called this genocide?

Olaf Tryggvason, King of Vikings 9 September

2005-09-09T10:00:00.000Z

There was once an island in the Baltic called Svolder (or Swold in modern English). Its exact location is now unknown because, in the course of a thousand years the coastline of the Baltic has altered enormousely and parts of the sea have silted up. As far as anyone knows, its most likely position was near Rügen, on the North German Coast.

On this day, 9 September, 1000, a sea battle took place there between the Norwegian Vikings, led by the great Norwegian mythic hero King Olaf Tryggvason and his enemies Eric Hakonson, his cousin and rival; Olaf, the king of Sweden; Sweyn Forkbeard, king of Denmark and the King of the Wends, Hallfred Ottarson.

The Icelandic sagas are the only source that retell the events of this great and tragic moment in viking history. During the summer, Olaf Tryggvason had been in the eastern Baltic with his fleet, biffing the Latvians.

Olaf's enemies, jealous of his power and great skill as a leader in battle, lay in wait for him at the island of Swold. Unbeknown to Olaf, they were intending to ambush him on his way home for the winter. Olaf's fleet sailed past the anchorage of Eric Hakonson in a long column - Olaf had parted earlier in the year on good terms so no attack was expected. Olaf was in the rear of his column in his great longship the Long Serpent. Olaf's enemies allowed the bulk of the Norwegian ships to pass, and then stood out to attack, hoping to catch Olaf's ship alone.

Olaf and his fleet could have escaped by the use of sail and oar, but with the true viking spirit he turned to give battle with the eleven ships immediately about him. Olaf lashed his ships together, side by side. His own, the Long Serpent, the finest war-vessel yet built in the north, was in the middle of the line, where her bows projected beyond the others. The idea was to leave all hands free to fight in a floating fort. Barriers were thrown up using oars and yards, limiting severely the enemy's routes of attack.

The Danes and Swedes rushed with 60 longships at the front of Olaf's line but with no success. Eric Hakonson attacked the flank. His vessel, the Iron Ram, was strengthened across the bows with bands of iron, and he forced his longship between the last and last but one of Olaf's line - overpowering the outer longship. He then rowed around and repeated the manouvre until, after many hours of combat, Olaf's ship, the Long Serpent alone was left.

At last, after fearsome hand to hand fighting. the Long Serpent too was overpowered. At that last, crucial moment, as his enemies pressed him about trying to capture him for ransom, a sudden blaze of vivid white light surrounded the king, blinding his enemies. Olaf, red with the blood of the slain, leapt into the sea, clasping his shield edgeways to his chest. He sank at once as the weight of his hauberk dragged him down and when at last the light faded, Olaf had disappeared forever below the heaving waves.

When the saga was told, the people would not believe that Olaf had died and looked ever to sea for his return.

So died Olaf Tryggvason, King of Vikings.

V-2 Rocket Hits London 8 September

2005-09-08T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 8 September, 1944, the first V-2 rocket was fired at London. The V-2 rocket (which gets its name from the German 'Vergeltungswaffe 2' or "reprisal weapon 2", was an early ballistic missile used by Germany during the later stages of World War II against mostly British and Belgian targets. The Germans had been developing the weapon since as early as 1927 and the V-2 was put into production in 1943. Our chaps were already aware of the weapon because an earlier test at Blizna in Poland, a fired missile had been recovered by Polish resistance agents from the banks of the Western Bug, and the details had passed on to British intelligence.

The British, in an attempt to delay the construction of the weapon, launched a massive bombing campaign against Peenemunde which, although successful, also killed many slave workers.

Most of the engineers involved in the project were keen on a mobile launch system, but, luckily for us, Hitler pressed for the construction of massive underground launch complexes. Adolf's grand plan was to have the rockets produced at dozens of factories which could be shipped to the launch sites in a continuous stream by rail and launched immediately. Bonkers, of course, every time a launch site was started our chaps bombed it out of existence, sometimes while the concrete was still wet. This delayed development considerably. Eventually, Adolf gave in and a mobile launch system was developed from which the missile could be launched practically anywhere, roads running though forests being a particular favourite. The system was so mobile and small that not one Meillerwagen was ever caught in action.

V-2 mass production took place at the Mittelwerk tunnel system under the Kohnstein mountain, part of the Mittelbau-Dora slave labour camp complex, near Nordhausen, Germany. Fatalities among the slave labourers was staggering, over 100 died every day and the majority of the slaves were Russian, Polish and French, although there were also prisoners of war, foreign workers and Germans forced to compulsory work.

When in full swing, 3172 V-2s were fired, of which 1402 were fired at England, with 1358 of them landing on London. Unlike the V1 Flying Bomb (or Buzz Bomb, as it was known), which made a characteristic buzzing sound, the V-2 traveled faster than the speed of sound, with no warning before impact and no possibility of defence. However, apart from the psychological effect, the V-2 was militarily ineffective. Its guidance systems were too primitive, each one cost as much as a four-engined bomber, which was more accurate, had a longer range, carried many more warheads, and was (providing our brave boys didn't shoot them from the sky) reusable.

Nevertheless, in all, 7000 civilians were killed in London by V-2 rockets.

After the war, Von Braun, who was the designer, went to work for the US Army. He became the father of almost all US rocketry, working on the Redstone, Jupiter, Jupiter-C, Pershing, and Saturn rockets. So that's alright then.

The Blitz 7 September

2005-09-07T22:00:00.000Z

On this day, 7 September, in 1940, Nazi Germany started an aerial bombardment of Britain. Centred initially around the Docks situated in the East End of London, by the end of the war in 1945 the 'Blitz', as it became known, had inflicted around 43,000 deaths. Additionally, over a million houses were destroyed and 'bombsites' were still a part of Britains urban landscape until the early 1980s. Nevertheless, the Blitz failed to achieve the Germans' strategic objectives of knocking Britain out of the war or rendering it unable to resist an invasion. - So jolly hard cheese Adolf, you beastly, cabbage-eating swine!

The first raid on 7 September involved 300 bombers escorted by 600 fighters. A further 180 bombers attacked that night. Sadly, because of the inaccurate nature of bombing at the time, many of the bombs aimed at the docks fell on neighbouring residential areas, killing 430 Londoners and injuring another 1,600. This was a pattern that continued until mid-November 1940, with an average of 200 bombers attacking London almost every night.

By February 1941, when the Blitz still hadn't acheived its objective of bringing dear old Blighty to its knees, the focus of activity changed. (For those of you who are experts in such things, one of the major tenants of war-winning doctrine is 'maintenance of aim', which, luckily for us, young Mr Hitler didn't learn when he was at school - no doubt because of his all-consuming passion for painting houses and dressing up in strange outfits.) Anyway, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, well known German nautical type, persuaded Adolf to switch the focus of the campaign and attack British ports in support of the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler, being the sort of chap he was - always happy to oblige a sailor - issued a directive on 6 February ordering the Luftwaffe to concentrate its efforts on ports.

That pretty much blew his chances, especially since the plucky Brits had by now come up with the Bristol Beaufighter, mounted with airborne radar systems, ground-based radar systems that guided night fighters to their targets, and an increasing number of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights that were radar-controlled. The tide was turning against the Bosch and the Luftwaffe's losses mounted. Finally, with the impending invasion of Russia requiring the movement of air power to the East, the Blitz was wound down in May 1941. Hurrah!

We shouldn't forget though, that Adolf was a multi-faceted chap (for a murderous dictator, that is) and, whilst Blitzing our brave East-enders, he was also orchastrating the Treaty of Craiova between Romania and Bulgaria. The treaty, signed on 7 September 1940, forced Romania to give the southern part of Dobrogea (the Cadrilater) to Bulgaria and to participate in the organization of a 'population exchange'. 88,000 Romanians and Aromanians were forced to abandon their houses in southern Dobrogea to move north while 65,000 Bulgarians had to move south.

Ethnic cleansing by bomb or bullet - all one to your thorough-going tyrant.

The Great Fire of London 2 September

2005-09-02T10:00:00.000Z

On this day in 1666, a man called Thomas Farrinor, who was a baker to King Charles II and lived in Pudding Lane, in London retired for the evening. Some time, shortly after midnight, smouldering embers from the oven, which Farrinor had not properly extinguished earlier, set alight some nearby firewood. In London at that time, most buildings, including Farrinors bakery, were constructed of highly combustible materials like wood and straw and so a fire quickly took hold. Farrinor and his family managed to escape the burning building by climbing out through an upstairs window. The baker's housemaid failed to escape and was burned to death. A neighbour called Samuel Pepys was woken by the fire at around 1am.

Within an hour of the fire starting, the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, was woken with the news. He declared that "a woman might piss it out." Sadly, Sir Thomas was mistaken - the fire consumed a staggering 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, 6 chapels, 44 Company Halls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, St Paul's Cathedral, the Guildhall, the Bridewell Palace and other City prisons, the Session House, four bridges across the rivers Thames and Fleet, and three city gates, and made homeless 100,000 people, one sixth of the city's inhabitants at that time. Incredibly only 16 people died.

A writer at the time said: "Then the city did shake indeed, and the inhabitants did tremble, and flew away in great amazement from their houses, lest the flames should devour them: rattle, rattle, rattle, was the noise which the fire struck upon the ear round about, as if there had been a thousand iron chariots beating upon the stones. You might see the houses tumble, tumble, tumble, from one end of the street to the other, with a great crash, leaving the foundations open to the view of the heavens."

It is beleived that the destructive fury of this fire was never exceeded in any part of the world, by any fire originating in an accident. Within the walls of the City, it consumed almost five-sixths of the whole city; and outside the walls it cleared a space nearly as extensive as the one-sixth part left unburnt within. Hardly a single building was left standing. Public buildings, churches, and houses - all gone.

2 September 1666 - The Great Fire of London.

World Created 1 September

2005-09-01T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 1st September, 5509 BC the world was created. At least, if you are a member of one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, today is definitely the day. On the other hand, in the western churches, Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC was the big day. For Jews, a certain ambiguity is acceptable and either Elul 25, AM 1 or Adar 25, AM 1 could be correct. It all comes down to how you decide to interpret the Book of Genesis in which a description is given of how God created the world - in six days. In this account, God also is supposed to have created the first human, a man named Adam. Genesis goes on to list a number of Adam's descendants, in many cases giving the ages at which they had children and died. If these events and ages are interpreted literally, it is possible to build up a chronology in which many of the events of the Old Testament are dated to an estimated number of years after the Creation. Over the years people have matched this Biblical chronology with recorded history and established a date for the Creation in a modern calendar. Unfortunately, there are periods in the Biblical story where dates are not given which has, not surprisingly, resulted in a variety of estimates of the date of Creation.

The two dominant dates for Biblical Creation using these estimates place the dates in about 5500 BC or about 4000 BC. Why the two dates? Well, astonishingly, there are two versions of the Word of God and most of the difference arise from two different versions of the Book of Genesis. The oldest version was translated into Greek from the Hebrew Torah during the third century BC and is known as the first book of the Septuagint. It was used by Jews until about 100AD, then by all Christians until 405AD, then by the Byzantines until 1453. This version is still used by the Orthodox churches.

The newer was a revision of the Torah by Jews in about 100AD, and is still used by all Jews today. Jerome translated this book into Latin and it is known as the first book of the Vulgate. From then it has been used by all Western Christians, who split into Roman Catholics and Protestants beginning in 1517.

Basically, the differences are down to the ages of various patriarchs from Adam to the father of Abraham. (For those who are interested in this stuff see Genesis 5, 11). The resulting difference between the two genealogies was 1466 years which is, for the bright sparks among you, almost all of the difference between 5500 BC and 4000 BC.

So there you have it. Just a couple of other slight difficulties with this idea, for a start off, according to Hindus, the universe undergoes endless cycles of creation each lasting exactly 4,320,000 years. The current universe is believed to have been created 3,893,100 years ago (and the earth with it) and is expected to dissolve in 426,900 years from now. What is more, the Mayan calendar dates the Earth to August 11 or August 13, 3114 BC.

Some of us, tend to need a slightly more scientific approach to figuring all of this out - dodgy translations of old fables being a tad to 'open to interpretation' and for those, the age of the Earth is considered to be 4.55 billion years - based upon dating of mineral crystal deposits and meteorites.

Of course, if you are of a different persuasion altogether, you might remember September 1st as the day Cetshwayo ascended to the throne as king of the Zulu nation following the death of his father Mpande in 1873 - or some such other momentous event.

The Gleiwitz Incident 31 August

2005-08-31T10:00:00.000Z

Detractors from the recent Anglo-American adventure in Iraq point to the inescapable fact that the reasons given to the public for starting the conflict proved to be false. In a nutshell, the much-hyped danger from Iraq's supposed possesion of huge numbers of 'weapons of mass destruction' proved to be an utter falacy. It will be the job of historians in the future to examine the details of the evidence, once it is released from the confines of official secrecy, to decide how much or how little the politicians of the day were 'bending' the truth to suit some higher political goal.

In a different time, in a different war, for very different motives, a different tale was told. In 1939 Nazi Germany was fairly keen to expand their aggresive plans for the domination and subjugation of Europe and find a reason to attack neighbouring Poland - ("nasty Polish agressors, stealing German land, threatening national security, weapons of mass destruction, etc. etc" - you know the sort of thing) - and in a series of incidents known collectively as 'Operation Himmler' they attempted to justify to the world an invasion of Poland. On this day, 31 August, in 1939, the main event was staged - the Gleiwitz incident, which was an attack against a German radio station in Gleiwitz (in Polish: Gliwice). Gliwice is in Polish Silesia close to the German border.

The Gleiwitz incident was organised by Alfred Naujocks who was under orders from Reinhard Heydrich. Naujocks was assisted by Heinrich Müller, the chief of Gestapo. A small group of Gestapo seized the station and broadcast a message inciting Poles resident in Silesia to strike against Germans. (This message was, of course recorded and played to the worlds press as evidence of the aggresive intent of the non-existant Polish insurgents who were supposedly threatening Nazi Germany's security).

Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian, who was a known sympathizer with the Poles was arrested by the Gestapo on 30 August. He was given a lethal injection (Why this was done I have no idea). He was then punctured by a number of gunshot wounds and left dead at the radio station as evidence that he had been killed while attacking. Of course, questions like who, in the wide, wide world of sport, would be defending against a possible attack on a tiny radio station didn't get asked. Nevertheless, the attack was supposed to represent an attack by Polish insurgents. Strangely, the "attackers" (including Honiok) did not wear Polish military uniforms.

On 1 September, Hitler was able to announce in the Reichstag that there had been 21 border incidents in total, including three very serious ones - one of which was the Gleiwitz incident. These were used as the excuse for the "defensive" attack that had been launched earlier that morning against Poland.

We, the British, being less susceptable to dodgy flim-flam about bogus dangers to national security, didn't believe Mr Hitler - thank goodness!

Wireless Wins Wars 30 August

2005-08-30T10:00:00.001Z

Regular readers of these articles will recall an earlier post about the development of the wireless. Many of you, will, like me, feel also that the wireless is probably the greatest boon to civilisation since the invention of the chair. However, it does have it's drawbacks. On this day, 30 August, in 1914, these drawbacks were writ large on the world stage - for the first time.

In the first days of World War I, The Russian 1st and 2nd Armies and the German Eighth Army were limbering up for a major punch-up in the forests around Königsberg, East Prussia. Initially, the Russians did fairly well, and the Russian armies crossed into East Prussia, had at the Germans and the battle went in favour of the Russians. The German commander, General Maximilian von Prittwitz, came up with a cunning plan - run away. However, he was sacked before he abandoned the whole of East Prussia to the Russians.

It was at this point that the German replacement commander, Max Hoffmann, realised that the Russian army, in a revolutionary leap forward in the use of technology in warfare, was using wireless to transmit their attack plans to their forward commanders. Unfortunately, they hadn't completely thought through the idea and had not encrypted the messages. It turned out that the Russians believed that, even if the Germans managed to eavesdrop on their transmissions, the Germans would not have access to Russian translators and therefore would not realise the significance of the message contents. However, the Germans easily intercepted and translated the transmissions and as a consequence were able to anticipate the Russians' every move.

Hoffmann's plan left a screening force to delay the Russian 1st Army led by General Paul von Rennenkampf which was approaching from the east, and set a trap for the Russian 2nd Army led by General Alexander Samsonov which was moving up from the south. Hoffman, allowed the 2nd Army to advance, and then cut them off from their supply route - the old pincer movement much loved by film makers. This produced the almost complete destruction of the 2nd Army near Frogenau.

Rather than report the loss of his army to the Tsar, General Samsonov committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The German victory compelled the Russians to remain on the defensive along the German front for the rest of the war.

General Erich Ludendorff, the chief of staff, dated the official dispatch reporting the victory from the nearby village of Tannenberg (Stębark), and the battle is thus known to history as the Battle of Tannenberg.

Wireless - what a let down.

Age of Chivalry Ends 26 August

2005-08-26T10:00:00.000Z

This day, the 26th August, in 1346, the Age of Chivalry ended. The day of the Knight in shining armour was done. It happened, as did so many things that altered the course of civilisation, on a battlefield in France, near Crécy-en-Ponthieu, in an area that gave its name to later notorious battles - the Somme. The Battle of Crécy was, probably the defining combat of arms of the Hundred Years' War. It was a turning point in history because it was the moment when a new armament, the longbow used en masse, was used with utterly devastating effect to cut down hitherto undefeated armoured knights. It was also the first battle where prisoners and wounded were dispatched contrary to chivalric codes of warfare, (ie, if they were badly wounded and hence too expensive to care for and if they had no ransom value) and the illustrious noble cavalry was no longer undefeatable by infantry.

Edward III of England, having succesfully trounced the Jocks, had decided to pop over to France and, whilst topping up on his duty-free, give Philip VI of France a bit of a talking to about handing back one or two bits of Normandy - a sort of "your garden fence seems to have moved itself halfway across my garden" type of discussion. Phil was unimpressed and responded with a galic "up yours, Rosbiff"

So to battle. Edward very cleverly chose a battlefield where he reasoned his 12,000 Englishmen might stand a chance of defending themselves against the 40,000 French who had turned out to give them a slapping. Edward III ordered that everybody should fight on foot and split his army into three groups. His sixteen-year-old son, Edward, the Black Prince, was to command one of them. Edward had a secret weapon - longbowmen recruited from his Welsh dominions. These were peasants who could speak neither French nor English. Edward arrayed them in a V-formation along the crest of the hill. While the French were doing their hair, polishing up their armour, eating snails and swilling wine, the English built a system of ditches, pits and caltrops to maim and bring down the enemy cavalry.

French crossbowmen opened the batting; they launched a shower of volleys to disorganize and frighten the English infantry. This attack was accompanied by the sound of musical instruments, brought by Philip VI to scare the enemy. However, the crossbowmen failed. They could, at best only fire off 3 to 5 volleys a minute and they were no match for the longbowmen, who could fire 10 to 12 arrows in the same period of time. Worse still, the crossbows were hopeless in the wet and had been damaged by a shower that occurred just before the battle. The longbowmen avoided harm to their weapons by simply unstringing their bows until the weather improved. What's more the music was rubbish. Frightened and confused the crossbowmen retreated with heavy losses.

The French noble cavalry, having got very cross with "L'opeless crossbowmen" decided it was time for them to have a bash. However, the obstacles that the English had built while the French were smoking their Galoise slowed the charge to a shambolic hack. At the same time, the Welsh peasants discharged a curtain of arrows on the knights - the bodkin arrowheads ripping through the French armour. The French took frightful losses and at nightfall, Philip VI, himself wounded, ordered retreat. The result was a humiliating defeat for France. The French lost about 12000 men and the English, by unreliable accounts of the time, about 150. Hooray for our brave English boys!!

After the French ran away, the Welsh and English checked the wounded French to see who was worth taking prisoner for ransom. Those knights who were too severely wounded were polished off with misericordias (mercy-givers) which are long daggers inserted through the unprotected underarms and in to the heart. This was a shocking departure from the chivalric code of warfare - never before had peasants been allowed to kill a knight and never before had knights died from anonymous arrows. Thus endeth the Chivalric Age.

Channel Swimmer 25 August

2005-08-25T10:00:00.000Z

In Dawley, Shropshire there is erected a memorial on which the inscription reads: "Nothing great is easy". The memorial was erected in 1909 by Thomas Webb, to commemorate the exploits of Dawleys most famous son, his brother Captain Mathew Webb who, on this day, 25 August, in 1875, successfully arrived in Calais, France having dived from the Admiralty Pier at Dover, England some 22 hours earlier. In doing so, Captain Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel without the use of 'artificial aids' (waterwings?).

Even before his attempt to swim the English Channel, Mathew Webb was famous for aquatic exploits of 'daring do'. For example, whilst serving as second mate on the Cunard ship 'Russia', which plied between New York and Liverpool, he attempted to rescue a man overboard by diving into the sea in mid-Atlantic. Sadly the overboard man was never found. Although Webb swam around for more than half-an-hour, he found only the young man's cap. Nevertheless, Webb's brave attempt made him a hero of the British press and won him an award of £100 and the Stanhope Gold Medal. (The Stanhope Gold Medal is the Royal Humane Society's top award and Webb was the first person ever to win it. The Stanhope Medal is named after a 19th century aristocrat, Chandos Scudamore Scudamore Stanhope.)

Having been inspired, whilst serving as captain on the steamship 'Emerald' by the failed channel swimming attempt of J. B. Johnson in 1873, Webb decided to have a go himself. His first attempt, on 12 August 1875 was thwarted by strong winds and poor sea conditions and he was forced to abandon the swim. However, undeterred, on 24 August 1875 he tried again. Backed by three chase boats and smeared in porpoise oil, (for luck, presumably), he set off into the ebb tide. Despite stings from jellyfish and strong currents he finally, after 21 hours and 45 minutes, landed near Calais.

After this, Captain Webb was a celebrity, he licensed his name for merchandising such items as commemorative pottery and match box covers. He also wrote a book entitled The Art of Swimming. He participated in exhibition swimming matches and stunts such as floating in a tank of water for 128 hours. His final stunt, was to attempt to swim across the Niagara River at the base of Niagara Falls - a feat widely held to be impossible. So it proved to be. At 4.25pm on 24 July 1883 he jumped into the river and within 10 minutes he had become caught in the current and was dragged under by a whirlpool. His body was found four days later. Captain Mathew Webb, brave but bonkers.

The Crisp 24 August

2005-08-24T10:00:00.000Z

Today, the 24th of August, is the anniversary of that great day in 1853 when the potato crisp was invented. For those amongst you who have a burning need for clear terminology, let me spend a moment clarifying. Crisps (in English) are are a snack food made from potatoes cut into very thin slices, deep fried or baked until crisp, and then served. Chips are the larger, chewier fried potato sticks. In the United States, chips are called 'French Fries' and crisps are called chips. In New Zealand, Australia and South Africa chips and crisps are referred to as chips.

The original crisp was created by a Native American chef called George Crum, at the Moon Lake Lodge restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York. Mr Crum had a customer, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was a millionaire and a director of the Long Island Rail Road. (Mr Vanderbilt was generally perceived as a vulgar, mean-spirited individual who made life miserable for everyone around him, including his family. In his will, for example, he disowned his sons except for William who was by many accounts as ruthless a cove as his father. At the time of his death, Cornelius Vanderbilt's fortune was estimated at more than $100,000,000. Vanderbilt's most famous statement was on the subject of charitable giving, which he didn't believe in - "The public be damned" he said with a chummy sort of snarl.)

Anyway, Vanderbilt was, apparently a professional whinger when it came to chips - he continually sent his chips back complaining that they were too thick or too soggy. Eventually, the exasperated George Crum, rather than lodge a hatchet in Vanderbilt's bonce, decided to slice the potatoes so thin that they couldn't be eaten with a fork. Astonishingly, Vanderbilt was ecstatic about the chips (well, let's face it, you don't have much else to worry about if you're a multi-millionaire). The crisps became a regular item on the menu under the name "Saratoga Chips". They soon became popular throughout New England.

Mass marketing crisps became popular in the 1920s when the mechanical potato peeler was invented by Herman Lay, a traveling salesman from the southern United States, who was the founder of the 'Lay' bit of 'Frito Lay' who now own the brands Fritos, Doritos, Cheetos, Ruffles, Lay's, Funyuns, Rold Gold Pretzels, Lay's Stax, Baken-Ets (pork rinds), Tostitos, Munchos, Sun Chips, Munchies, Walkers, and others. Frito Lay is now owned by PepsiCo. Interestingly, before the airtight sealed bag came along, crisps were stored in barrels or tins. Sadly, this meant that the crisps at the bottom were often stale and damp (Yuch!!!). Luckily for today's generation of bulging, rotund teenagers, Laura Scudder invented the crisp bag by ironing together two pieces of wax paper, thereby creating an airtight seal, which keeps the crisps fresh until opened. Hooray!

William Wallace Executed 23 August

2005-08-23T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 23 August in 1305, William Wallace was executed as a traitor to King Edward I of England. In his defence, Wallace is reported to have said, "I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject."

William Wallace was 'a half-welsh, half-scot' commoner and by a strange turn of events led a Scots resistance to English domination in the reign of King Edward I. In 1286, Scotland's king Alexander III died after falling from his horse. Sadly, he had no direct heirs, so the Scottish lords declared Alexander's 4 year-old granddaughter, Margaret (called 'the Maid of Norway'), Queen. King Edward I of England, seizing the advantage, arranged the Treaty of Birgham with the Scottish lords, betrothing Margaret to his son, Edward on the understanding that Scotland would preserve its status as a separate nation. Unfortunately, Margaret fell ill and died at only 8 years old in 1290. Thirteen 'ginger' claimants to the Scottish throne appeared from the woodwork.

The Scots invited King Edward I of England to decide the royal succession. Ever the diplomat, Edward arrived at the Anglo-Scottish border with a large army and announced that he had come as an overlord to solve a dispute in a vassal state, forcing each potential king to pay homage to him. After hearing every claim, Edward in 1292 picked John Balliol to reign over what he described as "the Vassal State of Scotland". In March of 1296, Balliol renounced his homage to Edward, and by the end of the month Edward was biffing the Scots right and left and by July he had forced Balliol to abdicate at Kincardine Castle. Edward went to Berwick in August to receive formal homage from some 2,000 Scottish nobles (aka: the Ragman Roll), having previously removed the Stone of Destiny from Scone Palace, the stone on which all of the Kings of Scots had been crowned.

Meanwhile, whilst all this high politics is taking place, Wallace was busy stealing fish. Unluckily, he was caught by two English soldiers who Wallace immediately killed. The authorities, not surprisingly, issued a warrant for his arrest shortly thereafter. Undeterred, Wallace murdered Sir William Heselrig, the English Sheriff of Lanark, in May 1297, and dismembered the corpse. The story goes that Wallace committed these murders to avenge the death of one Marion Braidfute of Lamington — the young maiden Wallace allegedly courted and married. Sadly, no evidence of any sort exists to corroborate this detail and depite being a putative Scottish hero, he probably commited three gruesome murders to avoid being punished for the theft of a couple of fish.

Whilst on the run from the English, Wallace joined the Scottish armies that were being biffed about the glens by Edward and turned out to be, probably by dint of outrageous savagery, a very successful leader. He achieved victory in battles at Loudoun Hill and Ayr. In August of 1297, Wallace left Selkirk Forest to join Andrew de Moray's army at Stirling. Moray had begun another uprising, and their forces combined at Stirling, where they prepared to meet the English in battle. At the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Wallace killed 5400 of the Earl of Surrey's professional army - thus inflicting a memorable defeat on 'proud Edwards armies - and sent them hamewards tae think again'.

A year later, the tables were turned and the Scots were utterly thrashed at Falkirk, Wallace was captured on August 5, 1305, at Robroystoun, near Glasgow. Wallace was transported to London and tried for treason at Westminster Hall. Following the trial Wallace was taken down, stripped naked and dragged at the heels of a horse to Smithfield Market, where he was strangled by hanging, but released near death, emasculated, drawn and quartered, and, eventually, beheaded. His head was placed on a pike on London Bridge, which was later joined by the heads of his brother, John, and Sir Simon Fraser. His limbs were displayed, separately, in Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth.

So my advice to you all is to make sure that you pay for your fish.

The Daguerreotype Photographic Process 19 August

2005-08-19T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, August 19 in 1839, the French Government acquired the patent of the daguerreotype photographic process. The process is named after its inventor, French artist and chemist Louis J.M. Daguerre. The French Government announced the invention as a gift "Free to the World." - apart from the English, from whom the patent was withheld - this was, after all, before the Entente Cordial!

The daguerreotype is a type of photograph, but, unlike modern photographs, it has no negative. Instead, it is an image exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver, (which has first been exposed to iodine vapour), housed in a velvet-lined folding case. While the daguerreotype was not the first photographic process to be developed, it had the advantage over earlier processes, in which the images tended to fade quickly when exposed to light. The daguerreotype became the first commercially used photographic process - and jolly clever it was too.

However, just because it was jolly clever didn't mean that that was the end of it. The process was only used for about 10 years before being overtaken by, amongst others, the Ambrotype introduced in 1854, which gave a positive image on glass, with a black backing, the Tintype or Ferrotype, which produced an image on chemically-treated tin and the albumen print, a paper photograph produced from large glass negatives that was most commonly used in American Civil War photography.

The swift disappearance daguerreotype photography was inevitable because the process is intricate and complex. Not only that, it was also labour intensive, and involves multiple stages of production. As a result, daguerrotypes were expensive. Worse still, the typical exposure was often 60 to 90 seconds long, requiring the sitter to hold a pose for all that time. Additionally, since there is no negative, it had images could not later be reproduced. Finally, and probably most damning of all, let's not forget - it is a French invention. Nevertheless, French or not, unlike film and paper photography, a daguerreotype, when properly sealed, can last virtually forever.

First Flights 18 August

2005-08-18T22:00:00.000Z

Most people, I think, are, these days, of the view that the first flight in an aeroplane was achieved by Wilbur and Orvill Wright at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina on December 17 1903. However, whilst there is no doubt that they flew on that day, they probably weren't the first.
For a start, on this day August 18 in 1903, Karl Jatho, a German pioneer and inventor flew with his self-made motored gliding airplane a distance of 60 m, flying at up to 10 ft (3 m) high. This was almost twice as far as Orville Wright's first controlled flight four months later, which was of 36 m (120 ft) in 12 seconds. He had four witnesses for his flight.

For you design buffs, it is interesting to note that Jatho's aeroplane was modeled on the Zanonia seed, a seed that was known for its gliding capability. Sadly however, in contrast to the Wright Brother's plane, the wings of Jagos giant zanonia seed were flat in profile and not curved. What that means in practical aerodynamics is that the aircraft was probably forced into the air by engine power alone and would not have been capable of much further development - due to it having the aerodynamics of a plank.

Further back still, on August 14 1901, Gustave Albin Whitehead took his first flight in Connecticut when he flew his aircraft the 'Number 21' three times, as reported by the Bridgeport Herald, the New York Herald and the Boston Transcript. The longest flight was 2.5km (1.5 miles) at a height of up to 60m (200ft): significantly better than the Wright brothers two years and four months later. Even more impressively, there are witness reports that he flew about 1km (half a mile) as early as 1899. In January 1902 he flew 10km (7 miles) over the Long Island strait in the improved 'Number 22' aeroplane.

What!!! I hear you expostulate ... how can this be true???? Well, it has been suggested by one or two mischievous correspondents (me included) that the reason his flights are unknown is that, firstly, the Wright brothers donated their Wright flyer to the Smithsonian Institute on condition the institute did not recognize an earlier aeroplane and secondly, because of his German origins he was forced to remain silent during the First World War.

Well blow me down - such skulldugerous aeronauts!.

First Automobile Accident 17 August

2005-08-17T10:00:00.000Z

At West 74th Street and Central Park West in New York City there is erected a plaque which is a small indicator of the way the United States sees itself in relation to the rest of the world. It's not a big thing, as things go - the world will not stop turning - nations will not fall, nor cities crumble - it just shows a state of mind. It was erected on September 13, 1999 and it reads:

"Here at West 74th Street and Central Park West, Henry H. Bliss dismounted from a streetcar and was struck and knocked unconscious by an automobile on the evening of September 13, 1899. When Mr. Bliss, a New York real estate man, died the next morning from his injuries, he became the first recorded motor vehicle fatality in the Western Hemisphere. This sign was erected to remember Mr. Bliss on the centennial of his untimely death and to promote safety on our streets and highways."

A tragic moment for Mr Bliss and his family. Nevertheless, I would draw your attention to two small details: firstly the bit that says "first recorded motor vehicle fatality in the Western Hemisphere" and secondly the bit that says "September 13, 1899". The Western hemisphere bit is interesting because, according to the definition given in both the Encyclopeadia Brittanica and the Smithsonian Institute, the western hemisphere is: "the half of the Earth that lies west of the prime meridian", although the Smithsonian, and this is the nub of it, allows that Americans define the western hemisphere as "the major landmass that lies west of the prime meridian, namely the continent America (aka the Americas)" - which is interesting, I have never thought of Margaret Thatcher as an Eastern Potentate - let alone Winston Churchill, or, come to that, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In fact, the first person killed by an automobile in the world - and indeed the Western World - was Bridget Driscoll on this Day, August 17th in 1896. As she and her teenage daughter, May, (and possibly one other person) crossed the grounds of the Crystal Palace,(Lat: 51:23:53N Lon: 0:05:07W and hence in the Western Hemisphere) an automobile that belonged to the Anglo-French Motor Car Company struck her at "tremendous speed" – according to witnesses some 4 MPH (6.4 km/h). The driver was Arthur James Edsall of Upper Norwood.

No plaque commemorates this tragic event - some nondescript street corner wouldn't be appropriate somehow and the Crystal Palace was burnt down in 1936. So the first person killed by an automobile, unlike the second, is unremembered. Although in the inquest The coroner, Percy Morrison (Croydon div. of Surrey) said: "This must never happen again" there were 3600 deaths and serious injuries on Britains roads last year and that would be a lot of plaques.

The Peterlooo Riots 16 August

2005-08-16T10:00:00.000Z

I don't know if The Corn Laws are still a feature of secondary school, but I have a recollection of being crammed behind a desk in a classroom full of badly behaved youths and trying - not very hard - to listen to a goggle-eyed history teacher droning interminably on, through a haze of chalk dust that was suspended in the hot late-summer afternoon air, about tariffs and riots and corn. I never, for one minute thought I would ever be bothered about it again, but every year, on August 16th, I am reminded of that special boredom that only really bad schooling can provide.

The Corn Laws, for those of you who were wagging off school on that afternoon, were in force between 1815 and 1846. They were import tariffs designed to "protect" British farmers and landowners, against competition from cheap foreign grain imports - mostly from the Americans. In reality, they represented the power of the British aristocracy, and a repeal of the Corn Laws would have jeopardized the political power of the landowners and they were in fact a crossroads in the transition of Britain from a feudalist society, to a more modern, industrial one.

What has that got to do with August 16th? Well, in 1819 a meeting organized by the Manchester Patriotic Union Society, a political group that agitated for the repeal of the corn laws and parliamentary reform, was planned at St. Peter's Field, Manchester. A number of speakers, including Richard Carlile, John Cartwright and Henry Hunt, - the 19th century equivalents of 'Red Robbo' - had been invited to speak. The local magistrate, William Hulton, who seems to have based his opinions on no evidence whatsoever, was of the view that the meeting would end in a rebellion and had arranged for a substantial number of regular soldiers to be on hand. Around 60,000 or 80,000 People, many of whom were wearing their Sunday clothes, turned out for what all reports suggest was expected to be a peaceful meeting. Some carried banners with texts like "No Corn Laws", "Universal Suffrage" and "Vote By Ballot." The main speakers did not arrive until after 1:00 pm, and Hunt was invited to speak first at 1:20 pm.

At around 1:31 pm the magistrates decided to stop the meeting and started reading the Riot Act. Not suprisingly, people did not immediately disperse - even if they had wanted to, 80,000 people can't just disappear - and so the magistrates gave orders to Captain Joseph Nadin, Deputy Constable of Manchester, to arrest the leaders. Nadin requested military aid and magistrates sent for the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry - 120 cavalry militia recruited from among shopkeepers and tradesmen - who were all drunk.

Sixty Yeomanry cavalrymen, under their leader Captain Hugh Birley, brandishing their cavalry sabres, charged the cart that served as the speakers' stand. When some demonstrators tried to stop them by linking their hands, they begun to attack them with their sabres. When the cavalry reached the cart, they arrested Hunt, Joseph Johnson and a number of others, including some newspapermen. Not content with this, they then begun to chop at the flags and banners with their sabres. William Hulton decided that the crowd, by refusing to be chopped up, were committing assault and ordered Lieutenant Colonel Guy L'Estrange of the Hussars into the field at 1:50 pm, Within ten minutes the Hussars had cleared the field and also pacified the yeomanry. Eleven people were killed, including a woman, a child, and a peace officer. About 400 were injured, 100 of them women, many of whom were trampled by horses. One man had his nose severed, and others had numerous sabre cuts. Even some local masters, employers and owners were put off their peacock and smoked salmon sandwiches by the carnage.

So, there you have it, the Peterloo Massacre of August 16, 1819. The repeal of the Corn Laws was, in the end, bought about by the appearance of the potato blight in Ireland in 1845. Sir Robert Peel, Conservative Prime Minister, responded to the crisis by purchasing cheap American wheat and proposing to remove all import duties on grain. It was hoped that these actions would lower the price of bread enough to put it within the reach of the Irish peasantry - who didn't seem at all keen on eating cake.

The law was eventually repealed on 16 May 1846, when the bill to repeal passed by 98 votes. Peel, who had been badly mauled in the debates by Disraeli, was forced to resign, the government fell, and the Conservative Party was split in half. Those who sided with Peel became known as Peelites, numbering among them almost every Conservative of ministerial experience (Gladstone, Lord Aberdeen, among others). They eventually combined with the Whigs and Radicals to form the modern Liberal party in the 1860s. Disraeli, who had opposed Peel and supported the Corn Laws to the end, along with Lord Stanley, fashioned the modern Conservative party from the remnants of Peel's Conservative Party.

Anyone for toast?

Scottish Kings Duncan and Macbeth 15 August

2005-08-15T10:00:00.000Z

August 15 should probably be entitled 'Scottish King Day' because on 15 August 1040 Mac Bethad mac Findláech, better known as Macbeth (Gaelic for "Son of Life") became the king of Scotland, by defeating Duncan I (Donnchad mac Crínáin) or 'Duncan the Gracious' as he was known to his chums.

Gracious Duncan was born on August 15 1001 and died on August 15 1040 after Macbeth gave him a jolly good biffing at a Battle near Elgin in Moray. Macbeth remained king of the Scots until August 15, 1057.

Gracious Duncan was a son of Crinan the Thane de Mormaer, who was a lay abbot of Dunkeld, and Princess Bethoc of Scotland. Duncan became King in succession to his maternal grandfather Malcolm II in 1034 and his accession is said to be the first example of inheritance of the Scottish throne in the direct line. "Duncan The Gracious", was a less than complimenary - if not downright ironic title as he was a not particularly strong or popular ruler. Not much is known about him apart from the fact that he marched south to besiege Durham In 1039, but was badly trounced and that he later attempted to seize control of Moray, but was bashed twice by the Earl of Orkney's son, Thorfinn, who was a chum of MacBeth, before being killed in battle. He was killed at Bothnguane and later buried at Iona.

Macbeth on the other hand was a strong king and ruled over a kingdom stable enough for him to be able to leave for several months on a pilgrimage to Rome. He instituted a new form of law and order in Scotland and his reign was noted as a time of prosperity. He almost certainly had absolutely nothing to do with witches. What's more, Mackers (as actors call him) probably had no relationship to the Kings of Scotland either and only the late 13th century Chronicle of Huntingdon calls him nepos (nephew or grandson) of King Malcolm (probably Malcolm III). He did however marry Gruoch; better known to history as Lady Macbeth (or Lady Mackers), a granddaughter of Kenneth III of Scotland, and daughter of the prince Bodhe. In 1031, according to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, Macbeth was one of three Scottish kings who submitted to Canute the Great. Macbeth formed an alliance with Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, son of Malcolm II's youngest daughter, and took up arms against Gracious Duncan. Duncan died on August 15, after fighting them in battle near Elgin on August 14, 1040.

Macbeth was killed by Malcolm's forces at a battle near Lumphanan and the throne passed to Macbeth's stepson, Lulach, on August 15, 1057. Macbeth's life story was almost nothing at all like Shakespeare's version but it would be nice to think Mackers' last words might have been: "I will not yield, To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, And to be baited with the rabble's curse. Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, And thou opposed, being of no woman born, Yet I will try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!", although he probably just grunted.

The Quagga 12 August

2005-08-12T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 12 August, in 1883 at Artis Magistra zoo, which is in Amsterdam, the last of the Quagga died, the remainder of its species having been hunted to extinction. The last wild Quagga was probably shot in 1878. The Quagga was given its name by the KhoiKhoi (who used to be known as Hottentot). The name is onomatopoeic and, apparently, resembles the mating call of the Quagga.

A strange looking animal, it was once found in great numbers in the Cape Province of South Africa as well as in the southern part of the Orange Free State. The Quagga was, for many years thought to be a sub-species of the zebra, but had vivid stripes at the front of its body, faded stripes with wide inter-stripe spaces around the midriff and a plain brown rump.

In 1788 the Quagga was classified as a species, Equus quagga; however, over the next 50 years or so, many other zebras were described but because of the great variation in coat patterns (no two zebras are alike), taxonomists were left with a number of so-called "species", and a sneaky suspicion that none of these were separate species or even subspecies but a growing idea that most were simply natural variants. Taxonomists were, of course completely in the dark about the Quagga because it had become extinct 30 years before the arguments started.

A century later, science galloped to the rescue and our Quagga became the first ever extinct creature to have its DNA studied. Genetic scientists at the Smithsonian Institution have demonstrated that the Quagga was not a separate species, but diverged from the plains zebra, Equus burchelli, between 120,000 and 290,000 years ago.

For those of you, and I know there are many, that like to get stuck into the Minutiae of nomenclature, this discovery suggests that Equus quagga should be named Equus burchelli quagga. However, heaven forefend that we should forget the rules of biological nomenclature, which clearly state that where there are two or more alternative names for a single species, the name first used takes priority. As the Quagga was described about 30 years earlier than the plains zebra, it appears that the correct terms are E. quagga quagga for the Quagga and E. quagga burchelli for the plains zebra. Some people in South Africa (known as 'raving loonies' where I come from) have begun a project to breed back our Quagga by selective breeding from plains zebra stock.

Thermopylae 11 August

2005-08-11T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 11 August, in 480 BC, Leonidas, King of Sparta was killed at the Battle of Thermopylae. This battle is used in military academies around the world to this day to show how a small group of well-trained and well-led soldiers can have an impact out of all proportion to their numbers. Xerxes I, king of Persia, was continuing a campaign started by his father Darius to defeat the Greek city states. Xerxes is sometimes estimated to have had between 3 and five million men; Herodotus wrote that the Persian army drank entire rivers and ate the food supplies of entire cities.

The Greeks, were, not suprisingly, somewhat at a loss as to how to deal with such a massive force. Hurriedly, an alliance of Greek city-states was formed, which was headed by the militaristic Sparta, whose supremely disciplined warriors were trained from birth to be amongst the best soldiers in the world at that time. The Spartans contributed a small force of 300 hoplites, hand-picked and commanded by King Leonidas. Leonidas, realising the likely outcome of mixing it with the Persians, took to battle only men who had fathered sons that were old enough to take over the family responsibilities of their fathers.

The mountain pass of Thermopylae, (the "Hot Gates"), was chosen by the Greeks as the site of battle. This was a stroke of genius because at the time it consisted of a pass so narrow that two chariots could barely move abreast - on one side rose the sheer side of the mountain and the other was a vertical drop into the sea. An army of some 7000 Greeks, led by 300 Spartans, stood in this narrow spot to receive the full force of the Persian army, numbering more than 280,000.

The Greeks formed up in a deep phalanx - a wall of overlapping shields and layered long (3 - 4 metre) spears, which spanned the entire width of the pass. Despite repeated waves of attack resulting in massive casualties, the Persians could not break through the Greeks defensive phalanx. Because of the terrain that the Greeks had chosen, the Persians were unable to surround or flank the Greeks, which was the normal method of defeating a phalanx and, because of the narrowness of the pass of Thermopylae, the superior Persian numbers were useless.

It is not inconceivable that, given time, the Persians might have been defeated but after the second day of fighting, a Greek named Ephialtes defected to the Persians and told them of another lightly defended path through Thermopylae, which the Persians quickly exploited to surround the Greeks. Leonidas realized that the game was up and on August 11 he sent away all but what remained of his 300 Spartans. Bravely, a contingent of about 600 Thespians, led by Demophilus, refused to leave with the other Greeks. Instead, they chose to stay with Leonidas and fight in a suicidal effort to delay the advance and allow the rest of the army to escape. The fighting was, as you might imagine, extremely brutal. After a time all of the long spears of the phalanx were broken, but the Spartans and Thespians kept fighting with their xiphos (short swords). After those too were broken, they fought with their bare hands and teeth.

Although the Greeks fought with outrageous bravery against overwhelming odds, Leonidas was eventually killed, along with all of his men. The last Spartans were killed by a barrage of arrows that are said to have blackened the sky.

There is an epitaph on a monument at the site of the battle with Simonides's epigram to the Spartans which reads (in English translation):

"Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie". or, perhaps: "Friend, tell the Spartans that on this hill we lie obedient to them still".

Diesel 10 August

2005-08-10T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, the 10th of August, in 1893 the deisel engine ran succesfully for the first time in Augsburg, southern Germany. Rudolf Diesel developed the idea of the compression ignition engine and went on to build a functional prototype in early 1897. The 'Diesel engine' was named after him. Originally it was known as the "oil engine".
Being something of a visionary, Deisel said: "The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it" He predicted that: "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time."
On 29 September 1913, Diesel boarded the "SS Dresden", a cross-channel ferry, to attend the opening of a factory in Ipswich; however, he never made it and his body was found a couple of days later by local fishermen. As was usual at the time, the seamen only took his belongings and threw the body back into the sea. It is suspected that because Diesel decided to allow anyone to purchase a license for his engine patents, including the rivals of Imperial Germany, he was murdered by German agents and tossed into the North Sea.
Nevertheless, because of Rudolph's clever idea, the 10th of August is marked in the calendars of engine mechanics the world over as International Biodiesel Day - an idea we may yet be glad of.

Battle of Gravelines 8 August

2005-08-08T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 8 August, in 1588 the Battle of Gravelines ended - the Spanish Armada was defeated by the English during an invasion attempt by Phillip II of Spain. The surviving parts of the Spanish Armada set sail for home. Sadly for the Spanish, only 67 of the original 130 ships that set out to biff the English returned to Spain and most of these were in very poor condition. Queen Elizabeth, being aware that the Spanish fleet had been defeated, decided to rally the troops who were assembled to repel a possible invasion at Tilbury in Essex - thus proving that the modern Labour Party did not invent spin.

"We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust." Her Majesty said, continuing with the unforgetable:

"I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."
Brave stuff, especially when the enemy has already packed up and gone home.

Wireless 20 July

2005-07-20T10:00:00.001Z

Various people have made a number of more or less ribald comments about my use of the word wireless. People have intimated that the word is old fashioned - some have suggested that it is anachronistic! Well, all I can say is "tosh" or possibly "fiddlesticks" because on this day, the 20th of July, in 1872, an American, Mahlon Loomis was granted the first ever patent for the transmission of intelligence without the aid of wires - wireless (or radio as some people erroneously call it). Almost everyone thought that he was potty, indeed Loomis himself was none too sure of his sanity and was heard to say; "I know that I am regarded as a crank, perhaps a fool by some, and as to the latter, possibly I am, for I could have discarded this thing entirely and turned my attention to making money." Nevertheless, he should receive the credit for being the first to use a complete antenna and ground system, carrying out the first experimental transmission of wireless telegraph signals, being the first to use of kites to carry an antenna aloft and being the first user of balloons to raise an antenna wire. He also built the first vertical antenna (steel rod mounted on top of a wooden tower) and was the first person to formulate the idea of ‘waves’ travelling out from his antenna. He is, of course, completely unknown and all the kudos for the invention of wireless goes to Nikola Tesla in 1893 and to Guglielmo Marconi in 1896. It was the continuing spat between these two men and arguments over patents and royalties that started the now more common usage of the American word 'radio' – Tesla insisting on ‘radio’ and Marconi on ‘wireless’. Neither Tesla’s nor Marconi’s systems could do more than transmit morse code and it wasn't until 1906 that Canadian-American scientist Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was the first to wirelessly transmit a human voice. On Christmas Eve, 1906, using his heterodyne principle, Fessenden transmitted the first audio radio broadcast in history from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea, that were equipped with wireless sets, heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing the song O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. To quote Mahlon Loomis' dying words, uttered in 1886: "I know that I am by some, even many, regarded as a crank - by some perhaps a fool.... But I know that I am right, and if the present generation lives long enough their opinions will be changed - and their wonder will be that they did not perceive it before. I shall never see it perfected - but the wireless will be, and others will have the honour of the discovery ". Wireless – possibly the greatest invention ever.

Great Fire of Rome 18 July

2005-07-18T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 18 July in 64 AD, a fire started in some shops that were close to the Circus Maximus, in Rome. The fire quickly spread and eventually 10 of the 14 districts that comprised ancient Rome were destroyed. The fire raged, in all, for nine days. The story that everyone remembers is that the Emporer Nero started the fire in order to clear space for his planned new palace the Domus Aurea (Golden House). He is supposed to have stood on his private stage and extemporized verses comparing the present disaster to the Fall of Troy, accompanying himself on the lyre, while he watched the fire burn from a safe distance at his villa on the Quirinal Hill. Interestingly however, this may not be entirely, or even slightly, correct. The story was reported by Tacitus who, at the time of the fire, was a young teenager. Tacitus describes the story as a rumour that was going about during the time of the fire. Nero was away at Antium when the fire started,

What certainly is true is that many Romans lived in insulae, which were apartment buildings of three to five floors, with wooden floors and partitions that were built closely packed together in ancient winding lanes. Fires broke out in these conditions all the time. The fire burned hot enough to melt iron gates and nails in the roofs and it seems certain that a firestorm raged, which allowed the fire to advance in the opposite direction to the way the wind was blowing.

What is also certainly true is that Nero accused the Christian sect of starting the fire and embarked on the most appalling persecutions of Christians, with much feeding to the lions, using them as human torches and as targets for gladiators. It has been suggested that the Christians set the fire in order to fulfil an Egyptian prophecy that stated that the day Sirius (the dog star) first rises would mark the fall of the great evil city. Even if they did not start it, some Christians certainly added to the fire after it began. Nero built his Domus Aurea but it was of little use to him - he committed suicide in 68 AD.

Rosetta Stone 15 July

2005-07-15T10:00:00.000Z

During the early part of the Napoleonic war, Bonaparte attempted to threaten the British position in India by conquering Egypt. On this day, July 15, 1799, while supervising the digging of foundations for an extension to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta), French Captain Pierre-Francois Bouchard discovered a black basalt, inscribed tablet, which became known as the Rosetta Stone. The scientists on the expedition realised that the stone was of significance because it was carved with an inscription in three different scripts. One in Egyptian hieroglyphs at the top, a second in what is known as 'demotic script' (a sort of 'everyday use' type of hieroglyph) in the middle, and Greek at the bottom. The translation of the Greek passage revealed that the inscription was a royal edict issued on March 27, 196 BC. Hieroglyphs had slipped from use in the 4th century AD, so for 1400 years, no one had known how to read them. The Greek inscription was a translation of the upper two Egyptian passages. It wasn't too long before the bright sparks on the spot realised that the Greek bit might be used as a key to decipher the Egyptiann bits - and hence all the other hieroglyphs that were laying about all over Egypt.
At the second battle at Abu Qir in 1801, Bonaparte was defeated in Egypt and the Rosetta Stone became forfeit, in the name of King George III and the stone found its way to the British Museum. By now, the scientific community was getting excited and copies of the inscriptions were sent to linguistic experts all over Europe. Finally, after only 14 years of trying, in 1822, a Frenchman, Jean-Francois Champollion, solved the puzzle. Interestingly, the beginnings of Bonapartes defeat in Egypt began with the Battle of Abu Qir Bay (Battle of the Nile) in which Admiral Nelson's fleet defeated the French Mediterranean fleet. The first ship to open fire in the battle was HMS Bellerophon (Bellerophon means 'bearing darts' and he is the hero from Greek mythology that killed the Chimera). On this day in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte finally surrendered aboard HMS Bellerophon before being transported to St Helena (named after the Greek 'Helena of Constantinople', who is said to have discovered the whereabouts of the True Cross). Handy, the Greeks.

Bastille Day 14 July

2005-07-14T10:00:00.000Z

Back in 1789, on this day, 14 July, 600-odd disgruntled Frenchmen, wearing silly hats, assembled at the Hôtel des Invalides with the intention of attacking the notorious Parisian gaol, the Bastille. Although this act was an important development in, and later a symbol of, the French Revolution, the main aim of the attackers at the time was to obtain large quantities of arms and ammunition that were stored there. Apart from the armaments, the gaol was nearly empty with only seven residents - four forgers, two "lunatics" and one "deviant" aristocrat, the Comte de Solages (there’s always one!). As the day wore on, ninety-eight attackers died and just one defender; nevertheless, at around 17.30, the governor, De Launay, realising that he couldn’t hold out for much longer surrendered. De Launay was stabbed repeatedly and his head was then sawn off and fixed on a pike and paraded through the streets. Thus was Liberté, égalité, fraternité and the age of enlightenment born.
Two years later, in 1791, On July 14, in not-particularly-revolutionary Birmingham, the Constitutional Society of Birmingham arranged a dinner to celebrate the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Members of the Lunar Society, including Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin, James Watts and Joseph Priestley attended the dinner. A well-organised mob, orchestrated by the Church and the British government, chose the occasion to attack the homes of several of the diners. This event became known as the Priestley Riots. Sadly, Joseph Priestley lost all his material possessions in the riots and the labour of years was gone with them. Despite this setback, we have Priestley to thank for discovering 9 gases including nitrous oxide. He invented soda water, (which is handy for those of us who like a fizzy drink after a hot summers day storming grubby French prisons), refrigeration, and gum erasers for which he coined the term "rubber". He discovered photosynthesis and he contributed towards the discovery of oxygen, which he referred to as ‘dephlogisticated air’ (Phlogisticated substances are those that were thought to contain ‘phlogiston’ and are "dephlogisticated" when burned. Priestley, when he discovered oxygen, thought it was ‘dephlogisticated air’ because it was capable of combining with more phlogiston and thus supporting combustion for longer than ordinary air). After the Priestley Riots, Priestley left England and emigrated to Pennsylvania where he built a home and laboratory and collected a 1600 volume library, which was then among the largest in America. He is regarded as a founder of liberal Unitarian thinking. A lasting legacy, if another were needed, of his philosophy and insight was that he persuaded his friend Thomas Jefferson to initiate what Americans call a liberal arts education.
An interesting addendum to the tale takes us back to revolutionary France. In the spirit of the now burgeoning age of enlightenment, in September of 1774, Priestley took his ‘dephlogisticated air' to a leading French scientist called Lavoisier. Lavoisier proved that air contained a new element, oxygen, which combined with hydrogen to make water and, in the process disproved the phlogiston theory. Controversially, a Swedish apothecary Carl Wilhelm Scheele claimed to have beaten Priestley by 2 years but was deprived of credit because Lavoisier denied receiving a letter Scheele claims to have sent in September 1774 describing his 1772 discovery of "fire air". History favoured our hero Priestley - until Scheele's missing letter was found in 1992 in Paris, 218 years late. Lavoisier received it on Oct 15, 1774. Incroyable! Crapaud français! (trans: Incredible French clamping plate).

Ruth Ellis 13 July

2005-07-13T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, the 13 July in 1955, Ruth Ellis became the last woman in Britain to be executed. The hanging took place at 9.00 am BST at Holloway Prison and was carried out by the executioner Albert Pierpoint. She left behind an 11-year-old son. Ellis was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for shooting her lover, racing driver David Blakeley, 25, outside the Magdala public house in north London on Easter Sunday. Despite the fact that, at her trial, the jury took only 14 minutes to find her guilty, the hanging of Ruth Ellis was one of the most controversial executions ever to have taken place. It is now widely accepted that this case was in large part instrumental in the bringing about the eventual suspension of the death penalty in Britain in 1965. It has often been postulated that, in any other country, Ruth Ellis would not have been hanged. If ever there was a crime of passion, this was it.
Ellis had been in her short life a photographic model, a club hostess, a mother and a divorcee. Ruth Ellis was no saint, a peroxide blonde, she often came across as a "brassy tart" (to quote the press of the day). She had a tragic attraction to men who drank heavily, who abused her, who two-timed her with other women and who liked to live what passed for the 'high life' in the West End clubs and bars of the 1950s. Ruth Ellis was David Blakeleys lover. Ruth said of him in evidence, "He was violent on occasions...always because of jealousy in the bar…he only used to hit me with his fists and hands, but I bruise easily, and I was full of bruises on many occasions.." Ruth was also living with Desmond Cussen, another fast car fan and it was Desmond Cussen who drove her, with her .38 revolver, to the Magdala Public House. Blakeley was in the pub with a friend, Clive Gunnel who was a friend also of Anthony and Carole Findlater. Blakeley had been having an affair with Carole Findlater for some time, with the full knowledge of Anthony Findlater, who serviced Blakeleys cars, and this was no secret to Ruth. Blakeley and Gunnel had gone from the Findlater’s home, where they were drinking, to the Magdala to buy more cigarettes and booze. Four days before the murder Blakeley had left Ellis after yet another fight and gone to stay with the Findlater’s. Ellis was beside her self with anger, hurt and jealousy. She drank Absinthe for four days, could not sleep and was taking tranquillisers. She had also had an abortion just ten days previously . As the two men stepped from the pub, Ruth walked up and emptied her Smith and Wesson revolver into Blakeley, in full view of witnesses. As Blakeley lay in a pool of blood, a Metropolitan Policeman came out of the pub and arrested Ruth Ellis for murder.
In September of 2003, the Criminal Cases Review Commission brought the case to the Court of Appeal arguing that Ellis was suffering "battered woman syndrome". The appeal judges ruled she had been properly convicted of murder according to the law as it stood at the time. The defence of diminished responsibility did not then exist.

The Battle of The Boyne 12 July

2005-07-12T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, the 12 July, in 1690, the first proper victory for the League of Augsburg, which was the first ever alliance between Catholic and Protestant countries, was won. The opposing armies in the battle were led by King James of England, Scotland and Ireland who had been deposed from his English and Scottish thrones in the previous year and his successor, the co-monarch William III (William reigned jointly with his wife, James's daughter Queen Mary II). Despite being deposed in England and Scotland, James’s supporters still controlled much of Ireland and the Irish Parliament. The battle was the culmination of James's unsuccessful attempt to regain the thrones of England and Scotland. William’s army at the Boyne was about 36000 men and was comprised of mixed religions, the Dutch Blue Guards for example, had the Papal Banner with them on the day, and many of the Guardsmen were Dutch Catholics. The Jacobites were 25,000 strong and James had several regiments of protestant French troops and a number of regiments of German Protestants. The crucial difference between the two sides was not religion but the fact that William’s army was equipped with the new and hugely efficient flintlock musket while James’s men had the obsolete matchlock musket. Over the years, the war metamorphosed into, on the one hand an issue of Irish sovereignty as well as religious toleration and land ownership and on the other about maintaining Protestant and British rule in Ireland. Nowadays, of course it is an occasion for waving orange flags about and being unpleasant to ones neighbours. Which is strange, because originally, Irish Protestants commemorated the Battle of Aughrim on the 12th of July. At Aughrim, which took place a year after the Boyne, virtually all of the old native Irish Catholic and Old English aristocracies were wiped out. What was celebrated on the Twelfth was the extermination of the elite. What happened was that by the time the Orange Order was founded in the 1790s, a new Gregorian calendar had been introduced. A consequence of this was that the date of the Battle of the Boyne was now also on the 12 of July (it had, originally been the First) and the entirely erroneous celebration of William's "victory over popery at the Battle of the Boyne" was born. I shall leave greater minds than mine to decide whether or not this forms the basis for stamping about the "Queen's highway" wearing daft hats to celebrate a spurious identity earned in the not very ‘Glorious Revolution’ settlement or just an excuse for anti social behaviour.

Waterloo Railway Station 11 July

2005-07-11T17:00:00.000Z

The Waterloo district of London, was named after the Battle of Waterloo in which Napoleon was defeated near Brussels. Waterloo Railway Station, somewhat ironically, is now London’s gateway for train passengers from France and Belgium and the original station was opened on this day, 11 July, in 1848 by the London and South Western Railway Company. The Station was, originally, fairly small and was situated where the present-day platforms 7 to 12 are found. However as rail travel became more popular, the station required extra capacity and three more stations were added to the original: ‘Windsor’ to the north-west in 1860; ‘Cyprus’ to the south east in 1878 and ‘Khartoum’ to the north in 1885. The stations were, for years, known by both their original names and by cardinal points - Cyprus Station was also known, often in the same timetable, as Waterloo South, for example. By the turn of the twentieth century, the platform numbering system was beyond the wit of man to comprehend. The first platform of the original station was designated as Platform 1, despite now being in the middle of the station; the remaining fifteen platforms shared the numbers 2-10, resulting in platforms sharing the same number. Waterloo South had no platform numbers at all. To add to the confusion, Waterloo had a further station, with another Platform 1, that was originally the terminus for London’s daily funeral express to Brookwood Cemetery. Trains bearing coffins (at 2s/6d for a single fare) left from the ‘Necropolis Station’ which was immediately adjacent to the main station. In the end it was decided that the only way to sort out the muddle was to knock down the whole thing and start again. Waterloo Station was completely rebuilt in 1902. The idiosyncrasies of the old Station ensured that it was much loved by writers. Jerome K. Jerome, in his novel ‘Three Men In A Boat’, fondly describes the difficulties of finding a train at Waterloo - in the end having to bribe an engine driver to find the right train. H.G. Wells referred to the now long disappeared Waterloo East station in ‘The War of the Worlds’ as the station troop trains to the Martian landing site departed from. Waterloo Station is said to have prompted G K Chesterton to observe "The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before."

Richard III 6 July

2005-07-06T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 6 July in 1483, Richard, Duke of Gloucester was crowned King Richard III. The story goes that after the death of his brother King Edward IV, Richard briefly governed as a regent for Edward’s son King Edward V, but he imprisoned Edward and his brother Richard in the Tower and acquired the throne for himself. Many of the facts about Richard are disputed, largely because his dynasty, the House of York, died with him at the Battle of Bosworth Field and the Tudors, being the victors, wrote the history. At that time history was considered to be a branch of literature. Nevertheless, Richard stands accused of a number of ‘misdemeanours’. To start with, the murder of his 2 nephews, the Princes in the Tower, the murder of Henry VI, the "private execution" of his brother George, Duke of Clarence, the murder of his wife’s first husband, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales and the murder of William, Lord Hastings. Slightly more controversially, he is also accused of forcing his wife, Anne Neville, to marry him against her will, of planning an incestuous marriage to his niece Elizabeth of York (and perhaps killing his wife so he could), of accusing his own mother of adultery. Finally of accusing his late brother the king of being illegitimate, of accusing Jane Shore and Elizabeth Woodville of witchcraft in withering his arm and finally of being illegitimate himself. Imagine these attributes in a modern Labour Party politician?

A soothsayer in, of all places, Leicester, prophesied his death. She is purported to have told him, as he headed off for the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22 1485 to meet Lancastrian forces led by Henry Tudor: "where your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your head shall be broken on the return". On the ride into battle his spur struck the bridge stone of the Bow Bridge; as he was being carried back after the battle, slung over the back of a horse, his head struck the same stone and was broken open, spilling his brains onto the cobbles. His burial site is currently under a car park in Leicester. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Bikini 5 July

2005-07-05T10:00:00.000Z

Imagine, if you can, a scenario where the immortal words "She’s got an itsey-bitsy, teenie-weenie yellow polka dot bikini" would have no meaning. This would be the unhappy situation if, on this day, the 5th of July, in 1946, a type of women’s bathing suit, characterised by two separate parts-one covering the breasts, the other the groin and buttocks, leaving an uncovered area between the two garments - had not been invented by engineer Louis Reard in Paris. The bikini was named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the atomic bomb. Reard’s suit was a refinement of the work of Jacques Heim who, two months earlier, had introduced the "Atome" (named for its size) and advertised it as the world’s "smallest bathing suit". Reard, cunning engineer that he was, split the "atome". The Bikini was, amazingly, fairly difficult to explode into the market places of the world. Initially, Reard could not find a model that would dare to wear his design. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris. The swimwear was banned from the Miss World contests and public places in the USA. Strangely though, Brigitte Bardot’s bikini in the 1957 film ‘And God Created Woman’ created a market for the swimwear and suddenly all sorts of inappropriate individuals were sporting the bikini at every turn. Back in the UK, with amazing foresight, the introduction of the National Health Service by the Labour government on this day in 1948 ensured that, if someone was foolish enough to wear a bikini in the English summer, treatment for the inevitably ensuing pneumonia was free.

Independance Days and Biscuits 4 July

2005-07-04T10:00:00.000Z

Today, 4 July is a remarkable day in history. Not only did the Congress of the United States of America ratify the Declaration of independence on this day in 1776 but also, on this day in 1946 the United States of America gave the Philippine Islands their independence after 381 years of colonial rule under, initially, the Spanish and later (for 87 years) the Americans - which was frightfully good of them. But there is more: today in 1807 was the birthday of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi was an Italian patriot and soldier of the Risorgimento. He personally led many of the military campaigns that brought about the formation of a unified Italy - having first lost twice as many battles as he eventually won. Garibaldi was an influential and colourful character who, rightly deserves to have the Garibaldi biscuit named after him - he was, apparently, prone to handing raisin biscuits out to his men. His men were no doubt thankful to receive these as a welcome change from sun-dried tomatoes, pasta, artichokes, olives and salami pizza. An orange North American fish is also named after him. If that wasn’t enough drama and history to be going on with, at 0550 GMT this morning, someone has gone and crashed a washing machine-sized "impactor" into Comet Tempel 1 at a relative speed of 37,000km/h, throwing up a huge plume of icy debris - most careless.

Penguins 3 July

2005-07-03T10:00:00.000Z

The origin of the word 'penguin' has, over the years, been the subject of heated debate. For example, John Latham, in 1785 suggested that the word came from the Latin 'pinguis' meaning fat, which, supposedly refers to the appearance of the bird. Fatuous. It is now widely accepted that in fact the name stems from an ancient description of a bird that was, at one time, found in great numbers on islands off eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland and Britain (including Wales). The word stems from the welsh phrase 'pen gwyn', meaning "white head" and referred originally to the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis). (Although the head of the Great Auk is not in fact white, there is a white patch behind the beak.) Later, when explorers discovered apparently similar birds in the southern hemisphere, the term was supposedly transferred to them. The Great Auks were excellent swimmers, using their wings to swim underwater. Unlike other auks, however, the Great Auk could not fly, which made it vulnerable to being hunted by humans and it was eventually hunted, for food and down for mattresses, to extinction. The last pair was killed on this day July 3, 1844, on the island of Eldey, near Iceland. This day is clearly a remarkable one for flightless birds. Take the Mallard for example, and I don’t mean the duck but rather the beautiful blue and magnificently streamlined steam locomotive that is the holder of the world speed record for steam locomotives at 126 mph (203 km/h). The record was achieved on July 3, 1938 on the slight downwards grade of Stoke Bank south of Grantham on the East Coast Main Line, and the highest speed was recorded at milepost 90¼, between Little Bytham and Essendine. It broke the German 1936 record of 200.4 km/h. Apparently, it was one of a small number of locomotives equipped with a double Kylchap blastpipe, which is a useful thing to know if ever you should need to pass the time of day with an anoraked and be-Thermos’d train spotter.

The Somme 1 July

2005-07-01T10:00:00.000Z

1 July 1916, was the opening day of the British and French offensive that became the Battle of the Somme. The middle day of the middle year of the First World War, it is remembered as the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. For many people, the first day has come to represent the futility and sacrifice of the war, with lines of infantry being mowed down by German machine guns. The main attack was to be carried out by the Fourth Army under the command of General Sir Henry Rawlinson. A diversionary attack was to be made on the northern flank by two divisions of General Edmund Allenby’s Third Army. When the breakthrough was achieved, the exploitation phase would be carried out by the three cavalry divisions of General Sir Hubert Gough’s Reserve Army. For all three men, the Somme would be their first battle in command of an army. Many commanders approached the battle with great optimism. The pre-battle speech delivered to the 8th Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry included the memorable, though slightly inaccurate: "When you go over the top, you can slope arms, light up your pipes and cigarettes, and march all the way to Pozières before meeting any live Germans." On this day 57,470 men became casualties of which 19,240 were killed or died of wounds.

Night of the Long Knives 30 June

2005-06-30T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, the 30th June, in 1934, Adolf Hitler led the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, against the Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. The S.A. was discontented with the progress of the Nazi regime and they felt that the ‘socialism’ element of National Socialism was being neglected. Their big mistake though was that they also wanted to become the core of a new German army. Hitler, using the tried and tested ‘divide and rule’ principle, fostered political infighting among his subordinates, with Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich on one side and Ernst Röhm, the leader of the S.A., on the other. At this time, the S.A. was the only remaining viable threat to Hitler’s power. Goering and Himmler asked Heydrich to assemble a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid 12 million marks by France to overthrow Hitler. Hitler decided to act. Alfred Rosenberg’s diary provides an account of what happened next: "With an SS escort detachment the Führer … knocked softly on Röhm’s door: "Message from Munich," he said with disguised voice. "Well come in," Röhm called to the supposed messenger, "the door is open." Hitler tore open the door, fell on Röhm as he lay in bed, seized him by the throat and screamed, "You are under arrest, you swine." Then he turned the traitor over to the SS. At first Röhm refused to get dressed. The SS then threw his clothes in the Chief of Staff’s face until he bestirred himself to put them on. In the room next door, they found young men engaged in homosexual activity. "And these are the kind who want to be leaders in Germany," the Führer said trembling." Official records tally the dead at 77, although some 400 are believed to have been murdered - most were simply shot out of hand. When you come to think about it, there is a lot to be said for parliamentary democracy.

Dog Shows 28 June

2005-06-28T10:00:00.000Z

On this day the 28th of June 1859 the first inklings that the world had gone completely off its collective chunk surfaced to the delight of some and the perpetual amazement of others. The first ever dog show was held in Newcastle-on-Tyne. Even the concept of what a dog show entails beggars belief. In a dog show, judges who are familiar with specific dog breeds (of which there are over 800) evaluate individual dogs for how well they conform to published breed standards, so a better way to describe a dog show is a conformation show. A dog show is not exactly a comparison of one dog to another, it is a comparison of each dog to a judge’s concept of the ideal specimen of the breed standard; based on this, one dog is placed ahead of another. There are, apparently, all-breed judges. So one person can retain a vast knowledge of the confirmation points of over 800 breeds of dog? What, for example, entails a "full coat" or a "cheerful attitude"? How do you quantify "quantity of wrinkles" or "colour of nose"? These details are, by all accounts, the bred and butter of your all-breed judge. Why would 120,000 people in the UK alone want to get involved in this? Is it the dogs they like or is it something else? Politics in the pure-bred dog world can be vicious I’m told; there have been charges at various times of favouritism, nepotism, bribery and even drugging of competitors’ animals. There is a lot to be said for a goldfish in a bowl.

Ralph Austin Bard 27 June

2005-06-27T10:00:00.000Z

Ralph Austin Bard was a Chicago financier who served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1941-1945, and as Under Secretary, 1944-1945. He was one of eight members of the Interim Committee appointed to advise President Harry S. Truman on the use of the atomic bomb. Although opinions varied, on June 1, 1945, the Committee: "agreed… that the bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible; that it be used on a war plant surrounded by workers’ homes; and that it be used without prior warning." However, on this day, June 27, 1945, Bard, had second thoughts and sent a memo to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson suggesting that the Japanese government be given some warning before the use of the atomic bomb. "The position of the United States as a great humanitarian nation and the fair play attitude of our people generally is responsible in the main for this feeling," he wrote, adding "that the Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender." On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese City of Hiroshima without the warning. "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds." as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Bhagavad Gita put it.

Invasion of the Soviet Union 22 June

2005-06-22T10:00:00.000Z

On this day 22 June in 1941 Adolf Hitler, announcing (conveniently) that the 1939 non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union was a "stain on Germany’s record" and that it was time to have a pop at the ‘untermensch’, sent three million men, supported by more than 3,000 tanks, 7,000 guns and nearly 3,000 aircraft across Nazi Germany’s border into the Soviet Union. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, was, by all accounts, astonished - he had not been expecting any German visitors until 1942 and had not even ironed a tablecloth in preparation. The Germans, of course, quickly over-ran the border posts enabling Herr ‘Noballs’ Goebels to announce a great victory on national radio the "greatest the world has ever seen". Dear old Winston had a handle on things, of course, he told parliament that Hitler was a "bloodthirsty guttersnipe" and announced "The Russian danger is our danger, and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe", which wasn’t bad for a man who only days before had been expressing his own outspoken opposition to communism in no uncertain terms "A communist" he said "is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up". Operation Barbarossa - anyone for crocodiles?

Magna Carta 15 June

2005-06-15T10:00:00.000Z

King John appended his Royal Seal to Magna Carta on this day in 1215 at Runnymeade. Unfortunately, King John, obviously somewhat less than impressed, utterly repudiated the charter as soon as the barons left London a few days later. Pope Innocent III also immediately annulled the "shameful and demeaning agreement’, saying it impaired King John’s dignity. (Dignity of a man who murdered his own brother, Arthur, in order to grab the throne? - nice one Pope.) Widely considered to be the first step in a long historical process leading to the rule of constitutional law, Magna Carta, was above all else a statement that the monarch was subject to law and a statement of the rights of free men. The only problem, of course, was that in 1215 almost no one was free. Nevertheless, the idea stuck and Magna Carta was amended and re-issued by John’s descendants, the final version being issued by Edward I’s Parliament on 12 October 1297 as part of a statute known as Confirmatio cartarum. The version of Magna Carta from 1297 is still part of English law, although only parts remain in force and most of it has been repealed or superseded. The articles currently in force are articles one, nine and twenty-nine of the 1297 version.

The Falklands Conflict 14 June

2005-06-14T10:00:00.000Z

Carl Phillip Gottlieb von Clausewitz famously wrote, in his book ‘Vom Kriege’ (On War), first published in 1832: "War is merely the continuation of policy by other means,". This statement is considered to have had a strong influence on military thinking in many subsequent wars including WWI, WWII, and all post Vietnam US military operations. However, Clausewitz didn’t have it completely correct - sometimes a lack of policy has more to do with it. Take, for example the Falklands War which illustrates what a lack of policy, a splash of political miscalculation and murmur of miscommunication can do to create a shooting war. In the period before the war, both sides had political eyes fixed firmly on domestic issues - Argentina on maintaining the position of its military government in the face of rising public hostility and Britain, as usual, on cutting costs and, at that time, biffing the unions. Consequently both sides seriously underestimated the importance of the Falkland Islands to the other. Whatever the reasons. this ‘mere continuation of policy’ cost the UK 255 good men, six ships (10 others were very badly damaged), thirty-four aircraft, and more than 1.6 billion pounds. Old Carl Phillip didn’t say too much about chance in his book, but it is not too difficult to envisage that the war could have ended in an Argentine victory. What if, for example, one of the Exocets had hit one of our two aircraft carriers, or what if the frequent unexploded bombs had actually detonated when they hit some of our ships (staggeringly, even with useless bombs, 75% of the British task force was damaged or sunk)? What if Argentina had decided to attack the British artillery, using the three paratroop regiments already deployed at Comodoro Rivadavia? What if the Argentines had made better preparations to hold the islands? But then, who would expect that the British to attempt to carry out a war 7500 miles from home? But, as it turned out, chance was with the British and on June 14 1982 the commander of the Argentine garrison in Port Stanley, Mario Menendez, surrendered to Major General JJ Moore of the Royal Marines.

Alfred the Great 9 June

2005-06-09T10:00:00.000Z

The 9 June 878 is a day that changed forever the balance of power in England in favour of the Saxon king Alfred the Great. Before you all chime in with a hearty "so what" you will, of course recall that our Royal Navy hold Alfred the Great to be the founder of the naval tradition. Alfred, as everyone knows, had fought a long war with the Vikings, who had settled into eastern England and were moving ever westward into the remaining Saxon territories - most notably Wessex (which is a concatenation of West Saxon). Guthrum, alias Gorm den Gamle was King of the Danish Vikings in East Anglia and Yorkshire and, by 878, he stood on the brink of a final conquest of Wessex but was decisively defeated by Alfred, (who had, you will recall, spent the winter lurking in a swamp and strolling around the place setting fire to old widow’s cakes), at the Battle of Edington, in Wiltshire. Good show Alfred. The really clever bit however was that Alfred, instead of putting all to the sword, as was the custom, persuaded Guthrum, and twenty-nine of his chief men to submit to Christian baptism and on 9 June 878 Alfred became Gorm den Gamle’s godfather. As a result, England became split into two, the south-western half kept by the Saxons and the north-eastern half becoming known as the Danelaw. This is known as the peace of Wedmore. This peace allowed Alfred to turn his attention develop the royal navy to repress the ravages of the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes on the coasts of Wessex and to prevent the landing of fresh hordes. This move more or less maintained the status quo until 1066. Alfred the Great - rotten at cookery but a good egg

First Viking Raids 8 June

2005-06-08T10:00:00.000Z

June 8 is a great day in the sagas of Vikings. For a start, on this day in 793 the first recorded Viking raid on Britain took place at Lindisfarne. This event was, by the account in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, a bit upsetting: "…dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter." - altogether a pretty duff year! There followed a succession of raids by Norse pirates which eventually led to the establishment of a Danish kingdom in England (the Danegeld). This was still going strong in 1042 when, on June 8 Hardeknut, (Canute the Hardy) who was a Dane died and passed the reign of England, for a while, back to a Saxon king, Edward the Confessor. Edward the Confessor was only a half brother to Hardeknut and the Norman Kings descended from Hrolf Ganger - Rollo of Normandy - had a claim to the throne also and, after some other skulduggery, this was taken up in 1066 when William the Conqueror (as the English know him) or William the Bastard (as the Vikings know him) decided to take what was his from Harold and invaded England at Hastings and accepting the surrender of the Saxon nobles at Berkhamsted. Our Glorious Queen is a direct descendant of William the Bastard, although it is doubtful if She ever wears a helm with horns, sails long ships into other peoples creeks or drinks ale from the skulls of her vanquished foe

Panama Canal 7 June

2005-06-07T10:00:00.000Z

Everyone knows that if you travel west from Bristol and keep going you will eventually bump into America. Having bumped into America and keep going west you will eventually dip your toes in the Pacific Ocean. Except if you go by boat. If you go by boat, you will, unless you are barking and want to heave your boats across country, go through the Panama Canal. The first ships passed through the Panama locks on this day 7 June 1914 and they went uphill to the Pacific, which is 24cm higher than the Atlantic. Confusingly, the Atlantic is at the West end of the canal and the Pacific is at the East. It’s all in the Panamanian topography. Of course, none of this would have been possible had much of the pioneering engineering discoveries necessary to build a successful canal not been done a century and a half earlier by, as seems to be the norm (steam engines, telephones, haggis etc), a Scotsman. John Rennie, who was born on this day, 7 June, 1761 solved almost all of the knotty engineering problems associated with the construction of canals and locks. While he was at it, he built the Lancaster Canal (started 1792), the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation (1793), the Crinan Canal (1794) and the Kennet and Avon Canal (1794). Rennie was also the bridge builder who pioneered the wide span elliptical arch bridge and built Waterloo Bridge, with its nine equal elliptical arches and perfectly flat roadway, and Southwark Bridge and London Bridge (of Arizona Desert fame). So, without John Rennie, going backwards to China the short way may have proved a bit tricky.

Go 6 June

2005-06-06T10:00:00.000Z

Some things in life are earth shatteringly important and change the world forever, whereas others simply don’t. On the simply don’t side of the equation, take Go for an example. Go is a strategic, two-player board game originating in ancient China, somewhere between 2000 BC and 200 BC. It was developed to teach Generals the value of strategy. It consists of a set of black and white stones that are placed on a grid in attempt to capture areas of the board. A simple concept, but a staggeringly complex game. The greatest ever player, Hon’inbō Shūsaku, the “Invincible Shusaku”, was born on June 6, 1829 and in 1846, he played the famous “ear-reddening move” against Gennan Inseki, the strongest player of that time. In essence, everyone thought that Gennan was winning, except for a doctor who noticed that Gennan’s ears became red after Shusaku played an expected move in an unforeseen place. On the changing the world side of the equation, Adolf Hitler had his ears reddened today in 1944, when the invasion of Normandy was launched. Hitler, of course thought that it was to be the Invasion of Pas de Calaise. Operation Neptune was the largest amphibious assault ever launched and involved five army divisions, over 7,000 ships and 11,000 aircraft in the initial assault. In total 75,215 British and Canadian troops and 57,500 US troops were landed by sea on D-Day. Another 23,400 were landed by air. So there you have it, Red Ears in a Bunker. Winston was frightfully chuffed; Neptune is going "in a thoroughly satisfactory manner" he announced in the House that night.

Billy Joe McAllister 3 June

2005-06-03T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, June 3 in 1953, Billy Joe McAllister committed suicide by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge on Choctaw Ridge, Mississippi. This, purportedly true event, was immortalised in the song ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ by Bobby Gentry in 1967. The song is noteworthy for the mystery surrounding his reasons for jumping off the bridge, which Ms. Gentry has, suspiciously in my view, never revealed. Some years later, in 1976 Herman Raucher’s film of the story was released and was widely seen as being second only to ‘Convoy’ as the worst film ever made about the American South. For those of you who can’t bear the suspense any longer, I can reveal exclusively that the suicide was probably a reaction to whatever it was that Brother Taylor saw a girl and Billy Joe throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge sometime before the reported suicide. Some observers have intimated that this may have been a baby, others have suggested, probably correctly, the possibility of it being the puppy of Billy Joe’s dog ‘Ol’ Yeller’ (it is the American South, after all). This sad event, of course, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the marriage of Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (AKA The Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor and, for a short while, King Edward VIII) to Mrs Wallis Simpson on 3 June 1937. In order to marry Mrs Simpson he abdicated the throne, announcing "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.". Later, when giving his views on marriage he said, "Of course, I do have a slight advantage over the rest of you. It helps in a pinch to be able to remind your bride that you gave up a throne for her." What a nice chap.

Mark Twain 2 June

2005-06-02T10:00:00.000Z

On this day, 2 June 1897, following the erroneous publication of a premature obituary in the New York Journal, Mark Twain famously responded: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated". Mark Twain was perhaps America’s most important writer, indeed, Ernest Hemingway said: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. ...all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.". He may have been right. One thing that is now widely forgotten is that many of Mark Twain’s works were suppressed for one reason or another. In 1880 for example he wrote "1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors." Which, was (and still is, in parts,) considered to be obscene: ‘In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore…. Lady Alice says "Good your grace, an’ I had room for such a thundergust within mine ancient bowels, ‘tis not in reason I coulde discharge ye same and live to thank God for yt….. so pray you seeke ye further."’ You get the gist. He lambasted religion in several suppressed works, most notably ‘Letters from the Earth’ and ‘The Mysterious Stranger’ - "It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream…." Nowadays, Huckleberry Finn, much admired when he wrote it, is widely suppressed because it is perceived as racist. Perhaps he should have stuck to his other great skill, inventing. Who can forget his most famous invention - ‘An improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments’ (US patent US121992), which, to the ineffable relief of us all, hugely improved the keeping-up of trousering of all sorts, as well as securely anchoring various other items of men’s leg-wear. This magnificent invention works by means of numerous hooks, eyes, buttons and yards of elaborate elastic strapping. Mark Twain - Two fathoms deep.

The Great Pumpkin 1 June

2005-06-01T10:00:00.000Z

There are those who believe in The Great Pumpkin and those who do not. For those who do not, I should elucidate. The Great Pumpkin, like Santa Claus, mysteriously appears every year, bringing presents. The Great Pumpkin, however, appears on Halloween and instead of clambering down chimneys, chooses to appear only at the most sincere pumpkin patch. The Great Pumpkin was first mentioned by Linus van Pelt who is the younger best friend of Charlie Brown. Though very young, Linus is very wise, and is a noted philosopher and theologian, often quoting the Gospels. Linus is sadly dominated by his older sister Lucy, who has been known to clobber him at the drop of a hat. Linus and Lucy have a younger brother "Rerun," who looks nearly identical to Linus, but smaller. Charlie Brown’s little sister, Sally, is in love with Linus and calls him her "sweet babboo." Linus in turn has an innocent crush on his teacher, Miss Othmar. Being somewhat fickle in his emotions he later developed a similar crush on Mrs. Hagemeyer, Miss Othmar’s replacement. Linus coined the term "security blanket" on 1 June 1954 and since then has almost never been seen without his blue blanket (or one of several), which he holds over his shoulder while sucking his thumb. Linus van Pelt, Prophet of The Great Pumpkin and inventor of the Security Blanket.

The Cornflake 31 May

2005-05-31T10:00:00.000Z

Today is the day, in 1894, that the humble corn flake was inflicted on an unsuspecting world. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the superintendent of a sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan and a Seventh Day Adventist provided a strict vegetarian regimen for his patients, which also included no alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine. The diet he imposed consisted entirely of bland foods, since he believed in sexual abstinence and believed that spicy or sweet foods would increase passions, while bland foods would have an anti-aphrodisiac property. He published ‘treatments’ for sexual desire in ‘Plain facts for old and young’, 1877. Although this first treatise was not hugely well received, he expanded upon his theories in the ever popular ‘Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects, Plain Facts for Old and Young, 1888’. His treatment advocated the circumcision of males (without anaesthetic) and the application of "pure carbolic acid" on the private parts of females. The corn flake began by accident when Dr. Kellogg and his brother, Will Keith Kellogg decided to force stale cooked wheat through rollers, hoping to obtain long sheets of the dough. To their surprise, what they got instead was flakes, which they toasted and served to their patients. This event occurred on approximately the April 14, 1894 and a patent for the product was registered on May 31 under the name Granose. The flakes of grain, served with milk, were a very popular food among the patients. In 1906, Will Keith Kellogg, decided to market the new food and set up a company, Kellogg’s, to do so. Corn flakes was the first product. Meanwhile, back in the sanatorium, Kellogg recommended corn flakes in combination with his other tried and tested anti-sexual ‘treatments’. Kellogg’s next business winning idea was Rice Krispies in 1929.

Dunkirk 27 May

2005-05-27T10:00:00.000Z

On 27 May 1940 the evacuation from Dunkirk, which had started the day before, was well underway. Men of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, were stubbornly fighting a rear guard action and holding the village of Le Paradis and the neighbouring hamlets of Le-Cornet Malo and Riez-du-Vinage against overwhelmingly superior forces. Their intention was to try and block the enemy’s advance on Dunkirk. Finally, after delaying the enemy for as long as possible and inflicting heavy casualties, all of their ammunition was used up and they were completely cut off from their Battalion and Brigade HQ. Left with no chance of escape and no choice, 97 officers and men of Second Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment surrendered to No 4 Company of the 1st Battalion of the 2nd SS Totenkopf (Death’s Head) Regiment. They were disarmed, marched into a field, mowed down by machine-guns, finished off by revolver shots and bayonet thrusts and left to rot. By some miracle, two men, Bill O’Callaghan and Bert Pooley, escaped death and hid in a pig-sty that belonged to Madame Duquenne-Creton. Madame Duquenne-Creton, at immense risk to herself, cared for and fed the 2 injured men for 3 days. Unfortunately, Bert, who had been wounded in the leg became increasingly ill and in the end, because his leg wounds were so severe the two men were forced to give themselves up and became prisoners of war. Bert was repatriated in 1943. When he returned home and told his story of the massacre no-one believed him and it was not until 1946 that he was able to return to Le Paradis, prove his story and set the wheels of justice in motion. On 28 Jan 1949, the German officer who ordered the massacre, Fritz Knoechein, who was married with four children, was hung by the neck until dead.

Kaspar Hauser 26 May

2005-05-26T10:00:00.000Z

On May 26, 1828 a young boy was found wandering the streets of Nürnberg, Germany. He was wearing peasant clothing and could barely talk. He had with him a letter to the captain of the 4th squadron of the 6th cavalry regiment, asking the captain to either take him or hang him. The shoemaker took the boy to the house of captain Wessenig where he said only, "I want to be a rider like my father." Further demands for information resulted in tears. He was taken to a police station where he wrote a name: Kaspar Hauser. The boy was taken into care and taught to speak and write and it emerged during the ensuing months that he had lived in a dark 2×1×1.5 metre cell with only a straw bed and had been fed on bread and water. The first human being he had seen was a man who had taught him the phrase, "I want to be a rider like my father", and to write Kaspar Hauser. Eventually he was released and the next thing he remembered was walking about in Nuremberg. Unsurprisingly, the boy was the talk of Nurnberg. Some connected him with the family of the Grand Duke of Baden. If this were true, his parents would have been Karl Ludwig Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden and Stephanie de Beauharnais, adopted daughter of Napoleon I of France. The Countess von Hochberg was the alleged culprit for the boy’s captivity. These rumours gained credence when on October 17, 1829, a hooded man tried to kill Hauser with an axe but managed only to wound his forehead. Then on December 14, 1833, a stranger stabbed him fatally in the chest and he died three days later. The final twist to the tale came in 2002, when the Institute for Forensic Medicine af the University of Münster analysed hair and body cells that belonged to Kaspar Hauser. The genetic code was a 95% match to that of Astrid von Medinger, a direct descendant of Stephanie de Beauharnais. Bad Badens in Baden Baden!

The Thirty Years War 23 May

2005-05-23T10:00:00.000Z

May 23 is the anniversary of the start of the Thirty Years War. Largely the province of a few slightly barking buffs, most of us know very little about the Thirty Years War apart from the fact that it was seventy years shorter than the other war (the one with Henry V and Agincourt). However, if you are ever stuck in a lift with a loquacious Bohemian you may find a few basics helpful. The Thirty Years War, to Bohemians is, apparently, like the weather to the British. What will impress your Bohemian fellow traveller the most is to know that it was started by ‘The Defenestration of Prague’. In 1617, Catholic officials stopped construction of some Protestant chapels, violating a recently acquired ‘right of freedom of religious expression’ (as granted in the Majestätsbrief (Letter of Majesty), issued by Emperor Rudolf II in 1609). As a result, at Prague Castle on May 23, 1618, an assembly of angry Protestants tried the officials, Vilem Slavata and Jaroslav Martinic for violating the Majestätsbrief, found them guilty and hurled them and their hapless scribe Fabricius, out of a castle window. They landed unhurt in a pile of manure and stalked off grumpily to start the war which, in Germany alone, resulted in the destruction of 2000 castles, 18000 villages and 1500 towns. At the end of the War the population of Europe was reduced to one tenth of what it was before the War. Defenestration - just say ‘No’. On a lighter note, a Mrs Trellis of North Wales has written to inform me that 23 May is the birthday of Humphrey Lyttelton, well-known British jazz musician. Mrs Trellis goes on to say that Humph is also chairman of the Radio 4 programme ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’, a programme, she asserts, that is little more than "an enormous fistful of rampant innuendo rammed into every crack".

Battle of Nechtansmere 20 May

2005-05-20T10:00:00.000Z

Today, May 20 is the day when all Picts gather round on a late spring evening, drink a warming glass of something or other and inflict a tattoo or two to commemorate the famous Battle of Nechtansmere in 685. Pictland, as you will all no doubt recall, comprised all of modern Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde except for Argyll. The Northumbrians had been gradually extending their territory to the north, having captured Edinburgh in 638. King Ecgfrith of Northumbria, casting aside for a moment his brown ale and stotty cake, invaded even more lands held by the Picts in 685 and the Picts, not surprisingly, were distinctly miffed. They met in battle on May 20 near Dunnichen; the Picts, after some preliminary hooting and shouting, pretended to run away and drew the Northumbrians into dank, dark and misty swamp of Nechtansmere. The Pictish King Bridei III, bursting like a thunderbolt from the mist, killed Ecgfrith by shoving a sharpened stick through his head. The victorious Picts destroyed Ecgfrith’s army, stole all his brown ale and stotty cake and enslaved the women. The battle dealt a blow to the Northumbrians from which they never recovered. Although the name Pict or Picti is usually assumed to mean painted or tattooed (as in Latin) it may have a Celtic origin. The Brythonic Celts knew them as ‘Prydyn’ which is, of course, the origin of the word ‘Britain’. Sadly, although the Picts had given the Geordies a sound drubbing, they were not up to the mark when the Vikings came along and utterly defeated them in 839.

Anne Boleyn 19 May

2005-05-19T10:00:00.000Z

On this day in 1536, Anne Boleyn, Marchioness of Pembroke and Queen Consort of England, second wife and queen consort of Henry VIII and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I of England was beheaded. The reason for this sad separation of head from shoulders has always been the subject of debate but it seems most likely that the king had got cheesed of with Anne’s strong willed ways and blundered into the arms of the doe-eyed and manipulative Jane Seymour, who was a pawn of Anne’s many political enemies. Most importantly, Anne had quarrelled with Thomas Cromwell, the chief minister, which was probably a bit of an error, and he moved swiftly to extract revenge. Cromwell, with the secret support of the king, engineered an elaborate plot to bring the queen to the scaffold along with several of her strategic allies at court. Anne was arrested on May 2, 1536, and taken to the Tower of London. where she apparently went slightly off her chunk. She is rumoured to have written a letter to her husband remonstrating against this "unworthy stain" on her reputation. On the evidence of a false confession, obtained from one of her chums, Marc Smeaton, by torture, Anne was convicted at her trial on May 15 and on May 19, 1536 she was beheaded in the Tower of London. Her head came off with a single stroke of the swordsman’s blade. By some oversight, a coffin hadn’t been ordered for her, so they placed her in an arrow box, and since it was too small, they placed her head under her arm, which is, of course, where all the tales of ghosts with heads under their arms stem from. Henry, clearly distraught, waited 11 whole days and married Jane Seymour on May 30.

Comet Halley 18 May

2005-05-18T10:00:00.000Z

On this day in 1910, the earth passed through the tail of the Comet Halley. Whilst of great interest to astronomers, this event proved worrisome to the timorous who fretted in the press that the comet’s tail was known to contain poisonous cyanogen gas. Happily for the timorous however, the gas caused no ill-effects. The appearance of Comets has often been seen as a prophetic event. Spookily, for example, two of the comet’s visits - 1835 and 1910 - are in the same years as the birth and death of the American novelist Mark Twain, who wrote in 1909, "I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." On the subject of prophetic stuff, Eilmer of Malmesbury (a famous early aviator, who "had hazarded a deed of remarkable boldness. He had by some means, I scarcely know what, fastened wings to his hands and feet so that, mistaking fable for truth, he might fly like Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze upon the summit of a tower, flew for more than a furlong. But agitated by the violence of the wind and the swirling of air, as well as by the awareness of his rash attempt, he fell, broke both his legs and was lame ever after."), having first seen it as a young boy in 989, declared in 1066: "You’ve come, have you?...You’ve come, you source of tears to many mothers. It is long since I saw you; but as I see you now you are much more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country". Later that year, King Harold suffered the unpleasantness of receiving a Norman arrow in his eye at Hastings.

Cunning Plans of a Military Sort 17 May

2005-05-17T10:00:00.000Z

May 17 is a day for cunning plans of a military sort. In 1899, for example, Colonel Baden-Powell was sent (with no troops or supplies of any sort) to resist the expected Boer invasion of the Natal Colony (now KwaZulu-Natal Province) and draw the Boers away from the coasts so that British troops could be landed. Baden-Powell decided that the best way of tying down Boer troops would be to invite attack by defending something. He chose the town of Mafeking. He recruited local forces of 2000 men in shorts and funny hats, part of which was a cadet corps of boys aged 12 to 15, (the inspiration for the Scouting movement). 8,000 Boer troops attacked Mafeking, but, by means of cunning plans, including fake landmines and searchlights made out of biscuit tins, Baden-Powells’ chaps withstood the siege for 217 days. As a ruse to tie down Boer forces it was a raging success and the siege was lifted on May 17, 1900, when British forces relieved the town after fighting their way in. Leaping from land into air, Operation Chastise was the official name for the attacks on German dams on May 17, 1943 in World War II using a specially developed "bouncing bomb" designed by Barnes Wallis. His cunning plan was for a bomb that could be exploded directly against the dam wall below the surface of the water. The major German dams were protected by heavy torpedo netting to prevent such an attack, and Wallis’s breakthrough was a drum-shaped bomb, spinning rapidly backwards that skipped over all the defences and detonated against the dam. The attack was carried out by the unfeasibly brave boys of Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, subsequently known as the Dam Busters. Mines were flooded and houses, factories, roads, railways and bridges destroyed as the flood waters spread for around 50 miles (80 km) from the source. The Nazis were kept busy nailing it all back together for several months. Good show chaps.

Niff Naff & Trivia 16 May

2005-05-16T10:00:00.000Z

Today is one of those days where history took a day off. Lots of interesting things happened on May 15 and on May 17, but on May 16 we can celebrate only the invention of Root Beer by Charles Elmer Hires, a Philadelphia pharmacist in 1866. Our US cousins are, of course, very familiar with Root beer but it is (thankfully) less common in the UK. Not surprisingly it is made from roots. It seems that just about any old combination of roots will do, with vanilla, cherry tree bark, liquorice root, sarsaparilla root, sassafras root bark, nutmeg and anise forming staples. Other ingredients may include allspice, birch bark, coriander, juniper, ginger, wintergreen, hops, burdock root, dandelion root, spikenard, pipsissewa, guaiacum, spicewood, yellow dock, honey, clover, cinnamon, prickly ash bark, yucca, quillaja, dog grass, coffee, citric acid and molasses. Root beer is made using some arbitrary mixture roots and spices to which is added sugar, water, and yeast. It is allowed to ferment under pressure to retain the carbonation and limit the alcohol produced by the yeast to low levels (normally about 2%). Astonishingly, there are currently 59 commercial varieties of Root beer available in the US (some of which have been described by various luminaries as ‘palatable’!) as well as hundreds, if not thousands of homebrewed concoctions. How it is that thousands haven’t been poisoned remains one of the great, unsolved mysteries of the age. Well Done Charles Elmer Hires.

Formation of Royal Flying Corps 13 May

2005-05-13T10:00:00.000Z

Today marks the anniversary of a major milestone in aviation. The Royal Flying Corps was formed by Royal Warrant on May 13, 1912. By the end of that year, it had 12 manned balloons and 36 biplane aircraft (as well as 43 tents and 12 black Labrador dogs). The RFC came into its own at the outbreak of World War I and its first action of the war was a two aircraft reconnaissance on 19 August 1914. Sadly, like so many early aviation exploits, the mission was not a great success and in the poor weather, both of the pilots lost their way. Readers of Biggles stories will know that one of the more unusual missions undertaken by the RFC was the delivery of spies to behind enemy lines. The first such mission took place on the morning of September 13 1915 and was not a success. The plane crashed and both pilot and spy were badly injured and captured. Nevertheless, later missions were more successful and, in addition to delivering spies the RFC became responsible for keeping the spies supplied with the carrier pigeons that were used to send back intelligence reports. One famous homing pigeon, Cher Ami, hatched on 13 May 1916, was awarded the French Croix de Guerre for heroic service after delivering 12 important messages. Cher Ami helped save the Lost Battalion of the US 77th Division in the battle of the Argonne, October 1918 and on her last, heroic and fateful mission, she delivered her message despite having been shot through the breast. Cher Ami’s remains are today enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution.

Richard 1 'Lionheart' 12 May

2005-05-12T10:00:00.000Z

On 12 May 1191, Richard I, King of England, Richard the Lionheart, Coeur de Lion. married Berengaria, first-born daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre at Limassol in Cypruss. This event took place during the Third Crusade and, before marrying Berengaria, Richard invaded, sacked and looted the island, murdering any that stood against him - no doubt some sort of 12th century stag night ritual. Richard, it appears, was a bit prone to this sort of thing. At his coronation, for example, Jewish leaders attended to present gifts for the new king. Richard’s courtiers stripped and flogged them and flung them out of court, where a massacre began. Many Jews were beaten to death, robbed, and burnt alive. At least one was forcibly baptised. Later, when Richard wrote of this incident, he called the massacre a "holocaustum". Returning to the Royal Wedding, the event was attended by his Mum, Eleanor of Aquitaine and his sister Joan, whom Richard had brought from Sicily. Richard, having got the ceremony over with then neglected his wife totally, and had to be commanded by priests to be faithful to her. There were no children from the marriage; indeed early historians, commented on Richard’s apparent disinterest in his wife and his very close friendship with Philip, the King of France. Richard is viewed by history as a hero, although he did little for England, siphoning the kingdom’s resources to support his Crusade. He spent only six months of his ten year reign in England and couldn’t speak English, claiming (in French) it was "cold and always raining." During the period when he was raising funds for his Crusade, Richard declared, "If I could have found a buyer I would have sold London itself." Over the years the figures of Robin Hood and Richard I have become closely linked. However, in the earliest Robin Hood ballads the only king mentioned is "Edward our comely king", presumably Edward I, II, or III. It was not until much later that a connection came to be made between the two men. Richard the Lionheart - not a very nice man.

Incidentally, for those of you interested in salacious gossip of this sort, here is the text of what those early historians said about Richard and Phillip - no doubt just boyish joshing:
Hoveden: Vol II, pp. 63-64
Ricardus dux Aquitaniae, filus regis Angliae, morum fecit cum Philipo rege Franciae, quem ipse in tantum honoravit per longum tempus quod singulis diebus in una mensa ad unum cantinum manducabant, et in noctibus non seperabat eos lectus. Et diliexit eum rex Franciae quasi animam suam; et in tantum se mutuo diligebant, quod propter vehmentem delictionem quae inter illos erat, dominus rex Angliae nimio stupore arreptus admirabatur quid hoc esset.
Which, I think, translates to
Richard, [then] duke of Aquitaine, the son of the king of England, remained with Philip, the King of France, who so honoured him for so long that they ate every day at the same table and from the same dish, and at night their beds did not separate them. And the king of France loved him as his own soul; and they loved each other so much that the king of England was absolutely astonished at the passionate love between them and marvelled at it.
Note that "lectus" does mean bed, couch and nothing else here, and "deligo" is probably best translated as "love" although it could, I suppose, mean "esteem" - clearly a too weak translation here.

Spencer Percival 11 May

2005-05-11T10:00:00.000Z

On this day in 1812 The Right Honourable Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was shot through the heart in the Lobby of the House of Commons. He is the only British Prime Minister ever to have been assassinated. Perceval was on his way to attend the inquiry about trade restrictions when John Bellingham, who was demanding compensation for his imprisonment in Russia, shot him. The circumstances are peculiar to say the least. In autumn 1803, a Russian ship Soyuz was lost in the White Sea. The owners (the house of R. Van Brienen) attempted to claim on their insurance but an anonymous letter informed Lloyd’s that the ship had been sabotaged. Soloman Van Brienen suspected Bellingham was the author, and accused him of a debt of 4,890 roubles. Bellingham, who had been working in Russia as a merchant was on the verge of leaving for Britain but on November 16 1804, was imprisoned. Eventually he was permitted to leave and arrived back in England in December 1809. Oddly, Bellingham (who’s father had been insane, by the way) decided to petition the United Kingdom Government for compensation for his imprisonment. Despite pleas from friends and family to desist, he persisted and on April 18 1812 he went in person to the offices of the Foreign Office where a civil servant called Hill told him he would not be compensated and that he was ‘at liberty to take whatever measures he thought proper’. What he thought proper was to lurk in the lobby of the House of Commons and on May 11 1812, he drew one of a pair of pistols concealed in specially made pockets in his coat and shot the Prime Minister as he passed through to the chamber. He was taken up, found guilty, sentenced to death, and hanged in public on Monday May 18. In the 1983 general election, his descendant Henry Bellingham was elected to Parliament for North West Norfolk and some years later in 1997 one of his opponents was Roger Percival, a descendant of Spencer Perceval.

"Wilkes and Liberty!" 10 May

2005-05-10T10:00:00.000Z

"Wilkes and Liberty!" is not a cry heard on the streets of London, or indeed anywhere else, nowadays but on May 10 1768 when John Wilkes, a radical and journalist, was imprisoned there was rioting in London with people running around shouting "Wilkes and Liberty!" as if their lives depended on it. Wilkes was a supporter of William Pitt the Elder (a Whig). When John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (a Tory) came to power in 1762, Wilkes started a weekly publication, the ‘North Briton’, in which both Bute and the Dowager Princess of Wales (with whom Bute may have been a smidgen over-chummy) were savagely satirised. Bute resigned in 1763 but Wilkes was equally opposed to his successor, George Grenville. Wilkes was later charged with seditious libel over attacks on the King’s speech at the opening of Parliament in issue Number 45 of April 23, 1763 which eventually led to his imprisonment. In addition to being a bit of a scallywag, Wilkes was a noted wit and when Lord Sandwich shouted to him "You Sir, will either die of the pox or the gallows!". Wilkes responded "That would depend on whether I embrace your lordship’s principles or your mistresses." Whilst all that is jolly interesting in itself, the best part of the tale started off as a bit of a side-show. In addition to Wilkes, there were about 40 other ‘North Briton’ supporters and contributors that the Government attempted to suppress. Secretary of State for the Northern Department George Montague-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax had his agents, led by Nathan Carrington, break into the home of Wilkes’ supporter John Entick and seize his private papers. Entick took Carrington and his colleagues to court and the trial took place in Westminster Hall presided over by Chief Justice of the Common Pleas Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. Camden held that Halifax had no right under statute or under precedent to issue such a warrant. The judgement established the limits of executive power in English law that an officer of the state could only act lawfully in a manner prescribed by statute or common law - which is why a Home Secretary will seldom cry "Wilkes and Liberty!".

Colonel Thomas Blood 9 May

2005-05-09T10:00:00.000Z

Seventeenth Century Royal Scam. On this day in 1671, Colonel Thomas Blood, one of the most audacious rogues in history, attempted to steal the Crown Jewels. Blood, disguised as a parson, had over a number of weeks, befriended the Jewel Keeper, Talbot Edwards and at 7 am on 9 May persuaded him to show the jewels to a group of his parson friends. Edwards, apparently not in the least bit surprised at being confronted by half a dozen drunken Irish parsons at seven in the morning, unlocked the door to the room where they were kept. At this point, Blood hit him on the head with a mallet and knocked him to the floor, where he was bound, gagged and stabbed with a sword. The crown was flattened with the mallet and stuffed into a bag, and the orb stuffed down Blood’s breeches. The sceptre was too long to go into the bag, and wouldn’t fit down his breeches, so Blood’s brother-in-law, Hunt (one of the other ‘parsons’), tried to saw it in half. Astonishingly, Edwards’s son chose that moment to visit his father for the first time in many years and on his approach the gang dropped the loot and fled. Blood, after unsuccessfully trying to shoot one of the guards with a wet pistol was captured. Blood refused to answer questions, saying only "I’ll answer to none but the King himself". Strangely, King Charles II then met with Blood and asked, "What if I should give you your life?" Blood, with a roguish wink, replied, "I would endeavour to deserve it, Sire!" Much to everyone’s amazement the King, instead of having him hung drawn and quartered, pardoned Blood, and gave him an income of five hundred pounds per annum! Of course, whilst one hesitates to question the motives of a Monarch, some commentators, bearing in mind the Royal impecuniousness at the time, have surmised that Blood was acting under orders and that the jewels were destined for sale to refill the royal treasury.

Tony Blair's Birthday 8 May

2005-05-08T10:00:00.000Z

Today is the Prime Ministers birthday. The Right Honourable Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair is the first Labour Prime Minister to have lead his party to three general elections in a row, and the first to lead Labour into a third term. Mr Blair, during his period of office has done much to extend and modernise the welfare state, develop the economy and extend the ‘special relationship’ with the United States. Happy Birthday Mr Blair. Speaking of visionary leaders and the United States, today in 1877, Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux surrendered to United States troops in Nebraska. This sad event came less than one year after the Battle of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn on June 26, 1876, in which Crazy Horse joined forces with Sitting Bull and led his band in the counterattack that destroyed Custer’s 7th Cavalry. Whilst in custody, a United States soldier assassinated Crazy Horse (with a bayonet) on September 5, 1877. Three years later, after the ‘Battle’ of Wounded Knee the so-called Indian Wars were over. Lyman Frank Baum, later famous as the author of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ and the ever-popular ‘The Book of the Hamburgs: A Brief Treatise upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of the Different Varieties of Hamburgs’, wrote: "..our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilisation, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.." There were 20,000 Lakota (Oglala Sioux) in the mid-18th century. There are now about 70,000, 20,480 of whom still speak their ancestral language.

Dissolution of Parliament 5 May

2005-05-05T10:00:00.000Z

On this day in 1640 King Charles I (obviously with an eye to future topicality as much as out of habit) dissolved parliament. This particular parliament was known as the Short Parliament because it lasted only three weeks. King Charles was forced to call the Short Parliament to raise money to fight the Bishops’ Wars, but parliament was more interested in arguing about grievances with the King and didn’t deliver. How different from the parliaments of today! In France, of course, things were, at that time, less revolutionary and it wasn’t until 5 May 1789 that the first meeting of the French Estates-General took place to resolve one or two tax issues. This meeting was a general assembly consisting of representatives from all but the poorest segment of the French citizenry and was the embryo of future French government. It had long been the practise that France raised the bulk of its taxes from the ‘Third Estate’ - the commoners - and this, astonishingly, was seen as a bit unfair (by the commoners, that is). Successive attempts at reforming the system had proven fruitless in the face of opposition from the First (the clergy) and Second (the nobility) Estates who were hardly taxed at all - no doubt the commoners predilection for eating cake had something to do with this. The assembly, predictably, ended in a shambles. Of course, one way of avoiding all this election fever altogether would be to have instead a coup d’état. We all complain about the politicians we have to choose from and a coup d’état removes all that uncertainty. The coup d’état on 5 May 1954 that carried General Alfredo Stroessner to power in Paraguay is a prime example. Although known, for several positive economic policies, including the building of the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world, Alfredo also granted asylum to numerous Ex-Nazis in Paraguay, including the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. ‘Good old Alfredo’ was apparently so benevolent a ruler that he only killed 3000 of his own people during the 35 years before he was ousted in a coup. What a nice man - on the whole, I would prefer to vote.

Battle of Tewkesbury 4 May

2005-05-04T10:00:00.000Z

The Battle of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, which took place on May 4, 1471, ended one phase of the interminable Wars of the Roses. The mentally unstable Lancastrian King, Henry VI of England, nicknamed "Mad Henry" was deposed for a second time by his rival, the Yorkist Edward IV of England. The battle put a temporary end to Lancastrian hopes of regaining the throne of England and proceeded fourteen years of peace until Henry Tudor finally settled the argument at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Another famous nickname, Al ‘Scarface’ Capone was sent to Atlanta prison on May 4 1932 for tax evasion. Alphonse Gabriel Capone, famous American gangster of the 1920s and 1930s was, according to his business card, a used furniture dealer, although he may have been fibbing. Sometime in the mid-1930s, whilst at Alcatraz, Capone began showing signs of dementia. ‘Crazy Al’, as he became known by the braver inmates, died on January 24, 1947. Finally on the subject of nicknames, (and somewhat topically) Margaret Hilda Roberts Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, became the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 4 May 1979. She acquired more nicknames than any other British leader - "The Great She-Elephant", "Attila the Hen", and "The Grocer’s Daughter" to name but a few. "The Iron Lady" retired from Parliament at the 1992 election.

David 1 of Scotland 27 April

2005-04-27T10:00:00.000Z

On this day in 1124, David I, known as "the Saint", became King of Scotland. On the death of Edgar, king of Scotland, in 1107, the territories of the Scottish crown were divided between his two brothers, Alexander and David. The death of Alexander in 1124 gave David possession of the whole starting on April 27 of that year. After some of the usual medieval skulduggery, David marched into England in 1138, and sustained, in traditional Scottish fashion, a crushing defeat on Cutton Moor in the engagement known as the Battle of the Standard. Despite this minor setback, David was the king who effectively created the kingdom of Scotland as we would now recognise it. The man was an utter swine by modern standards but then, who wasn’t in those days? Wallace and Bruce may well be remembered as the patriotic heroes who rescued Scotland from the tyranny of foreign oppression but it was David who projected Scottish royal power further than any of his predecessors and extended it more effectively than any of his successors before the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, the Scottish propensity for losing battles to the English was set and on this day in 1296 the Scots lost the Battle of Dunbar against Edward I and also on this day, but in 1650, they lost the Battle of Carbisdale. Porridge, haggis, kilts and losing battles – great nation Scotland!

Corbetts 26 April

2005-04-26T10:00:00.000Z

This day, 26 April, is known in Concordia, Kansas as ‘Corbetts’. It is now an almost forgotten fact that from the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries, a process called "carroting" was used in the making of felt hats. Animal skins were rinsed in an orange solution of the mercury compound mercuric nitrate. This process separated the fur from the pelt and matted it together. This solution and the vapours it produced were highly toxic. Its use resulted in widespread cases of mercury poisoning among hatters. Symptoms included dementia and hallucinations. All very interesting, but what has this got to do with 26 April? Well, Thomas P. Corbett, an Englishman moved to New York City in 1839. At a loss as to how to earn a living, he became a hatter. One day, with stunning clarity of purpose, he became a re-born evangelical Christian and changed his name to Boston. Furthermore, convinced that Jesus had been a hatter, Corbett began trying to imitate Him by wearing his hair very long. Sadly, on July 16, 1858, in order to avoid the temptation of prostitutes (always a wise move), Corbett castrated himself with a pair of scissors (never a wise move). Afterwards he went to a prayer meeting and ate a hearty meal. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Corbett (now a soprano) joined the Union army and on 26 April 1865 he and 25 other Union cavalry troopers cornered John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln’s assassin, in a tobacco barn in Virginia. Corbett shot Booth dead. Corbett was immediately arrested for disobeying orders but the charges were dropped and Corbett received his share of the reward money, which amounted to $1,653.85. Fearing a sudden onset of sanity, Corbett returned to being a hatter and moved to Concordia, Kansas where he lived in a hole dug into a hillside. 26 April - Mad as a Hatter Day.

Robinson Crusoe April 25

2005-04-25T10:00:00.000Z

Robinson Crusoe, a novel by Daniel Defoe was first published 25 April 1719 and is regarded as the first novel in English. The novel was so successful that before the end of the year, this first volume had run through four editions. Within a matter of decades, it had reached an audience as wide as any book ever written in English. In fact, it is the most widely read book after the Bible, although the Guinness Book of World Records claims the same rank. As James Joyce put it (not altogether flatteringly if you are English): Robinson Crusoe "is the true prototype of the British colonist... the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity." Moving on from most popular books to most popular tunes, "La Marseillaise", a song written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle at Strasbourg was first sung on April 25, 1792. (Clearly, the French were still smarting over the success of Robinson Crusoe.) Its original name is (the slightly less catchy) "Chant de guerre de l’Armée du Rhin" ("Marching Song of the Rhine Army). The song became the rallying call of the French Revolution and was so-called because it was first sung on the streets by troops (fédérés) from Marseille upon their arrival in Paris, although why anyone would want to sing anything about armies of the Rhine on arrival in Paris escapes me. Nevertheless, all this artistic effort was obviously very draining, because apart from the American-Mexican War, the Suez Canal being started and the St Lawrence Seaway being opened, nothing much else happened on 25 April until 1953. Just as the world was beginning to despair of 25 April, Francis Crick and James D. Watson published the "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid", which very nicely described the double helix structure of DNA. Whew.

Henry VIII April 22

2005-04-22T10:00:00.000Z

Henry VIII became King of England and Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) on 22 April 1509. Henry VIII has become one of the most popular historical kings of the English monarchy. Astonishingly, in these days of political correctness, this is mainly based on the common perception of his larger than life character as an over-eating, womanising bon vivant. Despite this, William Shakespeare’s historical play, ‘Henry VIII: All Is True’ was never popular and, curiously, it was Henry VIII that was playing on June 29, 1613 when the Globe Theatre burnt down. Another bon vivant, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) was born on 22 April 1870. He was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the founder of the ideology of Leninism. All jolly interesting, but more interesting still is the little known fact that Lenin’s brain was removed before his body was embalmed in order to discover the precise location of the brain cells that are responsible for genius. The Institute of Brain was created in Moscow for this purpose but, surprisingly, never reached a satisfactory conclusion. Speaking of genius, Earth Day is celebrated in most countries on the vernal equinox (March 20) to mark the precise moment that spring begins in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. At this global moment, night and day are equal all over the world, the sun sets at the South Pole and rises at the North Pole and anyone standing on the equator at noon will not cast a shadow. Except in the United States of America who celebrate Earth Day on 22 April – you can do that if you are a super power.

Heroes April 21

2005-04-21T10:00:00.000Z

April 21 is a day for heroes. Today’s heroes seem to comprise mostly overpaid sports players and television ‘personalities’ but it was not always thus. In 753 BC for example Romulus founded Rome. On April 21, 753 BC Romulus and his brother Remus started to build a settlement on the Palatine Hill, which was destined to become Rome. For some unrecorded and inexplicable reason, Remus jumped from the unfinished city wall, which was, apparently, an omen of ill fortune, so Romulus (instinctively, the history says) killed him. Remorsefully Romulus then named the city Roma, (why not Rema?) and made himself King. Now there’s someone to look up to - eat your heart out Beckham. Brazil has a hero who was a dentist. His name was Tiradentes and he was part of the Brazilian seditious movement known as the Inconfidência Mineira. Tiradentes wanted to found a republic with its capital at São João del Rei and to create a university. but the plot was betrayed and Tiradentes and 11 others were sentenced to death in 1792. In 1889 the anniversary of his death the 21 April, became a national holiday. Finally, the most famous hero of them all, Baron Manfred Albrecht von Richthofen, the "ace of aces" who won 80 air combats during World War I was killed on 21 April 1918. Von Richthofen was shot down and killed over Morlancourt Ridge, near the Somme River whilst pursuing a Sopwith Camel piloted by a Canadian, Lieutenant Wilfrid "Wop" May of No. 209 Squadron, Royal Air Force. In turn the baron was chased by a plane piloted by a schoolfriend of May, Captain Arthur "Roy" Brown, he was then caught by a bullet, shot from behind and below, passing diagonally through his chest. Von Richthofen’s plane came to rest in a field on a hill near the Bray-Corbie road just north of the village of Vaux-sur-Somme before he died, von Richthofen pointed to his plane and moaned, "Kaputt.". Even Jeremy Paxman would have a job to ‘out-comment’ that.

Enoch Powell April 20

2005-04-20T10:00:00.000Z

April 20th has, throughout history been ‘one of those days’. Apart from French scientists Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard inventing Pasteurisation on April 20 1862, which, lets face it, has been fairly useful, the 20th of April is what historians might refer to as an ‘oops’ day. For example, on April 20 1968, British politician Enoch Powell made a controversial speech in Birmingham in which he warned of what he believed would be the consequences of continued immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain. This speech became known as the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. Some, not surprisingly, interpreted this speech as being racist and questioned his judgement but what gave it that real ‘20th of April’ factor was that, with a keen sense of timing, Enoch made this speech on the anniversary of Hitler’s birth (April 20 1889). For the neo-nazis and fascist groups in Britain and Europe this was manna, Enoch was sacked and never re-elected for the Tory party again - oops. In 1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier, in search of the ‘Northwest Passage’ arrived on the coast of Labrador, North America on 20th April. Cartier, became convinced that he had found gold and diamonds lying about all over the place and as a result, he filled his ship with ‘jewels’ and gleefully set sail back to St Malo, ignoring the Northwest Passage plan completely. Sadly, he was to discover when he returned to France that all his samples were in fact worthless rubble - oops. In 1979 US President Jimmy Carter admitted, for no apparent reason, that, whilst fishing (on 20 April) he had been attacked by a killer rabbit. The Washington Post, headed a piece ‘President Attacked by Rabbit’ and ran it on the front page - "It was hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for me". Well, never mind the Iran hostage crisis, what were his chances of re-election after that? Ooops.

Sir Francis Drake April 19

2005-04-19T10:00:00.000Z

On April 19 1587 Sir Francis Drake, in a pre-emptive strike, ‘singed the King of Spain’s beard’ by sailing a fleet into Cadiz, one of Spain’s main ports, occupying the town for three days, destroying 31 enemy ships as well as a large quantity of stores and capturing 6 ships. This audacious attack delayed the sailing of the Spanish Armada by a year and earned Drake the astonishingly original Spanish epithet ‘El Draque’ (Dragon). 183 years later, on 19 April 1770 Captain James Cook bumped his ship Endeavour into the east cost of Australia. The site of Cook’s first landing was at Kurnell on Botany Bay, which was given its name by Sir Joseph Banks, the famous naturalist and ‘grandstander’, who was also on board. Banks introduced an amazed world to the name "kangaroo", from the aboriginal Guugu-Yimidhirr word gangaroo, which, history tells us, means ‘big grey furry hopping thing that never has a blocked nose and throws a good punch’. On the subject of sailing naturalists, the capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory is named Darwin to commemorate the 1839 visit there of the man who proved, in his book ‘The Origin of Species’, that a gangaroo is unlikely to be descended from either a male duck or a dragon. Charles Darwin died on 19 April 1882.

Polish Heroes 18 April

2005-04-18T10:00:00.000Z

April 18 is a great day for remembering the heroes of Poland. On April 18 1025, for example, Boleslaus the Brave, Duke of Bohemia, declared himself to be the first King of Poland. Boleslaus, for the first time, unified all the provinces that subsequently came to comprise the traditional territory of Poland. At his coronation feast (although Kings of Poland had no crown, so post-aggrandisement party might be a better term), Boleslaus served the top Polish meal of the age - Flaki and barszcz (tripe and beetroot). Despite this culinary extravaganza, Polish cuisine was famously execrable until on 18 April 1518 Bona Sforza was crowned as Queen of Poland and married Sigismund I of Poland. She was considered the mother of modern Polish cuisine and was famous for the introduction of Italian vegetables to Polish tables - Even today, such vegetables as leeks, carrots and cabbage are known in Polish as wtoszczyzna, which refers to Wtochy, the Polish name for Italy. Nowadays, of course, if you want a good plate of cabbage, Poland is the place to go. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the 19th Century that the waiting world saw the creation of the first Polish cook-book, by Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa, which was published on 18 April 1874. She based her work on the 18th Century diaries of the szlachta (Polish nobility) who, apparently, spent a great deal of time writing about food.

Battle of Formigny 15 April

2005-04-15T10:00:00.000Z

On the 15 April 1450 the Battle of Formigny hastened the end of the Hundred Years’ War. Whilst the end of a war might, by many, be seen as good news, in this case fans of Henry V of Agincourt fame ("We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; …….. That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.") might disagree. The French attack nearly annihilated the English forces, ending English domination in northern France. The English suffered 2,500 killed or seriously wounded and 900 taken prisoner while French casualties were no more than 300. With no other significant English forces in Normandy the whole region quickly fell to the victorious French. The battle is also famous for being the first decisive use of cannon. In those days they certainly knew how to have long wars. By April 15, 1632 the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeated the Holy Roman Empire under General Tilly at the Battle of Rain, one of several battles that took place during the (mere) Thirty Years War. Tilly was killed trying to catch a cannon ball in his teeth. Cannons were, sadly, out of fashion by the time of the grand opening, in Des Plaines Illinois, of the first MacDonalds ‘Restaurant’ on April 15 1955.

Battle of Forum Gallorum 14 April

2005-04-14T10:00:00.000Z

On the 14 April 43 BC at the Battle of Forum Gallorum, Mark Antony, besieging Julius Caesar’s assassin Decimus Junius Brutus in Mutina, defeats the forces of the consul Pansa, who is killed. This not particularly unusual event in Roman History gave William Shakespeare something to write about. Mutina (as you all no doubt know) is now called Modena and is the ancestral home of De Tomaso, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati. In 1894, in order for the heaving masses to be able to appreciate Bill Shakespeares efforts, Thomas Edison demonstrated the kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence. This device was a precursor to movies and the favourite device in the common-all-sea-side-piers ‘What the Butler Saw’ machines. On a more sombre note, in 1912 on April 14 at 11.40pm whilst sailing on its maiden voyage just south of the Grand Banks, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and by 2.20am the next morning, just 2 hours and 40 minutes later, sank. Of a total of 2,208 people on board that night, only 705 survived; 1,503 perished. Finally, and still on a more sombre note, on 14 April 1986 a considerable number of 2.2 lb (1kg) hailstones fell on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92 people. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.

Alfred Packer 13 April

2005-04-13T10:00:00.000Z

Alfred Packer is reputed to be one of the only two Americans ever to be convicted of cannibalism (the other being Albert Fish). (In reality his conviction was for murder, not cannibalism because, unlike jay-walking, cannibalism is not a crime in the United States). On April 13th 1883, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. However, Packer hornswoggled the hangman because in 1885, the sentence was reversed and Packer was sentenced to 40 years hard labour instead. The judge, with a clear grasp of political correctness, commented during sentencing: "Packer, you depraved Republican son of a bitch, there were only five Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you ate them all!". Here is something to look forward to: 2004 MN4 is a Near-Earth asteroid that will come so close to Earth (only 22600 miles away) that on April 13, 2029 (Friday the 13th) it will be easily visible with the naked eye, weather permitting, from Britain. No other closely approaching objects in recorded history have been visible to the naked eye. I’m sure that Guy Fawkes, who was born today in 1570, would have loved it.

James VI of Scotland 12 April

2005-04-12T10:00:00.000Z

James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, thereby uniting the two kingdoms of England and Scotland and on April 12, 1606, a "Grand Union" flag was created to represent this ‘grand union’. This flag, although similar to the current ‘Union Jack’ did not include the red diagonal cross, which was added on January 1, 1801 with the 1801 Act of Union with Ireland. Unlike the flags of most other nations, the Union Flag is a royal flag, rather than a national flag. In fact, no law has ever been passed making it a national flag. This technicality would only become an issue, of course, if the Monarchy were to be disbanded. Also on this day in 1937 Sir Frank Whittle ground-tested the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at the British Thomson-Houston factory in Rugby, England. The RAF, always notable in the area of foresight, said it was ‘impracticable’. As if this wasn’t exciting enough, to top off the events of 12 April, in 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly in space and (in no way suggesting a downhill slide into banality) in 1992 EuroDisney was opened in Marne-la-Vallee, France.

Napoleon Bonaparte (le petit caporal) 11 April

2005-04-11T10:00:00.000Z

Napoleon Bonaparte (le petit caporal) abdicated unconditionally, on 11 April 1814. Shortly thereafter, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau the victors (Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria) exiled him to Elba. Napoleon escaped from Elba on 26 February 1815. When he returned to the mainland, King Louis XVIII sent troops to stop him. Napoleon simply got out of his carriage and walked up to the soldiers and said "If any man would like to shoot his emperor, he may do so". The army (340,000 men) decided that this was too difficult and decided instead to have another go at pan-European domination. Happily, Napoleon’s final 100 days ended by the (rubber?) boot of the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815 after which Napoleon was exiled to St Helena, where he died (some say of arsenic poisoning). Sadly, Napoleon never said "not tonight Josephine"; however, his dying words were the more enigmatic but less quotable "France, the Army, head of the Army, Josephine."
Speaking of mad Emperors, on 11 April 1979 Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was deposed. Whether any of this is more important than the 1868 formation of the Benevolent and Protective order of Elks in New York by Englishman Charles Algernon Sidney Vivian, I leave to others to decide.

Venus de Milo 8 April

2005-04-08T10:00:00.000Z

On 8th April 1820 the Venus de Milo, a Hellenistic statue was found on the Aegean island of Melos by a peasant named Yorgos. It is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexual love and physical beauty. Venus is her Roman name. Although the French bought the statue from the Turkish rulers of Melos for the price of a nice herd of goats, the ruins of an ancient theatre near which the statue was found was at that time owned by Crown Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria. Ludwig insisted that since the statue had been found on his land, it belonged to him. Unsurprisingly the French disagreed. The sculpture dates back to about 130 BC, and is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch, an itinerant Greek song writer. On the subject of songs, on 8 April 1967 in Vienna, Sandie Shaw won the 12th Eurovision Song Contest with the very catchy "Puppet on a String" – surely a pinnacle in English culture.

Corpus Juris Civilis 7 April

2005-04-07T10:00:00.000Z

On this day in 529, the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I invented Neighbourhood Watch by publishing the Corpus Juris Civilis (the fundamental work in jurisprudence). As if that wasn’t exciting enough, in 1943 Albert Hoffman synthesised Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and hence psychedelic shirt material became a long-awaited reality (or possibly not, depending on your intake of LSD). Notwithstanding these two earth shattering events, probably the most exciting thing of all time to have happened on any April 7 is a toss-up between Anthony Eden becoming Prime Minister in 1955 and the invention of the friction match by English chemist John Walker in 1827. Possibly, the birth of the internet with the publication of RFC1 at ARPA on 7 April 1969 might also be of passing interest to nerds.
Incidentally, (and, sadly, nothing to do with April 7) the word nerd first appeared in Dr. Seuss’s book If I Ran the Zoo, published in 1950, where it names one of Seuss’s many comical imaginary animals. (The narrator Gerald McGrew claims that he would collect "a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too" for his imaginary zoo.). The philosopher Timothy Charles Paul Fuller adopted the term nerd in the mid-1960s to describe a stereotypical intelligent recluse with poor social skills, one often the butt of others’ jokes.

Alexander Nevski 5 April

2005-04-05T10:00:00.000Z

Today in 1242, the (not all that famous) Russian leader Alexander Nevski put an end to the (almost unknown) Northern Crusade against Novgorrod by inflicting a crushing defeat on the Order of Teutonic Knights in a battle fought on a 3500 square mile ice rink called Lake Chudskoye. Some years later, probably fearing another crusade, Napoleon disbanded the order, although not too successfully and today the Order survives today as a charitable organisation for distressed clerics and as a subject for opera libretti.
Also on this day in 1621, the crew of the Mayflower, having become completely cheesed off with being in America, set sail for home.

Francis Drake 4 April

2005-04-04T10:00:00.000Z

On 4 April 1581 Francis Drake completed a circumnavigation of the world and was knighted by Elizabeth 1. This was a big plus for Sir Francis. Drake was also, of course, famous for winning a bowling match against Spanish Armada. Drake is less famous for making the first English slave-trading expedition. Some years later, on 4 April 1983 the Space Shuttle Challenger made its maiden voyage into space where it circumnavigated the globe several times. The Captain of the Challenger was not famous for biffing the Spanish and therefore was not knighted.

Samual Moray 1 April

2005-04-01T22:00:00.000Z

In 1826 Samual Moray became bored with pioneering the development of steam powered ships and on 1 April filed the first ever patent for the internal combustion engine. In 1918, Hugh Montague (Boom) Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard, having learned to fly in one of Tommy Sopwith’s aeroplanes (powered by the internal combustion engine), formed the Royal Air Force. Only 6 years later, on 1 April, the worlds first paying commercial flight was carried out by Société Anonyme Belge d’Exploitation de la Navigation Aerienne (SABENA Airlines) between Rotterdam and Strasbourg. Having exhausted the possibilities of the internal combustion engine, the RAF introduced the jet powered Harrier vertical take off aircraft into service on 1 April 1969.

Julius Rosenberg 30 March

2005-03-30T10:00:00.000Z

In 1951, An American electrical engineer Julius Rosenberg, 33, and his 35-year-old wife, Ethel were found guilty by New York’s Federal Court of passing atomic secrets to the Russians. In pronouncing guilty verdicts, Judge Kaufman, presiding over the trial, said: "That citizens should lend themselves to the destruction of their own country by the most destructive weapon known is so shocking that I cannot find words to describe the loathsome offence."
Also on this day in 1042, Edward the Confessor became King. Edward was the son of King Ethelred II (the Unready) and Emma, the daughter of Richard II of Normandy. Much of his reign was peaceful and prosperous. Skirmishes with the Scots and Welsh were only occasional - something of a new turn of events.

A surprising thing about the 30th of March throughout history is that apart from the odd war, occasional beheadings, famines, plagues, invasions, commencement of Crusades, the death of Robin Hood and the birth of William Shakespeare, nothing much happened for 649 years until, in order to break the monotony, George I, Elector of Hanover became the first Hanoverian king of Great Britain as a result of the Act of Settlement of 1701. George I did a great deal of skirmishing with the Scots in order to suppress the Jacobite rebellion. On the other hand, George I declined various invitations to skirmish with the Welsh. Into each life some rain must fall.

Torrey Canyon 29 March

2005-03-29T10:00:00.000Z

In 1967 bombing raids began on the stranded oil tanker the ‘Torrey Canyon’. The RAF and the Royal Navy dropped 62,000lbs of bombs, 5,200 gallons of petrol, 11 rockets and large quantities of napalm onto the ship. Despite direct hits, and a towering inferno of flames and smoke as the oil slick began to burn, the tanker refused to sink. The mission was called off for the day when particularly high spring tides put out the flames. A disappointed statement from the Home Office said "We have been informed officially that the fire in the wreckage of the Torrey Canyon is out. We cannot say at this stage what the next step will be." Bombing continued into the next day before the Torrey Canyon finally sank. The oil slick was finally dispersed by favourable weather, but not before 70 miles of Cornish beaches were seriously contaminated and tens of thousands of seabirds killed. The environmental disaster was made far worse by the heavy use of detergent to disperse the slick. A report into the effect on the marine environment found that the detergent killed far more marine life than the oil.
Also, in 1971, Charles Manson and three members of his hippy cult were sentenced to death in Los Angeles. They had been found guilty of the August 1969 murders of seven people and one unborn child.
Finally, in 1912, Robert Falcon Scott wrote his final entry in his diary: ‘We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.’ Their bodies were left beneath a cairn of ice and a cross of skis and are still there, buried beneath the snow and ice.

Death of Queen Elizabeth 1 24 March

2005-03-24T22:00:00.000Z

Today is the anniversary of the Death of Queen Elizabeth 1. who, in 1603 ‘mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree’. passed away. The crown passed to the Protestant King James VI of Scotland who became King James I of England. Spookily, only 350 years later in 1953, Her Majesty Queen Mary, while sleeping peacefully, died at twenty minutes past ten o’clock."

1815 Corn Law 23 March

2005-03-23T10:00:00.000Z

This week is the anniversary of the passing of the 1815 Corn Law. As you will all recall from endless school history lessons, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, legislation was introduced to regulate the import of cereals in an attempt to maintain an adequate supply for consumers while providing a secure price for the producers. Cereals could not be imported into Britain until the domestic price reached eighty shillings a quarter. This price meant that cereals and bread were more expensive than they needed to be and this caused considerable agitation and resulted, in a number of areas, in the ‘Reading of the Riot Act’. My, how times change.