Yes it really happened

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1806 Napoléon’s brother Louis was declared individual of the newly formed Kingdom of Holland; in 1873 the last permanent slave market in east Africa closed, after the British government forced Sultan Barghash to end slavery in Zanzibar (Tanzania). In 1879 UK missionaries built a cathedral on the site, and in 1890 the country became a British protectorate. In 2013 a heritage centre to the abolition of slavery was created where once 70,000 slaves a year were traded; in 1916 Lord (Horatio Herbert) Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, died when HMS Hampshire struck a German mine and sank in less than 20 minutes off the coast of Orkney. There were 12 survivors, with 737 lives lost. Kitchener was on a diplomatic mission to Russia; in 1967 the Six-Day War began in the Middle East, with Israel launching Operation Focus, a surprise aerial attack on Egypt.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1844 the YMCA (the Young Men’s Christian Association) was founded in London as a prayer and Bible study group by the 22 year-old draper George Williams and ten friends; in 1872 the last Russian empress, Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse), was born. She was assassinated on July 17, 1918, alongside Emperor Nicholas II and their children, during the Russian Revolution. She was a favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria; in 1907 Persil, the first self-acting laundry detergent, was launched in Düsseldorf, Germany; in 1929 Louis Bunuel and Salvador Dalí’s influential surrealist short film Un Chien Andalou opened in Paris; in 1944 the Operation Overlord D-Day landings began in Normandy, France, when Allied forces began liberating northwest Europe from German occupation during the Second World War.

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In 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas was agreed by Spain and Portugal, dividing the New World of the Americas between them in a north-south divide. As a result, Latin American countries are predominantly Spanish-speaking. Portuguese is the national language of Brazil, where colonisation of the eastern tip took place before subsequent expansion west; in 1912 Captain Charles deForest Chandler became the first person to fire a machinegun (a prototype Lewis model) mounted on an aircraft (Wright Model B), flown by Lieutenant Roy C Kirtland. He hit a ground target from a height of 250 feet; in 1954 Alan Turing, mathematician and Second World War codebreaker, died from cyanide poisoning, aged 41. At Bletchley Park he and his team cracked the Enigma code, crucial to protecting Allied convoys from German U-boat attacks; in 2000 the prime minister Tony Blair was heckled while giving a speech to the Women’s Institute conference at Wembley, in protest that the address was overtly political; in 2014 Petro Poroshenko was sworn in as Ukraine’s new permanent president to replace an interim leader after the ousting of Moscow-leaning predecessor Viktor Yanukovych.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

Today

In 1374 Geoffrey Chaucer was appointed controller of customs for the port of London, checking the imports of wools and hides; in 1949 the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US security service, published a report naming celebrities including Danny Kaye and Edward G Robinson as members of the Communist Party; in 1982 President Reagan addressed members of both houses of parliament, hoping that Marxism-Leninism would be left “on the ash heap of history”; in 2018 US celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain died by suicide in a French hotel room at the age of 61 (obituary, June 9, 2018).

Tomorrow

In 1549, on Pentecost Sunday, the Book of Common Prayer was first used by the Church of England; in 1870 Charles Dickens, whose literary success began in 1836 with the serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, died aged 58. Contrary to his wishes, he was laid to rest in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. In The Times report of the next day: “How many a phase of cruelty and wrong his pen exposed, and how often he stirred others to try at least to lessen the amount of evil and of suffering which must be ever abroad in the world, will never be fully known. There was always a lesson beneath his mirth”; in 1920 George V opened the Imperial War Museum in Crystal Palace, south London. The museum moved to South Kensington in 1924, then relocated to Lambeth Road in 1936; in 2014 a supercomputer passed the Turing Test, regarded as a milestone in artificial intelligence. A third of people in a scientific trial thought it was a 13-year-old boy.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1692 Bridget Bishop was the first person to be hanged after the witch-hunt and trial in Salem, Massachusetts. Her “showy costume” was described as a “snare and sign of the devil”; in 1865 Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde was first performed in Munich, Bavaria; in 1921 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born in Corfu, the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. He died on April 9, 2021, aged 99, the longest-serving royal consort in British history (obituary); in 1944 soldiers of an SS armoured division massacred more than 600 villagers in Oradour-sur-Glane, central France, in retaliation for the alleged capture of a German officer by the French resistance; in 2010 David Cameron made his first visit to Afghanistan as prime minister. He met President Karzai in Kabul, but a security alert forced the cancellation of a visit to a military base.

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In 1509 Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, his brother Arthur’s widow; in 1955 at least 80 people were killed after a collision at Le Mans 24-hour race in which flaming debris from one of the cars was thrown into a packed grandstand; in 1975 the first oil was pumped ashore from British oilfields in the North Sea, at Sullom Voe in Shetland; in 1987 Margaret Thatcher celebrated her third general election victory; in 2004 the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols was spared the death penalty. The 1995 bombing killed 168 people and left hundreds injured. The decision came on the third anniversary of the execution of his co-defendant Timothy McVeigh.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1842, on a journey from Slough to Paddington, Queen Victoria became the first British monarch to travel by train, writing in her journal that it was “delightful and so quick”; in 1944, during the Second World War, the first German V1 flying bomb hit London, one week after the Allied invasion of Normandy; in 1971 The New York Times began publication of the Pentagon Papers, chronicling US political and military involvement in Vietnam. The documents had been leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst; in 2019 two tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman. The US accused Iran of being behind the attacks, but Tehran denied involvement.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1215 individual John set his seal on Magna Carta at Runnymede, near Windsor; in 1983 the first BBC TV series of Blackadder was shown, starring Rowan Atkinson; in 1996 the IRA detonated a 3,300lb lorry bomb outside the Arndale shopping centre in Manchester, resulting in injuries to 212 people; in 2018 a large fire broke out in the Mackintosh Building at Glasgow School of Art, causing extensive damage.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1940 German aircraft sank the Cunard liner The Lancastria off Saint-Nazaire, with the loss of more than 3,000 troops and refugees; in 1944 Iceland was established as a republic. The population voted in a referendum to cut all ties with Denmark; in 1950 the first kidney transplant took place in Chicago, US, on a 44-year-old woman; in 1972 five men were caught attempting to bug and steal documents from the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office complex in Washington; in 1980 the British government announced that US nuclear cruise missiles would be located at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire and at the disused RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1812 President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Great Britain; in 1815 the French were beaten at the Battle of Waterloo, marking the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte; in 1940 General Charles de Gaulle made a BBC broadcast from London, rallying the French people in support of the Resistance during the Second World War. In his speech he said: “Honour, common sense, and the interests of the country require that all free Frenchmen, wherever they be, should continue the fight as best they may”; in 1979 Salt II, the strategic arms limitation treaty, was signed in Vienna by the US president Jimmy Carter and the Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev.

[tamada]

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Really nice camera work.

[jackspratt]

Were they wearing undies?

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Only the photographer was wearing his fruit of the loom undies. Of course, the cavemen living concurrently in Europe and western Asia also wore undies, but of a different unknown brand.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1970 the Conservative Party leader Edward Heath became prime minister after a surprise win over Labour at the general election, prompting the resignation of Harold Wilson; in 1997 William Hague became the youngest leader of the Conservative Party in just over 200 years; in 1999 Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest child, married Sophie Rhys-Jones at St George’s Chapel in Windsor. She became the Countess of Wessex. On the prince’s 59th birthday in 2023 his brother, individual Charles III, granted him the title Duke of Edinburgh. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh have two children, Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor and James Mountbatten-Windsor, Earl of Wessex; in 2014 Crown Prince Felipe was proclaimed the new individual of Spain, after the abdication of Juan Carlos I; in 2017 an attack took place near Finsbury Park Mosque, London, in which one man died and nine others were hospitalised when a van was driven into worshippers leaving the mosque.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1942 Tobruk fell to Rommel with the capture of more than 30,000 Allied troops; in 1960 Edna O’Brien’s novel The Country Girls was banned in Ireland under the Censorship of Publications Act 1929 for its sexually explicit content. It was described as a “smear on Irish womanhood” by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid. It was part of a trilogy with The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in their Married Bliss (1964), all of which were subject to book burnings; in 1989 the US Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag was legal, according to freedom of speech guarantees in the First Amendment; in 2001 the blues singer and guitarist John Lee Hooker died. Known for his “talking blues” musical style, his songs include Boogie Chillen, I’m in the Mood and Boom Boom;
in 2004 SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded aircraft to achieve spaceflight.

briefing

UK: Report on public sector finances released by the Treasury and Office for National Statistics; first estimate published of last month’s retail sales figures.

Isle of Man: Representatives of the British, Irish and Northern Irish governments convene for the British-Irish Council, with the UK delegation led by Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary.

Germany: France v the Netherlands, Slovakia v Ukraine and Poland v Austria in the UEFA European Championships.

Saint Lucia: England v South Africa in the ICC T20 World Cup.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Today
UK: National Windrush Day, celebrating the contribution of the Windrush generation and their descendants.

Tomorrow
World: T20 World Cup: England v United States; Euro 2024: Scotland v Hungary.

on this day

Today

In 1377 Richard II became individual. His 22-year reign ended on September 29, 1399; in 1830 Peter James Bossy, a convicted perjurer, became the last person in England sentenced to stand in the pillory; in 1948 the Empire Windrush, one of the first ships to carry West Indian migrants to the UK during the postwar period, arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex. More than 500,000 Commonwealth citizens settled in Britain between 1948 and 1971; in 1979 the Liberal Party MP Jeremy Thorpe was acquitted after being tried on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder a former male model, Norman Scott. The scandal led to Thorpe resigning as party leader (obituary, December 5, 2014); in 1986 Diego Maradona scored twice as Argentina beat England 2-1 in the Mexico World Cup — the first was the controversial Hand of God and the second, the Goal of the Century.

Tomorrow

In 1757 troops of the British East India Company under Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in northeastern India; in 1972 Anthony Barber, Edward Heath’s chancellor, announced that he would temporarily float the pound; in 2016 the UK voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the European Union in the country’s in/out referendum; in 2018 a 12-strong boys’ football team and their coach entered a cave network in Thailand where they became trapped. The rescue operation ended on July 10.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1591 Euphame MacCalzean was tied to a stake and burnt alive on Castle Hill in Edinburgh during the North Berwick witch trials (1590-91). The last person to be tried and executed for witchcraft was Janet Horne in June 1727 in Dornoch, Sutherland; in 1950 North Korean forces invaded South Korea. An armistice was signed on July 27, 1953; in 2006 Gilad Shalit, an Israel Defence Forces soldier, was captured by Palestinian militants (Hamas) using tunnels near the Israeli border and held in isolation for more than five years. On October 18, 2011, he was released as part of a prisoner exchange of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners who were collectively responsible for the deaths of 569 Israelis; in 2009 the actress Farrah Fawcett, who starred in the TV series Charlie’s Angels, died of cancer at the age of 62 (obituary, June 25, 2009); in 2014 campaigners lost an appeal at the UK Supreme Court over the right to die. The Supreme Court indicated that it should be a matter for parliament.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1483 Richard III became individual of England; in 1870 Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) was performed for the first time as a single opera, in Munich; in 1959 Queen Elizabeth II and US President Dwight Eisenhower formally opened the St Lawrence Seaway, which links the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean; in 1993 the US launched a missile attack on Iraq’s intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for an alleged plot to kill former President George Bush.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

on this day

In 1954 the world’s first nuclear power station to be connected to an external grid began producing electricity in Obninsk, near Moscow; in 1960 Lottie Dod, a five-time winner of the Wimbledon ladies’ singles championship, died aged 88. She first became champion in 1887, the youngest winner at 15 (nicknamed The Little Wonder). She also won the British Ladies’ Amateur golf championship, a silver medal in archery at the 1908 Summer Olympics, played twice for the England women’s national field hockey team, and was an accomplished skier, ice skater and mountaineer. She passed away peacefully while listening to radio commentary on the Wimbledon championships; in 1961 the Most Rev Michael Ramsey was enthroned as the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury in front of an invited congregation of more than 4,000, and with nearly 1,000 clergy robed and in the choir; in 1976 terrorists hijacked a French Airbus, and forced it to land in Entebbe, Uganda. Israeli special forces launched a successful hostage rescue mission on July 4, 1976; in 1989 the Austrian foreign minister Alois Mock and his Hungarian counterpart, Gyula Horn, opened the border separating Austria and Hungary — regarded as the first cracks appearing in the Iron Curtain.