This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1915 Edward Stone, 1st US combatant to die in WW I, is mortally wounded.

1940 Crew of the British destroyer Cossack board German Altmark in Jøssingfjord, Norway, and realised 299 British prisoners after hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets and the last recorded Royal Naval action with cutlass.

[ABBAFAN]

1461, the Battle of St. Albans. Yorkist forces defeated by Lancastrians under the Duke of Somerset after fierce fighting in and around the town lasting several hours.

[Aktungbby]

AHEM! That was the 2nd Battle of St Albans! Wouldn't want to create any confusion in the Wars of the Roses! The poor Lancastrians were so notorious for looting that London barred the gates to the victors; so in the end, the winners (Lancastrians) had little to show for the effort. @ nice site on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary

[Jimbuna]

1884 General Charles Gordon arrives in Khartoum.

1901 H Cecil Booth patented a dust removing suction cleaner.

1915 Germany begins a blockade of Britain.

1916 The last German garrison in the German colony of Cameroons surrenders.

1979 Snow falls in Sahara Desert.

[ABBAFAN]

The first St. Albans only a scrap and therefore the outcome was irrelevant . Also yes, looting was a problem which was to have repercussions indeed. I'll be going on the Towton walk in March.

[Aktungbby]

1952: Bwana Devil based on the true story of the Tsavo maneaters and filmed with the Natural Vision 3-D system. The film is notable for sparking the first 3-D film craze in the motion picture industry, as well as for being the first 3-D film in color and the first 3-D sound feature in English. Starred Robert Stack (the Untouchables) and Nigel Bruce (elementary Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone) Just the trailer is exciting! Move over Val Kilmer (MAJ John Henry Patterson in Ghost and the Darkness) And where are those critters now: the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History

The two lion specimens in Chicago's Field Museum are known as FMNH 23970 (killed 9 December 1898) and FMNH 23969 (killed 29 December 1898). Recent studies have been made upon the isotopic signature analysis of Δ13C and Nitrogen-15 in their bone collagen and hair keratin and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Using realistic assumptions on the consumable tissue per victim, lion energetic needs, and their assimilation efficiencies, researchers compared the man-eaters' Δ13C signatures to various reference standards: Tsavo lions with normal (wildlife) diets, grazers and browsers from Tsavo East and Tsavo West, and the skeletal remains of Taita people from the early 20th century. This analysis estimated that FMNH 23969 ate the equivalent of 10.5 humans and that FMNH 23970 ate 24.2 humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsavo_Man-Eaters

A slight reduction from very brave MAJOR Patterson's claim of 135 victims...but who's counting at that dinner table... 1516: Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's first daughter by Warrior Queen: Catherine of Aragon, is born at Greenwich England...for ten years, she will reign as Catholic Bloody Mary...No wonder they call it Greenwich Mean Time !!?? and have a drink named after her!

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by ABBAFAN

The first St. Albans only a scrap and therefore the outcome was irrelevant . Also yes, looting was a problem which was to have repercussions indeed. I'll be going on the Towton walk in March.

I'm envious! Well avoid any old caltrops and try not to end up like some beknighted Trollope ...laying about! Check the 'wanted' posters to see if there's a £100 bounty on yer gandu!
Timing, snow, wind-driven and recycled arrows made for England's #2 ?? biggest battle ever! The Yorkists had the wind at their backs and could thus outreach the Lancastrian bowmen...Swift retreats are a disaster especially when doffing your armor...to run faster. Flanked BBY <(enlarges) fighting in armor, in water, in a snowstorm...

Men struggling across the river were dragged down by currents and drowned. Those floundering were stepped on and pushed under water by their comrades behind them as they rushed to get away from the Yorkists. As the Lancastrians struggled across the river, Yorkist archers rode to high vantage points and shot arrows at them. The dead began to pile up and the chronicles state that the Lancastrians eventually fled across these "bridges" of bodies. The chase continued northwards across the River Wharfe, which was larger than Cock Beck. A bridge over the river collapsed under the flood of men and many drowned trying to cross. Those who hid in Tadcaster and York were hunted down and killed.

[Jimbuna]

1674 Netherlands & England sign Peace of Westminster (NYC becomes English).

1915 British fleet opens fire on Dardanelles coast.

1941 Nazi police attacked & driven away from Koco, Amsterdam (by young Jews).

1941 Nazi raid Amsterdam & round up 429 young Jews for deportation.

1942 About 150 Japanese warplanes attack the Australian city of Darwin.

1944 823 British bombers attack Berlin.

1944 U-264 sinks off Ireland.

1945 980 Japanese soldiers reportedly killed by crocodiles in 2 days on Ramree Island, Burma.

[Jimbuna]

1917 Ammunition ship explodes in Archangel harbour, about 1,500 die.

1938 UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigns, says PM Chamberlain appeased Germany.

1941 1st transport of Jews to concentration camps leave Plotsk Poland.

1941 Nazis order Polish Jews barred from using public transportation.

1942 Lt E H O'Hare single-handedly shoots down 5 Japanese heavy bombers, becomes America's first World War II flying ace.

1971 Major General Idi Amin Dada appoints himself president of Uganda.

[Jimbuna]

1431 Joan of Arc's first day of interrogation during her trial for heresy.

1916 Battle of Verdun in WW I begins (1 million casualties).

1917 British Mendi sinks off Isle of Wight, 627 die.

[Jimbuna]

1836 Alamo besieged for 13 days until 6th March by Mexican army under General Santa Anna; entire garrison eventually killed.

1916 French artillery kills entire French 72nd division at Samogneux Verdun.

1919 Fascist Party formed in Italy by Benito Mussolini.

1945 US Marines raise the flag on Iwo Jima, later a famous photo and Marine Corps War Memorial sculpture.

1997 Scientists in Scotland announce they have cloned an adult mammal, producing a lamb named "Dolly".

1998 Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and Crusaders.

[Jimbuna]

1946 Juan Peron (Labor Party) first elected President of Argentina.

2008 Fidel Castro retires as the President of Cuba after nearly fifty years.

[Jimbuna]

1919 League of Nations set up by Paris Treaty.

1939 1st Anderson bomb shelter in Britain erected in an Islington garden.

1945 US aircraft carriers attack Tokyo.

[Aktungbby]

1874: Honus Wagner is born; 'The Flying Dutchman' baseball shortstop
In 1936, the Baseball Hall of Fame inducted German-American Wagner as one of the first five members. He received the second-highest vote total, behind Ty Cobb and tied with Babe Ruth.
Although Cobb is frequently cited as the greatest player of the dead-ball era, some contemporaries regarded Wagner as the better all-around player, and most baseball historians consider Wagner to be the greatest shortstop ever. Cobb himself called Wagner "maybe the greatest star ever to take the diamond." In addition, Wagner is the featured player of one of the rarest and most valuable baseball cards in the world. only 57 copies are known to exist:The card was designed and issued by the American Tobacco Company (ATC) from 1909 to 1911 as part of its T206 series. Wagner, a nonsmoker, refused to allow production of his baseball card to continue. (Rule one of collectibles: Scarcity creates value BBY!) The ATC ended production of the Wagner card and a total of only 57 to 200 cards were ever distributed to the public, as compared to the "tens or hundreds of thousands" of T206 cards, over three years in sixteen brands of cigarettes, for any other player. In 1933, the card was first listed at a price value of $50 in Jefferson Burdick's The American Card Catalog, making it the most expensive baseball card in the world at the time. On April 20, 2012, a New Jersey resident purchased a VG-3 graded T206 Wagner card for more than $1.2 million On April 6, 2013, a 1909–11 T206 baseball card featuring Honus Wagner sold at auction for $2.1 million. That's $900,000 in less than one year! [wiki]

[Jimbuna]

1797 Bank of England issues its first £1-note.

1815 Napoleon Bonaparte & his supporters leave Elba to start a 100-day re-conquest of France.

1914 HMHS Britannic, sister to the Titanic, is launched at Harland & Wolff, Belfast.

1916 Germans sink French transport ship Provence II, killing 930.

1935 German Luftwaffe is re-formed under Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering.

1942 German battle cruiser Gneisenau deactivated by bomb.

1952 PM Winston Churchill announces Britain has its own atomic bomb.