This day in history

[macliam]

11 November 1918

WWI armistice signed by the Allies and Germany comes into effect and World War I hostilities end at 11am, “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”.

In memory of all the fallen. RIP.

Also on this day

1493 - Christopher Columbus sighted an island which he named St. Martin, now called Nevis.

1499 - Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck was executed.

1675 - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time.

1745 - Bonnie Prince Charlie's army crosses into England

1831 - Nat Turner was hanged after leading a slave rebellion in

1834 The Ugly Duckling was first published by Hans Christian Andersen.

1880 - Ned Kelly, Australian bushranger, was executed by hanging in Melbourne

1919 - The first2 minutes' silence was observed in Britain to commemorate those who died in WW1.

1920 - Anniversary of WW1 was marked by the burial of unknown soldiers in Paris and London.

1940 – The Royal Navy attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto.

1965 - Rhodesia declared UDI under Ian Smith. 14 years later it became the Republic of Zimbabwe.

1975 - Angola declared independence after the Portuguese withdrew.

1992 - The Church of England voted to ordain women as priests.

1998 - Queen Elizabeth II and Irish president, Mary McAleese, commemorated the Irish dead in WW1.

1999 - House of Lords Act was given Royal Assent, removing the right to hereditary seats.

2004 - Yasser Arafat, ex-president of Palestine and leader of the PLO and Fatah, died in Paris.

2008 - RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) set sail on her final voyage, bound for Dubai.

[Richard Frost]

1990: A worldwide web of internet communication is proposed

English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee publishes a proposal to interlink communications via the internet through hypertext, like this, for a project called "WorldWideWeb", a web of documents viewed by "browsers". Within weeks, he'll have built the necessary infrastructure and published the first web pages, describing this very project.

[Richard Frost]

1789 Benjamin Franklin writes "Nothing . . . certain but death & taxes"

1887 Bloody Sunday clashes in central London

1895 First shipment of canned pineapple from Hawaii

1901 Caister Lifeboat Disaster claims lives of nine lifeboat men off the coast of Norfolk, England

1968 William Craig, Home Affairs Minister, bans all marches, with the exception of 'customary' parades, in Derry, Northern Ireland; the exception of 'customary' parades meant that Loyalist institutions could parade but civil rights marches could not

2021 Glasgow Climate Pact agreed at COP26: commits countries to a phasedown" of "unabated" coal, end deforestation by 2030 and cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030

[Richard Frost]

14 November 1994

First public trains run through the Channel Tunnel linking England and France under the English Channel

[Richard Frost]

1899 Morning Post reporter Winston Churchill captured by Boers in Natal

1939 Nazis begin mass murder of Warsaw Jews

1979 In Parliament Sir Anthony Blunt, art advisor to the Queen, exposed as 4th man in Soviet spy ring. He was then stripped of his knighthood and fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge

[Richard Frost]

1776: November 16
British capture Fort Washington

Hessian Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3,000 Hessian mercenaries and 5,000 Redcoats lay siege to Fort Washington at the northern end and highest point of Manhattan Island.

Throughout the morning, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen inside the fort, but by afternoon, the Patriots were overwhelmed, and the garrison commander, Colonel Robert Magaw, surrendered. Nearly 3,000 Patriots were taken prisoner, and valuable ammunition and supplies were lost to the Hessians. The prisoners faced a particularly grim fate: Many later died from deprivation and disease aboard British prison ships anchored in New York Harbour.

Among the 53 dead and 96 wounded Patriots were John and Margaret Corbin of Virginia. When John died in action, his wife Margaret took over his cannon, cleaning, loading and firing the gun until she too was severely wounded. The first woman known to have fought for the Continental Army, Margaret survived, but lost the use of her left arm.

Two weeks earlier, one of Magaw’s officers, William Demont, had deserted the Fifth Pennsylvania Battalion and given British intelligence agents information about the Patriot defence of New York, including details about the location and defence of Fort Washington. Demont was the first traitor to the Patriot cause, and his treason contributed significantly to Knyphausen’s victory.

Fort Washington stood at the current location of Bennett Park in the Washington Heights neighbourhood of New York City, near the George Washington Bridge, at the corner of Fort Washington Avenue and 183rd Street. Fort Washington Park and Fort Washington Point lay beneath the site along the Hudson River.

1961 United Kingdom limits immigration from Commonwealth countries

1968 The Derry Citizens Action Committee defies a ban on marches in Derry, Northern Ireland, by marching with an estimated 15,000 people

1969 1968 Mỹ Lai massacre of between 347 and 504 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by US soldiers is first reported

1970 Two men are shot dead by the Irish Republican Army (IRA)

1971 The Compton inquiry is published, acknowledging that there was ill-treatment of internees, but rejected claims of systematic brutality or torture (Northern Ireland)

[Richard Frost]

17 November

1558: Elizabethan Age begins
Queen Mary I, the monarch of England and Ireland since 1553, dies and is succeeded by her 25-year-old half-sister, Elizabeth.

The two half-sisters, both daughters of King Henry VIII, had a stormy relationship during Mary’s five-year reign. Mary, who was brought up as a Catholic, enacted pro-Catholic legislation and made efforts to restore the pope to supremacy in England. A Protestant rebellion ensued, and Queen Mary imprisoned Elizabeth, a Protestant, in the Tower of London on suspicion of complicity. After Mary’s death, Elizabeth survived several Catholic plots against her; though her ascension was greeted with approval by most of England’s lords, who were largely Protestant and hoped for greater religious tolerance under a Protestant queen. Under the early guidance of Secretary of State Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth repealed Mary’s pro-Catholic legislation, established a permanent Protestant Church of England, and encouraged the Calvinist reformers in Scotland.

In foreign affairs, Elizabeth practiced a policy of strengthening England’s Protestant allies and dividing her foes. Elizabeth was opposed by the pope, who refused to recognize her legitimacy, and by Spain, a Catholic nation that was at the height of its power. In 1588, English-Spanish rivalry led to an abortive Spanish invasion of England in which the Spanish Armada, the greatest naval force in the world at the time, was destroyed by storms and a determined English navy.

With increasing English domination at sea, Elizabeth encouraged voyages of discovery, such as Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the world and Sir Walter Raleigh’s expeditions to the North American coast.

The long reign of Elizabeth, who became known as the “Virgin Queen” for her reluctance to endanger her authority through marriage, coincided with the flowering of the English Renaissance, associated with such renowned authors as William Shakespeare. By her death in 1603, England had become a major world power in every respect, and Queen Elizabeth I passed into history as one of England’s greatest monarchs.

1278: 680 Jews arrested (293 hanged) in England for counterfeiting coins

1869: The Suez Canal in Egypt opens, linking the Mediterranean and Red seas

[macliam]

17 November

I commend you for continuing this thread in the face of virtually no thanks or interest shown.

November 17

284 - Diocletian was acclaimed Roman Emperor by his soldiers.

375 - Valentinian, Emperor of the West, died of apoplexy, enraged by the insolence of barbarian envoys.

1421 – c10,000 died in floods in what is now the Netherlands, caused by storms in the North sea.

1558 - The Church of England is re-established following the death of Mary I.

1636 – Portuguese general Henrique Dias, born a slave, won a decisive battle with the Dutch in Brazil.

1800 - The US 6th Congress convened for the first time in Washington, D.C.

1814 – Brigadier General Joseph Finegan, CSA was born in Clones, Co. Monaghan

1831 - Ecuador and Venezuela separated from Bolivar’s Republic of Gran Colombia

1839 - Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, debuted in Milan.

1852 - Union Brigadier Michael Corcoran's Irish Legion is mustered in the defenCe of Washington D.C.

1855 - David Livingstone became the first European to view the Victoria Falls.

1877 - Russia launched a surprise night attack to overrun Turkish forces in Armenia.

1885 – Serbia, with Russian support, invades Bulgaria.

1922 - The Irish Free State started executing 72 anti-Treaty republican prisoners

1922 - The last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI, is expelled to Malta on a British warship.

1965 - 2nd Bttn. 7th Cavalry were ambushed in La Drang valley,Vietnam and almost wiped out.

1967 - American craft Surveyor 6 made a 6-second first liftoff from the lunar surface.

1970 - Soviet unmanned Luna 17 touched down on the moon.

1970 - Douglas Engelbart received the patent for the first computer mouse

1986 - Renault President Georges Besse was shot to death in Paris by Action Directe.

1989 - Demonstrations in Prague began what was to be called the Velvet Revolution.

1997 - 60 Swiss and Japanese tourists were killed by Islamic extremists at Luxor, Egypt

2003 – Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger became the 38th Governor of California.

[Richard Frost]

17 November

I commend you for continuing this thread in the face of virtually no thanks or interest shown.

Well history is a bit of a hobby for me and I enjoy following it daily. So it is quite easy. I have slimmed down what I post, a lot. I now only post what interests me rather than a full dialogue for what happened that day. However I hope that would not stop any one like yourself from posting anything they want to or feel passionate about.

FWIW, The thanks system on imutual is greatly underused. There are lots of posts that I think, do not get anywhere near the amount of thanks that they deserve. I regret greatly the demise of the post of the month competition. Which in my opinion encouraged people to use the site and be polite to each other. Unfortunately the demise is just part of a greater world problem of which bad manners is just a small issue.

If we have no history, we have no future

Tristram Hunt

[macliam]

I agree, both on history and the use of the thanks system.

But then, most of the posts seem to be whingeing about how bad the site is anyway.....