5th August

'Everybody has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses.'

Who said that in 1951? The British Prime Minister and war leader Onestop Choochley.

In other news ...
George, Lord North, died today in 1792. If you haven't heard of this bloke

1. I'm not surprised
2. You're in good company
3. Neither had x thousand American colonists during the War of Independence.

He was actually Britain's Prime Minister during that whole debacle and they should all be eternally grateful to him.

4th July

Yeehah! Of course I had to mention it. The day that all Americans everywhere stop work and have a party. What are they celebrating? The fact that France, Spain and Holland helped them win a war against the British. I make that 4 to 1 so the outcome isn't that terribly surprising, is it? By the by, the 4th has very little actual significance. The Declaration of Independence (lifted almost wholesale from Englishman John Locke) was written on 2 July 1776 and published on 8 July. The 4th was the day that Congress accepted it (and even then with alterations). How is it that such a great nation can get its own Independence Day wrong?

In other news ...
Same news, really. On this day in 1826 two of the blokes who signed the Declaration (see above) dropped dead. One was Thomas Jefferson, the slave owner who nevertheless contended that all men were created equal. And the other was John Adams, father of the much more famous Gomez and Fester.

What are the odds?

29th May

What is it about 29th May? You might like to stay out of the water tonight because on this day in 1500 Batholomew Diaz, the Portuguese explorer, drowned during a storm off Brazil. Not to be outdone, on this day in 1911, William Schwenk [I kid you not!] Gilbert (as in Gilbert and Sullivan) drowned in his own lake whilst trying to save a child who had got into difficulties. And three years after that, more than 1000 people drowned when the Empress of Ireland sank in the St Lawrence River.

You have been warned!

In other news ...
I've probably said it before in these pages, but it's worth repeating. On this day in 1795 the Virginia Assembly objected to the Stamp Act imposed by the British (ie their government). The Virginians' argument was basically 'No taxation without representation', James Otis (inventor of the lift) ignoring the fact that because of the state of democracy at the time well over 95% of the British didn't have any representation either.

Brass neck or what? Why didn't we just declare war on the colonists and have done? Oh, wait a minute - we did.