11th November

At eleven o'clock this morning in 1918 the War to End Wars ended. The conflict that everybody said would be over by Christmas 1914 had lasted four years and 97 days. The stats are terrifying - 9 million dead, 27 million wounded. The Allies' bill was £68.5 billion; the Central Powers £32.6 billion.

And the world would never be the same again.

In other news ...
I've never really understood Ned Kelly. He was an Australian outlaw hanged today in 1880 after a bank robbing career of just two years. He wore body armour - a breastplate and helmet made of iron. Perhaps he expected a role in The Man in the Iron Mask, then playing in the Melbourne Lyceum. Whatever the reason, the gear must have slowed him up a bit which probably enabled the Oz police to catch him in the first place.

17th August

One of the most bizarre murder stories of all time came to light today in 1980 when baby Azaria Chamberlain went missing from a camp site at Ayers Rock in Australia. Azaria's mother, Lindy, claimed that a dingo took the sleeping child from their tent. The body was never found.
There were three problems with this case -
a) The Chamberlains belonged to a religious sect and that made them suspect in the eyes of many people.
b) Ayers Rock was an ancient Aboriginal site linked with child sacrifice and finally
c) the Green Lobby said that dingoes were harmless, God's creations etc etc and would not take a child.

After umpteen trials, hearings and years of anguish to the Chamberlain family, the case has finally been closed. My message to the greens out there?

The dingo did it. They are vicious wild animals and have attacked humans both before and after Azaria Chamberlain.

In other news ...

Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, died today in 1987. He had been the only prisoner in Spandau Gaol, Berlin for years, having been sentenced to life for Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg. He was alleged to have strangled himself with electrical flex hooked onto a window frame. the only problem with that is that he was physically incapable of doing it, having had a stroke previously. All the evidence points to murder but because of the man's reputation, no serious investigation ever took place.

16th June

Today in 1835 William Lovett set up the London Working Men's Association which segued into the Chartist movement some months later. For the record, the 6 points of the Peoples' Charter were:

1. Universal male suffrage
2. Equal Electoral Districts
3. Payment for MPs
4. Abolition of property qualification for MPs
5. Secret Ballot
6. Annual Parliaments 

(not necessarily in that order). What Lovett was trying to do was to establish a true democracy (but note, he dropped women from the equation fairly early as being unworkable). The government of the day found all this far too subversive and the movement failed. Yet today, all of it is law except Annual Parliaments (on the practical grounds of expense and upheaval). So let's have a People's Charter for 2012:

1. No Old Etonians in government
2. No coalitions
3. No involvement in politics by the Lib-Dems
4. Compulsory retirement age in House of Lords of 65
5. No House of Lords.

That makes a lot more sense!

In other news ...
Charles Sturt, who discovered most of Australia died today in 1869. He went to Australia because he was tired of people thinking he was Charles Stuart and being the butt of various unpleasant decapitation jokes.

20th April

One of those great moments occurred today in 1853. Oliver Cromwell. East Anglian squire, Puritan and military whizz-kid expelled the boring, pocket lining, selfish b******s who formed the 'Rump' parliament with the famous words 'Do you mean to sit 'til Doomsday come?' Once they were out, he locked the door, put the key in his pocket and walked away. How cool is that?
And where is Oliver Cromwell today?

In other news ...
Today in 1770 James Cook on board The Endeavour (named after his favourite television cop, Morse) discovered New Zealand. The natives immediately leapt about, sticking their tongues out at him and thrashing his crew at Rugby. The final score was: All Blacks 316, Captain Cook's Fifteen 3.
So disappointed was Cook that he sailed away to find the most boring land in the world - Australia.

19th March

The Tolpuddle Martyrs went down today in 1834. George and James Loveless and five of their farm labourer mates were sentenced to seven years' transportation to Botany Bay in Australia. Their crime? They joined a branch of the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union in an attempt to improve the pitiful wages paid to labourers. Local Dorset farmers connived with the county's magistrates to find a way to punish the men because, technically, joining a Trade Union was not illegal.
They came up with administering (taking) of illegal oaths, which was a crime under the 1797 Mutiny Act. According to the law at the time, the Martyrs had no opportunity to defend themselves in court and could not afford a lawyer. ~one of them died in Australia before public outrage brought the survivors back. It would be forty years before anybody tried to set up another union for farm workers and the conspiracy of landowners and magistrates would continue for much longer.

In other news ...
Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan of the Apes, died today in 1950. His 70 novels had been translated into 56 languages and more than 100 million copies had been sold. On his gravestone they wrote Tarzan's immortal words - 'AAAAAAAAARRGHHYYAAAAAA!'

Who could ask for a finer epitaph?