15th December

Two great Americans died today, 76 years apart. The first was Sitting Bull, spiritual leader of the Lakota whose victory over Custer's 7th Cavalry has passed into legend. He spent some years in prison and travelled with Bill Cody's Wild West Show, spoofing the Indian Wars. By the year of his death (1890) however he had joined the Ghost Shirt movement dedicated to the restoration of the Plains Indians' way of life. He was shot and killed in a skirmish with troops sent to suppress the cult.

The other was Walt Disney.

In other news ...
The body of Napoleon Bonaparte was reburied in Les Invalides in Paris today in 1840. He had died in 1821 on St Helena, poisoned either by the British or the wallpaper, whichever version you choose to believe and it took nearly twenty years for the body to be transferred.
You would think the French could have built a more fitting tomb for their greatest son (yes, I know, he wasn't exactly French, but you can't have everything). The tomb is a huge, ugly slab of marble - yeuch!

And finally ...

A very happy birthday to Penny Collins, daughter and granddaughter in a squillion - three years old today and getting more gorgeous with every minute.

24th June

Today in 1947 the world officially went mad. An experienced pilot claimed that he saw nine unidentifiable disc-shaped objects in the sky over Washington State. He was either on something or was one of the most brilliant PR men in history. Single-handedly he gave birth to the UFO industry, Greys, Little Green Men, Roswell and Close Encounters of the Highly Improbable Kind. You couldn't make it up.

In other news ...
24th June 1876.

Custer 0, Crazy Horse 1.

Nuff said.

16th March

On this day way back in 1792, Tipu Sahib surrendered to the British. He was Sultan of Mysore in southern India and had all his guns made in Britain (as you do when you're fighting against the most industrialised nation on earth). He was defeated by General Cornwallis who had surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown a few years earlier (nice to know he could win something). Check out (as Cornwallis's victors say) the mechanical toy called Tipu's Tiger. It's a metal lifesize tiger clawing a white man to death and before somebody lost the key it could move its front paws and growl.

Awesome.

In other news ...
Two hundred and ten years ago a military college for gentlemen was founded at West Point along the Hudson River. It's gratifying to know that cadets still wear the grey tail-coat and shako of the 1820s and that West Point produced some of America's worst soldiers (Custer) and best ( ... erm ...).

28th February

On this day in 1874 Arthur Orton was found guilty of perjury in a trial that had lasted for 260 days (the longest in legal history after that of Warren Hastings, Governor General of India). Orton swore he was the rightful claimant to a small fortune belonging to the Tichborne family and that he was himself Roger Tichborne, the missing heir. The only problem was that Roger was eight stone wringing wet and Arthur had a far more realistic claim to be the fattest man in England.
Don't tell me they were all playing the anti-plump card as early as 1874!

In other news ...
Today in 1973 members of the Lakota nation - that's Sioux if you, like me, were brought up on Western B movies - occupied the village of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in a gesture against the continuing bad treatment of native Americans - that's Indians if you're a Western fan or Christopher Columbus. In the original 'battle' of Wounded Knee in 1890, the 7th Cavalry, still smarting over the thrashing they got on the Big Horn fourteen years earlier, opened their Gatling guns on unarmed men, women and children led by their chief Big Foot. This was described in the American press as a battle; the defeat of an arrogant idiot called George Custer was described as a massacre,
Go, as modern Americans say, figure.