15th June

All right, it happened today in 1215 but let me put the record straight once and for all. King John did not sign the document called Magna Carta (never the Magna Carta, children); he put his seal to it - the official, legal way of agreeing with what the document said (which he didn't, by the way). There is a memorial to JFK and western democracy in the field where all this took place (then called Runnymede or wet meadow, an island in the Thames). Why? Magna Carta had nothing whatsoever to do with

1. America (which hadn't been invented in 1215)
2. Democracy (even though the Greeks had already invented this, they had forgotten all about it by 1215)
3. The rights of Englishmen (Englishmen - not to mention women and children - would remain downtrodden for the next six hundred years.

All Magna Carta was was a list of 63 gripes by the barons complaining that King John was trying to knock them into line.
Some things in history get distorted - live with it!

In other news ...
On this day in 1825, the Duke of York (who was pretty grand not to mention old, according to some accounts) laid the foundation stone of the new London Bridge. He was in Arizona at the time on a fact-finding tour of Third World Countries.

15th April

Our boys in blue went on strike today in 1797. No, not the police - they hadn't been set up yet - but the navy, the Jolly Jack Tars of Old England. It was a bummel of a year all round - the Irish were threatening revolt (what's new?); there was a run on the banks (time for another one, I can't help feeling) and then the fleets at Spithead and the Nore refused to sail against Revolutionary France.
The sailors had an awful lot of legitimate gripes and the way the mutineers were handled says it all. at the Nore, where officers were beaten up, the Admiralty hanged the ringleaders and the fleet sailed, At Spithead, kindly old Admiral Howe invited the ringleaders to his best port and promised them better food and conditions - and the fleet sailed.
Take a lesson, Mr Cameron. If the teacher threaten strike action over pay and pensions, give them what they want. If petrol tanker drivers threaten strikes, hang them. That would be fair.

In other news ...
Today in 1945, allied troops liberating Europe found a horde of looted Nazi treasure in a mine in Austria. The find included works by Goya, Rubens, da Vinci  and Raphael as well as King Arthur's sword Excalibur, King John's Crown Jewels, the Ark of the Covenant and some postcards painted by Adolf Hitler.