30th December

Rasputin was murdered today in 1916 by Prince Felix Yusopov at the nobleman's house in St Petersburg. 'Rasputin' means the debauched one and he certainly enjoyed the company of titled ladies (even, it was rumoured, the Tsarina), drank like a fish and exposed himself in various restaurants. The stories of his death were much exaggerated. Allegedly, he was poisoned (in his wine and cakes), shot, bashed with chains, tied up and thrown into the frozen river Neva. When they pulled him out two days later, it was said that he still had had the strength to snap the rope.

Wow.

In other news ...
Anita Loos got it right today in the Observer in 1973 when she wrote 'I'm furious about the Women's Liberationists. They keep ... proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.'

19th November

President Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most brilliant speeches in History today in 1863. It was also one of the shortest and has come to be known as the Gettysburg Address. It's so brilliant it is worth quoting in full.

'Ladies and Gentlemen, my address is 339B John Wilkes Booth Road, Gettysburg.'

Absolutely brilliant.

In other news ...
Today in 1908 a court in St Petersburg had to be adjourned because the prosecuting counsel refused to proceed against Russia's first female barrister. Tcha! I am forced to cry. They'll be demanding women bishops in the Church of England next ...

Wait a minute ...

22nd January

In his diary entry for this day in 1924, George V wrote, 'Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama [that's Queen Victoria to you and me] died. I wonder what she would have made of a Labour government.'
What indeed? She might have been quite tickled that the new Prime Minister was Ramsay MacDonald, a crofter's son from the Heelands, a part of the country she adored. On the other hand she is on record as saying that Irish terrorists should be lynched and women campaigning for the vote should be horse-whipped, so who knows?

In other news ...
Time for another 'Bloody Sunday'. This was the third or fourth given that name and it happened in St Petersburg 107 years ago. about 1000 people marched to the Winter Palace to protest to the Tsar, Nicholas II, about the appalling conditions in his country. They were led by Father Gapon who was himself a government spy. They were all unarmed and carried icons and portraits of Nicholas who they saw as their father. a panicky Guard commander ordered his troops to open fire and the blood of at least half the crowd stained the snow. The irony of all this? Nicholas wasn't even there.