25th October

All right, this is the one you've all been waiting for. Balaclava Day, 1854. When 678 men of Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade (most of whom are sitting in 54mm replica in my attic) rode into the Valley of Death and into legend after a confused order took them the wrong way.

'It was a mad-brained trick, men,' Cardigan said to the survivors afterwards, 'but it was no fault of mine.'

'Go again, sir?' an anonymous soldier asked him. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

In other news ...
It was a good day for a battle today - Agincourt was fought in 1415 in the mud of Northern France. The French nobility were all but wiped out by a much smaller force, largely of archers, under Henry V. A while ago there was a move to have October 21 (Trafalgar Day) or October 25 (Agincourt Day) declared a public holiday in Britain, but that was shelved in case it upset our French colleagues in the EU. Actually, on the basis of that there ought to be no public holidays because I can't think of a day when we didn't knock seven bells out of them.

21st October

Truly great events spawn truly great quotations. Here are three from October 21st 1805, the day the British fleet under Horatio Nelson trounced the Franco-Spanish ships of Admiral Villeneuve at Trafalgar and saved England from invasion.

'England expects that every man shall do his duty.'
This was the coded message sent by a flag signalling system to the entire fleet by Nelson. He wanted to send 'England confides [trusts]' but they hadn't got that in the code book. It was the only cock-up the fleet made that day.

'Now, gentlemen, let us do something today which the world may talk of hereafter.'
Admiral Collingwood who led a column that smashed the enemy line (Nelson led the other).

'I do not say the French will not come; I only say they will not come by sea.'
Sorry, I can't remember whose this is, but it was a speech to the House of Commons, soon after Trafalgar.

In other news ...
Katsushika Hokusai was born today in 1760. Nobody, nobody does waves better (except Teasy-Weasey - and if you remember him, it's time for your cocoa).