This day in history

Aug 23 1305
Scottish patriot William Wallace ("Braveheart") hanged, disemboweled, drawn, and quartered. His head was displayed on London Bridge

Wallace was executed on my birthday? Heh, that's pretty cool.

August 24th 79 A.D.

After centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy, devastating the prosperous Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing thousands. The cities, buried under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud, were never rebuilt and largely forgotten in the course of history. In the 18th century, Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered and excavated, providing an unprecedented archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization, startlingly preserved in sudden death.

In 1825, Uruguay declared independence from Brazil... In 1916, the National Park Service was established within the Dept. of the Interior... In 1944, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after 4 years of Nazi occupation... In 1950, President Harry Truman ordered the Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike... In 1984, author Truman Capote was found dead in Los Angeles. He was 59...

On August 26, 55 B.C., Roman forces under Julius Caesar invade Britain

On this day, August 27 - In 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa blew up; the resulting tidal waves in Indonesia's Sunds Strait, killing 36,000 people in Java and Sumatra... In 1894, Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, which contained a provision for a graduated income tax. It later was struck down by the Supreme Court... In 1975, Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia's 3,000 year old monarchy, died in Addis Ababa at the age of 83, almost a year after being over-thrown...

PRINCESS DIANA DIES:
August 31, 1997

1888 Jack the Ripper claims first victim

1944 The British cross the Gothic Line

1994, IRA declares armstice, fighting resumes in 1996 because of the british government reluctance in negotiation

1970, police in Philadelphia storms Black Panthers local office

1925, US Marines leaves Haiti after 11 years of occupation

August 31 - In 1886, an earthquake rocked Charleston, S.C., killing 110 people... In 1887, Thomas A. Edison received a patent for his kinetoscope, a device that produced moving pictures... In 1969, retired undefeated heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano died in an airplane crash in Iowa...
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It was American actress Mae West (1892-1980) who observed, "Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution, yet."...

Aug 31 1422
Henry V dies of dysentery!


Has any MTW English player had their king die on this date, in particular?

Really? Dind't know that.

Good old King Henry, he was a brutal, nasty son of a b1tch, but he certainly was good at making war.

I'm a big "fan" of Agincourt. Re-reading John Keegan's account of the battle. Endlessly interesting.

September 1, 1939 - WWII begins

4:45 a.m.
Germany attacks Poland from ground, air and sea thus starting the bloodiest or wars so far.

1969, the revolution day of Libya

1871, the first danish labor union 'The Unity' was established

Sep 1 1939

Hitler reluctantly invades Poland, but only after being provoked by warmongering Poles. The previous night, a Polish commando team shot their way into a German radio station in the border town of Gleiwitz, and broadcasted a radical call to arms against the people of Germany.
Except that it was all an elaborate sham engineered by Nazi general Reinhard Heydrich, dubbed Operation Canned Goods.

Sep 7 1978

Walking to the bus stop, BBC journalist Georgi Markov suddenly feels a sharp pain in his right calf. A KGB assassin had jabbed him with an umbrella tip, rigged to inject a tiny platinum sphere. The pellet is laden with ricin, a castor-based toxin with no known antidote. Markov dies in the hospital four agonizing days later.

September 17, 1939

65 years ago Soviet Union invaded Poland and the Red Army entered the latter's borders. Thus did Stalin realize the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact signed back in August that year.

180 000 thousands of Polish Army soldiers were taken captive. Even then some first executions of prisoners were noted.
One year later, some 20 000 of the prisoners, mostly officers as well as doctors, university teachers were murdered in russian prisoners' camps in Ostashow, Kozielsk and Starobielsk.

Oct 6 1014
Czar Samuil of Bulgaria dies after an army of 15,000 of his men is returned, blinded by his enemy Emperor Basil of the Byzantine Empire. One out of every hundred of his men was permitted to keep one eye, such that they were able to return home. For this victory Basil earned the title Bulgaroctonus, slayer of Bulgars.