Illuminati-R-Us

21st February 1746 - Fort George (Inverness castle) surrenders to the Jacobites. Huzzah!

22 Feb, 1943, Sophie and Hans Scholl, who had founded an informal resistance cell at Munich University, are beheaded. They had dropped flysheets in the University's entrance hall, and a housekeeper had informed the gestapo. Perhaps the most abject and depraved lawmen of all time, Roland Freisler, President of the Volksgerichtshof, flew in to yell, shriek and bark their pre-written sentences at them. It was over after four days. Their friends, the rest of the "cell", were all capturedduring the coming months, and all were executed.

Their crime? Writing things like "in the name of the German people, we demand from the regime of Adolf Hitle to give us back personal freedeom, the highest good out of which he has cheated us in the most shameful way".

Arneb wrote:22 Feb, 1943, Sophie and Hans Scholl, who had founded an informal resistance cell at Munich University, are beheaded. They had dropped flysheets in the University's entrance hall, and a housekeeper had informed the gestapo. Perhaps the most abject and depraved lawmen of all time, Roland Freisler, President of the Volksgerichtshof, flew in to yell, shriek and bark their pre-written sentences at them. It was over after four days. Their friends, the rest of the "cell", were all capturedduring the coming months, and all were executed.

Their crime? Writing things like "in the name of the German people, we demand from the regime of Adolf Hitle to give us back personal freedeom, the highest good out of which he has cheated us in the most shameful way".

That got me reading about Johann Reichhart, of whom I had not heard.

Some people have to fight for something that other people are too fucking stupid to vote for.

Feb 27th, 1812 - Argentine War of Independence: Manuel Belgrano raises the Flag of Argentina in the city of Rosario for the first time.

Feb 27th, 1844 - The Dominican Republic gains independence from Haiti.

Lianachan wrote:Some people have to fight for something that other people are too fucking stupid to vote for.

Surely you are referring to British independence from Europe - but more than half of you they DID vote for that, didn't you notice?

Lianachan wrote:Feb 27th, 1844 - The Dominican Republic gains independence from Haiti.

I guess, given where Haiti is today, they'll say it was a good career move.

March 5th, 1981 - launch of the quite marvellous ZX81.

Oh wonderful. I remember my elder cousin presenting the rest of the family with a video animation he had programmed on this machine, which he had gotten for Christmas, 1981. We all wondered what the hell this meant and why it was cool, and my father, always the discreet and circumspect one, said so aloud.

On March 5, 1933, the last multiparty elections in the Weimar Republic took place. They weren't free and fair anymore, but even after crushing the opposition, and having had most opposition parliamentarians arrested, even after rescinding basic human and civilian rights following the burning of the Reichstag, Hittler's NSDAP only took 43.9 % of the vote, which surprised many. Hitler reacted by nullifying the entire Communist vote, and that gave him an absolute majority - which he needed for his Ermächtigungsgetz ("enabling law"), the one that made him the sole executive and legislative centre. The next, and last, election, in November of 1933, featured only one "unified" voting list, Germany had descended into a dictatorship. You all know how that panned out.

A century ago today, 6 March, 1918, the first death from what was to become the "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1818/19, was registered. The pandemic probably originated in Haskell County, Tennessee. A country doctor there, one Loring Miner, had noticed (and reported) a massive increase of a crushing febrile illness in the rural population. Other than almost any infectious disease known, it preferentially befell and killed healthy young men. It appears that the disease was brought to Europe with American invasion troops - the first mass occurrence happened in a training camp to the West of Haskell County.

Running in three waves , the Spanish flu (which wasn't Spanish at all; neutral Spain was just the only country that regularly published epidemiological bulletins not under military censorship) ended in the early summer of 1919. It is the first documented worldwide flu pandemic; it rode the Dogs of War, and it actually killed way more people than the WWI: Between 25 and 50 million all told.

Although in terms of absolute numbers of deaths it rivals the Black Death of 1348, it doesn't seem to have found a place in the collective memory, much less, in any case, than the war that made it possible.

A hundred years huh? So, we're due.

12th March, 1881. Andrew Watson makes his international debut, captaining Scotland in a 6-1 win over England. In doing so, he becomes the first ever black international footballer and first ever black person to captain a team. He was already the first black person to win a football cup (Scottish Cup, with Queens Park). He would later become the first black person to play in the English F.A. Cup (for Corinthians). He last played for Scotland in 1882, having moved to England (Scotland only picked players who played in Scotland), and it took over 120 years for another black guy to play for Scotland (Nigel Quashie, 2004).

I'd never heard of him, I'll look into this as it intrigues me.

Heid the Ba wrote:I'd never heard of him, I'll look into this as it intrigues me.

I'd never heard of him either. He may be the first ever black professional footballer too, but it's not certain that he was ever paid. If he was, he's apparently a decade earlier than the officially certified first black professional footballer.

Relatedly, the topic of Britain's first black military officer came up last week and there are a few contenders before Walter Tully, who was also a footballer.

Edit to add: It comes down to the definition of "black" and whether Anglo-Indians count.

On a strangely opposite note, it is now exactly 80 years ago that Germany annexed Austria. The "Anschluss" ("connection" or "incorporation") was a mélange of threats from Berlin, troops marching towards the border and the Austrian chancellor (Arthur, Seyß-Inquart, a so-called-Austro-fascist instituted by the President a day earlier and later executed as a result o the Nuremberg trials) declaring the dissolution of the Austrian Republic into the German Reich.

Valiant as ever, Austria renounced German overlordship in a Decleration of Independence as early as 27 April 1945, with Soviet troops rapidly encroaching on the capital. If you need an example of a people throwing off the yoke of tyranny in a bold fight for freedom, look no further.

Two jubilees today:
1943 Le Petit Prince appears
2013 Jorge Maria Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis.

More importantly, 13th March 2016: Mr & Mrs Lianachan enjoy a smashing day out in Glasgow watching the mighty Ross County win the Scottish League Cup for the first time.

Now THAT's an important day in history, if ever there was one.

It really ought to be a national holiday.

But that's ususally reserved for one-off events. Ross County, however...

True, we can't have a national holiday every time they win a cup.

Took this just after our last minute winning goal. The Hibs scorer plays for us now, as it happens. Great result and a superb day out, but we've been solidly shit pretty much since that match.

March 14th :

1748 - death of Field Marshall Wade, of Wade's Roads fame
1879 - birth of Albert Einstein

March 15th, 44 BCE: Assassination of one of the most famous people who ever lived, Gaius Julius Caesar.

"Infamy, infamy! They've all got it in for me . . ."