Illuminati-R-Us

Are you okay?

Lance wrote:Are you okay?

Well, I will be. I'll never get the 71 quid back though.

What happened?

Taking this elsewhere . . .

You're taking HISTORY elsewhere???

12th October 1960 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at the United Nations to protest a Philippine assertion.

What did he do with his Other Shoe?

Yeah, whatever happened to that guy?

100 years ago today, birth of Fritz Walter, captain of the German national football team that won a World Football Championship against Hungary (3 - 2) in 1954.

He is an important figure to many of us. It is not so much the surprising and unexpected victory over undoubtedly the best national squad that had ever existed at the time - it is that he embodied how the victory was won. He was shy, a humble man, soft-spoken, with quiet authority. No grandstanding, no Make Germany Great Again, just a not-quite-young-anymore man doing what he loves, playing football. He died in 2002 and is not forgotten over here.

Yesterday had a significant Anniversary: 75 years ago, the Nuremberg trials began. It was the first time that waging a war of aggression on a neighbour and the treatment of a sovereign state's own citizens was on the docket.

50 years ago yesterday:

40 years ago today:

Fifty years ago today was also an Old Firm game at Ibrox, one that ended with the deaths of sixty six Rangers fans in a crush in a stairwell.

150 years ago today. King Wilhelm I. of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor, in theeHall of Mirrors, in Versailles Castle, Paris. The war with France was still ongoing, but the choice of location shows it was pretty much over.

We watch the Second German Empire from a remote and high vantage point, with the experience of two (lost) World Wars and the utter catastrophe of Nazism looming large. But beside being (or, at least, later becoming) an authoritarian, increasingly militaristic, aristorcratic, and imperialistic state, the Second Reich also made Germany a top contender wrt science, technology, engineering and economics. One in three science Nobel Prizes went to Germany until 1914 (plus four in Literature), and the economy produced accepatble living conditions for a sizeable part of the population (which went from 45 to 65 million).

One year ago today, on January 20th, a 66-year old man from Wuhan arrived in Singapore, staying in the Shangri-La Hotel on Sentosa Island (a hotel I have stayed in). A few days later, he became the first person in the country to be diagnosed as a carrier of the novel coronavirus.

Oddly enough, the same hotel later served as a quarantine facility.

January 20th, 2005: Llance smoked his last cigarette.

January 21 1977 (on his 2nd day in office), President Carter granted a complete and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam draft dodgers. What a nice President!

Lance wrote:January 20th, 2005: Llance smoked his last cigarette.

Well, your last one so far.

I've smoked one more recently than that

tubeswell wrote:January 21 1977 (on his 2nd day in office), President Carter granted a complete and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam draft dodgers. What a nice President!

I didn't realise it was that rapid. But something a former US naval officer could do, that someone like WJC or DJT might have found difficult to do.

It's still January 20th here, and on this day in 1265, the first English parliament containing representatives of the towns (not just the lords) met in Westminster.

Feb 1st, 1692. 120 redcoat soldiers arrived in Glencoe with papers stating that they were collecting taxes from the local area and were to be given lodgings in the homes of the MacDonalds. Like many other Highland clans, the MacDonald chief MacIain had recently pledged his allegiance to the new King, and likely saw this as a further test of his loyalty to the crown. The soldiers, meanwhile, were simply told to await further orders.

For the next 12 days, clansmen and soldiers shared food, drink, stories, ceilidhs and shinty games, neither side knowing what was to happen next....

The suspense is mounting . . .

I have a feeling this isn't going to end well.

Arneb wrote:I have a feeling this isn't going to end well.

Me too!

Don't give away the ending!

Fun fact - an ancestor of mine on my father’s mother’s side was there at the time.

If any of my mob were there we’d have been wearing red . . .