Of all the many coincidences in the world, few are more enjoyably amusing than this one, if only because they provide so many opportunities for witty writing and human satire, which may or may not be the same thing:
Today in 1415, the Battle of Agincourt, in which the English under Henry V defeated the French during the Hundred Years War
Today in 1854, the Charge of the Light Brigade, in which the Russians defeated the English during the Crimean War
Amber pages
Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay, British essayist and historian, born today in 1800 (but see my entry on July 23)
Alexandre-César-Léop Georges Bizet, French composer, born today in 1838
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (honestly!), artist, born today in 1881. His earliest known painting, "El Picador", was completed when he was eight, and is the illustration above
Louise-Léonie Camusat (Léonie Rouzade was her nom-de-plume-et-de-guerre); born on September 6 1839, but listed today, her death-date in 1916, because sadly most of her rather brilliant ideas on how to make a better world died with her. A feminist obviously, a politician occasionally, a journalist mostly, but also an author, whose science fiction novel "La Monde Renversé" ("The World Turned Upside Down") had the delightful plot of a fictional Muslim community in which she is elected spiritual and political leader, and takes the opportunity to flip the gender hierarchy, going much further even than the modern concept and law of Parité in France, where equal representation of the genders is now mandated. Her other splendid means of putting grand ideas into allegory as a more likely way of getting them paid attention to, was "Voyage de Théodose à l'île de l'Utopie" ("A Voyage to the Isle of Utopia"), a kind of Thomas More meets Jonathan Swift, but in French. Oh, and she also and co-founded the first women's socialist organization, "Union des femmes" with Eugénie Potonié-Pierre, for whom click here.
John Ernst Steinbeck awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, today in 1962
And today in 1971, the United Nations General Assembly formally removed Taiwan and admitted mainland China, confirming what a biased, controlled, meaningless organisation it is, with barely half the countries in the world members, and the entire farce managed by the permanent members of the Security Council, all of whom use their veto as and when it suits them...
... or their troops, despite their commitment to that most fundamental clause of the UN treaty, which states that member countries will do everything in their power to avoid wars, even to the point of committing themselves to not making bellicose threats... you can read it for yourself here; and then go tell President Trump... too late to tell President Reagan, who was responsible for...
... US troops invaded Grenada, today in 1983 - see Oct 19 - 2,000 marines and paratroopers attacking an island barely populated enough to conscript an international cricket team: The Charge of the Heavy Brigade, oh yes indeed! And you can tell - even UK Prime Minister Thatcher refused to take part, calling it a "humiliation" of the island.
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