Little Eddie takes over in 1547 after Bluff Hal copped it?

Well, more accurately, Henry died this day but Seymour made sure no-one knew about it until he could get his maws on little Eddie and have him safely succeed in the Tower of London (where there was little chance of either Eddie or himself being caught and lynched) on 1st February.

A joyous day all round, except for all non-Seymourians (roughly 99.99% of the population if they were to be believed just a few years later)

Temperance wrote:

So, what else happened on January 28th?

Well, for a start, in 1547, Henry VIII died. And His nine year old son, Edward VI become King, and the first Protestant ruler of England.


(Crossed posts with his Enormity!)

Of course! How could I have missed that one?

And the Duke of Norfolk - who was due to be executed at dawn on 28th January - escaped by the skin of his teeth.

And I crossed posts with you, Your Only Just a Bit Lesser Enormousness.

nordmann wrote:

A joyous day all round ....

Indeed, Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, incarcerated in the Tower must have kissed his lucky rabbit's foot. He had just been convicted of High Treason for, amongst other things, daring to quarter his coat-of-arms with those of Edward the Confessor, and by doing so had been deemed to have openly declared his treasonable pretensions to the throne.

The execution document was presented to the King that afternoon, but luckily for Howard, Henry snuffed it just a few hours later, before he could sign it.

A close shave or what!?!

MM, I've just said about Norfolk!!

Wasn't Henry past signing anything by then? It seems certain the "dry-stamp" signature was even used for his will.

Any warrant or attainder - even if legally signed - was invalidated by the king's death (I think??).

I know ... crossed posts!

Again! This is like playing snap.

I'll shut up now!!

It is indeed ... I just typed loads about the Howard family .... how the Duke of Norfolk, throughout everything, the reformation etc, ... he and his family have remained Catholic but also the hereditary Earl Marshalls of England..... blah blah blah


But I lost it all....

Tant pis, you get the drift anyway.

EDIT : And NOW I've posted twice! I'm giving up for now ... every reply I send it says I haven't specified a post and all is lost! Or it posts twice!

For any lengthy posts I find it's much safer on this site to write and save it in Word (and then I take it to Wordpad) - on occasions I can copy from the site, but often I can't. Sometimes of course you start off making a little comment and it grows, so then I just have to hope it posts.

January 28, 1788. Australia's first penal colony at Botany Bay was founded. Now their national day, though not necessarily supported by the indigenous people. This year's Australian Open women's tennis had to be suspended for ten minutes while fireworks were set off in celebration.

January 29, 1865. Victoria Cross instituted for bravery in war. (For Britons and their allies, of course.) Original ones were cast in metal taken from cannons captured during the Crimean War.

It's amazing to think that it's 25 years since the Botany Bay bicentenary. Or put another way - the time since 1988 until now is one-ninth of the whole time since Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet landed. (And the 43 years since the Cook/Australia bicentenary in 1970 telescopes time even more than that.)

Caro - (with shades of the Waitangi thread) - it's interesting that Australia seems to have these landmark dates in a way that New Zealand does not. For example I can't think of a New Zealand equivalent of Botany Bay. And neither does Cook's sighting of New Zealand have anywhere near the high profile as does his 'discovery' of Australia. This despite the fact that he reached New Zealand first.

2 superficially similar countries but, nevertheless, with each having a fundamentally different ethos.

6 February 1840 is our main date - the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Sometimes a day more of protest than celebration, though - at least as far as the main media is concerned, though Maori Television broadcasts the whole day on what's going on and gives quite a different perspective. (And Maori certainly don't object to this being our day of memory; it's a date to commemorate the two races coming together, not imposing one on the other, even though that did happen eventually.) Maori TV also does nothing but Anzac Day commemorations on 25th April.

But from my vantage point Cook's arrival in NZ is much more focused on than him across Australia. Young Nick's Head - the first sighting by his boy, Nick Young was here - is a very important place in NZ history and not long ago there was a big fuss when someone wanted to sell part of it to overseas interests. I think the upshot was the government took it over and it has become one of those special places that can't be sold. Or perhaps it went to Maori with the same understanding. I should check this. I have: here is what a DOC (Department of Conservation) site says: In 2002 there was public outcry when the headland was sold. As a result the cliffs, a pa site and the peak of the headland were placed in public ownership. Today DOC manages the reserve in association with Ngai Tāmanuhiri.

DOC has completed a conservation plan to guide the future of the site in conjunction with Ngai Tāmanuhiri, the landowner, and Te Kuri a Paoa/Young Nicks Head Charitable Trust.

The site has significance for Maori too, aside from being the moment when their history was changed by outside influences.

It is odd to think it is 25 years since those celebrations - we were in Sydney for them. At least we were in Sydney and we went to Botany Bay during the celebrations, not quite sure whether that's why we went or not. Left the kids at home, I remember. Also remember the much renowned Bondi Beach was very disappointing - signs everywhere telling us not to swim, and nothing very special at all.

My message above (about the dry stamp) did not make much sense. Unfortunately, we were all being rather silly yesterday. So, to be sensible once more, here's what I've checked out about the Duke of Norfolk and the events of 28th January, 1547.

During January of 1547 the dry stamp of the king's signature was deployed by William Clerk (who was *the* clerk - to the Privy Chamber) on eighty-six documents. In all cases this stamp was used "in the presence of Sir Anthony Denny and John Gates". Denny held the odd title of Purveyor of the Dry Stamp.


Included in this interesting batch of documents ("all dutifully recorded on a parchment roll of four membranes, or pages") was a special mandate to Wriothesley, Lord St. John, Russell and Hertford. It was the very last document of the eighty-six, instructing Hertford "to pronounce in the Parliament House your majesty's assent to the attainder of the Duke of Norfolk by Act of Parliament." This document was dated January, but the day of the month was left blank.

The time and date for the actual execution were however scheduled - for dawn on 28th January - but Henry died in the early hours of that day - at around two o' clock in the morning. However, according to Robert Hutchinson ("The Last Days of Henry VIII), Henry's death did *not* - as I thought - automatically invalidate any death sentence still pending. Hutchinson says, "The legal formalities were all in place; it was simply a question of Hertford (Edward Seymour, later Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector) and his allies delivering the signed (dry stamped) death warrant to the Constable of the Tower."

That order was never issued: officially the new regency government did not want to begin the new reign "in blood". Probably not even Hertford dared press ahead with the execution of a peer of Norfolk's importance. So Thomas Howard, whom Lacey Baldwin Smith has described as being "a master of political survival", lived on - but he spent the next six years in the Tower. Mary let him out in 1553, and the Act of Attainder against him was reversed and his estates and title restored. How forgiving Mary was - Norfolk had once said that if Mary were his daughter he would "beat her head against a wall until it was as soft as a baked apple." He was not a pleasant man.

Apologies for long post and past the proper day for discussion. Perhaps I should add:

January 29th 1547 - Thomas Howard wakes up in the Tower and thinks, "Jesus, I'm still here. How did even I manage that?"

PS It was *Henry* Howard, Earl of Surrey, the son of Thomas Howard, who was condemned for displaying next to his own coat of arms "the arms and insignia of our Lord the present King". Henry Howard, who was, incidentally, a pretty good poet, died on January 19th, 1547. He had the dubious honour of being Henry VIII's last victim. To be fair to the king, he was terrified for his son, little Prince Edward. The indictment against Surrey, after all the blurb about arms and "three labels silver", states: "In addition his purpose was treasonably to disinherit and block the advancement of the said most excellent Lord Prince Edward from his true and indubitable title in the case of, and towards, the Crown of this realm of England." Seems no one was forgetting 1483, least of all the dying Henry VIII.

Surrey had acted like a total idiot, but that's another story. He wrote some nice stuff in the Tower before he died - some paraphrase translations of psalms 88, 73 and 55. Kept his mind off things, I suppose.

EDIT: Put Thomas Seymour by mistake - I meant Edward Seymour.

29th January, 1536 - that noble Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, was buried in Peterborough Abbey (now Peterborough Cathedral).

On the same day, Anne Boleyn "miscarried of her saviour". The foetus, according to Chapuys, the Spanish Ambassador, "seemed to be a male child whiich she had not borne three and a half months".

This was nearly 50 years ago (tempus fugit!). 30th January 1965.

And from almost 70 years ago - January 30th 1948:



Ben Kingsley cops it ...

No one else has mentioned it yet but today, 30th January, in 1649, Charles Stuart, thinking it a bit chilly made sure he had an extra shirt on before being led outside of the first floor window of the Banqueting House at Whitehall ... and so onto the scaffold to lose his head!

His last recorded words were: "I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be."



Oliver Cromwell gave permission for the King's head to be sewn back onto his body so the family could pay its respects, and then Charles was buried in private on the night of 7 February 1649, inside the Henry VIII vault in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

And just to prove that the day isn't just for offing people - January 30th 1956 was the day a young Elvis decided to have a go at his own version of his pal Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes" in the Sun Recoding Studio which they both used. Perkins' version was already well on the way to being a hit on country music radio stations across the state and Elvis was really just seeing if he could knock up a "blacker" version of the song, primarily as a tribute to his friend who had just been in a serious car accident, and with a notion that if it could go on the album he was planning to put together then Carl might earn a few bob as songwriter.

In March, when the album came out, the song was its opening track, and had already been released as a single by a shrewd Sam Philips who saw an opportunity to get it played on black radio stations with hopefully the same success as it was already achieving in the country charts. Elvis's version did indeed prove popular - and soon was getting as much air play on the mainstream stations too, many of which still assumed the singer was black and at first relegated it to "speciality" programmes. That was to change, and fast!

Here he is - pelvises in subdued mode ...

Quote :

And just to prove that the day isn't just for offing people

1961 - the contraceptive pill went on sale in the UK. Despite some objections, sensible people understand that it saved a lot of unnecessary offing.

January 31st 1910 was a busy day for Hawley Harvey Crippen (normally called "doctor" but only by those who therefore think homeopathy quacks should be dignified with the term). Michigan-born Crippen, after an afternoon partying at home with his wife Cora and friends, managed to dose his spouse with enough of that most un-homeopathetic of substances, hyoscine, to kill her. According to popular belief he then proceeded to chop her corpse up and bury it under the floor of their cellar at 39, Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Road, Holloway in London.



A body was indeed found later, though recent DNA investigation throws some doubt on it having been Cora. In the 103 years since the incident in fact a thriving industry has emerged casting aspersions and doubts left right and centre regarding the details of the crime and the forensic findings of the police. What is undeniable however is that Cora was never seen again and that Crippen and his mistress la Neve legged it at the first sign of police interest - making history in the process by being the first murder suspects arrested at sea on the basis of a radio call from land. Crippen was hanged in November the same year, protesting his innocence right to the death.

But then, who'd believe a homeopath?

This lad was executed today in 1606 - or could it be said that he cheated the executioner?



A very weak Guido (Guy) Fawkes, having undergone torture and then being dragged behind horses on a wattle mat through London, mounted the gallows erected outside the very building he had planned to blow to smithereens. There the particularly nasty punishment of being half-hanged, having one's limbs dislocated, and then being disembowelled while still alive awaited him. He was the last of the plotters to be dispatched that day and had already seen the agonies endured by his friends Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes. Showing remarkable presence of mind he therefore concluded it might be better to handle the job himself - promptly jumping from the gallows and breaking his neck where he landed.

The crowd were not be denied their entertainment however and his corpse subsequently underwent the extreme privations of being "hung, drawn and quartered". But somehow it just wasn't the same, and a disconsolate and rather deflated audience wandered home.

Not that it made any difference to Guido and it does seem a bit tasteless to quibble over the manner of someone's death, but I think you'll find that Mr Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, having as you say been sentenced to be "hung, drawn and quartered" were in fact, half-hanged, then castrated, disembowelled - that is their guts pulled out (like 'drawing' a chicken) via an incision just below the rib cage and burned before them whilst they were possibly still alive. (Having previously suffered torture via the rack, their shoulders were probably already dislocated). They were then beheaded and hacked into quarters. The head usually ended up on a spike above London Bridge whilst the four chunks of meat were often put on display as a general warning by being nailed to London's city gates. That's the way things had been generally done for hundreds of years and James VI was not one to go against tradition.

That was the prescribed method for men. For the general public to witness judicial castration, disembowelling and butchery was acceptable, indeed it was encougaged, but it was deemed too scandalous for people to see the female pudenda, and so women traitors were usually burned at the stake. And of course if you were one of the nobility, however treacherous you'd been, you might well find yourself 'let off' with just a simple beheading.

All in all none of them nice ways to go. No wonder he looks rather pensive in your picture.

You left out the pelting of the scaffold with cow- and other varieties of dung, and the dipping of rags, hands and other unmentionable appendages into the blood of the executee, and of course the chanting of "You're Not Singing Anymore" to the tune of "Men of Harlech".

Also executed this day in 1945, Private Eddie Slovik, the first and only American soldier to be executed for desertion since the American Civil War;



and a series of collisions in the Firth of Forth in 1918, becomes known as the Battle of May Island

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_May_Island

There must have been more than Eddie Slovik who deserted - what did he do or where was he or what were the circumstances for him specially to deserve being executed?

Feb 1 seems to have been a day for literary anniversaries.1862 Hulia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic was first published as a poem and in 1884 the first volume of the Oxford English Disctionary was published. In 1851 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley died. I don't think Frankenstein was my favourite book, but I've forgotten why not now.

Not literary but taking out a lot of trees in analysis - in 1981 an Australia cricket bowler bowled the last ball of an innings underarm to ensure a win (which they were already virtually assured of anyway; the lower-end batsman would have had to get a six to for New Zealand to win) against NZ. It has been a godsend for NZers, ensuring the mockery can extend the Australia/NZ mythological differences forever. The batsman has got a bit sick of being endlessly dragged out on important anniversaries though. He has "moved on", to what I don't actually know.

This being about York, this is sort of relevant. Roman emperor Septimius Severus dies at York while campaigning to subdue northern Britain - er -so was he buried there? So which car park would that be? Or would it have been an ashes job? And where are they, then?

I imagine the Romans had the good sense to bring his body back to home base and stick it somewhere where it wasn't likely to end up under a car park.

February 5th 1916, Enrico Caruso walks into the Victor Talking Machine Company's studio in New York and belts out this classic:

February 5th 1922 - this came out for the first time, and dentists' waiting rooms would never be the same again ...

In one of those strange coincidences that history often throws up, this day, February 6th, sees the accession of three different monarchs to the throne of England, and all the second of their species ...

... well, almost.




In 1649 the Scottish parliament voted to recognise the accession of a young Charles II as monarch of Great Britain after his father's recent unfortunate meeting with an axe. Their vote this day however was not matched by a similar in Ireland, and most definitely not by their English counterparts who had gone to so much trouble to get rid of pater. Charles himself was not around to argue the toss either - sensibly high-tailing it to France at the time.




In 1685 Charles, having been famously restored to the throne 25 years previously, chose this anniversary of his original accession to shuffle off his mortal coil. February 6th was therefore the day that his younger brother James got his posterior on the important stool and set about a bit of restoration of his own - getting all his Catholic mates into the top jobs. Lead balloons go down slower than this policy did with parliament, who briefly wondered if perhaps regicide mightn't have been such an obnoxious measure after all but who then sensibly decided to advertise the position abroad instead. Some Dutch geezer saw the ad and the rest, as they say, was misery (or glorious, depending on your sectarian prejudice).




In 1952 on this day, while famously up a tree in Kenya, a young Princess Elizabeth got word that her chain-smoking dad had snuffed it the night before (as we now know with more than a little help from his doctor and the morning newspapers). Using her strong limbs and prehensile tail she swooped down through the branches and seized the crown. Well, something like that.

February 6th 1935 - Parker Brothers, having bought out the patent for Charles Darrow's invention, release it for sale on this day. They have committed themselves to manufacturing 24,000 units which they hope to sell over five years (not believing any fad for a board game can last much longer than that).

And of course this, in 1958;

It's 150 years on february 7th since the greatest maritime disaster in NZ's history. 189 seamen (some very young indeed) drowned or were killed when HMS Orpheus founded coming into the Manakau Harbour, bringing supplies to the British troops. This wikipedia site says the average age was 25 - I thought I heard someone today say 22 but I wasn't listening fully. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Orpheus_(1860)

Edward Wing was blamed but the captain died in the wreck, and I heard a descendant of Mr Wing defending him today. So who knows, but she said his life was ruined and I think that of his young son, who must have been on board too, and who had a much longer life. She said local Maori had been very helpful in the rescue and she put that down to the very good relations the Wings had with Maori.

I suppose the troops got their supplies some other way after this disaster.

7th February 1964 and the Beatles make their first trip to America;

February 7th 1669 and Samuel Pepys' wife Elizabeth had rather more of her written into his diary than she may have wanted posterity to know about ...

Sunday 7 February 1668/69
(Lord’s day). My wife mighty peevish in the morning about my lying unquietly a-nights, and she will have it that it is a late practice, from my evil thoughts in my dreams; and I do often find that in my dreams she doth lay her hand on my cockerel to observe what she can. And mightily she is troubled about it ; but all blew over, and I up, and to church, and so home to dinner, where she in a worse fit, which lasted all the afternoon, and shut herself up, in her closet, and I mightily grieved and vexed, and could not get her to tell me what ayled her, or to let me into her closet, but at last she did, where I found her crying on the ground, and I could not please her; but I did at last find that she did plainly expound it to me. It was, that she did believe me false to her with Jane, and did rip up three or four silly circumstances of her not rising till I come out of my chamber, and her letting me thereby see her dressing herself; and that I must needs go into her chamber and was naught with her; which was so silly, and so far from truth, that I could not be troubled at it, though I could not wonder at her being troubled, if she had these thoughts, and therefore she would lie from me, and caused sheets to be put on in the blue room, and would have Jane to lie with her lest I should come to her. At last, I did give her such satisfaction, that we were mighty good friends, and went to bed betimes, where yo did hazer very well con her, and did this night by chance poner my digito en her thing, which did do her much pleasure; but I pray God that Ella doth not think that yo did know before -- or get a trick of liking it. So para sleep ."

Poor Elizabeth wasn't much longer for this world. She died later that year after a short illness.

February 7th, 1776, and New York is on the verge of complete evacuation. A terrified population has already begun to congregate on ice floes in the Hudson and a mayor vainly attempts to pacify his hysterical citizens.

The cause of the panic? From the west William Alexander, Lord Stirling, was on his way with a contingent of forces from New Jersey. Stirling, a Scottish lord who had pioneered viticulture in the US (and a renowned lush - the two were probably linked), was now a self-appointed colonel in the New Jersey Militia and on his way to being one of Washington's leading generals. From the east Henry Clinton was also approaching, at the head of a small fleet which would soon unite with other ships sent from Britain to start a full-scale invasion and reacquisition of the Carolinas. Congress, then still a collection of revolutionary hot-heads according to the governor, had advised the townspeople to get out while the going was good. With their only land route blocked by the incoming drunk colonel and with growing fear that Clinton, despite the governor's reassurance, would start a bombardment of the town to deter Stirling's occupation of it, for thousands the only option was to brave the freezing conditions and huddle together on the ice.



The event was succinctly phrased in an anonymous despatch from Manhattan which has ended up in the archives:

"NEW-YORK, February 7, 1776.-The town is in the greatest confusion. The Congress have recommended for the inhabitants to move out. The Mercury, man-of-war, has demanded three months' provision, which is refused. Lord Stirling came to town this morning with Jersey forces.

The Governour sent for the Mayor, and desired him to assure the publick, that General Clinton was only come to pay him a visit on his way, and that the troops should not land here; nevertheless, it was thought necessary to keep a strict look out, for fear they should land by surprise; in consequence of which, half of our battalion kept guard all night, the other half the next, and the second battalion are doing the same. Nothing hostile has yet commenced, but God knows how soon it may. The ice obliges the ships to warp close to the wharf. This day the ice, in large cakes, were chock from side to side, and many people upon it."

Clinton as it turned out didn't land or bombard anyone. He was afraid of putting his own soldiers in jeopardy before reinforcments could come. Stirling didn't come either, electing to camp on the Jersey shore. He later rose through the ranks and had a short but effective revolutionary war, dying of alcoholism before its eventual completion.

We don't know how long New Yorkers clung to their icy refuges but there is no record of any great loss of life, at least in February. Later in the year however all their worst fears were realised. British forces occupied the town and then in September much of it burned down around them in a great fire set by either the Brits or the revolutionaries - each side blamed the other.

My husband was reading Pepys' diary last year, but I don't recall him reading out that particular passage. I don't know how much Pepys was writing for his own private delectation or for posterity, but I do find diaries and letters sometimes uncomfortable reading because they were written just for private reasons. I read the letters to his wife by William Malone, the leader of the NZ forces at Gallipoli a few years ago, and they gave a very fascinating insight into the way people compartmenalise their lives - his working attitude was of discipline and training; his letters were full of angst and regret and guilt, as well as love. (The prevailing idea that Victorian men were straight and stern and unemotional never seems to me born out by their writings.) But he was intending these outpourings to his young wife, talking of his jealousy, to be read by any old person, and although there were in the library in book form, I feel a little unwelcome to them.

Not being religious I can assume that dead people can't be hurt (and certainly legally dead people have no privacy) but it's still a bit difficult. I have my grandmother's letters which I have typed up and sent to people, but my sister wonders if my grandmother would really have liked that. I don't know, probably not, but she's not around anymore and people loved reading them. They are not specially intimate - written before her marriage they certainly have nothing like the Pepys' passage. I would like to give them a wider audience, putting them into public archives, but perhaps I shouldn't.

February 8th 1587 - Elizabeth Queen of Scots is executed for being prettier than The Virgin Mary ...



... or something like that.

8th/9th February 1904, the Japanese Navy anticipates Pearl Harbor by 37 years, by starting the Russo-Japanese War with a surprise attack on the Russian Fleet at Port Arthur;

http://www.russojapanesewar.com/torp-attk-pa.html

9th Feb, 1540: The first recorded horse race meeting in England was held at Roodeye Fields, Chester. I haven't been to a race meeting at Chester but have been to the raceway there; I had a feeling it was on the same site, but might be quite wrong about that.

And more horses: 1981 Irish racehorse and Derby winner Shergar, is stolen.

On a totally different subject in 1878 Wellingtonians got in a panic when they mistook a British steamer for a hostile Russian raider. "The country is in the midst of the first Russian scare" - I am not really sure what Russia was doing to frighten us. Or why they would bother.

It’s not new for a bit scoop to be held for an appropriate time to allow someone to make money from it. It’s 100 years since the Terra Nova of the Scott Expedition arrived in Oamaru, NZ with expedition members Harry Pennell and Edward Atkinson. They were rowed ashore and kept their purpose and identity secret. The boat refused to identify itself (well, those on it did) and insisted on talking to the harbourmaster. (There is now an oak tree at his home with a plaque saying "In memory of the Antarctic heroes, Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates, Evans, who reached the Pole on January 18, 1912, and perished on the return journey".)

Pennell and Edwards explained the need to send a telegram, but did give any hint of its contents. The pair slept on the dining room floor of the harbourmaster’s house and the letter of thanks for that is in the North Otago Museum. They sent the telegram to the expedition agent in Christchurch Joseph Kinsey. I was wondering why the telegraph operator didn’t see the contents and pass on the news, but apparently he was detained for a while in another room.

There was speculation but it was generally wrong. People had seen the boat and realised it was from Scott’s expedition; some thought the two men were Scott and another. Others ‘understood that the visitors reported "All Well".’ The secrecy was to give time for Kinsey to send a cable to the Central News Agency in London and to try to inform relatives before they saw newspaper reports. The Central News Agency had paid £32,500 for first rights to the story. It was printed within 36 hours of the Terra Nova entering the Oamaru port. The Oamaru Mail wasn’t particularly happy – not a hint of the disaster had been given. The Sydney Daily Telegraph was more damning: "Surely such an item as the destruction of the exploring party should not be commercialised. Presumably the defence of this ghastly silence is that the survivors conceived it their duty to carry out to the letter the contract entered into by Scott himself." By the time the ship arrived in Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch, everyone knew.

Oamaru is a town which celebrates its history and has a historic precinct and festivals , so they have made the most of this centenary with five days of commemorations, and public tours of the navy ship, large murals unveiled, a flotilla of boats, concerts, theatre, re-enactments, etc.

I’m a bit surprised at the time it took for any news of this disaster to reach the public. It was over a year, and while I know there was a couple of months to not get back to base and then more time for base camp to get their way out of the Antarctic, it still seems a long time for no one to realise what had happened. They didn’t meet any other ships on the journey back? Or have anyone go and look for them earlier?

February 11th 1942 - and this ditty becomes the first ever recipient of a Gold Record award. RCA gave it to their own artist, Glenn Miller, for sales exceeding 1,200,000 of a single recording - this one:



Little known fact: The song featured in the 1941 film "Sun Valley Serenade". The famous Norwegian skater Sonja Henje played the lead female role and skated beautifully in the movie, all agreed. What all didn't know was that they had actually used an ice-skater double, the future ski racing champion Gretchen Fraser. Go figure ...

And this was the BBC nine o'clock news on February 11th 1990:

February 12th is a doubly bitter day of remembrance for the Creek nation.



On this day in 1733 General James Oglethorpe founded the colony of Georgia. This was possible only with the cooperation of the Yamacraw tribe who graciously ceded land for the establishment of Savannah. Earlier the Yamacraw, along with other Creeks, had disassociated themselves from the rest of the Yamasee Confederation of tribes who had sided with the Spanish Florideans against the British of South Carolina. Oglethorpe sought to exploit that friendship and forged diplomatic bonds with Tomochichi and other Creek elders which greatly facilitated his dream of establishing a colonial haven for released debtors and other impoverished souls from England.

Oglethorpe's philantropism didn't quite work out as planned. He was obliged for a start to exclude all Roman Catholics from settling in his new colony for fear they would ally with Spanish. His effort to ban slavery foundered when those who did settle, largely Scottish and English dissenters, realised the profit to be gained from emulating the practise established in their neighbouring colonies. His wish to restrict freeholds to 50 acres for every citizen was also a non-starter. In short Georgia developed more or less in the same manner as the rest of the British territories, and the in-built requirement for constant expansion soon began putting severe stress on relations with the native inhabitants of the area.

Amazingly the Creeks managed throughout all this to maintain diplomatic accord with the settlers who were fast acquiring their lands. Oglethorpe in particular set great worth on his own friendship with them, even after he no longer was directly involved in the colony's administration. When hostilities again erupted against the Spanish the Creeks actually provided considerable military aid to help the British establish themselves even further in the area.

By 1821 they must have seriously regretted this long held policy of aiding the coloniser. Now citizens of a state of the newly formed union, Georgians looked with increasing avarice at the extensive lands still allotted to the Creeks. On February 12th 1821 the so-called Treaty of Indian Springs was signed, confiscating Creek traditional territory and banishing the tribes to wild land west of the Mississippi. The treaty was one in name only - none of the six leading Creek chiefs ratified it. In fact they passed a death sentence on those who had. But any thoughts of leading a successful resistance to the white man's ambitions were futile - their numbers had long ago been surpassed by white settlers in the area and now those settlers' uncompromising demands were being backed up by an efficient and battle-hardened military machine.

Their protests did lead to a revised treaty a few years later in which the requirement to migrate westwards was lifted. But this was simply ignored by the Georgian governor and the eviction continued. A plea delivered by the Upper Creek chief Menawa in Washington DC fell on deaf ears. He was to die in the enforced migration to what is now Alabama (where they were yet again to be forcibly evicted only a decade later).

February 12th 1664 was a day much like any other for Samuel Pepys - the bulk of it being spent traipsing around London on matters of business, much of which was tied up with his job as Clerk of the Acts for the Royal Navy. This day the main bit of business was the final settling of a long simmering feud with John Creed, a man with whom Pepys had been in constant competition for patronage from the Earl of Sandwich, an important man to know in naval circles. The two men effectively signed a non-aggression treaty in a London pub and then Creed escorted Pepys on a walk down to Deptford, the naval yards and Pepys' own little fiefdom. Pepys probably wished to reinforce in his rival's mind the fact that it was he who held the job as foreman over the Earl's fleet, not Creed, and that John could henceforth tone down his claims to be Sandwich's favourite, something Creed had been doing with less and less justification of late though always to the detriment of Pepys's own reputation in the latter's view.

It was here that a rather throwaway line by Pepys raised the curiosity of this reader and left him wishing (not for the first time) that Samuel could have expanded a little more on his theme. The passage reads;

"After dinner he and I to Deptford, walking all the way, where we met Sir W. Petty and I took him back, and I got him to go with me to his vessel and discourse it over to me, which he did very well, and then walked back together to the waterside at Redriffe, with good discourse all the way."

Sir William Petty's "vessel" to which Pepys refers was no ordinary craft. After England had been so embarrassingly attacked right in its economic heartland by the Dutch navy only a short time beforehand, Charles I had requested that the by-now renowned genius of Petty be diverted from demographics, economics and philosophy, and directed to naval matters. Petty's response had been immediate and altogether unexpected by anyone, least of all the king, who had expected Petty to recommend changes in the navy's organisation, not its fleet design. He had set about inventing from scratch what we would now call a catamaran, though at the time the concept was practically unknown, even to seasoned shipwrights. At considerable personal cost he had even produced a prototype, and to everyone's surprise it not only out-performed all challengers in specially arranged races in Dublin and London, but in fact became so successful that it was considered too dangerous to build! Were the Dutch to copy it, it was argued, then England's cities would be even more vulnerable to attack, so adept was the craft at sailing close to the wind and in shallower waters than convential gunships could manage.



On this day in 1664 Petty's craft was essentially in mothballs, and Pepys was about the only naval contact of influence left who still championed its adoption. Petty himself was already well on the way to designing an even bigger and more deadly Mark II version - the one that later would prove his dream's undoing when it sank in a storm in Biscay with the loss of everyone on board.

We do not know what either of these vessels looked like. No prints or plans remain. An even later version produced by Petty just before he died also sank without a trace alas, both in nautical and historical terms. A model of a twin hulled boat, made by a Portsmouth goldsmith in the 1660s and presented to the Royal Society in 1685 may well be that of the very vessel mentioned by Pepys above. If so it would explain why its image is so jealously guarded by the RS and cannot be reproduced here.

But here's a link to it ...

Royal Society - Model of a Twin-hulled Boat

There was, of course, nothing "new" in the idea of a catamaran, it had been in use by the Tamils for a millennium or more by the time Petty "invented" it, and many suggest that the more extreme galleys of Ptolemy II (from 12 to as many as 40 rows of oarsmen) were probably catamarans - or even more multi-hulled than that!

Yes, Petty's innovation was the rudder mechanism. A centrally mounted rudder placed too much torque on the support when the structure, or the load, exceeded a certain weight - a large twin-hulled vessel could literally snap in two when turning. That was why they had never been considered as feasible for either warship or cargo purposes. Petty placed a rudder on each hull which turned synchronously. Not as easy as it might sound - his patent for the mechanism was considered so valuable that it was commandeered by the state and he himself would have been guilty of treason had he published it. We now know that the magic ingredient was rubber which he used to make the mechanism watertight where it protruded from each hull under the waterline.

Sunday, 12th February 1542.

Catherine Howard, awaiting her fate (see tomorrow) in the Tower, was anxious to get things right. Marillac, the French ambassador, reported that "she asked to see the block, pretending that she wanted to know how she was to place her head on it." Her request was granted, and the block was brought for her. She spent the evening of the 12th February carefully practising for the events scheduled for around 7.00am the following morning.

Re the double rudder bar, the Greeks used a bar to control rdder oars extened on both sides for larger hulls - extending across two hulls would have been a projection of this notion. Turning those would indeed have been a nightmare if hulls were comparable in size - but if perhaps smaller for cargo?

To Temp. Glad you are back and operational again. What a sad story of Catherine Howard that graphically bears out the concentrated mind theory.

Priscilla wrote:

To Temp. Glad you are back and operational again. What a sad story of Catherine Howard that graphically bears out the concentrated mind theory.

Thanks, P. Was beginning to think I'd have been better off disappearing!

13th February 1542 was, just like this morning, "cold and dull, with a ground frost". At seven o'clock, every member of the King's Council, with the exception of the Duke of Norfolk (losing one niece on a Tower scaffold may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness), met at the Tower to watch a young girl and a mad woman die.

Catherine was almost too weak to stand, but she did her best to behave as a Howard woman should. Perhaps the rehearsals of the previous evening paid off. She admitted hers was a just and worthy punishment, asked her husband's forgiveness and commended her soul to God. Contrary to popular belief (and "The Tudors"), she did not mention Culpepper. Thank God the executioner did his work cleanly and efficiently. One stroke of the axe (no elegant sword this time) killed her.

Lady Rochford (Jane Boleyn, nee Parker) was next. She also was calm even though she had been declared insane and subject to "fits of frenzy". Faced with the axe and the spectacle of her young mistress's bloody remains, she somehow managed to say a few coherent and appropriate words before she too submitted herself to the headsman.

According to an eyewitness, one Otwell Johnson (he wrote a letter to his brother dated 14th February describing the events), both the girl and the woman made a "godly and Christian end".

We do not know exactly how old Catherine Howard was - she was possibly as young as eighteen when she died.

February 13th 1945. Arthur Travers "Bomber" Harris orders the first of four raids over the next two days using incendiary bombs which turns this







to this






No industrial, infrastructural or military targets in Dresden were targeted - only the ancient cultural centre of the city. Loss of life during the inferno has been reckoned at around 25,000 (reduced from earlier estimates of ten times that number). "The Florence of the North" was no more.

13th February 1692, the Massacre of Glencoe;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Glencoe