While there's no quiz set... what little gems of wisdom would otherwise go un-noticed... how about this.

On this day in history…
Feb 16, 1923:

1923 Howard Carter, lifted the lid off the sarcophagus to reveal a golden effigy of the young king, having discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen 12 months previously,
Since then countless treasures have been exposed, myths made-up and research into his possible causes of death abound, from malaria to a family weakness being the result of his parents being brother and sister, his DNA seems to have raised more questions than its so far answered. Seems research is likely to go on for many years to come.

What other events can you come up with…?

On February 16th 1568 the Holy Office of the Inquisition condemned the entire population of the Netherlands (three million people) to death for heresy.

Seems a trifle harsh...

On February 16th 1959 Fidel Castro became president of Cuba and really pissed off the Americans.

The church in Rome seems to go on boozy benders on February 15th, if what they then do on the 16th is anything to go by. In 600 CE the pope, Gregory the Great, decreed that "god bless you" was the only appropriate response to a sneeze. Gezundheit!

In 1486 on February 16th pope Innocent VIII authorised the contents of the book "Malleus Maleficarum" (The Hammer of Witches) as doctrine. Its authors, friars Heinrich Krämer and Jakob Spränger, advocated the burning of witches as a means of buying reprieve from one's stay in purgatory. This began two hundred years of enthusiastic church-backed lethal misogyny throughout Europe and supposedly a plethora of early bunk vacancies in purgatory. Ironically on the same day the Holy Roman Empire elected Maximillian as their new emperor, who then promptly declared "peace in Germany for eternity".

On to mammon: apparently the first British cheque was written by Nicholas Vanacker (not a name I am familiar with) and is now in the archives of the National Westminster Bank.

And in NZ Captain Cook first sighted what he called Bank's Island (after Joseph Banks; now known as Banks Peninsula). Yesterday's would have more important - first shipment of frozen meat to Britain.

1965 A 2nd report from British Railways Board chairman Dr Richard Beeching outlined transport needs for the following 25 years. The report followed his 1st controversial review of the state of the railways, published in 1963 in which he said the system was uneconomic and under-used, and recommended that a quarter of the railway system should be shut down.


And it still don’t work.

Oh be fair, Norman. If Beeching hadn't closed all those lines, where would the Railway Preservers be able to go and play model trains at 12" - 1' scale?

True… very true… it must have done wonders for the anorak trade as well. My friend has an 11 ¼ inch gauge railway running around the boundary of his strawberry farm… I swear if you could bottle the smell of steam trains you’d make a fortune, and some sad git would be able to sniff it like a well matured wine and tell you which railway it came from.


Ok Beeching can have a reprieve…


In its place:… 1990 Wives of Royal Navy seamen protested over a decision to allow WRENs (women sailors) to go to sea.

17th February, 1972 :

The 15,007,034th Volkswagen Beetle rolled out of the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, surpassing the Ford Model T's previous production record to become the most heavily produced car in history, By by June 23, 1992 there had been over 21 million Beetles produced. The Beetle is the world's best selling car design.

Who has never, at least, ridden in a Vdub?

On this in history Feb. 17th 1867 1st ship passes through Suez Canal

Quote :

Who has never, at least, ridden in a Vdub?

Nobody in the town I live in rides in a VW now; it was the car used by a killer who murdered a 15-year-old here, and has become car-non-grata, rather to the distress of the odd person to whom it was quite special and desirable.

17 February 1883 Mr Ashwell of London patented the Vacant/Engaged toilet door sign.
Thank you Mr Ashwell, I'm a rotten singer.

That was yesterday in history where I am!

No, it's just Norway is more advanced than you lot. At least in terms of the clock.

Not as advanced as here though, where everything is tomorrow.

what happend tomorrow where you are then...?

1876 A direct telegraph line was established between Britain and New Zealand.

And a black day in history it was too Norman, look at what has been received in return. Lucy Lawless and Lord of the Rings!

PS Heavens, the upper lip on this smilie quivers...

Yes, but in return we got The Archers and Jeremy Clarkson. Not a fair swap.

18th Feb. 1504 The 12 year-old future King Henry VIII was invested as Prince of Wales.


Little did they know then what changes this little boy would make to English history…

On this day in 1930, a cow called Elm-Farm-Ollie became the first ruminant to fly in an aeroplane. She was milked whilst airborne.

After her historic 18th February flight, Ollie was often referred to as Nellie the Flying Cow, but I don't know why they changed her name. Ollie is much nicer.

Because they didn't want her going down in aeronautical history as just another EFO?

February 18th 1678 saw the publication of christianity's second biggest bestseller after its plagiarised jewish one with the snappy title of "Book". John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress", tells the story of a little pilgrim boy called Christian who, after having been transported from the State of Kansas by a divine tornado, befriends a scarecrow, a tin man and a talking Carthusian en route to the Celestial City of Oz (upon which he then discovers that the Great Wizard is just a big fraud after all).

Can't say I've actually read it, as you can see.

18th February 1930,Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto [now reclassified as a dwarf planet].

T.

19th February
1674 England and the Netherlands signed the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transferred the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it was renamed New York.
And thus our troubles began…

19th February 1945. US Marines land on Iwo Jima.

It's 70 years since the Japanese bombed Darwin, Australia, killing at least 243 people and meaning many of its 6000 population fled. 19th Feb, 1942.

Caro - compared to Pearl Harbour one rarely hears about the sudden Japanese attack on Darwin... by the same retuning aircraft carrier task force wasn't it...? Why has the attack on Darwin been largely forgotten whereas Pearl Harbour "lives on in the annals of infamy..." etc... not the least for all the big budget films made about it?

Or have I just answered my own question... the attack on Darwin would always be over-shadowed by that on Pearl Harbour as the latter occurred first, but just two months earlier... And of course in 1942 Australia was already at war with Japan, unlike the US when Pearl was attacked.

February 20 1673

First recorded wine auction took place in London.

20th Feb. 1547 Edward VI, aged 9 years old, was crowned at Westminster. Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first monarch who was raised as a Protestant.

The writing in the last post is dark on dark. Why should that be - doesn't seem to be here.

Meles, I am of course too young to remember this attack, and I am not sure how much it is in NZ's consciousness. I think it was always very important and memorable for Australians. Their PM Julia Gillard at a memorial day service (and apparently this has been designated a public holiday - I don't know if that is throughout Australia or just in the Northern Territory) called 1942 Australia's darkest year, and that day the darkest day of it. This was reported as her saying it was Australia's darkest day, which isn't quite what she said. Darwin itself was, after all, destroyed by a cyclone in 1974 (Christmas Day) and 71 people were killed and 80% of homes destroyed.

There is a difference between how Australians and NZ perceive Churchill and the British response to the war. NZers generally view all this quite favourably, but Australians feel they were left out to dry. Although NZ feared a Japanese attack, they didn't actually get one, and Darwin is a long way away. NZers were happy to continue with the European war, I think, and still felt the Pacific arena was less important; I don't think that's how Australians feel.

Just seen that there was an article about the 1942 attack on Darwin on yesterday's BBC Online News:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17073472

It seems the attack is remembered by some as "a day of infamy" but for the Australians as much as the Japanese....

From The Australian, 11 February 2012:

"It is not hard to make the case that when war came to our shores with the bombing of Darwin on February 19, 1942... Australians behaved abominably. There was panic, looting, cowardice, desertion and a stampede south to get out of harm's way.

Yet we could ask ourselves today: If you were under attack from waves of Japanese aircraft dropping more bombs than fell on Pearl Harbor, were unprepared, had not received any training drills, had no warning, had no leadership and feared imminent invasion, might you have behaved in the same way?

It took many years for the awkward truth to emerge about the panic and abject failure of leadership following the bombing. By any analysis, it was not a good look. Yet the negative truth masked other, equally true, stories of courage and heroism among soldiers, sailors and civilians alike."

Normanhurst's post is dark on dark because he has copied and pasted it over with embedded code stipulating font colour and that font colour must be black or similar.

As said before - unless text is copied from a source, such as Notepad, which does not recognise or use HTML formatting code then one risks ending up with garbage here.

I've taken the offending code out of the post above

.... and hence I personally always, or nearly always, Preview before Sending... an indispensible function that preview thingy... also the A-A toggle thing at far right... now that you've explained it to me, Nordmann.

February 20th 1975 - Thatcher elected leader of the British Conservative Party.

February 20th 1971 - Idi Amin appointed president of Uganda, by himself.

Black day indeed ...

But a profitable day for Scotland.

February 20 1472

Orkney and Shetland are left by Norway to Scotland, due to a dowry payment.

On the other hand, in 1437, James 1 was assassinated in a blocked sewer.

21st February
1431 In a trial demanded by the English, French heroine Joan of Arc was accused of heresy before the judges in Rouen.

On this day in 1861, Chichester steeple fell into the nave - thus did the antimonachist slogan

'If Chischester steeple fall,
In England here's no king at all'

come to fruition. Queen Vic, of course ruled. There's always a sting in the tale of a good prophecy; the Law according to Sod, volume 16

Learning to edit but wonder why the italics went wrong in the quote? No one need bust a gut trying to explain. I'll learn eventually.

Because the quote was pasted in as a frame. You probably copied it from a website which had the text embedded in a frame already. This meant that the first piece of code to turn on italics ended up inside the frame and the bit to turn off outside the frame. This in turn meant that the code elements were not in communication and therefore simply displayed as text themselves.

To avoid this one can copy the text first into notepad, for example, and then copy and paste from Notepad to the messagebox. This should strip away all unwanted HTML code (like that which defines frames).

Oh my gawd, don't you get into a spag bog of mind clutter. I typed it straight from a book onto here and made a hash of the editing.

I fixed it.

Not sure how you managed to insert a frame either then - but to fix it was easy. I simply copied your post's contents and pasted them into notepad, opened your post, emptied the contents and then copied and pasted back.

As Meles says - always check in preview if you've used formatting ...

I can fix a frame around anything without trying. See the e-mail I sent you. Lots of frames and smart colours for your consideration. Well you did ask - no, order, as I recall.

'Send a sample' you said and I have. Doubt that it arrived.

Over out and to the bank. Regards, P.

Do I take it that P has passed out, keeled over and been carted off to the bank?

Laughing all the way, I heard.

Nah! Got to the bank and they tried to stop me taking money from my husband's account! Cheek! Sorted that in no time and then went shopping. Laughing all the way back. So much for this day in history but tomorrow - now that's more special. 'Thinking Day' Dib dib dib.

On February 21st 1764, the House of Lords decided to expel John Wilkes from Parliament.

Wilkes (who had been born, of course, in Clerkenwell) had offended and disgusted the Lords Temporal and Spiritual by the penning - several years previously actually - of an undoubtedly dodgy poem, "An Essay on Women", a parody of Pope's "Essay on Man".  He wrote it in an idle moment with a friend (Thomas Potter) for the private delight of friends.

Lord Sandwich, gunning for Wilkes, amid excited cries of "Go on! Go on!" from their Lordships,  read out in the Upper Chamber these immortal lines:

"Life can little more supply

Than just a few good f**ks and then we die."

(It was later to take D. H. Lawrence page after tedious page of pretentious prose to say much the same thing.)

In what has been described as "a golden moment in the long history of British hypocrisy", the Lords then declared that, because of his obscene and blasphemous libel, Wilkes should be declared "outlaw". He was out.

But in 1774 he was back - Middlesex kept electing him.