Addendum to the previous message.

Nielsen, while I did research about Isabella I came again on one of my favourite women...what a woman...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_of_York
Sister of Edward IV and Richard III (Minette where are you?)
she was fully intertwined with the so-called War of the Roses. My last book from the local library that I read during the kidney dialysis was about this War of the Roses and I commented it overhere... 
Step grand grand mother of Charles V and third wife of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy.
From the wiki:
Although the marriage produced no children, Margaret proved a valuable asset to Burgundy. Immediately after her wedding, she journeyed with her stepdaughter Mary through Flanders, Brabant and Hainaut, visiting the great towns: Ursel, Ghent, Dendermonde, Asse, Brussels, Oudenaarde and Kortrijk were all impressed by her intelligence and capability.
Also from the wiki:
It was in the wake of her husband's death that Margaret proved truly invaluable to Burgundy. She had always been regarded as a skilful and intelligent politician; now, she went beyond even that. To her stepdaughter, Mary, now Duchess of Burgundy, she gave immeasurable guidance and help: using her own experiences in the court of Edward IV, where she had largely avoided being used as a pawn and contributed to the arrangement of her own marriage, she wisely guided the Duchess in deciding her marriage; against the wave of marriage offers that flooded to the two Duchesses in Ghent (from the recently widowed Duke of Clarence, from the 7-year old Dauphin of France, Charles, from a brother of Edward IV's wife, Elizabeth Woodville), she stood firm, and advised Mary to marry Maximilian of Habsburg, the 18-year-old son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, to whom Charles the Bold had betrothed Mary, and who was ambitious and active enough, in Margaret's opinion, to defend Mary's legacy.

Now to our subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_of_Austria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_II_of_Denmark

"His wife, Isabella(1501-26) brought their children to court of her aunt,  the regent of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_of_Austria,_Duchess_of_Savoy


Next to the following addendum...

Kind regards, Paul.

Addendum to the previous message.

About the "Regentessen of the Netherlands" I read the three books of Jane de Iongh:
http://www.marktplaza.nl/boeken/geschiedenis/Dr.Jane-de-Iongh-De-Hertogin-de-Madama-De-Koningin-33598411.html
The three "regentessen" (governesses?) of the Netherlands:
The Duchess: Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoie
Madama: Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Parma and Piacenza (we call her Margaret of Parma)
The Queen: Mary of Hungary, Governess (Landvoogdes) of the Netherlands.

I found something in English about Jane de Iongh:
https://www.librarything.com/author/ionghjanede

She was women for women...

Short biography

Adriana Wilhelmina de Iongh, called "Jane," and her brother were the children of an artistic family. She studied literature at the University of Amsterdam, with the Italian Renaissance as her doctoral thesis topic in 1924. After graduation, she got a job as a librarian at the Netherlands Economic History Archive (NEHA). She belonged to the small group of professional historians in the Netherlands during the interwar period. In 1935, Jane de Iongh resigned as librarian of the NEHA, to become a board member of both the International Institute of Social History and the International Archives for the Women's Movement (now IIAV). She studied the women's movement and conducted research in Britain and France. In 1936 she published a book that criticized the traditional, prejudiced view of women's role in history as that of wife or lover of a famous man. Jane was a member of the Dutch Society for Women's Interests and Equal Citizenship and the Women's Group of the Liberal Party. In the second half of the 1930s, as she frequently published articles in Dutch periodicals, Jane de Iongh developed into a well-known and respected personality. She worked also for more complete citizenship rights for women. During the German Occupation, she helped fulfill the need for cultural and historical works about the patriotic past by writing two biographies of the great female Regents of the Netherlands in the 16th-century: Margaret of Austria and Maria (or Mary) of Hungary. Her books offered a new interpretation of the political history of the Netherlands. Shortly after the Liberation, Jane de Iongh was named attaché for Education, Arts and Sciences in London, a position she would hold for 10 years. In the 1950s, in ailing health, she lived for a while in the south of French while she completed work on the biography of the third great female ruler of the Netherlands, Margaret, Duchess of Parma and Piacenza.

And but in Dutch but there is a photograph
http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Iongh


And:
goo.gl/m7gnqt

The monstrous regiment of women...

Kind regards, Paul.

Paul,

I have for some time - actually from a thread on the BBC boards started 2008 called 'Zeven Vereignete Provincïes' -  attempted to make an overview on the history of the Netherlands, from the time of 'de oude Batavier' untill the present days. 
It's not that I'm working or even thinking of this continously but it is in my files and sometimes worth looking at.

Above you mention that the duke of Burgundy ruled what is now called BENELUX, yet some the old Provincïes went deep down into what is now France.

A hobby of mine, nerdish perhaps, but I'd like to know, so sometimes I look, find articles on wiki and other places, write and edit a bit.

Kind regards to you, too.

Nielsen

Nielsen,

you are a "bij de pinken" boy (they translate it in my dictionary with: "be all there").
Yes of course in the time before the Habsburgs, the county of Flanders was a French fief depending from France, but there were also parts of the County which were HRE. The neighbour was the Duchy of Brabant, which was completely HRE. And then you had the Prince-Bishopry of Liège.
But the French king gave then the county of Flanders (in apanage?) to the dukes of Burgundy, who collected then further  the rest of the nowadays Benelux.
And yes the dukes of Burgundy were from Dijon France as you say, thus the had at the end their French duchy in France and at the same time the Benelux (Leo Belgicus). They called it in Dutch "de landen van herwaarst over" the Benelux (in French: les pays de par deçà) and "de landen van derwaarts over"  Duchy de Burgundy and France-Comté (in French: les pays de par delà). For the moment there is a great discussion on the French board Passion Histoire about the difference between I think France-Comté the County of Burgundy? and the Duchy of Burgundy all in France nowadays, but the county was part I think from the HRE. I did for the French a study about l'Alsace-Lorraine (in German (Elzas-Lotharingen). And that "county" played also a role in the troubles from 1870 on till 1945. "Triste histoire"...les malgrés-nous et le massacre d'Oradour....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_of_Flanders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Burgundy

BTW; Duke Charles the Bold wanted to connect his "pays de par deça" with his "pays de par de là"...He was killed by Nancy...Perhaps Louis XI (the spider)? had bribed the Suisses and lurred the duke overthere...I read in the time some fifty years ago a novel about Louis XI, where he was called "the spider" in the middle of his web...if it is hagiography, I don't know...I certainly don't mention it on the French board...
And then the two Burgundies were separated via Maria of Burgundy and the marriage with the HRE emperor Maximilian of Austria with Philip the Handsome as son and then Charles V as son...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgundian_Netherlands
From the wiki:
"The Valois era would last until 1477, when Duke Charles the Bold died at the Battle of Nancy leaving no male heir. The territorial Duchy of Burgundy reverted to the French crown according to Salic law, and King Louis XI of France also seized the French portion of the Burgundian possessions in the Low Countries. The Imperial fiefs passed to the Austrian House of Habsburg through Charles' daughter Mary of Burgundy and her husband Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, son of Emperor Frederick III. Maximilian however regarded the Burgundian Netherlands including Flanders and Artois as the undivided domains of his wife and himself and marched against the French. The conflict culminated at the Battle of Guinegate in 1479. Though Maximilian was victorious, he was only able to gain the County of Flanders according to the 1482 Treaty of Arras after his wife Mary had suddenly died, while France retained Artois.
In her testament, Mary of Burgundy had bequested the Burgundian heritage to her and Maximilian's son, Philip the Handsome. His father, dissatisfied with the terms of the Arras agreement, continued to campaign the seized French territories. In 1493, King Charles VIII of France according to the Treaty of Senlis finally renounced Artois, which together with Flanders was incorporated into the Imperial Seventeen Provinces under the rule of Philip." (Philip the Handsome)

Kind regards, Paul.

Nielsen,

you said:
"I have for some time - actually from a thread on the BBC boards started 2008 called 'Zeven Vereignete Provincïes' -  attempted to make an overview on the history of the Netherlands, from the time of 'de oude Batavier' untill the present days. 
It's not that I'm working or even thinking of this continously but it is in my files and sometimes worth looking at."

That's the difficulty for most outside "The Netherlands" they confuse the former Netherlands (the seventeen provinces) after the end of Burgundy with the present days "The Netherlands" which is only the North (the "verenigde zeven provinciën) of the former Netherlands (the Low Countries is perhaps better understandable for the English?) These Low Countries, The Netherlands were many times pictured as the "Leo Belgicus"
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/425-leo-belgicus-rampant-and-passant

As I understand it you want to write about the history of the present day "Netherlands"?
I suggest to write a history of the Low Countries...
I have a splendid book about it from Jaap ter Haar:
https://www.stormybooks.nl/a-45294770/geschiedenis/jaap-ter-haar-meer-dan-2000-jaar-geschiedenis-van-de-lage-landen/
https://www.marktplaats.nl/a/boeken/geschiedenis-vaderland/m1161420800-j-terhaar-meer-dan-2000-jaar-geschiedenis-van-de-lage-lande.html
"Meer dan 2000 jaar geschiedenis van de lage landen"
(More than 2000 years of history of the low countries)
If you start with the schematic sequences I will cover each item in detail...

Kind regards from Paul.

Hold your horses, Paul, you're giving me credit for something I don't aspire to do.

"... As I understand it you want to write about the history of the present day "Netherlands"? ..."

Many sensible people will have done that already, what I'm attempting to do is making sense of it to myself. 
Including understanding how the feudal system first came to be abolished, the nobility gradually lost their powers, and how the import of wool from the eastern English areas led to the richness of the towns in these Low Countries.

Added later:

The situation regarding an area being under the disputed suzerainty of two kings, is really quite comparable to the situation in Schleswig-Holstein, with one duchy being under Danish suzerainty, and the other under the HRE, yet with the King of Denmark being Duke of both places, thus promising fealty to the HRE Emperor until 1806. and being a member of the German Confederation between 1815-66 as Duke of Holstein.

Kind regards to you too.

Nielsen wrote:

Hold your horses, Paul, you're giving me credit for something I don't aspire to do.

"... As I understand it you want to write about the history of the present day "Netherlands"? ..."

Many sensible people will have done that already, what I'm attempting to do is making sense of it to myself. 
Including understanding how the feudal system first came to be abolished, the nobility gradually lost their powers, and how the import of wool from the eastern English areas led to the richness of the towns in these Low Countries.

Added later:

The situation regarding an area being under the disputed suzerainty of two kings, is really quite comparable to the situation in Schleswig-Holstein, with one duchy being under Danish suzerainty, and the other under the HRE, yet with the King of Denmark being Duke of both places, thus promising fealty to the HRE Emperor until 1806. and being a member of the German Confederation between 1815-66 as Duke of Holstein.

Kind regards to you too.

Nielsen,

thank you for your reply...

"Including understanding how the feudal system first came to be abolished, the nobility gradually lost their powers, and how the import of wool from the eastern English areas led to the richness of the towns in these Low Countries."
Ask, Nielsen, ask...I know a bit about it...
But for the moment a bit overwhelmed by all the "new" subjects, which "emerge" and where I want to contribute to...

"The situation regarding an area being under the disputed suzerainty of two kings, is really quite comparable to the situation in Schleswig-Holstein, with one duchy being under Danish suzerainty, and the other under the HRE, yet with the King of Denmark being Duke of both places, thus promising fealty to the HRE Emperor until 1806. and being a member of the German Confederation between 1815-66 as Duke of Holstein."
Thanks to mention that..in due time I will try to seek for the parallels...

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

28th July, 1586:  The first potatoes arrive in England, courtesy of Colombia, brought in by Sir Thomas Harriot, who was a scientist and mathematician.

Thomas Harriot is widely credited with introducing the potato to England after his voyage to what would become Virginia in North America. However potatoes were already known in Spain and its empire - which included the Netherlands just across the North Sea – from about 1565 (eg. some potatoes are recorded as arriving in Antwerp in a ship from the Canaries in 1567). Potatoes seem to have first arrived in England independently and it is certainly true that by the 1590s, potatoes, then called "Openhauks", were being grown around Raleigh's estates at Youghal near Cork. Harriot described his adventures in ‘A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.’ (publ. 1588), in which he describes the curious tuber:

"The second part of suche commodities as Virginia is knowne to yeelde for victuall and su-stenance of mans life, vsually fed vpon by the naturall inhabitants: as also by vs during the time of our aboad. And first of such as are sowed and husbanded. Openavk are a kind of roots of round forme, some of the bignes of walnuts, some far greater, which are found in moist & marish grounds growing many together one by another in ropes, or as thogh they were fastnened with a string. Being boiled or sodden they are very good meate."
 
But the thing is, potatoes are not native to North America. The white, waxy spud originated in the highlands of what are now Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, and so became known to the Spanish with the conquest of the Incan Empire, (and similarly the the sweet potato is a native to the Carribean and was also first encountered by the Spanish). So the so-called Virginia potatoes that Thomas Herriot brought back to England must have originally been introduced to North America from somewhere else. Perhaps they had been introduced by the Spanish when they made the first exploratory incursions into the area in the 1540s and 50s. It has even been suggested that it was Raleigh’s expedition itself that first introduced the potato into Virginia, although given Harriot’s report that seems rather unlikely. Either way by the time of Raleigh’s 1685 expedition potatoes were already in use as an easily storable food onboard trans-Atlantic ships, both Spanish and Portuguese, and indeed those of Basque fishermen who were operating around the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.

Anyway, it seems a potatoey 'Dish of the Day' is called for.

Meles meles,

"But the thing is, potatoes are not native to North America. The white, waxy spud originated in the highlands of what are now Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, and so became known to the Spanish with the conquest of the Incan Empire, (and similarly the the sweet potato is a native to the Carribean and was also first encountered by the Spanish). So the so-called Virginia potatoes that Thomas Herriot brought back to England must have originally been introduced to North America from somewhere else. Perhaps they had been introduced by the Spanish when they made the first exploratory incursions into the area in the 1540s and 50s. It has even been suggested that it was Raleigh’s expedition itself that first introduced the potato into Virginia, although given Harriot’s report that seems rather unlikely. Either way by the time of Raleigh’s 1685 expedition potatoes were already in use as an easily storable food onboard trans-Atlantic ships, both Spanish and Portuguese, and indeed those of Basque fishermen who were operating around the Grand Banks off Newfoundland."

Of course you are right. Here in Dutch they call it an "aardappel" (an apple from the earth), but in our Flemish dialect we say "patat"
And about the delicious product from potatoes we have even a museum in Bruges:
http://www.frietmuseum.be/en/museum.htm
The history of the potato is very well represented (I was there), but on their site you don't find anything about it, only this:
http://www.frietmuseum.be/en/history.htm

But here you have it in full (I suppose it is written by a Belgian, while in my humble opinion it is a bit Belgian-centred...)
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/the-history-of-french-fries/
From the above link...this one I find a good one, apocryphally or not
"When the potato was first introduced to Ireland and Scotland, it was met with quite a bit of resistance from Protestants there, due to the fact that the potato wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the Bible; thus, it wasn’t clear whether it was acceptable to eat, so they refused to plant them at first.  The Catholics, on the other hand, chose to sprinkle them with holy water before planting, thus making them acceptable to plant and eat."

Kind regards from Paul.

15 August 1965:

27 or 28 August:  55BC, the Romans came to Britain staying for the next few hundred years.

1769:  Captain James Cook set off on an expedition to look for the Transit of Venus, and goes to look for the great southern continent, in the course of which he lands on NZ, the first expedition there since Abel Tasman who didn't come ashore.

This was 20 years ago:
wiki:

Henri Paul, the deputy head of security at the Ritz Hotel, had been instructed to drive the hired black 1994 Mercedes-Benz S280 in order to elude the paparazzi; a decoy vehicle left the Ritz first from the main entrance on Place Vendôme, attracting a throng of photographers. Diana and Fayed then departed from the hotel's rear entrance, rue Cambon at around 00:20 on 31 August CEST (22:20 on 30 August UTC), heading for the apartment in Rue Arsène Houssaye. They did this to avoid the nearly 30 photographers waiting in the front of the hotel. They were the rear passengers; Trevor Rees-Jones, a member of the Fayed family's personal protection team, was in the (right) front passenger seat. It was believed that Diana and Dodi were not wearing seat belts.

After leaving the rue Cambon and crossing the Place de la Concorde, they drove along Cours la Reine and Cours Albert 1er – the embankment road along the right bank of the River Seine – into the Place de l'Alma underpass. At around 12:23 a.m., at the entrance to the tunnel, Paul lost control; the car swerved to the left of the two-lane carriageway before colliding head-on with the 13th pillar supporting the roof at an estimated speed of 105 km/h (65 mph). It then spun and hit the stone wall of the tunnel backwards, finally coming to a stop. The impact caused substantial damage, particularly to the front half of the vehicle, as there was no guard rail between the pillars to prevent this. Witnesses arriving shortly after the accident reported smoke. Witnesses also reported that photographers on motorcycles "swarmed the Mercedes sedan before it entered the tunnel."

This was 210 years ago




The Second Battle of Copenhagen (or the Bombardment of Copenhagen) (16 August – 5 September 1807) was a British bombardment of the Danish capital, Copenhagen in order to capture or destroy the Dano-Norwegian fleet, during the Napoleonic Wars. The incident led to the outbreak of the Anglo-Russian War of 1807, which ended with the Treaty of Örebro in 1812.
Britain's first response to Napoleon's Continental system was to launch a major naval attack on the weakest link in Napoleon's coalition, Denmark. Although ostensibly neutral, Denmark was under heavy French and Russian pressure to pledge its fleet to Napoleon. In September 1807, the Royal Navy bombarded Copenhagen, seizing the Danish fleet, and assured use of the sea lanes in the North Sea and Baltic Sea for the British merchant fleet. A consequence of the attack was that Denmark did join the war on the side of France, but without a fleet it had little to offer.^[2]
The attack gave rise to the term to Copenhagenize, and the British bombardment is historically sometimes referred to as the first ever air strike on civilians.



Further in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Copenhagen_(1807)



Edited in order to avoid unnecessary duplication.

1752: The Julian calendar was abandoned in England and they changed to the Gregorian one, skipping 11 days in September.  What I am not sure of is: if we are looking at dates before that are they shown in the Julian calendar or the Gregorian one?  I presume it is the Julian one but I am not sure.  Especially when a famous person's birthday, eg Shakespeare or Queen Elizabeth I, is being talked about.  Or the anniversary of some event.

Caro, 

To make thing simple, NOT, the different countries within the UK changed at different times, and, alas, I can't find the relevant references, but the use of Old /New Style is an ofshot of that change.

Some people in England felt that theyd been robbed of these 11 days and made elder without any compensation.

Nielsen wrote:

This was 210 years ago




The Second Battle of Copenhagen (or the Bombardment of Copenhagen) (16 August – 5 September 1807) was a British bombardment of the Danish capital, Copenhagen in order to capture or destroy the Dano-Norwegian fleet, during the Napoleonic Wars. The incident led to the outbreak of the Anglo-Russian War of 1807, which ended with the Treaty of Örebro in 1812.
Britain's first response to Napoleon's Continental system was to launch a major naval attack on the weakest link in Napoleon's coalition, Denmark. Although ostensibly neutral, Denmark was under heavy French and Russian pressure to pledge its fleet to Napoleon. In September 1807, the Royal Navy bombarded Copenhagen, seizing the Danish fleet, and assured use of the sea lanes in the North Sea and Baltic Sea for the British merchant fleet. A consequence of the attack was that Denmark did join the war on the side of France, but without a fleet it had little to offer.^[2]
The attack gave rise to the term to Copenhagenize, and the British bombardment is historically sometimes referred to as the first ever air strike on civilians.



Further in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Copenhagen_(1807)



Edited in order to avoid unnecessary duplication.

Nielsen,

I am nearly sure that you last year mentioned also this battle while I did a whole research to better understand it and I mentioned it all to you. But you are right to start it again, while that of last year is gone.
When I searched for it I saw that Nordmann has taken away all that from before October 2016 or something like this time. All my messages from before are gone. It is a lesson for me, to save it when I contribute something of value where I did a whole evening research for.
I have done it now for this year for fear that a Nordmann, hope that he is not in an awful condition or even worser, do the same for this year.

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

Oh Paul, if you want the man back, never suggest he takes stuff off! I have got into a mess over this  twice. The first time - well, we'll never know what happened - and it was about one of your posts, too, then, later, I said that something of mine had probably been deleted - I was deleting stuff of my own at that time but was misunderstood and told I must apologise for suggesting he had and that the site people sometimes gave threads a short back and sides trim but he never did. Thus are small issues fanned to an exchange of warring words. It's probably boring and onerous to keep a site going especially when so few now contribute - even fewer during holiday times. He is probably bored with us all.

Paul,

I don't think your posts have been deleted ... as far as I can see all posts are still there under their original subject/sections right back to January 2012. However if I do a search to show "all posts by ...", then it is true it only lists the posts for that person back for just 9 pages ... which for you currently cuts off in October 2016 and for me is a month or so more recent. This however seems to be solely an error/limitation of the search facility. As I say it currently will not display any more posts than occupy the last 9 pages, but all the actual posts themselves do still seem to be in place.

Regarding your "lost" earlier post about the Battle of Copehagen (1807) you did, in response to Nielsen, post a comment and wiki link about it on this thread on 12 April 2017.

Meles meles wrote:

Paul,

I don't think your posts have been deleted ... as far as I can see all posts are still there under their original subject/sections right back to January 2012. However if I do a search to show "all posts by ...", then it is true it only lists the posts for that person back for just 9 pages ... which for you currently cuts off in October 2016 and for me is a month or so more recent. This however seems to be solely an error/limitation of the search facility. As I say it currently will not display any more posts than occupy the last 9 pages, but all the actual posts themselves do still seem to be in place.

Regarding your "lost" earlier post about the Battle of Copehagen (1807) you did, in response to Nielsen, post a comment and wiki link about it on this thread on 12 April 2017.

Meles meles,


thanks to your analytical approach I found all what you promised...have now to apologize to four persons, MM, Priscilla, Nielsen and last but not least, Nordmann 
And you Meles meles with your heavy workload have found it so quickly...have to say that I am many times a bit in an urge and then take conclusions without further research, especially in such cases...
A weak apology is perhaps that I too have a heavy workload in guiding an onerous household...
But that is perhaps more talk for the "tumbleweed" café...while I have a bit time I searched for "tumbleweed"..."tumbleweed suite" what a poetic and thought provoking name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbleweed
From the wiki: symbolism:
"It has come to represent locations that are desolate, dry, and often humourless, with few or no occupants." Yes "the tumbleweed suite"
If this is from Nordmann, allez, chapeau Nordmann.

To come back to the subject:
Apologies to Nielsen too, while the first entry of 12 April was about the first battle of 1801 and now is it about the end of the second battle of 1807

And you see Priscilla I brought you again on a wrong road...

And to Nordmann,

when I searched on my name in the BBC messageboard for the Case Yellow/Red thread, I had some thousands of messages to go through...yes it is perhaps better to limit it on 9 pages...
Apologies to you too...   I hope from the bottom of my heart that I have not to say: Nordmann, in "blessed memory?"...OOPS...perhaps
better in happy memory...you have to understand Nordmann, if you still read this, we from a Roman-Catholic country are so sticked in old speech that we sometimes forget that times are changed...

And the previous is perhaps also for the Tumbleweed Café...

Kind regards to the four of you, who I all consider as my friends

Fifty years ago today, the launch of the last of the Clyde built liners:

ignore the turkeys at the beginning.

With a controversial independence referendum taking place today in Catalunya, here's an incident from Catalan history:


The Battle of the Col de Parnissars, fought on 30 September 1285, was the culmination of the Aragonese crusade, a papally-sactioned crusade against his most catholic majesty the King of Aragon. The whole sorry saga is one of those typical medieval tales of pride, arrogance, dynastic rivalry, brutality and betrayal, in which nearly everyone involved dies horribly, including for once, some of the principal instigators of all the trouble.

It started in 1282 when the island of Sicily revolted against the harsh regime of Charles I, King of Naples and uncle to the French king Philip III, who had conquered the island 16 years earlier. Having slaughtered most of the pro-French population but now faced with imminent reprisals by Charles, the rebellious Sicilians turned to Peter (Pero) III of Aragon to help deliver them from French dominion. An Aragonese fleet under Peter himself duly arrived and the Sicilians offered him the throne of Sicily, which he accepted. However Pope Martin IV, who was French, sided with his fellow countrymen and promptly excommunicated the Sicilian rebels, and then for good measure excommunicated King Peter and granted the entire kingdom of Aragon to Charles, Count of Valois, the brother of the French king.

King Peter’s brother was James (Jaume) II of Majorca, and he controlled the critical county of Roussillon located between France and Aragon. But Peter had originally opposed James' inheritance as a younger son, and so to spite his older brother, James now sided with the French, giving them free passage through his territory. In the summer of 1284 King Philip III of France and Count Charles entered Roussillon with a large army of over 100,000 men, but while the French had King James' support, the local populace of Roussillon rose against them. The city of Elne in particular was stoutly defended by the so-called Bâtard de Roussillon, the illegitimate son of the Count of Roussillon. But eventually Elne fell, the cathedral and city were burned, and the population was massacred … all save the Bâtard who succeeded in negotiating his own surrender. He then accompanied the advancing French forces as an ‘honourable’ prisoner.

The next obstacle to the French was the Pyrenees. The only road across the mountains was the old roman Via Domitia which passed through the Col de Parnissars, and it was here that Peter of Aragon had assembled his army. The French briefly tried to force the route but with Peter in control of the narrow pass and all the surrounding high ground they turned back. They were at a loss how to proceed until unexpected help came from the prior of a local abbey who offered to show them a hidden track that lead along a rocky gorge and then up through thick forest to the summit ridge. Led by the monks a small French force managed to take control of the ridge and over the following days French engineers cleared a route wide enough for the whole army to get across the mountains and around Peter’s army.

Having crossed the Pyrenees Philip razed a few villages and then entrenched himself before the city of Girona in an attempt to besiege it into surrender. The resistance was strong however and the city was only taken months later in spring 1285. Charles was crowned there although without the actual crown (as Peter was still in possession of it): in its place the papal legate, Jean Cholet, placed his own cardinal’s hat on the count's head. For this Charles was derisively but not unaffectionately nicknamed roi du chapeau ("king of the hat"). It was the high point of the French endeavours: thereafter their fortunes rapidly reversed.

The heat of summer brought disease and the French camp was hit hard by an epidemic of dysentery with Philip himself being afflicted. Then in September the supporting French fleet was utterly destroyed by the Aragonese navy which had newly arrived back from Sicily. Increasingly ravaged by disease, running low on supplies, lacking naval support, and with morale and troops ebbing away, Philip and Charles were forced to beat a retreat. But Peter’s army was still grouped in the Pyrenees behind them and so was now blocking the return route to France. Philip opened negotiations with Peter for free passage for himself and his family back through the Col de Parnissars. But no such passage was asked for, nor offered, for any of his troops. On 30 September the French royal family slipped through the pass and abandoned the rest of the army to be slaughtered at the Battle of the Col de Parnissars. Philip and his family scuttled down to Perpignan, the capital of James of Majorca, and there Philip died (he may actually have died two days earlier as they came through the pass). He was finally buried at Narbonne, the closest French city. His son, Philip IV (the Fair), inherited the French kingdom but his father’s attempt to conquer Aragon had very nearly bankrupted the French monarchy and so his entire reign was handicapped by a chronic shortage of cash.

King Peter of Aragon only enjoyed his victory for a few weeks. On 11 November he too succumbed to illness, possibly dysentery again. He was succeeded by his son Alphonso III, but he died just a few years later in 1291 at the age of 26. Charles I, the king of Naples whose harsh rule in Sicily kick-started the whole saga, had died early in 1285 of a sudden illness. His death was followed just weeks later by that of Pope Martin IV who expired after a reign of only four years and one month. Charles of Valois, "roi de chapeau", lived until 1325, but having failed to take the Kingdom of Aragon he never dared use the title and eventually renounced all claim to it. As the historian H.J. Chaytor aptly said, the Aragonese Crusade was, "perhaps the most unjust, unnecessary and calamitous enterprise ever undertaken by the Capetian monarchy.”

Only James, King of Majorca, prospered. Over the following decades of his reign he devoted himself to reforming the governance of his cities, increasing the power of the crown over that of the church and nobility, improving trade and agriculture, building up the economy, and on strengthening his country's defence. James died peacefully in his bed in 1311 at the respectable age of 67, and was succeeded by his son, Sancho the Peaceful, whose reign, unlike his father's, was markedly undisturbed by turmoil. The reigns of James and Sancho were a golden period for Catalan art, culture, power, prestige and prosperity.

5 October 1914, in what is generally recognised as the first air combat victory in history, a French Voisin III shoots down a German Aviatik B II near the village of Jonchery-sur-Vesle.

The French plane was armed with a Hotchkiss 8mm machine gun. It's crew, consisting of pilot Sergeant Joseph Frantz and observer/gunner Corporal Louis Quenault were feted by the French public and newspapers. Frantz being awarded a Legion of Honour and Quenault a Medal Millitaire.
The two Germans, observer Oberleutnant Fritz von Zangen and pilot Sergeant Wilhelm Schlichting were both killed.

Frantz (left) and Quenault

100 years ago today, the PDSA was founded:

I don't think I've ever heard of the PDSA, Trike.

18th November:  2 tragic fire disasters with associations to NZ, in 1874, the Cospatrick disaster which I am sure I have written about before. 

And in 1947 the Ballantyne's fire which killed 38 staff members and some customers.  And still reverberates to this day; when a documentary was made not long ago about this, there were still people around who didn't want it all dragged up again.  Ballantynes is an iconic shop in Christchurch, one of the last of the old-fashioned department stores of yesteryear, which is still open and in the centre of CHCH. It held together after the earthquake and provided a reassuring presence in the midst of disaster.  For a while after the earthquake when it could not be open a bus ran to its subsidiary in Timaru, two hours' drive away.  Things are very expensive in Ballantynes - I looked there once for a tee-shirt and while I was prepared to pay a bit extra, the cheapest I could see were available for $210!  (Roughly half that in pounds.) 

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/timeline/18/11

Caro wrote:

I don't think I've ever heard of the PDSA, Trike.

18th November:  2 tragic fire disasters with associations to NZ, in 1874, the Cospatrick disaster which I am sure I have written about before. 

And in 1947 the Ballantyne's fire which killed 38 staff members and some customers.  And still reverberates to this day; when a documentary was made not long ago about this, there were still people around who didn't want it all dragged up again.  Ballantynes is an iconic shop in Christchurch, one of the last of the old-fashioned department stores of yesteryear, which is still open and in the centre of CHCH. It held together after the earthquake and provided a reassuring presence in the midst of disaster.  For a while after the earthquake when it could not be open a bus ran to its subsidiary in Timaru, two hours' drive away.  Things are very expensive in Ballantynes - I looked there once for a tee-shirt and while I was prepared to pay a bit extra, the cheapest I could see were available for $210!  (Roughly half that in pounds.) 

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/timeline/18/11

Caro,

"I don't think I've ever heard of the PDSA, Trike."

It took me also some 10 minutes to find what PDSA was. It is something as enigmatic like PVBA, which is for the Dutch speaking Belgian entrepreneurs and insiders quite understandable (In French it is SPRL, which is the exact translation of PVBA ).
http://secure.pdsa.org.uk/stories/our-history/
And there I found it: People's Dispensary for Sick Animals.
And now I see that it is on one of Triceratop's photos ...
https://www.pdsa.org.uk/

"And in 1947 the Ballantyne's fire which killed 38 staff members and some customers."

Fifty years ago, I still remember all the fuss that day, we had the fire at the "L'Innovation" Brussels...while the fire prevention in those days wasn't so good as in our days. I recall that we in our paint department hadn't yet a "Sprinkler system" in that time. I prevented a disaster while a spray painter, when there was a fire from a ventilator coming to the ground wanted in a hurry to extinct the fire with an open can of tolueen, which had the same appearence as water...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Innovation_Department_Store_fire



Kind regards from Paul.

I may have posted this before. Anyway, today is 100th anniversary of the Battle of Cambrai:

Centenary of the Halifax Explosion, 6 December 1917.

A collision started a fire aboard the SS Mont Blanc, a ship loaded with munitions. In the subsequent blast, approximately 2,000 people were killed. The blast is estimated at 2.9 kilotons, making the largest non-nuclear manmade explosion in history.

Halifax Explosion

And 3500 miles east of Halifax, in Helsinki the Finnish Parliament declared independence.

The abdication of the Grand Duke of Finland (Tsar Nicholas II) in March had left the country in something of a constitutional limbo. The Finns had had to look to the Swedish Constitution of 1772 (still partially in effect in Finland despite over 100 years of Russian rule) to find a way forward. The Constitution gave the Parliament the right to elect a new sovereign if the royal line ended. The Finnish Parliament was divided between monarchists and republicans and so decided to interpret itself (parliament) as being 'sovereign' until the question of who should be head of state could be agreed upon.

Just a month after the Bolshevik coup in neighbouring Petrograd, Finland seized its opportunity.

As we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, we tend to focus on the stories of the victims and survivors of the disaster.
One survivor is a 104-year-old ship — CSS Acadia — berthed at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Acadia served as a hydrographic survey and scientific ship from 1913 to 1969. Like many civilian government vessels, she was pressed into wartime service during the two world wars when she was commissioned in the Royal Canadian Navy as HMCS Acadia.
Acadia was built in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England in 1913 by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd. and was the first vessel specifically designed for hydrographic research in Canada’s eastern and northern waters. When doing hydrographic surveys, she operated with a ship’s crew of 51 and 15 hydrographic staff. The latter conducted the research required to produce modern charts of Canadian waters. By the 1950s, her crew and hydrographic staff called her affectionately “The Grand Old Lady.”
In January 1917, she was commissioned as HMCS Acadia and was initially given patrol and escort duties, but in October 1917 was assigned as a guard ship in Halifax at the southeast entrance to Bedford Basin. Her naval crew of patrolmen were responsible for examining foreign-going vessels for contraband or spies.
It was here on Dec. 6 that her crew experienced the brunt of the explosion that was to devastate much of Halifax and Dartmouth, take nearly 2,000 lives and injure another 9,000. A Royal Naval rating, Frank Baker kept a diary about the event. Because they were not expecting any vessels for examination that day, Acadia’s crew were washing down the paint work on the ship when, as Baker noted, “... the most awful explosion I ever heard or want to hear again occurred.”
“The first thud shook the ship from stem to stern and the second one seemed to spin us all around, landing some under the gun carriage and others flying in all directions all over the deck. Our first impression was that we were being attacked by submarines, and we all rushed for the upper deck, where we saw a veritable mountain of smoke of a yellowish hue and huge pieces of iron were flying all around us.”
Damage to Acadia was confined to the shattering of glass in the skylights above the galley and engine room and on the bridge and chart room. After securing their vessel and a tug that was moored alongside and tending to the minor injuries of their crew, Baker and his shipmates were sent ashore where he noted that “... it is beyond me to describe the absolute terror of the situation. For miles around nothing but a flaming inferno, charred bodies being dragged from the debris and those poor devils who were still lingering were piled into motor wagons and were conveyed to one of the improvised hospitals. We returned to our ship at 11 p.m. sick at heart with the appalling misery with which the city abounded.”
Acadia continued her naval duties until 1919 when she again took up her hydrographic work. At the outbreak of the Second World War, she served in the RCN as a training, patrol and gunnery training vessel before returning to the Canadian Hydrographic Service. She was retired from active service in 1969 and remained alongside at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography until 1982 when her ownership was transferred to the Province of Nova Scotia for preservation and interpretation at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
Over the past 35 years Acadia has hosted thousands of visitors from all over the world who, with the efforts of museum staff interpret the ship’s rich legacy as a scientific and naval vessel and as one of Canada’s few floating National Historic Sites.
Over the past few years, public access below deck has been discontinued and the vessel is in need of extensive repairs and restoration. It is hoped that she can soon return to her full status as a museum ship celebrating Canada’s rich marine heritage. This would be an appropriate recognition of not only the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion but also the 150th birthday of our nation.

from http://thechronicleherald.ca/explosion100/1526767-opinion-storied-ship-a-survivor-like-no-other

Triceratops wrote:

Centenary of the Halifax Explosion, 6 December 1917.

A collision started a fire aboard the SS Mont Blanc, a ship loaded with munitions. In the subsequent blast, approximately 2,000 people were killed. The blast is estimated at 2.9 kilotons, making the largest non-nuclear manmade explosion in history.

Halifax Explosion

With the current warnings about Storm Caroline, the 7th of December also witnessed The Great Storm of 1703:

Great Storm of 1703

"I don't want yer 'oly city. I'm just looking for some eggs."

The keys of Jerusalem are offered to Private Murch, 60th (London) Division, British Army, while out foraging for breakfast 100 years ago today.

23 January 1795 – In a rather unusual ‘naval battle’ a French cavalry regiment charged across the frozen Zuidersee and captured a fleet of fourteen Dutch warships that were frozen at anchor between the port of Den Helder and the island of Texel. Each cavalryman carried a foot soldier behind him and the horses' hooves were bound with cloth ostensibly to give them a grip on the ice but this also served to muffle the sound of their approach. Not only was it an unusual victory, but due to the complete surprise to the unsuspecting Dutch sailors it was also an entirely bloodless one, with no casualties on either side except for a few bruises from men and horses slipping on the ice.

On 28 January 1896 Walter Arnold was speeding through the village of East Peckham in his motor car when he was spotted by a constable who gave chase on his bicycle. The policeman eventually overtook him, pulled him over and charged him with "furiously" speeding at 8 mph, which was four times the legal 2mph speed limit. Hauled up before the Magistrate, Walter Arnold was fined just a shilling, but with 9 shillings costs, and became the first person to be fined for speeding in Britain.

He was also charged 1s 9d for not having three persons in charge, 1s 9d not having his name and address displayed on the machine, and a penalty of 5s plus a whopping £27 0s 11d  for using the carriage without "a locomotive horse".


London Daily News – Thursday 30 January 1896

However Walter Arnold may not have been too unhappy with the publicity his case generated as his company 'The Arnold Motor Co', was the first in the UK to have acquired a licence to build German-designed Benz cars to which he fitted his own engine and sold as the 'Arnold Sociable Motor Carriage'.



The law was changed later that same year with the Locomotives and Highways Act (1896) which raised the speed limit for light 'locomotives' (those weighing under 3 tons) to a racy 14mph, and it also dispensed with the requirement that these vehicles carry two spare backseat drivers and a horse.

One wonders how they gauged speed at that time. 2 miles an hour is slower than the average human walking pace (about 3 miles an hour). A horse walks at about 4 miles an hour, trots at about 12 miles an hour and canters at about 14 miles an hour. So the constable must have guessed that the motor car was going faster than a walking horse but slower than a trotting horse in order for him to come up with a speed of 8 mph.

I have a good friend who lives in East Peckham and I've never heard of this claim to fame so I'll have to mention it to him the next time I see him. Those Medway and Eden Valley towns and villages of West Kent were famous for their tanneries making saddlery and cricket balls. In fact so many of them were there that the cricket ball makers even had their own trade union:

Amalgamated Society of Cricket Ball Makers

My understanding is that the Medway water is quite soft (unusual for southern England) and so is well suited for the tanning of leather. The effluent, apparently was also quite polluting. It could be that the saddlers in the area (and much of the rest of the community) were particularly antipathetic to the nascent automobile industry and so this might account for the local policeman's vigilance and quick action in this case.

Vizzer wrote:

One wonders how they gauged speed at that time.

I wondered about that too. Apparently the policeman pursued him for five miles, so presumably he calculated the average speed based on the time it took to catch him (about 40mins) ... it seems the policeman wasn't a Victorian Bradley Wiggins.

I doubt people then were adept at estimating speed as they didn't have much experience of "high speed" horseless vehicles other than trains. The first pedestrian fatality involving a motor vehicle occurred in the same year, on 17 August 1896, which was just weeks after the speed limit had been raised to 14 mph and accordingly there was a lot of interest in whether excessive speed had been a factor. At the inquest the witnesses all estimated the vehicle's speed as far in excess of what it really had been: the car's true speed was accurately known as it was being used for a public demonstation and accordingly had been deliberately fitted with a govenor device limiting it to just 5mph.

The bobby's stamina must be commended. I wonder what type of bicycle he was on? It was very likely a Rover Safety Bicycle, the first to be purchased by any constabulary (Kent) in 1894. Prior to this bicycles could be used with permission but constables had to provide their own. After the initial purchase of Rovers by a constabulary the company then quickly pushed a geared model for sale to the authorities which, in those pre-derailleur times, was a two-speed affair (uphill and flat) and involved dismounting to change gears. Though the first standard "police bike" in the UK this was still very much cutting-edge technology in its day and very experimental, so it wasn't unusual for police authorities to "volunteer" their constables for speed trials and the like as Rover sought to improve their design and patent their innovations before the French and Americans came up with similar improvements. A road race as early as 1892 sponsored by Rover along one of the few "macadamised" stretches of trunk road long enough to yield meaningful data (between Peterborough and Twyford) was limited to safety bicycles with pneumatic tyres and rudimentary gears, and its hundred or so competitors were therefore evenly split between the most die-hard enthusiasts and police constables, the only professional people with experience enough of riding souped-up "crawlers" to produce the goods the company needed.

If the constable was on one of these then he could expect an average speed at full pelt of around 10mph, depending on how hilly the terrain. On the flat he could peak at a staggering 15mph and downhill could expect (if he was brave) to push 20mph while still within braking capacity (also experimental). He could also expect to corner at a speed far in excess of the horseless carriage he pursued, so the road contours they encountered in this thrilling high speed pursuit would have played a big role in the proceedings. Whatever the terrain, the distance covered over 40 minutes meant that this was as much a test of the constable's impressive stamina as his control of his own vehicle - in fact both machines in this pursuit were being pushed to their boundaries of performance I reckon, as were their owners. I also reckon there must have been quite a portion of the race where automobile and bicycle were neck and neck (perhaps with their drivers in conversation) and that each knew it would be decided by whose stamina was best - the copper's or the engine's. Given that Arnold seemingly had no intention of pulling over no matter how much the PC cried "nee naw nee naw" and flashed his torch the denouement must surely have involved the engine, rather than Arnold, giving up?

I would love to see a dramatised re-enactment of this event!

I know where Peterborough is but do we know which Twyford they were cycling to - Berks, Bucks or Hants? There are possibly others too. Twyford, Berkshire is probably the most famous and home to the current PM Mrs May no less. Twyford, Buckinghamshire, however, would be closer to the Soke.

A dramatised re-enactment would be hilarious. Ideal material for Horrible Histories or some such children's program. Maybe it's already been done.

Well they could use one of Arnold's original cars ... this one featured at last year's Hampton Court Motor Pageant (several news sites claimed it was the actual car he was driving when he was stopped and fined but I suspect that's probably journalist's exaggeration).

Where was Arnold even expected to store the spare horse?

Vizzer, the race went from Norman Cross, near Peterborough, to a mile outside Twyford in Berkshire, a distance of exactly 100 miles and all on tarmacadam along the Great North Road. This was the third time Starley and Sutton (Rovers' founders) had staged the event. The first prize in the inaugural 1885 race was a £50 gold watch, second prize a Rover bike, and third a £5 watch, and the race was won in a time of 7 hours and 5 minutes, a new land speed record for 100 miles. We don't know much about the second event, but by the time the third event came around the prize fund had apparently dropped considerably - the winner (in 6 hours 15 minutes) was on a factory owned prototype and was allowed to keep it. However as he was a copper the bike most likely ended up "in the care of" his employers.

Although it was limited to Rovers, Starley (Rovers' engineering innovator as well as owner) allowed some "foreign" competition, mainly because he wanted to see how the French version of the chain drive fared. This was a patented improvement and expensive to avail of, so if it turned out to be superior to Rovers' own then it might have meant bankruptcy (imagine - a world without the Land Rover just because a bicycle chain held together). Fortunately for him all of the French bikes pulled out because of chain dislocation or riding off the gears, which was a fact he could gleefully cite in further Rover advertisements for their own product.

By the way I've just noticed that in the Arnold Motor Co. advert above, the driver is sat on the left as would be normal if driving on the right ... was this because it was a German design, I wonder? I'd thought at that time it was already established practice, if not the law, for traffic in Britain to drive on the left, as in these two pics - Doré's print of traffic in Fleet Street in the 1880s, and a similar view photographed circa 1900.

    

... when did driving on the left (in Britain) become established?

Kipling as a lawbreaker.

http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/facts_motor3.htm

What were you doing when you were 25 years old?

This is what Mozart was doing - his "Idomeneo" opera debuted in Munich on January 29th 1781.



I once attended a quartet/choir rendition of this deep underground in a cave in Crete below mount Ida (where Zeus was hidden as a baby). Idomeneos was a local lad who had led the Cretan army into battle at Troy, so the whole thing was rather apt, as well as one of those memories you take with you to your grave (and of which one would in no way object should it prove to be one's last) ...

A day late, but can't be helped.

60 years ago, Denmark makes it's bid for world domination by trademarking:

Triceratops wrote:

A day late, but can't be helped.

60 years ago, Denmark makes it's bid for world domination by trademarking:

Didn't someone manage a crafty one by releasing similar stuff under the brand name "0637" in a typeface which made it indistinguishable when read upside down?

60 years ago today:

10 April, 1968: The day the Wahine went down with the loss of 53 lives crossing Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand.  The worst modern shipping disaster in NZ.  I am surprised at the amount of coverage this is getting even down south in our newspapers.  Wahine Disaster

This is just one article among hundreds this week.  I think the coverage has to do with the fact it will be the last major anniversary where there will still be survivors alive.  I don't actually remember the event all that clearly - I think it was the Easter university holidays and I was probably travelling home.  But there is a member on the Jiglu board who was on the beach as an 11-year-old and has never forgotten seeing a dead body wash up.

Coincidentally (just as I write this word, the news is talking about the Wahine Disaster, always referred to as that) our weather today is full of storms, tornadoes, hail, and snow warnings. The tornadoes and storms don't affect us so much down south where I live (though it is colder here, just as the north is in Britain), but we are more prone to snow.  Having said that we have about three days of lightish snow a year.  The school down here tends to close when this happens, more because of the buses not able to get through than the town itself having snow.

Mentioned by Nielsen on the Tumbleweed Café about George Orwell:

"As I've forgotten how to find and thus resurrect old threads, I hereby offer to the 'On this day in history' that today, a 115 years ago Erik Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell was born in then Motihari, Bengal Presidency in British India - present day East Champaran, Bihar, India."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell


What a fantastic person (with fantastic I mean the informal connotation of "very exciting")
As I am so interested in social interacting in society I read a lot about him. When I have time I will try to show my personal evaluation of him.

Kind regards from Paul.

Nielsen,

will try tomorrow to start a discussion about George Orwell...now too late to elaborate a coherent message...

Kind regards from Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Nielsen,

will try tomorrow to start a discussion about George Orwell...now too late to elaborate a coherent message...

Kind regards from Paul.

Dear Niels again excuses   from Paul.

Today, 4th July, is of course the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on 4th July 1776. But by complete coincidence it is also the date that two signers of the document, John Adams (2nd president of the United States) and Thomas Jefferson (3rd president of the United States), both died within just a few hours of each other, in 1826, exactly 50 years after the original Declaration of Independence.