1st August 1915 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY: in the skies over the Western Front – The Fokker Scourge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_Scourge

Ireland: At the funeral of exiled Irish Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rosse, Pádraig Pearse gives “one of the most famous speeches of the Irish independence movement stirring his audience to a call to arms” [Wikipedia].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_O%27Donovan_Rossa

Some, at least, in Ireland, do not forget the call to arms:

https://www.facebook.com/therising2016

War!

In the Near East: the new (and incomplete) Germany to Baghdad railway begins transporting Armenians out of Anatolia and into Aleppo, now a (still troubled) city in Syria. Within 3 weeks, 20,000 are deported, and tales of abuse and atrocities are multiplying. [a report quoted in: “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916”, by Bryce et al]

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=H0mfmdThGLAC&pg=PA556&lpg=PA556&dq=1st+august+1915&source=bl&ots=GIrjbyYxWc&sig=qQZGkXxAI0jTTVWfwZmdIsnB6Yc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBTh4ahUKEwiXs7zx7oDHAhVBkBQKHTvmA64#v=onepage&q=1st%20august%201915&f=false

10th July 1915 (Saturday)

BORN TODAY: in Windsor, England and educated at Sherborne school – “the Great Omani”, escapalogist. Before he died in 2007, aged 92, he wrote a short poem for his funeral:

They lay the Great Omani in his box

 They have done it up with nails not locks

 But at his funeral do not despair

Chances are he won’t be there.

[Wikipedia]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Omani

War!

Armenia: Turkish troops massacre Armenians in villages near Mush [Burg & Purcell].

New Zealand: The hospital ship Maheno leaves Wellington, bound for the Dardanelles.

www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/maheno-leaves-wellington-1915

30th June 1915 (Wednesday)

BORN TODAY: in five schools in north east Surrey and (what is now) south west London –  the Croydon War Hospital, under the command of Colonel Morris and  staffed by 80 nurses, “many of whom were members of the local Voluntary Aid Detachments.  (However, at one time, the entire nursing staff consisted of nurses from Australia.) “

http://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/croydonwar.html

War!

War at Sea: off the coast of Kent, the British destroyer HMS Lightning strikes a mine, which splits it in  half, sending its bow section and 15 of its crew to a watery grave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Lightning_(1895)

Gallipoli: Australian soldiers, pinned to their positions for many weeks since the initial Gallipoli landing, are praying for rain. Herbert Reynolds records in his diary: “At about 9pm a thunder storm passed over but we got very little rain, a good fall of rain now would be welcome as we are depending on the water from the boats for our supply, the holes in the gullies are all dry and there is no water other than that in our vicinity except salt sea water.”

https://www.awm.gov.au/blog/2010/06/30/wednesday-30th-june-1915-diary-of-hv-reynolds/

Turkish Armenia: In the city of Tarsus in the south east of Turkey, a foreign resident confides in a diary: “Half the town want to ‘store’ things here, to be ours if they [ie – Armenian deportees] never return; rugs, coppers, etc.—but we may be blown up, who knows?”

Click to access 451-462.pdf

24th May 1915 (Monday)

Turkey’s war!

Gallipoli: a brief truce is arranged between the warring nations so that the thousands of dead on both sides can be buried.

http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/pt/digitalnz/record/1206500

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/34113/gallipoli-armistice

Anatolian atrocities: In response to growing tales of forced marches and massacres of Armenians in Anatolia by the Turkish government, the foreign ministers of the Triple Entente (France, Russia and Britain) issue a proclamation vowing that Young Turk (party) leadership would be held responsible for “these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization”.  In response, the Turkish cabinet three days later approves the “Provisional Law of Relocation” by which the army is “authorised and compelled to crush in the most severe way any sign of resistance or aggression among the population… including to transfer and relocate the populations of villages and towns, either individually or collectively in response to military needs or…any signs of treachery or betrayal”  

“By best estimate, some 800,000 of the Armenian deportees were to perish – starved, shot, or beaten to death – en route [to the] “barren reaches of northern Syria”.

[Scott Anderson: “Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East”]

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/Affirmation.160/current_category.7/affirmation_detail.html

28th August 1914 (Friday)

BORN TODAY: At Waterloo, South Australia – Esmond Gerald ‘Tom’ Kruse, MBE for his services to the Royal Mail, and star of the award winning 1954 film: “Back of Beyond”.

http://sahistoryhub.com.au/people/tom-kruse

War!

In Louvain in Belgium, American, Swedish and Mexican diplomats visit the city  “after three days of barbarous havoc inflicted by German soldiers. They find smouldering buildings and streets strewn with dead horses, executed Belgians, and wreckage. The visitors are appalled.” [Burg and Purcell: “Almanac of World War 1”]

 At sea: In the first full naval battle of the war, British and German war ships engage at the Battle of Heliogoland Bight (off the German and Danish coasts). Around 750 – mainly German – sailors die, and the Germans lose six vessels, including a destroyer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Heligoland_Bight_(1914)

Peace:

In New Zealand, farmer and diarist George Adkin spends his evening reading the novel “Old St Paul’s” by William Harrison Ainsworth, set in the city of London at the time of the plague and the great fire.

http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/topic/4741

 

16th December 1913 (Tuesday)

BORN TODAY: At WIgston Barracks, Leicester, England – Reg Twigg, author of “Survivor on the River Kwai, the Incredible Story of Life on the Burma Railway”, who died in May this year – one of the last survivors of the Death Railway.

http://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/authors/reg-twigg/books/survivor-on-the-river-kwai

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2323172/The-Brit-River-Kwai-Reg-Twigg-remaining-survivors-Death-Railway-died-week–story-left-stay-forever.html

World Affairs: In Blomfontein, South Africa, the “Women’s Monument” is unveiled, commemorating the death of around 27,000 Boer women and children who died in British concentration camps during the Boer War (1899-1902).

http://www.rememberoursisterseverywhere.com/group/women-s-monument-boer-war-south-africa

Natural Disasters: in the Rio Blanco valley in Patagonia, Chile the Rio Blanco Glacier breaks out of its natural dam and sends a huge flood of water, earth and rocks down the valley below.

Click to access igs_journal_vol02_issue013_pg172-175.pdf

Accidents: – A bad day for the global mining industry…

~ At the Radium Mine in South Australia, 22 year old miner, K Lively, loses a foot in an underground explosion.

~ On the same day, at the Mainsforth coal-mine in County Durham, England, Joseph Aspey, colliery driver,  loses an arm in an accident.

~ And at the Vulcan  Mine in Colorado an explosion kills “thirty-eight men practically all Americans”.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/89956178

http://www.dmm.org.uk/individn/002065.htm

http://www3.gendisasters.com/colorado/3522/newcastle,-vulcan-mine-explosion,-dec-1913

13th July 1913 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY: The State Technical University of Konisgsberg (then in East Prussia) now known as Kaliningrad (after 1945 an oblast of the Soviet Union, now an exclave  of Russia).

World Affairs: The UK House of commons publishes the Casement Report into atrocities perpetrated by the British Peruvian Amazon company in its pursuit of profit from the rubber industry.

Society and Culture: Liepzig, in Germany, hosts the twelfth German gymnastics festival.

Railway accident – 15 die and 100 are injured in a rail collision at Venice Beach, Los Angeles.

Royal Lancastrian Progress: On the seventh day of their royal tour, King George V and Queen Mary become the first reigning monarchs to visit a UK football (soccer) league venue when they visit local schoolchildren at the Goodison ground, home of the Everton club in Liverpool.

28th March 1913 (Friday)

BORN TODAY, in Elbistan, central southern Turkey – Astrid Aghajanian (born Helen Galdzakian) Armenian survivor of the 1915 genocide. After her father was shot, she and her mother escaped from forced march, were found first by Bedouin tribesmen (who sold them to another) and then saved by a Turkish Officer.

She eventually settled in Shoreham-by Sea (West Sussex) in England, via Aleppo (Syria), British Palestine (1920s), fleeing to Amman in Jordan in 1948, to Cyprus (Kyrenia) but forced to flee again after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

She died in Gloucester (UK) in May 2012. “”You may destroy the spider’s home, but he will always build it again.”

Arms Race: The UK House of Commons (the lower house of the Parliament) votes for a major expansion of the British (military) fleet, which is expected to increase by five battleships, eight cruisers and sixteen torpedo boats.

Crime and Punishment: In Carroll Country, Virginia, USA, Floyd Allen and his son Claud are put to death in the electric chair. Floyd was convicted of obstructing justice, after which the judge, the sheriff, the county prosecutor and two other people were murdered in a courthouse shooting which Floyd was found guilty of instigating.

Accidents: At the Pitsea explosive factory in Essex, UK, which produces dynamite and gelignite, three men die and others are injured by an explosion in a guncotton drying stove.

One person dies and 28 are injured after a combination of driver error and inadequate signalling cause a railway accident at Marylebone Station in London.

History of Transport: The Oxford  based Morris car-plant in the UK produces its first ever vehicle: a “Bullnose Morris Oxford”.

Extreme Weather:  On South Island, New Zealand at least 3 people drown in severe flooding in Canterbury, Otago and Southland.