12th September 1915 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY:

~ on the River Mersey – HMS Constance, a “C” class light cruiser for the (British) Royal Navy’s 4th light cruiser squadron of the Grand Fleet. She will take part in the Battle of Jutland (1916), and visit China in the late 1920s before being sold for scrap in 1936, aged 21.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Constance_(1915)

~ at Whitmore Park on the outskirts of Coventry in the English Midlands – National (artillery shell) Filling Factory number 10.

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/National_Filling_Factories

~ In Lannelly, in South Wales – the idea of converting an existing factory for the production of six inch shells. The plan is approved by the Ministry in two days, and the first shell is produced in just 5 weeks.

http://www.llanellich.org.uk/files/297-shell-and-rectification-factories

7th June 1915 (Monday)

BORN TODAY: in London –  Felicia Miriam Ursula Herold, better known as Patricia Roc, actress.

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

Migration: As part of the carnival celebrations, a group of Chinese migrants are photographed in “national costume” outside the Chinese Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales.

War!

On the (English) Home Front: The “Times” of London reports on the first all-female staff tube (underground railway) station. All female “for the time [being] at any rate”. [www.ianvisits.co.uk].

http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2015/06/05/the-all-female-tube-station-is-100-years-old/

25th May 1915 (Tuesday)

BORN TODAY:

~ in New South Wales – Taree golf club.

~ In Derbyshire – George William Lowe, English cricketer.

http://tareerslandgolf.com.au/celebrating-100-years-of-taree-golf-club-1915-2015/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lowe_%28cricketer,_born_1915%29

 

World Affairs: In the Treaty of Kyakhta, Russia and China recognise the autonomy of Outer Mongolia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Kyakhta_%281915%29

War!

In the Dardanelles: 78 men drown when HMS Triumph is torpedoed by the German U-boat, U21.

http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/sunk15.htm

11th May 1915 (Tuesday)

BORN TODAY: in Luanda, Angola – Aníbal da Fonseca Paciência, Portuguese footballer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An%C3%ADbal_Paci%C3%AAncia

War!

The (English) Home Front: In Liverpool, which has experienced several days of riots targetting german, and alleged german, businesses and homes after the sinking of the Lusitania, a crowd of 2000 intent on rioting – or perhaps looting – in the Wallasey district has to be turned back by a cordon of police. With much german owned property already destroyed the xenophobic crowd directs its attention to other groups – Scandinavians, Italians, Russians and Chinese. The rioting also spreads to Manchester.

Click to access mrhr_02ii_panayi.pdf

The Eastern Front: Tsar Nicholas writes home to his wife, Alexandra. After explaining to her the current difficulties of the Russian Army in the face of the German and Austrian advance, and giving his assessment of the performance of various Russian commanders, he concludes:  “For the last few days the weather has been magnificent, the woods smell so delightfully and the birds sing so loudly. It is a veritable rustic idyll – if only it were not for the war I drive about in a car, look at new places, get out and walk.”

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/letters/may15.html

28th January, 1915 (Thursday)

BORN TODAY:

~ in Inskip, in Lancashire, England – Albert Long, palaeobotanist, naturalist and teacher.

“Education is no good if it makes people greedy or selfish or unjust. It should cure these evils. All the certificates in the world therefore cannot be compared to a kind Spirit.” [Royal Society website]

http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/obits_alpha/Long_a.pdf

~ Also, Sir John Colville “knight and civil servant”, son of the Honourable George Colville and Lady Cynthia Colville, educated at Harrow and  Trinity College, Cambridge, and later the Assistant Private Secretary to three British Prime Ministers. “Although he should not have done so, Colville kept a diary from 1939 – 1957, parts of which have been published”.[The Janus library project in Cambridge].

http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0014%2FCLVL

~ and in Beijing – Nien Cheng, “Chinese writer scarred by the Cultural Revolution” [Guardian newspaper obituary].

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/nov/10/nien-cheng-obituary

War!

The Dardanelles: In London, the War Council is split over the planned Dardanelles operation, but with help from Kitchener and Asquith (the Prime Minister) Churchill’s will prevails and the plan will proceed. [Burg & Purcell]

War at Sea: Off the coast of Brazil, the American cargo ship, the William P. Frye, a four-masted steel barque heading for England with a cargo of wheat, has been intercepted by a German cruiser. When the crew fails to fulfill orders from the German captain to jettison its cargo, the ship is sunk, inciting indignation in the US.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-sink-american-merchant-ship

 

18th January 1915 (Monday)

BORN TODAY:

~ in Trikala, Greece – Vassilis Tsitsanis – songwriter and bouzouki player. “One of the leading Greek composers of his time and widely regarded as one of the founders of modern Rebetika” [Wikipedia].

~ Also, in Poznan, Poland – Kazimierz Wichniarz, actor.

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

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

War!

War from the air: After dark, two German zeppelins successfully bomb the towns of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn on England’s east coast, returning undamaged to their base near Hamburg [Burg & Purcell].

War at Sea: His (British) Majesty’s submarine E10 sinks in the North Sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_January_1915

Asia-Pacific:  In what “westerners” call “the Far East”, the Japanese government issues its “twenty-one demands” to the Republican government of China in an attempt to build on its gains in Manchuria and Northern China during the first sino-Japanese war (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-One_Demands

Peace:

Railway accident: In Colima-Guadalajara Mexico, a train crash kills around 600 people.

(some sources place this event a day or two later).

3rd November 1914 (Tuesday)

BORN TODAY: in Japanese occupied Port Arthur  in the Kwantung Leased Territory (a territorial concession from the Chinese to Western Powers) on the Liáodōng Peninsula in Manchuria (now Dalian in North East China – voted “China’s most livable city” in 2006) – Saburo Okita, Japanese economist, politician and briefly Minister for Foreign Affairs.

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

War!

Russia declares war On Turkey, and British and French forces bombard the Turkish forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles. Montenegrin forces bombard the Austro-Hungarian naval base at Cattaro (modern Kotor). The British bombard Aqaba (then a Turkish possession, now in Jordan) on the Red Sea Gulf of Aqaba.

http://www.firstworldwar.com/onthisday/1914_11_03.htm

The German navy unsuccessfully raids Great Yarmouth on England’s East coast.

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

The North Sea: disregarding complaints about International Law, the British government declares the whole of the North Sea a “military area”, and requires all neutral merchant ships in future to put into British ports for inspection and subsequent escort, without   any ‘illegal’ cargo bound for Germany. [UK Government archives].

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/spotlights/blockade.htm

In Armenia, near the foot of Holy Mount Ararat (later successfully annexed by Turkey), Russian forces occupy the town of Bayazid.

Middle East: The 16th Brigade, Indian soldiers who left Bombay on 16th October, arrive at the mouth of the Shatt Al-Arab waterway in (what is now) southern Iraq. [Roger Ford – “Eden to Armageddon: World War 1 in the Middle East”].

 

 

27th September 1914 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY:

~ Place unknown – Herbert Franke, German sinologist.

~ In Johnson City, Tennessee – Catherine Sarah Wood Marshall LeSourd, author of “nonfiction, inspirational, and fiction works”.

~ at Kirkham in Lancashire – William Braithwaite Roberts, “lower-order batsman and left-arm spin bowler.”

[Wikipedia]

War!

On the Western Front, an anonymous British nursing sister receives news that she is assigned to a hospital train which will operate just behind the front:

“It was worth waiting five weeks to get this; every man or woman stuck at the Base has dreams of getting to the Front, but only one in a hundred gets the dream fulfilled…

“There is no doubt that ‘the horrors of war’ have outdone themselves by this modern perfection of machinery killing, and the numbers involved, as they have never done before, and as it was known they would. The details are often unprintable…”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Diary-Nursing-Sister-Western-1914-1915/dp/0857066625/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1411725749&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=diary+of+a+nursing+sister+on+the+western+front+1914-1915

Peace

Migration strife: The steamship Komagata Maru, carrying British sikhs, hindus and muslims who were refused entry to Vancouver during the summer, docks in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in British India. At the docks in Budge Budge, the authority’s attempt to arrest the “reingleader” is met with resistance which escalates to a riot (the “budge Budge riot”). Nineteen passengers are shot dead, and the rest are imprisoned for the duration of world War 1. (some sources, including the SikhiWiki, date this incident to yesterday – 26th),

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

http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Budge_Budge_Riot

3rd September 1914 (Thursday)

BORN TODAY: in Kusminki, in the Oryol Governorate of Western Russia – Ivan Pereverzev, Russian actor whose career started “in the Donbass” (now the Donets region of Eastern Ukraine) and ended with a Very English Murder. [Wikipedia].

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

War!

Eastern Front: Russian troops occupy the (formerly Austrian-ruled) city of Lemberg/ Lvov/ Lviv in Galicia (now in Ukraine).

Western Front: German troops, sweeping south to the east of Paris, reach the river Marne.

War at Sea:

~ In the German “concession” area of Jiaozhou Bay off China’s Shandong peninsula, the Japanese destroyer “Shirotaye” is itself destroyed by the German gunboat “Jaguar”.

http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/sunk14.htm

~ British HMS “Speedy”, a torpedo gunboat and the sixth of nine Royal Navy vessels christened “Speedy”, is not fast enough to avoid the mine which sinks it, in the Humber Estuary on England’s east coast.

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

Peace

In Rome: the College of Cardinals chooses 59 year old Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa as the new Pope – Benedict XV.

2nd September 1914 (Wednesday)

BORN TODAY: in London, England – Baron George Brown: city clerk; fur salesman for John Lewis; ledger clerk for the Transport and General Workers Union; then District Organiser; Labour MP in the landslide victory of 1945; Minister and later Deputy Prime Minister in the Labour government of the 1960s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Brown,_Baron_George-Brown

War!

Eastern Front: The Austro-Hungarian army abandons the city of Lemburg in Galicia (Lvov in Polish, now Lviv, in Ukraine) under pressure from the Russian advance westward.

Western Front: The French Government leaves Paris, relocating to Bordeaux. In Germany, today is Sedantag, a semi-official memorial holiday commemorating King Wilhelm of Prussia’s victory over the French in the Battle of Sedan in 1870.

The Asia Pacific Theatre:   More than 20,000 Japanese troops land on the Shandong peninsula in North East China. Their target is the German port of Tsingtao (now Qingdao).