31st August 1915 (Tuesday)

War!

DIED TODAY: Europe’s first ever parachutist (in 1913), Adolphe Celestin Pegoud – shot down by his former student, Unteroffizier Kandulski.

http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/france/pegoud.php

BORN TODAY: Hauptmann Adolf Vogt of the German Wehrmacht, Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross .

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

An update from Cairo:  Intelligence officer T.E. Lawrence writes home to his family:  he has heard that the weather in Britain has been terrible; he sends a request for a book search for him at Blackwell’s bookshop; and, today being his mother’s birthday, he speculates that “For the next one there will probably be peace”. 

http://www.telstudies.org/writings/letters/1915-16/150831_family.shtml

18th June 1914 (Thursday)

BORN TODAY: The Victorian [that is, the South Australian] Croquet Association. Centenary celebrations  “will start with cutting the birthday cake at the AGM on 17th June 2014, followed by a luncheon at the opening of the Croquet Victoria season, on 6th August 2014”. [Croquet Victoria – “Advancing Croquet in Victoria”].

http://www.croquetvic.asn.au/

Accidents: At Carr Bridge, Inverness, Scotland – flooding causes a bridge to collapse, and a derailment and fall from a height for a Highland Railways train. Five drown and ten are injured.

http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_photograph.jsp?item_id=80827

Early flight: At the International Airplane Safety Competition in France, US inventor Lawrence Burst Sperry demonstates his new three-way gyrostabilizer (autopilot) by having himself and his engineer stand on the wings of the aircraft with the pilot’s seat empty, during a flypast.  There are claims that in 1916 he used his new invention to become the founding member of the “mile-high club”. [Wikipedia]. What is more certain is that his last flight took place on 23rd December, at the age of 31, when his craft was lost in, and his body later recovered from, the English Channel/ La Manche.

http://www.nndb.com/people/864/000173345/

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

 

 

 

 

23rd May 1914 (Saturday)

BORN TODAY: Les Watkins and Daaf Drok – footballers: Australian Rules and Dutch world cup team respectively.

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

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

Ireland: The British “Spectator”  magazine reports a debate in the House of Commons last Wednesday, under the heading “The Irish Financial Debate”. The article highlights that the Irish are pressing for home rule but seem to be expecting that the bills will somehow be paid by the (rest) of the British.  ” We hear passionate protests that Ireland must be free, independent of English control, and allowed to shape her own destiny in her own way. When, however, we get down to the facts we find that all this talk is governed by the master-consideration— ‘provided that she is handsomely paid by England and Scotland for doing so… What is yours is ours, and what is ours is our own.’ “

http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/23rd-may-1914/4/topics-of-the-day

Migration: the steamship Komagata Maru (“normally used for transporting coal”) arrives in Vancouver, carrying 376 Indian Sikhs who claim rights of entry as citizens of the British Empire.  DENIED, and sent back to India. “Upon return the majority was labelled as anti-British and killed by the British colonial government”. [www.http://socialhistory.org/ ]

http://socialhistory.org/en/today/05-23/sikh-immigrants-denied-entry

http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_komagatamaru.htm

Society and culture: At the “Whiteways” Freemason’s Lodge, in St John’s Newfoundland, Eric Stanley Ayre (25) of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment is initiated into the mysteries of Freemasonry. In just over three years from now he will be killed on active military service.

http://ngb.chebucto.org/NFREG/WWI/ww1-freemasons.shtml

Accidents: Pioneer aviator Gustav Hamel disappears over the English Channel/ French La Manche while flying a Morane-Saulnier monoplane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hamel#Disappearance

Arms Race: The Imperial Russian Military-Technical Administration places an order with the Russo-Balt Factory for the delivery of ten aircraft at a cost of 150,000 rubles apiece. 

http://russiasgreatwar.org/media/military/air_operations.shtml

 

 

 

 

9th April, 1914 (Thursday)

BORN TODAY: in Vyshny Volochyok, in Imperial Russia – Boris Sergeyevich Sokolov, geologist and paleontologist.

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

World Affairs: Off the West Coast of Mexico the world experiences its first ever air/ naval skirmish as opposing forces in the Mexican revolution confront each other: A biplane representing the constitutionalist forces, flown by a pilot trained in the USA,  drops bombs on gunboats of the Huertista regime.  All the bombs miss, and the blockade continues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_9_April_1914

On the same day, in what will become known as the “Tampico incident”,  “a paymaster of the U.S.S. Dolphin [lands] at the Iturbide Bridge landing at Tampico [Mexico] with a whaleboat and boats’ crew to take off certain supplies needed by his ship , and while engaged in loading the boat [is] arrested by an officer and squad of men of the army of General Huerta”. US President Wilson becomes involved in subsequent remonstrations with the Mexican government, requesting permission from the US Congress [on April 20th] to use US troops if necessary ” to obtain from General Huerta and adherents the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States”. 

http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/tampicoincident.htm

 

 

 

 

 

27th March 1914 (Friday)

BORN TODAY: In Litherland, Lancashire – Squadron Leader William Hubert Rigby ‘Nits’ Whitty DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross).

http://surfcity.kund.dalnet.se/commonwealth_whitley.htm

~Also, in Siam (Thailand) – The Siam Army Air Corps, later to be renamed the Royal Thai Air Force.

http://www.fotw.net/flags/th%5Eaf.html

Science and technology: In Belgium, Doctor Albert Hustin conducts the first successful non-direct blood transfusion, using a combination of (not so new) anti-coagulant technology (sodium citrate ) and refrigeration.

http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/first-successful-non-direct-blood-transfusion-carried-out

19th March, 1914 (Thursday)

BORN TODAY: in Hamilton County, Florida – Berne Davis, “Fort Myers Arts Matron”. Happy Centenary Ma’am!

http://www.news-press.com/article/20140316/ENT/303160043/Berne-Davis-Centennial-Fort-Myers-arts-matron-celebrates-100th-birthday

World Affairs and global finance: The Anglo-Persian and Royal Dutch Shell oil companies sign an agreement with the Armenian millionaire Calouste Gulbenkian (“Mr five per cent”) who is a major shareholder in the Turkish National Bank (British controlled), in an attempt to secure exclusive oil rights in Mesopotamia (now Iraq).

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee120/node/248

Death in Venice:  a ferry boat (vaporetto) carrying around 50 passengers collides with a naval ship because the crew are busy watching the new marvels of a seaplane circling overhead. 14 die in the accident.

http://www.independenttraveler.com/trip-reviews/death-in-venice

Food and agriculture: New Zealand farmer and diarist George Adkin spends a busy day with his raddle.

http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/topic/4578

Extreme weather:  Torrential rain hits north London, causing sewers to overflow. Rainwater floods down Highbury Hill pushing mud against the west terrace boundary wall of the Arsenal football club, opened just six months ago. The wall is unable to take the pressure and begins listing in towards the terracing.

http://www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk/archives/5828

1st March 1914 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY: in Haden, Queensland – Marjorie May (Madge)  Bratby (later Gormley), nine times Australian buckjumping champion and by 1950 the only woman in the Queensland Wild West Stampede Rodeo.

http://ehive.com/account/3492/object/77972/Marjorie_May_(Madge)_GORMLEY_(nee_Bratby)_b_1st_March_1914_Haden_QLD

Arms Race: The first ever military flight in Australia takes place at Point Cook in Victoria. Happy Centenary, Point Cook Air Base!

http://anzaccentenary.vic.gov.au/events/centenary-military-aviation-air-show/

Extreme Weather:  New York records its lowest ever pressure reading (at that time) – down to 961mb, with 16 inches of snow, 84 mile per hour winds and a temperatures as low as -9 celsius.

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/83461-new-york-low-961mb-on-1st-march-1914/

16th February 1914 (Monday)

BORN TODAY – In Howard County, Arkansas – James Clarence (“Jimmy”) Wakely, “one of the last singing cowboys”.

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

Society and culture: In New South Wales, Charles Gilbert Heydon, a Judge at the Industrial Court, rules that a living wage for a family of four should be 48 shillings a week, and that the living wage should be governed by the degree of prosperity of the age.

http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-archives/today-in-history/today-in-history-february

Science and technology: In the USA, J. C. Carberry and W. R. Taliaferro set a new army altitude record of 8,700 feet.

http://www.skytamer.com/February.html

9th February 1914 (Monday)

BORN TODAY: in Crisp, Texas – Ernest Dale Tubb, the Texas Troubadour.

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

Law and order: At the Bluecoat school in Bath, England, Gilbert Mullins is awarded a “good conduct certificate”  for “good conduct… and as an earnest that he will learn and labour truly to get his own living, and to do his duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call him”. 

http://www.bathintime.co.uk/image/316997/good-conduct-certificate-bluecoat-school-feb-9th-1914.

Society and culture: New Zealand farmer and diarist, George Adkin, is poorly all day but struggles on with the labours of the farm.

http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/theme.aspx?irn=4540

Early flight: in San Diego, California, Lieutenant Henry B. Post of the First Aero Corps, considered one of the most skillful US Army aviators, plunges to his death in San Diego Bay when the right wing of his hydro-aeroplane crumples.

http://www.thisdayinaviation.com/9-february-1914/

8th February 1914 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY: In Spokane, Washington State – Margaret Virginian Wittman, “Miss Idaho” in the 1933 Miss America beauty pageant, even though she had never lived in Idaho or participated in a state contest. At the centre of a disqualification scandal after a newspaper reveals her (lack of) credentials.

http://missamerica1933.com/contestants/id-whitman.html

Early Flight: Between Damascus and Jerusalem, in the Ottoman Near East, Turkish Pilot Fethi Bey dies when his Bleriot XI/B aircraft called the “Muavenet-i Milliye” crashes into rocky terrain while he is attempting to fly from Istanbul to Alexandria.

http://www.diplomaticobserver.com/EN/belge/2-3224/first-turkish-pilot-also-lost-in-syria.html