23rd January 1915 (Saturday)

BORN TODAY: in St Lucia, in the British Windward Islands (now a sovereign independent state) – Sir (William) Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize winner for Economics who specialised in the economics of development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Arthur_Lewis

War at Sea:

The German submarine SM-U21 sinks three British merchant vessels in the Irish Sea.

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

Colonial Unrest:

in Magomero in British Nyasaland (now Malawi), John Chilembwe, a US educated Baptist pastor and educator, and supporter of the new creed of “Ethiopianism”, leads an anti-european attack on the estate of William Jervis Livingstone, himself the son of a Baptist Minister.

“William Jervis Livingstone was murdered and beheaded in front of his wife, small daughter Nyasa (5 years old) and infant baby Alastair then only 6 months old; two other European employees were also murdered – Duncan MacCormick from the Isle of Lismore (like William), and Robert Ferguson. Three Africans were also killed by the rebels, and European-run mission was set on fire and a missionary was severely wounded. All the dead and injured were men, as Chilembwe had ordered that women should not be harmed. In wholly unchristian act, on 24 January, a Sunday, Chilembwe conducted a service in the Providence Industrial Mission church next to a pole where Livingstone’s head was impaled – a macabre and gruesome incident in the extreme – especially where a man of the church was instrumental in its implementation” [Wikipedia]

John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on January 15 in Malawi.

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

Rural Unrest:

In Hertford, England – Herbert Wright and Samuel Playle are found guilty of poaching on land belonging to Lord Desborough and each fined 10 shillings. An expensive pheasant.

http://www.hertspastpolicing.org.uk/page/poaching_at_panshanger?path=0p2p100p

21st June 1914 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY: in Victoria, British Columbia – Wiliam Spencer Vickrey, post Keynesian economist and Nobel Laureate.

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

World Affairs: Serbian diplomat Jovan Jovanovic warns Leon Bilinski, the Austrian finance minister, that there may be an assassination plot against Archduke Franz Ferdinand when he visits Sarajevo next week. His warning is ignored.

http://www.wonderpediamagazine.co.uk/history/could-ww1-have-been-avoided

Extreme Weather: the city of Termez in Central Asia (previously belonging to the Emirate of Bukhara, at this time part of Imperial Russia, later in the Soviet Union, and now the most Southern point in Uzbekistan)  experiences the hottest temperature ever recorded in Uzbekistan – 49.6 celsius.

http://www.dfa.gov.za/foreign/bilateral/uzbekistan.html

Sport: In Buenos Aires – England’s Exeter City football club beat a team representing Southern Argentina 3-0.

http://ecfcst.org.uk/2014/05/29/exeter-city-v-argentina-sud-limited-edition-replica-programme/

 

30th August 1913 (Saturday)

BORN TODAY: in London, England – Sir John Richard Nicholas Stone, “eminent British economist” who married the dismal science of economics to the even more dismal arithmetic of modern accounting to create the concept of national income and expenditure, thereby earning himself a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Sadly, however, his work did not make the world a less dismal place.

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

Sport: In North London, the (Woolwich) Arsenal football club play their first practice match at their new ground – the Highbury stadium. Unfortunately the public cannot be admitted because the ground is still a building site and considered too dangerous.

http://pws.prserv.net/Roger_Wright/Norris/SL1314.htm

12th June 1913 (Thursday)

BORN TODAY: in Wila, in the canton  of Zurich in Swtizerland – Elisabeth Eidenbenz, daughter of a Zurich pastor who joined the Asociación de Ayuda a los Niños en Guerra (“Association to Aid Children in War”). She arrived in Madrid in 1937 and later founded the “Maternite Suisse” in an abandoned Chateau just across the French border where, with the aid of funds from the Swiss Red Cross, she provided refuge for Spanish mothers-to-be, despite (from 1942) harassment from Nazi authorities searching for Jews and Tziganes (Roma/ Hungarian gypsies). She was awarded France’s “Legion d’Honneur” in 2006 and died on May 23rd 2011 in Zürich (Switzerland) at the age of 97.

World Affairs: In Constantinople, Said Halim Pasha is appointed as the new Grand Vizier (First Minister) following the assassination of Mahmoud Shevket Pasha yesterday.

In Samoa, the German Governor of Samoa, Erich Schultz, persuades the Samoans to accept the German Kaiser’s sovereignty over Samoa.

Colonial unrest: In Reykjavik Harbour, Iceland, Einar Petursson is arrested by the Danish coastguard for sailing his small boat flying an “unofficial” new flag for Iceland – a blue and white flag which has been growing in popularity. His arrest provokes outrage among Icelanders who pass a resolution to adopt the new flag for Iceland. The proposal is denied by the Danish authorities, on the grounds that it is considered too similar to the flag of Greece.

Society and Culture: V.I.Lenin publishes “Child Labour in Peasant Farming”

“Capitalism condemns the peasant to extreme degradation and ruin. There is no other salvation for him than through joining the class struggle of the wage-workers. But before the peasant can arrive at this conclusion he will have to experience many years of being disillusioned by deceptive bourgeois slogans”.

 

9th June 1913 (Monday)

BORN TODAY: in Oxford, England – Patrick Steptoe, fertility pioneer.

Arms Race: At Greenock, on the Clyde in Scotland, the Cunard Line launches RMS Alaunia, an ocean liner which, like her sisters Andania and Aurania, has no first class berths – just second and third class. At the outbreak of war she will be requisitioned as a troopship, and her fate is to be sunk by a mine off the English south coast (near Hastings) in September 1916, where she still lies to this day.

The dismal science: John Maynard Keynes publishes “Indian Currency and Finance”.

Labour relations: Striking female fishing net workers at Kilbirnie in Scotland hold a picnic.