10th September, 1915 (Friday)

BORN TODAY: in New York City – Edmond O’Brien, actor.

http://www.nndb.com/people/620/000042494/

Local journalism, 100 years ago today:  in England, the Western Times provides its readers with an update:

“Cycle accident     – On enquiry at the Royal Devon and Hospital last evening we were informed that the youth, Albert Madge, who met with a  serious accident on Wednesday through colliding, while cycling, with a taxi-cab in Queen-street, Exeter, had passed  a comfortable day.”

http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/_events/1915-this-week.php

War!

Crime and punishment: At the Tower of London, at 6.00AM, Ernst Waldemar Melin, a Swedish national, is executed by firing squad for the crime of spying on behalf of the German government.

http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/ernst_melin.htm

8th September 1915 (Wednesday)

BORN TODAY: in London – Frank Pullen, entrepreneur, and Bryan Wynter, landscape painter.

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

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/bryan-wynter-2176

War!

War from the Air: A German Zeppelin bombs the City of London, killing 22 and injuring another 87.

http://www.da.mod.uk/WWI/Galleries/WWI-Artwork/Zeppelin-raid-over-London-8-September-1915-John-Fraser-1858-1927

7th September 1915 (Tuesday)

BORN TODAY: in Milan – Maria Corti, Italian philologist, literary critic and novelist, “considered one of the leading literary scholars of post-World War II Italy”, despite that her “early academic career coincided with Italian Fascism and was curtailed by laws which prohibited women from holding university or liceo teaching positions”. [Wikipedia]

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

War!

War from the Air: A German zeppelin air raid on east and south east London bombs residential areas, killing civilians, including women and children.

http://lewishamwarmemorials.wikidot.com/incident:7-september-1915

http://www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk/78-sept-1915-1/4587505645

6th September 1915 (Monday)

BORN TODAY: Little Willie – the world’s first tank.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-tank-produced

Society and culture: Scotland appoints Ms Emily Miller as its first ever policewoman.

http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/index.php/my-blog/35-first-policewoman-in-scotland-100-years-ago

War!

The Balkans: Bulgaria signs a military agreement with Germany agreeing to enter on the side of the Central Powers. In return for sending forces against Serbia and Montenegro (thereby re-opening the unresolved business of the recent Second Balkan War), Bulgaria is promised large parts of Macedonia, a sea port on the Adriatic and territorial concessions in European Turkey. [Burg & Purcell: “Almanac of World War 1”]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgaria%E2%80%93Germany_treaty_(1915)

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

19th August 1915 (Thursday)

BORN TODAY: in Chicago – Ringgold Wilmer Lardner Jr., journalist and screenwriter blacklisted in post-war Hollywood for his un-american activities, who later wrote the screenplay for M*A*S*H.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_Lardner,_Jr.

War!

War at Sea: The German submarine U-24 sinks the White Star Liner, “Arabic”, with the loss of 44 lives. In retaliation the British Royal Navy’s “HMS Baralong” tricks another U-boat, U-27 by flying a US  flag and feigning the rescue of passengers from another British steamer, and then shelling and destroying the submarine. The 12 surviving crew of U-27 take refuge on the steamer they were about to destroy, but are summarily executed by a boarding party from the Baralong. (“the Baralong incident”).

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

17th August 1915 (Tuesday)

DIED TODAY: Leo Frank, factory superintendant convicted in 1913 of the murder of an employee, Mary Phagan, aged 13. Sentenced to death by hanging in 1913, later commuted to life imprisonment. Abducted from prison on 16th August 1915, and lynched today, by the “Knights of Mary Phagan”, a vigilante group specifically formed for the abduction and lynching. A superior court judge is photographed among the spectators.

“Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1986 by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles , which said that it was done without attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence. The consensus of researchers on the subject is that Frank was wrongly convicted”. [Wikipedia].

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

Extreme Weather: Galveston, Texas is rocked by a category 4 hurricane, with winds of 135mph. Port Arthur is flooded.

http://antonk.com/august-in-history/august-17-on-this-day-in-history-2/

http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth221876/

War!

War at Sea: The German submarine U-38 sinks 10 vessels, 9 British and 1 Spanish, in a single day, on its voyage to become the third most successful U-boat of the first world war.

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=17th+august+1915&start=10

 

16th August 1915 (Monday)

War  from the sea!

~ On England’s north-west coast, near Whitehaven, a German submarine surfaces in the early morning hours and shells an explosives factory, followed by local villages.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-28668657

12th August 1915 (Thursday)

BORN TODAY: in South River, New Jersey – Alexander Francis Wojciechowicz, NFL Hall of Famer.

http://www.nndb.com/people/340/000166839/

Urban Life:  in Exeter, England, the Exeter and Plymough Gazette reports that wagonner Arthur Brealy has been fined 7 shillings and sixpence for dangerous driving of his horse and waggon laden with hay (not keeping in to the left side), resulting in a collision with the post-office mail motor van.

http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/_events/1915-this-week.php

War!

War from the air: Six civilians die and twenty three are injured in a Zeppelin raid on the town of Woodbridge, near England’s east coast.

http://www.ucs.ac.uk/About/Events/Event-details-page.aspx?id=23807

9th August 1915 (Monday)

BORN TODAY: in Manchester – Michael Young (Baron Young of Dartington), English socialist, Labour Party propagandist, East-End sociologist, “social visionary and innovator”, consumer champion and co-founder of the University of the Third Age, and of “Grandparents Plus”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Young,_Baron_Young_of_Dartington

War!

War from the air: Sixteen civilians die in a zeppelin raid on Goole in East Yorkshire when the vessel’s Kapitänleutnant mistakenly believes he is targetting the city of Kingston upon Hull.

http://www.iancastlezeppelin.co.uk/910-august-1915-1/4586640763