18th July 1915 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY: to Robert Francis Le Bailly and Ida Gaskell Le Bailly (née Holland) – Vice Admiral Sir Louis Edward Stewart Holland Le Bailly, KBE, CB.  “In retirement he was appointed Director-General of Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence… Later he became vice chairman of the Institute for Study of Conflict, and chairman of the Civil Service Selection Board”. [Wikipedia]

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

World Affairs: US President Woodrow Wilson sends US forces to Haiti in an attempt to prevent Germany or France from taking it over. Haiti controls the Windward Passage to the Panama Canal and is seen as strategically critical. The Haitian government is near insolvency at this time and is significantly in debt to foreign corporations. German companies control almost 80 percent of Haitian trade. US forces will occupy the country until 1934.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=haiti_538

War!

War at Sea: the Austrian submarine U4 torpedoes  the Italian armoured cruiser “Guiseppe Garibalidi”. which sinks in 3 minutes.

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

 

5th May 1914 (Tuesday)

BORN TODAY: In Harbin, China – to Russian parents, Eugenia Fomenko. Daughter of a suspected (Russian) US agent; architect in Harbin; dancer in Shanghai (with new name of  Jeanne LeGon); emigrant to the US; successful department store worker in Brooklyn; sportswear executive in Dallas, and briefly in California; suspected communist spy; divorcee; spouse of a Russian nobleman emigre with dubious connections (now Mrs Jeanne de Mohrenschildt); adventurer in Mexico and Central America; supporter of Russian emigres and refugees in Dallas; expatriate with interesting connections in Haiti; witness at the Warren Commission into the assassination of John Kennedy; widow of a man whose exact role (if any)  in the assassination remains unclear to this day. [Spartacus Educational]

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmohrenschiltJ.htm

20th May 1913 (Tuesday)

BORN TODAY: Five not at all of a kind:

In Ann Arbor, Michigan – William Redington Hewlett – co-founder of Hewlett Packard;

In Port de Paix, Haiti – Emile Jonassaint – Supreme Court Justice and temporary Head of State after the expulsion of the elected president in 1991;

In London, England – Jasmine Lydia Bligh – one of the BBC’s original three (female) TV presenters;

In Konigsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, an exclave of Russia inside Lithuania)  – Hans-Gunther Bethke –  Wehrmacht soldier and Iron Cross holder who was killed near Leningrad in 1942; and

In Lowell, Massachusetts – Vito Paulekas – son of Lithuanian immigrants, artist, “bohemian” and prime mover of the South California ‘freak scene” in the 1960s;

Arms Race: In Bath, Maine, USA, the US Navy launches the destroyer USS Cassin.

Women’s Suffrage – In Hastings, England, an angry mob of about 300 men attacks a meeting of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).  Later the NUWSS sues the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of Hastings under the Riot Damage Act to recover money they have been forced to pay to an hotelier for damage by the mob.

Society and Culture: London holds its first “Chelsea Flower Show”.