BORN TODAY: in Anama, New Zealand – Judith Eleanor Jane Peter, better known as Juliet, artist, potter and printmaker.
Category Archives: New Zealand
15th August 1915 (Sunday)
BORN TODAY: in Stockholm – Signe Eleonora Cecilia Larsson (later, Signe Hasso) Swedish born American actress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signe_Hasso
Society and Culture: at St Mary Magdalene Parish church in Old Milton, Hampshire, in southern England, Ethel Henrietta Florence Burton (25) marries Frank Rex (“Jimmy”) Fletcher (25).
Leisure: New Zealand farmer and diarist George Adkin enjoys a Sunday afternoon outing in the country (after church) with friends in their “lovely Humber car… Maud [his fiance]wore a bewitching black veil tied over a soft hat + her black furs + when she nestled down into the billowy soft cushions + was tucked in with a nice fur rug, she looked like a sweetest little adorable duchess one could imagine.”
http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Topic/5093
War!
Gallipoli: In response to the continuing failures of allied attacks on the Turkish at Suvla Bay, the British Secretary of War (Kitchener) dismisses the General in charge. Several more senior military men are either dismissed or voluntarily resign, an option sadly not available to the long suffering and frequently dying troops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_at_Suvla_Bay
On the (British) Home Front: Under the recent National Registration Act, all UK citizens between the ages of 15 and 65 are required today to register as at the their current residential address.
https://derbyscheme.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/national-registration-act-1915/
8th August 1915 (Sunday)
War!
At Gallipoli, the slaughter continues. RIP William George Malone; Harry William Hooper; McKenzie Maxwell; Cecil Anthony McAnulty; John Henry Adams; Albert Louis Albin; Bertrand Auchterlonie; Harold McClean Avery; Herbert Stanley Back; Thomas Vincent Baker; Andrew Barr; John Robert Baxter; and so many, many others, including many young Turkish men hidden from google view by my lack of Turkish language skills…
The Battle of Chunuk Bair lasted from August 7th to 19th and claimed 16,000 casualties from the Ottoman and British Empires. [Wikipedia].
2nd August 1915 (Monday)
(RE)-BORN TODAY: The 2nd (Royal Naval) Brigade of the British Royal Navy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_(Royal_Naval)_Brigade
Society and Culture:
~ for the British Summer Bank holiday, not yet moved from the beginning of August to the end, trippers from the industrial west Midlands are enduring a dismal day in Worcestershire:
“But Monday, surely it was about the dreariest day that holiday makers had ever known! Perhaps it was the beautiful weather of Sunday after the early morning rain) which prompted so many thousands of visitors to come to Worcester, ( between 20,000 and 30,000 people were despatched from the Black Country districts during the last few days.) Kidderminster, Stourport, and the Severn Valley from Birmingham and the Black Country. They must have belonged to the Blue Sky School, hoping that despite the torrential downpour of the early morning the weather would clear as it cleared on Sunday. Unhappily they were disappointed, and their condition as they walked through the Worcester streets or motored through the Worcester charabancs was pitiable. Such was the exodus from the Black Country that the platforms at Old Hill, Rowley, Cradley Heath, Langley, etc., were crowded with passengers from an early hour, but train after train ran into the stations filled from end to end, and hundreds of the excursionists remained on the platforms for a period of four and five hours before special relief trains were put on. Many became tired of waiting, and the railway officials refunded the money to them”. [www.ww1worcestershire.co.uk]
http://www.ww1worcestershire.co.uk/key-dates/1915/08/worst-bank-holiday-weather/
~ In Auckland, New Zealand, the Opera Hinemoa opens, with Merekotia Amohau from Rotorua playing Tupa in the Maori opera production.
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4a11/amohau-merekotia
By the wonder of the internet, you can still hear her at:
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/speech/111/mere-amohau-singing-aroha-pumai
31st July 1915 (Saturday)
BORN TODAY: in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand – RNZAF pilot Tame Hawaikirangi Thomas Waerea, who died in Europe in 1943, aged 28, and was buried in the Hanover War Cemetery, Niedersachsen, Germany, a long way from home, but is remembered at the Auckland Museum online cenotaph.
http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/record/C23803
War!
War at Sea: the British steamer “Iberian” is shelled, torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Ireland by the German submarine U28. The U-boat’s skipper, Georg-Günther Freiherr (Baron) von Forstner, and five of his crewmen see a sea-monster, “a gigantic sea-animal, writhing and struggling wildly… [which shoots] out of the water to a height of 60 to 100 feet.”
All six of the sub-mariners then forget to report this strange incident until 18 years have elapsed, in 1933.
30th July, 1915 (Friday)
BORN TODAY: in Brighton, England – Rachel Amos (later Bromwich), “Celtic scholar celebrated for her masterly dictionary of Welsh and British legend” [The Independent].
War!
Western Front: At one of the narrowest sections of no-man’s land, at Hooge in Belgium, German soldiers surprise British defenders with six of their new Flammenwerfer (flamethrowers) to capture the Hooge crater. [Burg & Purcell: Almanac of World War 1].
http://www.ramsdale.org/hooge.htm
Australia: WIth a growing sense of unity among the Australian states, the nation holds its first “National Day”.
https://www.awm.gov.au/blog/2013/01/22/the-other-australia-day-30-july-1915/
In Gosford, New South Wales, Miss McCabe appears as “Britannia”, holding a trident. transported in a Chrome Yellow Renault garlanded with flowers. [Flickr].
While in New Zealand, farmer and diarist George Adkin “levelled heaps in [his] Cow p[addock] all day”.
12th July 1915 (Monday)
BORN TODAY: in the Pavlovsk Palace, the 18th-century Russian Imperial residence built by Paul I in Saint Petersburg – Princess Catherine Ivanovna of Russia, great-great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicolas I and niece of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia: the last member of the Russian Imperial Family to be born before the fall of the dynasty, and ultimately the last surviving uncontested dynast of the Imperial House of Russia. She died in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2007, aged 92.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Catherine_Ivanovna_of_Russia
War!
Gallipoli: Allied forces make a final attempt to take the hill of Achi Baba which overlooks the places where many allied soldiers have been pinned for weeks.
“As was the norm with operations from Helles casualties were inordinately high. The Allies incurred 4,000 casualties and the Turkish force rather more, 10,000. For all that the Turkish force suffered twice as heavily the encounter nevertheless ended with possession of Achi Baba remaining in Turkish hands.”
http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/achibaba_jul.htm
War at Sea: Off England’s east coast, the German submarine SM-UB6 has a productive day destroying four English fishing boats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_July_1915
History, not fresh, but preserved and recycled: On the Western Front, Ulstermen from Northerl Ireland and the Orangemen diaspora celebrate the Battle of the Boyne (1690)…
“We (the Canadians) all gathered together with a good many Ulstermen to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne. The procession started from “Shrapnel Square” and was headed by an old scout mounted on a white horse with its mane and tail plaited with Orange and Purple ribbon. Next came the fife and drums well decorated with Orange Lilies and “No Surrender” was painted on the flag we carried“.
http://www.grandorangelodge.co.uk/history.aspx?id=99487#.VZQZzBOqqko
10th July 1915 (Saturday)
BORN TODAY: in Windsor, England and educated at Sherborne school – “the Great Omani”, escapalogist. Before he died in 2007, aged 92, he wrote a short poem for his funeral:
They lay the Great Omani in his box
They have done it up with nails not locks
But at his funeral do not despair
Chances are he won’t be there.
[Wikipedia]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Omani
War!
Armenia: Turkish troops massacre Armenians in villages near Mush [Burg & Purcell].
New Zealand: The hospital ship Maheno leaves Wellington, bound for the Dardanelles.
www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/maheno-leaves-wellington-1915
19th May 1915 (Wednesday)
BORN TODAY: in London – Renee Asherson, English actress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9e_Asherson
Volcano! – At Lassen Peak in California the first of two huge eruptions is observed from a safe distance after dark, including “incandescent boulders rolling down its west side around sunset”.
http://www.msss.com/earth/lassen/lassen2.html
War!
Gallipoli: At the “Third Attack on ANZAC cove” the Turkish Army suffers 3000 dead and another 7000 injured in a vain attempt to drive Australian and New Zealand invaders back into the sea.
25th April 1915 (Sunday)
Gallipoli
At dawn, the Allied landings begin. “Air Commander C.R.Samson, flying reconaissance overhead, reports the sea ‘absolutely red with blood’ “. [Burg & Purcell].
“The Helles landings were a massacre… rifle and machine gun fire killed most of those who made the attempt.” [ Peter Chasseaud: Mapping the First World War]. (Later) “the losses were compounded by dysentery caused by heat, flies and lack of sanitation. Landing sufficient supplies and drinking water was a perennial problem”.
“So bewildered was General von Saunders [the German commander of the Turkish troops] by his enemy’s idiocy that for the next day he remained convinced the southern landing was a mere feint and that the main invasion force was still coming elsewhere.” [ Scott Anderson: Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East].
“The first day objective of those landing on Cape Helles had been to secure a small village some four miles inland…over the next seven months the British would never reach that village, but would suffer nearly a quarter of a million casualites trying” [Anderson].
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