BORN TODAY: in Beckenham, Kent – Betty Box, prolific English film producer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Box
Western Front: the British launch what will prove to be the largest British battle of 1915 on the Western Front: The Battle of Loos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Loos
BORN TODAY:
~ on the River Mersey – HMS Constance, a “C” class light cruiser for the (British) Royal Navy’s 4th light cruiser squadron of the Grand Fleet. She will take part in the Battle of Jutland (1916), and visit China in the late 1920s before being sold for scrap in 1936, aged 21.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Constance_(1915)
~ at Whitmore Park on the outskirts of Coventry in the English Midlands – National (artillery shell) Filling Factory number 10.
http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/National_Filling_Factories
~ In Lannelly, in South Wales – the idea of converting an existing factory for the production of six inch shells. The plan is approved by the Ministry in two days, and the first shell is produced in just 5 weeks.
http://www.llanellich.org.uk/files/297-shell-and-rectification-factories
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:
http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/_events/1915-this-week.php
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.
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 from the Air: A German Zeppelin bombs the City of London, killing 22 and injuring another 87.
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 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
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
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)
BORN TODAY: in Colombo in British Ceylon – Arthur Terence Sahanandan Paul, pioneering Sri Lankan cardiothoracic surgeon.
http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E002039b.htm
Protest: In Zimmerwald, Switzerland, delegates from international socialist parties in 11 countries hold a conference to advocate anti-militarist and pacifist policies and (for some) international socialist revolution, later making this small Swiss town a part of the foundation myth of the Soviet Union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmerwald_Conference#Signatories_of_the_Zimmerwald_Manifesto
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
BORN TODAY: In Swansea, Wales – Lillian May Davies, fashion model, and later Princess Lilian, Duchess of Halland, after her marriage into the Swedish Royal Family in 1976.
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Princess_Lilian,_Duchess_of_Halland
DIED TODAY:
~ On the Thames Estuary in Purfleet, Essex – 16 cadets and their training officer on His Majesty’s Training Ship “Cornwall” when it is struck by a government tug.
https://www.thurrock.gov.uk/news/museum-and-heritage/marking-great-war-disaster-at-purfleet
~ in Mardin, near (what is now) the Turkish/ Syrian border, Ignatius Abded Mshiho II, the 61 year old Patriarch of Antioch, Head of the Syriac Orthodox Church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Abded_Mshiho_II
~ At Gallipoli – Brigadier General P.A.Kenna VC DSO, 21st Lancers, 3rd Mounted Brigade and Lewis Leonard Grant, a labourer from Allansford, Victoria, Australia… and many others.
BORN TODAY: in Boston, Massachusetts – Starling Burgess, better known as Tasha Tudor, illustrator and writer of children’s books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasha_Tudor
On the (Turkish) home front: In the town of Cizre, near the Syrian border, the authorities execute Philippe-Jacques Abraham, an ethnic Assyrian Bishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church, and Flavianus Michael Malke, the Syrian Catholic eparch, before having their bodies dragged through the streets of Cizre.
onehundredyearsagotoday 