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

22nd August 1915 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY: in Brantford, Ontario – James Hiller, co-developer of the electron microscope.

http://www.nndb.com/people/125/000206504/

War!

The (Russian) Home Front: The Tsar takes over supreme command of the army, and leaves St Petersburg in the dangerous hands of the Tsarina and her trusted advisor, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, a peasant and mystical faith healer.

http://www.johndclare.net/Russ_Rasputin_Figes.htm

The (French) Home Front: in the streets of Paris, young boys and girls play at being soldiers and nurses.

http://www.vintag.es/2015/04/kids-at-war-paris-1915-rare-photographs.html

The (Scottish) Home Front: in Aberdeen, 26,000 pay sixpence each to attend the “Gala and Heather day” in Duthie Park, in support of the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

http://www.friendsofduthiepark.co.uk/heather-day-at-duthie-park-a-century-on/

The (Irish) Home Front: In Dublin, at a “Celebration of gaelic and athletic events”, Patrick Pearse addresses the crowd of several thousand on his subject: “The Resurrection of Erin”.

http://www.millstreet.ie/blog/2015/08/19/patrick-pearse-and-his-visit-to-millstreet-on-22nd-aug-1915

4th August 1915 (Wednesday)

BORN TODAY: in Berlin – Eleonore “Loni” Nest, German child star actress who ended her career after more than 40 movies at the age of 13, before retiring to the south of France [Wikipedia]

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

War!

Adriatic skullduggery: The Triple Alliance  (Britain, France and Russia) reneges on its secret commitment to Italy (that control of parts of the Adriatic coast should only be decided after the war) by sending an official note to Serbia confirming the post-war territorial claims of Serbia and Montenegro. [Wikipedia].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_London_(1915)

3rd August 1915 (Tuesday)

BORN TODAY: Roman Fischer, an Austrian fencer, and  Arthur Birch, an Australian chemist.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Birch_(organic_chemist)

War!

On the Italian Front: After 91,000 casualties the Second Battle of Isonzo on the Italian/ Austrian border (now the Soca valley in north west Slovenia) draws to a close because both sides have run out of ammunition, both for small arms and for artillery. [Wikipedia].

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

On the (Belgian) Home Front: British nurse Edith Cavell, who has been based in Brussels for many years, is arrested by the German authorities on suspicion of helping British, French and Belgian soldiers and citizens to escape from German occupied Belgium.

http://primaryfacts.com/2780/edith-cavell-facts-and-information/

26th July 1915 (Monday)

BORN TODAY: in Nidubrolu in Andhra Pradesh, British India – Pragada Kotaiah, freedom fighter and parliamentarian.

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

War!

Socialism in Italy: a “rising star” of the Italian socialist party, one Benito Mussolini, expresses the view that “Italian workers should give ‘not a penny’ to the cause of war, nor spill ‘one drop of blood’ for a cause that had ‘nothing to do with it’. If the government failed to declare neutrality, the proletatriat would force it to do so”. [Mark Thompson: “The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919”].

Fire in Constantinople:  A great fire in Istanbul, later attributed to Russian areoplane bombing, destroys over 3000 buildings.

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=WC19150825.2.49.3

Submarines in the Dardanelles: the French submarine “Mariotte” is sunk by the Ottoman Navy, and its crew taken as prisoners of war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_July_1915

Discipline on the Western Front: in the largest single judicial execution by the British during the war, 5 members of the 3rd Battalion Worcestershire Regiment are executed on the ramparts of Ypres.

http://www.worcestershireregiment.com/wr.php?main=inc/shot_at_dawn

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

 

21st June 1915 (Monday)

Midsummer on the home front…

On the English home front: at Maidstone barracks, in Kent, a concert raises funds for wounded servicemen.

http://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council/campaigns-and-events/kent-and-medway-in-the-first-world-war

On the Scottish home front: the SS Carisbrook, a British merchant steamer carrying wheat from Montreal, Canada, to Leith in Scotland, is captured and sunk by German submarine U-38 off the north east coast of Scotland.

http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?13412

On the Alsatian home front: the town of Metzeral in Alsace (formerly and more recently in France) is destroyed at the end of six days of intense fighting.

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=228886

20th June 1915 (Sunday)

BORN TODAY: in Hamburg – SM UC-6, a German  minelayer submarine.  In just over two years she will sink over 50 ships before herself being destroyed in September 1917.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM_UC-6

War!

Eastern Front: At the Battle of Lemberg, German & Austro-Hungarian forces lauch an attack to re-take the city and the Austrian fortress lost to the Russians in 1914 (later Lwów in Poland, now Lviv in Ukraine).

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_lemberg1915.html

Across Empires: in St John’s on the Island of St. Pierre et Miquelon ( a vestige of the colony of New France off the Atlantic coast of Canada) 242 Canadian recruits of “F” company embark on HM Troopship Calgarian, bound for Liverpool and the war in Europe, including Inuit and Métis volunteers from Labrador.

http://www.heritage.nf.ca/first-world-war/articles/aboriginals-first-world-war.php

18th June, 1915 (Friday)

BORN TODAY:

~ in Houston, Texas  – Paul Neal “Red” Adair, arch-enemy of oil well fires.

http://www.nndb.com/people/731/000022665/

~ In Hervey Bay, across the water from Fraser Island, on the coast of Queensland in Australia – Isaac Garry “Ike” Owens, “one of the last full-blooded Butchulla” . In 1975 he made a statement for the Fraser Island Environmental Inquiry:

“I do not like to see the Island as it is now, being knocked about, the way they’re doing. All of my old friends have gone and the Island is not like it used to be. The beach is different — dirty, with bottles, cans of beer, and bottled beer and rubbish… It’s going to be like Queen Street in Brisbane, I think, before long. Even though there were two or three thousand aboriginal people before the white man came, they weren’t knocking it about like the people are now. They didn’t throw everything about like they do now on the beach. There are cars running up and down the beach. All we left was a few footprints.”

War!

Western Front: The second Battle of Artois is brought to an end when the French generals acknowledge that the German defences are too strong… after 40 days, 2 million shells, and 102,500 French casualties. The French have advanced approximately 3 kilometres.

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

13th June 1915 (Sunday)

The 19th century is slowly passing away

DIED TODAY

~ RIP Viscount Nabeshima Naoyoshi, 13th and final daimyo of the Kashima Domain, in Hizen Province in the north west corner of the island of Kyushu, in south west Japan.

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

~ RIP Danish explorer Anders Christian Barclay Raunkiær, traveller to Riyadh and through eastern Arabia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclay_Raunki%C3%A6r

~ RIP Amédée William Merlaud-Ponty, Governor General of French West Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Merlaud-Ponty