Of, or relating to the Jacobin Club: a political group during the French Revolution, which became identified with extreme egalitarianism and violence and which led the Revolutionary government from mid-1793 until mid-1794.
Jacobin
Fact of the Day
In 1875 the king of Fiji brought back measles from a state visit to Australia and wiped out 25% of his own people.
Quote of the Day
"Blessed are the peacemakers
"
~ James I & VI's personal motto
On This Day
1687 Isaac Newton published his laws on motion and gravity in his landmark book Principia.
1811 Venezuela became the first South American country to declare its independence from Spain.
1841 The first ever Thomas Cook tour took 500 teetotallers 12 miles by train to a temperance meeting.
1946 The bikini, named after the Bikini Atoll where atomic tests had been carried out just four days earlier, was first introduced to the press. Prototypes had been round since the reign of Diocletian (244-311), but the bikini didn't catch on until the 1960s.
1948 Britain's National Health Service came into operation.
1954 The BBC aired its first daily television news broadcast, despite the fact that the Director General thought that 'News is not at all an easy thing to do on television.'
