A poet appointed for life as an officer of the royal household who is expected to write poems in celebration of the court and national events.
Poet laureate
Fact of the Day
Living in the Dakota building, John Lennon and Yoko Ono apparently employed a man 'whose sole job was to polish the apartment's brass doorknobs' .
Quote of the Day
"The rights of man are made, not for counter-revolutionaries, but only for sans-culottes.
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~ Collot d'Herbois, French revolutionary
On This Day
1830 The Manchester to Liverpool train line opened, and caused the first train death (of MP William Huskisson).
1859 The great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel died.
1916 Tanks were first used on the Somme. They weren't ready for use in combat and many broke down.
1935 The Nuremberg race laws were introduced, stripping German Jews of their citizenship and forbidding them to marry Aryans.
1940 Hitler indefinitely postponed his invasion of Britain following a massive defeat of the Luftwaffe.
2008 The financial services firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the biggest such filing in US history, causing the Dow Jones to drop more than 500 points in a day.