An introduction.
Preamble
Fact of the Day
Robert Plot, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, devised a cunning plan to enable James II to permanently rid the country of parliaments: he advised James to found a hermetic college for the alchemical creation of gold, thus making the need for parliamentary subsidies redundant.
Quote of the Day
"Revolution is not an apple that falls when it's ripe. You have to make it fall.
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~ Che Guevara
On This Day
65 A plot to assassinate Nero was revealed by the freedman Milichus, leading to the suicides of its architect Piso and others including the philosopher Seneca and the poet Lucan.
1770 14 year-old Marie Antoinette married the 15 year-old Dauphin of France, the future Louis XVI, in a proxy wedding.
1770 Captain James Cook aboard the Endeavour 'discovered' New South Wales, Australia.
1824 The 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' Lord Byron died of malaria whilst helping Greece fight for its independence from Turkey. It is possible he would have survived if not for excessive bloodletting by unsterilised instruments.
1881 Benjamin Disraeli, who served as prime minister twice, died. He was the only British prime minister of Jewish birth (although he was Christian when he was prime minister).
1882 Charles Darwin, one of the developers of the theory of evolution, died of heart disease. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
1943 The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising started in an attempt to stop the liquidation of the ghetto and the transportation of the remaining Jewish population to Treblinka extermination camp. It lasted less than a month.
1971 The Soviet Union launched Salyut 1, the first ever space station of any kind.