A person who held a job or office before the current holder; or the thing that came before something else.
Predecessor
Fact of the Day
It is reckoned that 5,000 Britons died each year in shipwrecks between 1793 and 1815.
Quote of the Day
"The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
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~ Edward VIII/Duke of Windsor
On This Day
1184 BCE The traditional date for the fall of Troy, when the besieged city was eventually broken by the Greeks.
1558 Sixteen-year-old Mary Queen of Scots married the fourteen-year-ols Dauphin of France, Francis. The marriage didn't last long: Francis died just two years later from an ear condition, although the cause of it has never been confirmed.
1731 Daniel Defoe, writer, spy and merchant died, probably while in hiding from his creditors (it is said he owed £17,000 after a souring of business relationships with France).
1915 The Armenian Genocide started, when the Ottoman government arrested and deported around 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. By its cessation in 1923, about 1.5 million Armenians are thought to have died.
1916 At midday, the Easter Rising started. It was the attempt by a group of Irish republicans to establish a free Irish state.