Tsar

Or Tzar/Czar: the title of monarchs or supreme rulers in certain eastern European countries.

Fact of the Day

Isaac Newton may - or may not - have invented the cat flap.

Quote of the Day

"A French bastard arriving with armed banditti and establishing himself the King of England against the consent of the natives is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original and certainly has no divinity in it. "

~ Thomas Paine, 1776

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.