On this day in history...

[Arneb]

10 Jan 49BC: Alea iacta est

[Мастер]

10 Jan 49BC: Alea iacta est

Wow, and it only took five years for justice to be served.

On this day in 630, Muhammad and his followers took Mecca.

[Heid the Ba]

There's always trouble at the bingo.

[Arneb]

15 Jan, 1919, murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two prominent German communists, after the unsuccessful Spartacus uprising - at the hand of nationalist former Wehrmacht soldiers. The young Weimar Republic did what it could to suppress prosecution, with remarkable success. The two became icons of the German Communist movement. Even today, East German cities are littered with Rosa-Luxemburg- and Karl-Liebknecht-Streets. Not surviving into the Stalinist, let alone the GDR, era in which God knows what could have become of them, the two were never associated with communism's crimes and remained shining figures in communism's pantheon - So there has been no or little effort to have streets named after them renamed in post-communist East Germany. Our local SV Babelsberg 03 still plays at Karl-Liebknecht-Stadion, or "Karli", on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße, which today, ironically, is Babelsberg's main shopping street, littered with small private enterprises and hosting the building of a Protestant primary school. History can be brutal, but it can also be ironic.

[Heid the Ba]

History can indeed.

[Heid the Ba]

16th January 27BC: Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus is granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire.

[Lianachan]

17th January 1811: The Battle of Calderón Bridge, where a Spanish force of 6,000 troops defeats nearly 100,000 Mexican revolutionaries.

[Richard A]

Who could know it wouldn't last?

[Heid the Ba]

22nd January was a busy day for the boys:
1824 – The Ashantis defeat British forces in the Gold Coast.
1849 – Second Anglo-Sikh War: The Siege of Multan ends after nine months when the last Sikh defenders of Multan, Punjab, surrender.
1879 – The Battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu War results in a British defeat.
1879 – The Battle of Rorke's Drift, also during the Anglo-Zulu War and just some 15 km (9.3 mi) away from Isandlwana, results in a British victory.

Two wins and two losses.

[Heid the Ba]

23rd January 1968: Remember the Pueblo!

[Arneb]

24 January, 1600, on this beautiful summer day, Sebald de Weert discovered what he imaginatively called the Sebald islands. If only we had all stuck with that, and we wouldn't have this Falkland/Malvinas thing going on. These islands are Dutch, deal with it, ruffins. Dutch are better at football, too.

[Heid the Ba]

Malvinas Penguinas!

[Arneb]

This day in 1077, Kaiser Heinrich IV arrived at Canossa to repent his sins in the Controversy of Investiture and to gain repeal of the Chruch ban against him. That was one heck of a smart move.

[Мастер]

If I may go back in time . . .

January 21, Gregorian, 100 years ago, is the day Comrade Ulyanov passed from this world.

Not quite 54 years old, he had been in bad shape for about three years, due to the after effects of an assassination attempt six years before. He had frequently been in a wheelchair and sometimes lost basic abilities of speech and motion.

Although he did not speak publicly about such things, his private communications frequently advocated extra-judicial executions and other such crimes. It was his good fortune to have a successor (although not his chosen one!) who made his crimes seem, well, not bad at all by comparison.

Unto this day, he remains a somewhat macabre exhibit in Red Square, up against the Kremlin wall. If you want to see him, you need to figure out how to pay for things (many foreign bank/credit cards don’t work due to sanctions), and also possibly endure a lengthy interrogation from immigration officials if you are from an “unfriendly” country.

Or you can just read about him here.

[Arneb]

Not a bad career, having impunity from your crimes AND having one of the most splendid towns im the world named after you for 67 years,

[Arneb]

Speaking of Lenin - 80 years ago today, and exactly a year before the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the German siege of Leningrad was broken.

Beginning in September of 1941, this was no ordinary siege - Leningrad was not supposed to be taken as soon as possible, neither was it the plan to wipe it off the map with indiscriminate bombing. Its population was supposed to be hungered to death, and it damn nearly worked. Food infrastructure (bakeries, meat plants, cattle, storage) was a primary target. The Soviet authorities estimated a death toll of 630,000 after the war, but it was probably closer to a million - only about 17,000 of those deaths were due to direct military action. No city ever has experienced so many victims during a siege. The siege of Leningrad was a genocidal crime of the first order, second only to the attempted extarmination of Jewry.

As we all know (it's one small step for a man...") something that is devised merely as a propaganda coup can bring up the most beautiful result. One such coup during the siege of Leningrad is a leading example: The Soviet leadership prohibited musicians to leave the city on the rare successful flights out, and they were given some extra ration of calories. The score of the 7th symphony by Dmitry Shostakovich was flown in, and the third director of the Leningrad Radio Orchester, Karl Eliasberg, performed it in August, 1942, during the siege before a packed audience, as an in-your-face demonstration of the unyielding will of Leningraders to not bow to the terror. It is said that even a lot of German front soldiers, listened to the broadcast.

The score was dedicated "to our fight against fascism, our ineluctable victory above the enemy, and to Leningrad, my home city". In the first movement, you can viscerally feel the approaching terror in a small, simple, almost simplistic melody over a snare drum ostinato growing into a raging monster. If you have an hour or so to spare on one of the great works of this torn 20th century, by all means do. The video shows a performance from the same hall as the performance in 1942.

[Richard A]

A quick look on Wikipedia tells me that Eliasberg survived the siege, and indeed Stalin. I remember when Arneb's godfather was still alive, he had an old record of one of the Leningrad orchestras, but I can't remember whether a) it was the Radio Orchestra or the Philharmonic (the latter was evacuated before the siege) or b) whether it was of the Leningrad Symphony. But yes, it is special in every sense.

Of course there have been various things over the years that were originally intended as propaganda coups but which went on to be something more. Not always quite as great as Shostakovich 7, but still a lot more than simply the propaganda coups they were intended to be.

[Heid the Ba]

2020 – The World Health Organization declares the COVID-19 pandemic to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

[Richard A]

And it only took Boris 3 months to agree with them.

[Lianachan]

On this day 236 years ago, Charles Edward Stuart died in Rome of a stroke. His brother, Cardinal Henry Benedict, recorded Charles' death as being January 31st, as it was deemed unlucky for him to have the same date of death as their great-grandfather, King Charles I, executed 30th January 1649.

[Мастер]

King Charles I, executed 30th January 1649.

Also died of a stroke.

[Arneb]

31 January is actually quite a significant date, because 4 years ago today, the UK left the European Union. Great idea - hundreds of millions a week for the NHS, a Global Britain, great trade relations with just about everyone, cheap produce from all over the world filling supermarket shelves to the brim, only the best of the best foreigners (if there is such a thing) getting into the country - this has turned out just marvellous, right? Right?

[Heid the Ba]

King Charles I, executed 30th January 1649.

Also died of a stroke.

Wayhey!

[Richard A]

31 January is actually quite a significant date, because 4 years ago today, the UK left the European Union. Great idea - hundreds of millions a week for the NHS, a Global Britain, great trade relations with just about everyone, cheap produce from all over the world filling supermarket shelves to the brim, only the best of the best foreigners (if there is such a thing) getting into the country - this has turned out just marvellous, right? Right?

And the Government is celebrating it. By imposing similar checks on foodstuffs, etc. coming in from the EU that the EU has done on ours for the last 4 years. Sounds logical, right? Except that Vote Leave, which pretty much the entire current British Cabinet supported (with, ironically, the exception of our current Foreign Secretary), assured us that Brexit would not push up food prices because the UK, although it would be entitled to impose customs checks, etc. on them, could choose not to. And we did choose not to, for 4 years, with the result that trucks coming in were not subject to the same delays that they were going out. And that enabled us to continue to enjoy Spanish strawberries and peaches, Polish blueberries, French and Dutch cheese, etc., etc. in broadly similar quantities and at broadly similar prices to what we did before. Now we're screwing that as well.

And will Starmer commit to even attempting to do anything about that if he becomes PM. No, because don't you see, don't you see, if he does that, the Tories will keep the Red Wall and he won't be PM. So the best we can hope for is a hung Parliament with the Lib Dems calling the shots.

Oh and wouldn't it be amusing if, just as it seems a deal has been done to get the DUP to go back to work, these new checks on EU goods mean that trucks coming off the ferry at Cairnryan have to show whether or not they originated in the Republic?

[Arneb]

It just gets better every day!