On This Day

[Raistlin]

Sorry for daring to venture my humble opinion, Your Mightiness

But , I have been under the impression that St Patrick was the Patron Saint of Ireland.

St Columba was an unfortunate Missionary who tried to bring the ignorant & pagan inhabitants of Scotland towards the light

Tweaked, I don't write this stuff you know..

Big Brother has his beady eye on you

I also know that I'm leaving myself wide open to retaliation if/when I make a slip

The "other" Island doesn't cut it, you know. It amounts to the same thing if read in the UK

Isle of Wight ....

[Bizarra]

Sorry for daring to venture my humble opinion, Your Mightiness

But , I have been under the impression that St Patrick was the Patron Saint of Ireland.

St Columba was an unfortunate Missionary who tried to bring the ignorant & pagan inhabitants of Scotland towards the light

Tweaked, I don't write this stuff you know..

Big Brother has his beady eye on you

I also know that I'm leaving myself wide open to retaliation if/when I make a slip

The "other" Island doesn't cut it, you know. It amounts to the same thing if read in the UK

Isle of Wight ....

:ffs:

[Raistlin]

Events

1829 The Oxford team won the first-ever Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.

1891 L Starr Jameson became administrator of the South Africa Company's territories.

1893 Alarmed at Belgian advances in the Congo, France sent an occupying force to forestall further annexations.

1899 US Congress appointed a canal commission to report on routes through Panama.

1942 The Czech village of Lidice was destroyed and every man in it killed in reprisal for the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich.

1943 The ball-point pen was patented in the USA.

1967 The Six-Day War ended. The USSR broke off diplomatic relations with Israel.

1997 The notorious Khmer Rouge leader Son Sen and his family were killed in Cambodia by a supporter of Sen's rival, Pol Pot.

1997 The former Black Panther Elmer 'Geronimo' Pratt, convicted for the killing of a white schoolmistress in 1972, was released from prison in the USA due to new evidence.

2003 Launch of NASA's Mars Exploration rover The Spirit Rover.

Births

1688 James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender to the British throne

1706 John Dollond, English optician

1819 Gustave Courbet, French painter

1840 Henry Morton Stanley, US journalist and explorer

1854 G E Buckle, English newspaper editor

1915 Saul Bellow, US novelist

1921 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

1922 Judy Garland, US film actress and singer

1928 Maurice Sendak, US illustrator

Deaths

323BC Alexander the Great

1580 Luis Vaz de Camoens, Portuguese poet

1654 Alessandro Algardi, Italian sculptor

1735 Thomas Hearne, English antiquary and keeper of the Bodleian Library

1836 André Ampère, French physicist

1923 'Pierre Loti' (Julien Viaud), French novelist

1934 Frederick Delius, English composer

1940 Marcus Garvey, American civil rights activist

1967 Spencer Tracey, US film actor

1993 Arleen Auger, US soprano

1993 Les Dawson, British Comedian

2004 Ray Charles, American singer and musician

[Raistlin]

Events

1509 English king Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, his first wife.

1580 Buenos Aires founded by Juan de Garay.

1727 George I became king of Great Britain.

1770 Captain James Cook ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef.

1891 At an Anglo-Portuguese convention on territories north and south of Zambesi, Portugal assigned Barotseland to Britain;

1895 Britain annexed Togoland in W Africa to block Transvaal's access to the sea.

1955 US president Eisenhower proposed financial and technical aid to all non-Communist countries to develop atomic energy.

1962 3 men escape in the only successful break from Alcatraz prison.

1963 Constantine Karamanlis, the Greek premier, resigned in protest against King Paul's state visit to Britain.

1964 Greece rejected direct talks with Turkey over Cyprus.

1996 Republican politician Bob Dole left the US Senate.

1997 French meteorologist Cyril Moulin showed that up to a billion tonnes of dust a year are blown off the arid drought-prone lands surrounding the Sahara Desert and carried as far as the UK and the Caribbean.

1997 The British House of Commons voted for a total ban on handguns in a free vote.

Births

1540 Barnabe Googe, English poet

1572 Ben Jonson, English playwright

1776 John Constable, English painter

1847 Millicent Garrett Fawcett, English suffragette

1851 Mrs Humphrey Ward (Mary Augusta Arnold), English novelist

1879 Max Schreck, German Dracula actor

1910 Jacques Cousteau, French oceanographer

1932 Athol Fugard, South African dramatist and director

Deaths

1665 Kenelm Digby, English writer and diplomat

1712 Louis, Duc de Vendôme, French soldier

1847 John Franklin, English Arctic explorer

1859 Clemens, Prince Metternich, Austrian politician

1956 Frank Brangwyn, British painter

1970 Alexander Kerensky, Russian politician

1979 John Wayne, US film actor

[Raistlin]

Events

1777 The Marquis de Lafayette arrives in the American colonies to help in their rebellion against Britain.

1863 Confederate forces on their way to Gettysburg clash with Union troops at the Second Battle of Winchester, Virginia.

1920 The U.S. Post Office Department rules that children may not be sent by parcel post.

1923 The French set a trade barrier between occupied Ruhr and the rest of Germany.

1927 Charles Lindbergh receives the Flying Cross and is treated to a ticker tape parade to celebrate his successful crossing of the Atlantic.

1940 Paris is evacuated as the Germans advance on the city.

1943 German spies land on Long Island, New York, and are soon captured.

1944 The first Germany V-1 buzz-bomb hits London.

1949 Installed by the French, Bao Dai enters Saigon to rule Vietnam.

1971 The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers.

1978 Israelis withdraw the last of their invading forces from Lebanon.

1979 Sioux Indians are awarded $105 million in compensation for the 1877 U.S. seizure of the Black Hills in South Dakota.

1983 Pioneer 10, already in space for 11 years, leaves the solar system.

Born

40 Gnaeus Julius Agricola, Roman general.

1752 Fanny Burney, English writer.

1786 Winfield Scott, U.S. Army general.

1831 James C. Maxwell, scientist.

1865 William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and dramatist.

1893 Dorothy Leigh Sayers, English detective writer, creator of Lord Peter Wimsey.

1894 Mark Van Doren, American poet, writer and educator.

1903 Harold "Red" Grange, American football player.

[Bizarra]

1920 The U.S. Post Office Department rules that children may not be sent by parcel post.

1752 Fanny Burney, English writer. :lol2:

[Raistlin]

Events

1381 The Peasant's Revolt, led by Wat Tyler, climaxes when rebels plunder and burn the Tower of London and kill the Archbishop of Canterbury.

1642 Massachusetts passes the first compulsory education law in the colonies.

1645 Oliver Cromwell's army routs the king's army at Naseby.

1775 The U.S. Army is founded when the Continental Congress authorizes the muster of troops.

1777 The Continental Congress authorizes the "stars and stripes" flag for the new United States.

1789 Captain William Bligh of the HMS Bounty arrives in Timor in a small boat. He had been forced to leave his ship when his crew mutinied.

1846 A group of settlers declare California to be a republic.

1864 At the Battle of Pine Mountain, Georgia, Confederate General Leonidas Polk is killed by a Union Shell.

1893 The city of Philadelphia observes the first Flag Day.

1907 Women in Norway win the right to vote.

1919 John William Alcot and Arthur Witten Brown take off from St. John's, Newfoundland, for Clifden, Ireland, on the first nonstop transatlantic flight.

1922 President Warren G. Harding becomes the first president to speak on the radio.

1927 Nicaraguan President Porfirio Diaz signs a treaty with the U.S. allowing American intervention in his country.

1932 Representative Edward Eslick dies on the floor of the House of Representatives while pleading for the passage of the bonus bill.

1940 German forces occupy Paris.

1942 The Supreme Court rules that requiring students to salute the American flag is unconstitutional.

1944 Boeing B-29 bombers conduct their first raid against mainland Japan.

1945 Burma is liberated by the British.

1949 The State of Vietnam is formed.

1951 UNIVAC, the first computer built for commercial purposes, is demonstrated in Philadelphia by Dr. John W. Mauchly and J. Prosper Eckert, Jr.

1954 Americans take part in the first nation-wide civil defense test against atomic attack.

1965 A military triumvirate takes control in Saigon, South Vietnam.

1982 Argentina surrenders to the United Kingdom ending the Falkland Islands War.

1985 Gunmen hijack a passenger jet over the Middle East.

1989 Congressman William Gray, an African American, is elected Democratic Whip of the House of Representatives.

1995 Chechen rebels take 2,000 people hostage in a hospital in Russia.

Born

1811 Harriet Beecher Stowe, American author (Uncle Tom's Cabin).

1820 John Bartlett, editor, compiler of Barlett's Familiar Quotations.

1855 Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette, reform movement leader, Governor of Wisconsin, U.S. Senator and Progressive Party presidential candidate.

1906 Margaret Bourke-White, American photojournalist.

1925 Pierre Salinger, press secretary for John F. Kennedy.

1933 Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-American novelist (The Painted Bird, Being There)

1946 Donald Trump, New York real estate mogul.

[Raistlin]

Births

1330 Edward, England's Black Prince

1416 St Francesco de Paolo

1416 Joannes Argyropoulos, Greek scholar

1605 Thomas Randolph, English poet and playwright

1843 Edvard Grieg, Norwegian composer

1925 Richard Baker, English broadcaster

Deaths

1381 Wat Tyler, English rebel leader

1467 Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy

1750 Marguerite De Launay, Baronne Staal, French writer

1849 James Knox Polk, 11th president of the USA

1941 Evelyn Underhill, English poet and mystic

1993 James Hunt, English motor-racing driver

1997 Kim Casali, English cartoonist.

Events

1520 Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther by the bull Exsurge.

1658 The Mogul emperor Aurangzeb imprisoned his father the Shah, after winning a battle at Samgarh.

1672 The Sluices were opened in Holland to save Amsterdam from the French.

1836 Arkansas became the 25th state of the USA.

1855 Stamp duty on British newspapers was abolished.

1869 Celluloid was patented in the USA.

1954 The Convention People's Party, led by Kwame Nkrumah, won the Gold Coast elections.

1977 Spain had its first general elections since 1936.

1994 Jimmy Carter, former president of the USA, visited North Korea and helped diffuse a crisis over nuclear inspections.

1996 An IRA bomb, the biggest ever to go off on the British mainland, devastated the centre of Manchester. 200 people were taken to hospital and £100 million worth of damage was done.

[cute black aygo]

On this day ford motor company produces its ten milloinith automoblie

[Raistlin]

On this day ford motor company produces its ten milloinith automoblie

That's easy for you to spell... :D

[Bizarra]

On this day ford motor company produces its ten milloinith automoblie

I didn't know that Scottish typewriters couldn't spell in English [ Sorry, no offence intended. I just couldn't resist it.I can resist anything except temptation ! Maybe Kynan is off the hook now]

[Raistlin]

On this day ford motor company produces its ten milloinith automoblie

I didn't know that Scottish typewriters couldn't spell in English [ Sorry, no offence intended. I just couldn't resist it.I can resist anything except temptation ! Maybe Kynan is off the hook now]

Unless she has been taking lessons from him, It's a play wot I rote :D

[Raistlin]

Births

1514 John Cheke, English classical scholar

1858 King Gustav V of Sweden

1890 Stan Laurel, English-born US film comedian

1912 Enoch Powell, British politician

1942 Giacomo Agostini, Italian motorcycle champion

Deaths

1464 Roger van der Weyden, Flemish painter

1722 John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, English general

1752 Guilio Alberoni, Italian-born Spanish politician and cardinal

1930 Elmer Ambrose Sperry, US inventor

1953 Margaret Bondfield, British politician and trade-unionist

Events

1586 Mary Queen of Scots recognized Philip II of Spain as her heir.

1745 British troops took Cape Breton Island and subsequently Louisburg, at the mouth of the St Lawrence river.

1779 Spain declared war on Britain (after France had undertaken to assist in the recovery of Gibraltar and Florida), and the siege of Gibraltar began.

1836 The formation of the London Working Men's Association began the Chartist Movement.

1871 The University Test Acts allowed students to enter Oxford and Cambridge without religious tests.

1972 Burglars were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Building, Washington DC, USA.

1977 Leonid Brezhnev became president of the USSR.

1996 The first round of voting for a new president took place in Russia. 107 million Russians were eligible to vote for the first time in the country's history.

[Raistlin]

Births

1239 Edward I of England

1600 Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Spanish playwright

1682 Charles XII of Sweden

1703 John Wesley, English evangelist

1818 Charles François Gounod, French composer

1832 William Crookes, English chemist

1882 Igor Stravinsky, Russian composer

Deaths

1696 John Sobieski, King of Poland

1719 Joseph Addison, English essayist and poet

1734 Claude, Duc de Villars, French soldier

1762 Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, French playwright

1898 Edward Burne-Jones, English painter

1943 Annie S Swan (Mrs Burnett Smith), Scottish novelist

1958 Imre Nagy, Hungarian prime minister, executed

Events

1128 Henry I's daughter, Matilda, widow of Henry V, married Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou; she was recognized in England as her father's heir.

1579 Francis Drake proclaimed England's sovereignty over New Albion (California).

1617 James I met his Scottish Parliament. His proposal that the Scottish lords should surrender to the Crown their hereditable jurisdictions met with vigorous opposition, but the five Articles of Religion, for introducing Anglican principles to Scottish worship were endorsed.

1775 In the War of American Independence, British troops won a victory at Bunker Hill.

1940 Russian troops occupied the Baltic states.

1940 In France, Pétain announced that France was negotiating an armistice with Germany; General Charles de Gaulle fled from Paris to Britain.

1958 Imre Nagy, former prime minister of Hungary, was executed after a secret trial.

1972 US police arrested five intruders planting electronic 'bugs' at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, DC.

1980 British Ministry of Defence announced plans to deploy US Cruise missiles at Greenham Common and Molesworth military bases.

1996 New Zealand's Mount Ruapehu volcano erupted in a series of explosions, spewing enormous rocks and sending a cloud of ash and steam seven miles into the sky.

1997 Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the white Afrikaaner Resistance Movement (AWB) in South Africa, was sentenced to six years in jail for the attempted murder of a black farm hand.

[Raistlin]

Births

1769 Robert Stewart, later Viscount Castlereagh, Irish politician

1868 Nikolaus Horthy de Nagybánya, Hungarian politician

1884 Edouard Daladier, French politician

1886 George Mallory, English mountaineer

1920 Ian Carmichael, English actor

1952 Isabella Rossellini, Italian film actress

Deaths

1643 John Hampden, English patriot and politician

1845 Andrew Jackson, 7th president of the USA

1871 George Grote, English historian and politician

1902 Samuel Butler, English novelist

1928 Roald Amundsen, Norwegian polar explorer, lost this day in the Arctic

1936 Maxim Gorky, Russian author

Events

860 Vikings from Russia were repulsed in an attack on Constantinople.

1429 The French, led by Joan of Arc, defeated the English at the Battle of Patay.

1633 Charles I was crowned king of Scotland at Edinburgh.

1815 The Duke of Wellington and Gebhard von Blücher defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

1928 US aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.

1953 A republic was proclaimed in Egypt, with General M Neguib as president.

1975 First North Sea Oil was pumped ashore in Britain.

1987 Unemployment in Britain fell below 3 million.

1995 The last 26 - of nearly 400 - UN hostages were released by their Bosnian Serb captors in exchange for the release of four Serb prisoners.

[Raistlin]

Births

1566 King James VI of Scotland and I of England

1608 Thomas Fuller, English antiquarian and clergyman

1623 Blaise Pascal, French mathematician

1783 Félicité Robert de Lamennais, French writer

1861 Douglas Haig, British field-marshal

1906 Ernst Chain, German-born British bacteriologist who developed penicillin

1947 Salman Rushdie, British novelist

Deaths

1608 Alberico Gentili, Italian political writer

1707 William Sherlock, English prelate

1749 Ambrose Philips, English poet

1820 Joseph Banks, English botanist

1902 John Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton, English historian

1937 J M Barrie, Scottish author of Peter Pan

1993 William Golding, English novelist

Events

1464 An ordinance of Louis XI in France created the poste, organizing relays of horses on the main roads for the king's business.

1754 The Anglo-French war broke out in North America when a force under George Washington skirmished with French troops near Fort Duquesne.

1769 Hyder Ali of Mysore compelled the British at Madras to sign a treaty of mutual assistance.

1809 Curwen's Act was passed in Britain, to prevent the sale of parliamentary seats, thus decreasing the number of seats which the British government can manipulate for its regular supporters.

1829 Robert Peel's Act was passed, to establish a new police force in London and its suburbs.

1867 Emperor Maximilian was executed in Mexico.

1917 The British royal family renounced German names and titles, having adopted the name of Windsor.

1963 US President Kennedy gave the address to Congress on civil rights.

1965 Ben Bella, president of Algeria, was deposed; Houari Boumédienne headed a revolutionary council.

1970 Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister.

1996 Britain offered to slaughter up to 67,000 more cattle in an effort to end the ban on British beef.

1996 A vast freshwater lake 4 km/2.5 mi under the ice of Antarctica was discovered. The lake covers 14,000 sq km/5,000 sq mi, and is kept from freezing by the friction of the ice and by heat radiating from the earth's core.

1997 The US fast-food chain McDonalds won a two-year libel case in Britain against two environmental campaigners who claimed that the company caused environmental damage and exploited workers in the Third World.

[Raistlin]

Births

1723 Adam Ferguson, Scottish philosopher and historian

1819 Jacques Offenbach, German-born French composer

1891 John Costello, Irish politician

1906 Catherine Cookson, English novelist

1909 Errol Flynn, Australian-born US film actor

1941 Stephen Frears, English film director

Deaths

1597 Willem Barents, Dutch explorer

1836 Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, French revolutionary leader

1837 William IV, King of Great Britain and Ireland

1908 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer

1923 Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary leader, assassinated

1965 Bernard Baruch, US financier

Events

840 Vikings sailed up the Seine in France as far as Rouen, for the first time.

1530 The Diet of Augsburg met in the presence of Charles V, who was determined to exterminate heresy; Philip Melanchthon stated the Lutheran case, since Martin Luther was under the ban of the Empire.

1756 In India, over 140 British subjects were imprisoned in a cell ('the Black Hole of Calcutta'); only 23 came out alive.

1789 In France, the third estate took the Tennis Court oath, undertaking not to depart until a constitution was drawn up.

1791 Louis XVI attempted to leave France, but was turned back at Varennes and taken to Paris.

1837 On the death of William IV, Queen Victoria succeeded to the British throne.

1837

Hanover was automatically separated from Britain, as Salic Law forbids female succession, and the throne was taken by Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the eldest surviving son of George III.

1837 Natal Republic was founded by Dutch settlers in S Africa and a Constitution was proclaimed.

1994 US football player OJ Simpson was accused of the murder of his wife and her friend.

1995 Shell abandoned at the eleventh-hour its plan to dump the Brent Spar rig in the Atlantic, provoking a furious reaction in the British government. Meanwhile, the environmental campaign group Greenpeace claimed victory in the high-profile battle.

1997 The tobacco industry and the attorneys general of 40 states in the USA settled for $360 billion over the next 25 years in exchange for the industry's immunity from future legal action.

[Raistlin]

Births

1639 Increase Mather, American clergyman and president of Harvard

1825 William Stubbs, English historian

1884 Claude Auchinleck, British field-marshal

1905 Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, novelist, and playwright

1920 Jane Russell, US film actress

1935 Françoise Sagan, French novelist

Deaths

1377 Edward III, King of England

1529 John Skelton, English poet

1547 Sebastiano del Piombo, Italian painter

1631 John Smith, Virginian colonist

1652 Inigo Jones, English architect and stage designer

1683 Lord William Russell, English politician

1718 Alexius Petrovich, son of Peter the Great, died in prison

1738 Charles, Viscount Townshend, English politician

1786 George Hepplewhite, English cabinet-maker

1852 Friedrich Froebel, German educationalist

1940 Jean-Edouard Vuillard, French painter

Events

1661 The Peace of Kardis was signed between Russia and Sweden, ending the northern war; Russia abandoned all claims to Livonia.

1788 The US constitution came into force, when ratified by the 9th state, New Hampshire.

1798 British General Gerard Lake defeated Irish rebels at Vinegar Hill and entered Wexford, ending the Irish Rebellion.

1813 The Duke of Wellington completely routed the French at Vittoria, forcing the Spanish king, Napoleon's brother Joseph, to return to France.

1827 Robert Peel reformed English criminal law, by reducing the number of capital offences, abolishing the immunity of the clergy from arrest in cases of felony, and by defining the law of offences against property in a simplified form.

1887 In Britain, Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee was celebrated.

1887 Britain annexed Zululand, blocking the attempt of Transvaal to gain communication with the coast.

1919 The German fleet was scuttled in Scapa Flow, in the Orkneys.

1942 German forces under Field-Marshal Rommel captured Tobruk.

1963 Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini was elected Pope, taking the name Paul VI.

1970 Tony Jacklin won the US Open at Hazeltine Golf Club, Minnesota; he was the first Briton to win since Ted Ray in 1920.

1977 Menachem Begin became Israeli prime minister.

1996 Britain and other members of the EU reached an agreement for the phased lifting of the ban on British beef. French farmers, however, blockaded two channel ports.

1996 A new species of monkey, Callithrip saterei, was discovered in the rainforests of Brazil. The monkey is orange-haired and about the size of a squirrel.

1996 The California Supreme Court ruled that the law passed in 1992, under which violent offenders were automatically sentenced to 25 years to life for third convictions, was unconstitutional.

[Raistlin]

Events

1377 Richard II became king of England.

1671 Turkey declared war on Poland.

1679 The Duke of Monmouth subdued an insurrection of Scottish Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge.

1826 The Pan-American Congress met in Panama under the influence of Simón Bolívar in an unsuccessful effort to unite the American Republics.

1894 Dahomey was proclaimed a French colony.

1907 The Northern Line was opened on the London Underground.

1941 The launch of the German invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa) caught the Soviet high command and troops by surprise and opened with a devastating three-pronged attack towards Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev.

1995 Japanese police rescued 365 people from a hijacked Nippon Airlines 747 at Hakodate airport. The hijacker, armed with a screwdriver, was demanding the release of Shoka Asahara, leader of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult.

Births

1653 André-Hercule de Fleury, French cardinal

1699 Jean Chardin, French painter

1738 Jacques Delille, French poet

1805 Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian patriot

1856 H Rider Haggard, English novelist

1910 John Hunt, English mountaineer

1910 Peter Pears, English tenor

1932 Prunella Scales, English actress

1949 Meryl Streep, US film actress

Deaths

1101 Roger I, King of Sicily

1527 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian politician and diplomat

1527 Jane Shore, mistress of Edward IV, King of England

1535 St John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, beheaded

1699 Josiah Child, English merchant

1956 Walter de la Mare, English author

1987 Fred Astaire, US dancer and film actor

[Bizarra]

"1798 British General Gerard Lake defeated Irish rebels at Vinegar Hill and entered Wexford, ending the Irish Rebellion. "

The story............

The Battle of Vinegar Hill was an engagement during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 on 21 June 1798 when over 15,000 British soldiers launched an attack on Vinegar Hill outside Enniscorthy, County Wexford, the largest camp and headquarters of the Wexford United Irish rebels. It marked a turning point in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, as it was the last attempt by the rebels to hold and defend ground against the British military. The battle was actually fought in two locations: on Vinegar Hill itself and in the streets of nearby Enniscorthy.

Contents

[hide]

* 1 Preparations

* 2 Bombardment of Vinegar Hill

* 3 Attack on Enniscorthy

* 4 Rout and Atrocities

* 5 Aftermath

* 6 See also

* 7 References

* 8 Primary sources

* 9 Secondary sources

[edit] Preparations

By 18 June, the British had surrounded county Wexford with an estimated 20,000 troops and were ready to pour into Wexford to crush the insurgency. The rebel leadership issued a call to all its fighters to gather at Vinegar Hill to meet the army in one great, decisive battle. The number assembled was estimated at 20,000, but the majority lacked firearms and had to rely on pikes as their main weapon. The camp also included many thousands of women and children who were staying there for protection against the rampaging military.

The British plan, as formulated by General Lake, envisaged the complete annihilation of the rebels by encircling the hill and seizing the only escape route to the west, the bridge over the Slaney. Lake divided his force into four columns to accomplish this; three columns, under Generals Dundas, Duff and Needham were to assault Vinegar Hill, while the fourth column, under General Johnson, was to storm Enniscorthy and its bridge.

[edit] Bombardment of Vinegar Hill

The battle began shortly before dawn with an artillery bombardment of Irish positions on the hill. Advance units quickly moved against rebel outposts under cover of the shelling and moved artillery closer as forward positions were secured. The tightening ring forced the rebels into an ever-shrinking area and increased exposure to the constant shelling, including new experimental delayed-fuse shells resulting in hundreds of dead and maimed.[2] Mass charges by the rebels failed to break the lines of the advancing British military and the situation on Vinegar Hill soon became desperate for the rebels. When British troops crested its eastern summit, the rebels began to withdraw through a gap in the British lines later known as “Needham's Gap”; named after the late arrival of General Needham's brigade.

[edit] Attack on Enniscorthy

The British simultaneously launched an attack on Enniscorthy town to cut off the escape route via the bridge linking Vinegar Hill to the town, but were met with fierce resistance, led by William Barker. British progress in the town was slow and they suffered casualties as the town saw heavy street fighting for the second time in one month. The rebels were eventually driven across the bridge, but were reinforced by a large contingent of newly arrived comrades, who managed to prevent the soldiers from breaking through until most of the rebels had escaped along the eastern side of the River Slaney.[citation needed]

[edit] Rout and Atrocities

Vinegar Hill - view from Enniscorthy

When it became clear that the bulk of the Irish were retreating from Vinegar Hill, the British cavalry were unleashed, closely followed by the infantry. A massacre of hundreds of stragglers ensued, including many women and children,[3] from a combination of the cavalry and infantry attack, but also from the field guns which were switched to grape shot to maximise casualties among the fleeing masses. In addition, the British military were guilty of multiple instances of gang rape of females amongst the Irish camp.[4][5][6] Meanwhile, in Enniscorthy, British troops set fire to a makeshift hospital in the town, burning scores of trapped and helpless wounded Irish troops alive; their bodies were said to be still hissing in the embers the following day.[7]

[edit] Aftermath

The bridge at Enniscorthy

(Vinegar Hill visible in background)

Meanwhile, the bulk of the rebel force streamed unmolested towards the Three Rocks camp outside Wexford town and, following the decision to abandon the town, split into two separate columns in a new campaign to spread the rebellion beyond Wexford. One set out to the west, the other northwards towards the Wicklow Mountains to link up with General Joseph Holt's forces.

The defeat was therefore not the immediate crushing blow to the Wexford rebels that it has traditionally been depicted as, but it did alter the course of the fighting as continued resistance now took the form of mobile warfare, raids, and large scale guerilla-type operations.

[Raistlin]

The defeat was therefore not the immediate crushing blow to the Wexford rebels that it has traditionally been depicted as, but it did alter the course of the fighting as continued resistance now took the form of mobile warfare, raids, and large scale guerilla-type operations.

And so it began....

[Bizarra]

The defeat was therefore not the immediate crushing blow to the Wexford rebels that it has traditionally been depicted as, but it did alter the course of the fighting as continued resistance now took the form of mobile warfare, raids, and large scale guerilla-type operations.

And so it began....

Alas, Yes :(

[Raistlin]

Births

1596 John Banér, Swedish general

1668 Giovanni Battista Vico, Italian philosopher

1763 Josephine de Beauharnais, wife of Napoleon

1889 Anna Akhmatova, Russian poet

1910 Jean Anouilh, French playwright

1927 John Habgood, archbishop of York

Deaths

AD79 Vespasian, Roman emperor

1537 Pedro de Mendoza, Spanish explorer

1697 John Aubrey, English antiquary

1839 Hester Lucy Stanhope, English traveller

1924 Cecil Sharp, English collector of folk songs

1995 Jonas Salk, US physician and microbiologist

1996 Andreas Papandreou, Greek socialist and former prime minister

Events

1611 English navigator Henry Hudson and eight others were cast adrift by mutineers; the mutineers returned to England, but Hudson and his companions were never seen again.

1757 British troops under Robert Clive captured Plassey, in Bengal, and recovered Calcutta.

1934 Saudi Arabia and the Yemen signed a peace agreement after a war of six weeks.

1935 British foreign secretary Anthony Eden, offered Benito Mussolini concessions over Abyssinia, which he rejected.

1951 Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, 'missing diplomats', fled to the USSR.

1952 The US Air Force bombed hydroelectric plants in North Korea.

1989 President Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and Dr Jonas Savimbi, leader of UNITA rebels, signed a declaration ending the 14-year civil war in Angola.

1996 A terrorist bomb thought to be the work of Islamic fundamentalists killed 19 US servicemen and injured hundreds more in Dharan, Saudi Arabia.

[Raistlin]

Births

1519 Theodore Beza, French religious reformer

1532 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, English explorer

1542 St John of the Cross (Juan de Yepez y Alvarez), Spanish Carmelite friar

1650 John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough

1850 Horatio, Lord Kitchener, British soldier

1909 William Penney, British physicist

1911 Juan Fangio, Argentinian racing driver

1915 Fred Hoyle, English astronomer

1930 Claude Chabrol, French film director

Deaths

1065 Ferdinand I, King of Castile and Leon

1519 Lucrezia Borgia, duchess of Ferrara

1715 John Partridge, English astrologer

1908 Stephen Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the USA

1986 Rex Warner, British novelist

Events

1245 Pope Innocent sent John de Plano Carpinis, a friar minor, to the court of the Great Khan, at Karakorum; this embassy led to the establishment of Christian missions in China until c. 1368.

1277 English King Edward I began his first Welsh campaign following Llewelyn's refusal to do homage.

1314 Robert the Bruce defeated Edward II at Bannockburn and so completed his expulsion of the English from Scotland.

1535 Charles V led an expedition to conquer Tunis from Barbarossa, with a fleet commanded by Andrea Doria. Charles restored the Bey, Mulai Hassan (deposed by the Turks in 1534) and completed the Spanish conquest of the North African coast (begun in 1494).

1559 The Elizabethan Prayer Book was first used.

1812 Napoleon crossed the River Niemen and entered Russian territory.

1917 The Russian Black Sea fleet mutinied at Sebastopol.

1956 Colonel Nasser was elected president of Egypt.

1973 Leonid Brezhnev, during visit to USA, declared that the Cold War was over.

1994 (-25th) Prime Minister John Major of Britain vetoed the nomination of Jean-Luc Dehaene, prime minister of Belgium, as president of the European Commission at a Summit of EU heads of government.

[Raistlin]

Births

1736 John Horne Tooke, English politician

1900 Lord Louis Mountbatten of Burma

1903 George Orwell, English essayist and novelist

1924 Sidney Lumet, US film director

Deaths

1483 Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, English politician, executed

1634 John Marston, English playwright

1876 George Custer, US soldier

1897 Margaret Oliphant, English novelist

1912 Laurence Alma-Tadema, English painter

1968 Tony Hancock, English comedian

1995 Ernest Walton, Irish physicist

1995 Warren Burger, US Supreme Court chief justice 1969-86

1997 Jacques Cousteau, French oceanographer.

Events

1524 The Peasants' Revolt in southern Germany began at Stühlingen on the estates of Count von Lupfen. The rebels demanded the abolition of enclosures and feudal services.

1646 The surrender of Oxford to the Roundheads virtually signified the end of the English Civil War.

1788 Virginia became the 10th state of the USA.

1867 The first patent for barbed wire was taken out in Ohio, USA.

1876 US soldier George Custer and his 264 men were killed by Sioux Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Montana.

1975 Mozambique achieved independence from Portugal.

1991 Republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia.

1997 During a manually guided docking manoeuvre the Russian space station Mir collided with its unmanned cargo supply vessel, causing the space station to lose power and oxygen and to tumble out of control.

1997 A volcanic eruption in the Soufrière Hills on the British dependency of Montserrat in the Leeward Islands, West Indies, killed 23 people.