This Day In History Thread: Because We Need One?

[Shekinah]

September 24, 1948: The Honda Motor Company is founded.

[Scarlet Knight]

On September 25th, 1980, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin dies after 40 shots of vodka.

[Shekinah]

September 25, 1066: The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England.

[Gwynfrid]

September 25, 1950: The South Korea army recaptures Seoul. The Korean War will last until 1953, costing their lives to an estimated 1.2 million people.

[lio45]

I wish I'll look as young as Will Smith currently does when I'll be 46 years old...

[Sylthia]

September 25, 1066: The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England.

And so Anglo-Saxon England enjoyed a couple weeks of freedom.

[Neli42]

And so Anglo-Saxon England enjoyed a couple weeks of freedom.

*wiping up the milk that just shot through my nose*

25 September

1906 Controversial Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich is born in St. Petersburg.

1911 The French battleship Liberté explodes at Toulon harbor, killing 285 enlisted men and officers. The explosion was due to accidental detonation of her forward ammunition magazines by degraded propellant charges.

1981 Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in as the first female justice of the US Supreme Court

[factotum]

26 September 1944: Allied forces finally withdraw from Arnhem after failing to capture the bridge there. Only 2,400 troops escape of the nearly ten thousand who went in.

On a lighter note, 26 Sep 1973: Concorde makes its first non-stop cross-Atlantic flight, getting from Washington DC to Orly airport in Paris in a smidgeon over three and a half hours.

[Eldan]

September 26:

The philosopher Martin Heidegger is born. I can't stand a word he wrote.

2004: Switzerland finally pushes through legislation that women, after giving birth, should be paid 80% of their salary for 14 weeks, even if they can't work. Government had been supposed to do something about it since 1945. It was in the constitution and everything.

1580: Francis Drake returns to ENgland after sailing around the world.

1905: Albert Einstein publishes the special theory of relativity in Annals of Physics, as an article titled "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" (The electrodynamics of moving objects).

1348: The pope officially declares that jews are not responsible for the black plague.

[Gwynfrid]

September 26, 1786: In some of the earliest days of globalization, Mathias-Joseph Gérard de Rayneval and William Eden sign a commerce treaty between France and Great Britain, agreeing to more open trade and reducing tariffs. The agreement is controversial, especially in France, and effectively ends with the advent of the French Revolution.

[Shekinah]

September 26, 1087: William II is crowned the king of England. He would reign until 1100 until taking an arrow to the knee lung when hunting in the New Forest. Whether or not his death was an accident or an assassination is still debated today.

[Sylthia]

September 26, 1087: William II is crowned the king of England. He would reign until 1100 until taking an arrow to the knee lung when hunting in the New Forest. Whether or not his death was an accident or an assassination is still debated today.

Accidents happen all the time, especially when they are arranged.

Henry I was a great brother, he just happened to be in the New Forest when his brother William II got shot. Coincidentally, his other brother Richard also died in a riding "accident" in that same forest. Good ol' Henry like his brother Robert the most though, so he just locked him in the Tower of London for 30 years so he could take the throne of England along with all his father's other lands for himself.

[Aedilred]

Accidents happen all the time, especially when they are arranged.

Henry I was a great brother, he just happened to be in the New Forest when his brother William II got shot. Coincidentally, his other brother Richard also died in a riding "accident" in that same forest. Good ol' Henry like his brother Robert the most though, so he just locked him in the Tower of London for 30 years so he could take the throne of England along with all his father's other lands for himself.

I think it's unlikely Henry had anything to do with Richard's death given that he was at most seven years old when it happened. It does seem rather likely that William was murdered, though, and if he wasn't it was an astonishingly convenient coincidence - there's a list of suspects with motives as long as your arm. Whether Henry was directly involved or not, he certainly doesn't seem to have been terribly surprised, and he did a great job (together with Eadmer) of posthumously murdering William's reputation, even if he didn't off the man himself.

[RdMarquis]

Just wanted to say, I'm loving this thread. I will find something to contribute as soon as I can get at my books again.

[Sylthia]

I think it's unlikely Henry had anything to do with Richard's death given that he was at most seven years old when it happened. It does seem rather likely that William was murdered, though, and if he wasn't it was an astonishingly convenient coincidence - there's a list of suspects with motives as long as your arm. Whether Henry was directly involved or not, he certainly doesn't seem to have been terribly surprised, and he did a great job (together with Eadmer) of posthumously murdering William's reputation, even if he didn't off the man himself.

If memory serves, Richard died by being clotheslined, so it would be hard to arrange that. It does seem odd that that forest had so many accidents, though.

[factotum]

If memory serves, Richard died by being clotheslined, so it would be hard to arrange that. It does seem odd that that forest had so many accidents, though.

Two in the course of nearly 20 years doesn't seem like a huge rate to me, especially when the whole place was basically a royal hunting preserve and so the people in question were doing probably the most dangerous thing they could without actively going to war. If we assume William Rufus's death *was* an assassination then that lowers it to one accident, which is even more believable.

[Aedilred]

Two in the course of nearly 20 years doesn't seem like a huge rate to me, especially when the whole place was basically a royal hunting preserve and so the people in question were doing probably the most dangerous thing they could without actively going to war. If we assume William Rufus's death *was* an assassination then that lowers it to one accident, which is even more believable.

Another member of the royal family also died in the forest during the same period; a nephew (also called Richard, not sure whose offspring he was), only a few months before William. A biography I read of William suggested in fact that Richard (the younger's) death might have provided the inspiration for William's murder. At any rate, while at least some of it is probably coincidental, it is still kind of remarkable that three members of a relatively small family died in the same place under much the same circumstances in such a short period, especially given that the accidents seem to have been confined to the royal family (no other significant casualties in the same period among the senior nobility) and indeed that I can't think of any other member of the English royal family who ever died in a hunting accident either previously or subsequently. A couple were killed or injured in tournaments, but that's slightly different.

I wonder whether (part of) the problem was the New Forest itself; being newly afforested perhaps it wasn't as well maintained as a hunting reserve as it might have been during the period. But that seems like kind of a weak explanation.

[Gwynfrid]

September 27, 1822: Jean-François Champollion presents his solution to the problem of decyphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, based on the Rosetta Stone.

[Aedilred]

September 27th 1529 - the Siege of Vienna under Suleiman the Magnificent begins, marking the high point of Ottoman expansion into central Europe.

September 27th 1947 - Michael Lee Aday, one of the greatest musicians of the modern age, is born in Texas.

[Shekinah]

September 27, 1066: William the Conqueror and his army set sail from the mouth of the River Somme, beginning the Normal Conquest of England.

[Asta Kask]

Is there also an abnormal conquest of England?

Ahh, nitpicking. Next to spam, porn and lolcats, it's what the internet does best.

[Gwynfrid]

September 27, 1066: William the Conqueror and his army set sail from the mouth of the River Somme, beginning the Normal Conquest of England.

Norman Conquest, if you don't mind (as in: William, Duke of Normandy). One can hardly see the conquest of England as "normal", as it's been a fairly rare event in history.

EDIT: Duh, ninja'd.

[Spiryt]

Is there also an abnormal conquest of England?
.

Spoiler

Show

On topic:

27th September


1533 - Istvan (Stephan(us) Bathory, princeps of Transylvania, King of Poland and Lithuania, and Hungarian patriot is born.

1986 - Metallica's bassist, Cliff Burton dies in bus accident close to Ljungy in Sweden.

[Sylthia]

Is there also an abnormal conquest of England?

Ahh, nitpicking. Next to spam, porn and lolcats, it's what the internet does best.

The Normal Conquest of England is a little known military incursion of an army from around Bloomington, Illinois into the Anglo-Saxon Britain.

Regional Humor

[Emperordaniel]

September 28, 1978: John Paul I is found dead in his bed after only 33 days as pope, ending a 455-year streak of Italian-born popes (and resulting in the thirteenth and most recent Year of Three Popes).

[factotum]

September 28th 1985: Riots start on the streets of Brixton, south London, after a woman is shot and injured by police searching a house for an armed robber.

[Gwynfrid]

September 28, 1791: France grants equal rights to Jews, making them full citizens. The rest of European countries will follow suit over the course of the next century.

[FinnLassie]

September 27, 1822: Jean-François Champollion presents his solution to the problem of decyphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, based on the Rosetta Stone.

Welp, live and learn. I thought the Rosetta Stone language learning programme things were just named after some lass called Rosetta Stone.

[Gwynfrid]

Welp, live and learn. I thought the Rosetta Stone language learning programme things were just named after some lass called Rosetta Stone.

Wow... some random post of mine is causing a tiny bit of a postitive effect. Thanks for making my day

[Shekinah]

You guys are awful! Especially you, Rezzy!

September 29, 1982: The Chicago Tylenol murders begin when the first of seven individuals dies in metropolitan Chicago.