Clay Lane
Posts in The Copybook credited to ‘Clay Lane’
‘D-Day’ on 6th June, 1944, kicked off the Allied invasion of Europe and raised hopes of an end to the Second World War.
The Normandy Landings began with ‘D-Day’ set for 5th June, 1944, though unfavourable weather postponed it to the following day. The landings heralded the start of the Allied invasion of Europe and the end of the Second World War, though it was nearly a year before victory could be declared.
The mayor and bishop of Zakynthos went to extraordinary lengths to protect the most vulnerable people of their island.
In February 1943, the Italians, who had captured the Greek island of Zakynthos two years earlier, threw the island’s bishop, Chrysostom, in an Athens jail. Ten months later he returned home to find the island now in the hands of the Nazis.
A proudly British group of islands far off in the South Atlantic.
The Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean were discovered by the British in the 17th century, and given their first government by London early in the 19th. The islands are an important centre for farming and trade, a haven for extraordinary wildlife, and British to the core.
An improbable chain of coincidences led to one of the great medical revolutions just when it was most needed.
Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) discovered the principle underlying antibiotics, a genuine medical revolution, and it all happened by accident. But whereas the excitable Archimedes cried ‘Eureka!’ on making his famous discovery, Scotsman Fleming muttered a more British ‘That’s funny’.
Napoleon’s six-year-long campaign (1808-1814) to bring Spain and Portugal into his united Europe was frustrated by Arthur Wellesley.
Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself Emperor of the French in 1804, with the aim of bringing order to the chaos of a disunited Europe through his ‘Napoleonic Code.’ Spain initially welcomed Napoleon’s vision, but when his true ambitions became clear the Spanish appealed for help from Napoleon’s most powerful enemy: the United Kingdom.