History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
Young Thomas Cochrane learned early on that for a sailor, making a pet of a parrot could be surprisingly hazardous.
In 1793, the new French Republic declared war on Britain, and the Admiralty sent HMS ‘Hind’ to Norway to flush out any French privateers preying on our Baltic trade. Captain Alexander Cochrane’s crew included first lieutenant Jack Larmour, and also our author, the captain’s nephew Thomas, then a seventeen-year-old midshipman.
Victorian England was agog at the prospect of Tom Sayers meeting a confident but unproven challenger from the USA.
Boxing’s first world title bout, on April 17th, 1860, featured England’s own Tom Sayers against a challenger from the USA, John Heenan, ‘the Benicia Boy’. It was the boxing event of a whole generation, and bare-knuckle fighting’s swansong.
Having brought hundreds of convicts to New South Wales, Arthur Phillip then had to conjure order out of their chaos.
The first British settlement in Australia was established at Sydney Cove on January 26th, 1788, and named after the Home Secretary. The policy of penal transportation was barbarity, but out of it Captain Phillips and his successors conjured civilisation — and began by disobeying orders.
The Maharaja of Jodhpur called on his subjects to do their bit and stop the Nazis.
On May 15th, 1942, Maharaja Sir Umaid Singh of Jodhpur spoke at the inauguration of the National War Front in Jodhpur. Already many thousands of Indians had volunteered to help stop Nazi Germany from taking Britain’s place as India’s Presiding Power, and now His Highness addressed himself to those left behind.
Even before he was born, St Dunstan was marked out to lead the English Church and nation to more peaceful times.
In 793, Vikings swept across Northumbria and extinguished the beacon of Lindisfarne, symbol of England’s Christian civilisation. Much of the land lay under a pagan shadow for over a century, but St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of King Edgar (r. 959-975), helped to rekindle both Church and State.
A February celebration for which the faithful have brought candles to church since Anglo-Saxon times.
Candlemas is the English name for a Christian feast also known as the Presentation of Christ, the Purification of the Virgin, and the Meeting of the Lord. It is kept on February 2nd, forty days after Christmas, and in Anglo-Saxon times was a night of candle-lit processions and carol singing almost on a par with Easter.