POPnews - November 11th

[As Britain's - and indeed the Commonwealth's - principal mourner, Her Majesty The Queen has presided over numerous ceremonies in honour of those who've died serving their respective countries in times of war... Yet even the Royal Family has not been immune from such tragedies, as her uncle HRH The Duke of Kent died while in the commission of his duty in August 1942.]

1724 - Joseph Blake (alias Blueskin) was hanged at London's Tyburn gallows; a highwayman known for attacking 'Thief-Taker General' (and thief) Jonathan Wild at the Old Bailey, Blake was later immortalized in Blueskin's Ballad by John Gay.

1750 - The College of William and Mary's F.H.C. Society - also known as the Flat Hat Club - was formed at Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia, making it the first-ever fraternity in the United States.

1778 - Seneca Indians in central New York state killed more than forty people, in what came to be known as the Cherry Valley Massacre.

1805 - At the Battle of Dürenstein 8000 French troops commanded by Édouard Mortier attempted to slow the retreat of a vastly superior Russian and Austrian force under Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov.

1831 - Nat Turner was hanged at Jerusalem, Virginia, for having incited a violent slave rebellion the previous August.

1839 - The Virginia Military Institute was founded.

1864 - Union General William Tecumseh Sherman began burning Atlanta to the ground in preparation for his famous March to the Sea; these events form the core of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone With the Wind and the 1939 movie of the same name*.

*The most technically difficult sequence in the film has earned a place in film lore; the vast set-piece of the burning of Atlanta is indicated in the screenplay by just two words: 'Atlanta burns'. To this day, anything overly ambitious demanded by the director of a film will have the technicians on set grumbling these same two words until such time as they (inevitably) manage to achieve it.

1880 - Australian bushranger Ned Kelly was hanged at Melbourne Gaol.

1887 - Construction of the Manchester Ship Canal was begun at Eastham.

1889 - Washington became the 42nd US state.

1918 - At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month an armistice between Germany and Allied forces was signed, in a railway carriage near France's Compiègne Forest, ending World War I (then known as the Great War); on the same day Austrian Emperor Charles I relinquished all political power, but did not abdicate.

1919 - The Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington, resulted in the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the IWW.

1921 - The Tomb of the Unknowns was dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery.

1926 - Route 66 was established between Chicago and Los Angeles.

1966 - NASA launched Gemini 12.

1975 - Australia's Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the government of Gough Whitlam and commissioned Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister, announcing a general election to be held in early December; the country's gravest constitutional crisis to date is now more commonly known as The Dismissal.

1992 - The Church of England voted to allow women priests.

2004 - New Zealand's Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was dedicated at the National War Memorial in Wellington.

2008 - The RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) set sail on her final voyage, to Dubai.
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