sitcom Blackadder 's fourth series, entitled Blackadder Goes Forth.
First broadcast on BBC One on 2 November 1989, shortly before Armistice
Day, the episode depicts its main characters' final hours before a
British offensive on the Western Front of the First World War, and the
failed attempts of Captain Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson
(pictured), to escape his fate by feigning madness. After he cannot
convince General Melchett, and Field Marshal Haig's advice is useless,
he is resigned to take part in the push. It has a darker tone than other
episodes in the series, culminating with the main characters charging
into no-man's land under machine-gun fire. The episode's theme of death
ties in with the series' use of gallows humour and its criticism and
satire of war. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton wrote the episode, and
additional material was provided by its cast members. Its slow-motion
final sequence showing the main characters going "over the top" has
often been voted one of the greatest moments in television.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbyeee>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1805:
War of the Third Coalition: French, Austrian and Russian units
all suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Dürenstein.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_D%C3%BCrenstein>
1839:
The Virginia Military Institute, currently the oldest state
military college in the United States, was founded.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Military_Institute>
1889:
Washington, named in honor of the first U.S. president, was
admitted to the United States as the 42nd state.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_(state)>
1934:
The Shrine of Remembrance (pictured), a memorial to all
Australians who have served in war, opened in Melbourne.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrine_of_Remembrance>
1999:
The House of Lords Act was given royal assent, removing most
hereditary peers from the British House of Lords.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords_Act_1999>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
rumpty:
(New Zealand) Having a quality below standard; in a state of disrepair.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rumpty>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of
you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a
conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which
means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any
expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American
ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the
time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the
same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for
example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was
God or not?" I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message of
mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a
human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."
--Kurt Vonnegut
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut>
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