End of London. During an attempted jewellery robbery at Houndsditch by a
gang of immigrant Latvians, their leader George Gardstein was mortally
wounded. Two weeks later, the last two unapprehended suspects were
tracked down at 100 Sidney Street in Stepney. Local residents were
evacuated, and a gunfight broke out with the police. After a six-hour
siege, a fire consumed the building, and the bodies of the two suspects
were found within. One of the firemen, Superintendent Charles Pearson,
was killed when the building collapsed. The siege marked the first time
the police had requested army assistance in London to deal with an armed
stand-off. It was also the first siege in Britain to be filmed, by
Pathé News. Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, who was present at
the siege, said that he gave no instructions to the police, but a
Metropolitan police history of the event contradicted this. One of those
arrested for the robbery had his conviction overturned on appeal; the
rest were acquitted. The events were fictionalised in novels and in the
films The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The Siege of Sidney Street
(1960).
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sidney_Street>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1799:
Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland: A squadron of the navy of
the Batavian Republic surrendered to the Royal Navy without a fight near
Wieringen.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlieter_Incident>
1813:
Creek War: A force of Creeks belonging to the Red Sticks
faction killed hundreds of settlers in Fort Mims in Alabama.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Mims_massacre>
1918:
Fanny Kaplan shot and wounded Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin,
one of the events leading to the Red Terror in the future Soviet Union,
a repression against Socialist Revolutionary Party members and other
political opponents.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror>
1942:
Second World War: Erwin Rommel launched the last major Axis
offensive of the Western Desert Campaign, attacking the British Eighth
Army position near El Alamein, Egypt.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alam_el_Halfa>
1981:
President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad
Bahonar of Iran were assassinated in a bombing committed by the People's
Mujahedin of Iran.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad-Javad_Bahonar>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
skite:
1. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) To boast.
2. (Northern Ireland) To skim or slide along a surface.
3. (Scotland, slang) To slip, such as on ice.
4. (Scotland, slang) To drink a large amount of alcohol.
5. (archaic, vulgar) To defecate, to shit.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skite>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their
enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in
equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and
greedy only when others are fearful.
--Warren Buffett
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett>
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