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Historical Moments On this day

Joseph Cosgrove

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On this day 07 December 1941 07:48 Hawaiian time the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor.

"The day after the attack, Roosevelt delivered his famous Infamy Speech to a Joint Session of Congress, calling for a formal declaration of war on the Empire of Japan. Congress obliged his request less than an hour later. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, even though the Tripartite Pact did not require it. Congress issued a declaration of war against Germany and Italy later that same day. The UK actually declared war on Japan nine hours before the U.S. did, partially due to Japanese attacks on Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, and partially due to Winston Churchill's promise to declare war "within the hour" of a Japanese attack on the United States."
 

Joseph Cosgrove

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On this day 11 December 1936, King Edward VIII abdicates :

Edward VIII (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David; 23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication on 11 December the same year.
Edward was the eldest son of George V and Mary of Teck. He was named Prince of Wales on his sixteenth birthday, nine weeks after his father succeeded as king. As a young man, he served in the British Army during the First World War and undertook several overseas tours on behalf of his father.
Edward became king on his father's death in early 1936. However, he showed impatience with court protocol, and caused concern among politicians by his apparent disregard for established constitutional conventions. Only months into his reign, he caused a constitutional crisis by proposing marriage to Wallis Simpson, an American who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing that a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands was politically and socially unacceptable as a prospective queen consort. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with Edward's status as the titular head of the Church of England, which at the time disapproved of remarriage after divorce if a former spouse was still alive. Edward knew that the British government, led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, would resign if the marriage went ahead, which could have forced a general election and would ruin his status as a politically neutral constitutional monarch. When it became apparent that he could not marry Wallis and remain on the throne, Edward abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother, George VI. With a reign of 326 days, Edward is one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in British history.
After his abdication, he was created Duke of Windsor. He married Wallis in France on 3 June 1937, after her second divorce became final. Later that year, the couple toured Germany. During the Second World War, he was at first stationed with the British Military Mission to France but, after private accusations that he held Nazi sympathies, he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas. After the war, Edward spent the rest of his life in retirement in France.
 

Joseph Cosgrove

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On this day 19 December 1946 began the 'first' Indochina war.

"The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina on 19 December 1946, and lasted until 1 August 1954. Fighting between French forces and their Viet Minh opponents in the south dated from September 1945. The conflict pitted a range of forces, including the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps, led by France and supported by Emperor Bảo Ä￾ại's Vietnamese National Army against the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh and the People's Army of Vietnam led by Vo Nguyen Giap. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia."

Understandably seeing the date 1946, the legions ranks were swelling with German and Austrian war veterans.
 

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Yep... After a little more than one year of futile efforts during which the French and the Vietminh (the Vietnamese independentist party), tried to find a ‘gentlemen's agreement’, things went definitely wrong when the Vietminh decided to seize Hanoi by force on Dec 19[SUP]th[/SUP], 1946. It was said to be in retaliation of the shelling by the French Navy of the port of Haiphong, on Nov 23[SUP]rd[/SUP] that caused several thousands victims.
The coup in Hanoi eventually failed and Ho Chi Minh and all his staff went underground.
 

Joseph Cosgrove

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On this day, Feb 8 in 1943, Japanese troops evacuate Guadalcanal, leaving the island in Allied possession after a prolonged campaign. The American victory paved the way for other Allied wins in the Solomon Islands.

Guadalcanal is the largest of the Solomons, a group of 992 islands and atolls, 347 of which are inhabited, in the South Pacific Ocean. The Solomons, which are located northeast of Australia and have 87 indigenous languages, were discovered in 1568 by the Spanish navigator Alvaro de Mendana de Neyra (1541-95). In 1893, the British annexed Guadalcanal, along with the other central and southern Solomons. The Germans took control of the northern Solomons in 1885, but transferred these islands, except for Bougainville and Buka (which eventually went to the Australians) to the British in 1900.

The Japanese invaded the Solomons in 1942 during World War II and began building a strategic airfield on Guadalcanal. On August 7 of that year, U.S. Marines landed on the island, signaling the Allies’ first major offensive against Japanese-held positions in the Pacific. The Japanese responded quickly with sea and air attacks. A series of bloody battles ensued in the debilitating tropical heat as Marines sparred with Japanese troops on land, while in the waters surrounding Guadalcanal, the U.S. Navy fought six major engagements with the Japanese between August 24 and November 30. In mid-November 1942, the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, died together when the Japanese sunk their ship, the USS Juneau.

Both sides suffered heavy losses of men, warships and planes in the battle for Guadalcanal. An estimated 1,600 U.S. troops were killed, over 4,000 were wounded and several thousand more died from disease. The Japanese lost 24,000 soldiers. On December 31, 1942, Emperor Hirohito told Japanese troops they could withdraw from the area; the Americans secured Guadalcanal about five weeks later.

The Solomons gained their independence from Britain in 1978. In the late 1990s, fighting broke out between rival ethnic groups on Guadalcanal and continued until an Australian-led international peacekeeping mission restored order in 2003. Today, with a population of over half a million people, the Solomons are known as a scuba diver and fisherman’s paradise.
 

Joseph Cosgrove

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Chinese New begins today. It's a public holiday here in Thailand, one more on their calendar. Here they have three New years, Occidental, Chinese and Thai. Not to mention that every full moon is a public holiday.

So we'll be welcoming in the year of the dog no less. One good thing about having 3 New years is that if you break your New Year's resolution, you can always tell yourself that it doesn't matter, you;ll start it again next year.
 

Joseph Cosgrove

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22 April 1915

April 22, 1915: Gas Attack at Ypres
At 5pm on April 22, 1915, following a German artillery bombardment, French soldiers holding the northern face of the Ypres salient saw a greenish-yellow cloud drifting towards them from the enemy trenches along a roughly four-mile-long stretch of the front.

As the cloud reached their positions the soldiers — mostly middle-aged militia volunteers in the 87th Territorial Division and North African colonial troops in the Algerian 45th Division — began coughing violently and gasping for air, tears and mucus streaming down their faces, their lungs burning, accompanied by retching and dry heaving. Tearing at their own throats and coughing up blood, some sought refuge at the bottom of their trenches but merely hurried to their doom, as chlorine gas is heavier than air.

Unsurprisingly, after a few minutes of this the French soldiers fled their trenches in terror. Harold Peat, a Canadian private in reserve in the eastern part of the salient, witnessed the first moments of this new horror in war:

In the far distance we saw a cloud rise as though from the earth. It was a greeny-red color, and increased in volume as it rolled forward. It was like a mist rising, and yet it hugged the ground, rose five or six feet, and penetrated to every crevice and dip in the ground. We could not tell what it was. Suddenly from out the mist we men in reserves saw movement. Coming towards us, running as though Hell as it really was had been let loose behind them, were the black troops from Northern Africa. Poor devils, I do not blame them. It was enough to make any man run.​
Another Canadian soldier in the front line, Reginald Grant, painted a similar picture:

The line trembled from one end to the other, as the Algerian troops immediately on our left, jumped out of their trenches, falling as they ran. The whole thing seemed absolutely incomprehensible until I got a whiff of the gas. They ran like men possessed, gasping, choking, blinded and dropping with suffocation. They could hardly be blamed... The buttons on our uniforms were tinged yellow and green from the gas, so virulent was the poison.​
http://mentalfloss.com/article/63365/wwi-centennial-gas-attack-ypres
 

SnafuSmite

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Must have been an horrific thing to experience. WW1 was a terrible war, 19th century tactics against 20th century weapons. It always amazes me as to how creative we humans are when killing each other.
 

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WW1 was a family dispute that got out of hand

Yes! and we all know who started all! F-ing Serbs ! :) Is there any war around us where we can't be involved?!? Fck!

By the way now seriously. Do anyone with half brain think that all world would start war among each other just because insignificant nation as Serbs always been on world scene?
 

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Today is the day 30th of April.

Hitler commited suicide with his wife Eva in 1945.

1933 Wilie Nelson was born


1789 The first President of the USA George Washington was sworn in.

“On this day in 1789, George Washington is sworn in as the first American president and delivers the first inaugural speech at Federal Hall in New York City. Elements of the ceremony set tradition; presidential inaugurations have deviated little in the two centuries since Washington’s inauguration.”

1993 Tennis player Monica Seles is stabbed.


1975 South Vietnam, surrenders:

<…When they attacked at dawn on April 30, they met little resistance. North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace and the war came to an end. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over after Tran Van Huong spent only one day in power. Tin explained to Minh, “You have nothing to fear. Between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been beaten. If you are patriots, consider this a moment of joy. The war for our country is over.”>

1863
 

Joseph Cosgrove

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Here in Thailand there is no AALE. So in my own way, I (and the better half's) try to keep the legion tradition.
This morning, being the chef, I took Erika up a cup of coffee. no big deal, and where is the tradition? I may hear some of you say. Actually it is a legion tradition. It dates from the big day when the Mexicans made the full scale attack on the hacienda near the village of Camerone where the legionnaires had retreated to.

At the beginning of the attack a Sous officer (as stated in the official report kept in the museum), kicked over the morning's pot of coffee to douse the flames. So on the morning of Camerone ,the cadre bring around the coffee, laced with rhum. and croissants. This may depend on each section whether the rum is in the coffee or separate in the bottle(s).

The night before (in my case - this lunch time). There is a repas amélioré. Which is a special meal put on for the occasion. Washed down with lots of wine.

20180430_132141.jpg

You may say what is so special about lamb chops, green beans and gratin of broccoli and cauliflower cheese?
Nothing if I was in New Zealand or Wales, but here in Thailand lamb chops cost a fortune. Erika managed to get a bottle of French wine from the big town next door. She's earning points. And she doesn't drink!!!

Then we lit some candles for the fallen legionnaires on the alter. Here practically every house an alter. We always light candles whenever we hear of a fallen legionnaire.

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it started raining so we brought them inside

20180430_131937.jpg


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On Ground impregnated
with the blood of legionnaires
The sun never sets.

Have a great Camerone one and all !
 

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Happy Camaróns day to all legionnaires and to all friends of French Foreign Legion (to quote Thomas Gast).

Joe is that something like mushrooms or onion over lamb chops ? Dish looks good, but you camera looks bad.
 

Joseph Cosgrove

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Dusa, my "dish" Is called Erika. No, just having a Chang joke. It's garlic. I haven't got the hang of taking photos yet.
 

Joseph Cosgrove

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05 May 1821,
French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte dies at the age of 51 on the south Atlantic island of Saint Helena, as a British prisoner.
Mais le petit caporal est encore là...
 
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