For those of you who don't know, I am a history tutor, and I usually post an interesting fact about the date on my whiteboard when I tutor because, yes, I am a nerd. Anyway, this is the first date I've posted on this forum and since it's been around for a while already (thanks James) I figure I might as well flood it with more than one fact today. Yes, these mostly come from Wikipedia, and no, I'm not an idiot because I use it. So shut yer yap and learn something dammit, it's not like you were going to look up the date on Wikipedia today anyway.
1560 - The Roman Catholic Church is abolished in Scotland, making way for the Protestant Calvinism and later Presbyterianism that would take hold and shape the nation. I don't care if you don't care, I'm Scottish and I find that cool, deal with it.
But now let's skip to some World War II stuff.
1943 - General George S. Patton Jr. arrives in Messina with the U.S. 7th Army. His arrival beat that of the British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery by several hours and completed the conquest of Sicily while at the same time proving that Montgomery was a putz. Because a good general always kills two birds with one stone, especially when one of those birds is an ally.
ALSO 1943 - The First Québec Conference begins. This was a meeting between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and William Lyon Mackenzie King. For those of you who care, that's the Prime Minister of Canada. For the rest of us who don't give a crap about Canada and their faux-president the important thing to note is that he is NOT Stalin. Because fuck communism, that's why.
ALSO 1943 - The Royal Air Force initiates Operation Hydra. Not sure what Hydra was specifically, but I seriously doubt it had anything to do with Redskull OR Captain America. But it WAS the first air raid of Operation Crossbow, which was the bombing campaign against Hitler's special V weapon program.
Look for more tomorrow. You'll probably be disappointed, but do it anyway.
Sat Jan 31, 2015 7:16 am by DaLanMan
