Today is the anniversary of the Tunguska Event. It was a large explosion of between 3–50 megatons TNT equivalent that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate, Russia, on the morning of 30 June 1908. The explosion over the sparsely populated East Siberian taiga felled a large number of trees, over an area of 2,150 km² (830 sq mi) of forest, and eyewitness accounts suggest up to three people may have died. The explosion is attributed to a meteor air burst, the atmospheric explosion of a stony asteroid about 50–60 m (160–200 ft) wide.

The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history, though much larger impacts are believed to have occurred in prehistoric times, including the Chicxulub impact that ended the Cretaceous period. An explosion of the Tunguska magnitude would be capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.

Trees were knocked down and burned over hundreds of square km by the Tunguska meteoroid impact. This image is cropped from the original, taken in May 1929 during the Leonid Kulik expedition in 1929.

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Stretch Lambretta…

on the set of Star Wars (1977) with Carrie Fisher and her stunt double

Today is the birthday, in 1956, of Adrian Wright, The Human League. Formed in Sheffield, England in 1977 the group attained widespread commercial success with their third album Dare in 1981. The album contained four hit singles, including the UK/US No.1 hit ‘Don’t You Want Me’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPudE8nDog0

On this day in 1913, the Globe Theatre in London burned to the ground.

The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 at Southwark, close to the south bank of the Thames, by Shakespeare’s playing company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and stayed open until the London theatre closures of 1642. As well as plays by Shakespeare, early works by Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker and John Fletcher were first performed here.

Second Globe Theatre, detail from Hollar’s View of London, 1647

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Today is the birthday, in 1953, of Colin Hay, Scottish Australian musician with Men At Work, (1983 UK and US No.1 single ‘Down Under’). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfR9iY5y94s

Today is the birthday, in 1819, of Abner Doubleday, Civil War general and reputed inventor of Baseball. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg was his finest hour, but his relief by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade caused lasting enmity between the two men. In San Francisco, after the war, he obtained a patent on the cable car railway that still runs there.

Although he never made such a claim, Doubleday was declared to have invented the game of baseball in 1908, fifteen years after his death, by the Mills Commission. This claim has been thoroughly debunked by baseball historians. Despite the lack of solid evidence linking Doubleday to the origins of baseball, Cooperstown, New York, became the new home of what is today the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 1937.

Gen. Abner Doubleday, U.S.A.

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Reflecting Pool contractor looks like a movie villain…

Here’s Lenka, teaching us about…Everything! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE9tV1WGTgE

The Korean War began on this day in 1950, when the North Korea’s Korean People’s Army (KPA) launched an invasion of the south. In the absence of the Soviet Union’s representative, the UN Security Council denounced the attack and called on member nations to provide military assistance to repel the invasion.

Seoul was captured by the KPA on 28 June, and by early August, the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) and its allies were nearly defeated, holding onto only the small Pusan Perimeter in the peninsula’s southeast. On 15 September, UN forces landed at Inchon near Seoul, cutting off KPA troops and supply lines. UN forces broke out from the perimeter on 18 September, recaptured Seoul, and invaded North Korea in October, capturing Pyongyang and advancing towards the Yalu River (border with China).

On 19 October, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) crossed the Yalu and entered the war on the side of the North. UN forces retreated from North Korea in December, following the PVA’s first and second offensive. Communist forces captured Seoul again in January 1951 before losing it to a UN counter-offensive two months later. After an abortive Chinese spring offensive, UN forces retook territory roughly up to the 38th parallel. Armistice negotiations began in July 1951, but dragged on as the fighting became a war of attrition and the North suffered devastating damage from UN bombing, destroying virtually all of North Korea’s major cities.

Combat ended on 27 July 1953 with the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, which allowed the exchange of prisoners and created a 4-kilometre wide (2.5 mile) Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the frontline, with a Joint Security Area at Panmunjom.

The conflict caused around one million military deaths and an estimated 1.5 million to 3 million civilian deaths.

With her brother on her back a war weary Korean girl tiredly trudges by a stalled M-46 tank

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SIGNZZz

Today is the birthday, in 1943, of Carly Simon, US singer, songwriter, (1973 UK No.3 and US No.1 single ‘You’re So Vain’, 1974 US No.5 single with James Taylor ‘Mockingbird’). In 2015, after keeping quiet for more than 40 years, Carly Simon admitted that ‘You’re So Vain’ was about Warren Beatty, but only one verse of it. Simon said the other verses were about two other men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WM_R-6AKHE

Today marks the beginning of the Great Siege of Gibraltar in 1779. It was an unsuccessful attempt by Spain and France to capture Gibraltar from Britain during the American Revolutionary War. It was the largest battle in the war by number of combatants.

On 16 June 1779, Spain entered the war on the side of France with the primary war aim of capturing Gibraltar from the British. The vulnerable garrison of Gibraltar, commanded by George Eliott, was besieged from June 1779 to February 1783. Initially, the siege was carried out solely by Spanish forces under Martín Álvarez de Sotomayor. The siege proved to be a failure because two British relief convoys entered unmolested, the first under Admiral George Rodney in 1780 and the second under Admiral George Darby in 1781, despite the presence of the Spanish Navy.

Following the Spanish failure to defeat the garrison or prevent the arrival of relief convoys, the besiegers were reinforced by French forces under Louis de Crillon, who took over command in early 1782. After a lull in the siege, during which the Franco-Spanish besiegers gathered more guns, ships and troops, a “Grand Assault” was launched on 13 September 1782. This involved huge numbers—60,000 attackers, 49 ships of the line and 10 specially designed and newly invented floating batteries—against 5,000 British defenders. The assault proved to be a disastrous and humiliating failure, resulting in heavy losses for the French and Spanish. This was the largest action fought during the war in terms of numbers.

It was a factor in ending the American Revolutionary War the Peace of Paris negotiations were reliant on news from the siege, particularly at its climax.

Gibraltar Relieved By Sir George Rodney by Dominic Serres, 1782. Admiral George Rodney’s relief fleet at Gibraltar with captured Spanish battleships from the Battle of Cape St Vincent in January 1780

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This means you, Manuel!

Nothing to add here…

Today is the birthday, in 1949, of John Illsley, English musician, best known as bass guitarist of the rock band Dire Straits who had the 1985 US No.1 single ‘Money For Nothing’ the 1986 UK No.2 single ‘Walk Of Life’ and the 1985 world wide No.1 album Brothers In Arms. Illsley owns a local pub, the ‘East End Arms’, between Lymington and Beaulieu, which has been listed by critics as one of the “Fifty Best Pubs Around Britain”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd9TlGDZGkI