On this day in 1708, Queen Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia Bill – the last time a a monarch vetoed British legislation.
Anne was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 8 March 1702, and Queen of Great Britain and Ireland following the ratification of the Acts of Union 1707 merging the kingdoms of England and Scotland, until her death in 1714. Anne was born during the reign of her uncle King Charles II. Her father was Charles’s younger brother and heir presumptive, James, whose suspected Roman Catholicism was unpopular in England. On Charles’s instructions, Anne and her elder sister Mary were raised as Anglicans. Mary married her Dutch Protestant cousin, William III of Orange, in 1677, and Anne married Prince George of Denmark, a Lutheran, in 1683.
On Charles’s death in 1685, James succeeded to the throne, but three years later he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Mary and William became joint monarchs. After Mary’s death in 1694, William reigned alone until his own death in 1702, when Anne succeeded him.
Anne was plagued by poor health throughout her life. Despite 17 pregnancies, she died without surviving issue and was the last monarch of the House of Stuart. The loss of her young son, Prince William, precipitated a potential succession crisis. Under the Act of Settlement 1701, which excluded all Catholics, Anne was succeeded by her second cousin George I of the House of Hanover.
The Scottish Militia Bill was intended to arm the Scottish militia, which had not been recreated at the Restoration. On the day the bill was meant to be signed, news came that the French were sailing toward Scotland for the planned invasion of 1708 and there was suspicion that a significant portion of the Scottish population might be disloyal. Therefore, support for a veto was strong and the Queen refused her royal assent to the bill.
On this day in 1831, the French Foreign Legion, Légion étrangère, also known simply as la Légion, was created by King Louis Philippe. The Legion is a corps of the French Army created to allow foreign nationals into French service. It formed part of the Armée d’Afrique, French Army units associated with France’s colonial project in North Africa, until the end of the Algerian War in 1962.
Legionnaires are today renowned as highly trained soldiers whose training focuses on traditional military skills and on the Legion’s strong esprit de corps, as its men come from different countries with different cultures. Consequently, training is often described as not only physically challenging, but also very stressful psychologically. Legionnaires may apply for French citizenship after three years’ service, or immediately after being wounded in the line of duty: This latter provision is known as “Français par le sang versé” (“French by spilled blood”).
Members come from 140 countries. In the past, legionnaires were forced to enlist under a pseudonym (“declared identity”). This policy was designed to allow recruits who wanted to restart their lives to enlist. The Legion held the belief that it was fairer to make all new recruits use declared identities. French citizens can enlist under a declared, fictitious, foreign citizenship (generally, a francophone one, often that of Belgium, Canada, or Switzerland). As of 20 September 2010, new recruits may enlist under their real identities or under declared identities. Recruits who do enlist with declared identities may, after one year’s service, regularize their situations under their true identities. After serving in the Foreign Legion for three years, a legionnaire may apply for French citizenship.
As the Foreign Legion is composed of soldiers of different nationalities and backgrounds, it is necessary to develop an intense esprit de corps, which is achieved through specific traditions, the loyalty of its legionnaires, the quality of their training, and the pride of being a soldier in an elite unit. n contrast to all other French Army units, the motto embroidered on the Foreign Legion’s regimental flags is not Honneur et Patrie (Honour and Fatherland) but Honneur et Fidélité (Honor and Fidelity).Legio Patria Nostra (in French La Légion est notre Patrie, in English The Legion is our Fatherland) is the Latin motto of the Foreign Legion.
Because of its traditional slower marching pace, the Foreign Legion is always the last unit marching in any parade
Repossessions are ruthless…
A proper Tramp Stamp…
Where to store your cat…
Bada Bing!
I got my shot for Shingles today. Just to be safe, l also got one for Vinyl Siding too!
Turns out you can just buy a birthday cake anytime and eat it yourself. Nobody checks.
Are the conservatives more afraid of the drag queens or the books they’re reading to the kids?
I have this cool phone app that shows me what I would look like as an old person. It’s called “camera.”
There is no bigger test of patience than using a remote to type your email address on a TV.
Does anyone know when W-2s for Walmart’s self checkout will be sent out?
I thought Ariana Grande was a font.
Every time I go out in public, the public is there. I can’t keep living like this!
I’m so poor I rub cologne from magazines on my shirt. When people say, “Oh, you smell good, what is that?” I say, “Page 14.”
I heard they’re building a mirror factory in my town. I could see myself working there.
So……where exactly are all these clinics that clinically approve everything?
I’m eating a second cookie because I ate the first one absentmindedly and didn’t appreciate it enough.
A man has passed out on the Ferris Wheel at the local fair. Paramedics on site say he is slowly coming around.
I will also be posting telepathically today. So if you think of something funny, that was me.
Guy in emergency room with several broken limbs. “But those pants DID make her butt look big!”
Why did they name them sea-monkeys when ‘shrimpanzees’ was sitting right there?!
Cop: Do you know why I stopped you? Me: Looking back at my trailer full of donkeys… “Because I’m hauling ass?”
Any pan can be a non-stick pan if you non-cook in it.
That look you get on your face when you say you’re bored and someone suggests some form of exercise.
The spaces between ladder rungs have increased because Americans are getting taller. Manufacturers claim it’s due to climb it change.
Today is the anniversary of the première performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, Nabucco. It is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed in 1841 by Giuseppe Verdi. It is the opera that is considered to have permanently established Verdi’s reputation as a composer. The opera follows the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted, conquered and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian king Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar II). The historical events are used as background for a romantic and political plot.
the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (known as Va, pensiero) from the third act of the opera Nabucco was used an anthem for Italian patriots, who were seeking to unify their country and free it from foreign control in the years up to 1861 (the chorus’s theme of exiles singing about their homeland, and its lines such as O mia patria, si bella e perduta / “O my country, so lovely and so lost” were thought to have resonated with many Italians).
Verdi’s operas remain among the most popular in the repertoire today. In addition to Nabucco, Aida, Rigoletto, La Traviata, Otello and Falstaff are produced regularly around the world.
Today is the anniversary of the 1857 decision of the Supreme Court – Dred Scott v. Sandford. It held that the United States Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens.
The decision involved the case of Dred Scott, an enslaved black man whose owners had taken him from Missouri, a slave-holding state, into Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal. When his owners later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom and claimed that because he had been taken into “free” U.S. territory, he had automatically been freed and was legally no longer a slave.
In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision against Scott. In an opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court ruled that people of African descent “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States”.
Although Chief Justice Taney and several other justices hoped the decision would settle the slavery controversy, which was increasingly dividing the American public, the decision only exacerbated interstate tension. In 1865, after the Union‘s victory in the Civil War, the Court’s ruling in Dred Scott was superseded by passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery, and by Congress with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 conferring full citizenship and equal rights flowing from it. After Southern lawyers and courts countermanded this federal law with state law, Congress and 3/4 of the states in 1868 constitutionalized the 1866 Act by enacting the Fourteenth Amendment, whose first section guaranteed citizenship for “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Today is the anniversary of the 1770 Boston Massacre, known in Great Britain as the Incident on King Street. It was a confrontation on March 5, 1770 during the American Revolution in Boston in what was then the colonial-era Province of Massachusetts Bay.
In the confrontation, nine British soldiers shot several in a crowd, estimated between 300 and 400, who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. Five American colonists were killed. The event was subsequently described as “a massacre” by Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and other leading Patriots who later became central proponents of independence during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War.
Amid tense relations between the civilians and the soldiers, a mob formed around a British sentry and verbally abused him. He was eventually supported by seven additional soldiers, led by Captain Thomas Preston, who were hit by clubs, stones, and snowballs. Eventually, one soldier fired, prompting the others to fire without an order by Preston. The gunfire instantly killed three people and wounded eight others, two of whom later died of their wounds.
Eight soldiers, one officer, and four civilians were arrested and charged with murder, and they were defended in court by attorney, and future U.S. president, John Adams. Six of the soldiers were acquitted; the other two were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to branding on the thumb, according to the law at that time.
The Boston Massacre is considered one of the most significant events that turned colonial sentiment against King George III and British Parliamentary authority. John Adams wrote that the “foundation of American independence was laid” on March 5, 1770, and Samuel Adams and other Patriots used annual commemorations (Massacre Day) to encourage public sentiment toward independence.
A variation of Paul Revere’s famous engraving, produced just prior to the American Civil War, which emphasizes Crispus Attucks, the black man in the center who became an important symbol for abolitionists
Unfortunate headline….
Today is the birthday, in 1951, of English singer and actress Elaine Page, best known for her work in musical theatre. Paige played Eva Perón in the first production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita in 1978 which for this role won the Laurence Olivier Award for Performance of the Year in a musical. She had the 1985 UK No.1 single with Barbara Dickson from the musical Chess ‘I Know Him So Well’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gd_ohoPzYc
Comments