Crabs and Beer!

Today is the birthday, in 1788, of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron. He was one of the major figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as being among the greatest British poets. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Byron was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. Following graduation, he traveled extensively in Europe, living for seven years in Italy, in Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, and Genoa, and then was forced to flee to England after receiving threats of lynching. During his stay in Italy, he would frequently visit his friend and fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later in life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence to fight the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a folk hero. He died leading a campaign in 1824, at the age of 36, from a fever contracted after the first and second sieges of Missolonghi.

Byron racked up numerous debts as a young man, owing to what his mother termed a “reckless disregard for money”. From 1809 to 1811, Byron went on the Grand Tour, then a customary part of the education of young noblemen. After the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), Byron became a celebrity. “He rapidly became the most brilliant star in the dazzling world of Regency London. He was sought after at every society venue, elected to several exclusive clubs, and frequented the most fashionable London drawing-rooms.

Involved at first in an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb (who called him “mad, bad and dangerous to know”) and with other lovers and also pressed by debt, he began to seek a suitable marriage, considering – amongst others – Annabella Millbanke. However, in 1813 he met for the first time in four years his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. Rumors of incest surrounded the pair; Augusta’s daughter Medora was suspected to have been Byron’s child. He also had relationships with Jane Elizabeth Harley, Countess of Oxford, Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli who was married at the time, and a certain number of adolescent boys including Nicolo Giraud, a young French-Greek lad who had been a model for the painter Lusieri before Byron found him. When Byron returned to Italy, he became involved with a number of boys in Venice but eventually settled on Loukas Chalandritsanos, age 15, who was with him when he was killed.

He was a magnificent poet and one of my favorites. Among is works are two I especially like: She Walks in Beauty and So, we’ll go no more a roving .

Portrait of Lord Byron (c. 1813)

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(another abbreviated post – hoping to be back to full strength next week.

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Or Thursday…

Today is the birthday, in 1960, of Michael Hutchence, singer, songwriter from Australian rock band INXS, who had the 1988 UK No.2 & US No.1 single ‘Need You Tonight’. Their 1987 album Kick has sold over 10m copies in the US alone and features four Top 10 singles; ‘Need You Tonight,’ ‘Devil Inside’, ‘New Sensation,’ and ‘Never Tear Us Apart.’ INXS has sold over 55 million records worldwide. Hutchence was found dead in his hotel suite in Sydney on 22nd Nov 1997 age 37. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93ywiGMDnQ

On this day in 1824, the Ashanti defeated a British army in the Gold Coast (now Ghana).

By 1817, the Ashanti were expanding with an army of about 20,000, in response to various British incursions, so the (British) African Company of Merchants which was operating in various ‘castles’ along the coast signed a treaty of friendship that recognized Ashanti claims to sovereignty over much of the coast. The British merchants, however, refused to pay the rents demanded by the Ashanti.

In 1820, another British mission headed by Joseph Dupuis arrived in Kumasi in an attempt to resolve the dispute. Dupuis signed a treaty that was denounced at the time as “a complete sell-out” that recognized the Ashanti claim to collect tribute from the coastal peoples; renounced the British claim to protect the coastal peoples from Ashanti raids and recognised the right of the Asantehene (King of the Ashanti) to “eradicate from his dominions the seeds of disobedience and insubordination”.

the British governor, Sir Charles MacCarthy, wrote to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Bathurst his belief that the Ashanti were “blustering” and “they were not prepared for war, but depended solely upon the terror of their name to bring us to seek a compromise, and I suppose to extort from the native people under our fort…a contributions of six hundred ounces of gold”. MacCarthy asked for and received permission to have the Royal African Corps redeployed from the Cape Colony (modern south-western South Africa) to the Gold Coast.

MacCarthy led an invading force from the Cape Coast in two columns. Moving out to confront the British were an Ashanti force of 10,000 men armed with their “Long Dane” muskets. MacCarthy failed to understand until it was too late for him that the Ashanti force that he was facing was the main Ashanti army instead of an advance-guard as he assumed.^[15] The governor was in the first group of 500, which lost contact with the second column when they encountered the Ashanti army of around 10,000, in the battle of Nsamankow. The British ran out of ammunition, suffered losses and were overrun. Almost all the British force were killed immediately while 20 managed to escape. MacCarthy, Ensign Wetherell, and his secretary Williams attempted to fall back. MacCarthy was wounded, however, and killed by a second shot shortly thereafter.

Some weeks later, a larger British force made up of White and Native troops came to a standstill with the same Ashanti army that had defeated MacCarthy’s force. The British army withdrew back to the coast with 176 dead and 677 men wounded.

Asante Warriors Displaying their weapons in a ceremony.

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Another abbreviated post today

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Today is the birthday, in 1950, of British singer and songwriter Billy Ocean. His 1984 single ‘Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run) peaked at No.1 in the US and Ocean won the 1985 Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for the song. He accumulated a series of international hit singles ‘When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going’ (1985 and the theme song for the film The Jewel of the Nile), ‘There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)’ (1986). In 1988, his single ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car’ reached No.1 in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNgcYGgtf8M

On this day in 1788, The main part of the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay. The First Fleet were eleven British ships which transported a group of settlers to mainland Australia, marking the beginning of the European colonisation of Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy vessels, three storeships and six convict transports under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip.

Governor Arthur Phillip rejected Botany Bay choosing instead Port Jackson (Now Sydney Harbor), to the north, as the site for the new colony; they arrived there on 26 January 1788, establishing the colony of New South Wales, as a penal colony which would become the first British settlement in Australia.

The fleet sailed from Portsmouth to Rio de Janeiro to Capetown and then across the vast Southern Ocean to Australia. This was one of the world’s greatest sea voyages – eleven vessels carrying about 1,487 people and stores had traveled for 252 days for more than 15,000 miles (24,000 km) without losing a ship. Forty-eight people died on the journey, a death rate of just over three percent.

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Abbreviated post today. Battle with influenza continues…

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♫ This I tell you brother, you can’t have one without the other ♫

Today is the birthday, in 1924, of American country music, western music and folk music artist singer-songwriter Slim Whitman. He had the 1955 UK No.1 single ‘Rose Marie’. Known for his yodeling abilities and his smooth, high, three-octave-range falsetto in a style christened as “countrypolitan”. In the 1990s and 2000s a new generation was exposed to Whitman through his songs featured in the film Mars Attacks!; his famed ‘Indian Love Call’ would kill the invading Martians every time the record was played. He died of heart failure on June 19, 2013 aged 90. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBuk1HXcz1k

On this day in 1362, the German town of Rungholt was completely wiped away by a storm tide in the North Sea. Rungholt was situated on the island of Strand. It and neighboring islands now form tidal flats in the North Sea.

The storm tide, known as the Grote Mandrenke (Great Drowning of Men) was an intense extratropical cyclone, coinciding with a new moon, which swept across the British Isles, the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Denmark (including Schleswig/Southern Jutland) around 16 January 1362, causing at least 25,000 deaths.

In the Medieval Warm Period, storms were stronger and sea levels were higher compared to the pre-industrial average due to higher temperatures., much like today. An immense storm tide from the North Sea swept far inland from England and the Netherlands to Denmark and the German coast, breaking up islands, making parts of the mainland into islands, and wiping out entire towns and districts. These included Rungholt, in North Frisia, Ravenser Odd in East Yorkshire, and the harbor of Dunwich in Suffolk. The storm destroyed a total of 44 villages. At least 25,000 people died, with estimates going as high as 100,000.

Local myth has it that one can still hear the church bells of Rungholt ringing underwater when sailing through the area on a calm night.

Reconstructed coastline of North Frisia before the Marcellus Flood of 1362. The red line shows the present coastline that was formed for the most part after this flood.
(from: Wikipedia: public domain)

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Follow the toothless people…

Today is the birthday, in 1959, of Nigerian-born British singer Helen Folasade Adu (Sade). She had the 1984 UK No.6 single ‘Your Love Is King’, and the 1985 US No.5 single ‘Smooth Operator’. Diamond Life (1984) reached No.2 on the UK Album Chart, selling over 1.2 million copies and won the Brit Award for Best British Album in 1985. Sade was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2002 for services to music, and stated her award was “a great gesture to me and all black women in England”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TYv2PhG89A

On this day in 1559, Queen Elizabeth I was crowned and anointed as Queen of England and Ireland. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudor. Her eventful reign, and its effect on history and culture, gave name to the Elizabethan era. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This arrangement would evolve into the Church of England.

In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings had been.^[3] One of her mottoes was video et taceo (“I see and keep silent”).^[4] In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. After the pope declared her illegitimate in 1570, which in theory released English Catholics from allegiance to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers’ secret service.

As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. The Elizabethan era is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, the prowess of English maritime adventurers, such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, and for the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighboring countries faced internal problems and religious civil wars that jeopardized their thrones. After the short, disastrous reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped to forge a sense of national identity.

Portrait commemorating the defeat of the Spanish Armada, depicted in the background. Elizabeth’s hand rests on the globe, symbolizing her international power.

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Today is the birthday, in 1948, of Ronnie Van Zant, vocalist with Lynyrd Skynyrd who had the 1974 US No. 8 single ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and the 1982 UK No. 21 single ‘Freebird’. Van Zant died in a plane crash between shows from Greenville, South Carolina to Baton Rouge, Louisiana on October 20th 1977 along with bandmates Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines. Remaining band members survived, although all were seriously injured. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GxWmSVv-cY