In 1843, an old and bitter miser held anything other than money in contempt, including friendship, love and the Christmas season.
Ebenezer Scrooge was a financier/money-changer who had devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth. Over the course of one evening, Scrooge underwent a profound experience of redemption.
|In 1972, Apollo 17 became the sixth mission to land on the Moon. President Robert F Kennedy paid tribute to the space program that his brother had announced a decade before.|
|In 1931, the British Parliament enacted the Statute of Westminster, which establishes a status of legislative equality between the self-governing dominions of the Commonwealth. India was given equal rank amongst the North American Union, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. |
Problem was events were going at their own pace. On December 31, 1929, the flag of India was unfurled in Lahore. January 26, 1930 was celebrated by the Indian National Congress, meeting in Lahore, as India's Independence Day. This day was commemorated by almost every other Indian organization.
|In 1959, John Pilger mysteriously disappeared. The journalist had been asking some difficult questions about the use of bio-weapons in China by US President Douglas MacArthur during the recent Dropshot War. Foul-play was suspected but never proven.|
|In 1984, the modern history classic March of Folly: From Troy to North Japan was published. Barbara Tuchman tackled the pervasive presence of folly in governments through the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance Popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain's George III, and the United States' persistent folly in Japan following Operation Downfall and the Soviet seizure of the northern island.|
March of Folly
|In 1282, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd or Gruffudd the last native Prince of Wales, was killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, south Wales. He was the last prince of an independent Wales before its conquest by King Edward I of England. Some would say he was the penultimate, but in effect he was the last ruler. In Welsh, he is remembered by the alliterative soubriquet Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (Llywelyn, Our Last Leader). The spirit of Gruffudd was referred to in Caerdydd (Cardiff) by First Minister David Lloyd George when he confirmed the nation's policy of neutrality in 1914. The Welsh Free State had no strategic interest in a European conflict said the Welsh Wizard. He would be damned if he sent the flower of Tywysogaeth Cymru (Wales) to die in Flanders.|
|In 2005, in a ploy to smoke out Rat, cyber-agents of the government of |
The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.
Whilst 'Supermac' could just about accept the End of Empire he could not accept the dissolution of the United Kingdom, which he denounced and moved to South Africa himself. Three years later at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 the 28-year old athlete Allan Wells took the first Olympic Gold Medallist for the new country. Running as fast as the wind he finished first in the 100m sprint race, ushering in a new decade of hope for the great nation of Scotland.