On this day

[Streathamite]

NVA was the American term. Viet Cong was pejorative.

Combined PAVN and PLAF units captured Saigon.

Surely NVA was regular North Vietnamese army, Viet Cong was undercover guerrilla insurgents wholly based in South Vietnam (ie NLF)

 

[seventh bullet]

It's just a little misunderstanding about the use of differing names. PAVN is the People's Army of Vietnam, the armed forces of the DRV (NVA was an American term).

Off the top of my head, The People's Liberation Armed Forces (for the liberation of the south), pejoratively known as the Viet Cong, an earlier name given to Communist insurgents fighting the Diem regime (the overlapping phases of struggle termed by them as 'Destruction of the Oppression' and rural 'Concerted Uprisings'), were the armed wing of the National Liberation Front, divided into broadly described rural and urban insurgents and better trained and armed 'main force' fighters under PAVN command.

The latter's activities were contingent on the strategic needs of the former, it was an adaptation of People's War after all. After Tet, PAVN took a more commanding role than they already had been doing in the south as ARVN and US troops really hammered the southerner's fighting capabilities.

 

[petee]

Well they kept that one bloody quiet. That's where I was growing up at the time, and I don't remember any publicity to that end

you're 145 years old?

 

[planetgeli]

Orgreave. June 18th 1984.

Never forget.

 

[Sprocket.]

View attachment 218253

Orgreave. June 18th 1984.

Never forget.

Never, we are the enemy within!
It’s a housing estate now.

 

[A380]

 

[Ax^]

just a day late

 

[Sprocket.]

Perhaps one of the better results of this incident is that before this, there were only three republics in Europe. By the end of 1918 there were thirteen.

 

[A380]

1 July 1916. First day of the battle of the Somme. Just on the first day 19,240 British* soldiers were killed.

By the end of the battle in November a million people had been killed. A million people.

* A huge number from what is now Northern Ireland

 

[A380]

7 July 2005

 

[yield]

Bosnia's Srebrenica massacre 25 years on - in pictures

 

[A380]

7th August 1840. Putting kids up chimneys banned.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

7th August 1840. Putting kids up chimneys banned.

View attachment 225433

Downhill ever since

 

[A380]

Downhill ever since

Kids today are all spoilt. Direct correlation.

 

[A380]

 

[A380]

Also Trafalgar Day.
21 October 1805

 

[A380]

18 November 1987. 31 people killed in a fire at Kings Cross Underground station because the escalators hadn’t been cleaned for years to save money.




Station officer Colin Townsley was commanding the first LFB pump on scene, he went down to conduct an initial assessment without BA. His body was later found next to that of a woman he has tried to save rather than escaping himself.

 

[brogdale]

 

[brogdale]

869 death of England's first patron saint at the hands of the Danish archers:

 

[brogdale]

and...who knew...

 

[brogdale]

And if you're reckoning on keeping the feast of St Edmund during this pandemic anniversary, this medieval rhyme may help with your provision buying?

Set garlike and pease, saint Edmund to please

 

[brogdale]

No prizes for guessing where he was buried.

 

[Sprocket.]

Bury, no not that one!
Doing his Saint Sebastian impression.

 

[Sprocket.]

Bury, no not that one!
Doing his Saint Sebastian impression.

He was a bit naive though. A gang of Vikings ask you if you believe in life after death and you say yes.

 

[brogdale]

He was a bit naive though. A gang of Vikings ask you if you believe in life after death and you say yes.

Not called the Great Heathen Army for nothing, eh?

 

[Sprocket.]

Not called the Great Heathen Army for nothing, eh?

Noisy ancestors!

 

[brogdale]

Noisy ancestors!

Having (really quite) garlic-laden ragu 'shepherds pie' & peas for tea tonight; hope the patron Saint of pandemics is pleased.

 

[platinumsage]

869 death of England's first patron saint at the hands of the Danish archers:

View attachment 239678

I once looked up the veracity of the 20th November date, suspecting it was just chosen as a convenient feast day, as there are no contemporary written accounts.

However it seems the earliest written account is by Abbo of Fleury, some 115 years after Edmund's death who heard it from Dunstan the Archbishop of Canterbury, who as a child heard it from Edmund's armour bearer. So there's a reasonable case that the tale wasn't embellished too much in the telling.

 

[Sprocket.]

I once looked up the veracity of the 20th November date, suspecting it was just chosen as a convenient feast day, as there are no contemporary written accounts.

However it seems the earliest written account is by Abbo of Fleury, some 115 years after Edmund's death who heard it from Dunstan the Archbishop of Canterbury, who as a child heard it from Edmund's armour bearer. So there's a reasonable case that the tale wasn't embellished too much in the telling.

Yes, alongside many of the made up pants we hang too much tradition on in the world.

 

[brogdale]

Mayflower dropped anchor off Cape Cod in 1620.