The Midland Railway War Memorial is a First World War memorial in Derby,
England, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. It commemorates employees of the
Midland Railway who died while serving in the First World War. The
Midland was the largest employer in Derby; around a third of the
company's workforce left to fight and 2,833 were killed. The memorial
consists of a cenotaph surrounded on three sides by a screen wall.
Affixed to the wall are bronze plaques which list the names of the dead.
The cenotaph is surmounted by a recumbent effigy of a soldier, covered
by a coat and resting on a catafalque. Lutyens anonymises the soldier by
lifting him high above eye level. The Midland published a book of
remembrance, and sent a copy to the family of each man listed on the
memorial. Unveiled on 15 December 1921, the memorial stands in a
conservation area and is a Grade II* listed building. Repairs were
undertaken in 2010 after several stolen bronze plaques were recovered.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Railway_War_Memorial>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1833:
Yagan, a Noongar warrior wanted for leading attacks on British
colonists in Western Australia, was killed, becoming a symbol of the
unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of indigenous Australians by
colonial settlers.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yagan>
1936:
New York City's Triborough Bridge, the "biggest traffic machine
ever built", opened to traffic.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Bridge>
1960:
To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee featuring themes
of racial injustice and the loss of innocence in the Deep South of
America, was published.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird>
2010:
The Islamist militia group Al-Shabaab carried out multiple
suicide bombings in Kampala, Uganda, killing 74 people and injuring 85
others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Kampala_bombings>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
overpopulation:
(biology, demography) An excessive number of occupants (people, animals,
plants, etc.) in a particular area; specifically, when the number of
occupants exceeds the ability of that area to provide for them.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/overpopulation>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the
people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of
privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries,
the feeling of vitality everywhere.
--E. B. White
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._B._White>
Show replies by date