George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland, from 1 August 1714 until his death. At the age of 54, he ascended the British throne as the first monarch of the House of Hanover. Although many bore closer blood-relationships to the childless Queen Anne, the Act of Settlement 1701, which prohibits Catholics from inheriting the throne, designated her cousin, Sophia of Hanover, as heiress to the throne. Sophia was Anne's closest living Protestant relative but died a matter of weeks before Anne leaving the Protestant succession to her son, George. In reaction, the Jacobites attempted to depose George and replace him with Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart, but their attempts failed. During George's reign in Britain, the powers of the monarchy diminished and the modern system of Cabinet government led by a Prime Minister underwent development. Towards the end of his reign, actual power was held by Sir Robert Walpole. George died on a trip to his native Hanover, where he was buried.
Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_I_of_Great_Britain
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1770: English explorer James Cook ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef)
1892: The Salvation Army's Limelight Department, one of the world's earliest film studios, was officially established in Melbourne, Australia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limelight_Department)
1937: Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and several senior officers of the Red Army were convicted in the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, a secret trial during the Great Purge in the Soviet Union.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_of_Trotskyist_Anti-Soviet_Military_Organiz...)
1963: Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burned himself to death in Saigon to protest the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's Ngô Đình Diệm administration. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c)
1963: The University of Alabama was desegregated as Governor of Alabama George Wallace stepped aside after a stand in the schoolhouse door. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace)
_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:
disingenuous: Not noble; unbecoming true honor or dignity; mean. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disingenuous)
_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:
Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks. -- Ben Jonson (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ben_Jonson)