Alec Douglas-Home (1903–95) was a British Conservative politician who
served as Prime Minister from October 1963 to October 1964. His
reputation rests more on the two periods when he served as the UK
foreign minister than on his brief, uneventful premiership. As
parliamentary aide to Neville Chamberlain, he witnessed Chamberlain's
efforts to preserve peace before the Second World War. In 1951 he
inherited the earldom of Home and became a member of the House of Lords.
Under Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan he was
appointed to posts including Leader of the House of Lords and Foreign
Secretary. In October 1963 Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister. Home
was controversially chosen to succeed him, renouncing his earldom and
winning election to the House of Commons. He was criticised by the
Labour Party as an out-of-touch aristocrat, and he came over stiffly in
television interviews. After narrow defeat in the 1964 general election
he resigned as party leader; he later served under Edward Heath as
Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. After the
defeat of the Heath government in 1974 he retired from front-line
politics.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Douglas-Home>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
706:
In China, Emperor Zhongzong of Tang interred the final bodies in
the Qianling Mausoleum, which remained unopened until the 1960s.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianling_Mausoleum>
1890:
The U.S. Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, the first
United States government action to limit monopolies.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act>
1917:
White residents of East St. Louis, Illinois, burned entire
sections of the city and shot black inhabitants as they escaped the
flames.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_St._Louis_Riot>
1950:
A mentally ill Buddhist monk set fire to the Golden Pavilion at
Kinkaku-ji (restoration pictured), destroying what is now one of the
most popular tourist destinations in Japan.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkaku-ji>
1976:
More than a year after the end of the Vietnam War, North and
South Vietnam officially united under communist rule to form the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
geodesy:
Scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation
of earth, its gravitational field and geodynamic phenomena (polar
motion, earth tides, and crustal motion) in three‐dimensional,
time‐varying space.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/geodesy>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided,
only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity.
--Hermann Hesse
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse>