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