Dave Gallaher (30 October 1873 – 4 October 1917) was a New Zealand
rugby union footballer and the captain of the 1905–06 Original All
Blacks. They were the first representative New Zealand team to tour the
British Isles, winning 34 out of 35 matches on their world tour. With
his vice-captain Billy Stead, Gallaher co-wrote the classic rugby text
The Complete Rugby Footballer. Retiring as a player after the tour, he
took up coaching, and was a selector for both Auckland and New Zealand
for most of the following decade. The Originals helped to cement rugby
as New Zealand's national sport, but Gallaher's role as wing-forward
contributed to decades of strain between the rugby authorities of New
Zealand and the Home Nations, and the International Rugby Football Board
effectively outlawed the position in 1931. During the First World War,
Gallaher was killed at the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium. He has
been inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame and New Zealand Sports
Hall of Fame. The Gallaher Shield is awarded annually to the winner of
Auckland's club championship, and the Dave Gallaher Trophy is contested
between the national teams of France and New Zealand.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Gallaher>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1806:
War of the Fourth Coalition: Believing they were massively
outnumbered, the 5,300-man German garrison at Stettin, Prussia (now
Szczecin, Poland), surrendered to a much smaller French force without a
fight.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitulation_of_Stettin>
1888:
King Lobengula of Matabeleland granted the Rudd Concession to
agents of Cecil Rhodes, setting in motion the creation of the British
South Africa Company.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudd_Concession>
1918:
The Armistice of Mudros was signed in Moudros in the Lesbos
Prefecture, Greece, ending the hostilities in the Middle-Eastern theatre
of World War I, and paving the way for the occupation of Constantinople
and the subsequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_of_Mudros>
1961:
The Soviet hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon
ever detonated, was set off over Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic
Ocean as a test.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba>
1983:
As the military dictatorship came to an end, Argentina's first
democratic election in a decade resulted in Raúl Alfonsín being
elected President of Argentina.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_general_election,_1983>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
horripilate:
(transitive, intransitive) To bristle in fear or horror; to have goose
bumps or goose pimples.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/horripilate>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the
republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and
concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble
apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our
Constitution.
--John Adams
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Adams>