The Yeomanry Cavalry was the mounted component of the British Volunteer
Corps, a military auxiliary established in the late 18th century. When
the Volunteer Corps was disbanded after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815,
the yeomanry – recruited from the middle and upper classes – was
retained as a politically reliable institution that could act as a
mounted police force. It became infamous after playing a leading part in
the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, and its policing role declined as
civilian police forces were established in the mid-19th century. The
yeomanry struggled to find a place in the military establishment, and it
survived largely because of its members' political influence and
willingness to subsidise it financially. It found a new relevance when
the Second Boer War revealed a need for mounted infantry. It was
reorganised in 1901 as the Imperial Yeomanry, and in 1908 it ceased to
be a discrete institution when all volunteer auxiliaries were
amalgamated into the Territorial Force.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeomanry_Cavalry>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1968:
Following the deaths of two employees on the job, black
sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, agreed to begin a strike that
would last more than two months.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_sanitation_strike>
1990:
Anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, having been a political
prisoner for 27 years, was released from Victor Verster Prison near
Paarl, South Africa.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela>
2001:
The Anna Kournikova computer worm, which went on to affect
millions of users worldwide, was released by a 20-year-old Dutch
student.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Kournikova_%28computer_virus%29>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
radium:
1. The chemical element (symbol Ra) with an atomic number of 88. It is a
soft, shiny and silvery radioactive alkaline earth metal.
2. (textiles, dated) A type of cloth woven from silk or synthetic yarn,
often with a shiny appearance.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/radium>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our
house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of
energy — sun, wind and tide. … I'd put my money on the sun and solar
energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil
and coal run out before we tackle that.
--Thomas Edison
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison>