Alice of Champagne (c. 1193 – 1246) was the eldest daughter of Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem and Count Henry II of Champagne. In 1210, Alice married her stepbrother King Hugh I of Cyprus, receiving the County of Jaffa as dowry. After her husband's death in 1218, she assumed the regency for their infant son, King Henry I. Her attempts to bolster her claim to Champagne and Brie in France failed. Due to a debate with her uncle Philip of Ibelin, she left Cyprus in 1223. In exile, she married Bohemond, the heir apparent to the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli, but their marriage was annulled. In 1229, she unsuccessfully laid claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem against the absent Conrad II. In 1240, she married Raoul of Nesle and the High Court of Jerusalem proclaimed them regents for Conrad in 1243, although their power was nominal. Raoul left the kingdom, and Alice, before the end of the year. Alice retained the regency until her death in 1246.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_of_Champagne
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1716:
Austro-Turkish War: The Ottoman army were defeated in their attempt to capture the Habsburgs-controlled Petrovaradin Fortress despite having double the number of soldiers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Petrovaradin
1816:
Sir John Barrow, secretary at the Admiralty, rejected a proposal to use Francis Ronalds's electrical telegraph, deeming it "wholly unnecessary". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Ronalds
1888:
Bertha Benz made the first long-distance automobile trip, driving 106 km (66 mi) from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, in a Benz Patent-Motorwagen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz
1949:
An earthquake registering 6.4 Ms struck near Ambato, Ecuador, killing 5,050 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Ambato_earthquake
1984:
A Biman Bangladesh Airlines aircraft crashed while attempting to land in Dhaka, killing 49 people in the deadliest aviation accident in Bangladeshi history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Biman_Bangladesh_Airlines_Fokker_F27_crash
2012:
An American white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six people and wounding four others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Sikh_temple_shooting
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
sub rosa: 1. Covertly or in secret; confidentially, privately, secretly. 2. Carried out confidentially or secretly. 3. Not formally stated; implicit, tacit, unspoken. 4. (US, law, slang) Covert surveillance video used as evidence against applicants for workers' compensation to show they are not in fact (seriously) injured. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sub_rosa
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
A century hence, 2000 may be viewed as quite a primitive period in human history. It's something to hope for. ... I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer — born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow. As an engineer, I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession. --Neil Armstrong https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong