100px|Hermann Detzner
Hermann Detzner (1882–1970) was an officer in the German colonial
security force in Kamerun and German New Guinea, as well as a surveyor,
an engineer, an adventurer, and a writer. In early 1914, the German
government sent Detzner to explore and chart the interior of
Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the imperial protectorate on the island of New
Guinea. When World War I broke out in Europe, he was well into the
interior, without radio contact. He refused to surrender to Australian
troops when they occupied German New Guinea, concealing himself in the
jungle with a band of approximately 20 soldiers. For four years,
Detzner and his troops provocatively marched through the bush. He
explored areas of the Guinean interior formerly unseen by Europeans and
surrendered in full dress uniform, flying the Imperial flag, to
Australian forces in January 1919. He wrote a book about his adventures
that achieved notoriety in Great Britain and Germany, entered three
printings, and was translated into French, English, Finnish and
Swedish. He received a position in the Imperial Colonial Archives, and
appeared frequently on the lecture circuit throughout the 1920s. In the
late 1920s, scientific portions of his book were discredited. In 1932,
he admitted that he had mixed fact and fiction and, after that time,
eschewed public life. (more...)
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1793:
Marie Antoinette, queen consort of Louis XVII, was guillotined at the
Place de la Révolution in Paris at the height of the French Revolution.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette>
1834:
Most of the Palace of Westminster in London was destroyed in a fire.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Parliament>
1916:
Margaret Sanger established the United States' first family planning
clinic in Brooklyn, New York.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger>
1934:
Long March: Surrounded by Kuomintang troops, Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu, and
Otto Braun led a breakout of 130,000 Red Army soldiers and civilians
from Jiangxi.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March>
1986:
Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner made his ascent of Lhotse, making
him the first person to climb all fourteen "eight-thousanders".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Messner>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
nigh (v):
To draw nigh (to); to approach; to come near: nighing his hour, death
is nighing
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nigh>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are
protected.
--William O. Douglas
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas>