Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) was a British politician who served as
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940.
Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in
particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding
the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. When Adolf
Hitler continued his aggression, Britain declared war on Germany on 3
September 1939, and Chamberlain led Britain through the first eight
months of the Second World War. His premiership was dominated by the
question of policy towards the increasingly aggressive Germany, and his
actions at Munich were widely popular among Britons. Chamberlain
resigned the premiership on 10 May 1940, after the failed Allied
incursion into Norway as he believed a government supported by all
parties was essential, and the Labour and Liberal parties would not
join a government headed by him. He was succeeded by Winston Churchill
but remained very well regarded in Parliament, especially among
Conservatives. Chamberlain's reputation remains controversial among
historians, with the initial high regard for him being entirely eroded
by books such as Guilty Men, published in his lifetime, which blamed
Chamberlain and his associates for the Munich accord and for allegedly
failing to prepare the country for war.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1503:
Christopher Columbus and his crew became the first Europeans to visit
the Cayman Islands, naming them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea
turtles there.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayman_Islands>
1775:
American Revolutionary War: A small force of American Patriots led by
Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold captured, without significant
injury or incident, the small British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga in
New York.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Fort_Ticonderoga>
1824:
The National Gallery in London opened to the public, in the former
townhouse of the collector John Julius Angerstein.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gallery>
1857:
The Sepoy Rebellion began as a mutiny of sepoys against the Company
rule in India by the British East India Company.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rebellion_of_1857>
1924:
J. Edgar Hoover became the first director of the U.S. Federal Bureau
of Investigation.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
evoke (v):
To cause the manifestation of something (emotion, picture, etc.) in
someone's mind or imagination
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/evoke>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Seeing a woman's child is like seeing a woman naked, in the way it
changes how her face looks to you, how her face becomes less the whole
story.
--John Crowley
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Crowley>