Nelson's Pillar was a large granite column capped by a statue of Horatio
Nelson, erected in the centre of O'Connell Street, Dublin, Ireland in
1809. It was severely damaged by explosives in March 1966 and demolished
a week later. The monument was erected after the euphoria following
Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It proved a popular
tourist attraction but provoked aesthetic and political controversy, and
there were frequent calls for it to be removed, or replaced with a
memorial to an Irish hero. Nevertheless it remained, even after Ireland
became a republic in 1948. Although influential literary figures
defended the Pillar on historical and cultural grounds, its destruction
just before the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising was, on the whole,
well received by the Irish public. The police could not identify those
responsible; when in 2010 a former republican activist admitted planting
the explosives, he was not charged. The Pillar was finally replaced in
2003 with the Spire of Dublin. Relics of the Pillar are found in various
Dublin locations, and its memory is preserved in numerous works of Irish
literature.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson%27s_Pillar>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1479 BC:
Thutmose III (statue pictured) became the sixth Pharaoh of
the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, although during the first 22 years of
the reign he was co-regent with his aunt, Hatshepsut.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thutmose_III>
1704:
The first issue of The Boston News-Letter, the first
continuously published newspaper in British North America, was
published.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boston_News-Letter>
1916:
Irish republicans led by Patrick Pearse began the Easter Rising
against British rule in Ireland, and proclaimed the Irish Republic an
independent state.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising>
1933:
Nazi Germany began its persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses by
shutting down the Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_in_Nazi_Germany>
2013:
A building in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka, Bangladesh,
collapsed, resulting in over 1,100 deaths, making it the deadliest
accidental structural failure in modern human history.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
have legs:
1. (idiomatic) To have endurance; to have prospects to exist or go on for a
long time.
2. (nautical) To have speed.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/have_legs>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
things explain each other, Not themselves.
--George Oppen
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Oppen>