The Gloucestershire Regiment (1881–1994) was a line infantry regiment
of the British Army, formed from two regiments originally raised in 1694
and 1758, which first saw action in the Second Boer War. During the
First World War, 16 battalions fought under the regiment’s colours,
winning 72 different battle honours. In the Second World War, the 2nd
and 5th Battalions fought in the Battle of France. Most of the 2nd
Battalion soldiers were taken prisoner in the Battle of Dunkirk, but the
rebuilt unit returned to France on D-Day at Gold Beach. The 1st
Battalion saw action during the Japanese conquest of Burma, and the 10th
Battalion fought in the Burma Campaign 1944–45. During the Korean War,
the 1st Battalion held out for three nights against overwhelming Chinese
forces in the Battle of the Imjin River, and received the American
Presidential Unit Citation. The stand was described by the commander of
the United Nations forces as "the most outstanding example of unit
bravery in modern war".
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucestershire_Regiment>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1500:
Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral and his crew landed
in present day Brazil and claimed the land for Portugal.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_%C3%81lvares_Cabral>
1889:
Over 50,000 people rushed to claim a piece of the available two
million acres (8,000 km2) in the Unassigned Lands, the present-day U.S.
state of Oklahoma, entirely founding the brand-new Oklahoma City.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Rush_of_1889>
1915:
The Germans released chlorine gas in the Second Battle of
Ypres, causing over 6,000 casualties, with many deaths within ten
minutes by asphyxiation in the first large-scale successful use of
poison gas in World War I.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Ypres>
1948:
Civil War in Mandatory Palestine: The Jewish paramilitary group
Haganah captured Haifa from the Arab Liberation Army.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Haifa_(1948)>
2013:
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested two men who were
plotting to commit terrorist attacks against Via Rail Canada operations.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Via_Rail_Canada_terrorism_plot>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
Gaia:
1. (ecology) The ecosystem of the Earth regarded as a self-regulating
organism.
2. Alternative form of Gaea (“Greek goddess personifying the Earth”).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gaia>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of
state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility
for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for
achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that
these weapons, as they were in fact used, dramatized so mercilessly the
inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no
vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the
physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot
lose.
--Robert Oppenheimer
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer>
Show replies by thread