The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of Her Majesty's
Government and so exercises many of the executive functions nominally
vested in the Sovereign, who is head of state. According to custom,
the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet are accountable for their
actions to Parliament, of which they are members by (modern)
convention. The current Prime Minister is Tony Blair of the Labour
Party, who has been in office since 1997. As the title suggests, the
Prime Minister is the monarch's principal advisor. Historically, the
monarch's chief minister might have held any of a number of offices:
Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord High Steward,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Privy Seal, or Secretary of State
among others. With the emergence, in the 18th century, of government
by a cabinet of these ministers, its head came in time to be called
the "Prime Minister"; to this day the Prime Minister always also
holds
one of the more specific ministerial positions, usually that of First
Lord of the Treasury, if only in a nominal sense. Sir Robert Walpole
is generally regarded as the first Prime Minister in the modern
sense.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom
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Today's selected anniversaries:
622:
Beginning of the Islamic calendar.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_calendar)
1918:
Russian Revolution: Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
and his family at Ekaterinburg.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia)
1945:
Manhattan Project: "Trinity", the first nuclear test explosion, was
detonated near Alamogordo, New Mexico, United States.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_test)
1979:
Saddam Hussein took over as President of Iraq, succeeding Ahmed
Hassan al-Bakr.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein)
1994:
The planet Jupiter was hit by fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9
comet.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoemaker-Levy_9)
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Wikiquote of the day:
"If you build it, he will come." -- "The Voice" in Field of Dreams
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Field_of_Dreams)