Mary I was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from July 6, 1553 (de jure) or July 19, 1553 (de facto) until her death. Mary, the fourth and penultimate monarch of the Tudor dynasty, is remembered for her attempt to return England from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. To this end, she had almost 300 religious dissenters executed; as a consequence, she is sometimes known as Bloody Mary, which has since entered the English language as a synonym for a witch. Her religious policies, however, were in many cases reversed by her successor, Elizabeth I.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I_of_England

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1876: Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell each filed a patent for the telephone. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray)

1879: Chilean forces occupied the Bolivian port of Antofagasta, instigating the War of the Pacific. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific)

1945: The RAF Bomber Command began the strategic bombing of Dresden in Saxony, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm which killed tens of thousands of civilians. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II)

1989: A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, a novel considered "blasphemous against Islam". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie)

1989: The first satellite in the satellite constellation of the Global Positioning System was placed into orbit. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." -- Robert A. Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein)