Sir Vernon Sturdee (1890–1966) was an Australian Army officer. During the First World War he participated in the landing at Gallipoli and the fighting on the Western Front. Promotion was stagnant between the wars, and he remained at his wartime rank of lieutenant colonel until 1935. He had little faith in the strategy of basing a fleet at Singapore, and warned that the Army would have to face a well-equipped Japan. As Chief of the General Staff during the Second World War, he conducted a doomed defence of the islands to the north of Australia against the Japanese. He later commanded the First Army in New Guinea in 1944–45, directing the fighting at Aitape and on New Britain and Bougainville. He was charged with destroying the enemy without committing his troops to battles that were beyond their strength. When the war ended, he took the surrender of Japanese forces at Rabaul. He succeeded Sir Thomas Blamey as Commander in Chief of the Australian Military Forces in December 1945, and was Chief of the General Staff again from 1946 to 1950. During this time, he had to demobilise the wartime Army while fielding and supporting part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Sturdee

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1520:

Citizens of Toledo, Castile, who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V, rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Comuneros

1847:

New Zealand Wars: A minor Māori chief was accidentally shot by a junior British Army officer in the Petre settlement of New Zealand's North Island, triggering the Wanganui Campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanganui_Campaign

1912:

American Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Quimby

1945:

World War II: Nearly one million Soviet soldiers began the Battle of the Seelow Heights against the "Gates of Berlin". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Seelow_Heights

2007:

In one of the deadliest shooting incidents in United States history, a gunman killed 32 people and wounded over 20 more before committing suicide at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

heir apparent: (usually monarchy) Someone who will definitely inherit, assuming he survives the one from whom he is inheriting. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heir_apparent

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The gods conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have reasons for so doing. Pay attention to this. … The Emperor Julian's morals were almost those of St. Gregory Nazianzen. There is nothing in this but what is natural and usual. The transformations undergone by morals and ideas are never sudden. The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly, and are only seen from afar. Christianity did not secure a foothold until such time as the condition of morals accommodated itself to it, and as Christianity itself had become adjusted to the condition of morals. It was unable to substitute itself for paganism until such time as paganism came to resemble it, and itself came to resemble paganism.   --Anatole France https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France