Jeremy Thorpe (29 April 1929 – 4 December 2014) was a British politician who served as Member of Parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979, and as leader of the Liberal Party between 1967 and 1976. After graduating from Oxford University, he became one of the Liberals' brightest stars in the 1950s. As party leader, Thorpe capitalised on the growing unpopularity of the Conservative and Labour parties to lead the Liberals through a period of electoral success. This culminated in the general election of February 1974, when the party won 6 million votes. In May 1979 he was tried at the Old Bailey on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder, arising from an earlier relationship with Norman Scott, a former model. Thorpe was acquitted on all charges, but the case, and the scandal, ended his political career. By the time of his death he was honoured for his record as an internationalist, a supporter of human rights, and an opponent of apartheid and all forms of racism.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1903:

A 30 million cubic-metre landslide buried the town of Frank, Northwest Territories, and killed at least 70 of the town's residents, making it the deadliest landslide in Canadian history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Slide

1945:

The Holocaust: The Seventh U.S. Army liberated Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, and allegedly wounded and killed German prisoners of war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_liberation_reprisals

1975:

Vietnam War: North Vietnam concluded its East Sea Campaign by capturing all of the Spratly Islands that were being held by South Vietnam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Sea_Campaign

2011:

A worldwide television audience of 300 million people watched the wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_of_Prince_William_and_Catherine_Middleton

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

curate's egg: (idiomatic) A thing which has good and bad parts, but is overall spoilt by the bad. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curate%27s_egg

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The principal aim of mathematical education is to develop certain faculties of the mind, and among these intuition is not the least precious. It is through it that the mathematical world remains in touch with the real world, and even if pure mathematics could do without it, we should still have to have recourse to it to fill up the gulf that separates the symbol from reality.   --Henri Poincaré https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9