Ambrose Rookwood (c. 1578 – 31 January 1606) was a member of the
failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to replace the Protestant
English King James I with a Catholic monarch. Born into a wealthy
family of Catholic recusants, and educated by Jesuits at Flanders,
Rookwood became a horse-breeder. He was enlisted into the plot in
September 1605 by Robert Catesby, a religious zealot whose impatience
with James's treatment of English Catholics had grown so severe that he
conspired to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder, looking to kill
the king and much of the Protestant hierarchy. Rookwood's stable of
fine horses was seen as essential for the uprising to succeed. The plan
failed when the man left in charge of the gunpowder stored beneath the
House of Lords, Guy Fawkes, was discovered there and arrested. After
surviving an attack by the Sheriff of Worcestershire, Rookwood was
imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Rookwood>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1747:
The London Lock Hospital, the first clinic specialising in the
treatment of venereal diseases, opened.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Lock_Hospital>
1862:
American astronomer Alvan Graham Clark first observed the faint
white dwarf companion of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius>
1961:
Aboard NASA's Mercury-Redstone 2, Ham the Chimp became the
first hominid launched into outer space.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_%28chimpanzee%29>
2007:
Suspects were arrested in Birmingham, England, accused of
plotting to kidnap, and eventually behead, a Muslim British soldier
serving in Iraq.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_plot_to_behead_a_British_Muslim_soldier>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
Tiggerish:
(Britain) (Excessively) cheerful and exuberant; bouncy.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Tiggerish>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge
purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here
for.
--Norman Mailer
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norman_Mailer>
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