100px|Hermann Detzner

Hermann Detzner (1882–1970) was an officer in the German colonial security force in Kamerun and German New Guinea, as well as a surveyor, an engineer, an adventurer, and a writer. In early 1914, the German government sent Detzner to explore and chart the interior of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the imperial protectorate on the island of New Guinea. When World War I broke out in Europe, he was well into the interior, without radio contact. He refused to surrender to Australian troops when they occupied German New Guinea, concealing himself in the jungle with a band of approximately 20 soldiers. For four years, Detzner and his troops provocatively marched through the bush. He explored areas of the Guinean interior formerly unseen by Europeans and surrendered in full dress uniform, flying the Imperial flag, to Australian forces in January 1919. He wrote a book about his adventures that achieved notoriety in Great Britain and Germany, entered three printings, and was translated into French, English, Finnish and Swedish. He received a position in the Imperial Colonial Archives, and appeared frequently on the lecture circuit throughout the 1920s. In the late 1920s, scientific portions of his book were discredited. In 1932, he admitted that he had mixed fact and fiction and, after that time, eschewed public life. (more...)

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1793:

Marie Antoinette, queen consort of Louis XVII, was guillotined at the Place de la Révolution in Paris at the height of the French Revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette

1834:

Most of the Palace of Westminster in London was destroyed in a fire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Parliament

1916:

Margaret Sanger established the United States' first family planning clinic in Brooklyn, New York. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger

1934:

Long March: Surrounded by Kuomintang troops, Zhou Enlai, Bo Gu, and Otto Braun led a breakout of 130,000 Red Army soldiers and civilians from Jiangxi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March

1986:

Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner made his ascent of Lhotse, making him the first person to climb all fourteen "eight-thousanders". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Messner

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

nigh (v): To draw nigh (to); to approach; to come near: nighing his hour, death is nighing http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nigh

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected. --William O. Douglas http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas