Nelson's Pillar was a large granite column capped by a statue of Horatio Nelson, erected in the centre of O'Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland, in 1809. It was severely damaged by explosives in March 1966 and demolished a week later. The monument was erected after the euphoria following Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It proved a popular tourist attraction but provoked aesthetic and political controversy, and there were frequent calls for it to be removed, or replaced with a memorial to an Irish hero. Nevertheless it remained. Its destruction just before the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising was, on the whole, well received by the Irish public. The police could identify no one responsible; when in 2000 a former republican activist admitted planting the explosives, he was not charged. Relics of the Pillar are found in various Dublin locations, and its memory is preserved in numerous works of Irish literature.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson%27s_Pillar

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1860:

Japanese chief minister Ii Naosuke was assassinated by rōnin samurai upset with his role in opening Japan to foreign powers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakuradamon_Incident_%281860%29

1946:

The British Cabinet Mission arrived in New Delhi to discuss the transfer of power from the colonial government to Indian leadership. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Cabinet_Mission_to_India

1980:

One day after making a plea to Salvadoran soldiers to stop carrying out the government's repression, Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated while celebrating Mass in San Salvador. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero

2008:

Led by Jigme Thinley, the Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party won 45 of 47 seats in the country's first National Assembly election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Bhutanese_National_Assembly_election

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

dephlogisticated air: (chemistry, historical) Oxygen gas, as originally thought to be air deprived of phlogiston (“the hypothetical fiery principle formerly assumed to be a necessary constituent of combustible bodies and to be given up by them in burning”). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dephlogisticated_air

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The first thing I remember about the world — and I pray that it may be the last — is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which is, at once, the glory and desolation of homo sapiens, provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.   --Malcolm Muggeridge https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Malcolm_Muggeridge