The Siege of Sidney Street of January 1911 was a gunfight in the East End of London. During an attempted jewellery robbery at Houndsditch by a gang of immigrant Latvians, their leader George Gardstein was mortally wounded. Two weeks later, the last two unapprehended suspects were tracked down at 100 Sidney Street in Stepney. Local residents were evacuated, and a gunfight broke out with the police. After a six-hour siege, a fire consumed the building, and the bodies of the two suspects were found within. One of the firemen, Superintendent Charles Pearson, was killed when the building collapsed. The siege marked the first time the police had requested army assistance in London to deal with an armed stand-off. It was also the first siege in Britain to be filmed, by Pathé News. Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, who was present at the siege, said that he gave no instructions to the police, but a Metropolitan police history of the event contradicted this. One of those arrested for the robbery had his conviction overturned on appeal; the rest were acquitted. The events were fictionalised in novels and in the films The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The Siege of Sidney Street (1960).

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1799:

Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland: A squadron of the navy of the Batavian Republic surrendered to the Royal Navy without a fight near Wieringen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlieter_Incident

1813:

Creek War: A force of Creeks belonging to the Red Sticks faction killed hundreds of settlers in Fort Mims in Alabama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Mims_massacre

1918:

Fanny Kaplan shot and wounded Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, one of the events leading to the Red Terror in the future Soviet Union, a repression against Socialist Revolutionary Party members and other political opponents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

1942:

Second World War: Erwin Rommel launched the last major Axis offensive of the Western Desert Campaign, attacking the British Eighth Army position near El Alamein, Egypt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alam_el_Halfa

1981:

President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar of Iran were assassinated in a bombing committed by the People's Mujahedin of Iran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad-Javad_Bahonar

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

skite: 1. (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) To boast. 2. (Northern Ireland) To skim or slide along a surface. 3. (Scotland, slang) To slip, such as on ice. 4. (Scotland, slang) To drink a large amount of alcohol. 5. (archaic, vulgar) To defecate, to shit. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skite

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.   --Warren Buffett https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett