Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. When Adolf Hitler continued his aggression, Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, and Chamberlain led Britain through the first eight months of the Second World War. His premiership was dominated by the question of policy towards the increasingly aggressive Germany, and his actions at Munich were widely popular among Britons. Chamberlain resigned the premiership on 10 May 1940, after the failed Allied incursion into Norway as he believed a government supported by all parties was essential, and the Labour and Liberal parties would not join a government headed by him. He was succeeded by Winston Churchill but remained very well regarded in Parliament, especially among Conservatives. Chamberlain's reputation remains controversial among historians, with the initial high regard for him being entirely eroded by books such as Guilty Men, published in his lifetime, which blamed Chamberlain and his associates for the Munich accord and for allegedly failing to prepare the country for war.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1503:

Christopher Columbus and his crew became the first Europeans to visit the Cayman Islands, naming them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayman_Islands

1775:

American Revolutionary War: A small force of American Patriots led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold captured, without significant injury or incident, the small British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga in New York. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Fort_Ticonderoga

1824:

The National Gallery in London opened to the public, in the former townhouse of the collector John Julius Angerstein. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gallery

1857:

The Sepoy Rebellion began as a mutiny of sepoys against the Company rule in India by the British East India Company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Rebellion_of_1857

1924:

J. Edgar Hoover became the first director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

evoke (v): To cause the manifestation of something (emotion, picture, etc.) in someone's mind or imagination http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/evoke

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Seeing a woman's child is like seeing a woman naked, in the way it changes how her face looks to you, how her face becomes less the whole story. --John Crowley http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Crowley