Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) was a British statesman of the Conservative Party who served as Prime Minister from May 1937 to May 1940. He became a Member of Parliament in the 1918 general election. He was rapidly promoted in 1923 and, after a short-lived Labour-led government, returned as Minister of Health from 1924 to 1929, introducing a range of reform measures. He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the National Government in 1931. As Prime Minister, he adopted a foreign policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany, conceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Agreement of September 1938. This policy was widely popular among the British at the time. On 3 September 1939, as Germany was invading Poland, the UK declared war on Germany. Chamberlain led Britain through the first eight months of World War II, but resigned the premiership after the Allies were forced to retreat from Norway.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1190:

Third Crusade: Frederick Barbarossa drowned in the Saleph River in Anatolia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

1692:

Bridget Bishop became the first person executed for witchcraft in the Salem witch trials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Bishop

1878:

The League of Prizren was officially founded "to struggle in arms to defend the wholeness of the territories of Albania". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Prizren

1918:

World War I: Italian torpedo boats sank the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought SMS Szent István off the Dalmatian coast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Szent_Istv%C3%A1n

2008:

War in Afghanistan: An airstrike by the United States resulted in the deaths of eleven paramilitary troops of the Pakistan Army Frontier Corps and eight Taliban fighters in Pakistan's tribal areas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gora_Prai_airstrike

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

pizzazz:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pizzazz

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it — the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.   --Saul Bellow https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Saul_Bellow