What's the day today?

[Ibbie]

Twenty years ago, in 1996 on 15 June, the IRA exploded a bomb in the center of Manchester.

[Slasher]

It's a day off!

[Slasher]

It's the day after a day off.

Also on this day in 1788 the US Constitution came into effect after NH became the 9th State to ratify it.

And in 1527 Machiavelli fell off his perch aged 57.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Sheherazade). Still alive 20 June 1908. Not still alive 21 June 1908 at 64.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Operation Barbarossa started today in 1941, two days before Napoleon's effort in 1812. Both ultimately failed due to the inadequacies of French transport (the Germans heavily depended on trucks they'd nicked off the French in 1940, despite otherwise very good logistics by both armies, and to the Russian scorched earth tactics in both defences.
Scorched Earth has been banned under the Geneva Conventions since 1977.

[Magnus]

Today is Friday. Friday is the day when my daughter takes a piccy of my granddaughter and posts it to us. Little Airlie will be 1 on November 2, and my plan is to have a calendar for 2020 made up with all the Friday photographs in her first year.

[Ex-Ascot]

Today is my name day in Greece. It took a Peter who shares the same name day to remind me. You have to buy everyone drinks. Thankfully no one has realised. The only one on the island who has the same name as me was suprised I knew but don't think he knows my name.

[Slasher]

Today is another day off!

This shall be spent at my whiskey bar guzzling Glamis while perusing and decrypting July's roster. Quite a doozy next month.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a Mitsubishi oil tanker draughtsman in Hiroshima on business on this day in 1945, and survived the atomic bombing despite being less than 3km from Ground Zero.

He returned home to Nagasaki and, still heavily bandaged and deaf in one ear, managed to make it into work 3 days later. His supervisor had just ridiculed his description of the bombing and excuse for being off work when the Nagasaki bomb went off, also less than 3km away.
One presumes his boss was now more accepting of his excuse, but I'm sure we've all had bosses who wouldn't be.

He lived to the age of 93.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The Battle of Crecy took place today in 1346.
14,000 Englishmen, including 5,000 longbowmen and about 1,000 convicted criminals promised a pardon if they fought well,
30,000+ French; 12,000 French knights, 6,000 Genoese crossbowmen and over 14,000 infantry.
The French raised the 'No Quarter' Oriflamme standard for the first time against the English.

The Genoese crossbowmen were without their protective shields (still in the baggage train), and struggled to recock their crossbows in the mud. The English could fire at 3 times their rate at longer range. Reports indicate the mercenaries loosed off a couple of volleys, took a few casualties, and promptly b#ggered off.

The French then launched a succession of cavalry charges, and mixed cavalry/infantry assaults, until nearly midnight; uphill, through the mud. Initially they had to weave between the fleeing Italians, and afterwards their own casualties. The English took out many in each charge with arrows - over half a million are estimated to have been fired - then finished off the unhorsed and wounded with daggers, whilst recovering arrows. No prisoners were taken on the day.

English losses: 100-300
French losses: 12,000+ dead

..and the English captured the Oriflamme.

Poitiers and Agincourt followed very similar patterns, after which the French stopped using the Oriflamme and the King's standard became a white flag - say no more!

[Stoneboat]

Not today, but Al Haynes died yesterday in Seattle. He was 87. RIP Sir.

"United 232 Sioux City, you are cleared to land on any runway.""
"Tower 232, Roger, you want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?"

[Ex-Ascot]

On August 29, 1982, the Swedish-born actress and three-time Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman dies of cancer in London on her 67th birthday. Bergman co-starred in Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, who uttered the famous line to her: “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

[Ex-Ascot]

First ATM opened 50 years ago. USA of course and New York.

[Rwy in Sight]

We forgot to mention the shooting down of KAL007 on September 1st 1983.

[ian16th]

First ATM opened 50 years ago. USA of course and New York.

It was 52 years ago and in the UK!

[Ex-Ascot]

First ATM opened 50 years ago. USA of course and New York.

It was 52 years ago and in the UK!

Stand corrected Ian. Bloody American influenced Internet. The first American ATM opened 50 years ago today. Glad we beat them on that one.

[Capetonian]

They weren't ATMs as we know them. I remember using an ATM in the late 70s and you had a few vouchers like punchcards, each was £10, which you fed into the machine in exchange for your money. My first bank account was Barclays, I opened it as an act of defiance against a bunch of rabble rousers who were picketing outside Barclays because they had interests in South Africa and Rhodesia.

[ian16th]

Yes Cape, I too still have some of those vouchers.

They were read as paper tape, not punched cards, and processed the same way through your a/c as a £10 cheque.

I rather liked the 10 brand new £1.00 notes with a band around them. I don't think the m/c could handle used notes.
The dispensing m/c's were rather substantial, dunno if they ever got broken into.

[Capetonian]

Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a scheduled passenger flight that was shot down by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) on 3 September 1978, during the Rhodesian Bush War. The aircraft involved, a Vickers Viscount named the Hunyani, was flying the last leg of Air Rhodesia's regular scheduled service from Victoria Falls to the capital Salisbury, via the resort town of Kariba.

Soon after Flight 825 took off, a group of ZIPRA guerrillas scored a hit on its starboard wing with a Soviet-made Strela-2 surface-to-air infrared homing missile, critically damaging the aircraft and forcing an emergency landing. An attempted belly landing in a cotton field just west of Karoi was foiled by a ditch, which caused the plane to cartwheel and break up. Of the 52 passengers and four crew, 38 died in the crash; the insurgents then approached the wreckage, rounded up the 10 survivors they could see and massacred them with automatic gunfire. Three passengers survived by hiding in the surrounding bush, while a further five lived because they had gone to look for water before the guerrillas arrived.

ZIPRA leader Joshua Nkomo publicly claimed responsibility for shooting down the Hunyani in an interview with the BBC's Today programme the next day, saying the aircraft had been used for military purposes, but denied that his men had killed survivors on the ground. The majority of Rhodesians, both black and white,[4] saw the attack as an act of terrorism.[5] A fierce white Rhodesian backlash followed against enemy strongholds and increased racial tension even though few black Rhodesians supported attacks of this kind.[4] Reports viewing the attack negatively appeared in international journals such as Time magazine, but there was almost no acknowledgement of it by overseas governments, much to the Rhodesian government's indignation.

These filthy stinking murdering savages, I'm not sure why Wankipedia refers to them as 'guerillas', are the predecessors of the scum now running Zimbabwe, who have brought death and misery to millions of people.

[johngreen]

'Twas in 1939 on this day that Britain and France declared war on Germany.
I think that's worth an inclusion here...

[ExSp33db1rd]

ATM's ? I was given one of the first Barclaycards by a mate who worked for them, and they have just cancelled it 'cos I can't give them a UK address. Barstewards.