Browsing: December 28

A Brief History On December 28, 1918, Countess Constance Markievicz was elected to the British Parliament, the first woman to achieve that feat.  Incredibly, she was in jail for anti-conscription activity when elected! Digging Deeper Constance Gore-Booth was born in London to minor nobility, a Baronet of partially Irish heritage, and his lady, and was somewhat privileged in her youth.  She later married Count Casimir Markievicz, a Polish playwright. Constance was active in social causes such as Women’s Suffrage and various Irish nationalist organizations.  Not only was she elected to Parliament in an historic election, but she was also later…

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A Brief History On December 28, 1999, Western actor/action hero Clayton Moore died.  If you are not familiar with this star of the small and large screen, he played The Lone Ranger from 1949 to 1957 on television and starred in 2 related big screen movies about the same character.  Even if you never saw the Clayton Moore versions of the Lone Ranger,  you are probably familiar with “The William Tell Overture” by Rossini, the theme music played for Moore’s Lone Ranger character.  In the Covid-19 plagued year of 2020, we have lost another host of notable people, both to…

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A Brief History On December 28, 1918, Constance Markievicz, while an inmate in Holloway prison, London, England, made history as the first woman elected to British House of Commons as a Member of Parliament (MP).  You may notice her last name is not a typically British name, but her birth name of Constance Georgine Gore-Booth represents her English and Irish ancestry.  Her married name, Markievicz, you may recognize as a Slavic appellation, specifically Polish.  It is her husband, Casimir Markievicz, a playwright, director and artist that provides the background for the theme of this article, that of the changing and…

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A Brief History On December 28, 1943, the Soviet secret police, NKVD, under the direction of its commander Lavrentiy Beria, began a three day operation called Operation Ulusy to forcibly remove 93,139 people of the Kalmyk nationality to forced labor camps in the remote areas of Siberia.  The Soviets had accused the Kalmyks of being pro-German and anti-Soviet, even though 23,540 Kalmyks were serving in the Red Army against the Germans and only 5000 Kalmyks had sided with the Germans, forming the Kalmykian Cavalry Corps.  Soviet officials, ever paranoid and seeing sedition under every rock, overreacted to the Kalmyk nationalist…

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A Brief History On December 28, 1958, the Baltimore Colts played the New York Giants at Yankee Stadium in New York City for the National Football League Championship game, the first game in NFL history to played to “Sudden Death” overtime.  The Colts scored the game winning touchdown in overtime, and ever since NFL fans have referred to the contest as “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” Digging Deeper Of course, other sports may have their own versions of “the greatest game,” but this game is the one most often referred to in that sense.  Multiplying the effect of the game…

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