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December 29

December 29

December 29 is the 363rd day of the year (364th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 2 days remaining.

Events

- 1170 - Thomas Becket is slain in his own cathedral on orders from Henry II of England.
- 1813 - War of 1812: British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York.
- 1845 - Texas is admitted as the 28th U.S. state.
- 1851 - The first American-based YMCA opens, in Boston, Massachusetts
- 1860 - The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, the HMS Warrior is launched.
- 1862 - American Civil War: End of the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou.
- 1876 - The Ashtabula River Railroad bridge disaster, 64 injured, 92 dead at Ashtabula, Ohio.
- 1890 - Wounded Knee Massacre: The United States soldiers massacred over 400 men, women and children of the Great Sioux Nation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
- 1891 - Thomas Edison patents the radio.
- 1911 - Sun Yat-sen becomes the first President of the Republic of China
- 1913 - The first serial motion picture, The Unwelcome Throne is released by Seligs Polyscope Company.
- 1921 - William Lyon Mackenzie King becomes Prime Minister of Canada
- 1934 - The first college basketball game at Madison Square Garden in New York City is played, between the University of Notre Dame and New York University
- 1934 - Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.
- 1937 - The Irish Free State was replaced by a new state called Ireland when a new constitution was adopted.
- 1940 - Battle of Britain: Luftwaffe firebombs London, killing almost 3000 civilians
- 1949 - KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule.
- 1972 - An Eastern Airlines Lockheed Tristar crashed on approach to Miami International Airport, Florida, killing 101
- 1975 - A bomb explodes at New York City's LaGuardia Airport killing 11.
- 1987 - Yuri Romanenko of USSR remained in space for 326 days and came back to Earth on this day that year.
- 1989 - Václav Havel becomes President of Czechoslovakia
- 1989 - Riots break-out after Hong Kong decides to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese refugees.
- 1989 - On the final day of trading for the year and decade, the Japanese Nikkei 225 Average closes at an all-time high of 38,915.87.
- 1992 - Fernando Collor de Mello, president of Brazil, resigned.
- 1993 - Construction of the Tian Tan Buddha, the world's tallest outdoor bronze statue of the seated Buddha, was completed.
- 1996 - Guatemala and leaders of Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union sign a peace accord that ends a 36 year civil war.
- 1997 - Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation's chickens (1.25 million) to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.
- 1998 - Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million in the 1970s.
- 2001 - A massive fire in the historic district of downtown Lima kills at least 274 people.

Births

- 1709 - Empress Elizabeth of Russia (d. 1762)
- 1721 - Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XIV of France (d. 1764)
- 1796 - Johann Christian Poggendorff, German physicist (d. 1877)
- 1800 - Charles Goodyear, American inventor and businessman (d. 1860)
- 1808 - Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States (d. 1875)
- 1809 - William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1897)
- 1816 - Carl Ludwig, German physician (b. 1895)
- 1840 - Anton Dohrn, German zoologist (d. 1909)
- 1876 - Pablo Casals, Catalan cellist and conductor (d. 1973)
- 1881 - Jess Willard, American boxer (d. 1968)
- 1908 - Helmut Gollwitzer, German theologian (d. 1993)
- 1910 - Ronald Coase, British economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1914 - Billy Tipton, American musician (d. 1989)
- 1914 - Albert Tucker, Australian artist (d 1999)
- 1917 - Tom Bradley, Mayor of Los Angeles, California (d. 1998)
- 1927 - Andy Stanfield, American athlete d. (1985)
- 1931 - Prince Gu of Korea (d. 2005)
- 1934 - Tom Jarriel, American correspondent
- 1936 - Mary Tyler Moore, American actress
- 1936 - Ray Nitschke, American football player (d. 1998)
- 1937 - Barbara Steele, British actress
- 1938 - Jon Voight, American actor
- 1942 - Rick Danko, Canadian musician (The Band) (d. 1999)
- 1946 - Marianne Faithfull, English singer
- 1947 - Ted Danson, American actor
- 1952 - Gelsey Kirkland, American dancer
- 1953 - Gali Atari, Israeli singer
- 1954 - Roger Voudouris, American singer and songwriter
- 1963 - Francisco Bustamante, Filipino billiard player
- 1963 - Dave McKean, English artist and filmmaker
- 1965 - Dexter Holland, American singer and guitarist (The Offspring)
- 1967 - Andy Wachowski, American director
- 1970 - Aled Jones, Welsh singer and television presenter
- 1970 - Kevin Weisman, American actor
- 1972 - Jason Kreis, American soccer player
- 1972 - Jude Law, English actor
- 1973 - Theo Epstein, baseball general manager
- 1974 - Richie Sexson, baseball player
- 1978 - Alexis Amore, Peruvian actress, dancer, and model
- 1978 - Kieron Dyer, English footballer
- 1978 - LaToya London, American singer
- 1981 - Angela Via, American singer

Deaths

- 1170 - Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (assassinated)
- 1563 - Sebastian Castellio, French theologian (b. 1515)
- 1634 - John Albert Vasa, Polish bishop (b. 1612)
- 1661 - Antoine Gérard de Saint-Amant, French poet (b. 1594)
- 1689 - Thomas Sydenham, English physician (b. 1624)
- 1731 - Brook Taylor, English mathematician (b. 1685)
- 1785 - Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian poet (b. 1742)
- 1825 - Jacques-Louis David, French painter (b. 1748)
- 1891 - Leopold Kronecker, mathematician (b. 1823)
- 1894 - Christina Rossetti, English poet (b. 1830)
- 1916 - Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk (b. 1869)
- 1924 - Carl Spitteler, Swiss writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1845)
- 1926 - Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian writer (b. 1875)
- 1937 - Don Marquis, American author (b. 1878)
- 1960 - Eden Phillpotts, British writer (b. 1862)
- 1967 - Paul Whiteman, American musician and conductor (b. 1890)
- 1980 - Tim Hardin, American musician (b. 1941)
- 1980 - Nadezhda Mandelstam, Russian writer (b. 1899)
- 1986 - Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1894)
- 2003 - Earl Hindman, American actor (lung cancer) (b. 1942)
- 2003 - Dinsdale Landen, English actor (cancer) (b. 1932)
- 2003 - Bob Monkhouse, English comedian and game show host (b. 1928)
- 2004 - Julius Axelrod, American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1912)
- 2004 - Liddy Holloway, New Zealand actress (b. 1947)

Holidays and observances

- The fourth day of Christmas in Western Christianity

External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/29 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.tnl.net/when/12/29 Today in History: December 29] ---- December 28 - December 30 - November 29 - January 29 -- listing of all days ko:12월 29일 ms:29 Disember ja:12月29日 simple:December 29 th:29 ธันวาคม

December 29

December 29 is the 363rd day of the year (364th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 2 days remaining.

Events

Births

Deaths

Holidays and observances

- The fourth day of Christmas in Western Christianity

External links

Leap year

A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing an extra day or month in order to keep the calendar year in sync with an astronomical or seasonal year. Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. Leap years (which keep the calendar in sync with the year) should not be confused with leap seconds (which keep clock time in sync with the day).

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar, the current standard calendar in most of the world, adds a 29th day to February in all years evenly divisible by 4, except for century years (those ending in -00), which receive the extra day only if they are evenly divisible by 400. Thus 1996 was a leap year whereas 1999 was not, and 1600, 2000 and 2400 are leap years but 1700, 1800, 1900 and 2100 are not. The reasoning behind this rule is as follows:
- The Gregorian calendar is designed to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21, so that the date of Easter (celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day of the Moon that falls on or after 21 March) remains correct with respect to the vernal equinox.
- The vernal equinox year is currently about 365.242375 days long.
- The Gregorian leap year rule gives an average year length of 365.2425 days. This difference of a little over 0.0001 days means that in around 8,000 years, the calendar will be about one day behind where it should be. But in 8,000 years' time the length of the vernal equinox year will have changed by an amount we can't accurately predict (see below). So the Gregorian leap year rule does a good enough job. Image:Gregoriancalendarleap.png

Which day is the leap day?

The Gregorian calendar is a modification of the Julian calendar first used by the Romans. The Roman calendar originated as a lunar calendar (though from the 5th century BC it no longer followed the real moon) and named its days after three of the phases of the moon: the new moon (calends, hence "calendar"), the first quarter (nones) and the full moon (ides). Days were counted down (inclusively) to the next named day, so 24 February was ante diem sextum calendas martii ("the sixth day before the calends of March"). Since 45 BC, February in a leap year had two days called "the sixth day before the calends of March". The extra day was originally the second of these, but since the third century it was the first. Hence the term bissextile day for 24 February in a bissextile year. Where this custom is followed, anniversaries after the inserted day are moved in leap years. For example, the former feast day of Saint Matthias, 24 February in ordinary years, would be 25 February in leap years. This historical nicety is, however, in the process of being discarded: The European Union declared that, starting in 2000, 29 February rather than 24 February would be leap day, and the Roman Catholic Church also now uses 29 February as leap day. The only tangible difference is felt in countries that celebrate feast days.

Julian calendar

The Julian calendar adds an extra day to February in years divisible by 4. This rule gives an average year length of 365.25 days. The excess of about 0.0076 days with respect to the vernal equinox year means that the vernal equinox moves a day earlier in the calendar every 130 years or so.

Revised Julian Calendar

The Revised Julian calendar adds an extra day to February in years divisible by 4, except for years divisible by 100 that do not leave a remainder of 200 or 600 when divided by 900. This rule agrees with the rule for the Gregorian calendar until 2799. The first year that dates in the Revised Julian calendar will not agree with the those in the Gregorian calendar will be 2800, because it will be a leap year in the Gregorian calendar but not in the Revised Julian calendar. This rule gives an average year length of 365.242222… days. This is a very good approximation to the mean tropical year, but because the vernal equinox tropical year is slightly longer, the Revised Julian calendar does not do as good a job as the Gregorian calendar of keeping the vernal equinox on or close to 21 March.

Chinese calendar

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, so a leap year has an extra month, often called an embolismic month after the Greek word for it. In the Chinese calendar the leap month is added according to a complicated rule, which ensures that month 11 is always the month that contains the northern winter solstice. The intercalary month takes the same number as the preceding month; for example, if it follows the second month then it is simply called "leap second month".

Hebrew calendar

The Hebrew calendar is also lunisolar with an embolistic month. In the Hebrew calendar the extra month is called Adar Alef (first Adar) and is added before Adar, which then becomes Adar Sheni (second Adar). According to the Metonic cycle, this is done seven times every nineteen years, specifically, in years, 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19. In addition, the Hebrew calendar has postponement rules that postpone the start of the year by one or two days. The year before the postponement gets one or two extra days, and the year whose start is postponed loses one or two days. These postponement rules reduce the number of different combinations of year length and starting day of the week from 28 to 14, and regulate the location of certain religious holidays in relation to the Sabbath.

Hindu Calendar

In the Hindu calendar, which is a lunisolar calendar, the embolismic month is called adhika maas (extra month). It is the month in which the sun is in the same sign of the stellar zodiac on two consecutive dark moons.

Iranian calendar

The Iranian calendar also has a single intercalated day once in every four years, but every 33 years or so the leap years will be five years apart instead of four years apart. The system used is more accurate and more complicated, and is based on the time of the March equinox as observed from Teheran. The 33-year period is not completely regular; every so often the 33-year cycle will be broken by a cycle of 29 or 37 years.

Long term leap year rules

The accumulated difference between the Gregorian calendar and the vernal equinoctial year amounts to 1 day in about 8,000 years. This suggests that the calendar needs to be improved by another refinement to the leap year rule: perhaps by avoiding leap years in years divisible by 8,000. (The most common such proposal is to avoid leap years in years divisible by 4,000 [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22gregorian+calendar%22+error+%22leap+year%22+4000]. This is based on the difference between the Gregorian calendar and the mean tropical year. Others claim, erroneously, that the Gregorian calendar itself already contains a refinement of this kind [http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mleapyr.html].) However, there is little point in planning a calendar so far ahead because over a timescale of tens of thousands of years the number of days in a year will change for a number of reasons, most notably: #Precession of the equinoxes moves the position of the vernal equinox with respect to perihelion and so changes the length of the vernal equinoctial year. #Tidal acceleration from the sun and moon slows the rotation of the earth, making the day longer. In particular, the second component of change depends on such things as post-glacial rebound and sea level rise due to climate change. We can't predict these changes accurately enough to be able to make a calendar that will be accurate to a day in tens of thousands of years.

Marriage proposal

There is a tradition, said to go back to Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget in 5th century Ireland, whereby women may only make marriage proposals in leap years.

Saint Patrick and the leap year

:Saint Patrick, having driven the frogs out of the bogs was walking along the shores of Lough Neagh, when he was accosted by Saint Bridget in tears, and was told that a mutiny had broken out in the nunnery over which she presided, the ladies claiming the right of popping the question. :Saint Patrick said he would concede them the right every seventh year, when Saint Bridget threw her arms round his neck, and exclaimed, "Arrah, Pathrick, jewel, I daurn't go back to the girls wid such a proposal. Make it one year in four." Saint Patrick replied, "Bridget, acushla, squeeze me that way again, an' I'll give ye leap-year, the longest of the lot." Saint Bridget, upon this, popped the question to St Patrick himself, who, of course, could not marry: so he patched up the difficulty as best he could with a kiss and a silk gown. (Source: Evans, Ivor H, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988) According to a 1288 law in Scotland, fines were levied if the proposal was refused by the man; compensation ranged from a kiss to a silk gown to soften the blow. Because men felt that put them at too great a risk, the tradition was in some places tightened to restricting female proposals to 29 February.

Birthdays

A person who was born on 29 February may be called a "leapling". In non-leap years they usually celebrate their birthday on 28 February or 1 March. There are many instances in children's literature where a person's claim to be only a quarter of their actual age turns out be based on counting their leap-year birthdays. A similar device is used in the plot of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance. Category:Calendars Category:Units of time als:Schaltjahr ko:윤년 ja:閏年 simple:Leap year th:ปีอธิกสุรทิน

1170

Events

- December 29: Assassination of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, in Canterbury cathedral
- City of Dublin captured by the Normans
- Wang Anshi of Song China started to carried out reforms in three main structures, education, economy and political system.

Births

- Valdemar II of Denmark (died 1241)
- Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Dominicans (died 1221)
- Eustace the Monk, French pirate (died 1217)
- Isabelle of Hainaut, queen of Philip II of France (died 1190)

Deaths

- November 28 - Owain Gwynedd, Prince of Wales
- December 29 - Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (assassinated)
- Al-Mustanjid, Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad
- Ruben II of Armenia (born 1160)
- Albert I of Brandenburg
- Mstislav II of Kiev
- Eliezer ben Nathan, Jewish poet and writer (born 1090)
- Eudes, Viscount of Porhoet, co-ruler of the duchy of Brittany Category:1170 ko:1170년 simple:1170

Henry II of England

Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189) ruled as Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and as King of England (1154–1189) and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland, eastern Ireland, and western France. His sobriquets include "Curt Mantle" (because of the practical short cloaks he wore), "Fitz Empress", and sometimes "The Lion of Justice", which had also applied to his grandfather Henry I. He ranks as the first of the Plantagenet or Angevin Kings. Following the disputed reign of King Stephen, Henry's reign saw efficient consolidation. Henry II has acquired a reputation as one of England's greatest medieval kings.

Biography

He was born on 5 March 1133 at Le Mans to the Empress Matilda and her second husband, Geoffrey the Fair, Count of Anjou. Brought up in Anjou, he visited England in 1149 to help his mother in her disputed claim to the English throne. Prior to coming to the throne he already controlled Normandy and Anjou on the continent; his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine on 18 May 1152 added her holdings to his, including Touraine, Aquitaine, and Gascony. He thus effectively became more powerful than the king of France — with an empire (the Angevin Empire) that stretched from the Solway Firth almost to the Mediterranean and from the Somme to the Pyrenees. As king, he would make Ireland a part of his vast domain. He also maintained lively communication with the Emperor of Byzantium Manuel I Comnenus. In August 1152, Henry, previously occupied in fighting Eleanor's ex-husband Louis VII of France and his allies, rushed back to her, and they spent several months together. Around the end of November 1152 they parted: Henry went to spend some weeks with his mother and then sailed for England, arriving on 6 January 1153. Some historians believe that the couple's first child, William, Count of Poitiers, was born in 1153. During Stephen's reign the barons had subverted the state of affairs to undermine the monarch's grip on the realm; Henry II saw it as his first task to reverse this shift in power. For example, Henry had castles which the barons had built without authorisation during Stephen's reign torn down, and scutage, a fee paid by vassals in lieu of military service, became by 1159 a central feature of the king's military system. Record keeping improved dramatically in order to streamline this taxation. Henry II established courts in various parts of England, and first instituted the royal practice of granting magistrates the power to render legal decisions on a wide range of civil matters in the name of the Crown. His reign saw the production of the first written legal textbook, providing the basis of today's "Common Law". By the Assize of Clarendon (1166), trial by jury became the norm. Since the Norman Conquest jury trials had been largely replaced by trial by ordeal and "wager of battel" (which English law did not abolish until 1819). Provision of justice and landed security was further toughened in 1176 with the Assize of Northampton, a build on the earlier agreements at Clarendon. This reform proved one of Henry's major contributions to the social history of England. As a consequence of the improvements in the legal system, the power of church courts waned. The church, not unnaturally, opposed this and found its most vehement spokesman in Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, formerly a close friend of Henry's and his Chancellor. Henry had appointed Becket to the archbishopric precisely because he wanted to avoid conflict. The conflict with Becket effectively began with a dispute over whether the secular courts could try clergy who had committed a secular offence. Henry attempted to subdue Becket and his fellow churchmen by making them swear to obey the "customs of the realm", but controversy ensued over what constituted these customs, and the church proved reluctant to submit. Following a heated exchange at Henry's court, Becket left England in 1164 for France to solicit in person the support of Pope Alexander III, who was in exile in France due to dissention in the college of Cardinals, and of King Louis VII of France. Due to his own precarious position, Alexander remained neutral in the debate, although Becket remained in exile loosely under the protection of Louis and Pope Alexander until 1170. After a reconciliation between Henry and Thomas in Normandy in 1170, Becket returned to England. Becket again confronted Henry, this time over the coronation of Prince Henry (see below). The much-quoted, although probably apocryphal, words of Henry II echo down the centuries: "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" Although Henry's violent rants against Becket over the years were well documented, this time four of his knights took their king literally (as he may have intended for them to do, although he later denied it) and travelled immediately to England, where they assassinated Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170. As part of his penance for the death of Becket, Henry agreed to send money to the Crusader states in Palestine, which the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar would guard until Henry arrived to make use of it on pilgrimage or crusade. Henry delayed his crusade for many years and in the end never went at all, despite a visit to him by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem in 1184 and being offered the crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1188 he levied the Saladin tithe to pay for a new crusade; the chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis suggested his death was a divine punishment for the tithe, imposed to raise money for an abortive crusade to recapture Jerusalem, which had fallen to Saladin in 1187.) Henry's first son, William, Count of Poitiers, had died in infancy. In 1170, Henry and Eleanor's fifteen-year-old son, Henry, was crowned king, but he never actually ruled and does not figure in the list of the monarchs of England; he became known as Henry the Young King to distinguish him from his nephew Henry III of England. Henry III of England Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. Henry's attempts to wrest control of her lands from Eleanor (and from her heir Richard) led to confrontations between Henry on the one side and his wife and legitimate sons on the other. Henry's notorious liaison with Rosamund Clifford, the "fair Rosamund" of legend, probably began in 1165 during one of his Welsh campaigns and continued until her death in 1176. However, it was not until 1174, at around the time of his break with Eleanor, that Henry acknowledged Rosamund as his mistress. Almost simultaneously he began negotiating the annulment of his marriage and marry Alys, daughter of King Louis VII of France and already betrothed to Henry's son Richard. Henry's affair with Alys continued for some years, and, unlike Rosamund Clifford, Alys allegedly gave birth to one of Henry's illegitimate children. Henry also had a number of illegitimate children by various women, and Eleanor had several of those children reared in the royal nursery with her own children; some remained members of the household in adulthood. Among them were William de Longespee, 3rd Earl of Salisbury, whose mother was Ida, Countess of Norfolk; Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, son of a woman named Ykenai; Morgan, Bishop of Durham; and Matilda, Abbess of Barking. Henry II's attempt to divide his titles amongst his sons but keep the power associated with them provoked them into trying to take control of the lands assigned to them (see Revolt of 1173-1174), which amounted to treason, at least in Henry's eyes. Gerald of Wales reports that when King Henry gave the kiss of peace to his son Richard, he said softly, "May the Lord never permit me to die until I have taken due vengeance upon you." When Henry's legitimate sons rebelled against him, they often had the help of King Louis VII of France. Henry the Young King died in 1183. A horse trampled to death another son, Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany (1158–1186). Henry's third son, Richard the Lionheart (1157–1199), with the assistance of Philip II Augustus of France, attacked and defeated Henry on July 4, 1189; Henry died at the Chateau Chinon on July 6, 1189, and lies entombed in Fontevraud Abbey, near Chinon and Saumur in the Anjou Region of present-day France. Henry's illegitimate son Geoffrey, Archbishop of York also stood by him the whole time and alone among his sons attended on Henry's deathbed. Richard the Lionheart then became King of England. He was followed by King John, the youngest son of Henry II, laying aside the claims of Geoffrey's children Arthur of Brittany and Eleanor.

Appearance

Peter of Blois left a description of Henry II in 1177: "...the lord king has been red-haired so far, except that the coming of old age and gray hair has altered that color somewhat. His height is medium, so that neither does he appear great among the small, nor yet does he seem small among the great... curved legs, a horseman's shins, broad chest, and a boxer's arms all announce him as a man strong, agile and bold... he never sits, unless riding a horse or eating... In a single day, if necessary, he can run through four or five day-marches and, thus foiling the plots of his enemies, frequently mocks their plots with surprise sudden arrivals...Always are in his hands bow, sword, spear and arrow, unless he be in council or in books." Another contemporary, Gerald of Wales, described him thus: "A man of reddish, freckled complexion, with a large, round head, grey eyes that glowed fiercely and grew bloodshot in anger, a fiery countenance and a harsh, cracked voice. His neck was poked forward slightly from his shoulders, his chest was broad and square, his arms strong and powerful. His body was stocky, with a pronounced tendency toward fatness, due to nature rather than self-indulgence -- which he tempered with exercise." Peter of Blois

Fiction

The treasons associated with the royal and ducal successions formed the main theme of the play The Lion in Winter, which also served as the basis of a 1968 film starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn. In 2003, the film was remade as a mini-series with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close in the leading roles. Henry II and his sons King Richard and King John also provided the subjects of the BBC2 television series The Devil's Crown. The 1978 book of the same title was written by Richard Barber and published as a guide to the broadcast series, which starred Brian Cox as Henry and Jane Lapotaire as Eleanor. "Book of the Civilized Man" is a poem believed to have been written in Henry's court and is the first "book of manners" or "courtesy book" in English history, representing the start of a new awakening to etiquette and decorum in English culture.

Coat of arms

Henry II's coat of arms were gules a lion rampant or (red background with a golden lion on hind legs). [http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:iiewhcw2eQcJ:www.roadlesstraveledtheatre.com/images/lion/clip_image003.gif]

External links

1813

1813 is a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

- March 17 - Through a newspaper, the Prussian king Frederick William III of Prussia calls for resistance against the Napoleonic occupation
- April 27 - War of 1812: Battle of York - United States troops raid, destroy, but do not hold the capital of Ontario, York (present day Toronto, Ontario).
- May 2 - Napoleon wins the Battle of Lützen
- May 20-May 21 - Napoleon wins the Battle of Bautzen
- May 27 - War of 1812: In Canada, United States forces capture Fort George.
- June 6 - War of 1812: Battle of Stoney Creek - A British force of 700 under John Vincent defeat an American force three times its size under William Winder and John Chandler.
- June 21 - Peninsular War: Battle of Vittoria - A British, Spanish, and Portuguese force of 78000 with 96 guns under Wellington defeats a French force of 58000 with 153 guns under Joseph Bonaparte to end the Peninsular War.
- July 5 - War of 1812: Three weeks of British raids on Fort Schlosser, Black Rock and Plattsburgh, New York begin.
- August 19 - Gervasio Antonio de Posadas joins Argentina's second triumvirate.
- August 26-August 27 - Napoleon wins the Battle of Dresden
- August 29-August 30 - Napoleon's troops defeated at Kulm
- September - Robert Southey becomes Poet Laureate of Britain
- September 10 - War of 1812: Oliver Hazard Perry defeats a British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie
- October 5 - War of 1812: William Henry Harrison defeats the British at the Battle of the Thames, killing native leader Tecumseh
- October 14 - After a ceremony in Caracas, Venezuela, the municipality gives Simón Bolívar the title of El Libertador.
- October 16-October 19 - Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of Leipzig
- October 24-November 5 - Persia and Russia sign the Gulistan Treaty of 1813 at the end of the first Russo-Persian Wars (1804-1813) by which Persia (Iran) loses all its territories to the north of Aras River to the Russians.
- October 25 - War of 1812: Charles de Salaberry defeats an American invasion at the Battle of Chateauguay
- November 11 - War of 1812: the Americans are defeated at the Battle of Crysler's Farm
- November 21 - An independent government is restored in the Netherlands.
- December 29 - War of 1812: British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York
- Russian troops reach and take Berlin without a fight after the French garrison evacuated the city.
- Mathieu Orfila publishes his groundbreaking Trait des poisons, formalizing the field of toxicology.
- George Hamilton-Gordon serves as ambassador extraordinaire in Vienna.
- Following the death of his father Wossen Seged, Sahle Selassie arrives at the capital Qundi before his other brothers, and is made Meridazmach of Shewa.

Ongoing events

- Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815)-Peninsular War/Sixth Coalition
- War of 1812 (1812-1815)

Births

- January 19 - Sir Henry Bessemer, English inventor (d. 1898)
- January 21 - John C. Frémont, American soldier and explorer (d. 1890)
- January 26 - Juan Pablo Duarte, Founder of the Dominican Republic (d. 1876)
- February 11 - Otto Ludwig, German writer (d. 1865)
- March 18 - Christian Friedrich Hebbel, German poet and playwright (d. 1863)
- March 19 - David Livingstone, English missionary and explorer (d. 1873)
- March 21 - James Strang, Mormon splinter group leader (d. 1856)
- March 27 - Nathaniel Currier, American illustrator (d. 1888)
- April 23 - Stephen A. Douglas, U.S. Senator from Illinois and Presidential candidate (d. 1861)
- May 5 - Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (d. 1855)
- May 21 - Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Scottish clergyman (d. 1843)
- May 22 - Richard Wagner, German composer (d. 1883)
- June 24 - Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman and reformer (d. 1887)
- July 19 - Samuel M. Kier, American industrialist (d. 1874)
- October 10 - Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer (d. 1901)
- October 17 - Georg Büchner, German playwright (d. 1837)
- December 13 - David Spangler Kaufman, U.S. Congressman from Texas (d. 1851)
- Abbas I, Pasha of Egypt (d. 1854)
- John Miley, American Methodist theologian (d. 1895)

Deaths

- January 20 - Christoph Martin Wieland, German writer (b. 1733)
- February 13 - Samuel Ashe, Governor of North Carolina (b. 1725)
- February 26 - Robert Linvingston, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (b. 1746)
- April 10 - Joseph Louis Lagrange, Italian mathematician (b. 1746)
- April 27 - Zebulon Pike, American general (b. 1779)
- April 28 - Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, Russian field marshal (b. 1745)
- May 1 - Jean-Baptiste Bessières, French marshal (killed in combat) (b. 1768)
- June 6 - Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, French architect (b. 1739)
- June 17 - Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham, English sailor and politician (b. 1726)
- June 28 - Gerhard von Scharnhorst, Prussian general (b. 1755)
- July 29 - Jean-Andoche Junot, French general (suicide) (b. 1771)
- August 11 - Henry James Pye, English poet (b. 1745)
- August 23 - Alexander Wilson, Scottish-born ornithologist (b. 1766)
- September 2 - Jean Victor Marie Moreau, French general (mortally wounded in battle) (b. 1763)
- October 5 - Tecumseh, Shawnee leader
- October 19 - Józef Antoni Poniatowski, Polish prince and Marshal of France (friendly fire) (b. 1763)
- November 12 - Jean de Crévecoeur, French-American writer (b. 1735)
- December 24 - Empress Go-Sakuramachi of Japan (b. 1740)
- Wossen Seged, Meridazmach of Shewa (murdered) Category:1813 ko:1813년 ms:1813 simple:1813

United Kingdom

:For other meanings of the terms "United Kingdom" and "UK" , see United Kingdom (disambiguation) and UK (disambiguation). :For an explanation of terms like England, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology). The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom or the UK) is a country located off the north-western coast of continental Europe, surrounded by the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, the Irish Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. It is composed of four constituent parts: three constituent countries—England, Scotland, and Wales—on the island of Great Britain, and the province of Northern Ireland on the island of Ireland. The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland forms the United Kingdom's principal international land border, although there is a nominal frontier with France in the middle of the Channel Tunnel. The UK has several overseas territories and the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands come under the UK's sovereignty. The UK also has close relationships with the fifteen other Commonwealth Realms, as they all share the same head of state. The UK is also one of the largest member states of the European Union and a founding partner of both the UN and NATO.
Terminology

- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: The official name for the sovereign state
- United Kingdom: an abbreviation of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Britain: an informal term that sometimes means United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and sometimes means Great Britain
- British: an informal term that sometimes means from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and sometimes means from Great Britain
- Great Britain (as a geographical term): the largest island of the British Isles
- Great Britain (as a political term): England + Wales + Scotland
- British Isles (as a geographical term): Great Britain + Ireland + many smaller surrounding islands. This term is disputed, please see below.
- Ireland (as a geographical term): the second largest island of the British Isles
- Ireland (as a political term): an abbreviation of the Republic of Ireland, a sovereign state on the island of Ireland
- Northern Ireland: a political region of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Ulster (as a geographical term): Often used to refer to Northern Ireland. It is derived from the Irish Language term 'Ulad.' It was one of the ancient Irish provinces (the others were Connaught, Leinster and Munster.). Although it is normally used to refer to Northern Ireland, Ulster also (traditionally) includes Counties Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal, which lie in the Republic of Ireland. The term Ulster is often favoured by the Protestant community.
History
Protestant Today's state is the latest of several unions formed over the last 1000 years. Scotland and England have existed as separate unified entities since the 10th century. Wales, under English control since the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, became part of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Act 1535. With the Act of Union 1707, the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland, having shared the same monarch since 1603, agreed to a permanent union as the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Act of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland, which had been gradually brought under English control between 1169 and 1691, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was formed in 1922, after bitter fighting which echoes down to the current political strife, the Anglo-Irish Treaty partitioned Ireland into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, with the latter remaining part of the United Kingdom. As provided for in the treaty, Northern Ireland, which consists of six of the nine counties of the Irish province of Ulster, immediately opted out of the Free State and to remain in the UK. The nomenclature of the UK was changed in 1927 to recognise the departure of most of Ireland, with the current name being adopted. 1927 The United Kingdom, the dominant industrial and maritime power of the 19th century, played a leading role in developing Western world ideas of property, liberty, capitalism and parliamentary democracy - to say nothing of its part in advancing world literature and science. At its zenith, the British Empire stretched over one quarter of the Earth's surface and encompassed a third of its population. The first half of the 20th century saw the UK's strength seriously depleted from the effects of World War I and World War II. The second half witnessed the dismantling of the Empire and the UK rebuilding itself into a modern and prosperous nation. The UK has been a member of the European Union since 1973. Its attitude towards further integration is conservative, and there is significant Euroscepticism in UK politics. It has not chosen to adopt the Euro, owing to internal political considerations and the government's judgement of the prevailing economic conditions.
Government and politics
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, with executive power exercised on behalf of the Queen by the Prime Minister and other cabinet ministers who head departments. The cabinet, including the Prime Minister, and other ministers collectively make up Her Majesty's Government. These ministers are drawn from and are responsible to Parliament, the legislative body, which is traditionally considered to be "supreme" (that is, able to legislate on any matter and not bound by decisions of its predecessors). The UK is one of the few countries in the world today that does not have a codified constitution, relying instead on customs and separate pieces of constitutional law. While the monarch is Head of State and holds all executive power, it is the Prime Minister who is the head of government. The government is answerable chiefly to the House of Commons and the Prime Minister is drawn from this chamber of Parliament by constitutional convention. The majority of cabinet members will be from the House of Commons, the rest from the House of Lords. Ministers do not, however, legally have to come from Parliament, though that is the modern day custom. The British system of government has been emulated around the world - a legacy of the United Kingdom's colonial past - most notably in the other Commonwealth Realms. The Prime Minister is chosen as the MP who can command a majority in the House of Commons - usually the leader of the largest party or, if there is no majority party, the largest coalition. The current Prime Minister is Tony Blair of the Labour Party, who has been in office since 1997. In the United Kingdom the monarch has extensive theoretical powers, but his or her role is mainly, though not exclusively, ceremonial. The monarch is an integral part of Parliament (as the "Crown-in-Parliament") and theoretically gives Parliament the power to meet and create legislation. An Act of Parliament does not become law until it has been signed by the Queen (being given Royal Assent), although no monarch has refused to assent to a bill that has been approved by Parliament since Queen Anne in 1708. Although the abolition of the monarchy has been suggested several times, the popularity of the monarchy remains strong in spite of recent controversies. Support for a British republic usually fluctuates between 15% and 25% of the population, with roughly 10% undecided or indifferent [http://www.mori.com/mrr/2000/c000616.shtml]. The current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II who acceded to the throne in 1952 and was crowned in 1953. Parliament is the national legislature of the United Kingdom. It is the ultimate legislative authority in the United Kingdom, according to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. It is bicameral, composed of the elected House of Commons and the unelected House of Lords, whose members are mostly appointed. The House of Commons is the more powerful of the two houses. The House of Commons has 646 members who are directly elected from single-member constituencies based on population. The House of Lords has 724 members (though this number is not fixed): hereditary peers, life peers, and bishops of the Church of England. The Church of England is the established church of the state in England. established church]] The two largest political parties are the Labour Party and Conservative Party. The UK has long had a two-party system, but in the last 20 years the Liberal Democrats have re-emerged as a large third party. The electoral system used for general elections is first-past-the-post. The constitution of the United Kingdom is un-codified and partially unwritten, which means that no single document regulates how the government works, and unwritten constitutional conventions are used extensively. The constitution is based on the principle that Parliament is the ultimate sovereign body in the country. There has long been a widespread sense of national identity in the Celtic nations. Throughout the late 19th century the UK debated giving Ireland home rule. The Scottish National Party was founded in 1934, and Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales) in 1925. Referenda for devolution succeeded in 1997 for Scotland and Wales and in 1998 for Northern Ireland. In 1999, the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales were established, the former having primary legislative power. Proportional representation is used for the elections, which has resulted in a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition government in Scotland. Due to internal disagreements, the Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended since 2002.
Subdivisions
The United Kingdom is a country that is divided into four constituent parts:
- England
- Scotland
- Northern Ireland
- Wales The constituent parts of the United Kingdom have administrative subdivisions as follows:
- The regions and administrative counties of England
- The council areas of Scotland
- The counties and county boroughs of Wales
- The districts of Northern Ireland The Laws in Wales Act 1535 incorporated Wales and England into England and Wales for legal purposes. Although all four have historically been divided into counties, England's population is an order of magnitude larger than the others so in recent years it has for some purposes been divided into nine intermediate-level Government Office Regions. Each region is made up of counties and unitary authorities, apart from London, which consists of London boroughs. Although at one point it was intended that each or some of these regions would be given its own regional assembly, the plan's future is uncertain, as of 2004, after the North East region rejected its proposed assembly in a referendum. Scotland consists of 32 Council Areas. Wales consists of 22 Unitary Authorities, styled as 10 County Boroughs, 9 Counties, and 3 Cities. Northern Ireland is divided into 26 Districts. Also sometimes associated with the United Kingdom, though not constitutionally part of the United Kingdom itself, are the Crown dependencies (the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, and the Isle of Man) as self-governing possessions of the Crown, and a number of overseas territories under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.
Military
The armed forces of the United Kingdom are known as the British Armed Forces or Her Majesty's Armed Forces, officially the Armed Forces of the Crown. Their Commander-in-Chief is the Queen and they are managed by the Ministry of Defence. Ministry of Defence The British Armed Forces are charged with protecting the United Kingdom and its overseas territories, promoting the United Kingdom's wider security interests, and supporting international peacekeeping efforts. They are active and regular participants in NATO and other coalition operations. The United Kingdom fields one of the most powerful and comprehensive military forces in the World. Its global power projection capabilities are second only to those of the United States Armed Forces. The British Army had a reported strength of 112,700 in 2004, including 7,600 women, and the Royal Air Force a strength of 53,400. The 40,900-member Royal Navy is in charge of the United Kingdom's independent strategic nuclear arm, which consists of four Trident Ballistic Missile Submarines, while the Royal Marines provide infantry units for amphibious assault and for specialist reinforcement forces in and beyond the NATO area. This puts total active duty military troops in the 210,000 range, currently deployed in over 80 countries. The UK's special forces, principally the SAS, provides elite commandos trained for quick, mobile, military responses; often where secrecy or covert operations are required. The Royal Navy is the second largest navy in the World in terms of gross tonnage. Despite the United Kingdom's wide ranging capabilities, recent pragmatic defence policy has a stated assumption that any large operation would be undertaken as part of a coalition. Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq (Granby, No-Fly-Zones, Desert Fox and Telic) may all be taken as precedent - indeed the last true war in which the British military fought alone was the Falklands War of 1982, in which military action was initiated by Argentina and the UK was fighting a defensive, rather than offensive, campaign. The British army has been actively involved in the Troubles in Northern Ireland. However, a programme of demilitarisation is being gradually implemented.
Geography
Troubles World Factbook Map of the United Kingdom]] Most of England consists of rolling lowland terrain, divided east from west by more mountainous terrain in the Northwest (Cumbrian Mountains of the Lake District) and north (the upland moors of the Pennines) and limestone hills of the Peak District by the Tees-Exe line. The lower limestone hills of the Isle of Purbeck, Cotswolds, Lincolnshire and chalk downs of the Southern England Chalk Formation. The main rivers and estuaries are the Thames, Severn and the Humber Estuary. The largest urban area is Greater London. Near Dover, the Channel Tunnel links the United Kingdom with France. There is n