12 OCTOBER

BRITISH SNIPERS KILL FIVE IN WEST BELFAST INCLUDING THREE CHILDREN AND A PRIEST. 9 July 1972 – Soldiers of the British parachute regiment had taken up position behind sandbags in a lumbar yard on the Springhill Estate in West Belfast. They claimed to have been fired upon first, but civilian witnesses asserted that it was…

BRITISH TROOPS BURN DOWN PEKING’S SUMMER PALACE [ 18 October 1860 ] On this day in 1860 British troops set fire to one of the world’s greatest collections of art work and treasure, the legendary Summer Palace in Peking, also known as the Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yuanming Yuan). Burning all the buildings which stretched…

WIDER POWERS OF COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT AUTHORIZED IN KENYA 25 November 1952 – Sir Evelyn Baring, British governor of Kenya, issues new emergency measures designed to widen the conditions for the imposition of collective punishment on the kikuyu population in areas considered sympathetic to the anti-British Mau Mau insurgency. The pro-Empire Daily Express commented the same day…

BRITISH TROOPS ADVANCING ON KABUL EXECUTE ALL MALES OVER 14 YEARS OLD [ 13 September 1842 ] On this day in 1842, having defeated Afghan forces ranged against them at Tezin Pass, the victorious British troops began several days of appalling retribution against Afghan villagers for the massacre nine months earlier of a British army of…