21 MARCH

FORTY INDIAN MUTINEERS BLOWN FROM GUNS [ 10 June 1857 ] On this day in 1857, Herbert Edwardes, the British political officer at Peshawar, ordered forty captured Indian mutineers to be blown from guns, a method of execution in which the victim was tied to the mouth of a cannon which was then fired. As…

THATCHER WELCOMES APARTHEID LEADER P.W. BOTHA [ 2 June 1984 ] On this day in 1984, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher greeted the apartheid leader of South Africa, P.W. Both, at her official country estate at Chequers.  An estimated 40,000 protesters, furious at the government’s implicit endorsement of the regime, took to the streets of…

BRITISH WITNESS GIVES HARROWING ACCOUNT OF THE EXECUTION OF INDIAN MUTINEERS AT AHMEDABAD 26 October 1857 – A British witness gave a graphic account of the bloody aftermath of the execution, by being blown apart by cannon, of Indian mutineers at Ahmedabad. It was subsequently published in several British newspapers. “I walked straight to the…

SIX THOUSAND GIVEN A FEW HOURS WARNING OF COMPULSORY DEMOLITION [ 16 June 1936 ] On this day in 1936, six thousand residents of Jaffa’s old city awoke to found leaflets, dropped by British aircraft, informing them that their homes would be blown up and that they had until 9 pm to vacate them permanently….

COLONIAL SECRETARY WARNS AGAINST ‘IMMORAL RELATIONS WITH NATIVE WOMEN’ [ 11 January 1909 ] On 11 January 1909 Lord Crewe, Secretary of State for the Colonies, issued his ‘immoral relations’ memorandum. It cautioned all members of the Colonial Service of ‘the grave injury to good administration’ and ‘the disgrace and official ruin which will certainly…

HUNDREDS OF CIVILIANS AND PRISONERS KILLED AND TORTURED AT TAIT-SAN. [ 3 May 1863 ] On this day in 1863, Chinese imperial troops under the command of Major Charles Gordon (who was later to become the legendary General Gordon of Khartoum) killed hundreds of civilians and prisoners in the city of Tait-san, having captured it…