24 APRIL
INDIAN SOLDIERS REFUSE ORDERS TO USE CARTRIDGES GREASED WITH PIG AND COW FAT
[ 24 April 1857 ]
On 24 April 1857, eighty five Indian soldiers of the Third Bengal Light Cavalry stationed at Meerut, a town 40 miles north east of Delhi, refused orders to use cartridges covered by paper greased with pig and cow fat. They had been ordered to bite off the greased paper before loading the cartridges into the rifles. It was a humiliating command, conflicting with the most fundamental religious beliefs of both Hindu and Muslim recruits.
THOUSANDS OF BLACK NAIROBIANS TRANSPORTED TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS
[ 24 April 1954 ]
Today in 1954, British soldiers, under orders from General Sir George Erskine, started to round up thousands of Africans living in Nairobi and deport them to concentration camps as part of a deliberate policy of apartheid and collective punishment aimed at crushing the nationalist Mau Mau insurgency.
FOREIGN SECRETARY CITES COPPER AS REASON FOR ARMING CHILE’S DICTATORSHIP
[ 24 April 1974 ]
On 24 April 1974, Foreign Secretary James Callaghan explained to the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee why the Cabinet had decided to supply the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet with two Leander class frigates and two Oberon submarines. They had been under construction on the Clyde when the military coup, which ousted Chile’s democratic socialist government of Salvadore Allende, occurred on 11 September 1973.
Please feel welcome to post comments below. If you have any questions please email alisdare@gmail.com
© 2020 Alisdare Hickson All rights reserved