24 FEBRUARY

PLANTATION OVERSEER INVENTS REVOLTING PUNISHMENT FOR A SLAVE [ 28 January 1756 ] We catch a shocking glimpse of some of the sadistic punishments inflicted on slaves through the journals of Thomas Thistlewood, a plantation overseer in the British colony of Jamaica. NEWS BREAKS OF A FAMINE IN BENGAL AND ‘CALAMITIES’ FOR BRITISH INVESTORS […

THE SPECTATOR – ‘NEGROES ARE MADE ON PURPOSE TO SERVE THE WHITES.’ [ 16 September 1865 ] In the 1860s, The Spectator was one of Britain’s leading weekly magazines with a relatively progressive reputation. It had, among other liberal causes, supported the Federalists and the principle of emancipation during the American Civil War. Despite such…

ARGENTINE SHIP SUNK OUTSIDE FALKLAND ISLANDS EXCLUSION ZONE, KILLING 323. 2 May 1982 – At 15.57 a British nuclear powered submarine, HMS Conqueror, torpedoed and sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, even though the ship was thirty six nautical miles outside Britain’s declared two hundred nautical mile military exclusion zone around the Falkland Islands and…

FOREIGN OFFICE WARNED NOT TO DISCLOSE DATA WHICH MIGHT BE USED AGAINST THE UK. [ 7 July 1975 ] On this day in 1975, John Hickman, an official at the British embassy in Dublin, wrote to Bill Harding at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, warning him that statistics on the relative number of Catholics and…

BRITISH TROOPS COMMENCE THE LOOTING AND DESTRUCTION OF BEIJING’S SUMMER PALACE [ 7 Ocobter 1860 ] On this day in 1860, British officers joined French troops in looting Peking’s legendary Summer Palace.  The complex might however have been more accurately described as palaces, as there were over two hundred summer houses and pavilions within eighty…

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