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The Gunpowder Conspiracy of 1605 was a failed assassination attempt by a group of provincial English Catholics against King James I of England and VI of Scotland. The plot intended to kill the king, his family and most of the Protestant aristocracy by blowing up the Houses of Parliament.

On hearing of the failure of the plot, the conspirators fled towards Worcester but heavy rain slowed their travels. Many of them were caught when they arrived in Stourbridge. The remaining men attempted a revolt in the Midlands and this failed with a shoot-out resulting in the capture of several principal conspirators. They were tried on January 27, 1606 in Westminster Hall. The trial lasted one day and ranked highly as a public spectacle.

Four of the plotters were executed in St. Paul’s Churchyard on January 30. A number of others implicated in the conspiracy were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster, in front of the scene of the intended crime, where they were to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Guy Fawkes cheated the executioners: when he was to be hanged until almost dead, he jumped from the gallows, so his neck broke and he died, thus avoiding the gruesome later part of this form of execution.

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The Rum Rebellion of 1808 was the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia’s recorded history. The Governor of New South Wales was deposed by the New South Wales Corps on January 26, 1808, 20 years to the day after Arthur Phillip founded the European settlement in Australia.

William Bligh, well-known for his overthrow in the Mutiny on the Bounty, was a naval officer and headed for Sydney but his style of governance led to problems with his subordinates. Bligh had the captain of the fleet demoted, canceled his land grant and shipped him back to England. Once in Australia, he used the colony’s stores and herds to provide relief to farmers affected by flooding.

This earned Bligh enmity of traders who were profiting greatly from the situation. Over time, he made enemies of some of the most influential people in the colony, including Lieutenant John Macarthur, who, along with Major Johnston, drafted a petition calling for Bligh’s arrest. He was arrested and Lt.-Col. Joseph Foveaux took over the colony in July 1808. Bligh was put on trial in England and found not guilty of any wrong-doing.

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Rorke’s Drift was a mission station in Natal, South Africa, situated near a natural ford on the Buffalo River. During the Anglo-Zulu War, the defense of Rorke’s Drift immediately followed the British Army’s defeat at the Battle of Isandlwana earlier in the day. 139 British soldiers successfully defended their garrison against an intense assault by 4 to 5,000 Zulu warriors.

Rorke’s Drift was a mission station and former trading post located near the border between Natal and Kwa Zulu. The British ultimatum to the Zulus had expired. The British officers directed their men to make preparations to defend the mission station. When they realized that the Zulus were about to attack, several British soldiers deserted, and leaving only 139 men to defend. A column of 4 to 6,000 Zulus approaching was reported.

A heavy volley of gunfire was opened up at 500 yards and the British fire resulted in the piling up of the Zulu dead. The British wall was too high for the Zulus to scale and they resorted to crouching under it or firing their weapons through it. The Zulu attacks began to slacken after midnight and finally ended by 2 am. The British were exhausted, having fought for the better part of ten hours. As dawn broke, they could see that the Zulus were gone and all that remained were the vast piles of dead.

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The Silvertown explosion occurred in Silvertown in West Ham, Essex, England. The blast occurred at a munitions factory which was producing explosives for Britain’s World War I military effort. Approximately 50 tons of TNT exploded, killing 73 people and injuring over 400.

It also caused substantial damage to buildings and property in the local area. This was possibly the largest single explosion to occur in Britain up to that time. The factory was in a highly populated area, but this was obviously not the prime concern for the military authorities. On January 19, 1917, a fire broke out and efforts to put it out were under way when approximately 50 tons of TNT ignited.

The plant was destroyed instantly, as were many nearby buildings, including the Silvertown Fire Station. Debris was strewn for miles around, with red-hot chunks of rubble causing fires. The emergency services immediately became involved in putting out the fires caused by the explosion, treating the wounded, and beginning to repair the damage caused. Thousands were left without a home, requiring temporary accommodation in schools, churches, and other similar places.

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Philip Astley is regarded as the “father of the modern circus.” He was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme in England and at the age of nine, he apprenticed to work with his father as a cabinetmaker, but his dream was to work with horses.

Astley joined the 15^th Light Dragoon Regiment when he was 17 and served in the Seven Years War. He was a brilliant horse rider with a particular genius for trick riding. He saw that trick riders received more attention from crowds and had an idea for opening a riding school in London where he could also conduct shows of acrobatic riding skill. In 1768, he opened his riding school, teaching in the morning and performing his “feats of horsemanship” in the afternoon.

Astley called the arena a circus because of its shape and it was easier for the audience to keep the riders in sight. A few years later, he added a platform, seats, and a roof. His original circus was 62 feet in diameter and later he settled it at 42 feet, which has been an international standard for circuses since. He began to make more and more money but after two seasons, he had to bring in a new novelty, so he hired musicians, a clown, jugglers, tumblers, tightrope walkers, and dancing dogs. This laid the foundations of the modern circus.

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The “Piltdown Man” is a famous hoax consisting of fragments of a skull and jawbone collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, East Sussex in England. The fragments were thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilized remains of a hitherto unknown form of early human.

The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man. The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous archaeological hoax in history. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.

The Piltdown Man hoax succeeded so well because at the time of its discovery, the scientific establishment had believed that the large modern brain had preceded the modern omnivorous diet, and the forgery had provided exactly that evidence. It has also been thought that nationalism and cultural prejudice also played a role in the less-than-critical acceptance of the fossil as genuine by some British scientists.

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The Brinks Mat Robbery occurred when six robbers broke into the Brinks Mat warehouse at Heathrow Airport, England. The robbers thought they were going to steal three million pounds in cash, however, when they arrived, they found three tons of gold bullion worth 26 million pounds. Scotland Yard quickly discovered a family connection between a bank security guard and the robber.

Tried at the Old Bailey, Brian Robinson, who conceived the raid, and gang leader Michael McAvoy were each sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for armed robbery. Prior to his conviction, McAvoy had entrusted part of his share to an associate, Brian Perry, who recruited Kenneth Noyce to dispose of the gold. Noyce melted down the bullion and recast it for sale.

However, the sudden movements of large amounts of money through a Bristol bank came to the notice of the Treasury who informed the police. Noyce was placed under police surveillance and in January 1985, killed a police officer he discovered in his garden. Although, a jury found him not guilty on the grounds of self-defense, he was subsequently found guilty of conspiracy to handle the Brinks Mat gold. Three tons of stolen gold has never been recovered. According to the BBC, some have claimed that anyone wearing gold jewelry bought in the United Kingdom after 1983 is probably wearing Brinks Mat.

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The Battle of Solway Moss took place near the River Esk in the Scottish borders between forces from England and Scotland. When Henry VIII of England broke from the Roman Catholic Church, he asked James V of Scotland, his nephew, to do the same. James ignored the request and further insulted his uncle by refusing to meet with Henry at York.

Furious, Henry VIII sent troops against Scotland. In retaliation for the massive English raid into Scotland, James responded by assigning Robert, Lord Maxwell, the Scottish Warden of West March, the task of raising an army. An army of 15,000 to 18,000 Scots advanced south. Maxwell was never officially designated commander of the force but declared that he would lead the attack in person. However, he fell sick and never reached the scene of battle.

The Scots advance was met at Solway Moss by Sir Thomas Wharton and his 3,000 men. Sir Oliver Sinclair de Pitcairns declared himself to be the Scots’ chose commander. Unfortunately, the other commanders refused to accept his command and the command structure totally disintegrated. The battle was uncoordinated and resulted in few deaths, but the English captured 1,200 prisoners including Sinclair. James withdrew to Falkland Palace, humiliated and ill with fever. He died there two weeks later.

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The 1917 Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was one of the major battles of World War I, in which British, Canadian, South African, and ANZAC units engaged the Imperial German Army. The battle was fought for control of the village of Passchendaele near the town of Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium.

The basic plan of the offensive was to capture the high ground to the south and east of Ypres. Despite spells of good weather during the battle lasting long enough to dry out the land, Passchendaele has become known for the misery of fighting in thick mud. Preparatory bombardment and rainy periods produced an impassable terrain of deep liquid mud, into which an unknown number of soldiers drowned.

The Germans were well-entrenched, with mutually-supporting pillboxes and after five months of fierce fighting, the Canadian Corps took Passchendaele on November 6, 1917, ending the battle. In the course of the conflict, the Allied Powers had sustained almost half a million casualties and the Germans just over a quarter of a million dead and seriously wounded. In March 1918 – four months later – the Allies abandoned to the Germans every inch of territory gained in order to free several divisions to cover more strategically valuable terrain.

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The Newport Rising was the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain when approximately 1,000 to 1,500 Chartist sympathizers, including many coal-miners, most with home-made arms, led by John Frost, marched on the town of Newport, Monmouthshire, intent on liberating fellow Chartists who were to have been taken prisoner.

A rising of some sort had been in preparation over the preceding few months and the march had been gathering momentum over the course of the whole weekend as Frost and his associates led the protestors down from the industrialized valley towns above Newport. Some of the miners who joined the march had armed themselves with home-made pikes, bludgeons, and firearms. Rumors of a possible Chartist rising and previous violence elsewhere meant that the authorities had suspected there might be a riot.

The Chartists arrived at the small square in front of a hotel and the crowd demanded the release of the prisoners. A brief, violent and bloody battle ensued. Shots were fired by both sides, but the soldiers holding the building had vastly superior fire-power, training and discipline and soon broke the crowd. After a fiercely fought battle lasting approximately half an hour, 10 to 24 Chartists were killed by troops, and upwards of 50 wounded. In the aftermath, 200 or more Chartists were arrested for their involvement.

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