F. Digby Hardy
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F. Digby Hardy
John Henry Gooding, ''alias'' Frank Digby Hardy (5 April 1868 – 28 October 1930) was an English naval writer, journalist, soldier, career criminal and would-be spy during the Irish War of Independence. Born in Devonport, Plymouth to a middle-class family, he was educated in London before gaining notoriety in his native Devon as a bigamist and a cheque forger. Imprisoned numerous times throughout his life, he was enlisted by British intelligence to capture Irish Republican Army leader Michael Collins in 1920. Early years Hardy was born John Henry Gooding on 5 April 1868 in Devonport, the only son of John Rowcliffe Gooding (1837–1908) and Elizabeth Ann Furzeland (1849–1875), although he would later have four half-siblings through his father's remarriage in 1877. His father, a longtime employee of the Royal Navy, enlisted Hardy at the Royal Hospital School, Greenwich, essentially a place of education for children of naval servicemen. The school recommended him to The Royal ...
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Devonport, Devon
Devonport ( ), formerly named Plymouth Dock or just Dock, is a district of Plymouth in the English county of Devon, although it was, at one time, the more important settlement. It became a county borough in 1889. Devonport was originally one of the "Three Towns" (along with Plymouth and Stonehouse, Plymouth, East Stonehouse); these merged in 1914 to form what would become in 1928 the City of Plymouth. It is represented in the Parliament of the United Kingdom as part of the Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (UK Parliament constituency), Plymouth Sutton and Devonport constituency. Its elected Member of Parliament (MP) is Luke Pollard, who is a member of the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 14,788. History Plymouth Dock In 1690 the Admiralty gave a contract to Robert Waters from Portsmouth to build a stone dock at Point Froward on the east bank of the Hamoaze at the mouth of the River Tamar. Plymouth Dock, as Devonport was originally ...
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Lance-Corporal
Lance corporal is a military rank, used by many armed forces worldwide, and also by some police forces and other uniformed organisations. It is below the rank of corporal, and is typically the lowest non-commissioned officer (NCO), usually equivalent to the NATO Rank Grade OR-3. Etymology The presumed origin of the rank of lance corporal derives from an amalgamation of "corporal" from the Italian phrase ''capo corporale'' ("head of the body") with the now-archaic '' lancepesade'', which in turn derives from the Italian ''lancia spezzata'', which literally means "broken lance" or "broken spear", formerly a non-commissioned officer of the lowest rank. It can be translated as "one who has broken a lance in combat", and is therefore a leader. "Lance" or "lances fournies" was also a term used in Medieval Europe to denote a unit of soldiers (usually 5 to 10 men strong). Brazil After the independence of Brazil in 1822, the new Brazilian Army followed the Portuguese system of ranks, ha ...
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John Gordon (Irish Lawyer)
John Gordon PC (23 November 1849 in County Down – 26 September 1922 in Dublin City) was an Irish lawyer and politician, who served as Attorney-General for Ireland and a Judge of the High Court. Life and career Gordon was the son of Samuel Gordon, of Shankhill, County Down, and Arabella Barclay. He was educated at Queen's College Galway, a constituent college of the Queen's University of Ireland, where he held a senior scholarship in mathematics, graduating with a B.A. degree in that subject (3rd class honours) in 1873, and LL.B. in 1876. He served as auditor of the college's Literary and Debating Society for the 1873-1874 session. He was awarded an L.L.D. (honoris causa) on the dissolution of the Queen's University in 1882. He was called to the Irish Bar at the King's Inns in 1877. He married Dorothy Clay, daughter of Robert Keating Clay, solicitor, in 1887; she predeceased him. They had one son, Alan, a barrister. Gordon was elected a Member of Parliament for the South L ...
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Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's historic and primary financial centre. Its name derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which also had an entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became the public entrance, and over time "Scotland Yard" has come to be used not only as the name of the headquarters building, but also as a metonym for both the Metropolitan Police Service itself and police officers, especially detectives, who serve in it. ''The New York Times'' wrote in 1964 that, just as Wall Street gave its name to New York's financial district, Scotland Yard became the name for police activity in London. The force moved from Great Scotland Yard in 1890, to a newly completed build ...
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Ministry Of Munitions
The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort. The position was created in response to the Shell Crisis of 1915 when there was much newspaper criticism of the shortage of artillery shells and fear of sabotage. The Ministry was created by the Munitions of War Act 1915 passed on 2 July 1915 to safeguard the supply of artillery munitions. Under the very vigorous leadership of Liberal party politician David Lloyd George, the Ministry in its first year set up a system that dealt with labour disputes and fully mobilized Britain's capacity for a massive increase in the production of munitions. The government policy, according to historian J. A. R. Marriott, was that: : No private interest was to be permitted to obstruct the service, or imperil the safety, of the State. Trade Union regulations must be suspended; employers' profits must be limited, s ...
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Daily Chronicle (United Kingdom)
The 'Daily Chronicle' was a British newspaper that was published from 1872 to 1930 when it merged with the '' Daily News'' to become the ''News Chronicle''. Foundation The ''Daily Chronicle'' was developed by Edward Lloyd out of a local newspaper that had started life as the ''Clerkenwell News and Domestic Intelligencer'', set up as a halfpenny 4-page weekly in 1855. Launched after the duties on advertising and published news had been abolished in 1853 and July 1855, this local paper specialised in small personal ads. At first, it carried about three times as much advertising as it did local news. As the formula proved popular, it grew in size and frequency and often changed its name to match. In 1872, it finally changed from the ''London Daily Chronicle and Clerkenwell News'' to plain ''Daily Chronicle''. It was then being published daily in eight pages, half of which were news and half advertising. Edward Lloyd was keenly interested in advertising. It had the potential to gen ...
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Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) published in London. Founded in 1896, it is the United Kingdom's highest-circulated daily newspaper. Its sister paper ''The Mail on Sunday'' was launched in 1982, while Scottish and Irish editions of the daily paper were launched in 1947 and 2006 respectively. Content from the paper appears on the MailOnline website, although the website is managed separately and has its own editor. The paper is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, a great-grandson of one of the original co-founders, is the current chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust, while day-to-day editorial decisions for the newspaper are usually made by a team led by the editor, Ted Verity, who succeede ...
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Confidence Trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ..intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men') at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". Terminology Synonyms include con, confidence game, confidence scheme, ripoff, scam, and stratagem. The perpetrator of a confidence trick (or "con trick") is often referred to as a confidence (or "con") man, con-artist, or a "grifter". The shell game dates back at least to Ancient Greece. Samuel Thompson (1821–1856) was the original "confidence man". Thompson was a clumsy swindler who asked his victims to express confidence in him by giving him money or their watch rather than gaining their confidenc ...
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1906 San Francisco Earthquake
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in San Francisco and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died, and over 80% of the city was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high on the lists of American disasters. Tectonic setting The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. The strike-slip fault is characterized by ma ...
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Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world. Indigenous peoples have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, located on a broad sloping plateau interspersed with rivers, deep ravines, and urban forest, for more than 10,000 years. After the broadly disputed Toronto Purchase, when the Mississauga surrendered the area to the British Crown, the British established the town of York in 1793 and later designat ...
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Prince Arthur, Duke Of Connaught And Strathearn
Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (Arthur William Patrick Albert; 1 May 185016 January 1942), was the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He served as Governor General of Canada, the tenth since Canadian Confederation and the only British prince to do so to date. Arthur was educated by private tutors before entering the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich at 16 years old. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the British Army, where he served for some 40 years, seeing service in various parts of the British Empire. During this time he was also created a royal duke, becoming Duke of Connaught and Strathearn as well as Earl of Sussex. In 1900 he was appointed as Commander in Chief of the British Army in Ireland, which he regretted; his preference being to join the campaign against the Boers in South Africa. In 1911, he was appointed as Governor General of Canada, replacing A ...
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Dartmoor Prison
HM Prison Dartmoor is a Category C men's prison, located in Princetown, high on Dartmoor in the English county of Devon. Its high granite walls dominate this area of the moor. The prison is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, and is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. Dartmoor Prison was given Grade II heritage listing in 1987. History POW prison In 1805, the United Kingdom was at war with Napoleonic France, a conflict during which thousands of prisoners were taken and confined in prison "hulks" or derelict ships. This was considered unsafe, partially due to the proximity of the Royal Naval dockyard at Devonport (then called Plymouth Dock), and as living conditions were appalling in the extreme, a prisoner of war depot was planned in the remote isolation of Dartmoor. The prison was designed by Daniel Asher Alexander. Construction by local labour started in 1806, taking three years to complete. In 1809, the first French prisoners arrived and the prison was full by the ...
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