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John Orrok
John Orrok (c. 1779 - 1838) was a junior British army officer in the late 18th century and early 19th century. The letters he wrote home to Scotland between 1801 and 1816 from England, India and Belgium have been published and provide a detailed picture of his life and preoccupations and the society in which he moved. Biography Born into Scottish gentry, John Orrok obtained a commission into the British army while in his early or mid-teens and served in India and Ceylon in the 1790s. On returning to Britain he married his cousin, Betsy Reid, in 1800 and in 1803 they left their baby daughter with Betsy's parents and both sailed to India. John joined first the 65th and then the 33rd Regiment which was led at the time by Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington. Although John Orrok reached the rank of captain, he saw very little military action. The couple had three children while in India and after Betsy's death in 1810, Orrok brought them back to England, where he first se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkhas, and 28,330 volunteer reserve personnel. The modern British Army traces back to 1707, with antecedents in the English Army and Scots Army that were created during the Restoration in 1660. The term ''British Army'' was adopted in 1707 after the Acts of Union between England and Scotland. Members of the British Army swear allegiance to the monarch as their commander-in-chief, but the Bill of Rights of 1689 and Claim of Right Act 1689 require parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain a peacetime standing army. Therefore, Parliament approves the army by passing an Armed Forces Act at least once every five years. The army is administered by the Ministry of Defence and commanded by the Chief of the General Staff. The Brit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jamaica Steam Navigation Company
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola (the island containing the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic); the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands lies some to the north-west. Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of African slaves to Jamaica as labourers. The island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, when England (later Great Britain) conquered it, renaming it ''Jamaica''. Under British colonial rule Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on the African slaves and later their descenda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1838 Deaths
Events January–March * January 10 – A fire destroys Lloyd's Coffee House and the Royal Exchange in London. * January 11 – At Morristown, New Jersey, Samuel Morse, Alfred Vail and Leonard Gale give the first public demonstration of Morse's new invention, the telegraph. * January 11 Events Pre-1600 * 532 – Nika riots in Constantinople: A quarrel between supporters of different chariot teams—the Blues and the Greens—in the Hippodrome escalates into violence. * 630 – Conquest of Mecca: The prophet Muhamma ... - A 1838 Vrancea earthquake, 7.5 earthquake strikes the Romanian district of Vrancea County, Vrancea causing damage in Moldavia and Wallachia, killing 73 people. * January 21 – The first known report about the Lowest temperature recorded on Earth, lowest temperature on Earth is made, indicating in Yakutsk. * February 6 – Boer explorer Piet Retief and 60 of his men are massacred by King Dingane kaSenzangakhona of the Zulu people, afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1779 Births
Events January–March * January 11 – British troops surrender to the Marathas in Wadgaon, India, and are forced to return all territories acquired since 1773. * January 11 – Ching-Thang Khomba is crowned King of Manipur. * January 22 – American Revolutionary War – Claudius Smith is hanged at Goshen, Orange County, New York for supposed acts of terrorism upon the people of the surrounding communities. * January 29 – After a second petition for partition from its residents, the North Carolina General Assembly abolishes Bute County, North Carolina (established 1764) by dividing it and naming the northern portion Warren County (for Revolutionary War hero Joseph Warren), the southern portion Franklin County (for Benjamin Franklin). The General Assembly also establishes Warrenton (also named for Joseph Warren) to be the seat of Warren County, and Louisburg (named for Louis XVI of France) to be the seat of Franklin County. * February ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Longford
Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford, (''née'' Harman; 30 August 1906 – 23 October 2002), better known as Elizabeth Longford, was a British historian. She was a member of the Royal Society of Literature and was on the board of trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in London. She is best known as a historian, especially for her biographies of 19th-century aristocrats such as Queen Victoria (1964), Lord Byron (1976) and the Duke of Wellington (1969). Early life Elizabeth Harman was born on 30 August 1906 at 108 Harley Street in Marylebone, London. The daughter of eye specialist Nathaniel Bishop Harman, she was educated at the Francis Holland School, Headington School and was an undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. "Able, articulate and beautiful", in the words of ''The New York Times'', she was "the Zuleika Dobson of her day, with undergraduates and even dons tumbling over one another to fall in love with her". A few years after her graduation, on 3 November ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jac Weller
John "Jac" Weller (January 6, 1913 – August 18, 1994) was an American college football player, firearms expert and military historian. He was a consensus All-American in 1935 at the guard position. He played for Fritz Crisler's Princeton Tigers football team at Princeton University that went 25–1 during Weller's three years on the team. Weller later became known as a firearms expert and published several works on munitions and military history. Football player at Princeton Weller was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. He attended preparatory school at The Hun School before enrolling at Princeton University. At Princeton, Weller was a star lineman for Fritz Crisler's Princeton Tigers football championship teams of the mid-1930s. Crisler began the practice of having players wear numbers on their jerseys while Weller was a student, and Crisler assigned the number 99 to his best player—Jack Weller. During Weller's three seasons at Princeton, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Holmes (military Historian)
Edward Richard Holmes, CBE, TD, JP, VR (29 March 1946 – 30 April 2011), known as Richard Holmes, was a British military historian. He was co-director of Cranfield University's Security and Resilience Group from 1989 to 2009 and became Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield in 1995. Early life and education Holmes was educated at Forest School, Walthamstow, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Northern Illinois University, and the University of Reading, where he was awarded a PhD in 1975. Military career In 1964, he enlisted in the Territorial Army, the volunteer reserve of the British Army. Two years later he received a commission as a second lieutenant with the Territorial Army, and was promoted to lieutenant on 17 June 1968. He was promoted to acting captain in 1972, substantive captain in 1973, acting major in 1978 and substantive major in 1980. In 1979, he was awarded the Territorial Decoration. Holmes was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1986, whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banff, Aberdeenshire
Banff ( gd, Banbh) is a town in the Banff and Buchan area of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is situated on Banff Bay and faces the town of Macduff across the estuary of the River Deveron. It is a former royal burgh, and is the county town of the historic county of Banffshire. Etymology The origin of the name is not certain. While it may be derived from the Scottish Gaelic ''banbh'' meaning "piglet", a more likely origin is the name being a contraction of ''Bean-naomh'', Gaelic for "holy woman", as this would tie in with the burgh's coat of arms which features the Virgin Mary. William J. Watson writes: "It is true that Banff is Banb in the '' Book of Deer'' and Banbh in modern Gaelic—one syllable. On the other hand, banbh, a suckling pig, is not appropriate—one might say it is impossible—as the name of a place or district." History Banff's first castle was built to repel Viking invaders and a charter of 1163 AD shows that Malcolm IV was living there at that time. During th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Assaye
The Battle of Assaye was a major battle of the Second Anglo-Maratha War fought between the Maratha Empire and the British East India Company. It occurred on 23 September 1803 near Assaye in western India. An outnumbered Indian and British force, under the command of Major General Arthur Wellesley (who later became the Duke of Wellington), defeated a combined Maratha army of Daulatrao Scindia and the Bhonsle Raja of Berar. The battle was Wellesley's first major victory and the one he later described as his finest accomplishment on the battlefield, even more so than his more famous victories in the Peninsular War, and his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. From August 1803, Wellesley's army and a separate force under the command of his subordinate, Colonel James Stevenson, pursued the Maratha cavalry-based army, which had threatened to raid south into Hyderabad. After several weeks of pursuit and countermarching, Scindia reinforced the combined Maratha ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Honourable East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world. The EIC had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three Presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time. The operations of the company had a profound effect on the global balance of trade, almost single-handedly reversing the trend of eastward drain of Western bullion, seen since Roman times. Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola (the island containing the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic); the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands lies some to the north-west. Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of African slaves to Jamaica as labourers. The island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, when England (later Great Britain) conquered it, renaming it ''Jamaica''. Under British colonial rule Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on the African slaves and later their des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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