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Owen O'Malley
Sir Owen St Clair O'Malley (4 May 1887 – 16 April 1974) was a British diplomat. He was Minister to Hungary between 1939 and 1941. He was British ambassador to the Polish government in exile in London during World War II. From July 1945 until May 1947, he was Ambassador to Portugal. Background and education O'Malley was born in Eastbourne, the son of Sir Edward Loughlin O'Malley. He was educated at Rugby School, Radley College and Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. Diplomatic career O'Malley entered the Foreign Office in 1911. During World War II, serving as British Ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1941, O'Malley helped British secret agents Andrzej Kowerski and Krystyna Skarbek escape eastern Europe as German forces were advancing. He was appointed ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile in February 1943. He is particularly noted for his incisive report sent on 24 May 1943 to the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, on the Katyn Massacre indicating the likeliho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrzej Kowerski
Andrzej Kowerski (; 18 May 1912 in Łabunie, Zamość County, Lublin Province, eastern Poland – 8 December 1988 in Munich) was a Polish Army officer and SOE agent during World War II. From 1941 he used the ''nom de guerre'' Andrew Kennedy. Life Before the war Kowerski lost a part of one leg in a hunting accident. During the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Lieutenant Kowerski fought as a member of Poland's 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade, commanded by Col. Stanisław Maczek, winning his country's highest military decoration, the ''Virtuti Militari''. When Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland on September 17, forcing Poland's government to evacuate south into Romania, Kowerski and his "Black Brigade" (so called after their black leather jackets) evacuated to neighboring Hungary. There he was involved in covert activities, exfiltrating interned Polish, and other Allied, military personnel out of Hungary. When Kowerski subsequently worked for British Intellige ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1887 Births
Events January–March * January 11 – Louis Pasteur's anti-rabies treatment is defended in the Académie Nationale de Médecine, by Dr. Joseph Grancher. * January 20 ** The United States Senate allows the Navy to lease Pearl Harbor as a naval base. ** British emigrant ship ''Kapunda'' sinks after a collision off the coast of Brazil, killing 303 with only 16 survivors. * January 21 ** The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is formed in the United States. ** Brisbane receives a one-day rainfall of (a record for any Australian capital city). * January 24 – Battle of Dogali: Abyssinian troops defeat the Italians. * January 28 ** In a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana, the largest snowflakes on record are reported. They are wide and thick. ** Construction work begins on the foundations of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. * February 2 – The first Groundhog Day is observed in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. * February 4 – The Interstate Commerce Act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Portrait Gallery (London)
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it opened in 1856. The gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off Trafalgar Square, and adjoining the National Gallery (London), National Gallery. It has been expanded twice since then. The National Portrait Gallery also has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, with which its remit overlaps. The gallery is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Collection The gallery houses portraits of historically important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter, not that of the artist. The collection includes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives. First series Hoping to emulate national biographical collections published elsewhere in Europe, such as the '' Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (1875), in 1882 the publisher George Smith (1824–1901), of Smith, Elder & Co., planned a universal dictionary that would include biographical entries on individuals from world history. He approached Leslie Stephen, then editor of the ''Cornhill Magazine'', owned by Smith, to become the editor. Stephen persuaded Smith that the work should focus only on subjects from the United Kingdom and its present and former colonies. An early working title was the ''Biographia Britannica'', the name of an earlier eightee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Companion Of The Order Of St Michael And St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is a British order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George IV, George IV, Prince of Wales, while he was acting as prince regent for his father, George III, King George III. It is named in honour of two military saints, Michael (archangel), Michael and Saint George, George. The Order of St Michael and St George was originally awarded to those holding commands or high position in the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean territories acquired in the Napoleonic Wars, and was subsequently extended to holders of similar office or position in other territories of the British Empire. It is at present awarded to men and women who hold high office or who render extraordinary or important non-military service to the United Kingdom in a foreign country, and can also be conferred for important or loyal service in relation to foreign and Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth affairs. Description The Order includes three class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Power Politics
Power politics is a theory in international relations which contends that distributions of power and national interests, or changes to those distributions, are fundamental causes of war and of system stability. The concept of power politics provides a way of understanding systems of international relations: in this view, states compete for the world's limited resources, and it is to an individual state's advantage to be manifestly able to harm others. Power politics prioritizes national self-interest over the interests of other nations or the international community, and thus may include threatening one another with military, economic, or political aggression to protect one nation's own interest. Techniques of power politics include: * Deterrence theory, in which a weaker state deters attack by bolstering its defensive capabilities enough to render attacking infeasible * Conspicuous weapons development (including nuclear development) * Pre-emptive strikes * Blackmail * The mas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Law
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for states across a broad range of domains, including war, diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights. Scholars distinguish between international legal institutions on the basis of their obligations (the extent to which states are bound to the rules), precision (the extent to which the rules are unambiguous), and delegation (the extent to which third parties have authority to interpret, apply and make rules). The sources of international law include international custom (general state practice accepted as law), treaties, and general principles of law recognized by most national legal systems. Although international law may also be reflected in international comity—the practices adopted by states to maintain good relations and mutua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Books
BBC Books (also formerly known as BBC Publishing) is an imprint majority-owned and managed by Penguin Random House through its Ebury Publishing division. The minority shareholder is BBC Studios, the commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The imprint has been active since the 1980s. BBC Books publishes a range of books connected to BBC radio and television programming, including cookery, natural history, lifestyle, and behind the scenes "making-of" books. There are also some non-programme related biographies and autobiographies of various well-known personalities in its list. Amongst BBC Books' best known titles are cookery books by former TV cook Delia Smith, wildlife titles by Sir David Attenborough and gardening titles by Alan Titchmarsh. In the BBC Publishing days, it turned down ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', a book which has now sold over 14,000,000 copies worldwide. ''Doctor Who'' Since 1996, BBC Books has also produced a range of tie-in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katyn Massacre
The Katyn massacre, "Katyń crime"; russian: link=yes, Катынская резня ''Katynskaya reznya'', "Katyn massacre", or russian: link=no, Катынский расстрел, ''Katynsky rasstrel'', "Katyn execution" was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by German forces. The massacre was initiated in NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to Joseph Stalin to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, which was secretly approved by the Soviet Politburo led by Stalin. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 until his resignation in 1957. Achieving rapid promotion as a young Conservative member of Parliament, he became foreign secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy. He again held that position for most of the Second World War, and a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, Eden succeeded him as the leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister in 1955, and a month later won a general election. Eden's reputation as a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in 1956 when the United States refused to support the Anglo-French military response to the Suez Crisis, which critics across party lines regarded as a historic setback for British foreign poli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
