The Second Great Fire Of London
The Second Great Fire of London in December 1940 was caused by one of the most destructive air raids of the Blitz during World War II. The Luftwaffe raid caused fires over an area greater than that of the Great Fire of London in 1666, leading one American correspondent to say in a cable to his office that "The second Great Fire of London has begun". Fires started by the raid included an incendiary bomb that broke through the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, which was being guarded by a fire watch team at the behest of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Attack On the night of 29–30 December 1940, approximately 100,000 (mostly small incendiary) bombs fell on the city. The Germans dispatched 136 bombers to the city. Fewer incendiaries were dropped than in the raids of 15 November or 8 December. The raid was focused on a part of the city that contained many non-residential buildings, such as churches, offices, and warehouses. Many of these were locked and were not covered by the Fi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Blitz
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germans conducted mass air attacks against industrial targets, towns, and cities, beginning with raids on London towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940 (a battle for daylight air superiority between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force over the United Kingdom). By September 1940, the Luftwaffe had lost the Battle of Britain and the German air fleets () were ordered to attack London, to draw RAF Fighter Command into a battle of annihilation.Price 1990, p. 12. Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, ordered the new policy on 6 September 1940. From 7 September 1940, London was systematically bombed by the Luftwaffe for 56 of the following 57 days and nights. Most notable was a large dayligh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pressure
Pressure (symbol: ''p'' or ''P'') is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure (also spelled ''gage'' pressure)The preferred spelling varies by country and even by industry. Further, both spellings are often used ''within'' a particular industry or country. Industries in British English-speaking countries typically use the "gauge" spelling. is the pressure relative to the ambient pressure. Various units are used to express pressure. Some of these derive from a unit of force divided by a unit of area; the SI unit of pressure, the pascal (Pa), for example, is one newton per square metre (N/m2); similarly, the pound-force per square inch (psi) is the traditional unit of pressure in the imperial and U.S. customary systems. Pressure may also be expressed in terms of standard atmospheric pressure; the atmosphere (atm) is equal to this pressure, and the torr is defined as of this. Manometric u ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ernie Pyle
Ernest Taylor Pyle (August 3, 1900 – April 18, 1945) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist and war correspondent who is best known for his stories about ordinary American soldiers during World War II. Pyle is also notable for the columns he wrote as a roving human-interest reporter from 1935 through 1941 for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate that earned him wide acclaim for his simple accounts of ordinary people across North America. When the United States entered World War II, he lent the same distinctive, folksy style of his human-interest stories to his wartime reports from the European theater (1942–44) and Pacific theater (1945). Pyle won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his newspaper accounts of " dogface" infantry soldiers from a first-person perspective. He was killed by enemy fire on Iejima (then known as Ie Shima) during the Battle of Okinawa. At the time of his death in 1945, Pyle was among the best-known American war correspondents. His syndicat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zeppelin
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155–157. and developed in detail in 1893.Dooley 2004, p. A.187. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word ''zeppelin'' came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and as scouts, resulting in over 500 deaths in bombing raids in Britain. The defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily slowed the airship business. Although DELAG establish ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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St Paul's Survives
''St Paul's Survives'' is a photograph taken in London during the night air raid of 29–30 December 1940, the 114th night of the Blitz of World War II. It shows St Paul's Cathedral, illuminated by fires and surrounded by the smoke of burning buildings. It was taken by photographer Herbert Mason in the early hours of 30 December, from the roof of Northcliffe House, the offices of the ''Daily Mail'' newspaper, on Tudor Street, close to Fleet Street. The photograph has become a symbol of British resilience and courage, and is considered one of the iconic images of the Blitz. It became "instantly famous", and turned the Cathedral into "a symbol of togetherness, survival and suffering". The raid during which the photograph was shot became known as the "Second Great Fire of London": more than 160 people died, over 500 were injured, and hundreds of buildings were destroyed. The Blitz The Blitz (shortened from German ''Blitzkrieg'', "lightning war") was the sustained strategic bombi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Photograph
A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now created using a smartphone/camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see. The process and practice of creating such images is called photography. Etymology The word ''photograph'' was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light," and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing," together meaning "drawing with light." History The first permanent photograph, a contact-exposed copy of an engraving, was made in 1822 using the bitumen-based "heliography" process developed by Nicéphore Niépce. The first photographs of a real-world scene, made using a camera obscura, followed a few years later at Le Gras, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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London Fire Brigade
The London Fire Brigade (LFB) is the fire and rescue service for London, the capital of the United Kingdom. It was formed by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act 1865, under the leadership of superintendent Eyre Massey Shaw. It has 5,992staff, including 5,096 operational firefighters and officers based at 102 fire stations (plus one river station). The LFB is led by the Commissioner for Fire and Emergency Planning, a position currently held by Andy Roe. The brigade and Commissioner are overseen by the Greater London Authority, which in 2018 took over these responsibilities from the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA). In the 2015-16 financial year the LFB received 171,488 emergency calls. These consisted of: 20,773 fires, 48,696 false alarms of fire and 30,066 other calls for service. As well as firefighting, the LFB also responds to road traffic collisions, floods, shut-in-lift releases, and other incidents such as those involving hazardous materials or major t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Sansom
William Norman Trevor Sansom FRSL (18 January 1912 – 20 April 1976) was a British novelist, travel and short story writer known for his highly descriptive prose style. Profile Sansom was born in London, the third son of Ernest Brooks Sansom, M.I.N.A., a naval architect, by his wife Mabel (née Clark).''Who Was Who'', A. & C. Black, 1971.''World Authors, 1900–1950, volume 4'', H. W. Wilson, 1996, p. 2296. He was educated at Uppingham School, Rutland, before moving to Bonn to learn German. Named 'Norman Trevor' at birth, he was called 'William' as a child and used this name throughout his life. From 1930 Sansom worked in international banking for the British chapter of a German bank, and in 1935 he moved to an advertising company where he worked until the outbreak of World War II. Then he became a full-time London firefighter, serving throughout The Blitz. His experiences during that time inspired much of his writing, including many of the stories in the celebrated collec ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Auxiliary Fire Service
The Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) was first formed in 1938 in Great Britain as part of the Civil Defence Service. Its role was to supplement the work of brigades at local level. The Auxiliary Fire Service and the local brigades were superseded in August 1941 by the National Fire Service. After the war the AFS was reformed alongside the Civil Defence Corps, forming part of the UK's planned emergency response to a nuclear attack. It was disbanded in the UK in 1968. Members of the AFS were unpaid part-time volunteers, but could be called up for whole-time paid service if necessary. This was very similar to the wartime establishment of the police Special Constabulary. Men and women could join, the latter mainly in an administrative role. A first-hand account of the type of work they undertook is given by A S Bullock in ''Gloucestershire Between the Wars: A Memoir''. Organisation An AFS was formed in every county borough, borough and urban district, and there was also one in the Lond ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |