Monthly Archives: October 2018
On this day: Dressing a Communist
26th October 1957: Italian fashion designer Angelo Litrico is photographed cutting fabric for a jacket for Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev held the title of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 until 1964.
The designer, born the eldest of twelve children in Sicily in 1927, found international fame dressing political figures on both sides of the Cold War standoff.
On this day 80 years ago
This image is of Manhattan, New York on the 26th of October, 1938. It shows 20th Street between Second and First Avenues.
While the USA marked the introduction of minimum wage laws that month, Nazis were marching into the Sudetenland and expanding the Nuremberg Laws to ban Jews from many public spaces, while the Imperial Japanese Army was overtaking Canton in China.
On this day: the Battle of Agincourt
Morning of the Battle of Agincourt, 25th October 1415.
The Battle of Agincourt, part of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France and both kingdoms’ allies, was fought on the 25th of October, 1415, and resulted in an English victory.
This painting depicting the beginning of the battle was created by Sir John Gilbert in 1884.
On this day: British women prepare for invasion
23rd October 1941: Women of Britain’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) operate a rangefinder during anti-aircraft training on the beach of Weybourne in Norfolk, England.
Weybourne was considered to be at serious risk of invasion during the Second World War, and the region was prepared accordingly.
The ATS was formed in 1938, and existed until 1949, when it was incorporated into the Women’s Royal Army Corps.
On this day: Australian soldiers off to war
This photograph is titled:
“E” Company at Fort Macquarie October 18th, 1914.
Fort Macquarie, in the Australian state of New South Wales, was located at Bennelong Point, where the Sydney Opera House stands today.
Australia committed to the First World War from the outset, with preparations beginning even before Britain declared war on Germany in early August of 1914.
100 Years Ago in Belgium
The coastal city of Ostend in Belgium – along with much of the rest of the country – was occupied by the Germans during the First World War. As the war began drawing to an end in October of 1918, the Germans destroyed buildings as they retreated on the 17th of October.
Britain 100 Years Ago
17th October 1918: Officers at the General Headquarters of the Anti-aircraft School of Britain’s Royal Artillery.
After more than four years of fighting, the First World War would be over less than a month after this picture was taken.
Russian Orthodoxy – GONE!
In a centuries’ overdue move, and one that is going to lead to more Russian aggression in Ukraine, the Constantinople Patriarchate approved Ukraine’s split from the Russian Orthodox Church overnight. It is being called the biggest split in all of Christianity in a thousand years.
Russian Orthodoxy was forced on Ukrainians over several centuries, finishing with the forced conversion of my family’s Ukrainian Catholic villages in the west of the country when Churchill gifted the country to Stalin after the Second World War (thanks for that, Winston!).
What will happen now? Well, in anticipation of this move, the Russian military has already stepped up attacks in Ukraine’s east, with people being killed in record numbers again. It has to be understood that Russia’s Church – in the past decade or so – has become a weaponised political party that effectively runs the country, behind only Vladimir Putin.
Additionally, experts are predicting staged attacks on Russian churches, so that Putin can blame them on “fascist Ukrainians”, and attack and invade even more.
What I’m worried about is attacks on the thousand-year-old Orthodox monasteries and cathedrals in Ukraine, such as the Lavra complex in Kyiv. I sure hope they’ve stepped up security at those locations.
This move removes a major aspect of Russian colonialism from Ukraine.
I’m not sure why Russia never comes up alongside the likes of France and Britain and Spain in discussions about colonialism and cultural appropriation (because people think Russia is romantic?). The Russians were just as brutal as anybody else (see the Holodomor). And – unlike other nations – their behaviour is ongoing (see the annexation of Crimea, the invasion and occupation of eastern Ukraine, the ongoing invasion and occupation of one-fifth of Georgia, and the illegal occupation of Moldova).
The next few weeks are going to be chaotic for Eastern Europe.
On this day…
English ballerina Margot Fonteyn, one of the only dancers in history to hold the title of Prima Ballerina Assoluta, is seen here in a photograph dated the 11th of October, 1949.
Fonteyn was dancing the opening night performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
In Times Gone By... 
