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[Yuli Ban]

100 years ago today: the Battle of Jutland

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

You know, we're getting pretty close to one of my favorite historical events ever! Just got a few more months to go. Technically. Technically we have 6 months to go; technically we also have about 16 more months to go.

[Yuli Ban]

Goodness!

 

I feel we could mine some of the materials used...

[Yuli Ban]

Now this is one of my favorite parts of World War I, one of the parts that we tend to overlook

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[September 17, 1916] Manfred Von Richtofen who will go on to be known as the "Red Baron" gets his first aerial kill.

[Yuli Ban]

Oh!! Oh!!! I can't believe I missed it!

 

[September 15th, 1916] "First Use Of Tanks".

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[December 30th, 1916] "Rasputin murdered by Russian nobles".
 
[January 2nd, 1917] News comes in of the death of Rasputin (Daily Telegraph).
 
[Jan. 2, 1917] St. Petersburg is awash with stories that Russian nobles killed Rasputin, the 'Emperor's evil genius'

 
 
 
michaelnoir

• (December 17 Old Style) – The mystic Grigori Rasputin is murdered in Saint Petersburg.
• (December 17 OS) – Death of Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic (killed) (b. 1869).

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Petrograd. During the early morning hours, Rasputin visits the home of Prince Felix Yusupov at the prince's invitation. The prince gives him cakes laced with cyanide and then fires several shots into his back, but the monk lives. The count and his co-conspirators, including the czar's cousin Grand Duke Dmitri, beat and kick the wounded Rasputin as he drags himself across the floor, and they shoot him repeatedly. Then they bind him and take him to the Neva River, where they shove him down into the river's freezing waters through a hole in the ice. Rasputin drowns.
Allied capitals. After separately denouncing Bethmann Hollweg's call for a peace conference as insincere, the Allied governments issue an official joint response rejecting the proposal as a public relations gimmick, accusing Germany of criminal actions, and asserting their continuing agreement never to make peace individually. For the present, neither Bethmann-Hollweg's nor Wilson's proposal has any chance of success.
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Home Fronts: Rasputin is murdered in bizarre fashion in Petrograd. He is poisoned by cyanide, shot numerous times, beaten, and then tied up and thrown into the Neva River. His murderers include Prince Felix Yusupov, who is related by marriage to the Romanovs, and Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, perhaps the czar's favourite nephew.
Rasputin's body is recovered from the Neva and buried (January 3) on imperial grounds at Tsarskoe Selo, with Nicholas and Alexandra in attendance. Alexandra, before the coffin is sealed, has a letter placed on Rasputin's chest. "My dear martyr, give me thy blessing that it may follow me always on the sad and dreary path I have to follow here below", it notes. Rasputin has frequently warned her, "If I die or you desert me, you will lose your son and your crown within six months".
When the murderers are identified, Russia's grand dukes and grand duchesses without exception urge clemency for them. Nicholas II, ignoring these pleas, exiles the leaders of the conspiracy against Rasputin.
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• Allied governments reject German peace proposal
• British and Chinese governments agree on employment of Chinese labour in France.
• Bulgarian government accepts President Wilson's proposals for peace negotiations.

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• Entente Governments reject German peace proposals.
• British and Chinese Governments conclude agreement for employment of Chinese labour in France.
• Bulgarian Government reply accepting President Wilson's Note.

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• Emperor Karl I is crowned King Charles IV of Hungary and Croatia in Budapest.
• Grand Duke Purishkevich and Prince Felix Yusupov poison the mysterious confidant of the Tsarina, Father Grigori Yefimovich Novykh (Rasputin) at Yusupov’s home in Petrograd. After this attempt at murder fails, the pair shoot Rasputin and drop his body through the ice of the River Neva, where it will be recovered 2 January. An autopsy will reveal the cause of death as drowning.
• HMS Natal suffers an internal explosion while anchored off Cromarty, Scotland. Around 400 of her crew are lost, along with some of the wives and children of the officers visiting at the time.
• String Quartet no.1 by Ernest Bloch (36) is performed for the first time, in New York. It is very successful.

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Home Fronts

• Hungary: Emperor Charles crowned King Charles IV at Budapest.
• Germany: War Ministry dismounts 16 cavalry regiments.
• Russia: Tsar tells British Ambassador ‘In the event of revolution, only a small part of the Army can be counted to defend the dynasty.’

Politics

• ALLIES REJECT GERMAN PEACE NOTE as ’empty and insincere’. Anglo-Chinese labour agreement for Western Front.

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Eastern Front

• Very heavy fighting on whole Romanian front.
• Enemy progress at various points in mountains and south-east of Ramnicu Sarat, but checked between here and Focsani.
• Bulgars and Turks advance slowly towards Macin.

Political, etc.

• Greek Note to Allies requests rising of the Blockade.
• Southern Slave Committee issues declaration at Coronation of Austrian Emperor.
• Allies reply to "Peace" Note of Enemy Powers forwarded to U.S.A. Government.
• Spain declines to second President Wilson's proposal.

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30 December 1916 Allies against German peace proposals

• British ss St. Theodore after conversion intor raider by Möwe, captured and sank British sailing vessel Jean 60 miles east from St. Paul Rocks.
• British ss Aspenlead mined in Channel: towed into port.
• Allies negatived German proposals, which were described as lacking substance and precision, less an offer of peace than a war manoeuvre.
• Germans advanced towards Braila.

[Vladislav]

After war was declared in August 1914, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany wrote that war would never have occurred had his grandmother Queen Victoria, who had died in 1901, still held the British throne.

[Yuli Ban]

Vicky-Grams would have slapped all her petulant children for so much roughhousing.

[Vladislav]

Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia reviewed the military.   

https://www.youtube....h?v=ip1rhkhFHnc

[Vladislav]

Charles (1887-1922) became Emperor of Austria as Charles I and King of Hungary as Charles IV in 1916. He made attempts to take Austria-Hungary out of the First World War. Starting in 1917, Emperor Charles I tried to make a separate peace treaty between Austria and the Allies. To this end, he sent his brothers-in-law, Prince Sixtus and Prince Xavier, on several occasions, to the governments of France and England. 

[Yuli Ban]

[Vladislav]

King Albert I of Belgium became head commander of the Belgian army in the First World War.   

https://www.youtube....h?v=cPkaGV2X-uk

[Erowind]

[What is Going On in Germany WWI News Snippet]

I wonder how people would react if I printed a few dozen of these out and started posting them around my college. Idea! I should put up conflicting propaganda posters just to mess with people and watch the reactions from afar.

[Yuli Ban]

[Feb. 15, 1917] U-boats claim six British ships in one day; 214,810 tons of shipping has been sunk since Feb. 1

 

[Feb. 16, 1917] U.S. Senator says 'cabal' of newspapers is spreading false news to lead America into war

 

[Feb 17th, 1917] Somme River: The British have harassed the Germans with small raids as the winter proceeds. Now during the night they attack on a large scale north of the Ancre River, but German artillery stops them after a gain of several hundred yards that costs twenty-seven hundred casualties.

 

[Feb. 18, 1917] Russian Soldiers Deserting in Droves on the Eastern Front, Military Discipline in Total Breakdown

 

[Feb. 19, 1917] Smallpox outbreaks reported in several German cities

 

[Feb. 19, 1917] Sen. Cummins calls new espionage bill an act of madness, says it curtails civil liberties and leads America toward despotism

 

[Feb. 20, 1917] Food riots wrack Brooklyn as 3,000 women overturn peddlers carts, start fires and fight police

 

[Feb. 20, 1917] Six-year-old Norwegian girl is held captive on German submarine for eight days after her ship was sunk at sea

[Yuli Ban]