Scott Allsop's Blog, page 223

16th May 1916: The Sykes-Picot Agreement ratified by Britain and France

The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France, formally known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was ratified. The agreement was designed to deal with the future of the Ottoman Empire, which had been known as ‘the sick man of Europe’ in the preceding years due to its declining power. After the Ottomans joined the First World War on the side of the Central Powers, the Allies began discussing policy towards their territory. Britain and France had already agreed to Russia’s claim to Cons...

15th May 1928: Mickey Mouse’s first cartoon appearance

On 15th May 1928, the first animated cartoon to feature Mickey and Minnie Mouse was shown to a theatre audience.  However, the cartoon that was shown that day was not Steamboat Willie, which is the cartoon most people know as Mickey Mouse’s debut.  In fact Mickey’s first animated appearance was in a silent short called Plane Crazy, but the cartoon failed to secure a distributor until a soundtrack was added a year later.  It was finally released on the 29th March 1929, 11 months after its firs...

14th May 1955: The establishment of the Warsaw Pact

The USSR and seven other European countries signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance better known as the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was established shortly after West Germany was admitted to NATO. The USSR was concerned by the remilitarisation of West Germany, something it had tried to avoid when it proposed a new European Security Treaty that failed to gain support from the Western powers in November 1954. Just five days after West Germany joined NATO representat...

13th May 1787: The First Fleet departs for Australia

On the 13th May 1787, the eleven ships of the “First Fleet” set sail under Captain Arthur Phillip from Portsmouth, England, to establish a penal colony in Australia.  As well as over 1,000 convicts who had been sentenced to transportation, the ships also carried officers, crew, marines and their families. It took 252 days for the six convict ships, three store ships, and two Royal Navy escort ships to complete the journey.  The route involved the ships sailing first from Portsmouth to Tenerif...

12th May 1846: The Donner Party begin their ill-fated journey to California

The Donner Party departed Independence, Missouri on their ill-fated journey to California. The 1840s had seen a dramatic increase in the number of pioneers undertaking the long and dangerous journey to settle in the western United States. The California Trail shared its initial stages with the 2,170-mile (3,490 km) Oregon Trail but, after reading about a short cut in a guidebook by Lansford Hastings, a party led by George Donner and James F. Reed decided to take this route. The group of 20 wa...

11th May 1997: Deep Blue chess computer beats Garry Kasparov

On the 11th May 1997, the IBM computer Deep Blue became the first computer to defeat a reigning world chess champion under tournament conditions when it beat Garry Kasparov 3-2 over six matches. Deep Blue began life as a graduate research project at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Developed over 8 years by a team of eight computer scientists, it operated through brute force computing power.  Ranked as the 259th most powerful computer in the world, Deep Blue was able t...

10th May 1857: The start of the Indian Mutiny (First War of Indian Independence)

The Indian Mutiny, also known as the First War of Indian Independence, began in Meerut. By the middle of the 19th century, the British East India Company ruled two thirds of the Indian subcontinent on behalf of the government. The remainder paid tribute to the British, but there was increasing discontent among native rulers about their rapidly declining position. For ordinary Indians there were also concerns about the pace of Westernisation that threatened local traditions and ignored religio...

9th May 1887: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show opens in London

On the 9th May 1887, Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show opened in London at the American Exhibition in West Brompton.  This was the first time Buffalo Bill had travelled to Britain, and marked the first time that many Europeans had seen the fabled ‘Cowboys and Indians’. Over 100 performers had travelled from New York aboard the steamship State of Nebraska, including members of a range of indigenous tribes who staged a very scripted and stage-friendly version of life on the Great Plains.  Alon...

8th May 1942: The Battle of the Coral Sea ends during the War in the Pacific

The Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval battle in which the participating ships never came in sight of each other, ended. The Coral Sea is situated off the northeast coast of Australia. Following Japan’s entry into the Second World War, the Imperial Japanese Navy sought to establish perimeter defences in the region to protect the Japanese empire and isolate Australia and New Zealand from their ally the United States. Japanese forces launched Operation MO, in which they planned to seize P...

7th May 1794: Robespierre establishes Cult of the Supreme Being

On the 7th May 1794, just a few weeks before the Law of 22nd Prairial that created the Great Terror, Maximilien Robespierre formally announced the creation of the Cult of the Supreme Being in a meeting of the National Convention. The Cult had been devised almost exclusively by Robespierre, and followed a period of dramatic de-Christianisation that had seen the French Church stripped of its authority.  The Republic had fought hard to remove the influence of the Church from politics, with even...