(1/8) Ever🤔how George Orwell & Aldous Huxley had the🔮 to✍🏼their prophetic "novels", 1984 (1949) and Brave New World (1932)?

Huxley was an inner⭕️member of the Fabian Society, a highly significant strand of the secret society🕸with its fitting logo of the🐺in🐑's clothing. 👇🏼

Remembering Colonel Anil Kaul, VrC (Retd) on his 3rd Death Anniversary.

“It was October 12, 1987, exactly 5:55 pm as I was… coming out of the cupola of my T-72 tank on a steamy evening in an unknown place called Kokkuvil in the Jaffna district of Northern Sri Lanka.+

I froze in that confined space at what I saw. An LTTE militant stood at 60 meters aiming his rocket-propelled gun at my tank.

In a flash he fired. Probably having lost his nerve he aimed too low. The projectile hit the left mudguard of the tank, but for some inexplicable reason+

did not explode. It then hit the side of the main gun and then exploded on top of the turret, all in a fraction of a second. Before I knew, it seemed I had received a straight right punch so to say to my chin. I saw some blood appear on my left hand and there was a sharp drop in+

my eyesight.

Lt Colonel (now Lt Gen) Dalbir Singh, then Commanding Officer of 10 Para Commando, who was standing on the engine deck said to me, “Yaar what a close shave.”

He suddenly saw me and the look on his face told me that something was very very wrong with me. In that+

fraction of a second, as if it was a rewind of my entire life, thoughts raced through my life as to how and when I had landed myself in such a situation…

I asked my gunner to pull out a first field dressing (FFD) which is standard equipment in a first aid box carried in each+

Today is the 130th anniversary of the #WoundedKneeMassacre. On December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry surrounded a peaceful encampment of Lakota with Hotchkiss guns and slaughtered ~300. They were mostly women and children.

Those killed at Wounded Knee were led by Mniconjou Chief Spotted Elk, who was ill. Many were followers of Hunkpapa Chief Sitting Bull who was assassinated 14 days prior. They were invited to seek refuge with Oglala Chief Red Cloud at Pine Ridge. They were hungry, tired & cold.

The soldiers weren’t satisfied with gunning down the encampment. They chased down those who escaped, including little children & their grandmothers, for miles. Some ran all the way back to the Cheyenne River Reservation, through the night in the freezing cold, with bullet wounds.

Charles Eastman, the 1st western educated Oceti Sakowin (Dakota Sioux) physician, was at Pine Ridge during the #WoundedKneeMassacre. It was right after Christmas. A banner hanging over the wounded said, ‘Peace on Earth.’ The horrors Dr. Eastman saw that day changed him forever.

Those massacred at Wounded Knee were callously thrown into a mass grave. Soldiers proudly posed for photos with their corpses. They were awarded Medals of Honor for their part in the slaughter. Those Medals have never been rescinded, despite public outcry.

So when it first appeared in Normandy, the Sherman Firefly and it's meaty 17 pounder represented an ideal combo of reliable chassis, great gun and devastating firepower right?

Ummm...

Truth is a bit more complex. /1
#WW2 #SWW #History

Deliveries of Firefly to units only commenced in April 1944,
just a few weeks before Overlord & left minimal time for familiarisation.

Armoured Regiments mostly utilised Fireflies on a basis of 1 per troop of 4 tanks. /2

Finally each armoured regiment troop had access to integral, meaty, anti-tank firepower capable of dealing serious damage to any German AFV likely to be encountered. /3

The dual purpose 75mm gun was quite capable of laying down a reasonable HE shell or AP round for dealing with Panzer III or IV.

Firefly's 17 Pounder had.... problems with HE, but excelled at tank killing. So Tigers and Panthers would need to be wary. /4

Firefly's design history dated back to March 1943 when the General Staff published "Policy on Tanks" which effectively stated the majority of tanks should have a good HE weapon and...

[See image below] /5

Along with police, well-connected and well-intentioned people arrived at the Lindbergh estate. Military colonels offered their aid, although only one had law enforcement expertise—Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police. The other colonels were

Henry Skillman Breckinridge, a Wall Street lawyer; and William J. Donovan, a hero of the First World War who would later head the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Lindbergh and these men speculated that the kidnapping was perpetrated by organized

crime figures. They thought that the letter was written by someone who spoke German as his native language. At this time, Charles Lindbergh used his influence to control the direction of the investigation.

The deepest banking crisis of the Great Depression was touched off by the pending failure of two Detroit banks in early 1933. For several weeks, by law, every bank in the entire state of Michigan was closed for business. It was from these beginnings that a national banking

crisis engulfed the final days of the Hoover Administration. What transpired to bring on such a calamitous event? How did individuals cope in that interval without a banking system?

In 1927, a young Spanish boy, aged 8, - who would become the 18th Duque de Alberquerque - sat in a cinema watching a newsreel of the Grand National.
In that moment, an impossible dream was born.
Born on the 15 December 1918, the boy - Beltran de Osorio y Diez de Rivera

- was so enchanted that he resolved one day win to the great race himself.
Aged 33, the Duke - having ridden in French steeplechases - made his Grand National debut in 1952, putting up ten pound overweight on his own eight-year-old Brown Jack lll (Pic), trained by Peter Cazalet.

The tall Spaniard fell at the sixth, sustaining cracked ribs and concussion

His second attempt came eleven years later aboard the Irish-bred Jonjo (named after its joint owners John O'Hagen and Joe Thompson).
Together the 44-year-old Duke and the 13-year-old Jonjo completed the

first circuit safely enough and were well up with the leaders when being unluckily brought down at the 21st.
In 1965 the Duke took a bad fall from Groomsman at Valentine's and was taken to Walton General Hospital with a broken leg

His ride in 1966 was on the doubtful stayer

L'Empereur who had to pulled up at the 26th

He was back again in 1973, pulling Nereo up at the Canal Turn. He finished 8th on the same horse the following year.

Yet another bad fall a week before the 1975 National resulted in yet another broken leg, ruling him out of the race,