Events

200 years ago, on the 12th of February, 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. A few decades later, he was wandering about on some islands off the coast of Ecudaor and noted that the birds and turtles differed from island to island, though seemed to share similar traits to creatures from the mainland.

(Note: creatures in pictures below from neither Ecuador, England or the Galapagos Islands, but seeing as I've never been there, I don't have any pictures of them. These are, however, creatures, and as such seem fitting).

In 1859, Darwin published his seminal work On The Origin Of Species. While others had suggested that species evolved, Darwin's work was the first one that grabbed the imagination of the non-scientific community. The book was controversial because it contradicted the religious concept that the world's species were static, created by God in perfect form at the start of time.

Today, the concepts that underlay Darwin's book still underpin the theory of natural selection, the most widely accepted theory of the development of species.

Today, Darwin can be found on the ten-pound note, along with a bird, one of "the flora and fauna that he may have come across on his travels" (lest you forget why he was famous).

In the event you feel like getting down "with a celebration of science and reason" in honour of Darwin, you can find events on the Darwin Day page. Nothing is going on in Sheffield (even though it's only a couple hours from Darwin's birthplace), so I guess I'll just have to celebrate by myself.

Happy birthday, Chuck.

On February 9th, 1996 at six o'clock in the evening, the IRA announced they would be ending the cease fire that had lasted 17 months. One hour later, at two minutes past seven in the evening, a lorry with a half-tonne bomb exploded in the London's Docklands, just feet from the South Quay DLR station.

There was a warning that had been called in to the police, so most of the buildings had been evacuated. However, 2 men working in a news shop had not left, and Inam Bashir and John Jeffries were later found dead in the rubble. 39 people required hospitalization for injuries related to the blast, mostly from falling glass from the nearby buildings.

The Midland Bank building, South Quay Plaza I and II took significant damage, as did the DLR station and tracks. While most of the buildings have been repaired, part of South Quay Plaza still to this day sits derelict. All told, the damage cost more than £150 million pounds.

South Quay station and the DLR was reopened again by mid-April, despite the bomb exploding under the blast site.

Despite the reopening of hostilities, the peace process continued, slowly, finally ending with the July 2005 IRA's proclamation to pursue a united Ireland solely through peacefully means and the decommissioning of all their weapons, and the 2007 ending of Operation Banner, the British Army's operation in Northern Ireland.

The current South Quay station will soon shut, replaced by a newer, larger station positioned over the water a few hundred feet down the tracks, though the name will remain South Quay.

“The smart thing to do is to stay home and watch the game on TV,” I said to myself on Saturday afternoon. Superbowl is well covered here in the UK, showing on both BBC and Sky Sports. It would be no problem to watch it on my couch. And as the game starts at 11:30 PM local time and I had an 8 o’clock train to catch up to Sheffield, staying in seemed like the smart move.

But this is the RELAUNCH of the Superbowls Around the World blog series. After making a big deal of it in a blog entry I posted, I couldn’t just wind up saying that I ended up sitting on the couch in my apartment watching TV. No, I need to do it right.

So I searched on line and found that a surprising number of places were staying open to show the game. The NFL is actually more widely covered here than I would have expected. In the regular season games are shown on Sky Sports, and the regular season tilt that has happened for the past two years at Wembley is always a big deal.

I choose to forgo the sports bars and their cover charges and head instead to a party put on by the American expat Meetup group. The party, with an expected attendance of 800 people, was to be hosted in Islington. Islington is far from my place in Isle of Dogs, but close to St. Pancras station, where I needed to get my train out the next morning. With the game ending sometime around 3 in the morning, heading back to Isle of Dogs for a couple hours of sleep and then heading back to almost where I just was didn’t make much sense.

Therefore, I decided to splash out and get a hotel near St. Pancras. I headed out to the hotel around 4 pm, and decided to take an afternoon nap, as I knew sleep wouldn’t be something I got much of later in the evening.

I woke a few hours later and looked out my window. I opened the drapes, and wondered if the hotel had somehow moved across the ocean to Canada while I slept. There was snow on the ground. Lots of it.

London and the south-east of England was in the middle of a winter storm, which by its end would dump more snow on the capital than it had seen in 18 years.

The snow, however, didn’t stop those wanting to see the game from heading out. The Superbowl party hosted by the American expat group had over 1,000 people in attendance, watching the game on a projected screen in what appears to be a dance club in its other life.

There were fans of all stripes there, with Arizona and Pittsburgh being represented equally (by the sound of the cheering). A few folks even were actually from those cities represented…

Oddly, there were a lot of people wearing jerseys from other teams, even across other sports, including a guy in a KC Royals jacket. I guess wearing something American sports related was in the spirit of the night.

The expat group had managed to stream the video of the NBC from America, so we had all the American commercials, the American commentators and all the half-time show, including Bruce Springsteen.

In the end, Pittsburgh won what ended up being a very close game. I had been cheering for the Arizona Cardinals as I had just spent 2 months there, so I was slightly disappointed by the outcome, but happy to have actually bothered to go out, rather than staying at home.

Leaving the venue around 3 AM I was hoping to catch a night bus back to my hotel, but never saw one come along, and ended up walking the 25 minutes back to my hotel. I found out the reason for this the next morning as I woke up. The snow had hit London hard. All the airports were closed, none of the buses were running, most of the tube lines were shut or suffering serious delays and many of the trains were running delayed schedules.

The next morning, having stayed in a hotel right by St. Pancras station, I was able to walk to the station and catch my train up to Sheffield. East Midlands, the company that runs the London – Sheffield train, was one of the only companies in London that wasn’t delaying their schedule, and the train left right on time, though mostly empty, as very few people could make it to the station with few tube lines or buses running.

So, had I done the smart thing and watched the game at home (or even the really smart thing and went to bed early), I wouldn’t have made it to work on time this morning (if I could have made it at all). Only through choosing to go out did I ensure that I could make it up to Sheffield. I arrived in Sheffield, in “Northern” England, to find less snow, though they are expected to get it tonight. Luckily my hotel is only a 3 minute walk to the office.

So, I end with a few pictures from last night and this morning of the snowy scenes in London. I hope no one accuses me of bringing the snow here from Canada. I promise you all, when I moved here I really had hoped to leave the snow behind.

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For other experiences viewing "The Big Game", check out the rest of my Superbowls Around the World blog entries

I propose a toast. A toast to the 21st Amendment.

75 years ago today, on December 5th, 1933, the state legislature of Utah ratified the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, the 36th state to do so, and that passed the 21st Amendment into national law.

The Twenty-First Amendment did two things, and it is for that first one that I propose we raise a glass for. The Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteen Amendment.

The Eighteen Amendment had been passed in 1919, and it expressly prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, into or out of the United States, and ushered in the period of time known as Prohibition. The ban on alcohol went into effect on January 16, 1920.

The Drunkard's Progress, a lithograph by Nathaniel Currier supporting the temperance movement, from Wikimedia Commons

For the next 23 years, it was illegal to sell alcohol in the USA. Despite this, alcohol flowed into the USA from breweries, wineries and distilleries in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean thanks to rum-runners and bootleggers and booze was available in speak-easies. While organized crime, including mobster Al Capone, became very rich, the U.S. government lost money both in the high cost of enforcement and the loss of tax revenue on alcohol sales.

The rise in crime and loss of respect for the law eventually led the tide to turn against prohibition, and by 1933 the American public was fully in favour of repealing the ban on alcohol.

On April 7 of that year, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Cullen-Harrison Act, making it legal to sell beer with an alcohol content not exceeding 3.2%. Upon signing the bill, President Roosevelt said, "I think this would be a good time for a beer."

That wasn’t enough, though, and later that year after a three-quarters of the states had ratified it, the Twenty-First Amendment was passed, declaring:

The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

The second thing the 21st did was pass control of alcohol laws back to the individual states, and introduced what is now a dizzying array of regional alcohol laws in the USA.

So, even though the current number of laws mean that there are dry counties in Kentucky (including Moore country, home to Jack Daniels), only 3.2% beer for sale in grocery stores in Colorado and no booze available in Sunday in Mississippi, at least you can still get and enjoy a drink in most places across the USA, and for that, I raise a glass.

Jeers to the Eighteenth, dead 75 years today.

Cheers to the Twenty-first, alive, kicking and drinking for the past 75. Long live the Twenty-First Amendment.

Early in the morning on November 11, 1918, after days of negotiations, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Allied Commander-in-chief, and Matthias Erzberger, a prominent German politician signed an armistice treaty between the Allied forces and German forces, bringing an end to fighting associated with The Great War. The treaty, signed just after 5 in morning in the forests outside of the French town of Compiègne, stated that both sides would stop fighting as of 11 AM that morning. Fighting ceased on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

The Armistice with Germany eventually led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919 that brought an official end to the war.

On November 7, 1919, King George V declared that November 11 should be established as a day of observance for those who were killed during the war. The day, known mainly as Remembrance Day, but alternatively known as Armistice Day or Poppy Day, has been celebrated ever since in the Commonwealth. Americans observe Veteran's Day today, a holiday with roots dating back to 1919, though it has not always fallen on the 11th of November.

Here in London, there are multiple commemorations held around the region. The main, national commemoration happens on the the second Sunday of November, known as Remembrance Sunday, on Whitehall Road in front of The Cenotaph, a war memorial. There is an additional ceremony held on November 11th itself.

The commemoration on Remembrance Day started with a short service conducted by the Bishop of London, which includes prayers, hymns sung by a choir and some music played by the assembled band.

Three veterans from the first World War, now all in wheel chairs, were lead to the Cenotaph, where each laid a wreath in honour of their fallen brothers-in-arms.

Big Ben chimed the hour, announcing the start of 2 minutes of silence.

Once the echoes of the chimes from the Parliament Building's clock die away, there was nothing to break the silence except the wind rustling the leaves of the trees lining Whitehall.

The silence was broken by a lone bugle, playing "The Last Post," a bugle call used traditionally played at military funerals. The Bishop asks us to pray, we the assembled crowd recites the Lord's Prayer. After we had finished, the Bishop added an additional prayer for the Lord to put the peace of heaven into all men's hearts, so that we would never have to face the horrors of war again.

After the crowd finished singing God Save the Queen, I made my way up Whitehall Street, past the statue of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, who was the commander of the British Expeditionary Force. At its base was a lone wreath of poppies, bright red in the mid-day sun.

The weather was cool but not cold, truly a nice day. Just the kind of day where I love to get out, spend time walking the streets or taking a hike through nature, as I have since I was a teenager. Days worth treasuring and remembering, really.

It is fitting that, then, on a day worth remembering, that we all take some time out to remember those who fought and died, and also those who have fought and lived so that we could walk through the streets on sunny days in peace. And finally for those who are out there fighting now, may they come home safely, and may some day the prayer that the Bishop of London said today come true. That some day, the peace of heaven fills every man's heart, and that the world will be at peace.