History Challenge & Journal

[migrant]

Sir Walter Scott?

[sandman67]

Nope

[migrant]

Mad Jack Churchill

[Jimbob]

In 1940, some of the German commanders who were overseeing the push into France began to receive seemingly random reports of soldiers having been killed with broad-head arrows or hacked with a English Claymore. Effective enough weapons it would seem, but archaic even in that day and age. They likely could have guessed the bowman was an English soldier, but they couldn’t have appreciated these as the calling card of the rabid eccentric, Captain Jack Churchill.

could be him?

[dtaai-maai]

Certainly sounds like it - what a character!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill

[PeteC]

^ Yep, they don't make them like that anymore.

[Jimbob]

Hope them don't make them like Loo Tenant Colonel Oliver North, now a top political pundit with a short memory

[sandman67]

Indeed chums, the man that links all three odd items is "Mad Jack" Churchill - an old school soldier in every sense of the phrase. Now if there was ever a figure whose story is begging to be made into a film its Mad Jack.

Have a read:

http://www.wwiihistorymagazine.com/2005 ... files.html

Blimey!

[Dannie Boy]

Indeed chums, the man that links all three odd items is "Mad Jack" Churchill - an old school soldier in every sense of the phrase. Now if there was ever a figure whose story is begging to be made into a film its Mad Jack.

Have a read:

http://www.wwiihistorymagazine.com/2005 ... files.html

Blimey!

His bravery and achievements make it almost unbelievable, what a character!!

[Jimbob]

Another Churchill said: if the British Empire and its Commonwealth[5] last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.
So:
Q1 how long did it last, i.e. when did it start and finish.

Q2 What other empires were in existence at the start of WW1

Discuss.
I don't know the answers, just have opinions.

[STEVE G]

Q1 how long did it last, i.e. when did it start and finish.

I don't know if there is a definate answer to that but I would have thought from about Elizabeth I to Suez in 1956 as a guess and if we discount calling the Falklands and Gibraltar etc. an empire.

[Dannie Boy]

[quote][/quote] Q2 What other empires were in existence at the start of WW1
The Ottoman Empire was still in existence until just after the end of the war

[sandman67]

some of the empires kicking about around the start of WW1

British...biggest and best, the one the sun never went down on.
French
German
Belgian
Dutch
Russian
Ottoman
Spanish
Abyssinian
Chinese
Japanese
Austro-Hungarian

[dtaai-maai]

Can you have an empire if you no longer have an emperor (thinking of the French Republic)? Is this a chicken and egg scenario? At which point does a monarch become an emperor? Conquest of overseas nations?

[STEVE G]

Can you have an empire if you no longer have an emperor...

McDonalds have an empire and they've only got Ronald.