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The memorial after Remembrance Sunday, 2021

The Great Western Railway War Memorial is a First World War memorial by Charles Sargeant Jagger and Thomas S. Tait. It stands on platform 1 at London Paddington station, commemorating the 2,500 Great Western Railway (GWR) employees killed in the conflict. A third of the GWR's workforce of almost 80,000 left to fight in the war, the company guaranteeing their jobs. The memorial consists of a bronze statue of a soldier in heavy winter clothing, reading a letter from home. The statue stands on a polished granite plinth, within a white stone surround. The names of the dead are on a roll buried in the plinth. GWR chairman Viscount Churchill unveiled the memorial on 11 November 1922 in front of over 6,000 people, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, GWR officials, and relatives of the dead. When public gatherings were restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic, local communities on the GWR network laid wreaths on trains that carried them to Paddington to be laid at the memorial for Armistice Day. (Full article...)

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Antiparallelogram

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In the news

Cyclone Batsirai

Cyclone Batsirai (satellite image shown) makes landfall in Madagascar, displacing at least 112,000 people and leaving more than 100 others dead.
In association football, the Africa Cup of Nations concludes with Senegal defeating Egypt in the final.
Indian playback singer and composer Lata Mangeshkar dies at the age of 92.
Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi dies in a US military raid in Atme, Syria.

On this day

February 13

Covering of the Senne

1692 – Members of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands were massacred, allegedly for failing to pledge allegiance to the new monarchs, William III and Mary II.
1867 – Work began on the covering of the Senne (pictured), burying the polluted main river of Brussels to allow for urban renewal in the centre of the city.
1945 – World War II: The Allies began a strategic bombing of Dresden, Germany, resulting in a lethal firestorm that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
1978 – A bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, the site of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, killing three people and injuring eleven others.
2012 – The first Vega rocket was launched by the European Space Agency.

Béla II of Hungary (d. 1141)
Sarojini Naidu (b. 1879)
Waylon Jennings (d. 2002)

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Today's featured picture

In American football, a field goal (worth three points) is scored when a team place kicks or drop kicks the ball through the goal, i.e. between the uprights and over the crossbar, during a play from scrimmage. This photograph depicts Connor Barth of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers preparing to kick a field goal, with Jake Schum acting as the holder, during a 2015 National Football League military-appreciation game against the New York Giants at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

Photograph credit: Ned T. Johnston

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