livvicv- of Reciciis, ];ii;j?. 



91 



NOTABLE ANNIVERSARIES OF THE 



MONTH. . 



The most noteworthy happening of 

 November was the birth of Alartni 

 Luther (Nov. loth, 1483). The great 

 Protestant reformer was born at Eisle- 

 ben, in Germany. He revolutioni.sed 

 the religious thought of the world. 

 Curiously enough it was 310 years later, 

 November 1st, 1793, that Lord George 

 Gordon died. He was the leader in the 

 last demonstration against the Roman 

 Catholics, the No Popery riots of 1780. 

 The cause of the riots was the Bill for 

 the relief of Catholics, which passed 

 Parliament in 1778. For five days the 

 streets of London were in the hands of 

 the mob, much Catholic property was 

 destroyed, and many lives were lost ere 

 the rioters were dispersed. Lord George 

 died in Newgate gaol of fever. 



Marie Antoinette was born November 

 2nd, 1755. She was probably the most 

 beautiful Queen who ever sat on the 

 throne of France, and certainly the most 

 unfortunate. She married Louis XVI. 

 when fifteen, and was guillotined on 

 1 6th October, 1793, during the height of 

 the Terror, when Robespierre and Dan- 

 ton were deluging Paris with blood. 



William Cullen Bryant, the Words- 

 worth of America, was born in Massa- 

 chusetts, November 3rd, 1794. 



One of the most romantic careers ter- 

 minated when Admiral Benbow was 

 killed on November 4th, 1702. Origin- 

 ally captain of a merchantman, his 

 bravery in defeating a far superior force 

 of Moor pirates, which had attacked his 

 vessel, won him notice, and he was given 

 a ship m the navy. As Rear-y\dmiral 

 he was in many sanguinary fights in the 

 reign of William III., and lost this life 

 in a desperate action against the French 

 in the West Indies. 



The 5th of November is always re- 

 membered for the famous Gunpowder 

 Plot (1604), by which Catcsby and his 

 fellow-conspirators hoped to destroy 

 King James I. and Parliament at one 

 blow. Captain Guy F\iwkes w^as the 

 man chosen for the task. The plot was 



given away by one of the conspirators, 

 and Fawkes was found with the powder 

 barrels in the vaults below the Flouse. 

 He refused, under torture, to give away 

 his fellow-conspirators, and was exe- 

 cuted on Tower Hill. Whenever a new 

 session of Parliament begins the vaults 

 are still solemnly searched for lurking- 

 assassins! On the same day, in 1854. 

 the Battle of Inkerman was fought, the 

 Russians, under cover of a fog, making 

 a great sortie from Sebastopol, which, 

 but for the timely arrival of the French, 

 would have resulted in the defeat of the 

 English forces. 



William Pitt, the great Earl of Chat- 

 ham, was born on November 15th, 1708. 

 He was seized with illness in the House 

 of Lords — in the debate on the War with 

 the American colonies — and died in 

 1778. John Bright, the greatest orator 

 of the Victorian era, was born Novem- 

 ber 1 6th, 181 1. 



On November 17th, 1869, the Suez 

 Canal was opened. It shortened the 

 passage from London to Bombay by 24 

 days. It was the work of the French 

 engineer, M. de Lesseps, who later 

 attempted unsuccessfully to cut through 

 the Isthmus of Panama. It took 

 ten and a-half years to build, and cost 

 ;^ 1 6,000,000. The Panama Canal has 

 taken the Americans about the same 

 time to finish, and has cost i,Too,ooo,OfK). 

 The engineering difficulties the}- had 

 to overcome were immense, inlinitcl}' 

 greater than those the French met witli 

 at Suez. England had strongly opposed 

 the idea of connecting the Mediterranean 

 and the Red Sea, even going so far as 

 to get experts to assert that the water 

 level in the one was considerable higher 

 than in the other, thus making a sea le\ el 

 canal an imi^ossibilit)-. :\fter the work 

 had been done Disraeli's astuteness in 

 purchasing the Khedive's shares (for 

 ;^4,ooo,ooo') enabled England to secure 

 control of it. 



Sir William S. Gilbert was born No- 

 vember 1 8th, 1836. As author of the 



