Yes, I know it’s a few days late, but I haven’t been spending the holidays online, you know?
It’s going to be a good year. It’s certainly already started that way for me. Sarah and I got married on Saturday, and it was a really great day. My family were there, and my kids look very fancy in their dress clothes. Sarah looked lovely.
The dinner was fantastic – I highly recommend the restaurant to everyone. It’s called Cafe la Gaffe, and it’s just around the corner from the AGO, on Baldwin street. Have the rainbow trout, it’s fantastic.
It was really nice having Sarah’s family here for the holidays and the wedding too. Her parents flew here from Glasgow for Christmas, and her brother and his family arrived on Boxing Day from Poland. Ever seen a bilingual four-year-old? It’s incredibly cute.
Anyway, it’s shaping up to be a good year.
Ninety-three years after the fact, a team of divers discover that the Lusitania – the fastest liner in the North Atlantic – was indeed carrying American-made munitions to aide the British war effort.
For those who don’t know, the sinking of the Lusitania is considered the event which brought the United States of America into World War One on the side of the British, an act that tipped the war in favour of the Allies.
Germans have all along insisted that the Lusitania was being used as a weapons ship, and sunk it. The sinking of what the British then called a passenger ship helped fire anti-German sentiment at home and left the Americans little choice but to openly declare their support for the Allies.
Winston Churchill, who was first Lord of the Admiralty and has long been suspected of knowing more about the circumstances of the attack than he let on in public, wrote in a confidential letter shortly before the sinking that some German submarine attacks were to be welcomed.
He is quoted as having said said: ‘It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the U.S. with Germany. For our part we want the traffic – the more the better and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.’
