This will hurt me...

I would like to note that today is the one hundredth anniversary of the Tunguska Event . You would be forgiven for having not heard of this event or even any idea of where or what a Tunguska is, but it has fascinated me ever since I read about it in the World Book Encyclopaedia as a kid. As an aside, I will admit to dipping into the old encyclopaedia for random reading matter right throughout my childhood (remember kids this is BE time ( B efore the I nternet). The Tunguska Event was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in (what is now) Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia during the morning of June 30, 1908. To confuse matters more, we have the lovely quirk of Russian history that records the date as June 17, in the Julian calendar, which was used at the time. Most estimates of the energy of the blast agree on somewhere between ten-to-fifteen megatons of TNT the most likely. This would make it about a thousand times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima...

This is the three hundredth post to the blog known as ‘ This will hurt me... ’, and what a post it will be! Actually, it is a quick link to promote The Swinging Arm , Australia's leading antidisestablishmentarianist rugby league periodical, which also happens to be the official journal of the Rugby League Institute of Technology. Now, I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of ‘the game played in hell’™. However, I am a big fan of anything associated with the fine work of the boy from Broken Hill, the sin-city residing former Reverend turned roving rugby reporter Barry "Scoop" Freelove. Anyone with any doubt as to Barry’s passion and eloquence on the beautiful game need look no further than his communiqué this week, titled Rugby League's Greatest Shame .

German forces invaded Poland 68 years ago today. Through the 1930s, the response to the acceleration of Germany's rearmament and the threat of war was to appease rather than confront Hitler. By late 1938, Hitler was making speeches that furiously proclaimed Germany's right to annex the Sudetenland, a Czechoslovak territory with a significant German population. British PM Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to calm the situation, eventually signing the Munich Agreement with Hitler, giving control of the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. With the invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Britain was no longer acquiescent and Chamberlain warned that any further attacks would meet resistance. It took the defeat of Poland six months later to induce the British and French governments to declare war. Might things had been different? The British were in no military position to force Germany's hand earlier, and the French were not interested. The lack of action over both Pola...

Today is the 91st anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, one of the largest battles of the First World War. The battle is best remembered for its first day, 1 July 1916, on which British and Commonwealth units suffered 57,470 casualties – 19,240 dead, 35,493 wounded, 2,152 missing and 585 prisoners — the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. Initial casualties were especially heavy among officers, who still dressed differently from non-commissioned officers and other ranks, and whose uniforms the Germans had been trained to recognise. It’s estimated that the Germans suffered 8,000 casualties on the British front, 2,200 of which were prisoners of war. Nasty business, this war lark!