Relax It's Only Truth

28 MAY 1588 The Spanish Armada set sail with 130 ships and 30,000 men and headed for the English Channel. Its aim was to travel to the Netherlands where an additional 30,000 soldiers were waiting to be transported for a huge planned invasion of England.  The aim of the Armada was to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and her Protestant regime. It was prompted by Elizabeth's sanctioned execution of Mary, Queen of Scots but King Philip II of Spain's had other reasons to invade England. He wanted to stop English interference in the Spanish Netherlands where they were assisting Dutch Protestant rebels. The plan also aimed to stop English and Dutch privateering against Spanish ships in the Americas.  English ships sailed from Plymouth to attack the Armada as it progressed through the English Channel before anchoring off Calais. The Armada was damaged at the Battle of Gravelines before the Spanish fleet was driven by unfavourable winds up the eastern coast of England.  The Armada failed to

The Father of England - King Alfred the Great burns some cakes and defeats the Vikings (Danes) at the Battle of Ethandun (878): For years, the kingdom of Wessex in Britain, ruled by Alfred, had been under attack from Viking forces. Alfred had maintained a tenuous hold on his throne, but in the beginning of 878, he was forced to flee into the marshes of Somerset to hide from yet another Viking invasion. His time there marked a significant turning point in the history of England and the medieval world. Alfred could have chosen to stay in the swamp and eke out a peasant’s existence, but instead, he emerged to battle the Vikings and, in doing so, shaped the England we know today. . . . Alfred was a scion of the kingdom of the West Saxons, the most powerful and long-lived of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. But at the end of the 8th century, the Viking diaspora had suddenly changed all that, and in 878, after bearing the indignity of multiple military defeats and the deaths of all the adult males

Plataea (479 BC) - The battle where Western civilization hung in the balance: The Battle of Plataea was fought between the united city-states of ancient Greece and the mighty Persian Empire, and while it was the most important battle of the Greco-Persian Wars, it is not nearly as well-known as three other battles. Thermopylae was a Greek defeat, and Marathon and Salamis, although Greek victories, were only temporary setbacks for Persia, which returned to the fight each time. Plataea, however, was decisive and effectively ended the Persian invasion. If the Greeks had lost this battle and become merely one more province of the Persian Empire, the cultural flourishing of Greece in the 5th century BC might not have taken place. This victory ensured the continued independence of the Greek city-states - permitting an astonishingly rich period of art, science, and philosophy to begin which would lay the foundations for Western civilization. So much was on the line and so stacked the odds seemed

"It was while I was in this Field Hospital that I saw the first case of shell-shock. The enemy opened fire about dinner time, as usual, with his big guns. As soon as the first shell came over, the shell-shock case nearly went mad. He screamed and raved, and it took eight men to hold him down on the stretcher. With every shell he would go into a fit of screaming and fight to get away. A much larger number of soldiers with these symptoms were classified as 'malingerers' and sent back to the front-line. In some cases men committed suicide. Others broke down under the pressure and refused to obey the orders of their officers. Some responded to the pressures of shell-shock by deserting. Sometimes soldiers who disobeyed orders got shot on the spot. In some cases, soldiers were court-martialled. It is heartbreaking to watch a shell-shock case. The terror is indescribable. The flesh on their faces shakes in fear, and their teeth continually chatter. Shell-shock was brought about i

My granny told me stories of flood she experienced in her life. While describing the devastation, I can still remember, I saw her teary eyes. She mesmerized how fierce the wind force was, how her thatched hut fell down, how the goats washed away!! She had five pieces of rusty breads for the four family members from the relief fund.  No food, no clean water, no medication! People stood up the whole night and the whole day in the water logged huts, and then, they slept for a couple of hours on the banana rafts. Flood in Bangladesh in 1987 was a complete horror. It was also the year I was also born in, and my granny and my mother told me later, how hard it was to keep me alive.  I stole the photo to describe the memory.

In 1999, some people made a remarkable but horrible discovery near the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina. It was the bodies of  three Inca children who had been the victims of a ritual sacrifice. They were found with gold and silver statues aswell as food in a shrine over 20,000 ft above sea level. Evidence from their bodies show they were consuming alcohol and coca leaves during their final years and the girl in the picture still had coca leaves in her mouth. One of the victims had strangely been stuck by lightning after death. They were so well preserved from the cold conditions that there was still traces of a lung infection in the pictured girls lungs and lice in the hair of another, 500 years after their deaths. These people back then, including the children, believed they were doing the right thing; it was seen has an honour to be sacrificed and children were seen as the purest of beings, which is why they were selected.

On February 4th, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean immigrant was shot 41 TIMES by American police officers for bringing his wallet out to identify himself, as he couldn't speak English.  All 4 cops who shot him dead were found not guilty.