Admiral William Henry Smyth KFM DCL FRS FRAS FRGS FSA was a Royal Navy officer, hydrographer and numismatist. He is noted for his involvement in the early history of a number of learned societies, for his hydrographic charts, for his astronomical work, for a wide range of publications and translations, he was the only son of Joseph Smyth and Georgiana Caroline Pitt Pilkington, the daughter of John Carteret Pilkington and the granddaughter of Laetitia Pilkington and her husband Matthew Pilkington. His father, an American Loyalist from New Jersey who served as a lieutenant in the King's Royal Regiment of New York during the Revolutionary War, was the sixth son of Benjamin Smyth, a landowner in what is now Blairstown, his first wife Catherina Schoonhoven. Never having known his father, he grew up with a half-brother Augustus Earle and a half-sister Phoebe Earle. At the age of 14 he ran away from home to join a merchant ship. In 1804 he was in the East India Company's ship Marquis Cornwallis, which the government chartered for an expedition against the Seychelles.
In the following March, as Cornwallis the vessel was bought by the Royal Navy to be a 50-gun ship under the command of Captain Charles James Johnston, with whom Smyth remained, seeing much active service in Indian, Chinese and Pacific waters. In February 1808 he followed Johnston to Powerful, which, on returning to England, was part of the force in the expedition to the Scheldt, was paid off in October 1809, he afterwards served in the 74-gun Milford on the coast of France and Spain, was lent from her to command the Spanish gunboat Mors aut Gloria at the defence of Cadiz from September 1810 to April 1811. In July 1811 he joined Rodney off Toulon, through 1812 served on the coast of Spain. On 25 March 1813 he was promoted to lieutenant and appointed to the Sicilian flotilla, in which he combined service against the French from Naples with a good deal of unofficial hydrographic surveying and antiquarian research. For his services in defending Sicily, he was subsequently awarded the Order of Saint Ferdinand and of Merit by King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, received permission from the Prince Regent to wear it.
On 18 September 1815 he was promoted to Commander and in command of the brig Scylla continued surveying the coast of Sicily, the adjacent coasts of Italy, the opposite shores of Africa. In 1817 his survey work was put on a more formal footing by his appointment to Aid. In Aid, he carried on the hydrographic survey of the Italian, Sicilian and African coasts, constructed a large number of charts, used by the Royal Navy among others until the mid-20th century; as a result, he became known as "Mediterranean Smyth". His hydrographic operations in the Adriatic, in collaboration with the Austrian and Neapolitan authorities, resulted in the Carta di Cabottaggio del Mare Adriatico, published in 1822–24. In 1817 he met the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi in Palermo and visited his observatory, he published some of his work in his Memoir description of the Resources and Hydrography of Sicily and its Islands, followed in 1828 by a Sketch of Sardinia. Subsequently, in 1854, he was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal in recognition of his survey work in the Mediterranean.
On 7 February 1824, he was promoted to Post-Captain, in November paid off the Adventure, marking the end of his service at sea and his turn to a life of literary and scientific pursuits. In 1846 he retired from the Navy on half-pay, being advanced on the retired list to Rear-Admiral on 28 May 1853 to Vice-Admiral on 17 May 1858, to Admiral on 14 November 1863. Returning to England and settling at Bedford, in 1825 he fitted out a private observatory equipped with a 5.9-inch refractor telescope. He used this instrument to observe a variety of deep sky objects over the course of the 1830s, including double stars, star clusters and nebulae, he published his observations in 1844 in the Cycle of Celestial Objects, which earned him the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1845 and the presidency of the society. The first volume of this work was on general astronomy, but the second volume became known as the Bedford Catalogue and contained his observations of 1,604 double stars and nebulae.
It served as a standard reference work for many years afterward. It was reprinted in 1986 with a foreword stating: What makes it so special is that it is the first true celestial Baedeker and not just another "cold" catalogue of mere numbers and data. Like the original Baedeker travel guidebooks of the last century, this work is full of colorful commentary on the highlights of the heavenly scene and influenced several subsequent works of its type to the present day.... It is in the descriptive material, he not only describes what the user of a small telescope will see, but includes much fascinating astronomical and historical lore. Many of these descriptions are valuable for the novice and user of small telescopes of a size similar to Smyth's. Having completed his observations, he moved to Cardiff in 1839 to supervise the construction of the Bute Dock which he had designed, his observatory was dismantled and the telescope was sold to Dr John Lee, who re-erected it in a new observatory of Smyth's design at Hartwell House near the village of Stone in Buckinghamshire.
Smyth moved to Stone in 1842 and, still havi
Pascal Plancque is a French professional football manager and former player, most in charge of Ligue 2 side Chamois Niortais. During a 15-year playing career, Plancque made more than 200 league appearances for four clubs. Plancque began his managerial career with amateur side Arin Luzien in 1995, went on to coach Pau and Lille reserves before becoming Boulogne's new manager in 2011. One year he was appointed in the managerial role of RC Lens reserves, where he stayed until 2015. On 30 June 2016, Plancque joined English club Southampton as assistant first team coach to manager Claude Puel, he joined Puel as assistant manager at Leicester City. However, on 3 August 2018, Plancque left his role at the club. On 14 January 2019, Plancque took over the vacant managerial position at Chamois Niortais in Ligue 2, following the sacking, despite unexpectedly convincing results of Patrice Lair. After disappointing results, Plancque was relieved of his duties on 5 January 2020. Auxerre Cup of the Alps: 1987 Pascal Plancque at FootballDatabase.eu
Robert Charles "Bobby" Jackson is a former cornerback for the National Football League New York Jets, retiring with 21 career interceptions and 3 fumble recoveries. Jackson started at Florida State University and in 1993 was inducted into the FSU Hall of Fame. Jackson once held the all time interception record at FSU. Jackson held the single game-punt return average of 45.3 yard per return -- a record since broken by Jet star Leon Washington. His professional career began when he was drafted in the sixth round of the National Football League draft of 1978, he went on to start all 16 games at cornerback his rookie year. He tied for the team lead with 5 interceptions and was named to the “AFC All-Rookie Team” as a starter. Jackson was named the Jets' defensive captain in the 1981 season, he led the team in interceptions 3 other times. Jackson was named “HBO Defensive Player of the Week” for his play in a game against the Minnesota Vikings in 1982. Jackson scored two touchdowns in the Vikings game, one on an interception and another on a fumble return.
One touchdown was 77 yards and the other was 80 yards. Jackson was named “All Pro” by Pro Football Weekly Magazine. Jackson was selected to the “All-Time Jet Team” as one of the top three corners in the history of the New York Jets, he had a career total of 21 interceptions. Jackson has helped develop the professional aspirations of his two sons; the older son, Robert Thomas was a star player for Hofstra University and drafted by the San Francisco 49’ers and the younger is seeking his place in personal training for all sports. He is the current owner of Action Training company based on Long Island, New York
Rosamund Marriott Watson was an English poet, nature writer and critic, who early in her career wrote under the pseudonyms Graham R. Tomson and Rushworth Armytage. Though a follower of Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, she was by no means a derivative one. Rosamund Ball, known as Rose, was born in London on 6 October 1860, the fifth child of Benjamin Williams Ball, an accountant and amateur poet, Sylvia Ball, her older brother Wilfrid Ball became a painter of landscapes and marine subjects who helped introduce her to London's literary circles, including John Lane, the influential publisher of The Yellow Book. Her mother died of cancer when she was just 13, she would recall as one consequence of this that she had an unusual amount of freedom for reading and writing. No records of any formal education for her have been found, she intended to become a painter, but her father forbade it. Watson began her writing career with a column on modern fashion for The Fortnightly Review, she followed this up with other magazine writing, by 1886 she had her first poems printed in the American periodicals Scribner's Magazine and The Independent.
These early works were published under one or other of the Armytage pseudonyms, which she adopted following her 1879 marriage to George Francis Armytage, a rich Australian. Their daughter Eulalie was born the following year, but by September 1884, when their second daughter, was born, the couple had parted ways and would divorce. Around 1886, she eloped with the artist Arthur Graham Tomson, shortly afterwards dropping the Armytage pseudonym in favor of "Graham R. Tomson". During her years with Tomson, they lived in London and summered in Cornwall, she divorced Tomson as well and lived with the novelist H. B. Marriott Watson until her death, they had a son, killed in the First World War. Watson's major success came from her poetry, which stood in the lineages of Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti without, at its best, being derivative. Technically accomplished, Watson deployed a wide range of poetic forms and methods, including sonnets, rondeaux, poems in dialect and translations, her subject matter ranged from nature, the supernatural and folk tales to love and art itself.
Although the poems can be mannered, her clarity of insight and feminist rereadings of traditional stories have kept her work fresh, while her penchant for formal experimentation presaged modernism. Watson's poems were published in various contemporary magazines and journals, including The Yellow Book, her major volumes of poetry were Tares, The Bird-Bride, A Summer Night and Other Verses, After Sunset. Tares, published as her first marriage was breaking up and focuses on the disillusionments of love, was issued anonymously. Watson used the Tomson pseudonym for the first edition of A Summer Night. In working under pseudonyms, Watson was part of a late 19th-century trend among women writers trying to break into male-dominated literary circles, it appears to have helped her, since the influential editor Andrew Lang praised one of her early poems under the belief that it was by a man. Once Watson established herself in London's literary scene editions of A Summer Night carried her real name, as did her subsequent books, including the 1900 novel An Island Rose.
Watson wrote prolifically on gardening, her essays on the subject were published in The Heart of a Garden. She wrote several columns on interior design and fashion—her first-ever publication, in 1883, was a column on'modern' fashion for the Fortnightly Review; some of these columns were collected in The Art of the House. She wrote a column entitled "Wares of Autolycous" for the Pall Mall Gazette. Starting in 1892, Watson edited the magazine Sylvia's Journal, a progressive, feminist-leaning women's monthly that covered a range of topics from work and art to the domestic sphere. Contributors under her tenure included Violet Hunt, Edith Nesbit, others, Watson herself wrote a book column, "Book Gossip". In 1892, a long interview with Watson was published in Arnold Bennett's journal Woman. Watson died of cancer on 29 December 1911 at the age of fifty-one, her collected poems were published in 1912 with an introduction by H. B. Marriott Watson. Tares: a Book of Verses The Bird-Bride: a Volume of Ballads and Sonnets A Summer Night and Other Poems Vespertilia and Other Verses Old Books, Fresh Flowers The Patchwork Quilt After Sunset The Poems of Rosamund Marriott Watson The Art of the House The Heart of a Garden The Lamp and the Lute An Island Rose Works by or about Rosamund Marriott Watson at Internet Archive Works by or about Graham R. Tomson at Internet Archive Works by Rosamund Marriott Watson at LibriVox Archival material at Leeds University Library
The 764th Bombardment Squadron is an inactive United States Air Force unit. It was last assigned to the 461st Bombardment Wing at Amarillo Air Force Base, where it was inactivated on 28 March 1968; the squadron was first activated during World War II. After training in the United States, it deployed to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, where it participated in the strategic bombing campaign against Germany, earned two Distinguished Unit Citations for its actions. Following V-E Day, the squadron returned to the United States, where it was inactivated in August 1945; the squadron was reactivated at Hill Air Force Base, Utah under Tactical Air Command in late 1943, soon becoming one of TAC's first jet bomber squadrons. It moved to Blytheville Air Force Base, Arkansas in 1955 and was inactivated there, when Blytheville became a Strategic Air Command base, it was activated in 1963 at Amarillo. The squadron stood nuclear alert status at Amarillo and deployed crews and aircraft to Southeast Asia before inactivating.
The 764th Bombardment Squadron was activated at Wendover Field, Utah on 1 July 1943 as one of the four original squadrons of the 461st Bombardment Group. After training with Consolidated B-24 Liberators under Second and Fourth Air Forces in the United States, the squadron departed for the Mediterranean Theater of Operations on New Year's Day of 1944; the squadron arrived at its combat station, Torretto Airfield, Italy by the end of February 1944. The air echelon ferried its Liberators to Italy via the Southern Ferry Route, pausing for additional training in North Africa before joining the ground echelon in Italy; the squadron flew its first combat mission in April 1944. The squadron was engaged in the strategic bombing campaign against Germany, attacking communications, industrial facilities and other enemy strategic targets in Austria, France, Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia, it participated in the campaign against Axis petroleum production with attacks against facilities at Brux Czechoslovakia.
It received a Distinguished Unit Citation for an attack on petroleum facilities at Ploesti, Romania on 15 July 1944, when it damaged its objective, despite clouds and smoke obscuring the target and opposition by flak and interceptors.it conducted strategic attacks against enemy airfields and aircraft manufacturing centers. On one of its early missions, it attacked an aircraft component manufacturing facility at Budapest, battling its way through enemy air defenses; this attack earned the squadron its first DUC. The squadron was diverted from its strategic mission, flying air support and air interdiction missions. During Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France in August 1944, it hit artillery positions; the following month it flew airlift missions. Some of its last missions were flown to support Operation Grapeshot, the spring 1945 offensive in northern Italy. Following V-E Day, the squadron flew supplies to prisoners of war in Austria, it began returning to the United States in early July.
It reassembled at Sioux Falls Army Air Field, South Dakota at the end of the month and was inactivated there on 28 August 1945. Prompted by experience in the Korean War, the Air Force decided to increase its air support and air interdiction capabilities to support ground forces; as part of this increase, it organized the 461st Bombardment Wing, which included the squadron, at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, in December 1953. The squadron was intended to be a Martin B-57 Canberra unit, but these aircraft were not available, so it was equipped with Douglas B-26 Invaders. Officer cadre for the squadron was drawn from 4th Tow Target Squadron at George Air Force Base, California. Facilities at Hill required development and combat readiness training did not begin until July 1954; the wing trained in light bomber operations and participated in exercises, including simulated deployments. In January 1955, the unit began to receive B-57s and was equipped by the end of the year. However, Hill's parking and hangar space was inadequate for the B-57s and as they began to arrive, the unit anticipated a move to Blytheville Air Force Base, being developed by the Corps of Engineers for reopening in 1955.
In October 1955, the squadron moved from Hill to Blytheville. The conversion to the Canberra brought a number of changes; the new aircraft was subject to several periods of grounding, the unit faced shortfalls in the number of aircrew available. The unit mission underwent changes, with the delivery of tactical nuclear weapons taking priority over conventional weapons delivery, although conventional weapons remained as a secondary mission; the squadron inactivated in January 1958 as Tactical Air Command, under budget pressures, prepared to transfer Blytheville to Strategic Air Command. In 1962, in order to perpetuate the lineage of many inactive bombardment units with illustrious World War II records, SAC received authority from Headquarters USAF to discontinue its Major Command controlled strategic wings that were equipped with combat aircraft and to activate Air Force controlled units, which could carry a lineage and history; as a result, the 461st Bombardment Wing replaced the 4128th Strategic Wing at Amarillo Air Force Base, Texas.
As part of this organizational action, the squadron took over the mission and equipment of the 718th Bombardment Squadron, inactivated. SAC wings were organized under the dual deputy system, so the squadron was assigned directly to the 461st Wing, rather than to a group. One half of the squadron's Boeing B-52
Sir Francis Gerard Brennan, is an Australian lawyer and jurist who served as the 10th Chief Justice of Australia. Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser appointed Brennan to the court in 1981. Brennan was born in Queensland, he is the son of Frank Tenison Brennan, a Labor Party politician and judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland. He was raised as, continues to be, a Catholic and has said: "Egalitarianism and the respect for conscience are the practical manifestations of faith and charity." He is the father of Frank Brennan. After his father's death in 1949, he worked at the Australian National University and as associate to Kenneth Townley, a newly appointed Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland. Townley had been appointed to preside over the war crimes trials on Manus Island, New Guinea, his work provided Brennan with an early insight into the complexities of international law. Brennan was admitted to the Queensland Bar in 1951, his first reported case appears to have been a humble matter involving letters of administration granted to a person outside the jurisdiction.
Although modest, his early practice was diverse, consisting of matters ranging from committal proceedings to commercial disputes. In each of these matters, Brennan demonstrated his comprehensive knowledge of the law through his clear and lucid argument, his talent soon gained him respect, he became one of the first Catholic barristers to cross the strong sectarian line that permeated the Brisbane Bar by receiving briefs from the Protestant end of town. Brennan was appointed a Queen's Counsel in Queensland in 1965, he was admitted in New South Wales, the Northern Territory and New Guinea, Fiji. Notable cases in which he appeared included his 1969 representation of the Fijian Alliance Party in an arbitration matter before Lord Denning and his 1972 prosecution in Rabaul of the murder of a District Commissioner, he was one of the first advocates to argue a case for Aboriginal land rights, representing the Northern Land Council before the Woodward Royal Commission into Aboriginal Land Rights in the Northern Territory in 1974.
During his time at the Bar, Brennan played a leading role within the legal profession. He was elected president of the Bar Association of Queensland, president of the Australian Bar Association, member of the Executive of the Law Council of Australia, he began to influence the development of Australian law through his position as a part-time member of the Australian Law Reform Commission. One of Brennan's greatest achievements was the contribution he made to the development of Australian administrative law. In 1976, the Fraser government appointed him as the first president of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal; the Tribunal occupied a novel position at the time, straddling the divide between executive and judicial power. As the first president of the new institution, Brennan was in a unique position, able to develop the tribunal along lines consistent with either an administrative or judicial model. Brennan consciously adopted a judicial model, through his strong leadership, guided the tribunal through the difficult period of its establishment and early development.
This, together with his work as the first president of the newly created Administrative Review Council, is argued to have strengthened the new administrative structures. In 1977, Brennan was appointed as one of the foundation judges of the new Federal Court of Australia, which absorbed the jurisdiction of the Australian Industrial Court. In 1979, Brennan retired from his position as president of the Tribunal to concentrate full-time on his duties as a judge of the Federal Court, to which he had been one of the original appointees in 1977. However, Brennan's service as a full-time member of the Federal Court was short-lived. In 1981, the Fraser government appointed him Justice of the High Court. Brennan had moved to Canberra shortly after his appointment as president of the Tribunal and remained there until his retirement from the High Court. From his earliest days on the High Court, Brennan displayed characteristics that would stamp his judicial style for nearly two decades. Espousing a well-defined conception of a limited judicial role, Brennan strove for certainty in the exposition and application of legal principle.
He was willing to develop the law when he considered this to be necessary to achieve a just result consistent with the demands of modern society. As part of the majority in Koowarta's Case and the Tasmanian Dam Case, he gave wide scope to the external affairs power. In Kioa v West, he expounded the importance of natural justice to the exercise of administrative power while emphasising its fundamental difference from judicial power. In He Kaw Teh v The Queen, he distilled a mass of conflicting case law into expressed presumptions concerning the mental element of statutory offences. Together with Mason and Deane, Brennan played a prominent role within the Mason Court, yet his judicial method and his view of a limited role for the judiciary led him to frequent dissents. Unlike Mason and Deane, Brennan saw no place for social policy in judicial development of the law, he was prepared to embrace the notion of community values as a guide to judicial decision making, but only to a limited extent. The fundamental difference between the role of the judiciary and the role