Literally 'England Game', Englandspiel was an extremely successful German counterintelligence operation, which used the codes of captured agents working in the Netherlands to expose and destroy resistance groups in the region.
Englandspiel
Fact of the Day
As a young officer, First World War general Douglas 'Butcher' Haig had spoken to Napoleon, with the aid of a medium and a seance.
Quote of the Day
"What recreation tooke I? How lawfull was it? ... Was it not affected with too much delight?
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~ Questions from the seventeenth-century puritan guidebook for women, 'A Fountaine of Tears'
On This Day
1846 Scottish surgeon Robert Liston was the first European to use anaesthesia during an amputation. He could amputate a leg in two and a half minutes.
1898 Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium.
1937 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', the world's first full-length animated film, premiered in the USA
1946 A tsunami caused by an undersea earthquake killed at least 1,362 and left thousands homeless in Japan.
1967 Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a heart transplant, died in Cape Town, South Africa, 18 days after his operation.
1988 Pan Am Flight 103 exploded as it was flying over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 243 passengers and 16 crew, and 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed