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Charles Richardson (c. 10 March 1769 – 10 November 1850) was an English Royal Navy officer. He joined HMS Vestal in 1787, where he made an aborted journey to China before serving on the East Indies Station. He transferred to HMS Phoenix and fought in the Battle of Tellicherry. With HMS Circe he combated the Nore mutiny and fought in the Battle of Camperdown, capturing Jan Willem de Winter. He fought in the Battle of Callantsoog and the Vlieter incident, sailed to Egypt, and fought in the battles of Abukir, Mandora, and Alexandria. Commanding HMS Alligator, he was sent to the Leeward Islands Station during the Napoleonic Wars, where he captured three Dutch settlements. He transferred to HMS Topaze in 1821 and sailed to China, where his crew killed two locals in self-defence. The resulting diplomatic incident strained Richardson's health and he was invalided home, where he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and promoted to vice-admiral. He died of influenza in Painsthorpe. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Horsham Friends Meeting House in 2018

... that the headstone of George Bax Holmes, who is buried at Horsham Friends Meeting House (pictured), is now a paving slab?
... that the King Tornado football team once won by a score of 206–0 – without even playing the full game?
... that the album cover for Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run has been imitated by several musicians, as well as the Sesame Street characters Bert and Cookie Monster?
... that as part of the Hardpoint missile defense system, ARPA developed missiles able to hit 377 g of acceleration with reaction times in milliseconds?
... that Enass Muzamel established the Sudanese Female Cyclists Initiative to challenge the stigma against women riding bikes in Sudan?
... that only months after going out of business, Milkrun relaunched?
... that Aaron Hertzman paid $25 to have a team in the National Football League?
... that Rubymar was the first ship sunk by Houthi missiles during the Red Sea crisis?
... that a Missouri TV station blew up its call letters – literally?

In the news

Akira Toriyama in 2002

Akira Toriyama

Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama (pictured), author of Dragon Ball, dies at the age of 68.
Sweden becomes the thirty-second member state of NATO.
The Haitian government declares a state of emergency after gangs storm two prisons and demand the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
Following the general election, Shehbaz Sharif is appointed Prime Minister of Pakistan.

On this day

March 10: Mothering Sunday (Western Christianity, 2024)

Eliot Spitzer

1695 – Nine Years' War: At the Battle of Sant Esteve d'en Bas, Catalan miquelets attacked a column of French regular infantry and caused them to surrender.
1959 – An anti-Chinese uprising began as thousands of Tibetans surrounded the Potala Palace in Lhasa to prevent the Dalai Lama from leaving or being removed by the Chinese army.
1968 – Vietnam War/Laotian Civil War: North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces overwhelmed the American, Laotian, Thai, and Hmong defenders of Lima Site 85.
1977 – Astronomers using NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory discovered a faint ring system around Uranus.
2008 – The New York Times revealed that Eliot Spitzer (pictured), Governor of New York, had patronized a prostitution ring.

Tvrtko I of Bosnia (d. 1391)
Lillian Wald (b. 1867)
Marie-Eugénie de Jésus (d. 1898)
Rupert Bruce-Mitford (d. 1994)

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Today's featured picture

Picea abies, commonly known as the Norway spruce, is a species of spruce native to northern, central and eastern Europe. It has branchlets that typically hang downwards, and the largest cones of any spruce, at 9 to 17 centimetres (3.5 to 6.7 in) long. It is very closely related to the Siberian spruce, which replaces it east of the Ural Mountains, and with which it hybridizes freely. The Norway spruce has a wide distribution of planting for its wood, and is the species used as the main Christmas tree in several countries around the world. It was the first gymnosperm to have its genome sequenced. This young female Norway spruce cone, with a length of 43 millimetres (1.7 in) at the time of pollination, was photographed in Keila, Estonia.

Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus

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