On this date in 1905, this happened in French Indochina:
“Annamites” — a term that will not get you a warm welcome in Southeast Asia today — were residents of the French protectorate of Annam. It, along with Tonkin to its north and Cochinchina to its south, comprise present-day Vietnam: “Annamite” was also sometimes generalized as a colonialist synonym for all Vietnamese. (Here’s a 1947 Life magazine article by William Bullitt that does just that in its warning about the burgeoning war wherein “Annamites — half starved and weakened by malaria, gentle by nature but courageous” had started “kill[ing] every Frenchman they can.”)
Postcard pictures on this post via BeheadedArt.com, which delivers what it promises. (Clicker beware.)
On this day..
- 1524: The rulers of the K'iche' kingdom
- 1679: Four at Tyburn
- 1829: Jane Jameson
- 1764: John Prince, dissembler
- 1748: William Whurrier, War of Austrian Succession veteran
- 1884: Two abusive husbands
- 1562: Michael Lindener, poet laureate
- 1968: Veyusile Qoba, the last of the Langa Six
- 1811: Thomas White and John Newbolt Hepburn of the Vere Street Coterie
- 1842: Maketu Wharetotara, New Zealand's first execution
- 1937: Alexander Yulevich Tivel
- 203: Perpetua, the earliest Christian woman whose writings survive