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Reginald Philip Abigail
Reginald Philip Abigail (1892–1969), often referred to as R. P. Abigail, was a senior British officer in the Indian Civil Service in Burma, District Commissioner of Arakan during the early stages of the fall of Burma in 1942 and, at the start of his civil service career, an author and surveyor on the townships and settlements of Burma. When the Japanese bombing raids on Akyab in Arakan began in earnest in March 1942, Abigail drew criticism for leaving his post and departing Burma on board HMIS ''Indus'' bound for Calcutta. Life Reginald Philip Abigail was born in India on 11 August 1892, the son of Reverend W. J. Abigail. He was educated at Trent College and Bedford Modern School. At the outbreak of World War I, Abigail enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force before transferring to the Indian Army with the 2/7th Gurkhas, a regiment he left as a Captain in 1923. On 29 October 1923, Abigail joined the Indian Civil Service through open competition. Following in the same ve ...
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Indian Civil Service (British India)
The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 300 million people in the Presidencies and provinces of British India and were ultimately responsible for overseeing all government activity in the 250 districts that comprised British India. They were appointed under Section XXXII(32) of the Government of India Act 1858, enacted by the British Parliament. The ICS was headed by the Secretary of State for India, a member of the British cabinet. At first almost all the top thousand members of the ICS, known as "Civilians", were British, and had been educated in the best British schools.Surjit Mansingh, ''The A to Z of India'' (2010), pp 288–90 At the time of the creation of India and Pakistan in 1947, the outgoing Government of India's ICS was divided between India and Pakistan. Although these are no ...
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Canadian Expeditionary Force
The Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) was the expeditionary field force of Canada during the First World War. It was formed following Britain’s declaration of war on Germany on 15 August 1914, with an initial strength of one infantry division. The division subsequently fought at Ypres on the Western Front, with a newly raised second division reinforcing the committed units to form the Canadian Corps. The CEF and corps was eventually expanded to four infantry divisions, which were all committed to the fighting in France and Belgium along the Western Front. A fifth division was partially raised in 1917, but was broken up in 1918 and used as reinforcements following heavy casualties. Personnel Recruitment The Canadian Expeditionary Force was mostly volunteers; a bill allowing conscription was passed in August, 1917, but not enforced until call-ups began in January 1918 (''see'' Conscription Crisis of 1917). In all, 24,132 conscripts had been sent to France to take par ...
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People Educated At Bedford Modern School
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of p ...
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Indian Civil Service (British India) Officers
The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 300 million people in the Presidencies and provinces of British India and were ultimately responsible for overseeing all government activity in the 250 districts that comprised British India. They were appointed under Section XXXII(32) of the Government of India Act 1858, enacted by the British Parliament. The ICS was headed by the Secretary of State for India, a member of the British cabinet. At first almost all the top thousand members of the ICS, known as "Civilians", were British, and had been educated in the best British schools.Surjit Mansingh, ''The A to Z of India'' (2010), pp 288–90 At the time of the creation of India and Pakistan in 1947, the outgoing Government of India's ICS was divided between India and Pakistan. Although these are no ...
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1969 Deaths
This year is notable for Apollo 11's first landing on the moon. Events January * January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco. * January 5 ** Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to London's Gatwick Airport, killing 50 of the 62 people on board and two of the home's occupants. * January 14 – An explosion aboard the aircraft carrier USS ''Enterprise'' near Hawaii kills 27 and injures 314. * January 19 – End of the siege of the University of Tokyo, marking the beginning of the end for the 1968–69 Japanese university protests. * January 20 – Richard Nixon is sworn in as the 37th President of the United States. * January 22 – An assassination attempt is carried out on Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev by deserter Viktor Ilyin. One person is killed, several are injured. Brezhnev escaped unharmed. * January 27 ** Fourteen men, 9 of them Jews, are executed in Baghdad for spying for Isr ...
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1892 Births
Year 189 ( CLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Silanus and Silanus (or, less frequently, year 942 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 189 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Plague (possibly smallpox) kills as many as 2,000 people per day in Rome. Farmers are unable to harvest their crops, and food shortages bring riots in the city. China * Liu Bian succeeds Emperor Ling, as Chinese emperor of the Han Dynasty. * Dong Zhuo has Liu Bian deposed, and installs Emperor Xian as emperor. * Two thousand eunuchs in the palace are slaughtered in a violent purge in Luoyang, the capital of Han. By topic Arts and sciences * Galen publishes his ''"Treatise on the various temperament ...
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Yangon
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government relocated the administrative functions to the purpose-built capital city of Naypyidaw in north central Myanmar. With over 7 million people, Yangon is Myanmar's most populous city and its most important commercial centre. Yangon boasts the largest number of colonial-era buildings in Southeast Asia, and has a unique colonial-era urban core that is remarkably intact. The colonial-era commercial core is centered around the Sule Pagoda, which is reputed to be over 2,000 years old. The city is also home to the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda – Myanmar's most sacred and famous Buddhist pagoda. Yangon suffers from deeply inadequate infrastructure, especially compared to other major cities in Southeast Asia, such as Jakarta, Bangkok or Hanoi. Though ...
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Gurkha
The Gurkhas or Gorkhas (), with endonym Gorkhali ), are soldiers native to the Indian subcontinent, Indian Subcontinent, chiefly residing within Nepal and some parts of Northeast India. The Gurkha units are composed of Nepalis and Indian Gorkhas and are recruited for the Nepali Army (96000), Indian Army (42000), British Army (4010), Gurkha Contingent, Gurkha Contingent Singapore, Gurkha Reserve Unit, Gurkha Reserve Unit Brunei, UN peacekeeping forces and in war zones around the world. Gurkhas are closely associated with the ''khukuri'', a forward-curving knife, and have a reputation for military prowess. Former Indian Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw once stated that: "If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha." Origins Historically, the terms "Gurkha" and "Gorkhali" were synonymous with "Nepali", which originates from the hill principality Gorkha Kingdom, from which the Kingdom of Nepal expanded under Prithvi Narayan Sha ...
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British Indian Army
The British Indian Army, commonly referred to as the Indian Army, was the main military of the British Raj before its dissolution in 1947. It was responsible for the defence of the British Indian Empire, including the princely states, which could also have their own armies. As quoted in the Imperial Gazetteer of India, "The British Government has undertaken to protect the dominions of the Native princes from invasion and even from rebellion within: its army is organized for the defence not merely of British India, but of all possessions under the suzerainty of the King-Emperor." The Indian Army was an important part of the British Empire's forces, both in India and abroad, particularly during the First World War and the Second World War. The term ''Indian Army'' appears to have been first used informally, as a collective description of the Presidency armies, which collectively comprised the Bengal Army, the Madras Army and the Bombay Army, of the Presidencies of British ...
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World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific Ocean, Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in Genocides in history (World War I through World War II), genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the Spanish flu, 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising French Third Republic, France, Russia, and British Empire, Britain) and the Triple A ...
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District Commissioner (British Colonial)
A commissioner (commonly abbreviated as Comm'r) is, in principle, a member of a commission or an individual who has been given a commission (official charge or authority to do something). In practice, the title of commissioner has evolved to include a variety of senior officials, often sitting on a specific commission. In particular, the commissioner frequently refers to senior police or government officials. A high commissioner is equivalent to an ambassador, originally between the United Kingdom and the Dominions and now between all Commonwealth states, whether Commonwealth realms, republics or countries having a monarch other than that of the realms. The title is sometimes given to senior officials in the private sector; for instance, many North American sports leagues. There is some confusion between commissioners and commissaries because other European languages use the same word for both. Therefore titles such as ''commissaire'' in French, ''Kommissar'' in German and ''comi ...
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