John Blunt

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

JUDGE TELLS CHINOOK CRASH FAMILIES THEY GRIEVED TOO SLOWLY FOR JUSTICE

In 1994 a Chinook helicopter crashed into the Mull of Kintyre and killed 29 people, including 25 of the UK's top intelligence and counter terrorism experts working in Northern Ireland at the time.

The Ministry of Defence @DefenceHQ blamed the dead pilots for it. It took a 17 year campaign by their families to clear their names in 2011.

The actual cause of the crash was never established.

Key documents about what really happened have been sealed by the government for 100 years, until 2094, by which point every grieving relative alive today will also be gone. Handy timing.

So the families formed the Chinook Justice Campaign @ChinookJustice and went to the High Court asking for exactly one thing, an independent investigation into what happened to their fathers, brothers and sons.

Their lawyer Mark Stephens @MarksLarks of Howard Kennedy @HowardKennedy argued the MoD is sitting on evidence the aircraft may have been known to be unsafe before it ever took off.

Mr Justice Butcher agreed it was a tragedy. Then he threw the case out.

His reasoning, the families should have complained sooner, ideally sometime during the 14 years the MoD spent stonewalling them and sealing the paperwork.

"No such grounds have been shown" he said, on why they waited too long to sue over documents they were never shown in the first place.

Andy Tobias, whose father died in the crash, called the ruling "an absolute travesty of justice."

Jenni Balmer-Hornby, whose father Anthony was among the dead, said "all we are asking for is the truth."

Mark Stephens summed it up best, justice delayed should not become justice denied.

He's now calling on Andy Burnham, tipped to be the next Prime Minister, to fix with a decision what the courts wouldn't touch.

If domestic law won't move, the families say they're heading to the European Court of Human Rights, the same road the Hillsborough families walked.

32 years. 29 dead. 100 year lock on the files. And a High Court ruling that the real scandal is the paperwork deadline, not the plane.

This is what institutional accountability looks like in Britain in 2026. Bury the evidence, outlast the families, then tell them they missed the window.

Sources:
@Telegraph @itvnews @BBCNews @STVNews and others

[Nature 🦜and Music 🎶 @GuGi263]

In Spain these firefighters spent the day fighting wildfires when they found a Deer stranded in the forest.

This is how they responded.

[John Cocker 🇺🇦 @joecocker15]

On this day in 1943, a 9 year old Dutch Jewish girl arrived at the Sobibor extermination camp with her parents where she was murdered on arrival. Her younger sister survived the Shoah in hiding. Her name was Esther van de Kar

Please support @Sticht_Sobibor

[D.Radka, #NAFO 🇨🇿🤝🇺🇦 @DakdaR22]

"Putin’s aim was to make Ukraine fall and then turn his aspirations of expansionism to other bordering states.

His plan has failed. Moscow has had to face the heroic reaction of a people ready to do everything to defend its freedom.”

- Giorgia Meloni - PM of Italy

She is great😉

Respect to Ukrainians, Respect to all defenders.🫡🇺🇦

[Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer]

I’ve visited Ukraine four times as Prime Minister, and I’ve seen first-hand the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion.

The UK’s support for Ukraine will never waver.

That’s why we’re funding fighter jets for Ukraine, strengthening their ability to defend themselves while supporting thousands of skilled jobs in the UK.

So good to see you again my friend, @ZelenskyyUa.

[Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 @Haggis_UK]

Ed Davey(LibDem leader): "I cannot back joke figures with ridiculous policies, which is why I'm supporting Count Binface." 🤣

#PMQs

[Antidepressant Content @depressionlesss]

At a Japanese aquarium, these baby otters have an end-of-day routine: clean up the toys with grandpa, then collect their well-earned ice cube reward.

[Paul Freid @PaulFreid5]

Thank you @StevenCheung47 for posting the official footage of Donald Trump vandalizing the reflecting pool.

[Single Market Minded 🇪🇺 @SingleMarketPls]

Don't fall for his charade!!

He's bent. A fake. A fraud. A con man. A lying grifter.

He's a clown. Vote for him, get his whole circus. That we'll pay for.

Clacton you have big responsibility, and an amazing opportunity. You can rid the UK of this malignant cancer this summer!

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

ZELENSKYY: When full-scale war started, Ukraine was given 72 hours, and it is still holding on. Twelve years of Russian aggression and 1,603 days of full-scale war. Today, even Russian state propagandists admit: Ukraine is a strong state that Russia cannot and will not overcome.

[Maria Rose ❤️ @BhattiLaib9960]

My neighbor’s cat has dementia, and he keeps forgetting he doesn’t actually live with us. Every morning, without fail, he strolls into our house like he pays the mortgage.
He’ll hop on the couch, meow for snacks, and make himself comfortable — then look genuinely offended when we gently remind him, “Buddy… you don’t live here.”

Five minutes later?
He’s back at the door, ready to “visit” all over again.

Honestly, at this point, we’ve stopped correcting him. If his little fuzzy brain says we’re part of his daily route, then who are we to argue?

We just consider him our part-time roommate — rent-free, slightly confused, and very loved

[History Content @HistContent]

This mosaic floor didn't sink because of an accident. It sank because the ground itself moved.

Portus Julius, built in 37 BC by Agrippa as Rome's first purpose-built naval base, sat in the Campi Flegrei, one of the most volcanically active regions on Earth.
A phenomenon called bradyseism, the gradual rise and fall of ground caused by pressure from magma beneath the surface, slowly pulled the entire harbor underwater over the following centuries.

Studies show around 2 meters of subsidence by the time the base was even completed, with roughly 4 meters total by around 500 AD.

[Auschwitz Memorial @AuschwitzMuseum]

14 July 1931 | An Italian Jewish girl, Eleonora Pergola, was born in Rome.

She arrived at #Auschwitz on 23 October 1943 in a transport of 1,035 Jews deported from Rome. She was among 893 of them murdered in gas chambers after the selection.

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

Around thirty thousand men and women were transported from Ireland to Australia as convicts. A great many of them had stolen food.

The sentences read now like something from a fable. Seven years for a sheep. Seven years for a length of cloth. Life for returning from a previous transportation. Others were political, sent after the rising of 1798 and again after the Young Irelanders in 1848, and the authorities regarded the Irish as by far the most difficult prisoners they handled, precisely because so many of them did not accept that they had done anything wrong.

The voyage took months. Women were transported too, often with young children, and the ships that carried them are among the most closely studied in Australian archives because the records are unusually complete. Name, age, county, height, trade, offence, sentence. A whole life reduced to a line, and yet it is that line that lets a family in Queensland today find the townland in Clare their people came from.

Many never returned, and most never wanted to. They served their time, took land, married, and built something. Ireland lost them. Australia was made partly out of them.

The convict transportation registers are now largely digitised and searchable, and they are one of the great genealogical gifts of a very cruel system, because the clerks recorded detail about ordinary poor Irish people that no parish register in Ireland ever bothered to write down. The Great Irish Famine Rock at the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney commemorates the four thousand orphan girls sent out from Irish workhouses under the Earl Grey scheme between 1848 and 1850, most of them teenagers, sent to a continent they had never heard of. Around a quarter of Australians are estimated to have some Irish ancestry, a higher proportion than in the United States. Transportation to eastern Australia ended in 1840 and to Western Australia in 1868.

#archaeohistories

[i Expose Racists & Pedos @SeeRacists]

🚨 Florida police tackled and broke a 15-year-old Black teen’s arm while searching for a white runaway they had just seen in a photo.

Judah Everage was on his knees with his hands in the air when officers slammed him to the ground near Wickham Park in Melbourne. He wasn’t the person they were looking for, but they still fractured his elbow. Body camera footage shows he was complying the entire time.

One officer has since resigned, but the others involved are still on the job.

This is what happens when police treat Black kids as suspects first and ask questions later. Disgusting.

Sources: Body camera footage / Local reporting

[UAVoyager🇺🇦 @NAFOvoyager]

Ukraine has opened the Black Sea chapter of russian maritime ass-kicking.

For the first time, 20 russian vessels were hit in a single night — not in the Sea of Azov, but in the Black Sea.

Glory to Ukrainian sanctions.

[Oaks And Lions 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @oaksandlions]

Many English towns still carry a word left behind by the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago.

If a place ends in “-chester”, its name comes from the Old English word “ceaster”, meaning a Roman fort or fortified settlement.

The Anglo-Saxons borrowed the Latin word castra, meaning a military camp, using "ceaster" for the Roman forts and walled towns they found.

The first part of the name identifies the place where the Roman settlement stood.

- Manchester developed from Mamucium, the name of a Roman fort, combined with “ceaster”.
- Winchester takes its name from the Roman town of Venta Belgarum, meaning "the market of the Belgae", the local Celtic tribe.
- Colchester was known in Old English as Colneceaster, the Roman settlement beside the River Colne.
- Doncaster means the Roman fort or settlement on the River Don.

The same word also survives in slightly different forms, including “-caster” in Lancaster and “-cester” in Leicester and Cirencester.

These names reveal where Roman soldiers once built forts, roads and towns across the English landscape.

Every time you pass through a place ending in “-chester”, you are seeing the remains of Roman Britain preserved in the English language.

Does your town have a Roman place name?

Follow @oaksandlions for more on England’s history and heritage.

[Dr. M.F. Khan @Dr_TheHistories]

Lady Flora Hastings was accused of being pregnant. She wasn't. She had cancer and it killed her within five months.

In January 1839 she'd travelled from Scotland to London and made one small mistake. She shared the journey with Sir John Conroy.

Flora was thirty-two, unmarried, and lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria's mother. Conroy was the Duchess's comptroller, the man behind the Kensington System that had made Victoria's childhood a claustrophobic misery. Victoria called him the devil incarnate and she meant it. Anyone in his circle was guilty by association, and Flora was firmly in his circle.

Then Flora's stomach began to swell.

She'd been in pain for weeks. On 10 January she saw Sir James Clark, physician to both the Queen and her mother. He prescribed rhubarb and camphor, which did nothing at all, and asked to examine her properly. She refused. For an unmarried aristocratic woman in 1839, that kind of examination was a humiliation she wasn't prepared to endure.

So Clark guessed instead. He decided she was pregnant.

The gossip was out of the consulting room in no time. Baroness Lehzen and Lady Tavistock, both close to the Queen, were later named as the women who spread it. By 2 February Victoria was writing in her journal that Flora's figure looked exceedingly suspicious and that there was no doubt she was with child. The father, obviously, was Conroy. Victoria was nineteen and thrilled to believe it.

Flora was trapped. Keep refusing and the whole court would take it as proof of guilt. Give in, and two strange men would be inspecting her body to settle a rumour her colleagues had invented. What do you do?

She gave in. She said afterwards that her honour had been basely assailed, and by all accounts the examination was rough and went on a long time. The verdict was clear enough. She wasn't pregnant, and never had been. A virgin, certified in writing.

You'd think that would end it.

It didn't. Nobody apologised. Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, wasn't about to let his young queen admit she'd been wrong, so no retraction came. Flora's brother teamed up with Conroy and took the whole thing to the press. Her private letters ran in The Examiner and The Times. Her brother's pamphlet went through seven editions in six months. Crowds who'd cheered the new queen a year earlier were hissing at her at Ascot.

The swelling, meanwhile, didn't go away. It was never going to. There was no baby in there.

Through the spring Flora kept turning up to her court duties while she wasted away. Victoria finally went to see her on 27 June and wrote down what she saw. A woman as thin as anybody can be who's still alive, literally a skeleton, with a body swollen like a woman carrying a child, and a searching look in her eyes.

She was staring at a tumour that Clark had never bothered to find.

Flora died just after two in the morning on 5 July 1839, aged thirty-three. She had demanded a post-mortem in her final days, and demanded that every detail of it be published. It found a hugely diseased liver and the growth that had been pushing out her stomach all along.

She had to die to prove it.

Victoria had nightmares about her for years afterwards. Rather late for that.

#drthehistories

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

Shuts down Ebola research - Massive Ebola outbreak

Closes CDC Parasitic disease division - Huge parasitic diarrhoea outbreak

Defunds screwworm research - screwworm comes back to the US

Ladies and gentlemen I give you Health Secretary RFK Jr