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Thomas Hardy (13 September 1666 – 16 August 1732) was a Royal Navy officer and politician. In 1702, he was given command of HMS Pembroke and fought at the Battle of Cádiz and the Battle of Vigo Bay, where he was knighted for his services. In 1707, Hardy was sent as escort to a convoy sailing for Lisbon where he met the squadron of René Duguay-Trouin. Hardy became first captain to John Leake in the Mediterranean in 1708, assisting in the transport of Elisabeth Christine to Spain for her marriage to Archduke Charles, and participating in the capture of Cagliari and the assault on Minorca. He was promoted to rear-admiral and given command of a squadron to blockade Dunkirk. After briefly serving as commander-in-chief, the Nore, Thames and Medway, Hardy commanded a squadron off Ushant where he failed to intercept the squadrons of Duguay-Trouin and Jean-Baptiste du Casse. In 1715, he was second-in-command of the Baltic Fleet sent to serve in the Great Northern War, but he was dismissed in 1716. (Full article...)

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Dress from Plato's Atlantis

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... that the narrator of Recollections of Things to Come is an entire town?
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... that the unpublished autobiography of Peter Tyrrell was discovered almost forty years after his death in a politician's personal papers?
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In the news

Gloria Steinem in 2016

In Yemen, heavy fighting between the Houthis and the Presidential Leadership Council leaves hundreds of people dead.
American journalist and feminist activist Gloria Steinem (pictured) dies at the age of 92.
Following the Kazakh legislative election, Oljas Bektenov is reappointed Prime Minister of Kazakhstan by the newly established Kurultai.
Duane Davis is convicted of orchestrating the 1996 murder of American rapper Tupac Shakur.

On this day

September 13

Model of Luna 2

1759 – French and Indian War: British forces won the Battle of the Plains of Abraham near Quebec City, despite General James Wolfe being mortally wounded.
1814 – War of 1812: Fort McHenry in Baltimore's Inner Harbor was attacked by British forces during the Battle of Baltimore, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write "Defence of Fort McHenry", later used as the lyrics to the United States national anthem.
1959 – The Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 (model pictured) struck the Moon, the first spacecraft to reach another celestial body.
1971 – Following a failed coup attempt, Mao Zedong's second-in-command Lin Biao died in a plane crash while attempting to flee China.
2008 – Five bomb blasts took place in Delhi, India, killing at least 20 people as part of a series of attacks perpetrated by the Indian Mujahideen.

Kavad I (d. 531)
Pat Collins (b. 1896)
Lili Elbe (d. 1931)
Antony Hewish (d. 2021)

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Today's featured picture

The salema porgy (Sarpa salpa) is a species of marine ray-finned fish in the seabream and porgy family, Sparidae. It has a silvery body with eight to ten horizontal golden lines and a black spot at the base of the pectoral fin, and can sometimes reach more than 50 cm (20 in) in length. The species occurs in the eastern Atlantic from the Bay of Biscay to South Africa, as well as the Mediterranean Sea, at depths of up to 70 m (230 ft). It is largely herbivorous, feeding principally on seagrasses and algae, and is a protandrous hermaphrodite, changing from male to female. Consumption can sometimes cause ichthyoallyeinotoxism poisoning, resulting in auditory and visual hallucinations. This salema porgy was photographed in Catania, Sicily, Italy.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

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