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The Quintinshill rail disaster

100 years ago today, the worst rail disaster in British history occurred at Quintinshill near Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. On May 22nd 1915, a devastating crash involving a total of five trains, killed 226 people and injured a further 246. The vast majority of those killed were territorial soldiers of the 1/7th (Leith) Battalion, Royal Scots, on their way to participate in the Gallipoli campaign. Disaster stuck when a troop train headed for Liverpool struck a passenger train that

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How Britain celebrated VE day

On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker. After his death, Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz took the reins of power and headed a new administration known as the Flensburg Government. On May the 7th, Dönitz and his staff met with allied commanders in Reims, France to sign the formal act of military surrender ending nearly 6 years of total war in Europe. Celebrations erupted throughout the world from Moscow to Melbourne. More than one million people took

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