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Guy Fawkes' Explosion Would Have Devasted London
Anonymous Coward writes "Experts at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth have worked out for the first time the true extent of the damage Guy Fawkes would have caused if his daring deed had not been foiled on November 5, 1605. " Sorry - history geek/major in me coming out, but this is definitiely one of those major points in history when things Could Have Gone Differently.
It qould have destroyed the Houses of Parliament, including all the MPS, the Lords and the King who were there for the state opening of parliament; Westminster Abbey; and the main royal palaces of Whitehall and St James's (Buckingham wasn't built yet). So the effect on the government & ruling class would have been devastating.
On the other hand, the main commercial, shipping and population centre of London at the time was the City of London, which is a couple of miles from Parliament (technically in the City of Westminster), so the direct effect on London's population would have been small. The knock-on might have been huge, though. Just as 9/11 may have ended lower manhattan's dominance of the finance sector in NYC, it's possible that London's importance as a trading centre would have been seriously dented.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
The moderation is screwed! The parent '5, Insightful' is showing as '5, Funny' for some reason(!)
;)
As a UK 'citizen' who is 'lucky' enough to see the current load of self-serving, jeering, ignorant political whores performing live, I can confirm the parent post is true!
ermmm... don't take any notice of me... I'm too old...
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Of course, given that Mr Fawkes represented the oppressed (at the time) Roman Catholic community, was he a terrorist, or a freedom fighter?
You can get in trouble for thinking unpatriotic thoughts like that.
So I'll get into even greater trouble. The phrases freedom fighter/terrorist describe the same people from different viewpoints. The person getting freedom fighted calls them terrorist. Those who use terror call themselves freedom fighters.
Of course the real qualifier is what means they use and what ends they want to achieve (the means being more important than the ends in judging whether they are acting for good or evil IMHO).
The Resistance movement in Europe was called terrorist by the Gestapo. Old resistance fighter readily admit using terror tactics against the Nazis. They are proud of the fear they raised amongst the murdering invaders.
The Polish underground even used anthrax to discourage the Gestapo from reading anonymuous tipoff letters!
No, instead the exagerrated and publicized the scope of the failed plot and used it as an excuse to further oppress Ireland too since all catholics were obviously evil fanatics.