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Queenie was an elephant who was used to give rides for children at Melbourne Zoo for 40 years.

Queenie was a very popular exhibit, with large crowds of children often gathering around her enclosure even when she was not giving rides. She was often teased by children and her keeper, Andrew Wilkie, said she would retaliate by using her trunk to "tumble such trespassers over in the dust".

"On one occasion, a group of about fifteen schoolboys were teasing Queenie by offering her nuts and fruit in turn and then withdrawing the food just as she reached for it. This game continued for a while until the elephant retreated to the pool behind her house. She returned some minutes later and, imitating their behaviour, held out her trunk to each boy in turn, withdrawing it before they would touch it. The boys were delighted with this variation of the game until, as if carrying out a pre-planned attack, she soaked them all thoroughly with a well-aimed spray of dirty water from her pool." Source: Melbourne Zoo

She was put down in 1944 after crushing keeper Wilfred Lawson to death.

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Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 8th Earl of Shaftesbury (27 June 1831 – 13 April 1886), styled Lord Ashley between 1851 and 1885, was a British peer.

Ashley was the son of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. He was Member of Parliament for Hull from 1857 to 1859[1] and Cricklade from 1859 to 1865.[2] He was a patron and member of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.[3]

Lord Shaftesbury married Lady Harriet Chichester (d. 14 April 1898), only daughter (and only surviving child) of George Chichester, 3rd Marquess of Donegall, on 22 August 1857. They had six children:

Lady Margaret Ashley-Cooper (1858–1931), married Captain Theophilus Levett son of Theophilus John Levett MP.

Lady Evelyn Ashley-Cooper (1865–1931), married firstly the 2nd Baron Magheramorne, and secondly Captain The Hon. Hugo Baring (sixth son of the 1st Baron Revelstoke)

Lady Mildred Ashley-Cooper (1867–1958), married the Honourable George Higginson Allsopp.

Lady Violet Ashley-Cooper (1868–1938), married Walter Erskine, 12th Earl of Mar.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury (1869–1961), married Lady Constance Grosvenor, elder daughter of Victor Grosvenor, Earl Grosvenor, eldest son of Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster

Lady Ethel Maud Ashley-Cooper (1870–1945), married Sir George Warrender - she was known as Lady Maud Warrender, a singer and patron of music, and a personal friend of the composer Edward Elgar and his wife

Lord Shaftesbury committed suicide six months after succeeding to the title.

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The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871, killing hundreds and destroying about 3.3 square miles (9 km2) in Chicago, Illinois.[1] Though the fire was one of the largest U.S. disasters of the 19th century, the rebuilding that began helped develop Chicago as one of the most populous and economically important American cities.

On the flag of Chicago, the second star commemorates the fire.[2] The exact cause was never determined. The popular account dreamed up by a reporter, attributing it to Mrs. Catherine O'Leary and her cow, survived his confession of fiction in 1893.

The fire's spread was aided by the city's overuse of wood for building, a drought prior to the fire, and strong winds from the southwest that carried flying embers toward the heart of the city. The city did not react quickly enough, and at first, residents were not concerned about it, not realizing the high risk of conditions. The firefighters were tired from having fought a fire the day before.[6] The firefighters fought the flames through the entire day and became exhausted. As the fire jumped to a nearby neighborhood, it began to destroy mansions, houses and apartments, most made of wood and dried out from the drought. After two days of the fire burning out of control, rain helped douse the remaining fire. City officials estimated that more than 300 people died in the fire and over 100,000 were left homeless.

Philip Sheridan, a noted Union general in the American Civil War, was present during the fire and coordinated military relief efforts. The mayor, to calm the panic, placed the city under martial law, and issued a proclamation placing Sheridan in charge. As there were no widespread disturbances, martial law was lifted within a few days. 

After the fire, the city recovered 125 bodies. Final estimates of the fatalities ranged from 200–300, considered a small number for such a large fire. In later years, other disasters would claim many more lives: at least 605 died in the Iroquois Theater Fire in 1903; and, in 1915, 835 died in the sinking of the Eastland excursion boat in the Chicago River. The Great Chicago Fire remains Chicago's most well-known disaster, both for the magnitude of the destruction and the city's recovery and growth.

In the days and weeks following the fire, monetary donations flowed in to Chicago from around the country and foreign cities, along with donations of food, clothing, and other goods. These donations came from individuals, corporations, and cities. New York City gave $450,000 along with clothing and provisions, St. Louis gave $300,000, and the Common Council of London gave 1,000 Guineas as well as ₤7,000 from private donations.[10]

Operating from the First Congregational Church, city officials and the Aldermen began taking steps to preserve order in the city. Price fixing was a key concern. In one ordinance, the city set the price of bread at 8¢ for a 12-ounce loaf.

Catherine O'Leary seemed the perfect scapegoat: she was an Irish Catholic immigrant, who were unpopular because of their high numbers in the city. This story was circulating in Chicago even before the flames had died out, and it was noted in the Chicago Tribune's first post-fire issue. In 1893 the reporter Michael Ahern retracted the "cow-and-lantern" story, admitting it was fabricated.[14]

The amateur historian Richard Bales has suggested the fire started when Daniel "Pegleg" Sullivan, who first reported the fire, ignited hay in the barn while trying to steal milk.[15] Anthony DeBartolo reported evidence in the Chicago Tribune suggesting thatLouis M. Cohn may have started the fire during a craps game. Cohn may also have admitted to starting the fire in a lost will.[16]

Bales' account does not have consensus. The Chicago Public Library staff had criticized his account in their web page on the fire.[17]

An alternative theory, first suggested in 1882 by Ignatius L. Donnelly in Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, is that the Great Chicago Fire was caused by a meteor shower. At a 2004 conference of the Aerospace Corporation and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, engineer and physicist Robert Wood suggested that the fire began when Biela's Comet broke up over the Midwest. That four large fires took place, all on the same day, all on the shores of Lake Michigan (see Related Events), suggests a common root cause. Eyewitnesses reported sighting spontaneous ignitions, lack of smoke, "balls of fire" falling from the sky, and blue flames. According to Wood, these accounts suggest that the fires were caused by the methane that is commonly found in comets.[18]

But meteorites are not known to start or spread fires and are cool to the touch after reaching the ground; this theory has not found favor in the scientific community.[19][20] A common cause for the fires in the Midwest can be found in the fact that the area had suffered through a tinder-dry summer, so that winds from the front that moved in that evening were capable of generating rapidly expanding blazes from available ignition sources, which were plentiful in the region.

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Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia (9 November 1723 – 30 March 1787) was Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg. She was one of ten surviving children of King Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover.

She was contemplated as a bride for the crown prince of Sweden along with her sister Louisa Ulrika, as her brother warned that Louisa Ulrika was perhaps too ambitious to be a good queen in a monarchy without power, as Sweden then was during the Age of Liberty.[1] Her brother, King Frederick, said that Louisa Ulrika was "arrogant, temperamental and an intriguer", and that they should not let themselves be fooled by her friendliness towards them, while Anna Amalia was mild and "more suitable". But the Swedish representatives preferred Louisa Ulrika.

In 1743, Anna Amalia secretly married Baron Friedrich von der Trenck, a man whose adventures inspired works by literary greats such as Victor Hugo and Voltaire. Her brother Frederick II learned of her marriage after his ascension to the throne in 1740 when his sister became pregnant. He packed her off in a rage to Quedlinburg Abbey, a Protestant monastery where aristocratic women often went to give birth to children out of wedlock. Frederick II had the marriage annulled and von der Trenck imprisoned for ten years. Anna Amalia continued to correspond with von der Trenck until her death in 1787.

Anna Amalia became the Abbess of Quedlinburg in 1755, making her a wealthy woman. She chose to spend most of her time in Berlin, where she devoted herself to music, and became known as a musical patron and composer. As a composer she achieved a modest amount of fame and is most known for her smaller chamber works, which included trios, marches, cantatas, songs and fugues.

In 1758, Anna Amalia began a serious study of musical theory and composition, engaging as her tutor Johann Philipp Kirnberger, a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. She composed chamber music, such as flute sonatas. More favorably disposed toward religious music than her brother, she set the text of Ramler's Passion cantata Der Tod Jesu ("The Death of Jesus") to music. This was her favorite among her compositions. Only a few of her works have survived. She may have destroyed many of her compositions, as she described herself as being very "timorous and self-critical." However, more compositions by her may soon surface as a result of the discovery in 2000 of the Berlin Singakademie music archives in Kiev, a library that had been lost sinceWorld War II.

Anna Amalia was also a collector of music, preserving over 600 volumes of works by notables such as Johann Sebastian Bach,George Frideric Handel, George Philipp Telemann, Karl Heinrich Graun and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, among others. Her works of curation alone represent a significant contribution to Western culture. 

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This Wikipedia article seems unnecessarily bitchy. 

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Nancy Wake AC GM (30 August 1912 – 7 August 2011) served as a British agent during the later part of World War II. She became a leading figure in the maquis groups of the French Resistance and was one of the Allies' most decorated servicewomen of the war.

Born in Roseneath, Wellington, New Zealand in 1912, Wake was the youngest of six children. In 1914, her family moved to Sydney, Australia and settled at North Sydney. Shortly thereafter, her father, Charles Augustus Wake, returned to New Zealand, leaving her mother Ella Wake (née Rosieur; 1874–1968) to raise the children.

At the age of 16, she ran away from home and worked as a nurse. With £200 that she had inherited from an aunt, she journeyed to New York, then London where she trained herself as a journalist. In the 1930s she worked in Paris and later for Hearst newspapers as a European correspondent.

In 1937, she met wealthy French industrialist Henri Edmond Fiocca (1898–1943), whom she married on 30 November 1939.

She was living in Marseille, France when Germany invaded. After the fall of France in 1940, she became a courier for the French Resistance and later joined the escape network of Captain Ian Garrow. In reference to her ability to elude capture, the Gestapo called her the White Mouse.

By 1943, she was the Gestapo's most wanted person, with a 5 million-franc price on her head. When the network was betrayed that same year, she decided to flee Marseille. Her husband, Henri Fiocca, stayed behind where he was later captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo.

"A little powder and a little drink on the way, and I'd pass their (German) posts and wink and say, 'Do you want to search me?' God, what a flirtatious little bastard I was."

Wake had been arrested in Toulouse, but was released four days later. An acquaintance managed to have her let out by making up stories about her supposed infidelity to her husband. She succeeded, on her sixth attempt, in crossing the Pyrenees to Spain. Until the war ended, she was unaware of her husband's death and subsequently blamed herself for it.

After reaching Britain, Wake joined the Special Operations Executive. Vera Atkins, who also worked in the SOE, recalls her as "a real Australian bombshell. Tremendous vitality, flashing eyes. Everything she did, she did well." Training reports record that she was "a very good and fast shot" and possessed excellent fieldcraft. She was noted to "put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character."

On the night of 29–30 April 1944 she was parachuted into the Auvergne, becoming a liaison between London and the local maquis group headed by Captain Henri Tardivat in the Forest of Troncais . Upon discovering her tangled in a tree, Captain Tardivat greeted her remarking, "I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year," to which she replied, "Don't give me that French shit.” Her duties included allocating arms and equipment that were parachuted in and minding the group's finances. She became instrumental in recruiting more members and making the maquis groups into a formidable force, roughly 7,500 strong. She also led attacks on German installations and the local Gestapo HQ in Montluçon.

At one point Wake discovered that her men were protecting a girl who was a German spy. They did not have the heart to kill her in cold blood, but Wake did. She said after that it was war, and she had no regrets about the incident.

From April 1944 to the liberation of France, her 7,000 maquisards fought 22,000 SS soldiers, causing 1,400 casualties, while taking only 100 themselves. Her French companions, especially Henri Tardivat, praised her fighting spirit, amply demonstrated when she killed an SS sentry with her bare hands to prevent him from raising the alarm during a raid.

During a 1990s television interview, when asked what had happened to the sentry who spotted her, Wake simply drew her finger across her throat. "They'd taught this judo-chop stuff with the flat of the hand at SOE, and I practised away at it. But this was the only time I used it -- whack -- and it killed him all right. I was really surprised."

On another occasion, to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy in a German raid, Wake rode a bicycle for more than 500 miles (800 km) through several German checkpoints.

Immediately after the war, Wake was awarded the George Medal, the United States Medal of Freedom, the Médaille de la Résistance and thrice the Croix de Guerre. She learned that the Gestapo had tortured her husband to death in 1943 for refusing to disclose her whereabouts. After the war, she worked for the Intelligence Department at theBritish Air Ministry attached to embassies of Paris and Prague.

In 2001, she left Australia for the last time and emigrated to London. She became a resident at the Stafford Hotel in St James's Place, near Piccadilly, formerly a British and American forces club during the war. She had been introduced to her first "bloody good drink" there by the general manager at the time, Louis Burdet. He had also worked for the Resistance in Marseilles. In the mornings she would usually be found in the hotel bar, sipping her first gin and tonic of the day. She was welcomed at the hotel, celebrating her 90th birthday there, where the hotel owners absorbed most of the costs of her stay. In 2003, Wake chose to move to the Royal Star and Garter Home for Disabled Ex-Service Men and Women in Richmond, London, where she remained until her death.

Wake died on Sunday evening 7 August 2011, aged 98, at Kingston Hospital after being admitted with a chest infection. She had requested that her ashes be scattered atMontluçon in central France.

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Koni  full name Connie Paulgrave  also known as Connie, is a female black Labrador Retriever owned by President of Russia Vladimir Putin.

The dog is often seen at Putin's side, including at staff meetings, and when Putin greets world leaders upon their visits to Russia.

Koni was born in 1999 at a cynology centre of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Noginsk, where she was to be trained as a search and rescue dog. Koni's parents are Henrietta Bush (mother) and Alkor Ross Bradford (father). Alkor Ross Bradford had hereditary lines to a Labrador once owned by Leonid Brezhnev.

Answering a question at a press conference, Putin stated that like everyone he has bad moods, and explained:

(I)n those situations I try to consult with my dog Koni, who gives me good advice.

In February 2005, the We youth movement, a member of The Other Russia, started a campaign to promote Koni for President.

Koni became a symbol of friendly meetings between the Russian President and world leaders and is allowed to attend official meetings.

A popular anecdote is of when the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel met Vladimir Putin, Putin brought Koni to their meetings. On 21 January 2007, the two leaders met at Bocharov Ruchei, the President's summer residence in Sochi and at the beginning of their meeting Koni wandered into the room, leading Putin to ask Merkel, who was afraid of dogs, "The dog does not bother you, does it? It's a friendly dog and I'm sure it will behave itself." Merkel responded in Russian, a language in which she is fluent, "It doesn't eat journalists, after all." Koni then proceeded to sniff the German Chancellor, and sat at her feet. Merkel was reported to have shown "apparent discomfort", but the two quickly became friends.

When US President George W. Bush visited Putin's residence at Novo-Ogaryovo, Koni was there to greet both leaders. Putin was reported to have remarked to the visiting President that Koni is "[b]igger, tougher, stronger, faster, meaner — than Barney", which aides to Bush said was "a mark of a friendship strengthened by a little needling."

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Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione (22 March 1837 – 28 November 1899), better known as La Castiglione, was an Italian aristocrat who achieved notoriety as a mistress of Emperor Napoleon III of France. 

She married Francesco Verasis, conte di Castiglione, at the age of 17. He was twelve years her senior.

Her cousin, Camillo, conte di Cavour, was a minister to Victor Emmanuel II, king of Sardinia. When the Count and Countess traveled to Paris in 1855, the Countess was under her cousin's instructions to plead the cause of Italian unity with Napoleon III of France. She achieved notoriety by becoming Napoleon III's mistress, a scandal that led her husband to demand a marital separation.

The Countess returned to Italy in 1857 when her affair with Napoleon III was over. Four years later, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, conceivably in part due to the influence that the Countess had exerted on Napoleon III. That same year, she returned to France and settled in Passy.

In 1871, just after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, she was called to a secret meeting with Otto von Bismarck to explain to him how the German occupation of Paris could be fatal to his interests. She may have been persuasive because Paris was spared Prussian occupation.

Virginia spent her declining years in an apartment in the Place Vendôme, where she had the rooms decorated in funereal black, the blinds kept drawn, and mirrors banished—apparently so she would not have to confront her advancing age and loss of beauty.