Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 April 23

Stanley Price Weir (23 April 1866 – 14 November 1944) was a public servant and Australian Army officer. He was awarded the Volunteer Officers' Decoration in 1908, and appointed a justice of the peace in 1914. During World War I, he commanded the 10th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force during the landing at Anzac Cove and the Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Turks, and during the battles of Pozières and Mouquet Farm in France. Weir returned to Australia at his own request at the age of 50 in late 1916, when he was appointed as the first South Australian Public Service Commissioner. In 1917 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was mentioned in dispatches for his performance at Pozières and Mouquet Farm. On his retirement from the Australian Military Forces in 1921, he was given an honorary promotion to brigadier general, only the second South Australia-born officer to reach this rank. Before his retirement as Public Service Commissioner in 1931, Weir was the chairman of both the Central Board of Health and the Public Relief Board. He led an active retirement, contributing to several religious, charitable and welfare organisations. (Full article...)

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April 23: Saint George's Day in various countries

• 1016 – Edmund Ironside (pictured) became King of England, reigning for only seven months before the country was conquered by Cnut the Great.
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Inveraray Castle is a country house near Inveraray in the county of Argyll, in western Scotland, on the shore of Loch Fyne, Scotland’s longest sea loch. Designed in part by William Adam and Roger Morris, work on the Gothic revival castle began in the 1740s. The castle, the seat of the Duke of Argyll, chief of Clan Campbell, is open to the public.

Photograph: Son of Groucho

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