June 25

Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma was born on the 25th in 1900. He died when a bomb placed on his boat by the IRA exploded on August 27, 1979. It would be callous of me to ask at this point “What’s small, white and travels at 300 miles per hour?” The answer, of course, is Lord Mountbatten’s deck shoe across Donegal Bay.