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Francis Harvey (1873–1916) was an officer of the British Royal Marine Light Infantry during the First World War. Harvey was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valour available to British military personnel, for his actions at the height of the Battle of Jutland. A long serving Royal Marine officer descended of a military family, during his career Harvey became a specialist in naval artillery, serving on many large warships as gunnery training officer and gun commander. Specially requested for HMS Lion, the flagship of the British battlecruiser fleet, Harvey turned the ship into one of the very best ships for gunnery in the Royal Navy. At Jutland Harvey, although mortally wounded by German shellfire, ordered the blazing magazine of Q turret on the battlecruiser Lion to be flooded. This action prevented the hundreds of shells stored there from catastrophically detonating in an explosion that would have destroyed the vessel and all aboard her. Although he succumbed to his injuries seconds later, his dying act saved over a thousand lives and prompted Winston Churchill to later comment: "In the long, rough, glorious history of the Royal Marines there is no name and no deed which in its character and consequences ranks above this". (more...)

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September 14: Mid-Autumn Festival in the Chinese lunar calendar (2008)

• 786 – Harun al-Rashid became the Abbasid caliph upon the death of his brother al-Hadi.
• 1607 – Flight of the Earls: Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, and their families and followers departed Ireland for Spain.
• 1752 – In adopting the Gregorian calendar under the terms of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, the British Empire skipped eleven days (September 2 was followed directly by September 14).
• 1812 – The French invasion of Russia: Following the Battle of Borodino seven days earlier, Napoleon and his Grande Armée captured Moscow, only to find the city deserted and burning (pictured).
• 1901 – Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States eight days after William McKinley was fatally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

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