Lenin – Ingliando

On this day in the early hours of the morning, a fierce gun battle broke out in the East End of London. The Metropolitan and City Police had received a tip-off that two Latvian anarchists, Svaara and Sokoloff, were holed up in a room in Sidney Street. The anarchists were part of a group who called themselves Leesma (flame) and who carried out robberies to fund Lenin and his Bolshevik movement. Until mid-morning, the superior arms of the anarchists gave them the upper hand, but then Winston Churchill called in the Scots Guards and Svaara and Sokoloff were eventually killed at around lunchtime. Churchill himself witnessed the action in what would later be known as the Siege of Sidney Street.