The series “Henry Norris at the Arsenal” is now complete.
The index to all the articles can be found at Henry Norris at the Arsenal. The final article just published is Henry Norris at the Arsenal: 1928 to the end.
We are now working on adding to the articles information that has come to light since writing the articles, and preparing a more concise edition for publication as a book.
Below are the Arsenal (and for historical context, occasionally one or two non-Arsenal) anniversaries for today taken from the complete files of over 6000 Arsenal anniversaries which appear on the Arsenal History Society website. An index to the monthly Anniversary files can be found in the right column of this site under “Pages” on the right of the screen.
An index of all our main series can be found on the home page.
The anniversary files: our headline today comes from 1924
15 November 1912: Writing in the West London and Fulham Times Norris had to admit that things were not going well for Woolwich Arsenal. Maybe he admitted it because not even Fulham could provide him with any relief as they were near the foot of the second division.
15 November 1918: The first released British prisoners of war reached Calais.
15 November 1919: Jack Butler made his debut in a 2-2 away draw with Bolton.. He signed for Arsenal from Fulham Thursday in 1914, and served in France in the Royal Artillery in the war. Subsequently he played over 250 league games.
15 November 1922: The Conservatives won an easy victory in the general election, with the Liberals replaced by Labour as the second party in the Commons.
15 November 1924: First game for Dan Lewis: Everton 2 Arsenal 3. In a Fifa commentary on the change of rules to allow goals to be scored direct from corners it is suggested that this game was the first in which this then happened but this not the whole truth. The rules had been wrongly written allowing players to take a corner and then touch the ball again and this happened on this day. James Howie Ramsay scored two of Arsenal’s goals.
15 November 1950: Leslie Compton won his first full cap for England, having won 12 war time caps. He was the oldest player ever to win his first full cap – at the age of 38.
15 November 1951: Lionel Smith debut for England. In all he won six caps – the last being in 1953.
15 November 1952: Liverpool 1 Arsenal 5 – as Arsenal continued en route for the title. Cliff Holton got a hat trick, Ben Marden got two. It was the second game in a seven match unbeaten run.
15 November 1975: Birmingham 3 Arsenal 1, 21,652 in the crowd. It was Arsenal’s third successive defeat and it saw the club slip down to 16th in the league.
15 November 1976: Refusing to cease football just because of an international break Arsenal arranged two friendlies. The second was played on this day with the result Dubai National Civil Service 0 Arsenal 3. (Macdonald, Rostron 2)
15 November 2000: Rhys Weston sold to Cardiff for £50,000. He only played once for Arsenal but went on to play 182 times for Cardiff, and later had a long spell with Walsall. He also won seven caps for Wales.
