The Coventry Blitz was seventy years ago today. The German Luftwaffe, in an operation they codenamed "Moonlight Sonata", bombed the city for over eleven hours, killing 600, injuring a thousand, and damaging or destroying over 43,000 homes -- just over half of the existing housing stock. The raid was so devastating that Joseph Goebbels later used the term Coventriert ("Coventrated") to describe a particularly satisfactory level of destruction. [more inside]
posted by tractorfeed on Nov 14, 2010 - 35 comments

This past Saturday evening a woman dumped a rescue cat into a garbage bin on the side of a residential street in Coventry, U.K. Fifteen hours later owner Darryl Mann: "I came down to feed Lola on Sunday morning but couldn’t find her anywhere. It was really hot day outside and I searched nearby alleyways but suddenly heard a tiny meowing coming from the bin. I looked inside and I found her in the bin, she was terrified and covered in her own mess....At first I thought she’d somehow climbed inside the bin herself but when I checked the CCTV I was gobsmacked to see some a woman had done it deliberately." Mann posted the video to YouTube and Facebook in an effort to find the perpetrator. As a result, the woman was identified by this morning. [more inside]
posted by ericb on Aug 24, 2010 - 249 comments

On November 14, 1940, German bombers flew through the skies for nine hours above Coventry, England in a raid that Winston Churchill probably didn't know about but if he did, did nothing to prepare for. The bombers dropped thousands of pounds of explosives and incendiaries that resulted in hundreds of deaths and huge destruction. Coventry, perhaps best known before the war for naked horseback riding and the manufacture of pretty-but-malfunction-prone automobiles, was also home to a grand cathedral, St. Michael's Church, one of the greatest cathedrals in England. The cathedral was nearly destroyed; the fire left behind little but debris and the still-standing outer walls and spire. [more inside]
posted by Shotgun Shakespeare on Jan 18, 2008 - 28 comments

An announcement from Trey: "So Coventry will be the final Phish show...For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We're done. It's been an amazing and incredible journey."
posted by methree on May 25, 2004 - 20 comments