History Heroes is pleased to have signed up for a movement for #Lights Out on the 4th August 2014. It’s an amazing movement to have a shared hour of reflection to commemorate the centenary of the start of World War I on the 4th August: Everyone taking part will turn off all their lights except a single light/candle for an hour from 10.00-11.00 pm. If many people do it – and many are signed up already – it will be an eerie and moving experience. Everyone who does it will never forget thereafter when WWI began. History Heroes will be taking part. This is the movement if you want to know more: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/13698-take-part-in-lightsout

You may well know that the name of the movement comes from a statement attributed to Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, on the eve of the start of World War I. According to Sir Edward Grey’s memoirs and the friend to whom he made the remark, John Alfred Spender – editor of the Westminster Gazette at the time – Grey received Spender at his room in the Foreign Office on the 3rd August 1914. It was becoming dusk and they were standing by the window, watching the street lamps being lit, and Sir Edward Grey remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” World War I officially started for Britain the next day. It sends shivers down one’s spine.