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Thomas Percy (c. 1560–1605) was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Little is known of his life before 1596 when a distant relation, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, appointed him constable of Alnwick Castle. Percy acted as the earl's intermediary in a series of confidential communications with King James VI of Scotland. After James acceded to the English throne in 1603, Percy became disenchanted with him, supposing that the new king had reneged on promises of toleration for English Catholics. He met Robert Catesby in 1603, and the following year joined his conspiracy to kill James and his ministers by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder. Percy provided the group with funding and secured the leases to certain properties in London, including the undercroft directly beneath the House of Lords, into which the gunpowder was placed. When the plot was exposed on 5 November 1605, Percy fled to the Midlands. He and Catesby were killed on 8 November, during a siege of Holbeche House in Staffordshire, by the Sheriff of Worcester and his men. (Full article...)

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November 5: Guy Fawkes Night in Great Britain and some Commonwealth countries (1605)

The counties of Croatia are the primary administrative subdivisions of Croatia. The Kingdom of Croatia was first subdivided into counties in the Middle Ages. The divisions have changed over time, reflecting territorial losses to Ottoman conquest and subsequent recapture of some territory; changes in the political status of Dalmatia, Dubrovnik and Istria; and political circumstances, including the personal union and settlement between the Habsburg kingdoms of Croatia and Hungary. The traditional division of Croatia into counties was abolished in 1922, when the oblasts of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were introduced. Communist-ruled Croatia, a constituent part of post-World War II Yugoslavia, was organised into approximately 100 municipalities. Since the counties were re-established in 1992, Croatia has been divided into 20 counties and the capital city of Zagreb. The city of Zagreb has the authority and legal status of both a county and a city (separate from the surrounding Zagreb County). The counties are subdivided into 127 cities and 429 municipalities. (Read the full list...)