This date in history

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1944 George Stinney, a 14-year-old African-American boy, is wrongfully executed for the murder of two white girls, becoming the youngest person ever executed in 20th-century America.

1944 King George VI visits General Montgomery's HQ in Normandy.

1982 Britain requests Argentina to arrange for return of prisoners.

2000 Israel complies with UN Security Council Resolution 425 after 22 years, which calls on Israel to completely withdraw from Lebanon. Israel withdraws from all of Lebanon, except the disputed Sheba Farms.

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1963:Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first and only solo-mission woman launched into orbit by the Soviet Union aboard Vostok 6. Her flight lasted 71 hours and circled earth 48 times before landing safely. VT is still alive at age 83!

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1579 English navigator Francis Drake lands on the coast of California at Drakes Bay, names it "New Albion"

1631 Mumtaz Mahal dies during childbirth. Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, then spends more than 20 years building her tomb, the Taj Mahal.

1885 Statue of Liberty arrives in NYC aboard French ship `Isere'

1939 Last public guillotining in France. Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is guillotined in Versailles outside the prison Saint-Pierre.

1940 France asks Germany for terms of surrender in WW II

1940 General De Gaulle departs Bordeaux for London.

1940 Sinking of the RMS Lancastria by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France.

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1812 War of 1812 begins as US declares war against Britain.

1815 Battle of Waterloo; Napoleon and France defeated by British forces under Wellington and Prussian troops under Blucher.

1928 American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the 1st woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean landing at Burry Port, Wales.

1940 Winston Churchill's "this was their finest hour" speech urging perseverance during Battle of Britain delivered to British House of Commons.

1948 UN Commission on Human Rights adopts the International Declaration of Human Rights.

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1829 Sir Robert Peel introduces the Metropolitan Police Act 1829 into Parliament to establish a unified police force for London.

1917 The British Royal Family, which has had strong German ties since George I, renounces its German names and titles and adopts the name of Windsor.

1941 Soviet anthropologist Michael Gerasimov opens tomb of Timurid Empire founder Timur and allegedly finds the inscription that whoever opens the tomb shall "unleash an invader more terrible than I." Three days later Germany invades Russia.

1944 World War II: First day of the 2 day Battle of the Philippine Sea, US naval forces defeat Japanese fleet.

1947 First plane (F-80) to exceed 600 mph (1004 kph)-Albert Boyd, Muroc, California.

1991 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar surrenders to police.

[Jimbuna]

1837 Queen Victoria at 18 ascends British throne following death of uncle King William IV. She rules for 63 years till 1901

1840 Samuel Morse patents his telegraph.

1944 Nazis begin mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.

1970 British government of Edward Heath forms (with Margaret Thatcher in the Cabinet)

1991 The Bundestag (German parliament) decides to move the capital from Bonn back to Berlin.

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1854 First Victoria Cross won during bombardment of Bomarsund in the Aland Islands (Crimean War)

1887 Britain celebrates golden jubilee of Queen Victoria.

1919 The German Navy, feeling betrayed by the terms of the Versailles Treaty, scuttles most of its ships interned at Great Britain's Scapa Flow Naval base in the Orkney Islands.

1982 John Hinckley found not guilty of 1981 attempted assassination of President Reagan by reason of insanity.

1992 Last day of test cricket for Ian Botham and Allan Lamb.

[Jimbuna]

1633 Galileo Galilei forced to recant his Copernican views that the Earth orbits the Sun by the Pope (Vatican only admits it was wrong on Oct 31, 1992!)

1865 The CSS Shenandoah fires the last shot of the American Civil War in the Bering Strait to indicate surrender.

1911 King George V crowned King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and all his realms and territories beyond the sea.

1939 Princess and future Queen Elizabeth meets future husband Prince Philip of Greece (Midshipman Mountbatten, RN)

1940 France surrenders to Nazi Germany, with the northern half of the country occupied and the south established as the Nazi client state Vichy France.

1941 Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany and its allies invade the Soviet Union during WWII, the largest military operation in history.

1943 617 Squadron (Dambusters) attends investiture at Buckingham Palace, Commanding Officer Guy Gibson awarded the Victoria Cross.

1972 The Irish Republican Army announce that it would call a ceasefire from 26 June 1972 provided that there is a "reciprocal response" from the security forces.

1992 Two skeletons excavated in Yekaterinburg, Russia identified as Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra.

[Jimbuna]

930 World's oldest parliament, the Icelandic Parliament, the Alþingi (anglicised as Althing or Althingi), established.

1940 After conquering France, Adolf Hitler visits Paris and views the Eiffel Tower and the grave of Napoleon Bonaparte.

1942 World War II: Germany's latest fighter, a ****e-Wulf FW190 is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.

1943 RAF discovers Wernher von Braun's V1/V2-base in Peenemunde.

1945 Last organized Japanese defiance broken (Tarakan)

2016 Brexit referendum: United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union.

[Jimbuna]

1812 Napoleon Bonaparte's forces invade Russia crossing the Neman River.

1853 US President Franklin Pierce signs the Gadsden Purchase, buying 29,670 square-miles (76,800 square km) from Mexico for $10 million (now southern Arizona and New Mexico)

1917 Russian Black Sea fleet mutinies at Sebastopol.

1922 Adolf Hitler begins a month long prison sentence for paramilitary operations; he rails against the 'Jewish sell-out' of Germany to the Bolsheviks.

1930 First radar detection of planes, Anacostia, Washington, D.C.

1941 Entire Jewish male population of Gorzhdy, Lithuania, exterminated.

1948 Soviet Union begins the West Berlin Blockade by stopping access by road, rail and water.

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1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn: US 7th Cavalry under Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in what has become famously known as "Custer's Last Stand"

1950 North Korea invades South Korea, beginning the Korean War.

1942 British RAF stages a 1,000 bomb raid on Bremen Germany (WWII)

1942 Major General Dwight Eisenhower appointed commander of US forces in Europe.

1945 Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo announce fall of Okinawa.

1982 Greece abolishes headshaving of recruits in the military.

[Jimbuna]

1857 The first 62 recipients are awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in the Crimean war by Queen Victoria.

1917 First US troops arrive in France during World War I

1918 The Australian steamer Wimmera is sunk by a mine laid north of Cape Maria van Diemen in 1917 by the German raider Wolf; 26 of its 151 passengers and crew were killed.

1948 US begin airlift “Operation Vittles” to West Berlin.

1963 US President John F. Kennedy gives his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" (intended to mean "I am a Berliner", but may actually mean "I am a doughnut") speech in West Berlin.

1968 Iwo Jima & Bonin Islands returned to Japan by US

1977 The Yorkshire Ripper kills 16 year old shop assistant Jayne MacDonald in Leeds, changing public perception of the killer as she was the first victim who was not a prostitute.

1993 The U.S. launches a cruise missile attack targeting Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for a thwarted assassination attempt against former President George H. W. Bush in April in Kuwait.

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1743 War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Dettingen: in Bavaria, King George II of Britain personally leads troops into battle. The last time a British monarch commanded troops in the field.

1778 Liberty Bell returns home to Philadelphia after the British departure.

1929 President Paul von Hindenburg refuses to pay German debt of WWI

1942 PQ-17 convoy leaves Iceland for Archangelsk.

1950 North Korean troops reach Seoul, UN asks members to aid South Korea, Harry Truman orders US Air Force & Navy into Korean conflict

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1880 Australian bushranger Ned Kelly captured at Glenrowan.

1904 SS Norge runs aground and sinks off Rockall, North Atlantic, more than 635 die, largest maritime loss of life until Titanic.

1914 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo by young Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip at 10.45, the casus belli of WWI

1919 Treaty of Versailles, ending WWI and establishing the League of Nations, is signed in France.

1948 British begin airlift “Operation Plainfare” to West Berlin.

1950 North Korean forces capture Seoul, South Korea in opening phase of the Korean War.

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1900 The Imperial Chinese Court issues what is essentially a declaration of war against the foreigners in China and blames hostilities on them, giving license to Boxers for even greater ferocity.

1922 France grants 1 km² at Vimy Ridge "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada, the free use of the land exempt from all taxes."

1943 Germany begins withdrawing U-boats from North Atlantic in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Europe.

1966 Vietnam War: US planes bomb the North Vietnamese capital Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong for the first time.

1994 US reopens Guantanamo Naval Base to process refugees.