This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1915 The Germans reply to US President Woodrow Wilson's second Lusitania note by saying that Americans may sail on clearly marked neutral ships, but Germany does not deal with Wilson's other demands.

1943 Fourth day of battle at Kursk: General Model uses last tank reserve.

1943 British air raid sinks U-232.

1947 Demolition begins for UN HQ in NYC.

1950 General Douglas MacArthur named commander-in-chief of UN forces in Korea.

[Jimbuna]

1040 Lady Godiva rides naked on horseback through Coventry, according to legend, to force her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes.

1940 Battle of Britain begins as German forces attack shipping convoys in the English Channel.

1942 Himmler orders sterilization of all Jewish woman in Ravensbruck Camp.

1943 6th day of battle at Kursk.

1944 German submarine U-821 sunk by RAF.

1985 French foreign intelligence agents blow up the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor, New Zealand to prevent it interfering with French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira is killed.

[Jimbuna]

1915 German cruiser Königsberg sinks off Dar-es-Salam.

1940 Marshall Henri Petain, French hero of World War One, becomes head of the collaborative Vichy government of France.

1995 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men are massacred when Bosnian Serbs overrun the UN 'safe haven' of Srebrenica.

[Aktungbby]

1859: BIG BEN CHIMES IN THE CLOCK TOWER FOR THE FIRST TIME....AFTER CONSIDERABLE PROBLEMS:

Since the tower was not yet finished, the bell was mounted in New Palace Yard but, during testing it cracked beyond repair and a replacement had to be made. The bell was recast on 10 April 1858 at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a 13½ ton (13.76-tonne) bell. The second bell was transported from the foundry to the tower on a trolley drawn by sixteen horses, with crowds cheering its progress; it was then pulled 200 ft (61.0 m) up to the Clock Tower’s belfry, a feat that took 18 hours. It is 7 feet 6 inches (2.29 m) tall and 9 feet (2.74 m) diameter. This new bell first chimed in July 1859; in September it too cracked under the hammer. According to the foundry's manager, George Mears, the horologist Denison had used a hammer more than twice the maximum weight specified. For three years Big Ben was taken out of commission and the hours were struck on the lowest of the quarter bells until it was repaired. To make the repair, a square piece of metal was chipped out from the rim around the crack, and the bell given an eighth of a turn so the new hammer struck in a different place. Big Ben has chimed with a slightly different tone ever since, and is still in use today with the crack unrepaired. Big Ben was the largest bell in the British Isles until "Great Paul", a 16¾ ton (17 tonne) bell currently hung in St Paul's Cathedral, was cast in 1881.

I JUST LOVE THE SOUND BBY!

[Jimbuna]

1918 Japanese battleship Kawachi suffers a magazine explosion and sinks while docked in Tokuyama Bay, resulting in over 600 deaths.

1948 First jets to fly across Atlantic (6 RAF de Havilland Vampires).

1957 US Surgeon General Leroy Burney connects smoking with lung cancer.

[Jimbuna]

1943 Greatest tank battle in history ends with Russia's defeat of Germany at Kursk, almost 6,000 tanks take part, 2,900 lost by Germany.

1953 Battle of the Kumsong River begins - last major battle of the Korean war.

[Jimbuna]

1945 Battleship USS South Dakota is first US ship to bombard Japan.

1952 SS United States crosses Atlantic in 84:12 (record westward).

1959 USS Long Beach, first nuclear powered cruiser launched at Quincy, Mass.

[Aktungbby]

1922: SUZANNE KINCAID IS BORN TO CANADIAN IMMIGRANTS IN CONNECTICUTT ON BASTILLE DAY;<STERN DISCIPLINARIAN & 'RABID' REPUBLICAN , AN ELECTED STATE LEADER OF WOMENS' (LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS) GROUPS, TOP OF HER TENNIS LADDER, DEACONESS OF THE CHURCH(S), A SUPERB HORSEWOMAN AND SAILOR OF HER OWN BOAT..... GIVING RISE TO A FIRST-BORN DEVOTED PRINCE-OF-A-SON WHO WILL SOMEHOW SURVIVE TO CREATE THIS AWARD-WINNING THREAD (BOTH SHE AND MY WIFE KNIT INCESSANTLY) GOOD GOD!...I MARRIED MOM!???

[Jimbuna]

1815 Napoleon surrenders to Captain Frederick Maitland of HMS Bellerophon at Rochefort after his earlier defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

1915 The head of German propaganda in the US, Dr Heinrich Albert, loses his briefcase on a subway in New York City; an examination of its content reveals an extensive network of German espionage and subversion across the US.

1944 Greenwich Observatory damaged by WW II flying bomb.

[Jimbuna]

1439 Kissing is banned in England (to stop the Black Death from spreading).

1945 1st test detonation of an atomic bomb, Trinity Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico as part of the US Manhattan Project.

1945 Cruiser Indianapolis leaves San Francisco with atom bomb.

1946 US court martial sentences 46 members of the SS to death (Battle of Bulge crimes) in Dachau.

[Jimbuna]

1917 Royal Proclamation by King George V changes name of British Royal family from German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor.

1918 The Romanov royal family and several of their retainers are executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in the basement of Ipatiev House, in Yekaterinburg, Siberia.

2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is shot down over Eastern Ukraine by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.

[Jimbuna]

1925 Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf (original title was the catchy "Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice")

1942 Test flight of German Messerschmitt Me-262 using only its jet engines for the first time.

2012 Kim Jong-un is officially appointed Supreme Leader of North Korea and given the rank of Marshal in the Korean People's Army.

[Jimbuna]

1843 The steamship SS Great Britain is launched, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull or screw propeller and the largest vessel afloat in the world.

1940 Hitler orders Great Britain to surrender.

1941 British PM Winston Churchill launches his "V for Victory" campaign.

1941 First US Army flying school for black cadets dedicated (Tuskegee, Alabama).

1944 Japanese aircraft carriers Taiho and Shokaku sink in Marianas.

1945 USS Cod saves 51 sailors from Dutch sub in only sub-to-sub rescue.

[Jimbuna]

1944 Japanese aircraft carrier Hijo sunk by US air attack.

1944 Adolf Hitler survives an assassination attempt led by German army officer Claus Von Stauffenberg.

1969 1st Moon Landing: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step out from Apollo spacecraft 11, 530 million watch live global broadcast.

1976 US Viking 1 lands on Mars at Chryse Planitia, 1st Martian landing.

[Jimbuna]

1915 Woodrow Wilson sends the third Lusitania note, warning Germany that future infringement of American rights will be deemed 'deliberately unfriendly'.

1918 U-156 shells Nauset Beach, in Orleans, Massachusetts.

1921 To prove his contention that air power is superior to sea power, US Colonel William Mitchell demonstrates how bombs from planes can sink a captured German battleship.

1941 Himmler orders building of Majdanek concentration camp.

1955 USS Seawolf launched, first submarine powered by liquid metal cooled nuclear reactor.

1959 First nuclear powered merchant ship, NS Savannah, named, Camden NJ.

1969 Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to step on the Moon at 2:56:15 AM (GMT).