This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1783 Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day when it began.

1912 Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

1915 French pilot Roland Garros is shot down and glides to a landing on the German side of the lines during World War I.

1942 James Doolittle bombs Tokyo & other Japanese cities.

1968 London Bridge is sold to US oil company (to be erected in Arizona).

[Jimbuna]

1943 Jews refuse to surrender the Warsaw Ghetto to SS officer Jürgen Stroop, who then orders its destruction, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1951 General Douglas MacArthur ends his military career.

1967 Beatles sign a contract to stay together for 10 years (they don't).

1989 Gun turret explodes on USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.

[Jimbuna]

1899 David Beatty is appointed executive officer of the HMS Barfleur, a small battleship and flagship of the China Station.

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day.

1945 Soviet artillery begins shelling Berlin.

1976 George Harrison sings lumberjack song with Monty Python.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1976 George Harrison sings lumberjack song with Monty Python.

[Jimbuna]

1916 The Aud, carrying a cargo of 20,000 rifles to assist Irish republicans in staging what would become the 1916 Rising, is captured by the British Navy and forced to sail towards Cork Harbour.

1918 World War I: German fighter ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen "The Red Baron", shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France, Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown credited with the kill (disputed by some).

1945 Soviet army arrives at outskirts of Berlin.

1963 Beatles meet The Rolling Stones for the first time.

1970 The Principality of Hutt River (previously Hutt River Province) secedes from Australia - it remains unrecognised by Australia or other nations.

[Jimbuna]

1915 First military use of poison gas (chlorine, by Germany) in WW I.

1916 Karl Spindler scuttles the Aud near Daunt's Rock, to prevent its cargo of 20,000 rifles destined for Irish republicans falling into enemy hands.

1940 Rear Admiral Joseph Taussig testifies before US Senate Naval Affairs Committee that war with Japan is inevitable.

2006 Four Canadian soldiers are killed 75 kilometers north of Kandahar, Afghanistan by a roadside bomb planted by Taliban militants, the worst single day combat loss for the Canadian army since the Korean War.

[Jimbuna]

1867 Queen Victoria & Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

[...]
1916 Karl Spindler scuttles the Aud near Daunt's Rock, to prevent its cargo of 20,000 rifles destined for Irish republicans falling into enemy hands. [...]

Did not know this, though Spindler had indeed written a book about it, and was greeted as a hero by the irish-americans, after his moving to the USA.
Just looked for it in the 'web, the "Aud" was indeed the german "Libau", which broke the blockade heading for Ireland. There is a lot more of it regarding Graf Luckner and irish 'rebel' Casement

[Jimbuna]

1916 Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for ice-trapped ship Endurance.

1953 Winston Churchill knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

1961 JFK accepts "sole responsibility" following Bay of Pigs.

1967 Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily."

1969 Paul McCartney says there is no truth to rumors he is dead.

1980 US military operation to save 52 hostages in Iran, fails, 8 die.

2018 US President Donald Trump hosts his first state dinner for visiting French President Emmanuel Macron.

[Jimbuna]

1915 First landings at Gaba Tepe and Cape Helles on the Gallipoli Peninsula by ANZAC forces during WWI.

1945 Last Boeing B-17 attack against Germany.

1945 Soviet forces complete their encirclement of Berlin, cutting off all access points west of the German capital.

1960 1st submerged circumnavigation of Earth completed by USS submarine Triton in 60 days, 21 hours.

[Jimbuna]

1607 First English colony in American lands at Cape Henry, Virginia.

1945 Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, leader of France's Vichy collaborationist regime during WW II, arrested for treason.

1945 World War II: Battle of Bautzen - last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.

1952 US minesweeper Hobson rams aircraft carrier Wasp, kills 176.

1982 Argentina surrenders to Great Britain on South Georgia Island, near the Falkland Islands.

1986 World's worst nuclear disaster: 4th reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in USSR explodes, 31 die, radioactive contamination reaches much of Western Europe.

[Jimbuna]

1865 Steamboat "SS Sultana" explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. Most were paroled Union POWs on their way home.

1940 Himmler orders establishment of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

1943 Witold Pilecki escapes from Auschwitz after having voluntarily been imprisoned there to gain information about the Holocaust.

1945 Italian partisans capture Benito Mussolini at Dongo (Lake Como).

2005 The Superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse, France.

[Jimbuna]

1770 British Captain James Cook, aboard the Endeavour, lands at Botany Bay in Australia.

1789 Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against its captain William Bligh.

1939 Hitler claims German-Polish non-attack treaty still in effect.

1940 SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) Rudolf Höss (not Hess, diferent Nazi) becomes commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz.

1942 German Luftwaffe estimated to have flown over 11 thousand sorties against Malta since 20th March.

1944 Exercise "Tiger" ends with 750 US soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats off Slapton Sands, Devon.

1952 WW II Pacific peace treaty takes effect.

1973 Over 6000 Mk. 82 500 pound bombs detonate over 18 hrs in a railyard in northern California. 5500 structures damaged, town of Antelope destroyed, with every building reduced to foundations. Leads to Transportation Safety Act (1974).

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1973 Over 6000 Mk. 82 500 pound bombs detonate over 18 hrs in a railyard in northern California. 5500 structures damaged, town of Antelope destroyed, with every building reduced to foundations. Leads to Transportation Safety Act (1974).

A hot brake shoe ignited the oak-wood floor of a Department of Defense boxcar carrying 250 lb. (MK 81) Air Force General Purpose bombs filled with Tritonal (TNT/aluminum). These bombs were being transported from the Naval Ammunition Depot, Hawthorne, NV to the ship load-out port facility at the Naval Weapons Station, Concord, CA (Port Chicago). Over a period of approximately 32 hours, 18 boxcars exploded in succession. The railroad yard was essentially destroyed. Fortunately no one was killed; however 48 persons were injured.

THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE RAILCAR/BOMB DISASTER: http://www.insensitivemunitions.org/history/railroad-train-fires-and-munition-explosions/
...BUT I HEARD THIS ONE!

[Jimbuna]

1864 Battle of Gate Pa (Pukehinahina): 1,700 British troops suffer their worst defeat of the New Zealand Wars at the hands of 230 entrenched Maori warriors in Tauranga.

1916 Irish republicans abandon the post office in Dublin and surrender unconditionally, marking the end of the Easter Rising.

1945 US Army liberates 31,601 in Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany.

1946 28 former Japanese leaders indicted in Tokyo as war criminals.

1975 Vietnam War: US begins to evacuate its citizens from Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind in response to advancing North Vietnamese forces, bringing an end to US involvement in the war.

1981 Peter Sutcliffe admits he is the Yorkshire Ripper (murdered 13 women).

1990 Wrecking cranes began tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.

1997 The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 comes into force, outlaws production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons among its signatories.