This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1914 Private Thomas Highgate becomes the first British soldier to be executed for desertion during WW1.

1943 Italy surrenders to Allies in WWII.

1944 First V-2 rockets land in London & Antwerp.

1945 Hideki Tojo, Japanese Prime Minister during most of WW II, attempts suicide rather than face war crimes tribunal attempt fails, later he is hanged.

1994 Last US, British & French troops leave West Berlin.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1914 Private Thomas Highgate becomes the first British soldier to be executed for desertion during WW1.

In the early hours of 6 September, as his battalion moved forward to take part in the First Battle of the Marne, Highgate (A 17 YEAROLD FARMAHAND) was apprehended in a barn on the estate of Baron de Rothschild at Tournan-en-Brie by the gamekeeper who happened to be English and an ex-soldier. . He reportedly informed the latter, 'I have had enough of it, I want to get out of it and this is how I am going to do it.' Highgate had changed into civilian clothes and his discarded uniform was found nearby. Highgate was tried by court martial (convened at Chateau Combreaux, near Tournan in northern France), convicted of desertion and the death sentence was confirmed on 6 September 1914. Highgate was undefended and called no witnesses in his defence, but claimed that he was a 'straggler' trying to find his way back to rejoin his regiment, having got separated from his comrades.
Highgate's execution was almost as hasty as his trial, as senior officers insisted that he be executed "At once, as publicly as possible." Highgate was informed of his fate at 6:22am on 8 September in the presence of a Church of England clergyman. An officer then ordered a burial party and a firing squad to prepare, and Highgate was shot at 7.07am (45 MINUTES TO FILE A APPEAL) witnessed by men from the 1st Dorset Regiment and 1st Cheshire Regiment. News of his fate was published in Army Routine Orders and distributed to the remainder of the British Expeditionary Force

Private Highgate has no known grave, although his name is shown on the British memorial to the missing at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, Seine-et-Marne..
In 2000, Shoreham Parish Council voted not to include his name on its war memorial. However, after a posthumous pardon, it was considered that his name might be added.
It was discovered that Highgate's name already appeared on another memorial. His mother, who lived in Sidcup, Kent, lost three sons in the war; unaware of the circumstances of Thomas' death, she submitted the names of all three sons to the Sidcup War Memorial Committee, and his name appears there.
The mass pardon of 306 British Empire soldiers executed for certain offences during the Great War was enacted in section 359 of the Armed Forces Act 2006, which came into effect on royal assent(This is when the Queen formally agrees to make the bill into an Act of Parliament (law)) on 8 November 2006.

In 2000, the parish council in Highgate’s home village of Shoreham replaced its war memorial plaque bearing the names of those who had fallen during the war of 1914-1918 as the original had become worn. After some debate, the council voted not to include Highgate’s name. However, a space was left should, at some point in the future, the people of Shoreham want his name added.
In November 2006, the UK government pardoned all 306 servicemen executed in the First World War but, to this day, the name Thomas Highgate still does not feature on Shoreham’s war memorial. <THE 'SHOT AT DAWN MEMORIAL' AT STAFFORDSHIRE.

[Jimbuna]

1914 First fully mechanized unit in the British Army created - the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade (WWI).

1942 First bombing on continental US soil at Mount Emily, Oregon during WWII by Japanese planes.

1943 15 German JU-88's sink Italian flag ship Roma.

2015 Queen Elizabeth II becomes Great Britain's longest-reigning monarch at 63 years and seven months, beating the previous record set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.

[Jimbuna]

1940 Buckingham Palace hit by German bomb.

1943 German troops occupy Rome and take over the protection of Vatican City.

1944 Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning against Montgomery "But, sir, I think we might be going a bridge too far"

1945 Vidkun Quisling sentenced to death for collaborating with Nazis.

1945 Mike the Headless Chicken is decapitated in Fruita, Colorado; he survives for another 18 months before choking to death.

[Jimbuna]

2001 Two passenger planes hijacked by terrorists crash into New York's World Trade Towers causing the collapse of both and deaths of 2,752 people.

2001 Terrorists hijack a passenger plane and crash it into the Pentagon causing the deaths of 125 people.

2001 Attempt by passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 to retake control of their hijacked plane from terrorists causes plane to crash in Pennsylvania field killing all 64 people on board.

[Jimbuna]

1919 Adolf Hitler joins the obscure German Worker's Party as its seventh member, agreeing not with worker's rights, but with its German Nationalism and antisemitism.

1933 Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives idea of a nuclear chain reaction.

1943 Waffen-SS (Skorzeny) frees Benito Mussolini at Gran Sasso.

[Jimbuna]

1956 IBM introduces the RAMAC 305, 1st commercial computer with a hard drive that uses magnetic disk storage, weighs over a ton.

[Jimbuna]

1812 Napoleon occupies Moscow and the fires start, extinguished by the 19th.

1914 German troops withdraw from Aisne/invent trenches.

1942 German troops occupy train station Stalingrad-1.

[Jimbuna]

1812 French army under Napoleon reaches Kremlin, Moscow.

1916 First use of tanks in warfare, "Little Willies" at Battle of Flers-Courcelette, part of the Battle of the Somme.

1931 British naval fleet mutinies at Invergordon over pay cuts.

1938 British PM Neville Chamberlain visits Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden.

1940 Climax of the Battle of Britain, tide turns as Luftwaffe loses 56 aircraft, RAF 28.

1942 US aircraft carrier Wasp torpedoed at Guadalcanal.

1944 British bombers hit Tirpitz with Tallboy bombs.

1948 F-86 Sabre sets world aircraft speed record of 1080 kph.

1950 During Korean conflict, UN forces land at Inchon in South Korea.

1966 First British nuclear ballistic missile submarine HMS Resolution launched.

[Jimbuna]

1747 French troops occupy Bergen op Zoom (I lived there in the nineties).

1940 Luftwaffe attacks central London.

1941 Adolf Hitler orders that for every dead German, 100 Yugoslavs should be killed.

1942 Japanese attack on Port Moresby repelled.

1975 The first prototype of the MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.

[Jimbuna]

1916 The Red Baron [Manfred von Richthofen], WWI flying ace of the German Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France.

1938 British premier Neville Chamberlain leaves Munich.

1939 German U-29 sinks British aircraft carrier Courageous, 519 die.

1940 Adolf Hitler indefinitely postpones Operation Sealion, the planned German invasion of Great Britain.

1944 Operation Market Garden: In the largest airborne operation of WWII, Allied paratroopers land in the Netherlands in a failed attempt to capture the Arnhem bridge over the Rhine.

[Jimbuna]

1812 Great Fire of Moscow burns out after 5 days, 75% of the city destroyed and 12,000 killed.

1939 William Joyce's first Nazi propaganda broadcast.

1942 The order for 'extermination through labour' is approved by Otto Thierack, Nazi minister of justice.

1944 British submarine Tradewind torpedoes Junyo Maru: 5,600 killed, including 1,377 allied POWs and 4,200 Javanese slave labourers.

[Aktungbby]

1961: Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld, THE SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS IS KILLED WHEN HIS AIRCRAFT IS SHOT DOWN IN THE BELGIAN CONGO

Former U.S. President Harry Truman commented that Hammarskjöld "was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said 'when they killed him'."

Documents suggesting CIA involvement came to light when the South African National Intelligence Agency turned over a file to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission related to the 1993 assassination of Chris Hani, the leader of the South African Communist Party. These documents included an alleged plot to "remove" Hammarskjöld and contained a supposed statement from CIA director Allen Dulles that: "Dag is becoming troublesome … and should be removed." However the authenticity of these documents has not been established.

IN HIS BOOK, Vägmärken, BASED ON HIS DIARY, ENDING A MONTH BEFORE HIS DEATH, DAG, EVER THE PHILOSOPHER, HAD WRITTEN PRESCIENTLY:"

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours. He who wills adventure will experience it – according to the measure of his courage. He who wills sacrifice will be sacrificed – according to the measure of his purity of heart.

AWARDED A POSTHUMOUS NOBEL PRIZE FOR PEACE, JOHN F. KENNEDY REGARDED HIM AS THE GREATEST STATESMAN OF THE CENTURY...THE BELGIAN CONGO IS STILL A MESS TODAY https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/17/dag-hammarskjold-un-secretary-general-crash https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/13/spy-messages-solve-mystery-un-chief-death-crash

[Jimbuna]

1939 British Expeditionary Force reaches France.

1939 Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) becomes radio host of Reichsrundfunk Berlin.

1940 Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz in order to smuggle out information and start a resistance.

1944 Armistice between Finland and Soviet Union is signed. (End of the Continuation War).

1945 Kim Il-sung arrives in harbor of Wonsan, Korea.

1945 Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) sentenced to death in London.

[Jimbuna]

1797 US frigate Constitution (Old Ironsides) launched in Boston.

1939 British navy captures German U-27 boat.

1945 German rocket engineers begin work in US.

1967 British liner Queen Elizabeth II launched at Clydebank Scotland.

1990 Both East and West Germany ratify reunification.