This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1939 Battle of the River Plate - 3 British cruisers vs German pocket battleship Graf Spee.

1944 Japanese kamikaze crashes into US cruiser Nashville, kills 138

1961 Gideon Hausner in Jerusalem demands death penalty for Adolf Eichmann.

2002 Enlargement of the European Union: The European Union announces that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia will become members from May 1, 2004.

2003 Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit, during Operation Red Dawn by US forces.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

2003 Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit, during Operation Red Dawn by US forces.

Whatever his alleged shortcomings;...he certainly proved to be well hung in the end!

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

1812 The French invasion of Russia, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, officially ends with the French having lost as many as 530,000 people.

1911 Norwegian Roald Amundsen's expedition is the first to each the South Pole.

1941 Premier Winston Churchill travels to US on board HMS Duke of York.

1941 U-557 torpedoes British cruiser HMS Galatea.

1946 UN General Assembly votes to establish UN HQs in New York City.

1977 War criminal Pieter Menten sentenced in Amsterdam to 15 years.

2003 US President George W. Bush announces the capture of Saddam Hussein.

2008 President George W. Bush make his fourth and final trip to Iraq as president and is almost struck by two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi during a farewell conference in Baghdad.

[Jimbuna]

1840 Napoleon Bonaparte receives a French state funeral in Paris 19 years after his death.

1941 German submarine U-127 sinks.

1944 Hizbu'allah (Arm forces for Allah) forms.

1944 US Congress gives General Eisenhower his 5th star.

1961 Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death for war crimes in Israel.

2001 The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean.

2006 First flight of the F-35 Lightning II

[Jimbuna]

1773 Boston tea party incident - Sons of Liberty protesters throw tea shipments into Boston harbour in protest against British imposed Tea Act.

1907 As a gesture of the US's new presence as a world power, President Theodore Roosevelt sends the 'Great White Fleet' on a round-the-world cruise, visiting ports internationally.

1914 German battleships under Franz Von Hipper bombard the English ports of Hartlepool and Scarborough.

1921 The Anglo-Irish Treaty, agreed to by the British Parliament and Sinn Féin, is ratified.

1944 Nazi Germany launches a counteroffensive against the Allies in the Ardennes region of Belgium, beginning the 'Battle of the Bulge'

1979 4 British Army soldiers are killed by a PIRA landmine near Dungannon, County Tyrone. Another British Army soldier was killed by a PIRA landmine near Forkill, County Armagh.

[Jimbuna]

1903 The Wright brothers make the first sustained motorized aircraft flight at 10:35 AM, piloted by Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1935 1st flight of the Douglas DC-3 (C-47 Skytrain/Dakota) airplane.

1939 German pocket battleship Graf Spee scuttled by its crew off Uruguay.

1941 German troops led by Erwin Rommel begin retreating in North Africa.

1983 The Provisional IRA bombs Harrods department store in London, killing six people and injuring 90

1986 Mrs Davina Thompson makes medical history by having the first heart, lung & liver transplant at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England.

[Jimbuna]

1916 Battle of Verdun, longest of World War I, officially ends in German defeat after nine months of fighting and almost 1 million total casualties.

1941 Japanese troops land on Hong Kong.

1944 US Destroyers Hull, Spence and Monaghan sink in typhoon (Philippines)

1956 Japan admitted to UN

1957 World's first full scale nuclear power plant for only peacetime use begins to generate electricity, at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania

1969 House of Lords votes to abolish the death penalty in England, Wales and Scotland (Northern Ireland 25 July 1973)

1971 Three members of the Irish Republican Army die when the bomb they were transporting explodes prematurely in King Street, Magherafelt, County Derry.

2019 US House of Representatives votes to impeach President Donald Trump for abuse of power (230-197) and obstruction of Congress (229-198)

[Jimbuna]

1783 William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest ever British Prime Minister at age 24

1924 The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.

1941 German submarine U-574 sinks.

1941 Adolf Hitler takes complete command of German Army.

1949 Luxury passenger ship Aquitania demolished in Gareloch, Scotland.

1984 Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration to transfer Hong Kong back to China in 1997

[Jimbuna]

1915 Final withdraw of all allied troops from Anzac Cove.

1917 Cheka formed - Soviet state security force and forerunner to the KGB, under Felix Dzerzhinsky after decree by Lenin.

1924 Adolf Hitler freed from jail early, having served only nine months of five-year sentence for "Beer Hall Putsch"

1941 First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" in Kunming, China.

1944 Battle of Bastogne: Germans surround 101st Airborne (NUTS!)

[Aktungbby]

1913: the first crossword puzzle is published in the New York World. Originally billed as a "Word-Cross Puzzle"...one my wife and my favorite essential pastimes during the lockdown, especially the Wall Street Journal's toughies!

[Catfish]

Iris Cummings born today, a hundred years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Cummings

[Jimbuna]

1925 "Battleship Potemkin", Soviet silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, starring Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barksy and Grigori Aleksandrov, premieres in Moscow.

1939 Adolf Hitler names Adolf Eichmann leader of "Referat IV B", responsible for evictions and Jewish immigration.

1941 German submarine U-567 sinks.

1988 Lockerbie disaster: Pan Am Flight 103 destroyed mid air by a terrorist bomb killing all 258 on board over Scotland.

[Jimbuna]

1810 British frigate HMS Minotaur sinks killing 480

1894 French officer Alfred Dreyfus court-martialed for treason, triggers worldwide charges of anti-Semitism (Dreyfus later vindicated)

1942 Adolf Hitler signs the order to develop the V-2 rocket as a weapon.

1963 Official 30-day mourning period for President John F. Kennedy ends.

1964 First flight of the US aircraft Lockheed SR-71, reaches 3,530 kph (record for a jet)

1970 Treblinka SS commander Franz Stangl sentenced to life imprisonment.

1974 Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb home of former UK Prime Minister, Edward Heath, just before announcing Christmas ceasefire.

[Jimbuna]

1941 American forces on Wake Island surrender to Japanese.

1943 General Bernard Montgomery told he is appointed commandant for D-day.

1962 Cuba starts returning US prisoners from Bay of Pigs invasion.

1963 Fire on Greek ship Laconia, 128 die.

1968 82 members of US intelligence ship Pueblo released by North Korea.

1972 16 plane crash survivors rescued from Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 after 72 days on the Andean Mountains, after only surviving through cannibalism.

2002 A MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25, making it the first time in history that an aircraft and an unmanned drone had engaged in combat.