This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1940 Auschwitz concentration camp opens in Nazi controlled Poland with Polish POWs (approx. 3 million would die within its walls).

1940 German U-47 sinks airship Balmoral.

1942 First bazooka rocket gun produced (Bridgeport, Connecticut).

1942 Anne Frank begins her diary.

1944 First B-29 raid against mainland Japan.

1952 Keel laid for first nuclear powered sub USS Nautilus (4th to be named Nautilus).

1982 Argentina surrenders to Great Britain, ending the 74-day Falklands Islands conflict.

[Jimbuna]

1940 France surrenders to Germany, German troops occupy Paris.

2015 Real estate mogul Donald Trump launches his campaign for US President.

[Jimbuna]

1941 First US federally owned airport opened Washington, D.C.

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

[Jimbuna]

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

1932 Bonus Army: around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits.

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.

1965 First bombing by B-52 (50 km north of Saigon).

1967 China becomes world's 4th thermonuclear (H-bomb) power.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1965 First bombing by B-52 (50 km north of Saigon).

It didn't go well:

During the Vietnam War, with the escalating situation in Southeast Asia, twenty-eight B-52Fs were fitted with external racks for twenty-four 750-pound (340 kg) bombs under project South Bay in June 1964; an additional forty-six aircraft received similar modifications under project Sun Bath. In March 1965, the United States commenced Operation Rolling Thunder. The first combat mission, Operation Arc Light, was flown by B-52Fs on 18 June 1965, when 30 bombers of the 9th and 441st Bombardment Squadrons struck a communist stronghold near the Bến Cát District in South Vietnam. The first wave of bombers arrived too early at a designated rendezvous point, and while maneuvering to maintain station, two B-52s collided, which resulted in the loss of both bombers and eight crewmen. The remaining bombers, minus one more that turned back for mechanical problems, continued toward the target. Twenty-seven Stratofortresses dropped on a one-mile by two-mile target box from between 19,000 and 22,000 feet, a little more than 50% of the bombs falling within the target zone. The force returned to Andersen AFB except for one bomber with electrical problems that recovered to Clark AFB, the mission having lasted 13 hours. Post-strike assessment by teams of South Vietnamese troops with American advisors found evidence that the VC had departed the area before the raid, and it was suspected that infiltration of the south's forces may have tipped off the north because of the ARVN troops involved in the post-strike inspection...

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna View Post

1965 First bombing by B-52 (50 km north of Saigon)

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

It didn't go well:

I didn't know that ... how sad like the helicopter crews that crashed in Iran going in for the hostages.

I always thought the song by Creedence Clearwater Revival: Who'll Stop The Rain was about the Vietnam war and the B-52's dropping bombs.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27...the_Rain_(song)

many see "Who'll Stop the Rain" as a thinly veiled protest against the Vietnam War

[Jimbuna]

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.

1940 General Charles de Gaulle on BBC tells French to defy Nazi occupiers.

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

1945 William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) charged with treason.

2016 Soyuz capsule returns to Earth first British International Space Station astronaut Tim Peake, Russian Yuri Malenchenko and American Timothy Kopra after 186 days.

[Jimbuna]

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

1864 CSS "Alabama" sunk by USS "Kearsarge" off Cherbourg, France.

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 US President Franklin Roosevelt signs Two Ocean Navy Expansion Act.

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

1991 Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar surrenders to police.

[Jimbuna]

1941 German U-203 fails in torpedo attack on US battleship Texas.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1864 CSS "Alabama" sunk by USS "Kearsarge" off Cherbourg, France.

While the CSS Alabama had heavier firepower, the USS Kearsarge was a more advanced ship with more precise firepower. Thousands of French spectators witnessed the fight between the two ships from the coast, and the USS Kearsarge defeated the CSS Alabama, which sank. The fight was widely covered in the newspapers. Not having witnessed the battle himself, Manet relied on press descriptions of the fight to document his work in his famous painting. His knowledge of the USS Kearsarge being limited, he hid the victor in the smoke of the defeated USS Alabama in his battle painting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/25/arts/art-review-sunk-at-sea-and-captured-on-canvas.html AND THE USS KEARSARGE AT BOULOGNE PAINTED FIRSTHAND WELL AFTER THE BATTLE: BOTH BY EDOURD MANET>

[Jimbuna]

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

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.

[Jimbuna]

1807 British board USS Chesapeake, a provocation leading to War of 1812.

1815 2nd abdication of Napoleon (after Waterloo).

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.

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 Germany, Italy and Romania declare war on the Soviet Union.

2017 Prince Harry claims no one in UK royal family wants to be King or Queen in article published in Newsweek.

[Jimbuna]

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

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

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

1951 Treacherous British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean flee to USSR.

2016 United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union in their "Brexit" referundum.

[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.

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

1947 Flying saucers sighted over Mount Rainier by pilot Ken Arnold.

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

[Jimbuna]

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"

1942 British RAF stages a 1,000 bomb raid on Bremen Germany.

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

1947 First version of Anne Frank's diary "Het Achterhuis" published in The Netherlands.

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