This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1933 Day of Potsdam in Nazi Germany, a ceremony to open the new Reichstag after the fire in February; Adolf Hitler and Paul von Hindenburg shake hands in public.

1943 Assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler fails.

1945 First Japanese kamikaze "flying bombs" (MXY-7 Ohka) attack Okinawa.

1989 First sea test of Trident 2 missile self-destructs, Cape Canaveral, Florida.

2014 Russia formally annexes Crimea amid international condemnation.

[Jimbuna]

1941 James Stewart is inducted into the Army, becoming the first major American movie star to wear a military uniform in World War II

1944 American movie star Jimmy Stewart flies his 12th combat mission, leading the 2nd Bomb Wing in an attack on Berlin.

1965 US confirms its troops used chemical warfare against the Vietcong.

1979 Provisional Irish Republican Army assassinates Richard Sykes, the British ambassador to the Netherlands, in Den Haag.

1979 The Provisional Irish Republican Army explode 24 bombs in various locations across Northern Ireland.

1994 Dutch Ambassador to US christens a new tulip (the Hillary Clinton)

[Jimbuna]

1918 Germany begins using long-range gun, the 'Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz' ('Emperor William Gun'), aka 'Paris Gun' to shell Paris from Crépy-en-Laonnais, 75 miles away; over several days, 303 rounds kill 256 and wound over 600

1919 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party re-establishes a five-member Politburo which becomes the center of political power in the Soviet Union. Original members Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Krestinsky.

1921 Germany announces it will be unable to meet its Great War reparation payments.

1931 Indian independence fighters Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar are hung after conducting an assassination and a bombing. Their request to be shot by a firing squad is refused.

1933 Enabling Act: German Reichstag grants Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.

1945 Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey becomes the first British commander to cross the Rhine during the Allied invasion of Germany.

[Aktungbby]

1918 Germany begins using long-range gun, the 'Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz' ('Emperor William Gun'), aka 'Paris Gun' to shell Paris from Crépy-en-Laonnais, 75 miles away; over several days, 303 rounds kill 256 and wound over 600

2.8250825 casualties per round is a poor return on investment; especially that late in the war to end all wars

As military weapons, the Paris Guns were not a great success: the payload was small, the barrel required frequent replacement, and the guns' accuracy was good enough for only city-sized targets. The German objective was to build a psychological weapon to attack the morale of the Parisians, not to destroy the city itself.

but now I definitely see where the Golden gate came from

[Red Devil]

2014 Russia formally annexes Crimea amid international condemnation.

All mouth and no substance

[Jimbuna]

1942 US government begins moving native-born citizens with Japanese ancestry into detention centres under Executive Order 9066, with intention of preventing home-grown espionage.

1944 76 Allied officers escape Stalag Luft 3 (Great Escape)

1944 In occupied Rome, Nazis execute 335 civilians in retaliation for the previous day's Via Rassela bombing that killed 33 Germans.

1944 RAF rear gunner Nicholas Alkemade survives a jump from his Lancaster bomber 18,000 feet over Germany without a parachute; his fall broken by pine trees and soft snow, suffers only a sprained leg.

1945 Operation Varsity: In the largest one-day airborne operation of all time, British, US & Canadian paratroopers land east of the Rhine in Northern Germany.

1947 John D. Rockefeller Jr donates NYC East River site to the UN

1958 Elvis Presley joins the U.S. Army (serial number 53310761)

[Aktungbby]

1915: the US Navy lost its first commissioned submarine as the USS F-4 sank off Hawaii, claiming all 21 crew members.

[Jimbuna]

1941 Sea battle at Cape Matapan: British fleet under Cunningham defeats Italy.

1942 British naval forces raid Nazi occupied French port of St Nazaire.

1942 St. Nazaire Raid (Operation Chariot): obsolete British destroyer HMS Campbeltown, rigged with explosives and flying German flags, rams gates of German occupied St Nazaire port in France, and self detonates; kills 360 Germans, and disables the dry dock for duration of the war.

1945 Last German V-1 (buzz bomb) attack on London.

2003 In a "friendly fire" incident, two US A-10 Thunderbolt IIs from the 190th Fighter Squadron attack British tanks participating in the invasion of Iraq, killing British soldier Matty Hull.

[Jimbuna]

1848 Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam.

1912 Captain Robert Falcon Scott, storm-bound in a tent near South Pole, makes last entry in his diary "the end cannot be far"

1942 British cruiser HMS Trinidad torpedoes itself in the Barents Sea.

1942 German submarine U-585 sinks.

1945 Movie star Jimmy Stewart is promoted to full colonel, one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years.

1973 US troops leave Vietnam, 9 yrs after Tonkin Resolution.

1974 Chinese farmers discover the Terracotta Army near Xi'an, 8,000 clay warrior statues buried to guard the tomb of China's 1st emperor, Qin Shi Huang.

[Jimbuna]

1867 Alaska Purchase: US buys Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 ($109 million in 2018), roughly 2 cents an acre.

1939 Heinkel He 100 fighter sets a world airspeed record of 463 mph

1945 A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 to Americans.

1972 Northern Ireland's Government and Parliament dissolved by the British Government and 'direct rule' from Westminster is introduced.

1981 US President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded in an assassination attempt by John Hinckley, three others are also wounded.

1984 World's most valuable tip - New York police detective Robert Cunningham offers waitress Phyllis Penzo half of $1 lottery ticket, next day they win $6 million.

[Jimbuna]

1939 Britain & France agree to support Poland if invaded by Germany.

1945 US artillery lands on Keise Shima/begins firing on Okinawa.

1948 US Congress passes Marshall Aid Act to rehabilitate war-torn Europe.

1951 US tanks exceed 38° of latitude in Korea.

1954 USSR offers to join NATO

1958 US Navy forms atomic submarine division.

1958 USSR suspends nuclear weapons tests, & urges US & Britain to do same.

1972 Final day of the rum ration in the Royal Canadian Navy.

[Jimbuna]

1801 Napoleonic Wars: The British led by Horatio Nelson destroy the Danish fleet in the naval Battle of Copenhagen.

1912 Titanic undergoes sea trials under its own power.

1917 US President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to declare war against Germany.

1942 USS Hornet with Jimmy Doolittles B-25 departs from San Francisco.

1982 Several thousand Argentine troops seize the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands from Great Britain.

[Jimbuna]

1882 American outlaw Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford at home in St Joseph.

1922 Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party by an ailing Vladimir Lenin.

1941 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warns Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that a German invasion is imminent.

1944 British dive bombers attack German battleship Tirpitz at Kåfjorden, Norway.

1968 N Vietnam agrees to meet US reps to set up preliminary peace talks.

1969 Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start a policy of "Vietnamization", reducing American involvement.

[Jimbuna]

1900 Assassination attempt on Prince of Wales, later British King Edward VII when shot by Jean-Baptiste Sipido in protest over Boer war.

1915 Germany protests vigorously to the US, claiming it must insist that Britain lifts its blockade and assert American neutrality.

1917 US Senate agrees (82-6) to participate in WWI

1944 French General Charles de Gaulle forms new regime in exile, with communists.

1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty signed in Washington, D.C.

1965 The first model of the new Saab Viggen fighter aircraft plane is unveiled.

1968 US civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

1973 World Trade Center, then the world's tallest building, opens in New York (110 stories). Later destroyed in 9/11 terrorist attacks.

[Jimbuna]

1900 Attempted assassination of Edward Prince of Wales in Brussels, fails.

1939 Membership of Hitler Youth becomes obligatory.

1943 Mortsel, Belgium: Allies target Minerva car factory, used for repairing Luftwaffe planes for bombing raid; collateral damage from missed targets kills 936 civilians, Belgium's greatest loss of WWII

1943 Chinese steward Poon Lim is found off the coast of Brazil by a Brazilian fisherman family after being adrift 133 days, after British ship SS Benlomond torpedoed by german U-boat.

1951 Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, atomic spies, sentenced to death.

1982 British Royal Navy aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes, with escort vessels, depart Portsmouth, England for the Falkland Islands in response to the Argentine invasion.