This date in history

[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.

1943 SS police chief Rauter threatens to kill half Jewish children.

1944 600+ 8th Air Force bombers attack Berlin.

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

[Jimbuna]

1903 The Wright brothers 1st file a patent for a flying machine, which is granted 3 years later.

1944 Royal Air Force gunner Nicholas Alkemade falls 5,500 m out of a plane without a parachute over Nazi Germany and lives.

1945 Battle of Okinawa: US Navy ships bomb the Japanese island of Okinawa in preparation for the Allied invasion; it would become the largest battle of the Pacific War in World War II.

[Jimbuna]

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

1944 811 British bombers attack Berlin.

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.

1949 SS police chief in the Netherlands Hanns Albin Rauter's request for a pardon denied, executed by firing squad.

1982 US submarine Jacksonville collides with a Turkish freighter near Virginia.

1999 Kosovo War: NATO commences air bombardment against Yugoslavia, marking the first time NATO has attacked a sovereign country.

[Jimbuna]

1915 First submarine disaster; a US F-4 sank off Hawaii, killing 21.

1917 Canadian ace Billy Bishop claims his first victory, shooting down and mortally wounding German Leutnant Theiller.

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

1958 West German parliament desires German atomic weapons.

1960 First guided missile launched from nuclear powered sub (Halibut).

1970 Concorde makes its 1st supersonic flight (700 MPH/1,127 KPH).

[Jimbuna]

1915 First submarine disaster; a US F-4 sank off Hawaii, killing 21.

1917 Canadian ace Billy Bishop claims his first victory, shooting down and mortally wounding German Leutnant Theiller.

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

1958 West German parliament desires German atomic weapons.

1960 First guided missile launched from nuclear powered sub (Halibut).

1970 Concorde makes its 1st supersonic flight (700 MPH/1,127 KPH).

[Jimbuna]

1942 First "Eichmann transport" to Auschwitz & Birkenau concentration camps.

1944 705 British bombers attack Essen.

1945 Allies led by US Marine Corps secure island of Iwo Jima from Imperial Japanese Army, after 18,000 Japanese & 6,000 Americans killed.

1945 British premier Winston Churchill looks over at the Rhine (near Ginsberg).

1970 500th nuclear explosion announced by the US since 1945.

[Jimbuna]

1942 Allies raid German submarine base in St Nazaire.

1944 1,000 Jews leave Drancy, France, for Auschwitz concentration camp.

1944 2,000 Jews are murdered in Kaunas Lithuania.

1944 40 Jewish policemen in Riga, Latvia, ghetto are shot by the Gestapo.

1945 World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins.

1977 583 die in aviation's worst ever disaster when two Boeing 747s collide at Tenerife airport in Spain.

[Jimbuna]

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

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

[Aktungbby]

1942:British naval forces stage a successful raid on St. Nazaire in Operation Chariot, destroying the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast capable of repairing the German's battleship Tirpitz. Ultimately the Tirpitz will sit out the war in a Norwegian fjord; useless to Nazi endeavors of sea dominance & control....

[Jimbuna]

1912 Captain Robert 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 British destroyer HMS Campbeltown explodes in St Nazaire: 400 Germans die.

1942 Bombing of Lübeck in World War II was the first major success for the RAF Bomber Command against Germany and a German city.

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

1971 1st Lt William L Calley Jr found guilty in My Lai (Vietnam) massacre.

2004 The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants.

2017 UK Prime Minister Theresa May sends a letter to the EU invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, formally triggering Brexit.

[Jimbuna]

1867 US buys Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 (2 cents an acre - Seward's Folly)

1939 The Heinkel He 100 fighter sets the world airspeed record of 463 mph.

1945 World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 to Americans.

2013 North Korea declares it is at a state of war with South Korea.

[Jimbuna]

1889 Eiffel Tower officially opens in Paris. Built for the Exposition Universelle, at 300m high it retains the record for the tallest man made structure for 41 years.

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

1958 US Navy forms atomic submarine division.

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

[Jimbuna]

1873 British White Star steamship Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, 547 die.

1905 "SOS" first adopted as a morse distress signal (· · · – – – · · ·) by German government.

1918 United Kingdom: the Royal Air Force is created from the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps.

1933 Heinrich Himmler becomes Police Commander of Germany.

1933 Nazi Germany begins persecution of Jews by boycotting Jewish businesses.

1941 The Blockade Runner Badge for German Kriegsmarine is instituted.

1945 Battle of Okinawa: US ground forces invade Okinawa during World War II in the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific theatre.

1973 John Lennon and Yoko Ono form a new country with no laws or boundaries, called Nutopia, its national anthem is silence.

1986 US submarine Nathaniel Green runs aground in Irish Sea.

1992 Battleship USS Missouri, on which the Japanese surrender took place, decommissioned.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1918 United Kingdom: the Royal Air Force is created from the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps.

WIERD: 1954: Congress passed legislation in 1954 to begin the construction of the Air Force Academy, and President Eisenhower signed it into law on 1 April of that year.

[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.

1935 Scottish physicist Robert Watson-Watt receives a British patents for RADAR.

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.