1914 Battle of the Falkland Island: British Royal Navy destroys a German battle squadron.

1941 US & Britain declare war on Japan, US enters WW II.

1941 President Roosevelt delivers "Day of Infamy" speech to US Congress a day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Did Roosevelt really say, "I hate war, Eleanor hates war and my dog Fido hates war"?

I also hate war ...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...lanes_view.jpg

A torpedo has just hit USS West Virginia on the far side of Ford Island (center). Other battleships moored nearby are (from left): Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee (inboard of West Virginia), Oklahoma (torpedoed and listing) alongside Maryland, and California. On the near side of Ford Island, to the left, are light cruisers Detroit and Raleigh, target and training ship Utah and seaplane tender Tangier. Raleigh and Utah have been torpedoed, and Utah is listing sharply to port. Japanese planes are visible in the right center (over Ford Island) and over the Navy Yard at right. U.S. Navy planes on the seaplane ramp are on fire.

1917 British forces under General Allenby capture Jerusalem.

1941 Hitler orders US ships are to be torpedoed.

1926 Second part of Hitler's Mein Kampf published.

1936 Edward VIII signs Instrument of Abdication, giving up the British throne to marry American divoree Wallis Simpson.

1941 British battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse (Force Z ) sunk following Japanese aerial attacks off Malaya. 840 men die.

1942 An early report the Holocaust prepared by the Polish government-in-exile, using information obtained by Witold Pilecki, is addressed to UN member states.

1931 Statute of Westminster gives complete legislative independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland (Free State), and Newfoundland (not then part of Canada).

1936 Edward VIII announces in a radio broadcast that he is abdicating the British throne to marry Wallis Simpson.

1941 Japanese attack Wake Island (only failed WW II-landing).

1954 USS Forrestal christened in Newport News, Va.

1901 Guglielmo Marconi sends the first transatlantic radio signal, from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland, Canada.

1915 First all-metal aircraft (Junkers J-1) test flown at Dessau, Germany.

1937 Japanese aircraft shell and sink US gunboat Panay on Yangtze River in China. (Japan apologized & eventually paid US $2.2M in reparations).

1946 UN accepts 6 Manhattan blocks as a gift from John D. Rockefeller Jr.

1961 Adolf Eichmann is found guilty of war crimes in Israel.

1577 Sir Francis Drake sets sail from England on a circumnavigation of the world.

1636 The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.

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

1941 U-81 torpedoes British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal.

1944 Japanese kamikaze crashes into US cruiser Nashville, kills 138.

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.

1812 The French Invasion of Russia, led by Napoleon, officially ends.

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 Galatea.

1967 DNA created in a test tube.

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

1914 British fleet forfeits chance to destroy German fleet in North Sea.

1941 German submarine U-127 sinks.

1941 USS Swordfish becomes first US submarine to sink a Japanese ship.

1944 Bandleader, Major Glenn Miller, lost over English Channel.

1944 US Congress gives General Eisenhower his 5th star.

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

God defend us from the fury of the Norseman
 

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

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

1944 Ardennes campaign ('Battle of the Bulge') begins in Belgium.

1969 British House of Commons votes 343-185 to abolish the death penalty.

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

1927 US submarine S-4 sinks after collision killing all 34 aboard.

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

1938 Discovery of nuclear fission using uranium by Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann.

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

1944 US destroyers sink in storm off Philippines, 790 killed.

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

1941 German submarine U-434 sinks.

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

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

1996 During a press conference, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Maleki states that Iran supports the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, but reserves the option of closing off the shipping route if it is threatened.

1941 German submarine U-574 sinks.

1941 Hitler takes complete command of German Army.

1958 First radio broadcast from space, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower Christmas message "to all mankind, America's wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to men everywhere".

1960 Fire aboard USS Constellation, under construction at Brooklyn (50 die).

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.

1915 Final withdraw of all allied troops from Anzac Cove.

1924 Adolf Hitler freed from jail early.

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

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

1957 Elvis Presley receives his draft notice to join the US Army for National Service.

1960 Auschwitz commandant Richard Bar arrested in German FR.

1963 Trial against 21 camp guards of Auschwitz begins.

1975 Joe Walsh recruited to join Eagles.