1942 Warsaw Ghetto Jews (300,000) are sent to Treblinka Extermination Camp.

1975 US House of Representatives votes to restore citizenship to General Robert E. Lee

2003 Members of 101st Airborne of the United States, aided by Special Forces, attack a compound in Iraq, killing Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, along with Mustapha Hussein, Qusay's 14-year old son, and a bodyguard.

2011 Norway is the victim of twin terror attacks, the first a bomb blast targeting government buildings in central Oslo, second a massacre at a youth camp on island of Utøya.

1942 Adolf Hitler's Directive number 45: order for army to advance on Stalingrad.

1943 Battle of Kursk, USSR ends in German defeat (6,000 tanks)

1945 Marshal Philippe Pétain, leader of the French Vichy collaborationist regime during World War II goes on trial.

1956 Bell X-2 rocket plane sets world aircraft speed record of 3,050 kph

Pétain died in a private home in Port-Joinville on the Île d'Yeu on 23 July 1951, at the age of 95

When the Angel of Death approached, I have it on good authority he said "Sacrè! not a Pètit mort this time!:o :|\\

1567 Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate; her 1-year-old son becomes King James VI of Scots.

1917 Trial of Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari begins in Paris for allegedly spying for Germany and thus causing the deaths of 50,000 soldiers.

1943 Operation Gomorrah: RAF begins bombing Hamburg (till 3rd August), creating a firestorm and killing 42,600 people.

1944 Soviet forces liberate concentration camp Majdanek.

1945 US destroyer Underhill torpedoed West of Guam.

1969 Apollo 11 returns to Earth.

1985 French DGSE officers Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart are arrested and charged with murder over the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.

1797 Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife (Spain)

1814 English engineer George Stephenson introduces his first steam locomotive, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway named Blücher.

1923 German mark devalued to 600,000 Mark=$1

1943 First warship named after an African American launched - USS Leonard Roy Harmon, a Buckley class destroyer.

1943 Benito Mussolini dismissed as Italian Premier and arrested on the authority of King Victor Emmanuel III

1944 First jet fighter used in combat (Messerschmitt 262)

1944 World War II: Operation Spring - one of Canada's bloodiest days, 18,444 casualties and 5,021 killed.

1946 US detonates an underwater atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands (5th atomic explosion)

1961 In a speech John F. Kennedy emphasizes that any attack on Berlin is an attack on NATO

Kursk came about because the British, at Bletchley Park intercepted and decoded the orders for the germans to attack, and when. We told Stalin who was able to rush many hundreds of tanks into the area under cover of night and when the germans began their mass attack, they met a hefty shock.

1914 Irish Volunteers unload a shipment of 1,500 rifles and 45,000 rounds of ammunition arrive from Germany aboard Erskine Childers' yacht the Asgard; British troops fire on jeering crowd on Bachelors Walk, Dublin, killing three citizens.

1944 The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain (nicknamed "gasometer").

1945 Declaration of Potsdam: US, Britain and China demand the unconditional surrender of Japan during WWII

1945 Japanese government disregards US ultimatum.

1945 US cruiser Indianapolis reaches Tinian with atom bomb.

1945 Winston Churchill resigns as Britain's Prime Minister after election defeat.

1945 Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva depart Kirtland Army Air Field to transport the plutonium core for the Fat Man bomb (bombing of Nagasaki) to the island of Tinian where the bomb is assembled.

1953 Fidel Castro leads a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, intended to spark a revolution in Cuba.

1586 Walter Raleigh brings the 1st tobacco to England from Virginia.

1866 transatlantic telegraph cable successfully in second attempt comes ashore at Heart's Content, Newfoundland laid out by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Eastern steamship (1,686 miles long)

1944 1st British jet fighter used in combat (Gloster Meteor)

1948 Otto Skorzeny escapes anti-nazi camp at Darmstadt.

1949 1st jet-propelled airline (De Havilland Comet) flies.

1953 North Korea and the United Nations sign armistice to stop fighting and divide Korea at the 38th parallel.

1972 The F-15 Eagle flies for the first time.

1914 First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill orders British Grand Fleet to Scapa Flow.

1914 Austria-Hungary decides against mediation and declares war on Serbia - first declaration of war of WWI

1938 34,000-ton Cunard-White Star liner Mauretania launched at Birkenhead.

1945 Physicist Raemer Schreiber and Lieutenant Colonel Peer de Silva arrive on the Pacific island of Tinian with the plutonium core used to assemble the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9

2005 The Provisional Irish Republican Army call an end to their thirty year long armed campaign in Northern Ireland.

depends on who is writing it; the rest of us call it kids with guns terrorism. They were not interested in a united ireland it was a good excuse to play soldiers.

1905 US Secretary of War William Howard Taft makes secret agreement with Japanese Prime Minister Katsura agreeing to Japanese free rein in Korea in return for non-interference with the US in the Philippines.

1914 British fleet leaves Portland/passes Straits of Dover.

1921 Adolf Hitler becomes leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

1949 Moscow ends the blockade of West Berlin.

1863 President Abraham Lincoln issues "eye-for-eye" order to shoot a rebel prisoner for every black prisoner shot.

1916 German saboteurs blow up a munitions plant on Black Tom Island, New Jersey.

1945 After delivering the Atomic Bomb across the Pacific, the cruiser USS Indianapolis is torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-58. 880 of the crew died, many after being attacked by sharks, the inspiration for the movie Jaws.

1949 British warship HMS Amethyst escapes down Yangtze River, having been refused a safe passage by Chinese Communists after 3-month standoff.

1963 British spy Kim Philby found in Moscow.

1971 Japanese Boeing 727 collides with an F-86 fighter killing 162

1914 German Emperor Wilhelm II threatens war, orders Russia to demobilize.

1917 World War I: Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) begins, goes on to cause approximately 500,000 casualties.

1941 U-boats sink and damage 21 allied ships this month (80,521 tons)

1945 Pierre Laval, fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.

1970 Black Tot Day: the last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy (started 1740)

1971 Apollo 15 astronauts take 6½ hour electric car ride on Moon.

1972 Operation Motorman: the British Army use 12,000 soldiers supported by tanks and bulldozers to re-take the "no-go areas" controlled by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

2007 Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.