This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1907 SS Berlin sinks off the Hook of Holland (142 dead).

1916 World War I: Battle of Verdun begins, leads to an estimated 1 million casualties.

1917 British troopship SS Mendi sinks off Isle of Wight, 646 die.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1916 World War I: Battle of Verdun begins, leads to an estimated 1 million casualties.

This should be a victory celebration day for France even though many brave men were lost in the next ten (10) months of warfare.

10 Things You May Not Know About the Battle of Verdun

http://www.history.com/news/10-thing...ttle-of-verdun

Shortly after 7 a.m. on the morning of February 21, 1916, German gunners unleashed a hail of artillery fire on French positions surrounding the fortified city of Verdun. The Germans planned for their attack to “bleed France white,” but the battle soon dragged both sides into a costly standoff. For 10 months, French and German forces engaged in a grueling cycle of attacks, counterattacks and near-constant bombardments that turned the small city on the Meuse River into hell on earth. The French eventually halted the German advance and regained their lost territory, but not before the two sides had suffered some 800,000 casualties between them. Explore 10 facts about one of the longest and most ferocious battles of World War I.

[Jimbuna]

1935 Airplanes are no longer permitted to fly over the White House.

1940 German air force sinks 2 German destroyers, killing 578.

1942 World War II: President Franklin Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defenses collapse.

1955 British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sets sail.

1972 The Official IRA bombs Aldershot military barracks, the headquarters of the British Parachute Regiment, killing seven people; thought to be in retaliation for Bloody Sunday.

1989 UK physicist Stephen Hawking calls Star Wars a "deliberate fraud".

1997 Dolly the Sheep, world's first cloned mammal (from an adult cell) is announced by the Roslin Institute in Scotland.

[Jimbuna]

1836 Alamo besieged for 13 days until March 6 by Mexican army under General Santa Anna; entire garrison eventually killed.

1893 Rudolf Diesel obtains a patent for his internal combustion engine, later known as the diesel engine.

1916 French artillery kills entire French 72nd division at Samogneux (Battle of Verdun).

1942 Japanese submarine fires on oil refinery in Ellwood, California.

1945 US Marines raise American flag on top of Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Photo of which by Joe Rosenthall later became iconic, inspiring the Marine Corps War Memorial sculpture.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1916 French artillery kills entire French 72nd division at Samogneux (Battle of Verdun).

WELL NOT ALL THE ARTILLARY WAS GERMAN IT SEEMS.... <ENLARGES

On February 23 the German attack ground on, with waves of infantry from six German divisions advancing behind unrelenting artillery bombardments, slowly forcing the French 72nd and 51st Reserve Divisions out of Brabant and the forest of Herbebois, back towards the villages of Beaumont and Samogneux. With both French divisions nearing their breaking point, on the evening of the 23rd the French 37th Division, consisting of Algerian and Moroccan colonial troops, was hurled into the fight while the 72nd Reserve fought tooth and nail to hold Samogneux. Tragically, miscommunication led the French overall commander at Verdun, General Herr, to believe Samogneux had already fallen to the enemy, and friendly fire from French guns wiped out scores of their own troops – an all-too-common occurrence in the First World War. The misdirected French bombardment cleared the way for the Germans to occupy Samogneux, while the ragged remnants of the 72nd Reserve Division were withdrawn from the frontline. Together with the 51st Reserve Division, it had lost an astonishing 16,224 men out of an original strength of 26,523 in just three days.

THIS WAS NO PLACE TO BE NO MATTER WHO'S ARTILLERY IS DOING THE KILLING...

[Jimbuna]

1875 The SS Gothenburg hits the Great Barrier Reef and sinks off the Australian east coast, killing approximately 100, including a number of high profile civil servants and dignitaries.

1917 German plan to get Mexican help in WW I exposed (Zimmerman telegram).

1923 Flying Scotsman goes into service.

[Jimbuna]

1836 Samuel Colt patents first revolving barrel multishot firearm.

1916 German troops conquer Fort Douaumont near Verdun.

1932 Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler gets German citizenship.

1933 First genuine US aircraft carrier named, USS Ranger.

1945 US aircraft carriers attack Tokyo.

[Jimbuna]

1797 Bank of England issues first £1 note.

1815 Napoleon Bonaparte and his supporters leave Elba to start a 100 day re-conquest of France.

1914 HMHS Britannic, sister to the Titanic, is launched at Harland & Wolff, Belfast.

1935 German Luftwaffe is re-formed under Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering.

1935 RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) first demonstrated by Robert Watson-Watt.

1942 German battle cruiser Gneisenau deactivated by bomb.

1952 PM Winston Churchill announces Britain has its own atomic bomb.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1815 Napoleon Bonaparte and his supporters leave Elba to start a 100 day re-conquest of France.

...& MET HIS WATERLOO! STRANGELY, THE TOWN JUST NORTH OF NAPA IS ....ST. HELENA

[Aktungbby]

1700: William DAMPIERdiscovers New Britain ( in the Bismark Archepelago) the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. He has also been described as Australia's first natural historian, as well as one of the most important British explorers of the period between Sir Walter Raleigh and James Cook. ( and smarter: Raleigh was beheaded and poor Cook was eaten by Hawaiians)
After impressing the Admiralty with his book A New Voyage Round the World, Dampier was given command of a Royal Navy ship and made important discoveries in western Australia, before being court-martialled for cruelty. On a later voyage he rescued Alexander Selkirk, a former crewmate who may have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Others influenced by Dampier include James Cook, Horatio Nelson, Charles Darwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace. Somwhat forgotten today :He is cited over 80 times in the Oxford English Dictionary, notably on words such as "barbecue", "avocado", "chopsticks" and "sub-species". That is not to say he coined the words, but his use of them in his writings is the first known example in English. Well... I Bar B Q on my Weber making avocado-burgers; eat sushi with my chopsticks; and my wife considers me a sub- species.... if not an outright Sasquatch! Alternately shipwrecked and courtmartialled for cruelty(move over Bligh!!)his travels along the "Miskito" Coast in 1679 are also strangely remembered: his excellent charts, notes, and logs gave rise to...his leaving a stamp on history all-in-all, a remarkable man! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dampier

[Jimbuna]

1942 Battle of Java Sea began: 13 US warships sunk and 2 Japanese.

1990 Final day of the rum ration in the Royal New Zealand Navy.

1998 Britain's House of Lords agrees to end 1,000 years of male precedence by giving a monarch's first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as any first born son.

2012 Wikileaks begins disclosing 5 million emails from private intelligence company Stratfor.

[Jimbuna]

1939 The erroneous word "Dord" is discovered in the Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, prompting an investigation.

1956 American engineer Wright Forrester issued a patent for computer core memory.

1966 Cavern Club (Beatles hangout) in Liverpool closes.

[Jimbuna]

1913 David Beatty becomes Rear-Admiral Commanding the Royal Navy's first Battlecruiser Squadron.

1916 Germany begins attacking ships in the Atlantic.

1917 US government releases the plain text of the "Zimmermann Telegram" to the public.

1941 Captain America first appears in comic book form, published by Timely Comics.

1944 U-358 sinks in Atlantic.

1953 Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses. He dies four days later.

1978 Charlie Chaplin's coffin and remains are stolen from a Swiss cemetery.

[Jimbuna]

1882 Queen Victoria narrowly escapes assassination when Roderick Maclean shoots at her while boarding a train in Windsor.

1915 British vice admiral Sackville Hamilton Carden begins bombardment of Dardanelles forts.

1968 USAF displays Lockheed C-5A Galaxy, biggest plane in the world, with a cargo compartment 37m long.

[Jimbuna]

1899 George Dewey becomes 1st in US to hold the rank of Admiral of the Navy.

1917 German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admits the "Zimmermann Telegram" is genuine. Generates support for the US declaration of war on Germany in April.

1942 First combat flight for Canadian British-built Avro Lancaster bomber.