This date in history

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1812 Battle of Borodino: Napoleon Bonaparte wins a Pyrrhic victory against Russian General Mikhail Kutuzov in the most ferocious battle of the Napoleonic era; 70,000 are killed.

1909 Eugene Lefebvre becomes the first pilot to die in an aircraft, while test piloting a new French-built Wright biplane at Juvisy.

1940 Beginning of the Blitz as the German Luftwaffe bombs London for the first of 57 consecutive nights, losing 41 bombers as the Nazis prepare to invade Britain.

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1504 Michelangelo's statue of David is unveiled in Florence.

1664 Dutch surrender colony of New Netherland (including New York) to 300 English soldiers.

1914 HMS (formerly RMS) Oceanic, two weeks into its service with the Royal Navy, runs aground off, Foula, Shetland, Scotland in good weather and eventually sinks.

1914 Private Thomas Highgate becomes the first British soldier to be executed for desertion during WW1

1944 1st V-2 rockets land in London & Antwerp.

1951 Japan signs peace treaty with 48 countries in San Francisco.

1981 British TV comedy "Only Fools and Horses" created by John Sullivan, starring David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst and Lennard Pearce premieres on BBC One.

1994 Last US, British & French troops leave West Berlin.

2022 Queen Elizabeth II dies at Balmoral Castle after ruling for 70 years, as the UK's longest-serving monarch. Her eldest son inherits the throne as King Charles III.

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1513 Battle of Flodden: English forces defeat the Scots near Branxton in Northumberland and kill King James IV of Scotland, the last monarch in Great Britain to be killed in battle.

1543 Mary Stuart, at nine months old, is crowned Queen of Scots in the central Scottish town of Stirling.

1776 Congress officially renames the country as the United States of America (from the United Colonies)

1914 First fully mechanized unit in the British Army created - the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade (WWI)

1914 Meeting held at Gaelic League headquarters between Irish Republican Brotherhood and other extreme republicans; initial decision made to stage an uprising while Britain is at war.

1943 15 German JU-88's sink Italian flag ship Rome.

1994 Russian Tu-22 supersonic bomber collides with its photographic chase aircraft, a Tu-134AK, over Samoyliha, Shatura District near Moscow, killing all eight aboard the Tu-134

2015 Queen Elizabeth II becomes Great Britain's longest-reigning monarch at 63 years and seven months, beating the previous record set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.

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1776 George Washington asks for a spy, Nathan Hale volunteers.

1813 American naval commander Oliver Hazard Perry defeats the British in the Battle of Lake Erie.

1905 Japanese battleship Mikasa explodes at her moorings after the magazine catches fire, killing 251 seamen.

1939 Canada, under the leadership of Mackenzie King, declares war on Germany.

1940 Buckingham Palace hit by German bomb in London.

1943 German troops occupy Rome and take over the protection of Vatican City.

1943 Italian fleet anchors at Malta.

1944 Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning against Montgomery "But, sir, I think we might be going a bridge too far"

1945 Mike the Headless Chicken is decapitated in Fruita, Colorado; he survives for another 18 months before choking to death.

1945 Vidkun Quisling, head of the Nazi-controlled Norwegian government during WWII is sentenced to death for collaborating with the Nazis.

1972 3 British soldiers are killed in a land mine attack near Dungannon, County Tyrone.

1977 Hamida Djandoubi, convicted of torture and murder, is the last person to be executed by Guillotine in France.

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1939 British submarine Triton torpedoes British submarine Oxley.

1940 Nazi Germany begins Operation Seelöwe (Sealion - aborted invasion of England)

1941 Construction of the Pentagon begins in Arlington County, Virginia (completed Jan 15, 1943). Designed by architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain, construction was overseen by Leslie Groves.

1941 FDR orders US Navy that any Axis ship found in American waters be shot at on sight.

1943 Last German Q/pirate ship sinks near Easter Island / Rapa Nui.

1944 A reconnaissance squadron of the US 5th Armored Division "Victory Division" is 1st allied force to enter Nazi-Germany.

1945 Hideki Tojo, Japanese Prime Minister during most of World War II, attempts suicide rather than face war crimes tribunal but fails - later he is hanged.

1952 West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signs a reparation pact for the Jewish people.

2001 Attempt by passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 to retake control of their hijacked plane from terrorists causes the plane to crash in a Pennsylvania field, killing all 44 people on board.

2001 Terrorists hijack a passenger plane and crash it into the Pentagon, killing 125 people.

2001 Two passenger planes hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists crash into New York's World Trade Center towers, causing the collapse of both and the deaths of 2,606 people.

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1624 First submarine is publicly tested in London on the Thames for King James I

1776 Nathan Hale leaves Harlem Heights Camp (127th St) for spy mission.

1919 Adolf Hitler joins the obscure German Worker's Party as its seventh member, agreeing not with worker's rights, but with its German Nationalism and antisemitism.

1943 Waffen-SS (Skorzeny) frees Benito Mussolini at Gran Sasso.

1970 Supersonic airliner Concorde lands for the 1st time at Heathrow airport.

1990 US, United Kingdom, France, USSR, East & West Germanys sign agreements allowing 2 Germanys to merge.

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122 Construction begins on Hadrian's Wall in Northern England.

1782 The Grand Assault on Gibraltar by the allied French and Spanish fleets, including ten floating batteries and land forces, is heavily defeated by the British garrison, with all floating batteries destroyed and allied casualties of 1,473 compared to only 83 for the British.

1907 Lusitania arrives in New York City after record 5 day crossing of Atlantic.

1944 Amon Göth removed as head of Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp by the SS for stealing state property.

1971 Two North Ireland Loyalists are mortally injured when the bomb they were preparing exploded prematurely in a house in Bann Street, Belfast.

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1812 Great Fire of Moscow begins as Napoleon approaches the city and retreating Russians burn it - fire continues to burn for five days.

1814 Francis Scott Key pens the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry," later known as "The Star-Spangled Banner," while witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry from a ship in Baltimore Harbour.

1856 Battle of San Jacinto at Hacienda San Jacinto, Nicaraguan forces defeat American filibusters.

1914 Lord Kitchener: "Your country needs you" appears as front cover design for the London Opinion magazine.

1939 World's first practical helicopter, the VS-300, designed by Igor Sikorsky, takes (tethered) flight in Stratford, Connecticut.

1942 US Navy Admiral Chester Nimitz presents the 1st Medal of Honor of WWII, for courage and valor beyond the call of duty during the attack on Pearl Harbor, to sailor John William Finn; ceremony took place in Pearl Harbor aboard USS Enterprise.

1950 Western allies rearm West Germany.

1971 Two British soldiers are killed in separate shooting incidents in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

2001 Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital.

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1916 First use of tanks in warfare, Britain's Mark I "Little Willies" at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, part of the Battle of the Somme.

1928 Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin while sorting through petri dishes containing colonies of the bacteria Staphylococcus.

1931 British naval fleet mutinies at Invergordon over pay cuts.

1938 British PM Neville Chamberlain visits Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden.

1940 Battle of Britain Day: Royal Air Force repulses a major Luftwaffe attack, losing 29 aircraft to the Germans' 57-61 as the tide begins to turn.

1940 UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill visits Royal Air Force 11th Fighter Group on what would be the fiercest day of the Battle of Britain.

1942 US aircraft carrier Wasp torpedoed at Guadalcanal,

1944 British bombers hit German battleship Tirpitz with Tallboy bombs.

1948 F-86 Sabre sets world aircraft speed record of 1080 kph.

1950 During Korean conflict, UN forces land at Inchon in South Korea.

1966 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to the United States Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.

1970 Officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland vote narrowly in favour of remaining unarmed.

1992 George Soros' Quantum Fund begins selling large amounts of pound sterling, helping force the pound out of the ERM the next day and earning him the label "the man who broke the Bank of England"

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1620 The Mayflower departs Plymouth, England, with 102 Pilgrims and about 30 crew for the New World.

1941 Adolf Hitler orders that for every dead German, 100 Yugoslavs should be killed.

1965 British singer Davie Jones changes his stage name to "David Bowie" to avoid confusion with the Monkee of the same name.

1974 US President Gerald Ford announces conditional amnesty for US Vietnam War deserters.

1975 The first prototype of the MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.

1997 Apple Computer Inc. names co-founder Steve Jobs as interim CEO

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1859 Joshua Abraham Norton, an English-born resident of San Francisco, proclaims himself his Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America.

1862 Battle of Antietam [Battle of Sharpsburg]: Bloodiest day in the American Civil War with 22,000 dead, wounded, or missing in the first major battle on Union soil.

1916 World War I flying ace, the Red Baron of the German Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France.

1938 British premier Neville Chamberlain leaves Munich.

1939 German U-29 sinks British aircraft carrier Courageous, 519 die.

1939 Soviet Union invades Eastern Poland allowing Germans to advance West, taking 217,000 Poles prisoner, without a formal declaration of war.

1940 Adolf Hitler indefinitely postpones Operation Sealion, the planned German invasion of Great Britain.

1944 Operation Market Garden: In the largest airborne operation of WWII, Allied paratroopers land in the Netherlands in a failed attempt to capture the Arnhem bridge over the Rhine.

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1283 Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Prince of Gwynedd, Wales, becomes the first person executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered.

1928 French submarine "Ondine" sinks returning to Toulon, drowning 42

1940 France Vichy government proclaims end to Jewish status.

1941 Adolf Hitler says Russia is "already broken and will never rise again" in a broadcast to the German people.

1942 Launch of 1st A-4/V-2 rocket to altitude of 53 miles (85 km)

1952 1st British nuclear test during Operation Hurricane at Monte Bello Island, Australia, UK becomes the world's third nuclear nation.

1955 Soviet battleship "Novorossiisk" strikes WW II mine in Baltic Sea.

1981 Irish Nationalists at Maze Prison near Belfast end 7-month hunger strike.

1990 Reunification of East and West Germany. West German flag is raised above the Brandenburg Gate at the stroke of midnight.

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1883 The Orient Express departs on its first official journey from Paris to Istanbul.

1914 Dardanelles: French & British fleet bombards Turkish forts.

1942 German assault on tractor factory in Stalingrad.

1957 Avro Arrow roll-out ceremony at Avro Canada plant in Malton, Ontario.

1976 Official launch of the Intercity 125 High Speed Train (HST).

1976 Supreme Court lifts 1972 ban on death penalty for convicted murderers.

2023 Kevin McCarthy becomes the first Speaker of the US House of Representatives to be removed from office after fellow Republican hardliners, led by Matt Gaetz, vote for his ouster.

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1914 World War I first aerial combat resulting in a kill.

1916 Adolf Hitler is wounded in the left thigh by an exploding shell during the Battle of the Somme.

1925 The Lacarno Conference meets: Germany agrees to recognise their frontiers with France and Belgium and will apply for membership in the League of Nations.

1936 The Jarrow March sets off for London.

1943 US air raid on Wake, Japanese execute 98 US prisoners in retaliation.

1946 Newcastle United equals English Football League record for biggest winning margin in a 13-0 thrashing of Newport in a Division 2 match at St. James' Park; Len Shackleton scores 6, Charlie Wayman 4 for the Toon.

1974 Guildford pub bombing by the IRA leaves 5 dead and 65 injured.

1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin removes honor guard from Lenin's mausoleum.

2020 US President Donald Trump leaves Walter Reed National Military Medical Center while still infectious with COVID-19 and returns to the White House.

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1917 Battle of Passchendaele: Canadian troops capture the village of Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, after 250,000 casualties on both sides.

1939 WWII: Adolf Hitler speech at the Reichstag celebrates the defeat of Poland, offers peace to France and England, and mentions need for "settlement of the Jewish problem"

1943 Himmler wants acceleration of "Final Solution"

1944 Royal Dutch Navy submarine Zwaardvis (Swordfish) sinks German submarine U168 in the Java Sea.

1945 US General Eisenhower welcomed in The Hague (on Hitler's train)

1949 Iva Toguri D'Aquino (Tokyo Rose) sentenced to 10 years & $10,000 fine.

1949 US President Harry Truman signs Mutual Defense Assistance Act (for NATO)

1951 Joseph Stalin proclaims the Soviet Union has the atomic bomb.

1958 US nuclear sub USS Seawolf remains a record 60 days under the north pole.

1961 JFK advises Americans to build fallout shelters.

1985 PC Keith Blakelock is murdered as riots erupt in the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, north London.