This date in history

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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 1st US sub to sink a Japanese ship.

1961 Court in Israel sentences Nazi party official Adolf Eichmann to death for war crimes for his participation in organizing the Holocaust.

1973 American Psychiatric Association declares homosexuality is not a mental illness.

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1653 Parliamentarian General Oliver Cromwell appointed as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

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

1907 As a gesture of the US's new presence as a world power, President Theodore Roosevelt sends the 'Great White Fleet' on a round-the-world cruise, visiting ports internationally.

1914 German warships fire more than 500 shells on northern English towns of Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool - 1st time English civilians targeted during the war - kill 137 people.

1944 Nazi Germany launches a counteroffensive against the Allies in the Ardennes region of Belgium, beginning the 'Battle of the Bulge'

1998 Iraq disarmament crisis: Operation Desert Fox - the United States and United Kingdom bomb targets in Iraq to degrade its ability to produce, store, maintain, and deliver weapons of mass destruction.

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1900 First prize of 100,000 francs is offered for communication with extraterrestrials, with Martians excluded as they are considered too easy.

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

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

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

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1642 Abel Tasman's expedition is the first European voyage to reach New Zealand sailing into Wharewharangi Bay at the top of the South Island, making the first confirmed contact with Maori.

1916 Battle of Verdun, longest of World War I, officially ends in German defeat after nine months of fighting and almost 1 million total casualties.

1917 The 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, authorizing prohibition of alcohol, is approved by the US congress and sent to the states for ratification.

1941 44 surviving crewmen of German U-434 surrender to the HMS Blankney after scuttling their wounded submarine. Two are lost.

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

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

1971 Three members of the Irish Republican Army die when the bomb they were transporting explodes prematurely in King Street, Magherafelt, County Derry.

2019 US House of Representatives votes to impeach President Donald Trump for abuse of power (230-197) and obstruction of Congress (229-198)

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1932 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) begins transmitting overseas.

1941 Adolf Hitler takes complete command of German Army.

1941 German submarine U-574 sinks.

1950 General Eisenhower named NATO commander.

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

1983 The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro.

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

1988 Unexploded WW II bomb found in Frankfurt, Germany-5,000 evacuated.

[Jimbuna]

1860 South Carolina General Assembly votes 169-0 to secede from the United States, declaring itself an "independent commonwealth". Is quickly followed by other Southern states triggering the American Civil War.

1917 Soviet state security force and forerunner to the KGB, the Cheka forms, under Felix Dzerzhinsky after decree by Vladimir Lenin.

1924 Adolf Hitler freed from jail early, having served only nine months of five-year sentence for "Beer Hall Putsch"

1941 World War II: 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

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1960 Auschwitz commandant Richard Bar arrested in German FR

"Best spell it like Baer." He died in custody before being tried... 'prisoner at the bar-wise'.

[Jimbuna]

1939 Adolf Hitler names Adolf Eichmann leader of "Referat IV B", responsible for evictions and Jewish immigration.

1958 Charles De Gaulle wins 7 year term as 1st President of the 5th Republic of France.

1968 Glen Campbell's album "Wichita Lineman" goes to #1 in the US

1970 Elvis Presley meets US President Richard Nixon in the White House - the image of this meeting is the most requested photo from the entire National Archives.

1988 A terrorist bomb destroys Pan Am Flight 103 mid-air over Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board and 11 people on the ground.

1991 Soviet Union formally dissolves as 11 of 12 republics sign treaty forming the Commonwealth of Independent States.

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1941 Winston Churchill arrives in Washington, D.C. for a wartime conference.

1942 World War II: Adolf Hitler signs the order to develop the V-2 rocket as a weapon.

1944 Germans demand surrender of American troops at Bastogne, Belgium.

1944 Sub Swordfish departs Pearl Harbor for Japan.

1963 Cruise ship Lakonia burns 180 miles north of Madeira with the loss of 128 lives.

1963 Official 30-day mourning period for President John F. Kennedy ends.

1964 First flight of the US aircraft Lockheed SR-71, reaches 3,530 kph (record for a jet)

1974 Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb home of former UK Prime Minister, Edward Heath, just before announcing Christmas ceasefire (no-one injured)

1989 After 23 years of dictatorial rule, Romania ousts communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.

2010 Repeal of the "Don't Ask Don't Tell policy", a 17-year-old policy banning homosexuals serving openly in the US military, signed into law by President Barack Obama.

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1783 US General George Washington resigns his military commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Army to Congress.

1888 Vincent van Gogh cuts off his left ear with a razor, after argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, and sends to a female courtesan for safe keeping.

1920 Government of Ireland Act / Home Rule Act passes, partitioning Ireland.

1933 Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe sentenced to death for setting the German Reichstag on fire.

1941 American forces on Wake Island surrender to Japanese.

1943 General Bernard Montgomery told he is appointed commandant for D-day.

1972 16 plane crash survivors rescued from Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 after 72 days on the Andean Mountains, after only surviving through cannibalism.

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1814 Treaty of Ghent signed, ending the War of 1812 between the United States, the United Kingdom and their allies.

1914 German plane drops bombs on Dover, England.

1922 BBC broadcasts first British radio play "The Truth about Father Christmas"

1941 First ships of admiral Nagumo's Pearl Harbor fleet return to Japan.

1942 First powered flight of V-1 'buzz bomb', Peenemunde, Germany.

1943 US President FDR appoints General Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces.

1946 US General MacNarney gives 800,000 "minor Nazis" amnesty.

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1915 US Iron and Steel workers begin a 3-week strike in Ohio for an eight-hour-day; they are successful as the US needs steel for armaments.

1932 Emperor Hirohito of Japan narrowly evades an assassination attempt by a Korean independence activist, Lee Bong-chang.

1943 German warship "Scharnhorst" sinks in Barents Sea.

1943 Montgomery discusses Operation Overlord (D-day landings) with Eisenhower & Bedell Smith.

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1915 Today the British Cabinet recognizes the true nature of the war by deciding to institute compulsory military service, with single men to be conscripted before married ones.

1934 First ever Women's cricket international begins England vs Australia in Australia.

1944 Dutch Resistance fighter Corrie ten Boom is accidentally released from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, living to speak and educate of her experience in "The Hiding Place"

1950 Chinese troops cross 38th Parallel, into South Korea.

1950 The Peak District becomes the United Kingdom's 1st National Park.

1972 Nazi leader Martin Bormann's skeleton and remains are found in Berlin.

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1170 English Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket assassinated before the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral by four knights.

1812 The USS Constitution under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captures the HMS Java off the coast of Brazil after a three hour battle.

1845 Texas is admitted as the 28th state of the Union.

1891 Edison patents "transmission of signals electrically" (radio)

1934 Japan renounces Wash Naval Treaty of 1922 and London Treaty of 1930

1937 Constitution of Ireland (Irish: Bunreacht na hÉireann) is enacted and Irish free state is named Eire.

1939 First flight of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber prototype.

1940 Worst German air raid on London as over 10,000 bombs including the 1st incendiary bombs are dropped on the city as part of the Blitz.

1944 General Eisenhower's train returns to Versailles.

1997 Hong Kong begins slaughtering all its chickens to prevent bird flu.

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1915 Cromarty Harbour, Scotland - British cruiser Natal explodes: 405 die.

1941 In an emotional speech to the Canadian Parliament Winston Churchill states Britain will never surrender to "Hitler and his Nazi gang" and that "they have asked for total war. Let us make sure they get it". Afterwards Yousef Karsh captures him in his famous photograph, "The Roaring Lion".

1952 Tuskegee Inst reports 1952 as 1st yr in 71 with no lynchings in US

1959 George Washington, 1st ballistic missile sub commissioned.

1970 The financial cost of the disturbances and riots in Northern Ireland during 1969 and 1970 are today estimated to be £5.5 million.

1971 A member of the Irish Republican Army is killed in a premature bomb explosion in Santry, Dublin.

1972 US President Richard Nixon halts bombing of North Vietnam & announces peace talks.

1974 Beatles are legally disbanded (4 years after suit was brought)

2016 British singer-songwriter Ray Davies, of The Kinks, is awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II