This date in history

[Jimbuna]

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

1904 United States acquires control of the Panama Canal Zone for $10 million.

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

1945 US Marines raise the flag of the United States on top of Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Joe Rosenthal later becomes iconic, inspiring the Marine Corps War Memorial sculpture.

1998 Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and Crusaders.

[Jimbuna]

1797 Colonel William Tate and his force of 1,000-1,500 soldiers surrender after the Last Invasion of Britain (according to legend, to Welsh women in tall black hats, mistaken for elite guards regiment)

1920 Adolf Hitler make his first official speech as head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich, Germany.

1942 The "Battle of Los Angeles" takes place, a series of anti-aircraft engagements over the city in response to a rumored but false Japanese attack. It would last until the morning of the following day.

1949 V-2/WAC-Corporal rocket 1st object to reach 5x the speed of sound at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

1999 State of Arizona executes convicted murderer and bank robber, German national Karl LaGrand, despite international legal action by Germany to save him.

2022 Russia launches a full-scale pre-dawn and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by land, air, and sea, with bombings in several cities. Moments later, Vladimir Putin announces the start of a three-day “special military operation” in Ukraine to "demilitarize" the country.

[Jimbuna]

1570 Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy and persecution of English Catholics during her reign and absolves her subjects from allegiance to the crown.

1916 Battle of Verdun: German troops conquer Fort Douaumont without firing a shot, the largest and highest fort defending the city of Verdun during World War I

1932 Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler gets German citizenship.

1939 First Anderson bomb shelter in Britain is erected in an Islington garden.

1956 Nikita Khrushchev denounces Joseph Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1991 Gulf War: Iraqi Scud missile hits US barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, kills 28

[Jimbuna]

1616 The Roman Inquisition delivers injunction to Galileo demanding he abandon his belief in heliocentrism, which states the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun.

1797 Bank of England issues first £1 note.

1815 Napoléon Bonaparte and his supporters leave Elba to start a 100-day reconquest of France.

1852 British troopship Birkenhead sinks off South Africa, 458 die, 193 survive.

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

1916 Germans sink French transport ship Provence II, killing 930

1924 Trial against Adolf Hitler for treason in "Beer Hall Putsch" begins in Munich, Germany.

1935 Existence of re-formed German Luftwaffe revealed (banned in 1920 by Treaty of Versailles) with Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring as commander-in-chief.

1935 RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging) is first demonstrated by Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Wilkins in Daventry, England.

1936 Adolf Hitler introduces Ferdinand Porsche's "Volkswagen"

1942 German battle cruiser Gneisenau deactivated by bomb.

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

1971 Two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers shot and killed by the Irish Republican Army while on mobile patrol in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, North Ireland.

1991 Coalition planes bomb Iraqi forces retreating from Kuwait, killing hundreds and creating the so-called 'Highway of Death' during the Gulf War.

[Jimbuna]

1917 AP reports Mexico & Japan will allie with Germany if US enters WW I

1933 After the Reichstag Fire Decree, the German Communist Party (KPD) is essentially outlawed (though not formally banned) after the German government blames the Communists for burning down the Reichstag building.

1933 On Adolf Hitler's advice, German President Paul von Hindenburg signs the Reichstag Fire Decree after the building is destroyed by fire in Berlin; this eliminates many civil liberties in Germany.

1940 US population at 131,669,275 with 12,865,518 African American (9.8%)

1942 World War II: German submarine U-578 torpedoes US Navy destroyer USS Jacob Jones (DD130) off Cape May, New Jersey, killing all but 11 of 113 man crew.

1944 Arrests of the ten-Boom family in Nazi occupied Netherlands (Haarlem) through a Dutch collaborator on charges of hiding Jews.

1971 A British soldier dies in Derry after his vehicle had been attacked with petrol bombs (he died as a result of inhaling chemicals from fire extinguishers that were used to put out the fire)

1988 British television programme "That's Life!" surprises guest Nicholas Winton with an audience full of grown-up children that he saved from German-occupied Czechoslovakia, bringing them to safety in the UK

1991 Gulf War ends after Iraq accepts a ceasefire following their retreat from Kuwait.

[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; revelation generates support for the US declaration of war on Germany in April.

1942 1st combat flight for Canadian British-built Avro Lancaster bomber.

1943 Battle of the Bismarck Sea: Australian and American air forces devastate Japanese navy convoy.

1943 Bethnal Green Tube disaster: 173 die in a stampede sheltering in an air raid, UK's greatest loss of civilian life in WWII (details censored till January 20 1945)

1980 1st nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus is decommissioned.

[Jimbuna]

1801 Thomas Jefferson is the first US President to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.

1941 Prince Paul, prince regent of Yugoslavia meets with Adolf Hitler at the Berghof, Bavaria, where he rejects deal to allow Nazi's access to Greece.

1945 United Kingdom's Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), joins the British Auxiliary Transport Service (ATS) as a driver.

1966 North Sea Gas 1st pumped ashore by BP

1970 French submarine "Eurydice" explodes off Cape Camarat in the Mediterranean, all 57 crew lost.

2001 IRA detonates a bomb in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, injuring 11 people.

2009 International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, becoming the first sitting head of state to be indicted.

[Jimbuna]

1770 British soldiers kill five men in a crowd throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks at them. African American Crispus Attucks is the first to die and is later held up as an early Black martyr. The Boston Massacre or Incident on King Street galvanizes anti-British feelings.

1774 John Hancock delivers the fourth annual Massacre Day oration, a commemoration of the Boston Massacre, and denounces the presence of British troops in Boston, enhancing Hancock's stature as a leading Patriot.

1915 World War I: The LZ 33, a zeppelin, is damaged by enemy fire and stranded south of Ostend.

1946 Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, popularizes the term and draws attention to the division of Europe.

1960 Elvis Presley ends 2-year hitch in US Army.

[Jimbuna]

1788 The British First Fleet arrives at Australian territory of Norfolk Island to found a convict settlement.

1836 Battle of the Alamo: After 13 days of fighting, 1,500 to 3,000 Mexican soldiers overwhelm the Texan defenders, killing 182 to 257 Texans, including William Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett.

1918 US naval boat "Cyclops" disappears in Bermuda Triangle.

1944 British and Canadian sailors boards abandoned German U-boat U-774 seeking Enigma code machine, but are forced to scuttle the sub when efforts to tow it fail.

1947 XB-45, 1st US 4-engine jet bomber, makes 1st test flight, Muroc, CA

1967 Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Allilujeva approaches the US Embassy in New Delhi, India, and asks for political asylum.

1970 A Catholic man is shot dead by British soldiers in Belfast, North Ireland.

1987 Belgian ferry "Herald of Free Enterprise" sinks; 192 die.

1988 3 IRA suspects shot dead in Gibraltar by SAS officers.

1990 SR-71 sets a transcontinental record, flying 2,404 miles in 1:08:17

1991 Following Iraq's capitulation in the Persian Gulf conflict, US President George H. W. Bush told Congress that "aggression is defeated. The war is over"

1998 British Union Flag begins to be flown full-mast over Buckingham Palace whenever British monarch not in residence, following change of protocol after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

[Jimbuna]

1876 Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for the telephone in the US

1912 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen announces his team was the first to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911, 34 days before British explorer Robert Falcon Scott.

1936 German dictator Adolf Hitler breaks the Treaty of Versailles by sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland.

1942 15 Mk-VB Spitfires reach Malta.

1946 Bikini Atoll islanders are evacuated by the US government to make way for a nuclear testing site.

1974 "USS Monitor", Union Ship sunk in 1862 during US Civil War, restored at Cape Hatteras.

[Jimbuna]

1531 King Henry VIII is recognized as the supreme head of the Church in England by the Convocation of Canterbury.

1817 The New York Stock Exchange is founded.

1915 1st US navy minelayer, Baltimore, commissioned.

1971 Gun battle between Official Irish Republican Army and Provisional IRA leave 1 man killed; result of feud between two wings of the IRA developing since the split in 1970

1973 The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) undertakes its first operation in Great Britain, planting four car bombs in London. Ten members of PIRA are later arrested at Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the country.

1983 President Reagan 1st known use of term "Evil Empire" (about the USSR) in speech in Florida.

2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 with 239 people on board loses contact and disappears, prompting the most expensive search effort in history and one of the most enduring aviation mysteries.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

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

Actually the only one so designated; all others, Five star admirals FADMs as opposed to Dewey's insignia as Admiral of the Navy A modest man, he always wore his Battle of Manila 'Dewey Medal' on his Admiral of the Navy uniform reversed: so as not to show off his image on the reverse side: There were 1,848 men of the Navy and Marine Corps eligible for the Medal.

The Navy originally had an established precursor 5-star rank of Admiral of the Navy, that was superior to Admiral. The rank used the 1867 regulation Admiral insignia. This rank was established and given only to Admiral George Dewey, in recognition of his victory at Manila Bay in 1898. On March 2, 1899, Congress passed Pub. L. 55–378 approving the creation of the rank. The Senate confirmed Dewey's promotion to that rank on March 14, 1903, and he was officially promoted to Admiral of the Navy on March 24, 1903, with a retroactive date-of-rank of March 2, 1899.one wonders if that incl. the 4 years' back pay??! The congressional act also stipulated that upon Dewey's death, the rank would cease to exist. Dewey died on January 16, 1917, ending the Navy's use of the rank.

[Jimbuna]

1841 US Supreme Court rules the kidnapped slaves from the Spanish schooner the Amistad are free.

1862 USS Monitor and CSS Merrimack battle in Hampton Roads.

1916 Mexican General Francisco Pancho Villa invades the United States (18 killed)

1935 Adolf Hitler publicly announces the creation of a new air force, the Luftwaffe.

1945 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo with 120,000 fire bombs.

1961 Soviet flight Sputnik 9 carries and returns from orbit a dog named Chernushka (Blackie), frogs, and a guinea pig.

1974 The last Japanese soldier, a guerrilla operating in the Philippines, surrenders 29 years after World War II ends.

[Jimbuna]

1927 Bavaria lifts ban on Adolf Hitler's speeches.

1944 U-575 sinks British corvette HMS Asphodel in the Atlantic Ocean killing 92 of the 97 men aboard.

1945 Deadliest air raid of World War II sets Tokyo on fire after nighttime B-29 bombings; more than 100,000 people die, mostly civilians.

1945 Fieldmarshal Albert Kesselring succeeds Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of German Army Command in the West.

1948 1st civilian to exceed speed of sound - Herb H Hoover, Edwards Air Force Base, California.

[Jimbuna]

1915 The British declare a blockade of all German ports.

1958 American B-47 accidentally drops nuclear bomb 15,000 ft on a family home in Mars Bluff, South Carolina; creates crater 75 ft across, bomb without its nuclear capsule.

2011 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people and causing the second worst nuclear accident in history at Fukushima nuclear plant.

2018 China's National People's Congress approves removal of term limits for a leader, allowing Xi Jinping to be president for life.