This date in history

[Jimbuna]

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.

1941 Nazis kill entire Jewish population of Grodz, Lithuania.

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

1945 US destroyer Underhill torpedoed West of Guam.

1967 Chinese army/air force/fleet repress uprising in Wuhan City.

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

[Jimbuna]

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.

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

1943 RAF bombs Fokker airplane factory in Amsterdam.

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 underwater A-bomb at Bikini (5th atomic explosion)

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

[Jimbuna]

1914 First Lord of the Admiralty (British Minister of Navy) Winston Churchill orders British fleet to remain alert.

1914 For the next two days, the foreign ministries and leaders of major states work feverishly to avert war.

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.

[Aktungbby]

1794: French revolutionary, Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre , is overthrown and placed under arrest...to beed the next day, a failed pistol suicide attempt and gunshotted jaw notwithstanding. Poor fellow, he didn't lose his appeal... he had no appeal at all! <Cartoon showing Robespierre guillotining the executioner after having guillotined everyone else in France...talk about 'getting hoist with your own petard!as Madame Defarge watched??!!

[Jimbuna]

1586 Walter Raleigh brings the first tobacco to England from Virginia.

1866 Atlantic telegraph cable successfully laid (1,686 miles long)

1909 British ship SS Waratah is last seen en-route from Durban to Cape Town; 211 on board are missing and no trace of the ship ever found.

1943 772 British bombers attack Hamburg.

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

1948 Otto Skorzeny escapes anti-nazi camp at Darmstadt.

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

[_dgn_]

Death of Maximilien de Robespierre, 36 years old, surnamed by people "the Incorruptible", one of the 12 members (but perhaps one of the most influential) of the Committee of Public Safety's (a group of deputies responsible for leading ministries, and thus for waging the war against the Coalitions).


On July 27, 1794, at the time of his arrest in the middle of the National Convention, the last words of this politician (considered to be the soul of the French Revolution), and moreover, his last words of man (since he then kept silence until his execution) would have been: "The Republic is lost, the robbers triumph!"


The victorious batlle of Fleurus (8 Messidor An II or June 26, 1794, a month earlier) may be the main reason for Robespierre's "fall" : member of the Committee since one year, he wanted only to liberate France from foreign troops, not to wage a war of conquest. However, he had contributed greatly to forging the tools of victory, in particular by creating an army of one million men (a record for the time !), arming them, dressing them, feeding them, providing them with mounts ...


This made the fortune of the suppliers to the armies. The victory of Fleurus had liberated the territory, but Robespierre didn't intend to go any further, with an offensive war. Already hostile to war in 1792, he had rightly stated: "No one likes armed missionaries". He suggested that a war full of conquests would bring out a new Caesar. "If the chiefs of the armies are Caesars or Cromwells, they take over authority themselves." So contacts with Pitt for peace were ongoing. But powerful suppliers to the armies didn't want to see their huge incomes run out.


The same day, he was guillotined with 21 other people, including another important member of the Committee of Public Safety's, Louis-Antoine de Saint Just, the real winner of the Battle of Fleurus (and not Carnot). Among the victims was a MP who asked to share his plight: his brother, Augustin de Robespierre. The other MP in the same case(requesting to be arrested in the Nartional Convention at the same time as Robespierre), Philippe Le Bas, succeeded in committing suicide with pistol in the early morning of 10 Thermidor, in the Hotel de Ville of Paris.


History proved that Robespierre was right : a Caesar conquered Italy, looted it, brought for him and the suppliers to the armies (close to the future French Directory) huge masses of money. This Caesar then became Director, Consul and Emperor, continuing war of conquest over war of conquest. The "armed missionaries" bringing the principles and laws of the French Republic into their luggage throughout Europe also contributed, unintentionally, to a national feeling in the European countries (and the premises of German unity, by exemple).

But the relationship between the Incorruptible and the future Caesar are amazing. The protector of a certain artillery captain named Napoléon Buonaparte during the battle for Toulon was Augustin de Robespierre, representative of the Convention to the Armed Forces. Napoleon was arrested after the "fall" of Robespierre, for being close to the "tyrant". Moreover, due to its important reform legislation (largely exported throughout Europe), Napoléon is sometimes surnamed by historians as "Robespierre on a horse" !


Finally, who remembers that the motto of the French Republic (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity), present on all public buildings, coins, stamps, military flags ..., is due to a certain Maximilien of Robespierre, in a speech of December 1790 ?


RIP, Maximilien. No matter what was said to tarnish your reputation, you are still among us.

[Aktungbby]

RIP, Maximilien. No matter what was said to tarnish your reputation, you are still among us.

^Excellent! but hey I only post as it's the only time of the year I can use the legitimately!! I only threw in Madame Defarge so I can post a picture of Blanch Yurka who captured the rôle so completely! She is of course a Minnesota girl.The way she wore her head cover and Robepierre's creation of les San Culottes is an inspiration to me:

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by _dgn_

The same day, he was guillotined with 21 other people, including another important member of the Committee of Public Safety's, Louis-Antoine de Saint Just, the real winner of the Battle of Fleurus (and not Carnot). Among the victims was a MP who asked to share his plight: his brother, Augustin de Robespierre. The other MP in the same case(requesting to be arrested in the Nartional Convention at the same time as Robespierre), Philippe Le Bas, succeeded in committing suicide with pistol in the early morning of 10 Thermidor, in the Hotel de Ville of Paris.

It's tough to be August in July 1794 <Augustine de Robepierre shown going up the stairs: #3; Maximilian was #10; I don't know how he managed it!??

In order to avoid capture, Augustin Robespierre took off his shoes and jumped from a ledge. He landed on the steps or on some bayonets resulting in a pelvic fracture and several serious head contusions, in an alarming state of "weakness and anxiety''. Barras ordered that Augustin to be carried back to the rooms of the Committee of General Security. After a couple of hours the prisoners were taken to the Conciergerie prison; four of them were lying on stretchers. After identification at the Revolutionary Tribunal according to the Law of 22 Prairial the twenty-two convicts were sent to the scaffold on Place de la Révolution in the early evening. Couthon was the second of the prisoners to be executed, with Augustin as the third, Hanriot as the ninth and Maximilien as the tenth.

At least his brother, Maximilian, got to 'lie in state' briefly after his failed suicide pistol shot:
I had an '64 Aurora model of this in the 60's <the basket is essential equipment: no loose heads rollin' around!

[Jimbuna]

1794 French Revolutionary figure Maximilien Robespierre and 22 other leaders of "the Terror" guillotined to thunderous cheers in Paris.

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

1943 Operation Gomorrah: RAF bombing over Hamburg causes a firestorm that kills 42,600 German civilians.

1945 Japanese premier Suzuki disregards US ultimatum to surrender.

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

1945 "Elevator girl" Betty Lou Oliver survives falling 75 stories after fog causes a US bomber plane to crash into the Empire State Building, breaking the cables supporting the elevator she was operating. This remains a world record for the longest survived elevator fall.

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

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1945 "Elevator girl" Betty Lou Oliver survives falling 75 stories after fog causes a US bomber B-25 plane to crash into the Empire State Building, breaking the cables supporting the elevator she was operating. This remains a world record for the longest survived elevator fall.

One wonders; if the British air attack on Taranto which inspired Yamamoto's attack on Pearl Harbor didn't similary affect Mr Atta with his attack on the World trade center on 9/11.... 56 years later: My grandfather was in the Empire State Building in 1945; My best college friend/dorm-mate was killed on the hundredth floor of Building one on 9/11; and an uncle escaped from building two; My sister-in-law directed the escapes from nearby building seven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center which was also severly damaged from the seismic impact of collapsing buildings one and two...but attention-wise was (understandably) overlooked by the greater disaster to the two main buildings.

[Jimbuna]

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

1949 Moscow ends the blockade of West Berlin.

1956 Jacques Cousteau's Calypso anchors in 7,500 m of water (record)

[Jimbuna]

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.

[Jimbuna]

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

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

[Jimbuna]

1798 Battle of the Nile: British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson attacks and decimates the French fleet at Aboukir Bay off the Nile Delta, Egypt.

1834 Slavery abolished throughout the British Empire - Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into effect.

1914 British Grand Fleet reaches Scapa Flow.

1914 Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany declares war on his nephew Tsar Nicholas II of Russia in WWI

1936 XI Summer Olympic Games are opened by Adolph Hitler in Berlin.

1943 Sunderland seaplanes sink U-454 & U-383

1944 Anne Frank's last diary entry; 3 days later she is arrested.

1944 Polish resistance fighters of the Home Army launch the Warsaw Uprising, the largest military effort undertaken by a resistance movement in occupied Europe.

1945 Japanese city Toyama destroyed by B-29's

1958 US atomic submarine USS Nautilus begins 1st transit of North Pole "operation Sunshine"

[Jimbuna]

1914 German troops overthrow Luxembourg.

1914 Great Britain mobilizes.

1916 Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.

1934 Adolf Hitler becomes commander-in-chief of German armed forces.

1940 Clermont-Ferrand sentences General Charles de Gaulle to death.

1943 Lt John F. Kennedy's PT-boat 109 sinks at Solomon islands.

1943 Uprising at Treblinka Concentration Camp (crematorium destroyed)

1945 After 3½ days suffering exhaustion, lack of water and shark attacks in the Philippine Sea, the surviving crew of USS Indianapolis are spotted by Wilbur “Chuck” Gwinn, a PV-1 Ventura pilot on a routine sector search. 316 had survived.