This date in history

[Red Devil]

1998 Omagh Bombing in Northern Ireland, the worst terrorist incident of The Troubles, kills 29 people and injures about 220. I was based there in 73/74. The people of Omagh were nice people. We could visit the town centre from our barracks.

This bomb was strategically placed in a car park at the opposite end of the High Street to The court House. A phone call from the INLA informed the RUC that a bomb had been placed at the Court House, thereby driving all the people towards the real bomb.

A cowardly and deliberate attack to multiple kill many many innocents. They did not discriminate between catholic or protestant, even their own were expendable.

[Jimbuna]

1896 Gold first discovered in Klondike, found at Bonanza Creek in the Yukon, Canada by George Carmack.

1945 Puyi, the last Chinese Emperor and ruler of Manchukuo is captured by Soviet troops.

1971 Over 8,000 workers go on strike in Derry, Northern Ireland, in protest at the introduction of Internment (allowing suspected terrorists to be indefinitely detained without trial)

2012 Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange is granted political asylum by Ecuador.

[Jimbuna]

1940 Adolf Hitler orders a total blockade of Great Britain.

1943 498 British bombers attack Peenemunde (development base for the V weapons)

1945 Korea is divided into North and South Korea along the 38th parallel.

1960 Francis Gary Powers U-2 spy trial opens in Moscow.

1962 East German border guards shoot and kill Peter Fechter, 18, attempting to cross Berlin Wall into western sector.

1977 Russian nuclear sub "Artika" is 1st to North Pole.

1998 Monica Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony he had an "improper physical relationship" with the intern and on the same day admits before the nation he "misled people" about the relationship.

[Jimbuna]

1914 US President Woodrow Wilson issues "Proclamation of Neutrality"

1940 Battle of Britain: The air battle known as "The Hardest Day" occurs; Luftwaffe lose approximately 69 aircraft and the RAF lose 68 in one of the largest ever air battles.

1947 Naval torpedo & mine factory explodes at Cadiz, Spain killing 300

1976 Korean axe murder incident: 2 US soldiers tasked with cutting down a poplar tree blocking the view of UN observers are killed by North Koreans claiming it was planted by Kim Il-sung in the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

[Red Devil]

1949 On this day the debonaire, extrovert, Red Devil, was born in Hull

[Dargo]

OTD in 1989 USSR admitted the secret clause of the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact. It remains one of very few treaties Russia have actually honored.

[Eisenwurst]

https://talesfromthequarterdeck.com/...-tragedy-1857/

Church Services are still held on this day after all these years.

The modern equivalent would be 4 jumbo jets crashing at the airport with only a couple of survivors.

[Jimbuna]

1911 "Mona Lisa" stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Perugia; recovered in 1913

1945 US President Harry Truman ends Lend-Lease programme.

1959 Hawaii becomes the 50th US state.

1968 Warsaw Pact forces complete their invasion of Czechoslovakia by arresting the Czech leader Alexander Dubček and forcing him to sign the Moscow Protocols.

1991 Conservative coup in the Soviet Union is crushed by popular resistance led by Boris Yeltsin in three days.

2015 First British unmanned drone hit on a UK citizen outside a conflict - ISIS fighter Reyaad Khan in Raqqa, Syria.

[Jimbuna]

1485 Battle of Bosworth Field: Henry Tudor's forces defeat English King Richard III during last battle in the Wars of the Roses. Richard is killed, the last English monarch to die in battle.

1864 First Geneva Convention adopted in Geneva "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field" signed by 12 nations.

1914 First encounter between British & German troops (in Belgium)

1944 Adolf Hitler orders Paris to be destroyed.

1962 Failed assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle.

1972 IRA bomb explodes prematurely at a customs post at Newry, County Down - 9 people, including three members of the IRA and five Catholic civilians, are killed in the explosion.

[Jimbuna]

1305 Scottish patriot William Wallace is executed for high treason by Edward I of England at Smithfield, London.

1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact and secretly divide Poland between themselves, setting the stage for World War II

1942 Battle of Stalingrad: 600 Luftwaffe planes bomb Stalingrad (40,000 die)

1943 50th day of Battle of Kursk, USSR: Largest tank battle in history ends with Russia's defeat of Germany; over 10,000 tanks take part, nearly 250,,000 combatants killed.

1990 East & West Germany announced that they would unite on Oct 3

[Jimbuna]

1875 Captain Matthew Webb makes the first observed and unassisted swim across the English Channel in 21 hours and 45 minutes.

1892 British naval officer David Beatty is promoted to lieutenant.

1940 First British night bombing of Germany (Berlin)

1943 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten appointed Supreme Allied Commander in SE Asia.

1944 France 2nd Tank division under General Leclerc reaches Notre Dame.

1944 French General Charles de Gaulle walks the Champs Elysees in Paris after the liberation of the city from Nazi occupation.

1991 Linux is born when Linus Torvalds sends off an email announcing his project to create a new computer operating system.

[Jimbuna]

1346 Battle of Crécy, south of Calais in northern France; Edward III's English longbows defeat Philip VI's army, cannons used for first time in battle.

1682 English astronomer Edmond Halley first observes the comet named after him.

1922 Japanese cruiser Niitaka driven onto rocks in storm at Kamchatka, 284 killed.

1945 Japanese diplomats board USS Missouri to receive instructions on Japan's surrender at the end of WWII

1985 French government denies knowledge of bombing of the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland New Zealand.

[Jimbuna]

1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, 60 nations agree to condemn 'recourse to war for the solution of international controversies'.

1939 Erich Warsitz in a Heinkel He-178 makes the first manned jet-propelled flight.

1942 Soviet woman sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko arrives in Washington D.C., the first Soviet citizen welcomed at the White House, by Eleanor Roosevelt.

1945 US troops land in Japan after Japanese surrender.

1979 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, cousin of Queen Elizabeth II and last Viceroy of India, is killed along with three companions, two of them children by the IRA when his boat is blown up near Sligo, Ireland.

[Jimbuna]

1146 European leaders outlaw the crossbow, intending to end war for all time.

1791 HMS Pandora sank after running aground on a reef the previous day, on her return from her search for the Bounty and the mutineers who had taken her.

1918 Fanya Kaplan attempts but fails to assassinate Lenin, new leader of Soviet Russia.

1932 Hermann Goering elected Chairman of the German Reichstag.

1939 Isoroku Yamamoto appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese fleet.

1941 Winston Churchill approves a nuclear programme (Tube Alloys), first national leader to do so.

1945 US General Douglas MacArthur lands in Japan.

[Jimbuna]

1715 King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years—the longest of any major European monarch.

1915 The German ambassador to the US pledges again that German submarines will no longer sink liners without warning and providing safety of passengers and crew following the sinking of the British liner "Arabic"

1939 Adolf Hitler orders extermination of mentally ill through the "T4 Euthanasia Program," arguing that wartime "was the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill"

1939 World War II starts when Germany invades Poland by attacking the Free City of Danzig.

1944 King George VI promotes Montgomery to field marshal.

1950 13 North Korean divisions open assault on UN lines.

1951 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orders establishment of Israeli secret service Mossad.