This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1903 The Wright brothers 1st file a patent for a flying machine, which is granted 3 years later.

1918 Germany begins using long-range gun, the 'Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz' ('Emperor William Gun'), aka 'Paris Gun' to shell Paris from Crépy-en-Laonnais, 75 miles away; over several days, 303 rounds kill 256 and wound over 600

1919 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party re-establishes a five-member Politburo which becomes the center of political power in the Soviet Union. Original members Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Krestinsky.

1933 German Reichstag hastily passes the Enabling Act and President Paul von Hindenburg signs it the same day, granting Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.

1945 British 7th Black Watch crosses the Rhine into Germany.

1945 British Prime Minister Churchill visits Montgomery's headquarter in Straelen.

1945 Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey becomes the first British commander to cross the Rhine during the Allied invasion of Germany.

1983 US President Ronald Reagan introduces Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars")

[Jimbuna]

1603 Scottish King James VI son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I of England in succession to Elizabeth I, thus joining the English and Scottish crowns.

1878 British frigate Eurydice sunk; 300 lost.

1906 "Census of the British Empire" shows Great Britain rules 1/5th of the world.

1942 US government begins moving native-born citizens with Japanese ancestry into detention centres under Executive Order 9066, with intention of preventing home-grown espionage.

1944 76 Allied officers escape Stalag Luft 3 (Great Escape)

1944 Ardeatine massacre: Nazis led by SS officers Herbert Kappler, Erich Priebke and Karl Hass execute 335 civilians and political prisoners in occupied Rome in retaliation for the previous day's Via Rassela bombing that killed 33 Germans.

1944 RAF rear gunner Nicholas Alkemade survives a jump from his Lancaster bomber 18,000 feet over Germany without a parachute; his fall broken by pine trees and soft snow, suffers only a sprained leg.

1945 Operation Varsity: In the largest one-day airborne operation of all time, British, US & Canadian paratroopers land east of the Rhine in Northern Germany.

1949 SS police chief in the Netherlands Hanns Albin Rauter's request for a pardon denied, executed by firing squad.

1958 Elvis Presley joins the U.S. Army (serial number 53310761)

1982 US sub Jacksonville collides with a Turkish freighter near Virginia.

1999 Kosovo War: NATO commences air bombardment against Yugoslavia, marking the first time NATO has attacked a sovereign country.

[Jimbuna]

1915 First submarine disaster; a US F-4 sinks off Hawaii, killing 21

1917 Canadian flying ace Billy Bishop claims his first victory, shooting down and mortally wounding German Leutnant Theiller.

1949 The Soviet Union begins Operation Pribioi, the mass deportation of 90,000 Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to inhospitable areas in the Soviet Union.

1960 First guided missile launched from nuclear powered submarine (Halibut)

1961 Elvis Presley performs live on the USS Arizona.

1970 Concorde makes its first supersonic flight (700 MPH/1,127 KPH)

[Jimbuna]

1942 First "Eichmann transport" to Auschwitz & Birkenau concentration camps.

1945 Allied generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George S. Patton launch attack at Remagen on the Rhine.

1945 Allies led by US Marine Corps secure island of Iwo Jima from Imperial Japanese Army, after 18,000 Japanese & 6,000 Americans killed.

1970 500th nuclear explosion announced by the US since 1945

[Jimbuna]

1915 Typhoid Mary [Mary Mallon] is arrested and returned to quarantine on North Brother Island, New York after spending five years evading health authorities and causing several further outbreaks of typhoid.

1941 Adolf Hitler signs Directive 27 (assault on Yugoslavia)

1942 -28] Allies raid German submarine base in St Nazaire.

1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sails to eastern banks of Rhine.

1945 General Eisenhower declares German defenses on Western Front broken.

1945 Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins.

1964 Great Train Robbers sentenced to a total of 307 years behind bars.

1977 583 die in aviation's worst ever disaster when two Boeing 747s collide at Tenerife airport in Spain.

[Rockstar]

On this day in 1794, the United States established a permanent navy, complete with six frigates.

1. USS President 44 gun
2. USS Constellation 38 gun
3. USS Chesapeake 38 gun
4. USS United States 44 gun
5. USS Congress 38 gun
6. USS Constitution 44 gun and still serving as the oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy. Launched in 1797 she is also the world's oldest ship still afloat.

[Red Devil]

1964 Great Train Robbers sentenced to a total of 307 years behind bars.

Nowadays they would have got 5 years and out. If they were unlucky. The haul was 'only' £2m, but because a guard got brain injuries, they threw the book at them. One man was never identified or caught. They became sort of 'public celebrities' on the same lines as the mythical Robin Hood.

[Jimbuna]

1935 Influential Nazi Propaganda film "Triumph of the Will" released showing Nuremberg rallies, commissioned by Adolf Hitler and directed by Leni Riefenstahl.

1941 Sea battle at Cape Matapan: British fleet under Cunningham defeats Italy.

1942 British naval forces raid Nazi occupied French port of St Nazaire.

1942 St. Nazaire Raid (Operation Chariot): obsolete British destroyer HMS Campbeltown, rigged with explosives and flying German flags, rams gates of German occupied St Nazaire port in France, and self detonates; kills 360 Germans, and disables the dry dock for duration of the war.

1945 Last German V-1 (buzz bomb) attack on London.

1979 A partial meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the US results in the release of radioactive gas and iodine into the atmosphere but no deaths.

2003 In a "friendly fire" incident, two US A-10 Thunderbolt IIs from the 190th Fighter Squadron attack British tanks participating in the invasion of Iraq, killing British soldier Matty Hull.

[Aktungbby]

1935:the Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will", directed by Leni Riefenstal, premiered in Berlin with Adolf Hitler present.

[Red Devil]

2003 In a "friendly fire" incident, two US A-10 Thunderbolt IIs from the 190th Fighter Squadron attack British tanks participating in the invasion of Iraq, killing British soldier Matty Hull. They were Warrior APCs. Sadly, this happens far too often with US Forces..

[Jimbuna]

1848 Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam in the river upstream.

1912 Captain Robert Falcon Scott, storm-bound in a tent near South Pole, makes last entry in his diary "the end cannot be far"

1942 British cruiser HMS Trinidad torpedoes itself in the Barents Sea.

1942 German submarine U-585 sinks.

1951 American citizens Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted and sentenced to death for conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union.

1973 US troops leave Vietnam, 9 yrs after Tonkin Resolution.

1974 Chinese farmers discover the Terracotta Army near Xi'an, 8,000 clay warrior statues buried to guard the tomb of China's 1st emperor, Qin Shi Huang.

2022 In a major victory for Ukraine, Russia announces it is withdrawing its badly mauled forces from around Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.

[Red Devil]

1975. Red Devil married Sue. 48 years later still together

[Aktungbby]

1867: Queen Victoria gives 'royal assent' to the creation of Canada in the British North America Act. The act united New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Canada into the Dominion of Canada and took effect July 1 1867. My maternal grandparents immigrated from Brockville near Toronto to Bridgeport, Connecticutt around 1910. Given the miserable state of Amerika these daze, I might just decide to emigrate back to Vancouver, BC; there must be some kind of "law of return" to facilitate this!

[Rockstar]

On this day in 1973, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam. Under terms of the Paris Peace Accord. A handful of American military advisors and a contingent of embassy guards remain until the fall of the Saigon in 1975.

[Jimbuna]

1867 Alaska Purchase: US buys Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 ($109 million in 2018), roughly 2 cents an acre.

1939 Heinkel He 100 fighter sets a world airspeed record of 463 mph

1945 World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 to Americans.

1972 Northern Ireland's Government and Parliament dissolved by the British Government and 'direct rule' from Westminster is introduced.

1979 Airey Neave, a British politician, is killed by a car bomb as he exits the Palace of Westminster. The Irish National Liberation Army claims responsibility.

1981 US President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded in an assassination attempt by John Hinckley, three others are also wounded.