This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1858 "Big Ben", a 13.76 tonne bell, is recast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

1912 RMS Titanic sets sail from Southampton for her maiden (and final) voyage.

1923 Adolf Hitler demands "hatred and more hatred" in Berlin.

1932 Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected President of Germany in a runoff election against Adolf Hitler.

1963 USS Thresher, a nuclear powered submarine, sinks 220 miles east of Boston killing 129 men, including 17 civilians.

1972 US, USSR and 70 other nations agree to ban biological weapons.

2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154M crashes near Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board including President Lech Kaczyński.

[Jimbuna]

1783 Hostilities formally cease in the American Revolutionary War.

1900 The first modern submarine designed and built by John Philip Holland is purchased by the U.S. Navy.

1912 RMS Titanic leaves Queenstown, Ireland, for NY.

1945 SS burns and shoots 1,100 at Gardelegen.

1945 Four soldiers in the Sixth Armored Division of the US Third Army liberate the Nazi concentration camp, Buchenwald.

1950 US B-29 bomber shot down over Latvia.

1951 US President Harry Truman relieves General Douglas McArthur of command in Korea.

2019 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London by police and arrested on failure to appear in court on US extradition charges.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1950 US B-29 bomber shot down over Latvia.

< THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A PBY4-2 PRIVATEER-TWO DAYS EARLIER??>

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-to..._United_States

ON 4/8/50 https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/secret-casualties-of-the-cold-war-180967122/

Ferret flights, as the reconnaissance missions had been nicknamed, dated back to World War II, when converted bombers carrying electronic equipment located enemy radar stations. Cold war ferret flights, made by the Navy and Air Force, had a similar purpose: pinpointing the location and capabilities of the enemy’s radar. In the event of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, the information would be critical to the U.S. Strategic Air Command bombers, which would have to jam, destroy, or evade radar in order to strike Soviet targets.Flying unarmed and at night, along the Soviet borders or even hundreds of miles inland, the ferret crews did not try to hide from enemy radar; instead, they would get deliberately caught. Then they could listen to the enemy response through radio, radar, and other signals. The plan was to capture the information, then get out before fighters were scrambled or missiles were launched.
Often missions didn’t go according to plan. Because the ferret missions were top secret, the families knew nothing about the nature of the flights—or what happened when they went wrong. Finally, in 1992, documents about the flights were declassified. A joint U.S.-Russia commission was established to resolve cases, and families and private citizens doggedly undertook their own efforts to learn the fate of their loved ones. But 126 airmen are still unaccounted for. Their families are still waiting to find out what happened to them.

<RB-29 SURVEILLANCE PLANE

In Lepaja, Latvia, there is a rare example of official recognition of one of the shootdowns. Initiated in 2000, an annual ceremony at the Mother Sea Monument commemorates the downing of Jack Fette’s Privateer and the loss of the crew. Two commemorative plaques are also embedded in the monument. In 2015 Kathy and Paul Fiffick attended the ceremony, the first crew members’ family to do so. “They pulled out all the stops,” says Kathy. Paul recalls the moving speeches by the Latvians. “They always looked at the aircrew as a model,” he says. “Someday if [the Latvians] persisted, they would gain their independence from the Soviets.”

https://stationhypo.com/2018/04/08/remembering-the-crew-members-of-u-s-navy-pb4y-2-shootdown-by-the-soviets-april-8-1950/

It is the official position of the United States that aircrew members of flight 59645 were captured and held in Soviet Gulags until their death. Below is the case study: ...On 17 July 1956, the department of State sent a demarche to the soviet government, in which Washington referred to reports concerning detained U.S. military personnel that had “become so persistent, detailed and credible” that they merited the attention of the Soviets. The demarche specifically referred to reports from persons formerly detained in the Soviet Union that they had “conversed with, seen, or heard reports concerning United States military aviation,“ in the Gulag, and concluded that the United States government “is compelled to believe that the Soviet government has had or continues to have under detention” members of the Privateer crew and the crew of another lost flight, an RB-29 shot down over the Sea of Japan on 13 June 1952. The Soviet government rejected this assertion on 13 August 1956, stating that “no American from the personnel of the U.S. Air Force or U.S Naval Aviation are on the territory of the Soviet Union.”

MY NEWLY-WED DAD WAS 'REUPPED' FOR KOREA 1950 ON B-29'S BY THEN CANNON FODDER FOR SOVIET MIG FIGHTERS; FORTUNATELY HIS ENGINEERING SKILL AT COFFEE PRODUCTION WAS DEEMED MORE NECESSARY TO THE WAR EFFORT....I'M HERE BLOGGING AWAY AS A RESULT! 3/12/51??!! WITH A PERPETUAL GREAT MUG OF FRENCH ROAST ALWAYS AT HAND!

[Jimbuna]

1945 Canadian troops liberate Nazi concentration camp Westerbork, Netherlands.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office and Vice President Harry Truman is sworn in as 33rd US President.

1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit Earth (Vostok 1)

1966 First B-52 bombing on North Vietnam.

2009 U.S. Navy rescues captain Richard Phillips, killing three pirates and capturing a fourth.

[Aktungbby]

1955: the Salk vaccine against polio was declared 'safe and effective'....Havine grown up in Minnesota, where it was distributed later than other areas,, several of my friends were afflicted to varying degrees with polio, and are handicapped to this day. I remember the needle in the shoulder really hurt! And then came AIDs, and I lost more friends until decent antidotes were discovered....Strange, during this corona virus lockdown, 65 years later, waiting to hear if a new vaccine will "be approved" against Mother Nature's latest population reduction schemes!!??

[Jimbuna]

1904 A squadron of the Russian fleet is decoyed out of Port Arthur by Japanese maneuvers, when they realize they are sailing into a trap; their battleship Petropavlovsk hits a mine and sinks, with a loss of 700 men.

1906 Mutiny on Portuguese battleships Dom Carlos and Vasco da Gama.

1912 Royal Flying Corps forms (later Royal Air Force)

1940 Second battle of Narvik; 3 German destroyers and one U-boat sunk by the Royal Navy, 5 more German destroyers scuttled.

1945 Canadian soldier Léo Major single-handedly liberates Dutch town of Zwolle by fooling Germans into thinking a raid had begun.

1960 France becomes fourth nuclear nation exploding an A-Bomb in Sahara.

1970 Apollo 13 announces "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here", as Beech-built oxygen tank explodes en route to Moon.

[Jimbuna]

1865 US President Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington.

1912 RMS Titanic hits an iceberg at 11.40pm off Newfoundland.

1918 Douglas Campbell is 1st US ace pilot (shooting down 5th German plane)

1942 Destroyer Roper sinks German U-85 of US east coast.

1943 A JN-25 decrypt by American intelligence detailing a forthcoming visit by Marshal Admiral Yamamoto to Balalae Island results in his plane shot down 4 days later.

1944 General Eisenhower becomes the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

1945 American planes bomb Tokyo & damage the Imperial Palace.

1960 1st underwater launching of Polaris missile.

1994 US F-15 accidentally shoots 2 US helicopters down over Iraq, 26 die.

1999 NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees - Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed.

[Jimbuna]

1865 Abraham Lincoln dies 9 hours after he is shot attending the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington.

1912 RMS Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland as the band plays on, with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 people.

1942 George VI awards George Cross to people of Malta.

1945 British Army liberates Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

1945 US troops occupy concentration camp Colditz.

1952 The maiden flight of the B-52 Stratofortress prototype.

2019 Paris cathedral Notre Dame catches fire, toppling its spire and destroying its roof.

[mapuc]

On this day 15 April 1452 a boy came into the world-He would become very famous even this day today
His name was
Leonardo da Vinci

[Jimbuna]

1918 The British House of Commons passes a new Military Service Bill, taking men up to 55 years old and extending to Ireland.

1939 The Soviet Union proposes an alliance with Britain and France to counter Nazi Germany; the Soviets would later sign a secret agreement with the Nazis.

1945 Dutch town of Arnhem, site of failed Operation Market Garden, is freed by British and Canadian forces.

1945 Colditz Castle, the high-security prisoner of war camp in Germany, is liberated by American troops.

1948 Organization for European Economic Cooperation (EEC) forms in Paris.

1951 British submarine Affray sank in English Channel, killing 75.

2003 Treaty of Accession is signed in Athens admitting 10 new member states to the European Union.

[Jimbuna]

1961 1,400 Cuban exiles land in Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

2013 North Korea blocks a South Korean supply delegation from the Kaesong joint industrial zone.

[Aktungbby]

1906: a devasting earthquake struck San Francisco followed by raging fires.The
death toll 3-6 thousand. Considering two recent quakes in Napa(2014-epicentered 500 yards from the house) and raging fires(2017-8,000 ft from the house)..."the new normal" is 114 years old today!...and real-estate prices just keep climbing!

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

1906: a devasting earthquake struck San Francisco followed by raging fires.The
death toll 3-6 thousand. Considering two recent quakes in Napa(2014-epicentered 500 yards from the house) and raging fires(2017-8,000 ft from the house)..."the new normal" is 114 years old today!...and real-estate prices just keep climbing!

Wow! I didn't know that ... I figure that's why San Francisco has so many gay men and women ...

When they died the ghost didn't care who they got in and they brought their preferences with them

[Jimbuna]

1783 Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day when it began.

1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire kills nearly 4,000 while destroying 75% of the city.

1912 Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

1915 French pilot Roland Garros is shot down and glides to a landing on the German side of the lines during World War I.

1916 US Secretary of State Warns Germany that the USA may break diplomatic relations unless torpedo attacks on unarmed ships stop.

1934 Adolf Hitler names Joachim von Ribbentrop ambassador for disarmament.

1942 James Doolittle bombs Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

1943 Operation Vengeance: US Army Air Force P-38G fighter aircraft from Kukum Field on Guadalcanal ambush and shoot down the transport bomber aircraft of Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy and mastermind behind the Pearl Harbour attack.

[Jimbuna]

1775 American Revolution begins in Lexington, Massachusetts. The "Shot Heard Round the World" took place in Concord later that day.

1943 Jews refuse to surrender the Warsaw Ghetto to SS officer Jürgen Stroop, who then orders its destruction, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1945 US aircraft carrier Franklin heavily damaged in Japanese air raid.

1967 Beatles sign a contract to stay together for 10 years (they don't).

1989 Gun turret explodes on USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.