This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1942 Bełżec Concentration Camp opens with the transport of 30,000 Lublin Polish Jews.

1942 General Doug MacArthur arrives in Australia to become supreme commander.

1944 Mount Vesuvius in Italy erupts after months of volcanic unrest, destroying several towns near the volcano.

1960 US President Eisenhower forms anti-Castro-exile army under the CIA

1966 US submarine locates missing hydrogen bomb on the Mediterranean sea floor.

1970 US casts their first UN Security Council veto (Support England)

[Jimbuna]

1890 German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck resigns after 19 years after disagreement with German Emperor Wilhelm II

1940 Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler meet at Brenner Pass where the Italian dictator agrees he will, in due course, join Germany's impending war effort in the west.

1965 Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1944 Mount Vesuvius in Italy erupts after months of volcanic unrest, destroying several towns near the volcano.

The eruption in the middle of the italian campaign had some strange consequences. Only a 3 on the VEI scale; not a 5 as the AD 97 eruption that destroyed Herculanium and Pompei, there were consequences to the 340th Bombardment Group of which author Joseph Heller (Catch 22)was member. But even Vesuvius does not always have Vesuvian eruptions. Between A.D. 79 and 1944, Vesuvius experienced 27 significant eruptions . The 1944 eruption, like eight of the 10 previous eruptions, was effusive-explosive, combining flowing lava with violent expulsions of rock and ash. The other two were purely effusive, including one in 1855 that sent a lava flow into San Sebastiano. The last explosive eruption of Vesuvius occurred on Aug. 8, 1779, ejecting lava fountains up to a kilometer above the crater.

The 1944 eruption ejected 0.01 cubic kilometers of material, ranking it a 3 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index , which ranges from zero to 8 and is based largely on the volume of ejecta. By comparison, the A.D. 79 eruption was a VEI 5, the same as the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. A VEI-4 eruption of Vesuvius in 1631 ejected 0.2 to 1.1 cubic kilometers of material, some of which fell 1,200 kilometers away in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), and killed an estimated 4,000 people.

On the other side of the volcano from San Sebastiano, at Pompeii Airfield in Poggiomarino, a few kilometers east of the base of Vesuvius near the town of Terzigno, the U.S. Army Air Force’s 340th Bombardment Group at first thought they would not need to evacuate. The unit’s experiences with Vesuvius are described in a series of diary entries written by Sgt. Robert F. McRae.
On March 20, 1944, he wrote: “As I sit in my tent … I can hear at four- to 10-second intervals the loud rumbling of the volcano on the third day of its present eruption. The noise is like that of bowling balls slapping into the pins on a giant bowling alley. To look above the mountain tonight, one would think that the world was on fire. The thickly clouded sky glows like that above a huge forest fire. Glowing brighter as new spouts of flame and lava are spewn from the crater. As the clouds pass from across the top of the mountain, the flame and lava can be seen shooting high into the sky to spill over the sides and run in red streams down the slopes. ... Today it is estimated that a path of molten lava 1 mile long, half a mile wide, and 8 feet deep is rolling down the mountain. Towns on the slopes are preparing to evacuate. Our location is, apparently, safe. At any rate no one here, civilian or Army authorities, seems too much worried. Lava has not started to flow down this side of the mountain as yet but is flowing on the other side toward Naples.” But their luck would soon change — something for which the unit was known. The unit’s unlucky reputation — famously noted in the 1961 novel “Catch-22” by author Joseph Heller (who joined the 340th as a B-25 bombardier in May 1944 on Corsica, where the unit was relocated after the eruption) — was based largely on the high fatality rates for bomber crews. But it was also exacerbated by its encounter with Vesuvius. On March 21, McRae wrote: “At about 5:30 p.m. small streams of lava began running down our side of the mountain. The first on this side. Soon many swift, fiery streams were flowing in all directions. The rumbling continues — more prolonged now. This evening it would seem that the whole top of the mountain is burning. Fiery patches here and there resemble a log which is just burning out. Heavy explosions occur followed by prolonged rumbling while sparks and molten lava are thrown high into the air to fall like rain on all sides of the cone.”

McRae didn’t write again until March 29. In the intervening eight days, the crews had been evacuated to a nearby airfield where they spent a frigid night in a tobacco shed, leaving their airplanes behind. McRae, part of the team sent to inspect the damage, later reported “almost complete devastation” with “tents torn to ribbons” and “88 B-25 Mitchells — $25 million worth of aircraft … a total loss.”
The damage to the bombers, some of which were ultimately repaired and returned to service, was not reported in the U.S. press until late April. Germany, however, was aware of the losses earlier. In a mid-April diary entry, McRae noted that Axis Sally, an American who broadcast German propaganda from Berlin, said that Vesuvius had decimated the 340th Bomb Group. “Actually a sprained wrist and a few minor cuts were the only casualties,” he wrote.
While Vesuvius claimed no military fatalities during the 1944 eruption, 26 Italian civilians were killed and nearly 12,000 were displaced. Most died near Salerno, where heavy ashfall collapsed roofs. Falling volcanic rock killed three in Terzigno. And in San Sebastiano, hot ash boiled a water tank, which exploded, killing two children. After the Allied invasion of Italy in the fall of 1943, U.S. and British forces had advanced north from the beachheads at Salerno and taken Naples and the surrounding countryside but fighting continued in the north. With the Italian government in disarray, it was the U.S. military that took command of public safety and the evacuations.

Having been adamently trained to avoid Nimbus clouds in my Cessna172, ...what R those B-25 guys even doing that close to that cloud??!!

[Jimbuna]

1920 US Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles for second time refusing to ratify League of Nations' covenant (maintaining isolation policy)

1945 800 killed as Kamikaze attacked USS Franklin off Japan.

1945 Adolf Hitler issues "Nero Decree" to destroy all German factories.

1985 US Senate votes 55-45 to authorize production of the MX "Peacekeeper" intercontinental ballistic missile.

2003 Airstrikes by an American and British-led coalition signal the beginning of the Invasion of Iraq, without United Nations support and in defiance of world opinion.

[Jimbuna]

1815 Napoleon enters Paris after escape from Elba, begins 100-day rule.

1917 After the sinking of 3 more American merchant ships, US President Woodrow Wilson meets with cabinet, who agree that war is inevitable.

1933 Dachau the first Nazi concentration camp, is completed.

1934 Rudolf Kuhnold demonstrates radar in Kiel Germany.

1942 General Douglas MacArthur vows "I came through and I shall return" after escaping Japanese-occupied Philippines.

1945 US 70th Infantry Division captures Saarbrucken, immediately prior the invasion of Germany by the western Allies.

1972 Donegall Street bombing: the Provisional Irish Republican Army detonate its first car bomb on Donegall Street in Belfast; four civilians, two RUC officers and a UDR soldier killed while 148 people were wounded.

[Jimbuna]

1933 Day of Potsdam in Nazi Germany, a ceremony to open the new Reichstag after the fire in February; Adolf Hitler and Paul von Hindenburg shake hands in public.

1943 Assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler fails.

2014 Russia formally annexes Crimea amid international condemnation.

[Jimbuna]

1941 James Stewart is inducted into the Army, becoming the first major American movie star to wear a military uniform in World War II

1944 American movie star Jimmy Stewart flies his 12th combat mission, leading the 2nd Bomb Wing in an attack on Berlin.

1965 US confirms its troops used chemical warfare against the Vietcong.

2018 US President Donald Trump imposes $60 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports.

[Jimbuna]

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

1933 Enabling Act: German Reichstag grants Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.

1945 Battle of Okinawa: US Navy ships bomb the Japanese island of Okinawa in preparation for the Allied invasion; it would become the largest battle of the Pacific War in World War II

2019 Syrian Democratic Forces announce that the last Islamic State territory has been retaken raising flags in Baghuz, Syria and ending the five-year Islamic State "caliphate"

[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.

1916 German submarines torpedo the unarmed French cross-channel packet 'Sussex'

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 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.

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

2020 Indian PM Narendra Modi orders a 21 day lockdown for world's second most populous country of 1.3 billion people to deal with COVID-19

2020 China's Hubei province, the original center of the COVID-19 outbreak eases restrictions on travel after a nearly two-month lockdown.

[Aktungbby]

1915: the US Navy loses its first commissioned submarine, the USS F-4, sunk of Hawaii with the loss of all 21 crew members http://militaryhonors.sid-hill.us/history/f4-hist1.htm

Navy investigating board later attributed the accident to the corrosion of rivets in the lead lining of a ballast tank, most likely caused by sulfuric acid. This corrosion permitted seawater to seep into the battery compartment. According to U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, "As the sea valves of the ballast tank were open as usual, additional water entered the hull, probably to the extent of several tons. This caused the boat to sink to a bottom depth of 288 feet within two to four minutes, where the water pressure was so enormous as to open her seams," flooding the vessel.

[Jimbuna]

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

1919 Woodrow Wilson's dream of a League of Nations becomes a reality after the League Covenant is adopted at the Paris Peace Conference.

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

[Jimbuna]

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

1944 705 British bombers attack Essen, Germany.

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

1945 British premier Winston Churchill looks over at the Rhine (near Ginsberg)

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

1945 US 7th Army crosses Rhine at Worms.

1976 Queen Elizabeth II sent out the first royal email, from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment.

[Aktungbby]

1977: in aviation's worst disaster, 583 people were killed when a KLM
Boeing 747, rolling on takeoff in heavy fog crashed into a PanAm 747 taxiing across the runway on the Canary Island of Tenerife. Considering that it was KLM's most senior pilot's assumption he was "good to roll" in spite of the copilot's concern, and a critical momentary glitch in radio-mike (heterodyne-squeal) crossed communications, twixt the control tower to both moving aircraft- proof the leading cause of death on earth is....other people! A lot of those passengers were from California. Of the 321 killed aboard the PanAm aircraft, 256 were from CA.

[Jimbuna]

^ Two month after that tragedy the wife and I flew to Tenerife.

[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 Britain leases defense bases in Trinidad to US for 99 years.

1941 Adolf Hitler signs Directive 27 (assault on Yugoslavia)

1945 British premier Winston Churchill sails to eastern banks of Rhine.

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.