This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1924 Vladimir Lenin is placed in a Mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow.

1944 Siege of Leningrad lifted by the Soviets after 880 days and more than 2 million Russians killed.

1945 Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration Camps in Poland - now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

1967 A fire in the Apollo 1 Command Module kills astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee during a launch rehearsal.

1972 The British Army and the Irish Republican Army engage in gun battles near County Armagh; British troops fire over 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

1972 Two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers shot dead by IRA in an attack on their patrol car in the Creggan Road, Derry.

1973 Paris Peace Accords signed by US Secretary of State William P. Rogers, (North) Vietnam Minister for Foreign Affairs Nguyen Duy Trinh, Republic of South Vietnam Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyễn Thị Bình, and Republic of Vietnam Minister for Foreign Affairs Trần Văn Lắm, ending America's then longest war and it's military draft.

[Jimbuna]

1819 British colonial officer Stamford Raffles lands in Singapore.

1915 The United States Coast Guard is created by merging the US Life Saving Service & the US Revenue Cutter Service.

1942 WW II Navy flier Don Mason sends message "Sighted sub sank same"

1944 U-271 & U-571 sunk off Ireland.

1968 Radiation alert following B-52 crash in Arctic air base of Thule in Greenland.

1973 In the run up to the first anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday' there is serious rioting in Derry, North Ireland.

1986 Space shuttle challenger explodes 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all 7 crew members, including Christa McAuliffe who was to be the first teacher in space.

[Jimbuna]

1886 Karl Benz patents the "Benz Patent-Motorwagen" in Karlsruhe, Germany, the world's 1st automobile with a burning motor.

1896 American Emile Grubbe is the first doctor to use radiation treatment for breast cancer.

1917 British submarine K13 sank in Gaire Loch, Scotland; killing 32 of her crew.

1943 HMNZS Kiwi collides with Japanese submarine I-1 at Guadalcanal.

1943 U.S. cruiser "Chicago" is heavily damaged by Japanese bombers on the first day of the Battle of Rennell Island.

1944 USS Missouri, the last battleship commissioned by the US Navy, is launched.

2002 US President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address describes "regimes that sponsor terror" an "Axis of Evil", which includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

[Jimbuna]

1661 Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed after having been dead for two years.

1933 After Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, his former WWI colleague General Erich Ludendorff sends a letter to him stating "this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery"

1933 President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor of Germany who forms a government with Franz von Papen.

1939 Adolf Hitler threatens Jews during his speech to the German Reichstag (Parliament)

1943 Adolf Hitler promotes Friedrich Paulus, commander of the 6th Army, to Field Marshal in the hope that he will not surrender.

1943 USS Chicago sinks in Pacific Ocean.

1945 American Rangers and Filipino resistance fighters liberate over 500 Allied POWs from Japanese at Cabanatuan.

1945 German passenger ship Wilhelm Gustloff torpedoed off Danzig by a Soviet submarine - killing about 9,000 people, the world's greatest maritime disaster.

1948 Mahatma Gandhi assassinated in the garden of the New Delhi home he was visiting by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse.

1952 Korean War truce talks deadlock.

1965 State funeral for Winston Churchill at St Paul's Cathedral in London; at the time, the world's largest-ever state funeral.

1972 Bloody Sunday: 27 unarmed civilians are shot (14 are killed) by the British Army during a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland; this is the highest death toll from a single shooting incident during 'the Troubles'

[Jimbuna]

1865 Congress passes, by vote of 121-24, the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States – except as punishment for a crime.

1917 Germany notifies US that U-boats will attack neutral merchant ships.

1918 A series of accidental collisions on a misty Scottish night leads to the loss of two Royal Navy submarines with over a hundred lives, and damage to another five British warships.

1933 Adolf Hitler promises parliamentary democracy.

1943 German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrenders to Soviet troops at Stalingrad.

1944 Operation-Overlord (D-Day) postponed until June.

1944 U-592 sunk off Ireland.

1950 US President Harry Truman publicly announces support for the development of a hydrogen bomb.

1972 British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling to House of Commons on 'Bloody Sunday', "The Army returned the fire directed at them with aimed shots and inflicted a number of casualties on those who were attacking them with firearms and with bombs"

1985 South African President P. W. Botha offers to free Nelson Mandela if he denounces violence.

[Jimbuna]

1587 Queen Elizabeth I of England signs death warrant for her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots.

1917 German Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz announces unrestricted submarine warfare against allied shipping.

1918 German spy Lothar Witzke arrested by CIP agent Byron S. Butcher at the US border at Nogales - only German spy sentenced in the US during WWI

1933 German Parliament is dissolved by President Paul von Hindenburg by the request of new chancellor Adolf Hitler.

1968 Saigon police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executes Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém with a pistol shot to head. The execution is captured by photographer Eddie Adams and becomes an anti-war icon.

2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

[Jimbuna]

1349 By this date at least 200 people a day were being buried in London as a result of the Black Death.

1653 New Amsterdam becomes a city, later renamed New York City.

1901 Queen Victoria's funeral takes place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England.

1943 German 6th Army surrenders after the Battle of Stalingrad in a major turning point in Europe during World War II

1972 Angry demonstrators burn the British Embassy in Dublin to the ground in protest at the shooting dead of 13 people on 'bloody sunday'

[Jimbuna]

1917 US ocean liner Housatonic is sunk by a German submarine, on the same day that US President Woodrow Wilson breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany.

1933 Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe departs for Berlin (later arrested, convicted and executed for supposedly setting fire to the German Reichstag)

1943 "The Four Chaplains" drown after giving up their life jackets to others as the US Army transport ship Dorchester sinks in the North Atlantic.

1945 Almost 1,000 Flying Fortresses drop 3,000 tons of bombs on Berlin.

1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Yalta, Crimea, Soviet Union for the "Big Three" Yalta Conference.

1966 First soft landing on the Moon, by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 9

[Jimbuna]

1789 1st US electoral college chooses George Washington as President and John Adams as Vice President.

1938 Adolf Hitler seizes control of German army and puts Nazis in key posts.

1969 The Palestine National Congress appoints Yasser Arafat chairman of the PLO

1973 British Army snipers shoot dead a Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer and three civilians at the junction in Belfast during the 'Troubles' in N Ireland.

1974 Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes on a bus in West Yorkshire, England, carrying British Army soldiers and some of their family members.

2004 Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1917 US ocean liner Housatonic is sunk by a German submarine, on the same day that US President Woodrow Wilson breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany.

...this being the forum; I'm amazed it wasn't named Housatonic II ...the first Housatonic having been famously sunk in the Civil War as history's first submarine victim, by the CSS Hunley!

[Jimbuna]

1803 English explorer George Bass and crew set sail from Sydney to Tahiti and Chile - they're never seen again.

1885 King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal colonial possession.

1887 Snow falls on San Francisco.

1900 The United States and the United Kingdom sign treaty for Panama Canal.

1917 The last of the American troops commanded by General John Pershing leave Mexico; President Carranza will be assassinated within the next year.

1918 1st US pilot to down an enemy airplane, Stephen W. Thompson.

1972 Two IRA members are killed when a bomb they were planting exploded prematurely.

1973 Funeral held for US Army Lt. Col. William Nolde, last US soldier killed in Vietnam War.

[Jimbuna]

1922 US, UK, France, Italy & Japan sign Washington naval arms limitation.

1935 "Monopoly" board game goes on sale for 1st time.

1943 1st Spitfire in action above Darwin, Australia, Mu Ki-46 shot down.

1952 Queen Elizabeth II succeeds King George VI to the British throne and proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms including Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

1971 American astronaut Alan Shepard is 1st to hit a golf ball on the moon.

1971 The Irish Republican Army shoots and kills Gunner Robert Curtis, the first British soldier to die during the 'Troubles'

[Jimbuna]

1783 Great Siege of Gibraltar, launched by France and Spain against the British colony during the American War of Independence is lifted after 3 years and 7 months.

1863 HMS Orpheus sinks off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand, killing 189

1991 Provisional Irish Republican Army launches a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting in an attempt to assassinate UK Prime Minister John Major, injuring four people.

1992 The Maastricht Treaty is signed by 12 countries from the European Community (EC) to create the European Union (EU)

[Jimbuna]

1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle aged 44 after being convicted of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I in the Babington Plot.

1807 Battle of Eylau ends inconclusively between Napoleon's forces and the Russian Empire, first battle Napoleon isn't victorious.

1912 British Emissary journeys to Berlin to suggest that Britain might support German colonial aspirations in Africa if Germany agrees to hold her current naval strength.

1916 French cruiser "Admiral Charner" torpedoed off Syrian coast, kills 374

1942 Congress advises FDR that, Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn't oppose the US war effort.

1942 Nazi architect Albert Speer appointed Minister of Armaments by Adolf Hitler after death of Fritz Todt in a plane crash.

1944 German submarine U-762 sunk off Ireland by British forces with the loss of all 50 crewmen.

1960 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issues an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor"

[Jimbuna]

1916 Britain's military service act enforced (conscription)

1941 Nazi collaborators destroy pro-Jewish café Alcazar Amsterdam (Alcazar refused to hang "No Entry for Jews" signs in front of cafe)

1944 U-734/U-238 sunk off Ireland.

1945 HMS Venturer sinks U-Boat 864 off the coast of Norway.

1972 William Craig, who had been Northern Ireland Minister for Home Affairs, launches 'Ulster Vanguard' as an umbrella movement for the right-ring of Unionism.

1996 The Irish Republican Army declares the end of its 18 month ceasefire shortly followed by a large bomb in London's Canary Wharf.