This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1763 Treaty of Paris ends French-Indian War, France surrenders Canada to Great Britain.

1890 Around 11 million acres ceded to US by Sioux Indians, then opened for settlement.

1906 British battleship HMS Dreadnought launches after only 100 days, renders all other capital ships obsolete with its revolutionary design.

1915 US President Woodrow Wilson warns Germany that the US will hold it 'to a strict accountability' for 'property endangered or lives lost'

1916 Military conscription begins in Britain.

1933 Adolf Hitler proclaims end of Marxism.

1944 U-666/U-545/U-283 sink off Ireland.

1947 WW II peace treaties signed.

1972 Two British soldiers are killed in a land mine attack near Cullyhanna, County Armagh; an IRA member is shot dead during an exchange of gunfire with RUC officers.

[Jimbuna]

660 BC Traditional date for the foundation of Japan by Emperor Jimmu.

1858 First vision of the Virgin Mary to 14-year-old Bernadette of Lourdes, France.

1916 Germany and Austria-Hungary notify the US that they will sink any armed merchant ships starting on 1 March.

1929 Vatican City, the world's smallest country, is made an enclave of Rome.

1943 US General Eisenhower selected to command the allied armies in Europe; British General Montgomery not best pleased.

1944 U-424 sunk off Ireland.

1945 Declaration of Liberated Europe signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin after the Yalta Conference.

1946 The Royal Navy's Operation Deadlight ends after scuttling 116 of 156 captured German U-boats.

1956 British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean deny working as spies for Soviet Russia after reappearing in the Soviet Union after going missing 5 years earlier.

1975 Margaret Thatcher defeats Edward Heath for leadership of the British Conservative Party.

2013 Pope Benedict XVI announces his resignation from February 28, the first pope to resign since 1415

[Jimbuna]

1915 Adolf Hitler receives the relatively common Iron Cross second class for bravery in World War I

1915 Kaiser Wilhelm approves the strategic bombing of London's docks.

1942 German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen escape from Brest to Germany in a dash up the English Channel.

1973 1st US POWs in North Vietnam released; 116 of 456 flown to Philippines.

1988 US Navy frigate USS Yorktown bumped by Russian frigate Bezzavetny in the Black Sea in dispute over right of innocent passage.

1989 Loyalist paramilitary group kill Pat Finucane, a Belfast lawyer who represented republican hunger striker Bobby Sands, while he is having dinner with family.

1999 US President Bill Clinton acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial.

2013 North Korea allegedly conducts its third nuclear test, saying it was a nuclear device that could be weaponized.

[Jimbuna]

1689 Parliament of England adopts the Bill of Rights which establishes the rights of parliament and places limits on the crown.

1917 Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari is arrested in Paris on suspicion that she is a German spy.

1942 Operation Sealion, Nazi Germany’s invasion of England, is cancelled by Adolf Hitler.

1945 Allied planes begin bombing the German city of Dresden, resulting in a devastating firestorm that destroys the city and kills over 22,000 people.

1960 France becomes the 4th nuclear nation by exploding the 70 kilo-ton "Gerboise Bleue" atomic bomb in the French Algerian Sahara desert.

[Jimbuna]

1797 Battle of Cape St. Vincent: British fleet under Admiral Sir John Jervis defeats larger Spanish fleet under Admiral Don José de Córdoba y Ramos near Cape St. Vincent, Portugal. Captain Horatio Nelson distinguishes himself.

1876 Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray apply separately for telephone patents, the Supreme Court eventually rules Bell the rightful inventor.

1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, seven gangsters are killed, allegedly on Al Capone's orders.

1940 British merchant vessel fleet is armed.

1971 President Richard Nixon installs a secret taping system in the White House.

[Jimbuna]

1922 Marconi begins regular broadcasting transmissions from Essex.

1933 President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt survives assassination in Miami, Florida, attempt but Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak is mortally wounded, he would die on March 29

1936 Adolf Hitler announces construction of the Volkswagen Beetle (the People's Car, aka the Käfer/Beetle)

1942 German U-boat shells Antillian oil refinery.

1944 891 British bombers attack Berlin in the largest raid by the RAF against the city.

1952 King George VI is buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England.

1971 A British soldier dies 7 days after being mortally wounded in an Irish Republican Army attack in North Ireland.

1971 After 1,200 years Great Britain abandons pence & shilling system for decimal currency.

1989 Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan ends as the last Soviet troops cross the Soviet-Afghan border.

1998 The Angel of the North, a large-scale steel sculpture 20 m (66 ft) tall by Antony Gormley is installed at Gateshead, northern England.

[Jimbuna]

1804 US Navy Lt Stephen Decatur raids Tripoli Harbor & burns Navy frigate "Philadelphia" after it is seized by pirates.

1861 Abraham Lincoln stops his train at Westfield on his way to Washington to thank 11-year old Grace Bedell in person for her advice to grow a beard to gain more votes.

1916 The German ambassador in Washington announces that Germany will pay an indemnity for American lives lost on the Lusitania.

1916 The US rejects the right of Germany and Austria-Hungary to sink armed merchant ships.

1923 Howard Carter opens the inner burial chamber of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb and finds the sarcophagus.

1940 British search plane finds German supply ship Altmark, used to accommodate allied sailors from vessels sunk by the Graf Spee off Norway.

1942 Bangka Island massacre: Japanese soldiers machine-gun 22 Australian Army nurses and 60 Australian and British soldiers and crew members from two sunken ships. Only one nurse and two soldiers survive.

1963 Philosopher Hannah Arendt's controversial account of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann is first published in "The New Yorker"

[Jimbuna]

1915 Edward Stone, 1st US combatant to die in WW I, is mortally wounded.

1940 Altmark Incident: Crew of the British destroyer "Cossack" board German "Altmark" in Jøssingfjord, Norway, releasing 299 British prisoners after hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets and the last recorded Royal Naval action with cutlasses.

1972 British Parliament votes to join the European Common Market.

1972 Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle model exceed those of Ford Model T

[Jimbuna]

1879 Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi is awarded a patent for his design for the Statue of Liberty.

1901 Winston Churchill makes his maiden speech in the British House of Commons..

1977 Space Shuttle Enterprise takes its maiden flight affixed atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Aircraft Carrier.

2014 Ukrainian Revolution of 2014 begins as protesters, riot police and unknown shooters take part in violent events in the capital, Kiev, culminating after five days in the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych.

[Jimbuna]

1910 Typhoid Mary [Mary Mallon] is freed from her first periods of forced isolation and goes on to cause several further outbreaks of typhoid in the New York area.

1914 Four-year old Charlotte May Pierstorff mailed by train from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents’ house 73 miles away in most famous 'child in the post' instance.

1933 Prussian minister Goering bans all Catholic newspapers.

1942 An estimated 150 Japanese warplanes attack the Australian city of Darwin.

1944 U-264 sinks off Ireland.

1945 980 Japanese soldiers reportedly killed by crocodiles in 2 days on Ramree Island, Burma.

1964 UK flies ½ ton of Beatles wigs to the US

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1873 British Naval Officer John Moresby is the first European to discover Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, claims it for the United Kingdom.

1938 Adolf Hitler announces his support for Japan during the Sino-Japanese War.

1938 UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigns, stating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has appeased Nazi Germany.

1942 Lt E H O'Hare single-handedly shoots down 5 Japanese heavy bombers, becomes America's first World War II flying ace.

[Aktungbby]

1907 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an immigration act which excluded "idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons" from being admitted to the United States.
It did not, however, bar "men of many hats" from attending meets in Texas!! ...and with that middle hat, clearly a candidate for the latest social group!

[Jimbuna]

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[Jimbuna]

1431 Joan of Arc's first day of interrogation during her trial for heresy.

1916 Battle of Verdun begins with a German offensive, leads to an estimated 1 million casualties, and becomes the longest battle of the entire war (9 months)

1917 British troopship SS Mendi sinks off Isle of Wight, 646 die.

1945 Battle of Monte Castello (Italy): Allied forces, including the first land battle of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, defeat Germans after three months of fierce fighting in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains.

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1797 The Last Invasion of Britain, launched by the French during the Revolutionary Wars, begins near Fishguard, Wales.

1909 Great White Fleet, 1st US fleet to circle the globe, returns to Virginia.

1915 Germany begins "unrestricted" submarine war.

1916 The House-Grey Memorandum, drafted by US and Britain, states: 'Should the Allies accept [the American idea of a conference to end the war] and should Germany refuse it, the United States would "probably" enter the war against Germany'

1940 German air force sinks 2 German destroyers, killing 578

1942 World War II: President Franklin Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as American defenses collapse.

1967 25,000 US and South Vietnamese troops launch Operation Junction City against the Viet Cong. Largest US airborne assault since World War II.

1972 The Official IRA bombs Aldershot military barracks, the headquarters of the British Parachute Regiment, killing seven people; thought to be in retaliation for Bloody Sunday.